Prose (64 page)

Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,

Saw a door opened and a cat let in;

But they weren't German Jews, my dear, they weren't German Jews.

Went down to the harbour and stood upon the quay,

Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:

Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.

Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;

They had no politicians and sang at their ease:

They weren't the human race, my dear, they weren't the human race.

These verses and many, many more of Auden's have been part of my mind for years—I could say, part of my life.

1974

TRANSLATIONS

From
The Diary of “Helena Morley”

… Thank God Carnival is over. I can't say that it was very pleasant, because grandma beat me, something she never does.

It's my fate that everyone who loves me makes my life miserable. The only people who have any authority over my cousins are their fathers. Oh! If only it were like that with me! My father is the person who annoys me least of all. If it hadn't been for grandma's and Aunt Madge's interfering I'd have gone to the masquerade ball at the theatre. Since the age of seven I've dreamed of being twelve so that I could go to the ball. And now I'm almost thirteen and I'm beaten for not going!

Aunt Quequeta was the one who made me want to go to the ball, telling me about what they used to do in her day. A friend of hers put on a masquerade costume, disguised her voice, and flirted with her father all evening until he fell madly in love with her and the next day instead of coming in to lunch he kept walking around in the garden with his head hanging down, thinking of the masked woman. Another friend of hers let her husband go to the ball first and she went later, masked, flirted with him, and he fell madly in love with her, to such a degree that he kept sighing the whole evening.

My aunts still have the hoop skirts they used to wear. How I wish they still wore them! They don't wear anything like that now, but I'd like to go like that even so.

It was my cousin Glorinha who gave me such a swelled head that I thought I could go. I asked mama and she said, “If your grandmother will let you I'll let you.” I asked grandma, “Grandma, mama will let me go. Will you let me go to the ball with Glorinha?” she said, “I certainly will not!” I stamped my foot hard and I ran and threw myself on her bed, angry. She came in and took off her slipper and hit me twice, saying, “That'll give you something to cry about!” I thrashed my legs around but I didn't get up.

But it was worth it because today I got the material for a dress and a silver two milreis piece.

*   *   *

… Knowing that I and my sister have that failing of laughing at everything, how did papa have the courage to send a guest to our house the way he did? You can't imagine what our life has been like with this man in the house! Papa has been in Parauna for a week. He went to see a mine that a Frenchman wants to buy and asked papa if he'd go to see if it's worth it. There papa's the guest of this man he sent us. But you wouldn't believe it if I told you what his visit has been like.

We have a little Negro girl, Cesarina, very funny, who makes us laugh all the time at the things she says and does. On the day this man arrived something happened to us that couldn't possibly happen in any other house; there were only two tallow candles in the house. When mama discovered it there weren't any stores open. But these candles aren't any good; they don't last at all. One was used up before I'd even finished my lessons. Mama had the other one put in the guest room. In our house we only use kerosene in the kitchen and even the kitchen lamp was dry. When my candle came to an end I still had lessons to do, there was nothing else to do but send Cesarina to the guest room, to see if he'd gone to sleep. If he had, she was supposed to steal the candle without waking him up! She went and came back laughing so hard at finding the man still awake that she could only speak to us by making signs.

She held her hands up in the air and made spectacles with her fingers, meaning that the man had his eyes open. She made this sign and all the time she was having such a fit of the giggles that she couldn't speak.

We are idiots about laughing. We began that night and even now we can't look at our guest without a fit of giggling. We just have to see the man and then we remember Cesarina's spectacles and simply burst. Mama,
coitada,
doesn't know what excuse to give the man. She's said everything except that she has two lunatics in the house.

And I think that these attacks of laughing that we've had are due to our having as a guest a man who's never seen us before, and his being silent, without saying a word, in the house and at the table. Now mama's forbidden us to come to the table, but even in the kitchen we shake with laughter to see the man and mama sitting there in silence! I don't know what she'll tell papa. He's been here three days and it already seems like a week. I envy people who don't have giggling spells the way I have.

At the saddest moments, sometimes, when we shouldn't have had cheerful faces, we've laughed.…

When papa got back he asked mama if we had treated the guest in our house well, and said, “He and his family couldn't have done more for me at their house; they almost overwhelmed me with attention. His daughters are homely and not very attractive. I thought he'd come back enchanted with my girls, but when he got back he was silent and didn't say a thing. I couldn't keep from asking him if he'd seen my daughters and he told me, ‘I never saw their faces; they laughed from the minute I got there until I left.'”

*   *   *

… Today we went to Jogo da Bola Street for lunch. There were two guests there, friends of the family. The man is called Anselmo Coelho. He's good-looking and very nice, married to a terribly homely woman, who speaks through her nose, called Toninha. I asked my cousins why such a handsome man had married such an ugly woman, and they said that he was the widower of a very pretty wife, and, living in Itaipava, he met this teacher, and because she wouldn't be any expense to him, he married her.

At the table I noticed how little feeling the man had for his wife, and I felt sorry for her,
coitada!
After lunch we stayed at the table and he got the conversation onto his first wife. He praised her brains, her beauty, and her sympathy so much that I kept looking at the poor creature and feeling sorry for her. He said, “But she was so jealous that she made me suffer. When I miss her I always try to remember how jealous she was. If I had to go out alone on business, before I got to the door she'd fall down in a faint.” He told all this and then added, “I even miss the faints.”

After a while he looked at his watch and said, “It's time. I have to go.” He got up to go and that fool of a homely wife ran and held onto his arm, trying to imitate the other wife. He kept going out, saying, “Stop it, Toninha. Stop this nonsense!” And the woman kept clinging to his arm and he kept on going. We stayed at the table pretending not to notice in order not to embarrass him. Suddenly we heard a noise, the sound of a body falling on the doorstep. We all ran and there was the poor homely woman stretched out on the ground, with a horrible face, and her husband prodding her with his foot and saying, “Get up, fool! Stop acting! Get up! Don't disgrace me!” He said this still prodding his wife with his foot, without leaning over. Naninha said, “
Coitada!
She's had an attack!” He said, “She wants to do what I said the other one did. But you can leave her here, it isn't anything. She'll get up in a little while.” And off he went.

We waited a little for her to open her eyes. When she didn't open them, we carried her, two with her arms, two with her legs, almost dragging her, and put her on the bed and ran outside to laugh.

Aunt Agostinha said to us, “Now you see, while you're girls, that men don't care for silly women. He treats her well, but you see what she did today.”

*   *   *

… Today I'm tired because it's one of the days when I have the most work. But shouldn't I tell what happened to me yesterday, here in my dear diary? I imagine that today all Diamantina hasn't any other subject of conversation: “Did you see Helena and Luizinha dancing all night long last night, with their aunt lying in her coffin?” I'm only sorry that they won't say it to me personally, because I could explain. But what bad luck we have! Aunt Neném spent the whole month dying and then had to draw her last breath yesterday.

I know very well that Aunt Neném is my father's oldest sister and that he esteems her highly. But I confess that I can't cry for the death of an English aunt whom I didn't know. She's been sick for many years at the fazenda and none of her nephews or nieces knew her. When my father learned that she was very low he went there, a week ago. We'd already been invited to Leontina's wedding here. It was the first dance I'd ever been to. My rose-colored dress was the first pretty dress I'd ever had. How could I miss all that?

Then, I don't know how, the news spread through town. Papa only wrote to mama, who was all ready to go to the wedding, too, and didn't go; but she herself thought it was a shame that we couldn't go, after getting the news at the last minute. She planned it with us: “You go with your cousins and I won't tell anyone about Neném's death today. I'll keep the news until tomorrow.” But I'm so unlucky that I'd barely put my foot in the door of the bride's house when I received condolences. It seemed like spite. But I lied bravely, with a blank face. “Condolences for what?” “The death of your aunt.” “Who said that? It isn't true. My father's at the fazenda and he hasn't sent word to mama.” But they wouldn't leave me alone until they convinced themselves that I was more interested in amusing myself than in weeping for the death of an unknown aunt.

Oh! What a wonderful night! In spite of everybody's eagerness to spoil my fun, they didn't succeed. It was the first time I'd gone to a dance. How wonderful dancing is! And how quickly I learned all the steps! If I hadn't gone to the wedding yesterday I could never have been consoled for having missed it. There's a party like that so seldom! And then I think nobody's going to remember the lack of feeling we showed for very long. It would have been better if Aunt Neném had died after the wedding and we could have shown more feeling. But it wasn't God's will. What could we do?

*   *   *

…
Superstition in Diamantina.
Since I was little, I've suffered from all sorts of superstitions. If there were thirteen people at the table, I was always the one who had to leave. Combing one's hair at night, under any circumstances, sends one's mother straight to hell. Sweeping the house at night upsets one's life. Breaking a mirror is bad luck. Rubbing one foot against the other, walking backwards, and other things I don't remember now, are all unlucky. They can explain why some of them do harm, but not others. Such as, for example, if a visitor stays too long, stand the broom behind the door, or throw salt in the fire, and she'll go away. I believe that salt in the fire works if the visitor hears it crackle, because she knows what it means.

The funny thing is that everybody knows that superstition is a sin, but they prefer to confess it rather than do something that somebody says brings bad luck.

Once I asked grandma, “The Senhora doesn't like to sin, and how is it that you know superstition is a sin and yet have so many superstitions?” She answered, “There are things that are born in us, daughter. Nobody can see proofs, the way I have—such as thirteen people at the table and within a year one of them dying, or a mirror that fell and broke in Henrique's house and he had such bad luck afterward—without being afraid. The priests all say it's a sin, but I don't doubt that they believe in it, too. It's something we're born knowing, the people's voice is the voice of God.” I said, “I know for my part that I'm not going to believe these things, grandma. If it's a sin it's because God thinks it's absurd.” And she said, “Yes, my child, I don't say that you should believe in a lot of them, I think that's nonsense. But some are true and you oughtn't to ignore them. Like thirteen people at the table, and a broken mirror, you can't make light of them.”

I'm almost fourteen years old and already I think more than all the rest of the family. I think I began to draw conclusions from the age of ten years, or less. And I swear I never saw anybody from mama's family think about things. They hear something and believe it: and that's for the rest of their lives.

They're all happy like that!

*   *   *

… I'm going to unburden myself here of the disappointment, the rage and the sorrow, that I suffered yesterday at my cousin Zinha's wedding. She's my rich uncle's daughter, and the wedding was an important occasion.

My uncle ordered dress-lengths of silk from Rio de Janeiro for his girls. All my other cousins were making themselves silk dresses, too. Mama bought two lengths of fine pink wool for me and Luizinha. Aunt Madge took mine to make and Luizinha's went to another dressmaker.

Aunt Madge came back from Rio recently and since then I haven't had any peace. I have to carry a parasol so I won't get sunburned, because the girls in Rio don't have freckles. I have to wear my hair loose because the girls in Rio wear their hair loose. The same nagging all the time; the girls in Rio dress this way, the girls in Rio wear their hair that way. I didn't mind if the dress was made like those the girls in Rio wear. I just wanted it to be pink.

Aunt Madge took the material and never asked me to try it on. I went to her house every day as usual, and saw nothing of the dress. Once I got up my courage and asked for it. She said, “Don't worry. You're going to the wedding looking prettier than all the others.”