Quincas Borba (Library of Latin America) (29 page)

Quincas Borba was all over their laps. They would clap their hands to see him leap. Some went so far as to kiss him on the head. One of them, more ingenious, found a way to have him at the table at lunch or dinner, on his legs so he could feed him pieces of bread.

“Oh, none of that!” Rubião protested the first time.

“What’s wrong?” his guest replied. “There aren’t any strangers here.”

Rubião reflected for a moment.

“The truth is that there’s a great man inside him,” he said.

“The philosopher, the other Quincas Borba,” the guest went on, looking around at the newer ones to show the intimacy of his relationship with Rubião. But he couldn’t keep the advantage to himself because the other friends from the same period repeated in a chorus:

“That’s right, the philosopher.”

And Rubião would explain to the newcomers the reference to the philosopher and the reason for the dog’s name, which they had all attributed to him. Quincas Borba (the deceased) was described and spoken of as one of the greatest men of his time—superior to his fellow countrymen. A great philosopher, a great soul, a great friend. And at the end, after a moment of silence, rapping with his fingers on the edge of the table, Rubião exclaimed:

“I would have made him a minister of state!”

One of the guests, without conviction, out of duty, exclaimed:

“Oh, no doubt about it!”

None of those men, however, knew the sacrifice that Rubião was making for them. He turned down dinner invitations, rides,
he interrupted pleasant conversations just so he could hurry home to dine with them. One day he found a way of adjusting everything. If he wasn’t home by six o’clock on the dot, the servants were to serve dinner for his friends. There were protests: no, sir, they would wait until seven or eight o’clock. Dinner without him was dull.

“But it’s possible I might not be able to come,” Rubião explained.

That was the way it was done. The guests set their watches by the clocks in the house in Botafogo. When six o’clock struck, everyone was at table. On the first two days there was a bit of hesitation, but the servants had strict orders. Sometimes Rubião would arrive a little after. Then there was laughter, remarks, jollity. One of them wanted to wait, but the others … The others resisted the effort. On the contrary, he was the one who’d pulled the rest of them along, such was his hunger—to the point that if there was anything left, it was only the plates. And Rubião laughed with them all.

T
o write a chapter to say only that in the beginning the guests, with Rubião absent, smoked their own cigars after dinner may seem frivolous, but thoughtful people will say that there was some interest in that seemingly minimal circumstance.

It so happened that one night one of the oldest friends thought to go into Rubião’s study. He’d been there a few times, where the cigar boxes were kept, not four or five, but twenty or thirty of different makes and sizes, all open. A servant (the Spaniard) lighted the gas. The other guests followed the first, picked out cigars, and those who weren’t familiar with the study admired the well-made and well-arranged furniture. The writing desk received general admiration. It was made of ebony, a masterpiece of wood carving, a solid, strong piece. Something new awaited
them: two marble busts on it, the two Napoleons, the first and the third.

“When did these come?”

“At noon today,” the servant replied.

Two magnificent busts. Next to the eagle-eyed look of the uncle, the pensive look of the nephew was lost in space. The servant said that his master, as soon as the busts had arrived and were in place, had spent a long time admiring them, so oblivious that he, too, was able to look at them, without admiring them.
“No me dicen nada estos dos picaros,”
the servant concluded, making a broad and noble gesture.

R
ubião was a generous patron of letters. Books that were dedicated to him went to press with a guarantee of two or three hundred copies. He had diplomas from literary, choreographic, and religious societies, and he was a member of a Catholic Congregation and a Protestant Fraternity at the same time, not thinking about the one when people mentioned the other to him. What he did was pay his dues regularly to both. He subscribed to newspapers without reading them. One day, when he was paying the bill for one, he discovered from the collector that it supported the government party. He told the collector to go to the devil.

T
he collector didn’t go to the devil. He collected the price for six months, and, since he possessed the natural observation of bill collectors, he muttered out on the street:

“Now here’s a man who hates the paper and pays. How many are there who love it and don’t pay?”

B
ut—Oh, stroke of fortune! Oh, impartiality of nature!—our friend’s prodigality, if it had no cure, did have compensation. Time no longer passed for him as for an idler without ideas. Rubião, for lack of them, now had imagination. Formerly he’d lived for others more than for himself, had found no inner equilibrium, and indolence marked hours that never came to an end. Everything was undergoing a change. Now his imagination tended to leap about a little. Sitting in Bernardo’s shop, he would spend a whole morning without time’s wearying him, nor did the narrowness of the Rua do Ouvidor restrict his space. Delightful visions repeated themselves for him, like that of marriage (Chapter LXXXI) in terms where the grandeur didn’t take away from the graciousness. There were those who saw him leap from his chair more than once and go to the door to get a good look at the back of a person passing by. Did he know him? Or could it have been someone who chanced to have the features of the imaginary creature he was looking at? These are too many questions for just one chapter. Suffice it to say that one of those times nobody was passing by. He recognized the illusion himself, went back inside, and bought a bronze geegaw for Camacho’s daughter, whose birthday it was and who was going to be married shortly, and then he left.

“W
hat about Sofia?” the lady reader asks impatiently like Orgon:
“Et Tartuffe?’
Alas, my friend, the answer is naturally the same—she, too, was eating well, sleeping soundly and smoothly—things that also don’t prevent a person from loving when she wants to love. If this last reflection is the secret motive behind your question, let me say to you that you’re most indiscreet, and I want nothing to do with hypocrites.

I repeat, she was eating well, sleeping soundly and smoothly. She’d come to the end of the Alagoas committee with praise in the press.
Atalaia
called her “the consoling angel.” And don’t think this name made her happy even though it praised her. On the contrary, placing the whole charitable activity in Sofia’s hands might mortify her new friends and cause her to lose the work of many months in one day. That was how the article in the next number of the paper explained it, naming individually and glorifying the other committee women—“stars of the first magnitude.”

Not all the relationships were substantive, but the greater part of them were firm, and our lady was not lacking in the talent for making them lasting. Her husband was the one who sinned for being boisterous, excessive, outgoing, making it obvious that he was collecting favors, that he was receiving unexpected and almost undeserved kindnesses. Sofia, to correct him, bothered him with bits of censure and advice, laughing:

“You were impossible today. You were acting like a servant.”

“Cristiano, control yourself when we have people from outside. Don’t have your eyes popping out of your face as you bounce from one side to another like a child who’s been given some candy…”

He would deny it, explain, or justify himself. In the end he concluded that, yes, he mustn’t be so obsequious. Courtesy, affability, nothing more …

“Exactly, but don’t fall into the other extreme,” Sofia added, “don’t be grumpy …”

Palha became both things then, grumpy at first, cold, almost disdainful, but either reflection or unconscious impulse would restore our man to his habitual animation and with it, depending
on the moment, excess and clamor. Sofia was the one who really fixed everything. She observed, imitated. Necessity and vocation soon had her acquiring what neither birth nor fortune had given her. Furthermore, she was at that in-between age in which women inspire equal confidence in girls of twenty and matrons of forty. Some had great affection for her, others heaped praise upon her.

That was how our friend gradually cleared the atmosphere. She broke off old familiar relationships, some so intimate that it was hard to dissolve them, but the art of greeting without warmth, listening without interest, and taking leave without regret was not among the least of her gifts. And one by one off they went, poor modest creatures without manners or taste in dress, unimportant friendships of humble merriment, simple, unelevated customs. She did exactly what the major had said with the men when they saw her pass in a carriage—which, parenthetically, was hers. The difference was that she no longer peeked to find out if they’d seen her. The honeymoon with grandeur was over. Now she was casting her eyes firmly in a different direction, avoiding with a definitive action the danger of any hesitation. In that way she was obliging old friends not to tip their hats to her.

R
ubião still tried to stand up for the major, but Sofia’s look of annoyance cut him off in such a way that our friend preferred to ask her whether, if it didn’t rain the next morning, they were still going riding to Tijuca.

“I just spoke to Cristiano. He told me that he’s got some business, that we should put it off till next Sunday.”

Rubião, after a moment:

“Let’s the two of us go. We’ll leave early, ride, have lunch there, and we’ll be back by three or four o’clock …”

Sofia looked at him with such a desire to accept the invitation that Rubião didn’t wait for a verbal response.

“It’s all set then, we’re going,” he said.

“No.”

“Why not?”

And he repeated the question because Sofia didn’t want to explain her negative response to him, so obvious as well. Obliged to do so, she explained that her husband would be envious and would be capable of putting off his business meeting just to go along. She didn’t want to upset his business affairs, and they could wait a week. Sofia’s look accompanying that explanation was like a clarion accompanying the Lord’s Prayer. Oh, she wanted to! She wanted to go up the road with Rubião the next morning, well mounted on her horse, not idly or poetically musing, but valiant, fire in her face, completely of this world, galloping, trotting, stopping. Up there she would dismount for a while. All alone, the city in the distance and the sky above. Leaning against the horse she would comb its mane with her fingers, listen to Rubião praise her daring and grace … She imagined she felt a kiss on the back of her neck…

S
ince it’s a question of horses, it wouldn’t be out of place to say that Sofia’s imagination was now a lively and willful charger, capable of crossing hills and crashing through forests. A different comparison might be better if the occasion were other, but a charger is the one that fits best. It carries the idea of impetuosity, blood, speed, and at the same time the serenity with which it returns to the straight road and, finally, to the stable.

“I
t’s all set. We’re going tomorrow,” Rubião repeated as he sought out Sofia’s excited face.

But the charger had returned from the race fatigued, and it was left dreaming in the stable. Sofia was a different person now. The madness of the undertaking had passed, the envisioned ardor, the pleasure of going up the Tijuca road with him. When Rubião said he would ask her husband to let her go on the ride, she argued, spiritless.

“You’re crazy! Leave it for next Sunday!”

And she fastened her eyes on the piece of linen she was sewing—a trimming, a trifle, it’s called—while Rubião cast his eyes over a small stretch of wretched garden alongside the sitting room where he was. Sofia, seated at a corner of the window, was working her fingers. In two ordinary roses Rubião saw an imperial celebration, and he forgot about the room, the woman, and himself. It can’t be said for certain how long they were silent like that, alien and remote from one another. It was a maid who woke them up, bringing coffee. When the coffee had been drunk, Rubião stroked his beard, looked at his watch, and took his leave. Sofia, who’d been waiting for him to go, was satisfied, but she covered her pleasure with surprise.

“So soon?”

“I’ve got to see a fellow before four o’clock,” Rubião explained. “We’re all set, then. Tomorrow’s ride canceled. I’ll tell them not to prepare the horses. But it’ll be next Sunday for sure, right?”

“Of course, of course. I can’t say for sure, but if it can be worked out with Cristiano, I think so. You know that my husband’s a man with a lot on his shoulders.”

Sofia saw him to the door, shook hands indifferently, answered some silly remark with a smile, went back to the room where she’d been—to the same spot—at the same window. She didn’t go back to her work right off. She crossed her legs, pulling down the skirt of her dress as she habitually did, and she cast a glance over the garden where the two roses had given our friend an imperial vision. Sofia only saw two mute flowers. She stared at them for some time, however. Then she immediately picked up
her lacework, busied herself with it a little, stopped for a while, dropping her hands into her lap. And she went back to her work only to abandon it again. Suddenly she got up and tossed the thread and shuttle into the wicker basket where she kept her sewing things. The basket was one more remembrance from Rubião!