“And all this, you think, is just a standby in case all else fails?”
“That’s right. It doesn’t preclude any other activity whatsoever.”
“Not even politics?”
“Not even politics. It is simply a matter of abiding by certain basic rules and obligations. You may belong to any party, liberal or conservative, republican or ultramontane, the one caveat being that you must not attach any specific ideas to these words, and only recognize their usefulness as biblical shibboleths.”
“If I go into parliament, can I speak from the rostrum?”
“You can and you must; it is a way of attracting public attention. As for the subject of your speeches, you have a choice between pettifogging minutiae and political ideology, but with a preference for ideology. Minutiae, one must admit, are not inconsistent with the urbane dullness that is the mark of every accomplished bigwig, but, if you can, go for ideology—it’s easier and much more appealing. Suppose you were to inquire into the reasons for transferring the Seventh Company of Infantry from Uruguaiana to Canguçu; you will be heard only by the minister of war, and it will take him all of ten minutes to explain the reasons for his decision. Not so with ideology. A speech on the most arcane aspects of political ideology will, by its very nature, excite the passions of politicians and the public gallery, provoking heated interjections and rebuttals. Moreover, it requires neither thought nor investigation. In this branch of human knowledge everything has already been discovered, worded, labeled, and packaged; you need only rummage around in the saddlebags of memory. But whatever you do, never go beyond the boundaries of enviable triteness.”
“I’ll do what I can. So no imagination, then?”
“None whatsoever. Much better to put the word around that the gift of imagination is very low-class indeed.”
“And no philosophy?”
“Let’s be quite clear: a smattering perhaps when writing or speaking, but in reality, none. ‘Philosophy of history,’ for example, is a phrase you should frequently employ, but I forbid you to arrive at any conclusions that have not already been reached by others. Avoid anything that has about it so much as a whiff of reflection, originality, or the like.”
“And humor?”
“What do you mean, ‘humor’?”
“Should I always be very serious?”
“It all depends. You have a jovial, fun-loving nature and there’s no need to smother or suppress it entirely—you can laugh and joke once in a while. Being a bigwig doesn’t necessarily require you to be a melancholic. A serious man can have his lighthearted moments too. Only—and this is a crucial point . . .”
“Go on.”
“You must never use irony—that mysterious little twitch at the corners of the mouth, invented by some decadent Greek, caught by Lucian, transmitted to Swift and Voltaire, and typical of all skeptics and impudent freethinkers. No. Better to tell a rude joke, our good old friend, the chubby-cheeked, brash, and blatantly rude joke, wrapped in neither veils nor false modesty, which hits you right between the eyes, stings like a slap on the back, makes your blood pound, and snaps your suspenders with laughter. What’s that?”
“It’s midnight.”
“Midnight? Well, then, young man, you are already entering your twenty-second year; you have definitively come of age. Let’s turn in; it’s late. Chew over what I’ve told you, son. All things considered, our conversation tonight has been worthy of Machiavelli’s The Prince. Time for bed.”
THE TURKISH SLIPPER
BEHOLD YOUNG MASTER DUARTE, Bachelor of Arts. He has just tied his necktie with the stiffest and most fastidious knot yet seen in that year of 1850, when he is told that Major Lopo Alves has just arrived. Note that it is already late, past nine o’clock. Duarte shudders, and he has two reasons for doing so. Firstly, that the major was, at the best of times, one of the most tiresome bores of his day. Secondly, that he, Duarte, was, at that precise moment, on his way out to a dance where he would gaze upon the finest blond hair and most thoughtful blue eyes that this climate of ours, so miserly when it comes to such delicate features, had ever produced. It was a week-old romance. His heart, allowing itself to be captivated between two waltzes, entrusted his brown eyes with the necessary declaration, which they promptly transmitted to the young lady ten minutes before suppertime, and received a favorable response shortly after the hot chocolate was served. Three days later, the first letter was dispatched, and the way things were going it would be no surprise if, before the year was out, they were traipsing up the aisle. In circumstances such as these, the arrival of Lopo Alves was nothing short of calamitous. An old friend of the family, his late father’s army companion, the major was entitled to the utmost respect. There was no question of sending him away or giving him a chilly reception. Happily, there were attenuating circumstances: the major was a relative of Cecília, the girl with the blue eyes. Should the need arise, the major’s vote was in the bag.
Duarte slipped on a dressing gown and made his way to the drawing room, where Lopo Alves, a bundle of papers under his arm and his eyes staring into space, seemed entirely unaware of the young man’s entry.
“What fair wind brings you to Catumbi at such an hour?” inquired Duarte, giving his voice a jovial ring as much out of self-interest as out of natural good manners.
“I don’t know if the wind that brought me was fair or foul,” replied the major, smiling beneath his thick, grizzled mustache, “but I do know there was a good, stiff breeze. Are you going out?”
“I’m just heading over to Rio Comprido.”
“Of course. You’re going to the Widow Meneses’s house. My wife and the girls must already be there; I’ll go later, if I can. It’s still early, is it not?”
Lopo Alves then pulled out his pocket watch and saw that it was half-past nine. He stroked his mustache, stood up, took several paces about the room, sat down again, and said:
“I have some news for you, news which you are certainly not expecting. I wanted to tell you that I have written . . . I have written a play.”
“A play!” exclaimed the graduate.
“What can I say? I have suffered from these literary ailments ever since I was a child. Military service did not cure me; it merely relieved the symptoms. The illness has returned in all its former strength. It’s too late for any remedy now, and all I can do is accept it and let nature take its course.”
Duarte remembered that the major had indeed spoken on a previous occasion of several inaugural addresses, two or three eulogies, and a fair number of articles he had written about the River Plate campaigns. For many years, however, Lopo Alves had let the Platine generals and the dead rest in peace, and there had been nothing to suggest that the illness would return, still less in the form of a drama. Our young graduate would have had a better understanding of the situation if he had known that, a few weeks earlier, Lopo Alves had attended the performance of a drama of the ultra-romantic variety, which had greatly pleased him and had planted the idea in his head of braving the footlights himself. However, the major failed to vouchsafe these necessary details, and the graduate remained unaware of the reason behind this explosion of dramatic energy. Indeed, he neither knew nor wished to remedy his ignorance. Instead, he extolled the major’s intellectual abilities, expressed his fervent wish to attend what would surely be a triumphant opening night, promised to recommend it to some friends of his who wrote for the Correio Mercantil, and only paused for breath, and promptly turned pale, when he saw the major, trembling with pleasure, unroll the bundle of papers he had brought with him.
“I’m very grateful for your good intentions,” said Lopo Alves, “and I gladly accept your promise of support, but, first, I have another favor to ask of you. I know you’re an intelligent, well-read man, and you must tell me frankly what you think of my work. I’m not asking for compliments; what I want from you is honesty, and brutal honesty, at that. If you think it’s no good, you must say so without mincing your words.”
Duarte wo
uld have liked to let that bitter cup pass, but it was difficult to ask and impossible to refuse. Dejectedly, he consulted his watch, which now showed five minutes to ten, while the major leafed paternally through the one hundred and eighty pages of the manuscript.
“It will be very quick,” said Lopo Alves. “I know what you young men are like, especially when it comes to dances. Don’t worry—you’ll still be able to dance two or three waltzes with your young lady, if you have one, or with all of them, if you don’t. Wouldn’t it be better if we went into your study?”
For the hapless young man, the place of torture was immaterial; he submitted to his guest’s wishes. The latter, with the liberty to which his position entitled him, told the houseboy not to let anyone disturb them. The torturer did not want any witnesses. The study door closed, and Lopo Alves took up his position by the desk, facing the young man, who sank both his body and his despair into a vast leather armchair, determined to say not a word so that the end would come sooner.
The drama was divided into seven scenes. This information alone made the reluctant listener shudder. The only novelty in those hundred and eighty pages would be the author’s own handwriting. The rest would be the situations, characters, plot devices, and even the style of the most hackneyed of tousle-headed romanticism. Lopo Alves thought he had created a work of originality, when he had done nothing more than cobble together his own reminiscences. At any other moment, this might have amounted to an amusing entertainment. Early on in the first scene—a sort of prologue—there was an abducted child, a poisoning, two masked men, the point of a dagger, and a host of equally dagger-sharp adjectives. In the second scene, there occurred the death of one of the masked men, who would come back to life in the third, only to be taken prisoner in the fifth, and kill the tyrant in the seventh. As well as the apparent death of the masked man, the second scene included the kidnapping of the child, by then a young lady of seventeen years, a monologue that seemed to last at least the same amount of time, and the theft of a will.
It was almost eleven o’clock when he finished reading the second scene. Duarte could barely contain his anger; by now it was far too late to go to Rio Comprido. It would not be idle conjecture to imagine that if, at that moment, the major had breathed his last, Duarte would have given thanks for his death as a gift of Divine Providence. The young man’s fine sentiments would not lead one to suspect such ferocious feelings, but reading a bad book is capable of producing the most astonishing effects. In addition to which, while our young graduate’s eyes gazed blankly at Lopo Alves’s thick and shaggy mane, in his mind’s eye there burned the golden threads that adorned the fair, sweet head of Cecília; he could see her blue eyes, the pale bloom of her complexion, and her delicate, graceful gestures, surpassing all the other ladies in Widow Meneses’s drawing room. Not only could he see it, he could hear in his head the music, the conversation, the sound of footsteps, and the rustle of silk, while Lopo Alves’s voice droned hoarsely on through scene after scene, dialogue after dialogue, with all the impassiveness of devout conviction.
Time was marching on, and the listener had, by now, lost count of the scenes. Midnight had struck long ago; he had missed the dance entirely. All of a sudden, the major rolled up his manuscript, stood up straight, fixed him with an evil, hate-filled gaze, and rushed hastily from the room. Duarte wanted to call after him, but surprise had numbed both voice and limbs. When he regained control of his senses, he could hear the irritable, metallic click of the dramaturge’s heels on the cobbled sidewalk outside.
He went to the window; he could neither see nor hear anything. Both author and drama had vanished.
“Why couldn’t he have done that earlier?” the graduate asked himself with a sigh.
The sigh barely had time to spread its wings and fly out the window in search of Rio Comprido, when the houseboy came to tell him that there was a short, fat man at the front door.
“At this hour!” exclaimed Duarte.
“Yes, at this hour,” replied the short, fat man, entering the drawing room. “When it concerns a serious crime, the police may enter a citizen’s house at this or any hour.”
“A crime!”
“I believe you know who I am . . .”
“I haven’t had that honor.”
“I work for the police.”
“But what crime are you talking about? What has this to do with me?”
“A minor offense: a theft. You are accused, sir, of having made off with a Turkish slipper. It would seem that the slipper in question is of little or no value, but there are slippers and slippers. It all depends on the circumstances.”
The man said this with a sarcastic laugh, while fixing our young graduate with the eyes of an inquisitor. Duarte was not even aware of the existence of the stolen object. He concluded that it must be a case of mistaken identity and resolved not to rise to the insult being hurled at his person, and to some extent at his class, with this accusation of petty larceny. This is what he said to the police officer, adding that, in any event, this was no justification for disturbing him at such a late hour.
“Do forgive me,” said the representative of the law. “The slipper in question is worth several dozen contos de réis; it’s adorned with the finest of diamonds, making it particularly precious. It is Turkish not only in shape, but also in origin. Its owner, one of the most well-traveled ladies of our nobility, was in Egypt approximately three years ago, where she purchased it from a Jew. The story told her by this follower of Moses regarding the aforementioned product of Muslim art is truly miraculous, and, to my way of thinking, completely false. But it is not my place to say so. What matters is that she was robbed, and the police have received a complaint against you, sir.”
By this point in his speech, the man was standing by the window; Duarte suspected him to be a lunatic or a thief. However, he had no time to think further, because a few seconds later five armed men entered the room and proceeded to grab him and push him down the steps, oblivious to his shouts and his desperate attempts to free himself. Outside in the street was a carriage, which they bundled him into. The short, fat man was already inside, along with a tall, thin individual; they hauled him in and made him sit in the back of the carriage. He heard the crack of the coachman’s whip, and the carriage set off at a tilt.
“Aha!” said the fat man. “So you thought you could get away with stealing Turkish slippers, courting pretty blond ladies, possibly marrying them, and still thumb your nose at the human race?”
Hearing this allusion to the lady of his thoughts, Duarte shuddered. Could this be some sort of revenge by a supplanted rival? Or was the reference merely coincidental? Duarte lost himself in a thicket of conjectures, while the carriage continued to career forward at a full gallop. After a while, he ventured an observation.
“Whatever my crimes may be, I presume that the police—”
“We aren’t the police,” the thin man interrupted coolly.
“Ah!”
“This gentlemen and I are a pair. He, you, and I will make a trio. Of course, a trio is no better than a pair, indeed how could it be? The ideal is a couple. You probably don’t understand me, do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You will soon enough.”
Duarte resigned himself to waiting, sank into silence, and slumped back in his seat, letting both the carriage and the adventure run their course. Some five minutes later, the horses came to a halt.
“Here we are,” said the fat man.
And as he said this, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to our young hero to use as a blindfold. Duarte refused, but the thin man remarked that it would be more prudent on his part to obey than resist. Duarte did not resist; he himself tied the handkerchief about his head to cover his eyes and stepped out of the carriage. Then he heard a door creak; two people—probably the same two who had accompanied him in the carriage—held his hands and led him down endless corridors and stairways. On the way, he could hear unfamiliar vo
ices, random words, and snatches of sentences. Finally, they stopped; he was told to sit down and remove the blindfold. Duarte obeyed, but only to find that there was no one there.
He was in a vast room, brightly lit and elegantly and opulently furnished. The decoration was perhaps a little overdone; nevertheless, the person who had chosen it must have had very refined tastes.
The bronzes, the lacquerware, the rugs and mirrors—the abundance of objects filling the room—were all of the finest quality. The sight of this restored a certain serenity to the young man’s mind; it seemed unlikely that this could be the home of thieves.
He leaned back languidly on an ottoman . . . An ottoman! This promptly reminded him of how this whole adventure had begun, and about the stolen slipper. A few moments of reflection were enough for him to realize that the slipper in question had become more than problematic. Digging deeper into the world of conjectures, he seemed to stumble upon a new and definitive explanation. The slipper was simply a metaphor; it represented Cecília’s heart, which he had stolen, a crime for which his supposed rival now wished to punish him. This must, of course, be linked to the thin man’s mysterious words: “a pair is better than a trio; the ideal is a couple.”
“That’s what it must be,” concluded Duarte. “But who, then, is this rejected suitor?”
At that moment, a door at the far end of the room opened and there appeared the black cassock of a pale, bald priest. Duarte sprang to his feet. The priest slowly crossed the room, pausing to bless Duarte as he passed, and left by another door in the wall opposite. Our young graduate stood there motionless, his eyes fixed on the door, staring without seeing, completely dumbstruck. The priest’s unexpected appearance confounded all his previous theories about the adventure. However, there was no time to think up a new explanation, because the first door once again opened and another figure entered; this time it was the thin man, who came straight over to Duarte and asked him to follow him. Duarte did as he was told. They went out through a third door, and, making their way along several dimly lit corridors, they came to another room, lit only by the candles in the two silver candlesticks placed on a wide table. At the head of the table sat an old man who looked about fifty-five; he had an athletic body, very thick hair, and a bushy beard.