Read Online The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Machado de Assis - Free Book Online
Authors: Machado de Assis
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exclusion. But that was sufficient for me to think about revenge, whatever it might be, that would be huge and exemplary, which would make him look ridiculous in some way. Since Dr. Vilaça was a serious man, mannerly and calm, forty-seven years old, married and a father, I wasn’t content with a paper tail or his pigtail. It had to be something worse. I began scrutinizing him for the rest of the afternoon, following him around the grounds, where they’d all gone to stroll. I saw him chatting with Dona Eusébia, Sergeant-Major Domingues’ sister, a big robust maiden lady, who, if she wasn’t pretty, wasn’t ugly either.
“I’m very angry with you,” she was telling him.
“Why?”
“Because … I don’t know why… because it’s my fate … sometimes I think dying is better …”
They’d gone behind a little thicket. It was twilight. I followed them. There was a spark of wine and sensuality in Vilaça’s eyes.
“Let go of me,” she said.
“Nobody can see us. Dying, my angel? What kind of an idea is that? You know that I would die, too … What am I saying? … I die every day, from passion, from longing …”
Dona Eusébia put her handkerchief to her eyes. The glosser was digging in his memory for some literary fragment and he found this one, which I later discovered was from an opera by Antônio José da Silva, the Jew:
“Don’t weep my love, don’t wish for the day to break with two dawns.”
He said that and pulled her toward him. She resisted some but let herself go. Their faces came together and I heard the smack, very light, of a kiss, the most timid of kisses.
“Dr. Vilaça kissed Dona Eusébia!” I bellowed, running through the yard.
Those words of mine were an explosion. Stupefaction immobilized everyone. Eyes looked out all over. Smiles were exchanged, furtive whispers. Mothers dragged their daughters off with the pretext of the dew. My father pulled my ears, faking it but really annoyed at my indiscretion. The next day at lunch, however, recalling the incident, he tweaked my nose, laughing: “Oh, you little devil! You little devil!”
XIII
A Leap
Let’s put our feet together now and leap over school, the irksome school where I learned to read, write, count, whack noggins, get mine whacked, and make mischief, sometimes up on the hills, sometimes on the beaches, wherever it was convenient for loafers.
They were bitter times. There were the scoldings, the punishments, the arduous long lessons and little else, very little and very slight. The only really bad part was the whacking of the palms with a ruler, and even then … Oh, ruler, terror of my boyhood, you who were the
compelle intrare
with which an old teacher, bony and bald, instilled in my brain the alphabet, prosody, syntax, and everything else he knew, blessed ruler, so cursed by moderns, if only I could have remained underyour yoke with my beardless soul, my ignorance, and my rapier, that rapier from 1814, so superior to Napoleon’s sword! What was it that my old primary teacher wanted, after all? Memorization and behavior in the classroom. Nothing more, nothing less than what life, the final class, wants, with the difference that if you put fear into me, you never put anger. I can still see you now, coming into the room with your white leather slippers, cape, handkerchief in hand, bald head on display, chin clean-shaven. I see you sit down, snort, grunt, take an initial pinch of snuff, and then call us to order for the lesson. And you did that for twenty-three years, quiet, obscure, punctual, stuck in a little house on the Rua do Piolho, not bothering the world with your mediocrity, until one day you took the great dive into the shadows and nobody wept for you except an old black man—no one, not even I, who owe you the rudiments of writing.
The teacher’s name was Ludgero. Let me write his full name on this page: Ludgero Barata—a disastrous name whose second part means cockroach and that gave the boys an
“I’m very angry with you,” she was telling him.
“Why?”
“Because … I don’t know why… because it’s my fate … sometimes I think dying is better …”
They’d gone behind a little thicket. It was twilight. I followed them. There was a spark of wine and sensuality in Vilaça’s eyes.
“Let go of me,” she said.
“Nobody can see us. Dying, my angel? What kind of an idea is that? You know that I would die, too … What am I saying? … I die every day, from passion, from longing …”
Dona Eusébia put her handkerchief to her eyes. The glosser was digging in his memory for some literary fragment and he found this one, which I later discovered was from an opera by Antônio José da Silva, the Jew:
“Don’t weep my love, don’t wish for the day to break with two dawns.”
He said that and pulled her toward him. She resisted some but let herself go. Their faces came together and I heard the smack, very light, of a kiss, the most timid of kisses.
“Dr. Vilaça kissed Dona Eusébia!” I bellowed, running through the yard.
Those words of mine were an explosion. Stupefaction immobilized everyone. Eyes looked out all over. Smiles were exchanged, furtive whispers. Mothers dragged their daughters off with the pretext of the dew. My father pulled my ears, faking it but really annoyed at my indiscretion. The next day at lunch, however, recalling the incident, he tweaked my nose, laughing: “Oh, you little devil! You little devil!”
XIII
A Leap
Let’s put our feet together now and leap over school, the irksome school where I learned to read, write, count, whack noggins, get mine whacked, and make mischief, sometimes up on the hills, sometimes on the beaches, wherever it was convenient for loafers.
They were bitter times. There were the scoldings, the punishments, the arduous long lessons and little else, very little and very slight. The only really bad part was the whacking of the palms with a ruler, and even then … Oh, ruler, terror of my boyhood, you who were the
compelle intrare
with which an old teacher, bony and bald, instilled in my brain the alphabet, prosody, syntax, and everything else he knew, blessed ruler, so cursed by moderns, if only I could have remained underyour yoke with my beardless soul, my ignorance, and my rapier, that rapier from 1814, so superior to Napoleon’s sword! What was it that my old primary teacher wanted, after all? Memorization and behavior in the classroom. Nothing more, nothing less than what life, the final class, wants, with the difference that if you put fear into me, you never put anger. I can still see you now, coming into the room with your white leather slippers, cape, handkerchief in hand, bald head on display, chin clean-shaven. I see you sit down, snort, grunt, take an initial pinch of snuff, and then call us to order for the lesson. And you did that for twenty-three years, quiet, obscure, punctual, stuck in a little house on the Rua do Piolho, not bothering the world with your mediocrity, until one day you took the great dive into the shadows and nobody wept for you except an old black man—no one, not even I, who owe you the rudiments of writing.
The teacher’s name was Ludgero. Let me write his full name on this page: Ludgero Barata—a disastrous name whose second part means cockroach and that gave the boys an
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