Quincas Borba (Library of Latin America) (6 page)

S
even weeks later this letter postmarked Rio de Janeiro arrived in Barbacena, all in Quincas Borba’s handwriting:

My dear friend,

You must be puzzled by my silence. I have not written you because of some very special reasons, etc. I shall return soon, but I wish to pass on to you right now a private matter, most private.

Who am I, Rubião? Saint Augustine. I know that you’ll smile at that because you’re an ignoramus, Rubião. Our intimacy allows me to use a crueler word, but I make you this concession, which is the last. Ignoramus!

Listen, ignoramus. I’m Saint Augustine. I discovered that the day before yesterday. Listen and be quiet. Everything in our lives coincides. The saint and I have spent a portion of our time in pleasures and heresy, because I consider heresy everything that isn’t my doctrine of Humanitas. We’ve both stolen things, he, as a boy, some pears in Carthage, I, a young man already, a watch from my friend Brás Cubas. Our mothers were religious and virtuous. In short, he thought as I do that everything that exists is good and he demonstrates why in Chapter XVI, Book VII, of his
Confessions
, with the difference that for him evil is a deviation of the will, a natural illusion of a backward century, a concession to error on Augustine’s part, since evil doesn’t even exist, and only his first affirmation is true. All things are good,
omnia bona
, and goodbye.

Goodbye, ignoramus. Don’t tell anyone what I have just entrusted to you if you don’t want to lose your ears. Be silent, be on guard, and thank your good fortune for having a great man like me for a friend, even if you don’t understand me. You will understand me. As soon as I return to Barbacena I’m going to give you, in simple, explicit terms, suitable for the understanding of a jackass, the true notions of a great man. Goodbye. Remember me to my poor Quincas Borba. Don’t forget to give him milk, milk and baths. Goodbye, goodbye … Yours from the bottom of my heart,

QUINCAS BORBA

Rubião could barely hold the paper in his hands. After a few seconds he sensed that it might be one of his friend’s japes, and he reread the letter. But the second reading confirmed his first impression. There was no doubt about it, he was crazy. Poor Quincas Borba! So his odd ways, his frequent changes of mood, his meaningless drive, his disproportionate acts of tenderness were nothing but the foretoken of the total ruin of his brain. He was dying before he died. So good! So jolly! He had his impertinences, to be sure, but they were explained by his illness. Rubião wiped his eyes, moist with feeling. Then the thought of the possible legacy came to him, and he was all the more afflicted as he was shown what a good friend he was going to lose.

He tried to read the letter one more time still, slowly now, analyzing the words, breaking them up to catch the meaning better and really to discover if it was the banter of a philosopher. That way of disconcerting a person by playing was well known, but everything else confirmed the suspicions of disaster. Almost at the end now, he stopped, his heart pierced. Might it not be that with the insanity of the testator proven the will would be null and void and the inheritance lost? Rubião had a dizzy spell. He still had the open letter in his hands when he saw the doctor appear in search of news of his patient. The postman had told him that a letter had arrived. Was that it?

“This is it, but…”

“Is it some private message … ?”

“Precisely, it has a private message, very private. Personal matters. May I?”

Saying that Rubião put the letter in his pocket. The doctor left. He breathed deeply. He’d escaped the danger of making public such a dangerous document by which it would be possible to prove Quincas Borba’s mental condition. Minutes later he was sorry, he should have turned over the letter, he felt remorse, he thought about sending it to the doctor’s house. He called a slave, but when he came Rubião had already changed his mind again. He thought it would be imprudent. The sick man would soon be back—in a few days—he would ask about the letter, would accuse him of being indiscreet, a snitch … Easy remorse, which didn’t last long.

“I don’t want anything,” he told the slave. And he thought about the legacy once more. He estimated the figure. Less than ten
contos
, no. He would buy a plot of land, a house, he would grow this or that, or he would mine for gold. The worst was that if it was less, five
contos …
Five? That wasn’t much, but in any case it might not go beyond that. Let it be five, it was less but better less than nothing. Five
contos
... It would be worse if the will were found null and void. All right, then, five
contos!

A
t the beginning of the following week when he received the newspapers from the capital (Quincas Borba’s subscriptions still), Rubião read this item in one of them:

“H
is suffering is over,” Rubião sighed. Immediately after, taking another look at the news item he saw that it spoke of a man of merit, appreciation, to whom a philosophical controversy was attributed. No mention of dementia. On the contrary, at the end it said he was delirious during his final moments, the effect of his illness. So much the better! Rubião read the letter again and the hypothesis of a jape seemed likely once again. He knew that he had a sense of humor. He was surely poking fun at him. He went to Saint Augustine in the same way as he might have gone to Saint Ambrose or Saint Hillary, and he wrote an enigmatic letter in order to confuse him until he could return and have a good laugh over his success. Poor friend! He was sane—sane and dead. Yes, now he no longer suffered. Seeing the dog, he sighed:

“Poor Quincas Borba! If you only knew that your master was dead…”

Then he said to himself, “Now that my obligation is over, I’m going to turn him over to my friend Angélica.”

T
he news spread through the town; the vicar, the druggist, the doctor all sent to find out if it was true. The postman, who’d read about it in the papers, came in person to bring Rubião a letter that had come for him in the pouch. It could have been from the deceased although the handwriting of the sender was different.

“So the man finally gave up the ghost, eh?” he said as Rubião opened the letter and ran his eyes down to the signature, where he read
Bras Cubas
. It was just a note:

“My poor friend Quincas Borba died yesterday in my home,
where he had appeared a while back, filthy and in tatters, the effects of his illness. Before dying he asked me to write you and give you this news personally along with many thanks. The rest will be done according to legal procedures.”

The thanks made the teacher turn pale, but the legal procedures brought his blood back. Rubião folded the letter without saying anything. The postman spoke of different things and then left. Rubião ordered a slave to take the dog to his dear friend Angélica, telling her that since she liked animals, here was another one, that she should treat him well because he was used to good treatment, and, finally, that the dog’s name was the same as that of his master, dead now, Quincas Borba.

W
hen the will was read, Rubião almost keeled over. You can guess why. He was named sole heir of the testator. Not five, not ten, not twenty
cantos
, but everything, his whole estate, with the possessions specified: houses in the capital, one in Barbacena, slaves, bonds, stocks in the Bank of Brazil and other institutions, jewelry, coins, books—everything, in short, passed into Rubião’s hands directly, without any legacies to other people, without any charitable donation, without any debts. There was only one condition in the will, that the heir was to keep with him his poor dog, Quincas Borba, a name he had given it out of the great affection he felt for it. It demanded that the said Rubião treat the dog as if it were the testator himself, without skimping in any way for its needs, protecting it from annoyances, flight, robbery, or death that people might wish upon it out of evil. In short, to treat it as if it were not a dog but a human being. Item, the condition is imposed that when the dog dies it is to be given decent burial in its own plot, which will be covered with flowers and sweet–smelling plants, and, furthermore, he was to disinter the bones of said dog after the
suitable period and gather them together in a casket of fine wood, to be placed in the most honored place in the house.

S
uch was the clause. Rubião found it natural enough since he’d only had thoughts for the inheritance. He’d imagined just a legacy, and out of the will all of the possessions had come his way. He had trouble believing it. He had to have his hand shaken many times, strongly—the strength of congratulations—in order not to imagine that it was a lie.

“Yes, sir, you scored a goal,” the owner of the pharmacy that had supplied Quincas Borba’s medicines said to him.

Heir was a lot, but sole … That word puffed up the cheeks of the inheritance. Heir to everything, not a teaspoon left out. And how much would it all amount to? he was thinking. Houses, bonds, stocks, slaves, clothing, chinaware, a few paintings that he had in the capital, because he was a man of good taste, he had a fine knowledge of artistic things. And books? He must have had a lot of books because he was always quoting from them. But what could the figure for all of it be? A hundred
cantos}
Maybe two hundred. It was possible that three hundred wouldn’t be a surprise. Three hundred
cantos!
Three hundred! And Rubião had an urge to dance in the street. Then he calmed down. If it was two hundred or even a hundred it was a dream that the Good Lord was giving him, but it was a long dream, one that would never end.

The remembrance of the dog managed to take hold in the whirlwind of the thoughts that were going through our man’s head. Rubião found the clause natural enough but unnecessary because he and the dog were two friends, and nothing was more certain than that they should stay together to remember the third friend, the deceased, the author of the happiness of both. There were, of course, a few strange items in the clause, the bit about
the casket, and he didn’t know what else, but they would all be fulfilled unless the sky fell in ... No, with God’s help, he added. Good dog! Fine dog!

Rubião was not forgetting the many times he’d tried to get rich in enterprises that had died in bloom. He considered himself at that time a poor unfortunate, an unlucky person, when the truth was that a person with God’s help caught more worms than the early bird. So it wasn’t impossible to become rich, since he was now rich.

“What’s impossible?” he exclaimed aloud. “It’s impossible for God to sin. God doesn’t hold out on someone he’s made a promise to.”

He went along like that, up and down the streets of the town, without heading home, without any plan, with his blood pounding in his head. Suddenly this grave problem arose: whether he should go live in Rio de Janeiro or stay in Barbacena. He felt the urge to stay, to shine where he’d been in the shadows, to get one up on the people who’d paid scant attention to him before, mostly the ones who’d laughed at his friendship with Quincas Borba. But immediately after came the image of Rio de Janeiro, which he knew, with its enchantment, movement, theaters everywhere, pretty girls dressed in the latest French fashions. He decided it was better. He would come back up to his hometown many, many times.

“Q
uineas Borba! Quincas Borba! Hey!” he shouted as he went into the house.

No dog to be seen. Only then did he remember having sent him to Angélica. He ran to the woman’s house, which was quite distant. Along the way all kinds of ugly ideas came to him, some extraordinary. One ugly idea was that the dog had run away. Another extraordinary one was that some enemy, aware of the
clause and the gift, had gone to deal with the woman, stolen the dog, and hidden or killed it. In that case the inheritance . . . A cloud passed over his eyes. Then he began to see more clearly.

I’m not familiar with legal matters,” he thought, “but it seems to me that I’m not involved. The clause supposes the dog to be alive or at home. But if he runs away or dies there’s no reason to invent a dog. Therefore the original intent… But my enemies are capable of chicanery. If the clause isn’t fulfilled …”

Here our friend’s brow and the palms of his hands became damp. Another cloud came over his eyes. And his heart was beating rapidly, rapidly. The clause was beginning to seem outlandish to him. Rubião grasped at his saints, promised masses, ten masses … But there was the woman’s house. Rubião picked up his pace. He saw someone, was it she? It was, it was she, leaning against the door and laughing.

“What kind of a figure is that you’re cutting, old friend? Have you gone crazy, waving your arms around?”

“W
here’s the dog, friend?” Rubião asked, apparently in different but very pale.

“Come in and have a seat,” she answered. “What dog?”

“What dog?” Rubião replied, getting paler and paler. “The one I sent you. Don’t you remember that I sent you a dog to keep for a few days, for some rest, to see if. . . In short, a dearly–loved animal. It’s not mine. I came here to ... But don’t you remember?”

“Ah! Don’t talk to me about that creature!” she answered, pouring out the words.

She was small, she would tremble over anything, and when she was excited the veins on her neck stood out. She repeated that he shouldn’t talk to her about the creature.