The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (29 page)

The impressions made by the speech were varied. As regards the form, the quick eloquence, the literary and philosophical part, the opinion was unanimous. Everyone told me it was perfect and that no one had ever been able to extract so many ideas from a shako. But the political part was considered deplorable by many. Some thought my speech was a parliamentary disaster. Lastly, they told me that others now considered me in the opposition, among them oppositionists in the chamber who went so far as to hint that it was a convenient moment for a vote of no confidence. I energetically rejected such an interpretation, which was not only erroneous but libelous in view of my prominent support of the cabinet. I added that the need to reduce the size of the shako was not so great that it couldn’t wait a few years and, in any case, I was ready to compromise in the extent of the cut, being content with three-quarters of an inch or less. In the end, even though my idea wasn’t adopted, it sufficed for me to have it introduced in parliament.

Quincas Borba, however, made no restrictions. I’m not a political man, he told me at dinner, I don’t know whether you did the right thing or not. I do know that you made an excellent speech. And then he noted the most outstanding parts, the strong arguments with that modesty of praise that’s so fitting in a great philosopher. Then he took the subject into account and attacked the shako with such strength, such great lucidity that he ended up by effectively convincing me of its danger.

My dear critic,

A few pages back when I said I was fifty, I added: “You’re already getting the feeling that my style isn’t as nimble as it was during the early days.” Maybe you find that phrase incomprehensible, knowing my present state, but I call your attention to the subtlety of that thought. I don’t mean I’m older now than when I began the book. Death doesn’t age one. I do mean that in each phase of the narration of my life I experience the corresponding sensation. Good Lord! Do I have to explain everything?

There are things that are better said in silence. Such is the material of the previous chapter. Unsuccessful ambitious people will understand it. If the passion for power is the strongest of all, as some say, imagine the despair, the pain, the depression on the day I lost my seat in the Chamber of Deputies. All my hopes left: me, my political career was over. And take note that Quincas Borba, through philosophical inductions he made, found that my ambition wasn’t a true passion for power, but a whim, a desire to have some fun. In his opinion that feeling, no less profound than the other one, is much more vexing because it matches the love women have for lace and coiffures. A Cromwell or a Bonaparte, he added, for the very reason that they were burning with the passion for power, got there by sheer strength, either by the stairs on the right or the ones on the left. My feelings weren’t like that. Not having that same strength in themselves, they didn’t have certainty in the results and that was why there was greater affliction, greater disappointment, greater sadness. My feelings, according to Humanitism …

“Go to the devil with your Humanitism,” I interrupted him. “I’m sick and tired of philosophies that don’t get me anything.”

The harshness of the interruption in the case of a philosopher of his standing was the equivalent of an insult. But he forgave the irritation with which I spoke to him. They brought us coffee. It was one o’clock in the afternoon, we were in my study, a lovely room that looked out on the backyard, good books,
objets d’art
, a Voltaire among them, a bronze Voltaire who on that occasion seemed to be accentuating the sarcastic little smile with which he was looking at me, the scoundrel, excellent chairs. Outside the sun, a big sun, which Quincas Borba, I don’t remember whether as a jest or as poetry, called one of nature’s ministers. A cool breeze was blowing, the sky was blue. In each window—there were three—hung a cage with birds, who were trilling their rustic operas. Everything had the appearance of a conspiracy of things against man: and even though I was in
my
room, looking at
my
yard, sitting in
my
chair, listening to
my
birds, next to
my
books, lighted by
my
sun, it wasn’t enough to cure me of the longing for that other chair that wasn’t mine.

“So what do you plan to do now?” Quincas Borba asked me, going over to put his empty coffee cup on one of the window sills. “I don’t know. I’m going to hide out in Tijuca, get away from people. I’m disgraced, disgusted. So many dreams, my dear Borba, so many dreams, and I’m nothing.”

“Nothing?” Quincas Borba interrupted me with a look of indignation.

In order to take my mind off it he suggested we go out. We went in the direction of Engenho Velho, on foot, philosophizing about things. I’ll never forget how beneficial that walk was. The words of that great man were the stimulating brandy of wisdom. He told me that I couldn’t run away from the fight. If the oratorical rostrum was closed to me, I should start a newspaper. He came to use less elevated speech, showing that philosophical language can, now and then, fortify itself with the slang of the people. Start a newspaper, he told me, and “bring down that whole stinking mess.”

“A great idea! I’m going to start a newspaper. I’m going to shatter them into a thousand pieces. I’m going to …”

“Fight. You can shatter them or not, the essential thing is for you to fight. Life is a fight. A life without fight is a dead sea in the center of the universal organism.”

A short while later we came upon a dogfight. Sometimes that would be of no consequence in the eyes of an ordinary man. Quincas Borba made me stop and watch the dogs. There were two of them. I notice that there was a bone under their feet, the motive for their war, and I couldn’t help having my attention called to the fact that there was no meat on the bone. Just a naked bone. The dogs were biting each other, growling, with fury in their eyes … Quincas Borba put his cane under his arm and seemed ecstatic.

“Isn’t that beautiful?” he said from time to time.

I wanted to get away from there but I couldn’t. He was rooted to the ground and he only started walking again when the fight was completely over and one of the dogs, bitten and defeated, took his hunger
off someplace else. I noticed that Quincas had been truly happy, even though he held his happiness in as befits a great philosopher. He made me observe the beauty of the spectacle, recalled the object of contention, concluded that the dogs were hungry. But deprivation of food was nothing for the general effects of philosophy. Nor did he forget to remember that in some parts of the world the spectacle is on a grander scale: human beings are the ones who fight with dogs over bones and other less appetizing tidbits. A fight that becomes quite complicated because entering into action is man’s intelligence along with the whole accumulation of sagacity that the centuries have given him, etc.

So many things in a minuet!, as the saying goes. So many things in a dogfight! But I was no servile or weak-hearted disciple who was not about to make one or another adequate objection. As we walked along I told him that I had some doubts. I wasn’t too sure of the advantage of fighting with dogs over a meal. He answered with exceptional softness:

“It’s more logical to fight over it with other men, because the status of the contenders is the same and the stronger one gets the bone. But why shouldn’t it be a grand spectacle to fight over it with dogs? Locusts are eaten voluntarily, as in the case of the One Who Goes Before or, even worse, that of Ezequiel, therefore, what’s awful is edible. It remains to be seen whether or not it’s more worthy for a man to fight over it by virtue of a natural necessity or to prefer it in obedience to religious, that is, mutable, exaltation, while hunger is eternal, like life and like death.”

We were at the door of my house. I was given a letter, which they said was from a lady. We went in and Quincas Borba, with the discretion proper to a philosopher, went over to read the spines of the books on a shelf while I read the letter, which was from Virgília:

My good friend,

Dona Plácida is very ill. I’m asking you the favor of doing something for her. She’s living on the Beco das Escadinhas. Could you see if you can get her admitted to Misericórdia Hospital for the indigent?

Your sincere friend,

It wasn’t Virgília’s delicate and correct hand, but heavy and uneven. The V of the signature was nothing but a scribble with no alphabetical intent, so that from the looks of the letter it was very hard to attribute its authorship to her. I turned the piece of paper over and over. Poor Dona Plácida! But I’d left her with the five
contos
from the beach at Gamboa, and I couldn’t understand why…

“You’ll understand,” Quincas Borba said, taking a book off the shelf.

“What?” I asked, startled.

“You’ll understand that I was telling nothing but the truth. Pascal is one of my spiritual grandfathers, and even though my philosophy is worth more than his, I can’t deny that he was a great man. Now, what does he say on this page?” And with his hat still on his head, his cane under his arm, he pointed out the place with his finger. “What does he say? He says that man has ‘a great advantage over the rest of the universe; he knows that he is going to die, while the universe is completely ignorant of the fact.’ Do you see? The man who fights over a bone with a dog, has the great advantage over him of knowing that he’s hungry. And that’s what makes it a grand fight, as I was saying. ‘He knows that he is going to die’ is a profound statement, but I think my statement is more profound: He knows that he’s hungry. Because the fact of death limits, in a manner of speaking, human understanding. The consciousness of extinction lasts only for a brief instant and ends forever, while hunger has the advantage of coming back, of prolonging the conscious state. It seems to me (at the risk of some immodesty) that Pascal’s formula is inferior to mine, without ceasing to be a great thought, however, or Pascal a great man.”

While he was putting the book back on the shelf I reread the note. At dinner, seeing that I wasn’t talking very much, chewing without really swallowing, staring into a corner of the room, or at the edge of the table, or at a plate, or at an invisible fly, he said: “Something’s not right with you. I’ll bet it was that letter.” It was. I felt really bothered, annoyed with Virgília’s request. I’d given Dona Plácida five
contos
. I doubt very much that anyone had been more generous than I, or even equally as generous. Five
contos!
And what had she done with them? She’d thrown them away, naturally, squandered them on big parties, and now she’s ready for Misericórdia and I’m the one to get her in! You can die anywhere. Furthermore, I didn’t know or didn’t recall any Beco das Escadinhas. But judging from its name as an alley I imagined it to be some dark and narrow corner of the city. I would have to go there, attract neighbors’ attention, knock on the door and all that. What a nuisance! I’m not going.

But night, which is a good counselor, reflected that courtesy demanded I obey the wishes of my former lady.

“Bills that fall due have got to be paid,” I said on arising.

After breakfast I went to Dona Plácida’s place. I found a bundle of bones wrapped in rags lying on an old and revolting cot. I gave her some money. The next day I had her taken to Misericórdia, where she
died a week later. I’m lying. She was found dead in the morning. She’d sneaked out of life just the way she’d come into it. I asked myself again, as in
Chapter LXXV
, if that was why the sexton of the cathedral and the candymaker had brought Dona Plácida into the world at a specific moment of affection. But I realized immediately that if it hadn’t been for Dona Plácida my affair with Virgília might have been interrupted or broken off suddenly in its full effervescence. Such, therefore, was the usefulness of Dona Plácida’s life. A relative usefulness, I admit, but what the devil is absolute in this world?