Brazilian Tales Part 4

[5] In United States money ten Brazilian milreis are equivalent to about $5.50.

"I can see easily that the gentleman loves his lady very much ... And well he may. For she loves the gentleman very deeply, too. Go, go in peace, with your mind at ease. And take care as you descend the staircase,--it's dark. Don't forget your hat ..."

The fortune-teller had already placed the note in her pocket, and accompanied him down the stairs, chatting rather gaily. At the bottom of the first flight Camillo bid her good-bye and ran down the stairs that led to the street, while the card-reader, rejoicing in her large fee, turned back to the garret, humming a barcarolle. Camillo found the tilbury waiting for him; the street was now clear. He entered and the driver whipped his horse into a fast trot.

To Camillo everything had now changed for the better and his affairs a.s.sumed a brighter aspect; the sky was clear and the faces of the people he pa.s.sed were all so merry. He even began to laugh at his fears, which he now saw were puerile; he recalled the language of Villela's letter and perceived at once that it was most friendly and familiar. How in the world had he ever been able to read any threat of danger into those words! He suddenly realized that they were urgent, however, and that he had done ill to delay so long; it might be some very serious business affair.

"Faster, faster!" he cried to the driver.

And he began to think of a plausible explanation of his delay; he even contemplated taking advantage of this incident to re-establish his former intimacy in Villela's household ... Together with his plans there kept echoing in his soul the words of the fortune-teller. In truth, she had guessed the object of his visit, his own state of mind, and the existence of a third; why, then, wasn't it reasonable to suppose that she had guessed the rest correctly, too? For, the unknown present is the same as the future. And thus, slowly and persistently the young man's childhood superst.i.tions attained the upper hand and mystery clutched him in its iron claws. At times he was ready to burst into laughter, and with a certain vexation he did laugh at himself. But the woman, the cards, her dry, rea.s.suring words, and her good-bye--"Go, go, _ragazzo innamorato_," and finally, that farewell barcarolle, so lively and gracious,--such were the new elements which, together with the old, formed within him a new and abiding faith.

The truth is that his heart was happy and impatient, recalling the happy hours of the past and antic.i.p.ating those yet to come. As he pa.s.sed through Gloria street Camillo gazed across the sea, far across where the waters and the heaven meet in endless embrace, and the sight gave him a sensation of the future,--long, long and infinite.

From here it was but a moment's drive to Villela's home. He stepped out, thrust the iron garden gate open and entered. The house was silent. He ran up the six stone steps and scarcely had he had time to knock when the door opened and Villela loomed before him.

"Pardon my delay. It was impossible to come sooner. What is the matter?"

Villela made no reply. His features were distorted; he beckoned Camillo to step within. As he entered, Camillo could not repress a cry of horror:--there upon the sofa lay Rita, dead in a pool of blood. Villela seized the lover by the throat and, with two bullets, stretched him dead upon the floor.

LIFE

By Joaquim Maria Machado de a.s.sis

End of time. Ahasverus, seated upon a rock, gazes for a long while upon the horizon, athwart which wing two eagles, crossing each other in their path. He meditates, then falls into a doze. The day wanes.

AHASVERUS. I have come to the end of time; this is the threshold of eternity. The earth is deserted; no other man breathes the air of life.

I am the last; I can die. Die! Precious thought! For centuries of centuries I have lived, wearied, mortified, wandering ever, but now the centuries are coming to an end, and I shall die with them. Ancient nature, farewell! Azure sky, clouds ever reborn, roses of a day and of every day, perennial waters, hostile earth that never would devour my bones, farewell! The eternal wanderer will wander no longer. G.o.d may pardon me if He wishes, but death will console me. That mountain is as unyielding as my grief; those eagles that fly yonder must be as famished as my despair. Shall you, too, die, divine eagles?

PROMETHEUS. Of a surety the race of man is perished; the earth is bare of them.

AHASVERUS. I hear a voice.... The voice of a human being? Implacable heavens, am I not then the last? He approaches.... Who are you? There s.h.i.+nes in your large eyes something like the mysterious light of the archangels of Israel; you are not a human being?...

PROMETHEUS. No.

AHASVERUS. Of a race divine, then?

PROMETHEUS. You have said it.

AHASVERUS. I do not know you; but what matters it that I do not? You are not a human being; then I may die; for I am the last and I close the gate of life.

PROMETHEUS. Life, like ancient Thebes, has a hundred gates. You close one, and others will open. You are the last of your species? Then another better species will come, made not of clay, but of the light itself. Yes, last of men, all the common spirits will perish forever; the flower of them it is which will return to earth and rule. The ages will be rectified. Evil will end; the winds will thenceforth scatter neither the germs of death nor the clamor of the oppressed, but only the song of love everlasting and the benediction of universal justice....

AHASVERUS. What can all this posthumous joy matter to the species that dies with me? Believe me, you who are immortal, to the bones that rot in the earth the purples of Sidonia are worthless. What you tell me is even better than what Campanella dreamed. In that man's ideal city there were delights and ills; yours excludes all mortal and physical ailments. May the Lord hear you! But let me go and die.

PROMETHEUS. Go, go. But why this haste to end your days?

AHASVERUS. The haste of a man who has lived for thousands of years.

Yes, thousands of years. Men who existed scarcely scores of them invented a feeling of ennui, _tedium vitae_, which they could never know, at least in all its implacable and vast reality, because it is necessary to have journeyed through all the generations and all the cataclysms to feel that profound surfeit of existence.

PROMETHEUS. Thousands of years?

AHASVERUS. My name Is Ahasverus; I dwelt in Jerusalem at the time they were about to crucify Christ. When he pa.s.sed my door he weakened under the burden of the beam that he carried on his shoulders, and I thrust him onward, admonis.h.i.+ng him not to stop, not to rest, to continue on his way to the hill where he was to be crucified.... Then there came a voice from heaven, telling me that I, too, should have to journey forever, continuously, until the end of time. Such was my crime; I felt no pity for him who was going to his death. I do not know myself how it came about. The Pharisees said that the son of Mary had come to destroy the law, and that he must be slain; I, ignorant wretch, wished to display my zeal and hence my action of that day. How many times have I seen the same thing since, traveling unceasingly through cities and ages! Whenever zealotry penetrated into a submissive soul, it became cruel or ridiculous. My crime was unpardonable.

PROMETHEUS. A grave crime, in truth, but the punishment was lenient.

The other men read but a chapter of life; you have read the whole book.

What does one chapter know of the other chapter? Nothing. But he who has read them all, connects them and concludes. Are there melancholy pages? There are merry and happy ones, too. Tragic convulsion precedes that of laughter; life burgeons from death; swans and swallows change climate, without ever abandoning it entirely; and thus all is harmonized and begun anew. You have beheld this, not ten times, not a thousand times, but ever; you have beheld the magnificence of the earth curing the affliction of the soul, and the joy of the soul compensating for the desolation of things; the alternating dance of Nature, who gives her left hand to Job and her right to Sardanapalus.

AHASVERUS. What do you know of my life? Nothing; you are ignorant of human existence.

PROMETHEUS. I, ignorant of human life? How laughable! Come, perpetual man, explain yourself. Tell me everything; you left Jerusalem ...

AHASVERUS. I left Jerusalem. I began my wandering through the ages. I journeyed everywhere, whatever the race, the creed, the tongue; suns and snows, barbarous and civilized peoples, islands, continents; wherever a man breathed, there breathed I. I never labored. Labor is a refuge, and that refuge was denied me. Every morning I found upon me the necessary money for the day ... See; this is the last apportionment. Go, for I need you no longer. (_He draws forth the money and throws it away._) I did not work; I just journeyed, ever and ever, one day after another, year after year unendingly, century after century. Eternal justice knew what it was doing: it added idleness to eternity. One generation bequeathed me to the other. The languages, as they died, preserved my name like a fossil. With the pa.s.sing of time all was forgotten; the heroes faded into myths, into shadow, and history crumbled to fragments, only two or three vague, remote characteristics remaining to it. And I saw them in changing aspect. You spoke of a chapter? Happy are those who read only one chapter of life.

Those who depart at the birth of empires bear with them the impression of their perpetuity; those who die at their fall, are buried in the hope of their restoration; but do you not realize what it is to see the same things unceasingly,--the same alternation of prosperity and desolation, desolation and prosperity, eternal obsequies and eternal halleluiahs, dawn upon dawn, sunset upon sunset?

PROMETHEUS. But you did not suffer, I believe. It is something not to suffer.

AHASVERUS. Yes, but I saw other men suffer, and in the end the spectacle of joy gave me the same sensations as the discourses of an idiot. Fatalities of flesh and blood, unending strife,--I saw all pa.s.s before my eyes, until night caused me to lose my taste for day, and now I cannot distinguish flowers from thistles. Everything is confused in my wearied retina.

PROMETHEUS. But nothing pained you personally; and what about me, from time immemorial suffering the wrath of the G.o.ds?

AHASVERUS. You?

PROMETHEUS. My name is Prometheus.

AHASVERUS. You! Prometheus!

PROMETHEUS. And what was my crime? Out of clay and water I made the first men, and afterwards, seized with compa.s.sion, I stole for them fire from the sky. Such was my crime. Jupiter, who then reigned over Olympus, condemned me to the most cruel of tortures. Come, climb this rock with me.

AHASVERUS. You are telling me a tale. I know that h.e.l.lenic myth.

PROMETHEUS. Incredulous old fellow! Come see the very chains that fettered me; it was an excessive penalty for no crime whatever; but divine pride is terrible ... See; there they are ...

AHASVERUS. And time, which gnaws all things, does not desire them, then?

PROMETHEUS. They were wrought by a divine hand. Vulcan forged them. Two emissaries from heaven came to secure me to the rock, and an eagle, like that which now is flying across the horizon, kept gnawing at my liver without ever consuming it. This lasted for time beyond my reckoning. No, no, you cannot imagine this torture ...

AHASVERUS. Are you not deceiving me? You, Prometheus? Was that not, then, a figment of the ancient imagination?

PROMETHEUS. Look well at me; touch these hands. See whether I really exist.

AHASVERUS. Then Moses lied to me. You are Prometheus, creator of the first men?

PROMETHEUS. That was my crime.

AHASVERUS. Yes, it was your crime,--an artifice of h.e.l.l; your crime was inexpiable. You should have remained forever, bound and devoured,--you, the origin of the ills that afflict me. I lacked compa.s.sion, it is true; but you, who gave me life, perverse divinity, were the cause of all.