The Yellow Sofa

by José Maria De Eça de Queirós

  The office was asleep in the profound holiday silence, and when he pushed open the green baize door, the clock was striking ten, in the hollow tone to which the low ceiling gave that doleful, mourning resonance. He went quickly to his room; it seemed as though he had not been there for an age, and that there was something different about the furniture and the arrangement of things. The bunch of flowers had completely withered in its vase.

  His mood suddenly changed. Facing that furniture, those two partners’ desks, one alongside the other, reminding him of the intimacy, the mutual confidence, of the years, the very furniture shared his anger and he was seized with a dreadful rage. Well, Machado was a villain who deserved to die! And every object, even the walls, as though saturated with the business integrity which belonged there, were a silent accusation against his partner’s treachery. Suddenly, a light footstep sounded outside: it was Machado.

  Instinctively, Alves took refuge behind his desk, sorting papers at random with trembling hands and without daring to lift his eyes.

  The door opened and Machado entered, white as a corpse, with his hat and stick in one hand, the other in his trouser pocket, revealing a bulge. But Alves did not notice it, did not dare look at it, his glance roamed here and there, searching for a word, something profound and dignified to say. At last, with an effort, he faced him and at once that hand in the pocket gave him a fright; he started involuntarily, fearing a weapon, an attack. Machado understood, slowly took his hand out of his pocket and went to put his hat and stick on his desk. Then Alves, trembling, in anxious haste to break the silence, stammered:

  ‘After what happened yesterday, we cannot go on being friends.’

  Machado, whose drawn face wore an anxious expression, closed his eyes, breathed more freely. He too had been expecting an act of violence, something dreadful; and the moderation, the sad groan of a friendship betrayed, surprised him, deeply impressed him. At that moment, he would have liked to throw himself into his partner’s arms. And it was with genuine emotion, a sob in his throat, that he replied:

  ‘Unhappily, unhappily. . .’

  Alves then beckoned to him to sit down. Machado, crestfallen, went and sat on the edge of the repp sofa. Alves let himself fall like an inert mass on to the stool by the desk.

  And for a while, complete silence reigned, made even deeper by that city street in its Sunday quiet. Alves passed a trembling hand across his face, searching for words. The other waited, staring at the carpet.

  ‘A duel between us is impossible,’ said Alves at last, with an effort.

  ‘I am at your service, the decision is yours. . .’

  ‘It is impossible,’ said Alves again. ‘We’d be laughed at. . . Especially the sort of duels that go on around here. . . It would make us ridiculous. . . We cannot do it in our position. . . All business men would laugh at a duel between partners. . .’

  For a moment, Alves was silent, working on the thought that they were partners and on the past which had bound them together. He had not felt Machado’s infamy so sharply until he saw him there, in that office room, where they had worked together for three years. And he exclaimed:

  ‘There is no word to describe your infamous behaviour. . .’

  He had risen, his voice grew louder, and his feeling of a friend betrayed gave his words dignity, a solemnity which crushed the other man. He spoke quietly, aiming his words at him, like blows. He had known him from childhood, had looked after him in his young days; he had made him his partner, his friend, opened his home to him, welcomed him like a brother!

  ‘And behind my back, what do you do? Dishonour me!’

  Machado stood up, with a distressed look, wanting to be done with the torture.

  ‘I know all that,’ he stammered, ‘and I am ready to make amends in full, whatever they may be.’

  Excitedly, Alves then revealed his plan:

  ‘The only reparation is this: one of us must die. . . A duel is absurd. . . Let us draw lots for which of us must kill himself.’

  As soon as he had uttered them, those pathetic words seemed like strange and disconnected sounds; the quiet atmosphere, the very office furniture seemed to spurn them. Yet he had said the words, and he felt relieved at having finally got off his mind the idea which, since the previous evening, had been filling him with anxiety and torment.

  Machado went on looking at him, his eyes staring.

  ‘Draw lots? In what way draw lots?’

  He seemed not to understand. The suicide drawn by lots seemed to him grotesque and insane. And as Alves stayed by his desk, saying nothing but nervously twirling his moustache, Machado grew impatient and exclaimed:

  ‘Are you serious? Do you really mean it?’

  Then it was Alves who looked at him, downcast. What he feared had come to pass. Machado had found it absurd and had refused. His anger grew as he saw vengeance eluding him.

  ‘Even yesterday you ran away, fled in a cowardly manner when I caught you. Now you want to run away from this as well!’

  Livid, the other man shouted:

  ‘Run away from what?’

  Silent rage possessed him, made his eyes blaze. The other’s accusations had exasperated him. Then there had come this absurd suggestion, of a suicide drawn by lot. Now he was insulting him! No, he could not put up with that! And excited now, he stammered:

  ‘Run away from what?’ he repeated, ‘Run away from what? I am not running away from anything. . .’

  ‘In that case,’ said Alves, banging his fist on the desk, ‘let us draw lots, here and now, to decide which of us must disappear!’

  For a moment, Machado looked at him with cold disdain, as though he might strangle him. Then he quickly snatched up his hat and stick, and at the door, in a biting, emphatic and vibrant voice, said:

  ‘I am ready to give you full satisfaction, even with my life. . . But it must be in a sane and proper way, with four witnesses, with swords or pistols as you prefer, at whatever distance you choose, a mortal duel, whatever your wish. I am at your disposal. All today, all tomorrow, I shall be waiting at home. But I do not understand the ideas of a madman. And we have nothing more to discuss!’

  So Alves remained there, alone with the lamentable ruins of his grand design, humiliated, confused, annoyed, his temples throbbing, and not knowing what he ought to do!

  6 In the end, he grabbed his hat, just as Machado had done, and left the office. And he was so shattered that he was already in Gold Street when he realised that he had not locked up; he went back and that seemed to restore some sense of order to his thoughts.

  He had decided to fight him, in a duel to the death, and nothing on earth seemed capable of satisfying him except to see Machado at his feet, with a bullet in his heart.

  So what? That fellow had dishonoured him, robbed him of his wife’s affection and now, on top of everything, had treated him like an imbecile, called him mad! That especially infuriated him, because he now felt uneasily that there was in fact something ridiculous in the idea of suicide drawn by lot. Perhaps so! But Machado should not have said so, ought to have accepted everything, resigned himself to the form of reparation that he had demanded. Had he not asked only for natural and reasonable amends? Very well, so be it; they would fight with pistols—but only one of them loaded, taken at random and aimed from the distance of a handkerchief’s width. Then there would still be an element of chance, of fate, leaving everything in the just hands of God!

  Meanwhile, he would go at once to Rossio, where his close friend, Carvalho, lived—he who had been Director of Customs at Cape Verde and had married well. He headed in that direction, for he was the first person to whom he would want to go, and he would tell him everything, relying on his old friendship. Then they would go and seek another of his intimate friends, Teles Medeiros, a man of fortune and social standing who had whole armouries of rapiers in his lounge and much experience on any point of honour.

  It was nearing mid-day; the July sun was burning up the streets; and the closed shops, pe
ople in their Sunday clothes, carriages in the Square drawn up on the shady side, all intensified the feeling of peace and inactivity. A fine haze obscured the blue sky and the sound of bells fell heavily on the gentle air. As Alves was going up Carvalho’s steps, he met him coming down, self-important and cool in his new light tweed suit, putting on his pearl-grey gloves. Alves’s breathless appearance, his worried air, alarmed Carvalho; and he turned to go up again, opened the door with his key, took him into a little study which contained a bookcase and a wicker chaise-longue, shaped like a camp-bed. In the adjoining room, the lounge, someone was playing the piano, a brisk waltz, making the very house shake.

  Carvalho drew the door curtain, closed the window, and only then did he ask ‘What is it?’

  Alves put his hat on the corner of the table and with a rush straightway unburdened himself. At the opening words—sofa, arm round waist—Carvalho, who was slowly taking off his gloves, stood petrified in the centre of the study; and he went to draw the curtain still more closely, as if he feared that the account of the betrayal might spread an obscene breath over his respectable establishment. Still, in the confused way in which Alves recounted his fate, the impatience with which Carvalho listened, he did not realise who the man had been; he merely assumed that Machado had been present, and when he realised that Machado himself had been the man on the sofa, he slapped one hand against the other and exclaimed in horror:

  ‘What infamy!’

  ‘A man who was like a brother to me,’ said Alves, lowering his voice, brandishing his fists, ‘and that’s how he repays me! No, he must die! I demand a duel to the death. . .’

  Carvalho’s full-bearded face then showed a disturbed expression. Now he understood: Alves had not come merely to unburden himself; he had come to get a second! And at once the timidity of the bureaucrat took hold of him: respect for the law, dread of compromising himself. His self-esteem was revolted in face of the violent and disturbing matters which confronted him. He quickly sought excuses, explanations. If in fact Alves had seen no thing more than—if it was just a matter of their being together in the drawing-room—it might have been a prank, a trifle. . .

  Alves searched feverishly through his pockets. The piano in the adjoining room launched now into a jumble of uncertain notes, as if fingers were groping, seeking a forgotten melody. Suddenly, a snatch from Rigoletto broke out jerkily, wailing and sobbing. And Alves, who had at last found what he was seeking, put the letter before Carvalho who read it out in a subdued voice: ‘My soul’s darling, what an afternoon that was yesterday. . .’

  As though the words, heard in someone else’s voice, seemed even more disgraceful than when he had read them himself, Alves could not contain himself but raised his voice and shouted:

  ‘No! Only with bloodshed; it must be a duel to the death!’

  Carvalho was worried, motioned to him to be quiet. And as the piano had stopped for a moment, he went on listening, fearing that the shouts might have been overheard.

  ‘It is Mariana,’ he said, pointing towards the drawing-room. ‘For the moment, it is better that she does not know.’

  Then, once more, he slowly read the letter, felt the paper, examined it again, holding it in his fingers with excited curiosity, as if he could feel in it the very heat of those kisses. . . And Alves once more searched through his pockets, annoyed at having forgotten the other letters; for there were others even worse! Gripped now by the wish really to convince Carvalho that his wife was an immoral woman, he quoted phrases, revealed the whole episode, all Ludovina’s shamelessness.

  ‘What is more, she did not deny it, she admitted it all!’

  ‘What! You actually spoke to each other?’

  After a pause, Alves then completed his confidences, his idea of suicide by lots, his encounter with Machado. Carvalho, who had flung himself on the chaise-longue as though he were shattered, crushed, by all these revelations, opened wide the eyes in that sunburnt face of his, tanned by the Cape Verde sun, shocked that such violent and terrible things had really happened and been recounted to him, there in his quiet Rossio home.

  When Alves related how Machado had considered the whole idea senseless, Carvalho did not restrain himself:

  ‘Madness indeed! Pure madness!’ he exclaimed, as he got up.

  And in the narrow study, waving his arms about, he sought a word, a phrase, to sum it all up, went on talking of ‘madness’ and ended by saying that such things happened only in Rocambole!

  ‘It comes to the same thing,’ said Alves. ‘For I insist that it must be a pistol duel, but with only one of them loaded, and that drawn by lot. . .’

  Carvalho gave a start: ‘Only one pistol, drawn by lot? But that is murder! No, please do not count on me! There is no justification for that. . . And even if there were, I would not meddle in such a matter.’

  Perceiving himself deserted, Alves was indignant. So, in this desperate crisis, he, his best friend, was going to leave him in the lurch like that? On whom, then, ought he to rely, to whom trust his honour?

  The other man rambled on, again spoke of assassination, of crime, of prison, and ended by saying:

  ‘If you were to come and ask me to set fire to the Bank of Portugal, do you think that I ought to agree?’

  Alves tried to explain that it was not the same thing; their voices grew louder, one against the other, when a pause in the piano playing made them break off. There was an argument in the adjoining room, voices were raised, an altercation in which could be heard the words ‘white skirt’, ‘slattern’, ‘Madam said nothing’, all uttered in a tone of annoyance. For a moment, Carvalho listened. Then he shrugged his shoulders: it must be some new neglect on the part of the maid, a shameless creature whom they had had for a month, and who did nothing properly. Then, hearing a door slammed, he could not resist going to see what was the matter.

  Left alone for a moment, Alves felt a great weariness taking hold of him. Since the previous day his nerves had been on edge, taut as the strings of a tightly tuned violin. Until now, everything had seemed to him so easy, his vengeance secure. But now he had had two shocks in quick succession. Machado had not been in favour of suicide by lot; and now this fellow did not want any duel to the death! And something within him began to weaken, as if his spirit was growing weary of maintaining, for so many hours, a sombre attitude of vengeance and death. His head began to ache, the headache that had been threatening him since the previous evening. He sat down on the chaise-longue, his head in his hands, and sighed profoundly.

  Carvalho returned, flushed and excited. There had been a scene, he had thrown the servant girl out. Then he became upset, complained of his bad luck that did not allow him an honest maidservant—all a mob of shameless hussies, slatterns who cheated him. He remembered nostalgically the coloured ones—there was nothing to compare with a coloured maid.

  ‘So tell me what you think about all this affair,’ asked Alves, in disillusionment.

  Carvalho shrugged his shoulders:

  ‘The best thing is to leave everything as it is, your wife in her father’s home, you in yours, and what will be will be. . .’

  Yet he felt a touch of remorse, wanted to show sympathy, and added:

  ‘In this whole affair, count on me entirely. . . A proper duel, with swords, or even with pistols, to preserve your honour, yes sir! I’m on! But not those tragic affairs! No!’

  Taking up his hat, Alves said:

  ‘Let us go and see what Medeiros has to say; let’s go to Teles Medeiros’s house!’

  Carvalho was crestfallen. He was going to spend the day with his wife, at the home of her parents at Pedrouças. It was his brother-in-law’s birthday. . . But, after all, in such an affair, it was necessary to do something for one’s friends.

  ‘Let us go, then, just let me tell Mariana that I can’t go with her. . .’

  When, shortly afterwards, he came back, putting on his gloves, he looked irritable and disagreeable. On the way downstairs he stopped and turned to Alves, who wa
s following him down:

  ‘Did you know that my wife is expecting, eh? . . . A shock could be fatal, and if she were to know that I was a second. . . It’s no joke. . . However, let us go. Friends are for such occasions. . .’

  Down below, they took a carriage, for Medeiros lived down town, near the Estrela. It was a two-seater, almost new, smart and shining, which rolled noiselessly along. This put Carvalho into a better humour and he leaned back, finished buttoning his gloves. For a while, they did not exchange a word. Then, when the coupé was going through Loreto, a great curiosity seemed to take hold of Carvalho. Alves had given him few details. What had Ludovina said? How had he got to know of the affair? What had Neto said? Alves, seeming weary and downcast, completed the story in a few brief words. His friend did not approve of the thirty milreis allowance: it was ‘an indulgence to disgraceful behaviour’. But seeing that Alves looked dejected, that he was biting his lip with emotion, and his eyes filled with tears, Carvalho murmured vaguely:

  ‘This life is just a mess!’

  They did not exchange another word until they reached Medeiros’s house. When they rang the bell, the maid told them that Senhor Medeiros was still in bed. So Carvalho went upstairs, went familiarly into Medeiros’s bedroom, making a noise, calling him a lazy-bones and a roué. Behind him, Alves was knocking into the furniture, in the gloom of the bedroom.

  From the shade of the bed curtains, Medeiros’s ill-humoured voice demanded to know what sort of invasion this was; and when they opened the curtains, he cried out, buried himself in the sheets, unable to bear the bright morning light. But at last he showed his sleep-drenched face; then he roused himself, raised himself on to his elbow, and took a cigarette from the bedside table.

  Carvalho sat down beside the bed, and for a while they chatted about the idle ways of Medeiros, who explained that he had got to bed at five that morning.