“I swear by God in heaven. And you?”
“Me too.”
“Say it properly.”
“I swear by God in heaven; may the light fail me at the hour of my death.”
The contract was sealed. There was no doubting the couple’s sincerity; she wept like a woman possessed; he bit his lip to disguise his feelings. Finally they parted; Genoveva went to see the corvette leave, and returned home with such a tight feeling in her chest that she thought she was, in her words “about to have a funny turn.” Luckily, she didn’t; the days passed, then weeks, then months, and after ten months the corvette returned, and Deolindo with it.
There he goes, along Rua de Bragança, through Prainha and Saúde, and on to Gamboa, where Genoveva lives. The house is just past the English Cemetery, a dark hovel, its wooden doorway cracked by the sun. Genoveva would surely be there, leaning out the window, waiting for him. Deolindo prepares what he will say to her. He has already decided upon, “I swore an oath and I’ve kept it,” but now he’s trying to think of something better. At the same time, he remembers the other women he saw in those distant lands of Christ: Italians and Turks, the ladies of Marseilles, many of them pretty, or so at least they seemed to him. Perhaps not all of them were entirely to his taste, but some were, and still he paid them no attention. He thought only of Genoveva. That little house of hers, so tiny, and its few sticks of rickety old furniture—that is what filled his mind when he gazed upon the palaces of distant lands. He scrimped and saved to buy a pair of earrings in Trieste, and he now carries them in his pocket along with a few other trinkets. And what will she have for him? Perhaps a handkerchief embroidered with his name and an anchor in the corner, because she was an expert with needle and thread. By this point he has arrived in Gamboa, passed the cemetery and found the house. The door was closed. He knocked, and a familiar voice answered; it was old Inácia, who came to open the door for him with loud exclamations of delight. Deolindo asked impatiently for Genoveva.
“Don’t talk to me about that crazy woman,” exploded the old woman. “I’m glad I gave you the advice I did. Imagine if you’d run off with her. She’ll be with her lover now.”
“But what happened? What on earth happened?”
The old woman told him to calm down, that it was nothing at all, just one of those things life throws at us; no point getting all worked up. Genoveva’s head had been turned . . .
“But turned by what?”
“She’s gone off with a peddler, José Diogo. Do you know José Diogo, the draper? Well, she’s gone off with him. You can’t imagine how smitten they are. And now she’s crazy, mark my words. That’s why we quarreled. José Diogo was always hanging around here; it was all talk, talk, talk, until one day I said to him, I said, I don’t want my house getting a bad name. Ah! Father in heaven! That was a day of judgment, that was. Genoveva glowered at me with eyes as big as saucers, saying that she never gave nobody a bad name and didn’t need no favors from anyone. What favors, Genoveva? All I’m saying is I don’t want no more of these whisperings around the door all evening . . . Two days later, she’d moved out, and that’s the last I heard of her.”
“Where does she live?”
“Over at Praia Formosa, just before you reach the quarry, in a shack that’s just been painted.”
Deolindo didn’t want to hear any more. Old Inácia, somewhat regretting she’d said so much, kept warning him to be careful, but he wouldn’t listen and went on his way. I won’t say what he was thinking, for he wasn’t thinking anything at all. Ideas buffeted around his brain like a storm at sea, amid howling winds and shrieking whistles. In among them flashed his sailor’s knife, bloodied and vengeful. By now he had passed through Gamboa, Saco do Alferes, and reached the shoreline at Formosa. He didn’t know the house number, but he knew it was near the quarry and freshly painted, and with the help of some of the neighbors he would be able to find it. He had not counted on chance placing Genoveva at her window, sitting and sewing, at the very moment Deolindo passed by. He recognized her and stopped; she, seeing a man’s figure, looked up and found the sailor standing before her.
“What’s this?” she exclaimed in surprise. “When did you get back? Come in, Deolindo.”
She stood up, opened the door, and let him in. So frank and sincere was the girl’s manner that any other man would have been filled with hope; perhaps the old woman was mistaken, or lying; perhaps even the peddler’s seductive song had come to an end. All this passed through Deolindo’s head, without the precise form of reason or reflection, but in a tumultuous rush. Genoveva left the door open and offered him a seat; she asked about the voyage and said he’d grown fatter; but there was no excitement, no tenderness. Deolindo abandoned all hope. He might not have his knife with him, but he could still strangle Genoveva with his bare hands; she was a tiny slip of a thing, and, for the first few minutes, he could think of nothing else.
“I know everything,” he said.
“Who told you?”
Deolindo shrugged.
“Whoever it was,” she replied, “did they tell you I was in love with a young man?”
“They did.”
“Well, it’s true.”
Deolindo lunged toward her; she stopped him with a look. Then she said that she had only invited him in because she took him to be a man of reason. She told him everything, how much she had missed him, then about the peddler’s propositions, her refusals, until one day, without knowing how, she had woken up in love with him.
“Believe you me, I thought about you an awful lot. Ask Sinhá Inácia—she’ll tell you how I cried and cried. But the heart changes, as mine did . . . I’m telling you all this as if I was telling the priest,” she concluded, smiling.
It was not a smile of derision. She spoke with a mixture of candor and cynicism, insolence and simplicity, which I shall refrain from trying to define any better. Actually, I think even insolence and cynicism are wide of the mark. Genoveva wasn’t excusing herself for making a mistake or breaking an oath; she wasn’t excusing herself for anything at all; she had no moral compass for her actions. What she was saying, in brief, was that it would have been better if things hadn’t changed; she had enjoyed Deolindo’s affections—the proof being that she had wanted to run away with him. But once the peddler had supplanted the sailor, then reason was on the peddler’s side, and it was only right to say so. What do you think? The poor sailor cited their parting oaths as imposing an eternal obligation, the condition on which he had agreed not to elope with her, but to rejoin his ship instead: “I swear by God in heaven; may the light fail me at the hour of my death.” He had only embarked because she had sworn that oath. Upon those words of hers he had left, traveled, waited, and returned; they had given him the strength to live. I swear by God in heaven; may the light fail me at the hour of my death . . .
“All right, yes, Deolindo, that’s true. When I swore it, it was true. It was so true that I wanted to run far, far away with you where no one would find us. God knows it was true! But then other things came along . . . This other young man came along and I took a shine to him.”
“But that’s exactly why people swear things; so that they don’t fall in love with someone else.”
“Oh, stop it, Deolindo. Are you telling me you thought only about me? Go on, pull the other one!”
“What time does José Diogo come home?”
“He’s not coming home today.”
“No?”
“No, he’s over near Guaratiba trying to sell stuff; he’s due back on Friday or Saturday. Why do you want to know? What harm has he ever done to you?”
Perhaps any other woman would have said the same thing, but few would have said it so candidly, not deliberately, but quite spontaneously. Note that here we are very close to unvarnished nature. What harm has he ever done to you? What harm has this falling stone ever done to you? Any physicist could explain about falling stones. With a despairing gesture, Deolindo announced that he wanted to kill the peddler. G
enoveva looked at him scornfully, smiled faintly and tut-tutted. When he started talking about ingratitude and broken promises, she couldn’t quite disguise her astonishment. What promises? What ingratitude? She had already said, over and over, that the oath was true when she said it. The Blessed Virgin, over there on top of the chest of drawers, knew if it was true or not. Was this how he repaid her for everything she’d been through? And as for him, going on and on about fidelity, had he thought about her in every single place he went?
His reply was to put his hand in his pocket and pull out the package he had brought with him. She opened it, pulled out the trinkets one by one, and finally came upon the earrings. They were not, they couldn’t be, expensive; they were even rather tasteless, but they were really striking. Dazzled and contented, Genoveva picked them up, gazed at them from one side and then the other, close up and far away, and finally put them on. Then she went over to the cheap mirror hanging on the wall between the window and the door, to gauge their effect. She stepped back, then forward, turned her head from right to left and from left to right.
“Oh, they’re lovely!” she said, thanking him with a deep curtsy. “Where did you buy them?”
He did not reply, nor was there time for him to do so, because she fired off another two or three questions, one after the other, so overwhelmed was she at receiving a gift in exchange for having forgotten someone. This lasted four or five minutes, or perhaps only two. She quickly took the earrings off, gazed at them again, and put them in the little box on the round table in the middle of the room. He, for his part, began to think that, just as he had lost her by his absence, the same thing might now happen to the other man; and Genoveva probably hadn’t sworn anything at all to the peddler.
“Enough idle chatter,” said Genoveva. “It’s getting dark!”
Night was indeed falling fast. They could no longer see the leper hospital, and could barely make out Melões Island; the rowing boats and canoes, pulled up on dry land in front of the house, were now indistinguishable from the mud and earth of the shoreline. Genoveva lit a candle. Then she went to sit on the doorstep and asked him to tell her something about all the places he had been to. Deolindo refused at first; he said he was leaving, got up, and took a few steps across the room. But the demon of hope still gnawed at the poor fellow’s heart, and so he sat down again to tell two or three tales from his travels. Genoveva listened attentively. When a neighbor popped her head around the door, Genoveva made her sit down as well, and listen to the “lovely stories Senhor Deolindo is telling me.” There were no other introductions. The grand lady who stays up late to finish reading her book or chapter could not live the lives of the characters more intensely than the sailor’s former sweetheart lived the scenes he described; she was fascinated and enthralled, as if, between them, there was nothing more than the telling of those tales. What does the grand lady care about the book’s author? What did this girl care about the teller of the tales?
Hope, however, began to desert him, and he finally got up to leave. Genoveva would not hear of him going before her friend from next door had seen the earrings, and with great excitement, she went to show them to her. The other woman thought they were charming, and praised them lavishly; she asked if Deolindo had purchased them in France and begged Genoveva to put them on.
“They’re really very pretty.”
I imagine the sailor himself agreed with this opinion. He liked looking at them, thought they seemed made for her, and, for a few seconds, he savored the exquisite and exclusive pleasure of having given a good present. But it was only a matter of a few seconds.
As he said goodbye, Genoveva accompanied him to the door to thank him one more time for the gift, and probably to murmur some sweet and useless things to him. Her friend, whom she’d left behind in the room, heard only these words: “Don’t be silly, Deolindo,” and this from the sailor: “You’ll see.” She could not hear the rest, which was spoken in no more than a whisper.
Utterly downcast, Deolindo made his way slowly back along the shoreline; he was no longer the impetuous young man of earlier in the day, but had an ancient, sorrowful air about him, or, to use a nautical metaphor, he looked like a man “who has turned back to shore.” Genoveva went inside a few moments later, happy and boisterous. She told her friend the story of her maritime romance, praising Deolindo’s character and good manners; and her friend said she thought him very charming.
“He’s a fine young man,” insisted Genoveva. “Do you know what he said to me just now?”
“What?”
“That he’s going to kill himself.”
“Goodness!”
“Stuff and nonsense! He won’t kill himself. That’s just the way he is. He says things, but doesn’t do them. You’ll see; he won’t kill himself. Poor thing, he’s just jealous. But the earrings are really sweet.”
“I’ve never seen anything like them around here.”
“Nor have I,” Genoveva agreed, examining them in the light. Then she put them away and invited the other woman to sew with her. “Let’s do a bit of sewing; I want to finish my little blue camisole . . .”
It was true; the sailor did not, in fact, kill himself. The next day, some of his shipmates slapped him on the shoulder, congratulating him on his admiral’s night, and asked about Genoveva, whether she was even prettier than before, whether she’d cried a lot while he was away, and so on. He answered everything with a discreet, satisfied smile, the smile of a man who’d had a wonderful night. It would seem he was ashamed of the truth and preferred to lie.
A SACRISTAN’S MANUSCRIPT
I
. . . . . . . . . . . . WHEN I SAW Father Teófilo speaking to a lady, both of them seated comfortably on a church pew, and the church deserted, I confess that I was shocked. They were speaking in such quiet, discreet voices that, however hard I strained my ears and however long I lingered over snuffing out the candles on the altar, I couldn’t catch a word, not a single word. I had no choice but to draw my own conclusions, for I am a philosophical sacristan. No one should judge me by my crumpled, tattered surplice, or by my clandestine use of the Communion vessels. No, I am, as I say, a philosophical sacristan. I had some ecclesiastical training, but this was interrupted by illness and then abandoned entirely on account of a violent passion that reduced me to penury. Since the seminary always leaves its mark, however, I became a sacristan at the age of thirty, just to make ends meet. That’s enough about me, though, let’s get back to the priest and the lady.
II
Before going any further, I should say that, as I found out later, they were cousins, both born in the town of Vassouras. Her parents moved to Rio when Eulália (for that is her name) was seven. Teófilo came later. It was a family tradition for one of the sons to become a priest. One of Teófilo’s uncles, still living up in Bahia, was a canon. Since, in this generation, it fell to Teófilo to don the cassock, in the year eighteen hundred and fifty something, he enrolled at the São José Seminary, which is where I met him. You will understand my discretion in not specifying the date.
III
At the seminary, the rhetoric teacher used to tell us:
“Theology is the head of the human species, Latin the left leg, and rhetoric the right.”
Teófilo’s weak point was that right leg. He knew a lot about the other things: theology, philosophy, Latin, church history; but he simply could not get rhetoric into his head. As an excuse, he used to say that the divine word needed no adornment. He was twenty or twenty-two years of age then, with the good looks of a Saint John.
By that time, he was already a mystic, finding hidden meaning in everything. Life was an eternal mass, in which the world served as altar, the soul as priest, and the body as acolyte; nothing conformed to external reality. He was keen to take holy orders so as to go out into the world and preach great things, awaken souls, summon men’s hearts to the Church, and renew the human race. Of all the apostles, he especially loved Saint Paul.
I don’t know i
f the reader shares my opinion, but I believe a man may be judged by his historical affinities; you will become more or less the same tribe as the people you truly love. I thus apply Helvétius’s law: “The degree of intellect that pleases us gives an exact measure of the degree of intellect we possess.” In our case, at least, the rule did not fail. Teófilo loved Saint Paul, adored him, studied him day and night, and seemed to live by that notable convert who wandered from city to city, pursuing the humble trade of spreading the good news to all men. Saint Paul was not his only role model; there were two more: Hildebrand and Loyola. From this you may conclude that he was born with a rebellious, evangelizing streak. He hungered for ideals and creation, viewing all worldly affairs as if peering over the head of this century of ours. In the opinion of a canon who used to attend the seminary, his love of the two latter role models tempered what might have been dangerous in the first. One day, the canon said to him gently:
“Don’t fall into the sins of excess and exclusivity. Don’t give the impression that by exalting Paul, you intend to diminish Peter. The Church, which honors them side by side, included both of them in the Creed, yet we revere Paul and obey Peter. Super hanc petram . . .”
The other seminarians liked Teófilo, in particular Vasconcelos, Soares, and Veloso, all three of whom were excellent rhetoricians. They were also fine young men, cheerful by nature, serious by necessity, and ambitious. Vasconcelos solemnly vowed that he would become a bishop; Soares contented himself with some other senior position; Veloso coveted a pulpit and the purple socks of a canon. Teófilo tried to share with them the mystical bread of his dreams, but soon realized that it was either too light or too heavy a morsel, and instead devoured it alone. So much for the priest; now let’s turn to the lady.
IV
The lady. At the time I saw them whispering in church, Eulália was thirty-eight years of age. She was, I can assure you, still very pretty. She was not poor, for her parents had left her some money. Nor was she married, although she had turned down five or six admirers.