Quincas Borba (Library of Latin America) (8 page)

H
e dined there many times. He was timid and bashful. Frequency lessened the impressions of the first days. But he always carried hidden, barely hidden, a certain private fire that he was unable to extinguish. While the inventory was going on and, principally, the challenge to the will made by someone who alleged that Quincas Borba was unfit to make a will because of manifest dementia, our Rubião was distracted. But the challenge was defeated, and the inventory went rapidly along to its conclusion. Palha celebrated the event with a dinner in which the three were joined by the lawyer, the notary, and the clerk. That day Sofia had the most beautiful eyes in the world.

I
t was as if she’d bought them in some mysterious craftsman’s workshop, Rubião thought as he went down the hill. I’ve never seen them as they were today.

This was followed by his move to the house in Botafogo, part of his inheritance. It was necessary to furnish it, and here his friend Palha was of great help to Rubião once more, guiding him with his taste, his knowledge, accompanying him to shops and auctions. Sometimes, as we already know, the three of them would go, because there are things, Sofia would graciously say, that only a woman can choose well. Rubião accepted with thanks and made the purchases drag on as long as possible, making consultations for no reason, inventing needs, everything, just so he could keep the young woman beside him. She let herself stay, talking, explaining, demonstrating.

A
ll of that was going through Rubião’s head now after coffee, in the same place where we’d left him sitting, looking far away, very far away. He continued rapping with the tassels of his dressing gown. Finally he remembered to go see Quincas Borba and turn him loose. It was his daily chore. He got up and went to the garden in the rear.

“B
ut what a sin is this that pursues me?” he thought as he walked. “She’s married, she gets along with her husband, her husband’s my friend, he trusts me, completely… What are these temptations?”

He stopped and the temptations stopped too. He, a lay Saint Anthony, was different from the anchorite in that he liked the devil’s suggestions once they grew insistent. Out of that came an alternative monologue:

“She’s so pretty! And she seems to like me so much! If that isn’t liking, I don’t know what liking is. She shakes my hand with such pleasure, such warmth . . . I can’t keep away, even if they let me, I’m the one who can’t resist.”

Quincas Borba heard his steps and began to bark. Rubião hastened to turn him loose. It was turning himself loose from that persecution for a few moments.

“Quincas Borba!” he shouted, opening the door.

The dog tore outside. What joy! What enthusiasm! What leaps around his master! He comes to lick his hand out of contentment, but Rubião cuffs him, which hurts. He draws back a little, sad, with his tail between his legs. Then his master snaps his fingers, and there he is again, back with the same joy.

“Easy! Easy!”

Quincas Borba follows him through the garden, goes around the house, sometimes walking, sometimes leaping. He savors his freedom but doesn’t lose sight of his master. Here he sniffs, there he cocks an ear, over there he goes after a flea on his belly, but with a leap he recovers the space and the time lost and once again dogs the heels of his master. It appears that Rubião isn’t thinking about anything now other than walking back and forth, only to make him walk too and make up for the time he was tied up. When Rubião halts, he looks up, waiting. The master’s thinking about him, naturally. It’s some plan, they’ll go out together or something just as pleasant. He never thinks of the possibility of a kick or a whack. He has a feeling of trust and a very short memory for blows. On the other hand, petting makes a deep and fixed impression on him, no matter how casual it might have been. He likes being loved. He’s happy believing that he is.

Life there isn’t completely good or completely bad. There’s a black boy who bathes him every day in cold water, a devilish custom that he can’t get used to. Jean the cook likes the dog; the Spanish servant doesn’t like him at all. Rubião spends a lot of time away from the house but doesn’t treat him poorly, and he allows him inside, lets him stay with him at lunch and dinner, accompany him in the parlor or the study. Sometimes he plays with him, makes him leap. If visitors of some importance arrive, he has him taken away or brought downstairs, and since he always resists, the Spaniard leads him quite carefully at first, but gets his revenge soon after, dragging him by an ear or a leg, flinging him and cutting him off from all communication with the house.

“Perro del infiernor!”

Bruised, separated from his friend, Quincas Borba then goes to lie down in a corner and remains there for a long time, silent. He moves about a little until he finds a final position and closes his eyes. He doesn’t sleep; he’s gathering ideas, combining them, remembering. The vague figure of his dead friend might pass in the distance, far off, in bits and pieces, then it mingles with that of his present friend, and they seem to be one single person. Then other ideas …

But there are a lot of ideas now—there are too many ideas. In any case, they’re the ideas of a dog, a jumble of ideas—even
less than a jumble, the reader is probably explaining to himself. But the truth is that the eye that opens from time to time to stare into space so expressively seems to be translating something that’s glowing there inside, deep inside there behind something else that I don’t know how to define, how to express a canine part that isn’t the tail or the ears. Poor human tongue!

Finally he dozes off. Then the images of life play in him in a dream, vague, recent, a scrap here, a patch there. When he awakens, he’s forgotten the bad things. He has an expression that I’ll say could be melancholy, at the risk of annoying the reader. One can speak of a landscape as being melancholy, but the same thing can’t be said of a dog. The reason can’t be any other than the fact that the melancholy of the landscape is in ourselves, while to attribute it to a dog is to place it outside of ourselves. Whatever it might be, it’s something that’s not the joy of a while before. But let there be a whistle from the cook or a signal from his master, and it all vanishes, the eyes shine, pleasure lifts up his muzzle, and his legs fly so fast that they look like wings.

R
ubião spent the rest of the morning happily. It was Sunday. Two friends had come to have lunch with him, a young man of twenty–four who was nibbling at the first items of his mother’s possessions that had been handed down, and a man of forty–four or forty–six who no longer had anything to nibble on.

Carlos Maria was the name of the first, Freitas that of the second. Rubião liked both of them but in different ways. It wasn’t just age that linked him closer to Freitas, it was also the man’s nature. Freitas praised everything, greeted every dish and every wine with a special delicate phrase, and he would leave there with his pockets full of cigars, thus proving that he preferred that brand over all others. They’d been introduced in a certain shop on the Rua Municipal, where they dined together once. They’d
told him Freitas’ story there, his good and bad luck, but they didn’t go into details. Rubião had turned up his nose. Freitas was some castaway whose acquaintance wouldn’t bring him any personal pleasure or public esteem, of course, but Freitas soon softened that first impression. He was lively, interesting, a good storyteller, as jolly as a man with an income of fifty
cantos
. Since Rubião had mentioned his pretty roses, Freitas asked permission to go see them. He was crazy about flowers. A few days later he appeared there, saying that he was coming to see the beautiful roses, just for a few minutes, if it wasn’t inconvenient, if Rubião didn’t have something to do. The latter, on the contrary, was pleased to see that the man hadn’t forgotten their conversation, and he came down into the garden where the man had been waiting and went to show him the roses. Freitas found them admirable. He examined them so carefully that it was necessary to pull him away from one rosebed to take him to another. He knew the names of all of them, and he went along mentioning species that Rubião didn’t have and didn’t know—mentioning and describing, like this and like that, this size (indicating it by making a circle with his thumb and forefinger), and then he would name some people who owned good specimens. But Rubião’s bushes were of the best species. This one, for example, was rare, and that one too, etc. The gardener was listening to him in awe. When everything had been examined, Rubião said:

“Come have something to drink. What would you like?”

Freitas was happy with anything. When they got inside, he found the house nicely furnished. He examined the bronzes, the paintings, the furniture, he looked out at the sea.

Yes, sir!” he said. “You live like a prince.”

Rubião smiled. Prince, even as a comparison, was a word that had a nice sound to it. The Spanish servant came with the silver tray holding various liqueurs and some goblets, and it was a good moment for Rubião. He himself offered Freitas this or that liqueur. He finally recommended one that they’d told him was the best of all its type on the market. Freitas smiled in disbelief.

“Maybe it was to raise the price,” he said.

He took the first sip, savored it slowly, then a second, then a third. Finally, amazed, he confessed that it was a beauty. Where
had he bought it? Rubião replied that a friend, the owner of a large wine shop, had given him a bottle of it as a present. He, however, had liked it so much that he’d ordered three dozen. It didn’t take long for their relationship to grow close. And Freitas came to have lunch or dinner there many times—more times even than he wanted to or could—because it’s hard to resist a man who’s so accommodating, so fond of seeing friendly faces.

R
ubião once asked him: “Tell me, Mr. Freitas, if I got it into my head to go to Europe, would you be able to come along?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m a free friend, and it might happen that we’d start off disagreeing about the itinerary.”

“Well, I’m sorry, because you’re a jolly sort.”

“You’re mistaken, sir. I wear this smiling mask, but I’m a sad person. I’m an architect of ruins. I would go first to see the ruins of Athens, then to the theater to see
The Poor Man of the Ruins
, a weepy drama. Later on to bankruptcy court, where ruined men are found …”

And Rubião laughed. He liked Freitas’ expansive and frank ways.

D
o you want the reverse of this, curious reader? Take a look at the other guest at lunch, Carlos Maria. If the first one has “expansive and frank” ways—in a laudatory sense—it’s quite clear that this man has just the opposite kind. So it won’t be difficult at all for you to see him enter the parlor, slow, cold, and superior, to be introduced to Freitas and look away. Freitas, who had already cursed him cordially because of his lateness (it’s almost noon), treats him now with great courtesy, with friendly greetings.

You can also see for yourself that our Rubião, if he likes Freitas better, holds the other in higher esteem. Rubião waited for Carlos Maria until now and would have waited for him until tomorrow. Carlos Maria is the one who doesn’t hold either Freitas or Rubião in high esteem. Take a good look at him! He’s an elegant young man with large, placid eyes, very much in control of himself and even more in control of others. He looks beyond things, he doesn’t have a jovial laugh but a mocking one. Now, as he sits down at the table, picks up his utensils, opens his napkin, it can be seen in everything that he’s doing the host a great favor—perhaps two—that of eating his food and that of not calling him a fool.

And, in spite of the disparity of personalities, the lunch was merry. Freitas was devouring his food, with a pause now and then, of course—and confessing to himself that the lunch, if the man had come at the appointed time (eleven o’clock) might not have tasted so good. Now he was sailing into the first mouthfuls that heightened his castaway’s hunger. After some ten minutes he was able to start talking, full of laughter, expanding with gestures and looks, stringing together a whole series of sharp witticisms and picaresque anecdotes. Carlos Maria listened to most of them with a serious look in order to humiliate him, to such a point that Rubião, who really found Freitas amusing, no longer dared to laugh. Toward the end of the lunch Carlos Maria loosened up a little, grew expansive and made reference to other people’s amorous adventures. Freitas, in order to flatter him,
asked him to tell about one or two of his own. Carlos Maria burst out laughing.

“What role do you want me to play?” he asked.

Freitas explained. It wasn’t a discourse, but deeds, he was asking him for deeds, nothing untoward or anything left to the imagination.

“Are you comfortable living here in Botafogo?” Carlos Maria interrupted, addressing the host.

Freitas, cut off, bit his lip and cursed the young man a second time. He leaned back in his chair, taut, serious, looking at a picture on the wall. Rubião answered that he was quite comfortable, that the beach was beautiful.

“It’s a pretty view, but I was never able to stand the stench there is here on certain occasions,” Carlos Maria said. “What do you think?” he went on, turning to Freitas.

Freitas straightened up and said everything he thought, that they could both be right. But he insisted that the beach, in spite of everything, was magnificent. He went on without any ill humor or annoyance. He even did Carlos Maria the favor of calling his attention to a small piece of fruit that had become stuck to the tip of his mustache.

They reached the end. It had been a little over an hour. Rubião, silent, was mentally recomposing the lunch, dish by dish, he looked with pleasure at the glasses and the remains of the wine there, the scattered crumbs, the final appearance of the table just before coffee. From time to time he would glance at the servant’s jacket. He managed to catch Carlos Maria’s face in flagrant pleasure as he was taking the first puffs on one of the cigars that Rubião had asked to be distributed. At that point the servant entered with a small basket covered with a cambric handkerchief and a letter that had just been delivered.