Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Machado Joaquim Maria; Rabassa Gregory; Rego Enylton de Sa

Author:Machado, Joaquim Maria; Rabassa, Gregory; Rego, Enylton de Sa
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1997-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

LXIV

The Transaction

I wandered through the streets and retired at nine o’clock. Unable to sleep, I set about reading and writing. At eleven o’clock I was sorry I hadn’t gone to the theater, consulted the clock, wanted to get dressed and go out. I calculated that I’d get there too late, however. Besides, it would be a proof of weakness. Obviously Virgília was beginning to be annoyed with me, I thought. And that idea made me desperate and cold successively, ready to forget her and to kill her. I could see her from there, reclining in her box with her magnificent arms bare—the arms that were mine, only mine—fascinating everyone’s eyes with the superb dress she must have had on, her milky white breast, her hair in tight curls in the style of the time, and her diamonds, less brilliant than her eyes … I saw her like that and it pained me that others should see her. Then I began to undress her, put the jewels and silks aside, undo her hair with my voracious and lascivious hands, making her—I don’t know whether more beautiful or more natural—making her mine, only mine, nothing but mine.

The next day I couldn’t stand it. I went to Virgília’s early, found her with eyes red from weeping.

“What happened?” I asked.

“You don’t love me,” was her answer. “You’ve never shown me the slightest sign of love. Yesterday you treated me as if you hated me. If I only knew what I’d done! But I don’t know. Won’t you tell me what it was?”

“What what was? I don’t think there was anything.”

“Wasn’t anything? You treated me like a dog …”

With that word I took her hands, kissed them, and two tears appeared in her eyes.

“It’s over, it’s all right,” I said.

I didn’t have the heart to argue and, besides, argue about what? It wasn’t her fault if her husband loved her. I told her that she hadn’t done anything to me, that I was necessarily jealous of the other man, that I couldn’t always bear him with a happy face. I added that maybe there was a lot of pretending on his part and the best way to shut the door on battles and disagreements was to accept my idea of the day before.

“I thought about it,” Virgília repled. “A little house all our own, by itself, in the middle of a garden on some back street, isn’t that it? I liked the idea, but why run away?”

She said that with the ingenuous and casual tone of someone who can think no evil, and the smile that slackened the corners of her mouth carried the same innocent expression. Then pushing me away, she retorted:

“You’re the one who never loved me.”

“I?”

“Yes, you’re selfish! You’d rather see me suffer every day … You’re an unspeakable egotist!”

Virgília began to weep, and so as not to attract anyone’s attention she put her handkerchief into her mouth, suppressed her sobs in an outburst that disconcerted me. If anyone had heard her everything would have been lost.

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