The Alienist and Other Stories of Nineteenth-Century Brazil

by Machado De Assis

  Porfirio paid all their debts and bought the dress. His creditors frowned when they saw him coming, but instead of excuses he gave them money—as naturally as though he had never done anything else. Gloria put up a bit more opposition to the dress, but being a woman she eventually succumbed to the lure of looks and fashion. She did not consent to have the dress made by a tailor, however, and she wanted the savings deposited in the bank with the rest of what remained after paying their debts.

  “And why does it have to be deposited in the bank?” he asked a week later.

  “In case we need it,” answered his wife.

  Porfirio thought about this, walked around the room twice, approached her, and put his hand under her chin. He stood there for a moment gazing at her.

  Then, shaking his head:

  “You’re a saint. You sit here working, month in, month out, and never have any fun, never have a day off. That’s got to be bad for your health.”

  “Well, let’s go out for a walk.”

  “Don’t say that. Walking around is not enough. Otherwise, dogs would never get mangy,” he said, laughing uproariously at his own idea. “I’m saying something different. I mean … let’s have a party.”

  Gloria was instantly and firmly against it. She begged, argued, and even got angry, but her husband had an answer for everything. Had they been counting on this money? No! Imagine how they had been, owing the hair off their heads, whereas now they were all paid up and could enjoy themselves. It could even be a way to thank the Good Lord for his blessings. You can’t take it with you, after all. Everybody gets to have some fun occasionally. Even the worst-off people get a holiday sometimes. Why should the two of them have to slave for years without a break? And actually, he did get out a bit, but she didn’t. What did she ever get to see? Nothing! Just work and more work. And, after all, when else was she going to wear her new silk dress?

  “On the day of Our Lady of Gloria we can go the parish fair, all right?”

  Porfirio thought about this for a moment.

  “We can do both,” he said. “I won’t invite too many people. A family affair. I’ll invite Firmino and his wife, old Ramalho’s daughters, now that he has passed away, and Borges, of course …”

  “Nobody else, Porfirio, that’s enough!”

  Porfirio agreed to everything, and he was probably sincere, but the preparations worked him up to a fever pitch. He wanted the party to be a real blowout, something that people would talk about. After a week, the guest list had risen to thirty. They were deluged with inquiries. There was all sorts of talk about Porfirio’s party, about his winning the lottery, some said two thousand milréis, some said three thousand, and when they asked him, he smiled, avoided answering, and offered no clarification. Some concluded that he must have won four thousand, and he smiled even more mysteriously.

  The day arrived. Gloria, who had eventually caught her husband’s infectious enthusiasm, proudly wore her new dress. Every now and then, she thought about the money and told her husband to control himself and save something to put in the bank. He said yes, but did not count very carefully, and the money evaporated. After a simple, high-spirited dinner, the dancing started, a real blowout. The place was so crowded that you could hardly move.

  Gloria was the queen that night. Her husband stopped fidgeting with his brand-new, shiny shoes to watch her, elatedly. They danced together many times, and the general opinion was that nobody could top them, but they also danced with their guests, a family affair. It got to be three o’clock, four o’clock, five o’clock in the morning. At five o’clock, a third of the guests were still there, “the imperial guard,” according to Porfirio, who was everywhere at once, covered with sweat, his tie twisted to one side, straightening up the floral decorations, scooping up a child who had gone to sleep in a corner, carrying it to a bedroom carpeted with sleeping children. And then he was back in the front room, clapping his hands, let’s go people, don’t let the dancing stop, they could sleep when they went home.

  And instruments wailed again, as the last candles flickered low.

  FATHER AGAINST MOTHER

  We come at last to a story by Machado de Assis in which a slave plays a central role: “Pai contra mãe.” Even in this story, the slave catcher is the protagonist, although not because the author has any liking for him. Cándido, a good-natured good-for-nothing, is the father of the title. The mother is the escaped slave Arminda, who is pregnant when Cándido catches her. Cándido and his wife, Clara, another seamstress, are threatened with the loss of their newborn son, whom they may have to leave in something called the “foundling’s wheel,” which is a small rotating door to a convent, where nuns would find the infant and care for it as an orphan. The story was published in 1906, shortly before the author’s death, and, unlike the enormous majority of his stories, this one did not appear first in the newspaper. It was written well after the abolition of slavery, when slaves had not been numerous for decades. Improvidence and debt are on the prowl again in this second story about life among the not-so-rich majority in nineteenth-century Rio. But the great evil here is unmistakably slavery itself. There is a powerful sense, in this story, that the author is saying things he often would have liked to say in the past. And this time, quite unusually, the narrator is none other than Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis himself, more or less unmediated and in person.

  Like other social institutions, slavery brought with it a number of activities and artifacts. Let me mention a few artifacts associated with a particular activity of interest to our story. A sort of iron collar is one; an iron chain attached to the ankle, another; and, third, a metallic mask. The mask eliminated the vice of drunkenness among slaves by covering their mouths. It had only three openings—two for the eyes and one to breathe through—and it was fastened with a lock behind the head. Without the vice of drunkenness, slaves lost the temptation to steal, because it was commonly a coin or two belonging to the master that they used to buy a drink. So the mask eliminated not one vice, but two, and guaranteed both sobriety and honesty. The mask was grotesque, admittedly, but social order is not always achieved without grotesquery and, sometimes, cruelty. Tinsmiths hung these masks for sale by the doors of their shops. But let’s not worry about masks.

  The iron collar was locked around the neck of slaves who had attempted to escape, following their recapture. Imagine a thick iron ring and, on it, to the left or the right of the wearer’s neck, a thick iron bar extending up to the height of the wearer’s head. It was heavy, of course, but it was less a punishment than a marker. Any slave who ran away again wearing such a collar would be noticed wherever he went and quickly recaptured.

  Half a century ago, slaves ran away frequently. There were a lot of slaves, back then, and not all of them liked slavery. They were occasionally beaten, and not all of them liked to be beaten. Many were merely scolded, of course, because someone in the household defended them or because their owners were not mean or simply did not want to damage their property. Money, apparently, can feel pain, too. Still, slaves kept running away. Sometimes—although this was rare—a recently imported slave would sprint away from the Valongo slave market through the streets of Rio de Janeiro without any idea of where he was going. Newly imported slaves who were purchased and taken home soon learned their way around the streets and acquired the rudiments of Portuguese. Then they would ask the master to let them go out daily and earn money for him as street vendors or slaves for hire, and these had many opportunities to run away.

  The owner of a runaway slave offered a monetary reward to whoever brought him back. He put an advertisement in the newspaper with a description of the runaway—name, clothing, any noticeable physical defect, the neighborhood where the slave was last seen, and the amount offered in bounty. When the ad mentioned no specific amount, it promised “a generous reward.” Such ads often contained a small illustration of a barefoot black man running, a sack with his few belongings slung over his shoulder on a stick. They invoked the full rigor of t
he law against anyone who aided or abetted the escape.

  Now, catching escaped slaves was then a common occupation, useful, if not exactly noble, and, because it enforced the law and the sanctity of property, it had a secondhand sort of respectability. No one studied slave catching or took it up merely as a pastime, however. Poverty, a chance occurrence, the desire to serve, a lack of aptitude for other sorts of work, but most often the simple need to make ends meet—such were the motivations of the valiant men who imposed order on disorder in midcentury Rio de Janeiro.

  Cándido Neves—Candy, to friends and family—the person about whom this story of a slave catcher is being told, was motivated by poverty, pure and simple. He couldn’t tolerate any sort of trade or employment. He was “jinxed,” he said. His first idea was to learn typesetting, but he quickly saw that it would take time to master and, even then, he told himself, might not pay enough. He liked the idea of business, which was an excellent career, and so became cashier at a small store. In practice, though, serving customers at the counter annoyed him and wounded his pride, so he quit after five or six weeks. Letter carrier, notary’s assistant, messenger for an imperial ministry, and other jobs—were jettisoned soon after he got them.

  When he fell in love with Clara, he had only debts to his name—not too many, though, because he lived with his cousin, a wood-carver by trade. After various failed attempts to find other work, he decided to enter his cousin’s trade, of which he already knew some elements. He easily learned more, but he was in a hurry and didn’t learn them very well. So he stayed away from anything delicate or complicated, doing only claw-feet for sofas and simple carving for the backs of chairs. He wanted to be employed when he got married, and that didn’t take long to happen.

  He was thirty years old, Clara twenty-two. She was an orphan and lived with her Aunt Monica, in whose house she did needlework. She wasn’t so busy sewing that she couldn’t have boyfriends, but the boyfriends were only interested in killing time with her, so it appeared, and nothing else. They spent afternoons in the sitting room, gazing at her, and she at them, until the evening, when she had to go sew. She noticed that she didn’t really like them and didn’t miss them in their absence. She possibly never learned the names of many. She did want to get married, naturally. Her aunt said that it was like fishing: you just waited, cane pole in hand, to see if anything took the bait. But nothing did. Most fish swam by without stopping, and the few that stopped merely poked at the bait without taking it before swimming away in search of something better.

  Love brings us various missives. One has to open the envelopes to see what is inside. When Clara first saw Cándido Neves, she felt immediately that this might be her future husband, the one and only. They met at a dance. Such, one could say, recalling the attempted initial profession of the groom, was page one of their romance, a book that turned out poorly typeset and worse bound. The wedding took place eleven months later, with quite a celebration. Clara’s friends tried to dissuade her from the step that she was about to take. They did not deny that the groom was a fine fellow, or that he loved her, or that he possessed a number of virtues. But they said that he was too fond of partying.

  “Thank goodness,” replied the bride. “At least I’m not marrying some boring old hulk!”

  “An old hulk, no. It’s that …”

  But they didn’t finish the sentence. After the wedding, however, Aunt Monica spoke to them at the rundown house, where they had gone to live. She wanted to talk about their idea of having children. The new couple wanted to have one, just one, even though a child might try their scarce resources.

  “You’ll starve to death, and the child, too,” the aunt told her niece.

  “The Virgin, Our Lady, will provide for us,” replied Clara.

  Aunt Monica should have delivered her dire warning when Cándido had proposed to the young woman. But Monica, too, was fond of celebrations, and liked the idea of a wedding. The three of them were fun loving. The couple laughed about everything, even their names—Clara, Neves, Cándido—all about whiteness and purity. Their high spirits put no food on the table, but laughter is easily digested. Clara sewed more now, and Cándido took odd jobs, nothing steady.

  They did not give up the idea of having a child, however. It was the child who, apparently unaware of their plan, failed to materialize. One day, though, the child finally gave notice of its impending arrival; boy or girl, it was the blessed fruit that would bring them the future they’d sighed for. Aunt Monica felt a bit uncertain, but Cándido and Clara laughed at her worries.

  “God will surely help us, Aunt Monica,” insisted the expectant mother.

  The news flew from neighbor to neighbor. They had only to await the big day. The wife sewed more eagerly than before, which was a good thing, because now, in addition to the sewing that she did for money, she had to start piecing together the baby clothes out of scraps. She thought about the baby clothes until it seemed to her that she already had the baby, so much did she measure and sew for its diapers and little shirts. The scraps were small, and the intervals between them, large. Aunt Monica helped, it’s true, though resentfully.

  “You’ll see how hard life is,” she sighed.

  “Don’t other people’s babies get born somehow?” asked Clara.

  “They get born, and their parents have a steady means to feed them, even if it’s not much.”

  “What do you mean ‘a steady means’?”

  “I mean a job, an occupation. What does the father of that unlucky kid that you’re expecting spend his time doing?”

  Cándido Neves, as soon as he heard about the aunt’s warning, went to talk with her, and although he wasn’t rude to her, he was much less gentle than usual. He demanded to know if she had ever gone hungry while he was living with her.

  “You only fast during Holy Week, and only then because you decline to share whatever I’m having. We never go without our codfish.”

  “Sure, but there are just three of us.”

  “So there will be four.”

  “It’s not the same thing.”

  “What do you want me to do, then, that I’m not already doing?”

  “Something more reliable. Look at that cabinetmaker fellow, the guy who runs the corner store, the typesetter who got married on Saturday … they all have steady jobs. Don’t get mad, now. I’m not saying that you’re worthless, I’m saying what you’re doing is worthless. Weeks go by that you earn nothing at all.”

  “Yes, but one evening soon I’m going to more than make up for it. God won’t abandon me. Those runaways know they can’t play games with yours truly. Very few resist at all. A lot of them don’t even try to run and just surrender right away.”

  He spoke with pride. It was money in the bank. Before long he was laughing, and soon Monica was laughing, too, because she was naturally fun-loving and the baptism promised a big party.

  Cándido had lost the wood-carving job the way he’d let go of many others, better ones and worse ones. Now he was keen to catch slaves. Slave catching didn’t require you to stay a long time sitting in one place. It only required strength, a sharp eye, patience, courage, and a piece of rope. Cándido Neves read the advertisements concerning escaped slaves, carefully copied them on a bit of paper that he put in his pocket, and went out to do some research. He had a good memory. Once he had assimilated the information about the runaways, he quickly found, caught, tied them, and led them away. He was impressively strong and agile. More than once he was standing on a corner conversing absentmindedly and, among many slaves passing by, recognized one as a runaway. And he knew which one—the name, the owner’s name, the owner’s address, and the amount of the reward, too. He didn’t grab the slave right away, either. He waited for the right moment and then, one jump, and the reward was in his hands. Sometimes he shed a drop of blood, the work of the other person’s teeth and fingernails, but mostly he got by without a scratch.

  One day Cándido’s profits began to diminish. Runaways didn’t come
up and jump into his arms anymore. Other, very capable hands were at work. Slave catching was a growing business and lots of unemployed men had seen the potential, found a rope, copied the ads, and joined the chase. Cándido had more than one competitor in his own neighborhood. Now his debts began to rise without the payments that, at first, had been on time or almost on time. Life suddenly got harder. They borrowed money for food, and they didn’t eat so well. Sometimes it was a long time between meals. The landlord sent repeatedly for the rent.

  Clara didn’t even have time to mend her husband’s clothes because she was busy sewing for money at all hours. Aunt Monica helped her niece, naturally. When Cándido got home in the evenings you could see in his face that his pockets were empty. He ate supper and went out again to look for runaways. Blinded by the necessity, he now occasionally grabbed the wrong person, a faithful servant doing an errand for his master. Once he captured a free man of color. He apologized a thousand times but the man’s relatives left him black and blue.

  “It was bound to happen,” said Aunt Monica when she saw him walk in and after she heard his story about the mistake and its consequences. “Give it up, man! Look for a different line of work.”

  Cándido did decide he wanted another job, but not because of Monica’s advice. He was simply ready for a change of pace. The only problem was finding an alternative trade that he could learn quickly enough.

  Nature moved along: the fetus was growing, a considerable burden to its mother even before being born. The eighth month arrived, a difficult month, though less than the ninth, so let’s skip them both and narrate only their impact, which could not be more bitter.

  “No, Aunt Monica!” howled our Cándido, refusing advice that I’d rather not put in print, advice hard for the father to hear, no doubt. “Not that! Never!”

  It was in the last week of the last month that Monica advised the couple to leave the baby in the foundling’s wheel. There could hardly be a worse word for two young expectant parents, eager to kiss and care for their baby, eager to watch it laugh and grow fat and sassy. The foundling’s wheel! Cándido looked in horror at the aunt and finally pounded his fist on the dining table. The table was old and shaky and seemed about to collapse entirely. Clara spoke up: