“I Lombardi?” interrupted Maria Olímpia.
“Yes. Laboceta’s singing, and Jacobson, and there’s a ballet scene. You’ve never seen I Lombardi?”
“Never.”
“Anyway, that’s why I’m late. So what punishment do you deserve now? Perhaps I should cut off the tip of that turned-up little nose of yours . . .”
As he accompanied his words with a gesture, she drew back her head; then she finished her coffee. We really should have pity on the soul of this young lady. While the first chords of I Lombardi were already echoing inside her, the anonymous letter struck a lugubrious note, a kind of requiem. And might the letter not simply be a vicious calumny? Obviously it couldn’t be anything else: some wild invention of her enemies, either to upset her or to set the couple quarreling. That was it. In the meantime, now that she was forewarned, she wouldn’t let them out of her sight. Here an idea came to her: she asked her husband if he would send an invitation to the widow to join them.
“No,” he replied. “The carriage only has two seats, and I have no intention of sitting up with the coachman.”
Maria Olímpia smiled contentedly, and stood up. She had long wanted to hear I Lombardi. Let’s go! Tra, la, la, la . . . Half an hour later, she went upstairs to dress. When Galvão saw her come down a short time later, ready to go, he was delighted. “My wife is beautiful,” he thought, and made as if to clasp her to his chest. But his wife pulled back, telling him not to rumple her dress. And when he, playing the valet, tried to straighten the feather in her hair, she said to him, rather irritated:
“Stop it, Eduardo! Is the carriage here yet?”
They got into the carriage and set off for the theater. And who should be in the box next to theirs? The widow and her mother, of course. This coincidence—the daughter of fate—might lead one to believe there had been some prior arrangement. Maria Olímpia did, indeed, suspect as much, but the sensation caused by her arrival gave her no time to examine her suspicion. The entire audience had turned to look at her, and she drank in, in slow draughts, the milk of public admiration. Moreover, her husband had the Machiavellian inspiration to say in her ear: “Perhaps you should have invited her, then she would have owed us the favor.” Any suspicion would evaporate at such words. Nevertheless, she took care not to let them out of her sight, a resolution she renewed every five minutes for half an hour, until, unable to remain vigilant, she allowed her attention to wander. Off the restless thing goes, heading straight for the bright lights, the magnificent costumes, lingering briefly on the opera itself, as if demanding from all those things some delicious sensation in which a cold, individual soul could luxuriate. And then back it came to her, to her fan, her gloves, the frills on her dress, which really was rather magnificent. Talking with the widow during the intervals, Maria Olímpia maintained her usual voice and gestures, uncalculated and effortless, not a trace of resentment, the letter entirely forgotten. And during the intervals her husband, of course, with a discretion rare among the sons of men, went off to the aisles or the foyer, looking for news about the government.
At the end, the two ladies left the box together and made their way down to the foyer. The modesty with which the widow was dressed may well have emphasized the magnificence of her friend. Her features, however, were not as the latter had described them while trying on shawls that morning. No, sir; the widow’s features were charming, with a certain originality about them. Her shoulders were pretty and perfectly proportioned. She was not thirty-five but thirty-one; she was born in 1822, on the very eve of independence, so much so that her father, jokingly, began to call her Ipiranga, and the nickname stuck among her friends. Furthermore, the baptism registry was there for all to see in Santa Rita.
A week later, Maria Olímpia received another anonymous letter. It was longer and more explicit. Others followed, once a week for three months. Maria Olímpia read the first with some irritation, but she gradually became hardened to those that followed. There was no doubt that, unlike before, her husband often came home late from work, or he would go out in the evenings and return very late; but, according to him, he spent the time at Wallerstein’s or Bernardo’s, discussing politics. And this was true, but only for five or ten minutes, the time necessary to pick up some anecdote or novelty he could repeat at home as an alibi. From there he would go to Largo de São Francisco and catch the public omnibus.
It was all true. And yet, still she refused to believe the letters. Lately, she no longer bothered to take the trouble to reject what they said; she would read them just once and tear them up. As time passed, other, less vague signs began to appear, little by little, in the way that land gradually appears to sailors; but this Columbus stubbornly refused to believe in America. She denied what she saw; and when she could no longer deny it, she interpreted it; then she would recall some instance of a hallucination, a tale about illusory appearances, and on this soft and comfortable pillow she would lay her head and sleep. By now the law practice was prospering, and Galvão hosted card games and dinner parties; they went to balls, theaters, and horse races. Maria Olímpia was happy and radiant; she was beginning to be thought of as one of the foremost ladies of fashion. And she was frequently in the company of the widow, despite the letters, and to such an extent that one letter commented: “There seems little point in writing to you again, since you are evidently relishing this distasteful concubinage.” What on earth was concubinage? Maria Olímpia wanted to ask her husband, but promptly forgot the word and thought no more about it.
Meanwhile, it came to the attention of her husband that his wife was receiving letters in the post. Letters from whom? This was a hard and unexpected blow. Galvão scoured his memory for all the people who came to their house, those they might meet at theaters and balls, and found many likely candidates. Indeed, she did not lack admirers.
“Letters from whom?” he repeated, biting his lip and furrowing his brow.
For seven days he was restless and irritable, spying on his wife and spending most of his time at home. On the eighth day, a letter arrived.
“For me?” he asked brightly.
“No, it’s for me,” replied Maria Olímpia, reading the envelope. “It looks like Mariana or Lula Fontoura’s handwriting.”
She didn’t want to open it, but her husband told her to read it; it might be some grave news. Maria Olímpia read the letter and folded it up, smiling; she was about to put it away when her husband asked her what it was.
“You smiled,” he said teasingly. “It must be some joke at my expense.”
“As if! It’s about sewing patterns.”
“Then let me see.”
“What for, Eduardo?”
“What’s the matter? If you don’t want to show me, there must be some reason. Give it here.”
He was no longer smiling; his voice trembled. She again refused to hand over the letter, once, twice, three times. She even considered tearing it up, but that would only make matters worse, and she wouldn’t be able to destroy it completely. It really was a rather peculiar situation. When she saw that there was no other solution, she decided to give in. What better occasion to read the expression of truth on his face? The letter was one of the most explicit; it talked about the widow in the crudest of terms. Maria Olímpia handed it to him.
“I didn’t want to show you this,” she said first, “just as I haven’t shown you the others that I’ve received and thrown away. It’s all silly tittle-tattle, designed to . . . Go on, read it, read the letter.”
Galvão opened the letter and read avidly. She hung her head low, studying at close quarters the fringe on her dress. She did not see him turn pale. When, a few minutes later, he said a few words, his face was already perfectly composed and bore an inkling of a smile. But his wife, failing to divine his true feelings, replied with her head still bowed; she raised it only three or four minutes later, and not to look straight at him, but bit by bit, as if she feared finding in his eyes confirmation of the anonymous letter. Seeing, on the c
ontrary, that he was smiling, she thought this was the smile of innocence, and changed the subject.
The husband redoubled his precautions; it would also seem that he could not help feeling a certain admiration for his wife. The widow, for her part, having been warned about the letters, felt deeply ashamed, but reacted quickly by becoming even more affectionate toward her dear, dear friend.
In the second or third week of August, Galvão became a member of the Cassino Fluminense club. This was one of his wife’s fondest dreams. September 6 was the widow’s birthday, as we already know. The day before, Maria Olímpia (accompanied by her aunt who was visiting the city) went to buy her a gift, as was their usual habit. She bought her a ring. At the same establishment she saw a charming piece of jewelry, a diamond hairpiece in the shape of a crescent moon, the emblem of Diana, which would suit her very well, pinned just above her forehead. Even when the symbol comes from Muhammad, anything with diamonds in it counts as Christian. Maria Olímpia naturally thought of the first night that they would be attending the Cassino, and her aunt, seeing that she wanted it, offered to buy it for her. Too late; it had already been sold.
The evening of the ball arrived. Maria Olímpia felt a thrill of excitement as she ascended the staircase at the Cassino. People who knew her at the time say that what she experienced when out in the world was a sense of being caressed by the public gaze, albeit at a distance; it was her way of being loved. Now that they were members of the Cassino, she would be gathering a veritable cornucopia of admiring looks. She was not mistaken, for this is precisely what happened, and from the highest echelons too.
It was at around half-past ten that the widow arrived. She looked really beautiful, impeccably dressed, and wearing the crescent moon of diamonds on her head. The wretched jewel suited her devilishly well, with its two points turned upward, emerging from among her dark hair. Everyone in the hall had always admired the widow. She had many female friends, some closer than others, and more than a few admirers, and she possessed the kind of personality that comes alive under the bright lights. The head of a certain legation simply would not stop recommending her to newer members of the diplomatic corps: “Causez avec Mme. Tavares; c’est adorable!” Thus it had been on other nights, and thus it was on this one.
“I’ve had hardly a moment to talk to you tonight,” she said to Maria Olímpia, as midnight approached.
“It’s only natural,” said the other, opening and closing her fan. And, after moistening her lips, as if to prime them with all the venom she had in her heart: “My dear Ipiranga, tonight, you are a very charming widow . . . Have you come to seduce yet another husband?”
The widow turned pale and speechless. With her eyes, Maria Olímpia added something that humiliated the widow utterly, splattering her triumph with mud. For the rest of the night, they spoke little; three days later, they broke with each other for good.
THE ACADEMIES OF SIAM
HAVE YOU HEARD of the academies of Siam? All right, I know Siam never had any academies, but let’s just suppose it did, and that there were four of them, and then listen.
I
Whenever they saw swarms of milky-hued fireflies rising up through the night sky, the stars would often say that these were the sighs of the king of Siam, who was amusing himself with his three hundred concubines. And, winking at each other, they would ask:
“Pray tell us, O regal sighs, what is the beautiful Kalaphangko up to tonight?”
To which the fireflies would reply gravely:
“We are the sublime thoughts of the four academies of Siam; we bring with us all the wisdom of the universe.”
One night, there were so many fireflies that the stars took fright and hid in their bedrooms, and the fireflies took over part of outer space, where they stayed forever and called themselves the “Milky Way.”
This enormous rising cloud of thoughts was the result of the four academies of Siam trying to solve a very peculiar puzzle: Why are there feminine men and masculine women? And it was the nature of their young king that led them to ask this question. Kalaphangko was virtually a lady. Everything about him breathed the most exquisite femininity: he had velvety eyes, a silvery voice, gentle, amenable manners, and an abiding horror of war. The Siamese warlords grumbled, but the nation lived very happily; everywhere there were dances, plays, and songs, following the example of the king, who cared for little else, which rather explains the stars’ misinterpretation of those sighs.
Then, suddenly, one of the academies came up with a solution to the problem:
“Some souls are masculine, others are feminine. The anomaly we have before us is a case of mistaken bodies.”
“I disagree,” shouted the other three. “The soul is neuter; it has nothing to do with external differences.”
Nothing more was needed for the alleys and waterways of Bangkok to turn red with academic blood. First came controversy, then insults, and finally fistfights. It wasn’t so bad when the insults began; no one hurled abuse that was not scrupulously derived from Sanskrit, which was the academic language, the Latin of Siam. From then on, though, they lost all shame. The rivalry turned very nasty indeed, rolled up its sleeves, and descended into mudslinging, stone-throwing, punches, and vile gestures, until, in exasperation, the sexual academy (i.e., that which espoused the sexuality of souls) decided to put an end to the other three academies, and prepared a sinister plan . . . O winds that blow, scatter forth these leaves of paper, that I may not recount the tragedy of Siam! For—woe is me!—I can scarcely bear to write of such a dastardly revenge. They secretly armed themselves and went to find the members of the other academies, just as the latter, sitting hunched in thought over the famous puzzle, were dispatching a cloud of fireflies up to heaven. They gave no warning and showed no pity, but fell upon them, foaming with rage. Those who fled did not flee for long; pursued and attacked, they died on the riverbank, aboard barges, or in dark alleyways. Altogether there were thirty-eight corpses. An ear was cut off from each of the leaders, and these were made into necklaces and bracelets for their own victorious president, the sublime U-Tong. Drunk on victory, they celebrated the deed with a great feast, at which they sang this magnificent hymn: “Glory be to us, for we are the rice of science and the lamp of the universe.”
The city awoke to this horrifying news. Terror gripped the masses. No one could forgive such a cruel and despicable act; some even doubted their own eyes. Only one person approved of it all: the beautiful Kinnara, the flower of the royal concubines.
II
Lying languidly at the feet of the beautiful Kinnara, the young king asked her to sing.
“I’ll sing no other song than this: I believe that souls have a sex.”
“What you believe is absurd, Kinnara.”
“So, Your Majesty believes that souls are neuter?”
“That is equally absurd. No, I don’t believe in the neuter soul, or the sexual soul, either.”
“But then what does Your Majesty believe in?”
“I believe in your eyes, Kinnara. They are the sun and light of the universe.”
“But you must choose: either you believe that souls have no sex, and must, therefore, punish the only surviving academy, or you believe that souls do have a sex, and must, therefore, pardon it.”
“What a delightful mouth you have, my sweet Kinnara! I believe in your mouth; it is the very fount of wisdom.”
Kinnara leapt angrily to her feet. Just as the king was the feminine man, she was the masculine woman—a buffalo in swan’s feathers. Just now it was the buffalo that strode across the bedchamber, but, a moment later, it was the swan that stopped and, tilting her neck, asked and obtained from the king, between two gentle caresses, a decree in which the doctrine of the sexual soul was declared legitimate and orthodox, and the other doctrine absurd and perverse. On that same day, the decree was sent to the victorious academy, to all the pagodas and mandarins, and distributed throughout the kingdom. The academy hung out lanterns, and peace was restored. r />
III
Meanwhile, the beautiful Kinnara had an ingenious and secret plan. One night, while the king was studying some papers of state, she asked him if taxes were being paid on time.
“Ohimè!” he exclaimed, repeating a word he had heard from an Italian missionary. “Alas, very few taxes have been paid, but I didn’t want to have the defaulters beheaded . . . No, not that . . . Blood? Blood? No, I want no blood . . .”
“And what if I were to find you a solution to all of this?”
“What solution?”
“Your Majesty has decreed that souls are masculine and feminine,” said Kinnara, after first giving him a kiss. “Suppose that our bodies have been switched. All we need is to return each soul to the body that belongs to it. Let us exchange souls and bodies . . .”
Kalaphangko scoffed at the idea, and asked her just how they would achieve such an exchange. She replied that she would use the method of Mukunda, the king of the Hindus, who placed himself in the corpse of a Brahmin while a jester entered Mukunda’s. It’s an old legend passed down to the Turks, Persians, and Christians. Yes, but how was the invocation worded? Kinnara declared that she knew the wording, because an old Buddhist monk had found a copy of it in the ruins of a temple.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t actually believe in my own decree,” he retorted, laughing, “but go ahead; if it’s true, let’s switch. But only for six months, no more. At the end of six months, we’ll change back.”
They agreed to make the exchange that very night. While the city slept, they sent for the royal barge, stepped aboard, and let themselves drift away. None of the rowers saw them. When Dawn appeared, urging on the golden-red cows drawing her glittering chariot, Kinnara offered up the mysterious invocation. Her soul detached itself from her body and hovered in the air, waiting for the king’s body to become vacant too. Her own body lay slumped on the rug.