Quincas Borba (Library of Latin America) by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis Page B

her husband everything.
    “I’ll tell him everything,” she was thinking, “either orally or in a letter… No, not a letter. I’ll tell him everything face–to–face one day.”
    And imagining the dialogue, she foresaw the man’s surprise, then his anger, then his curses, the harsh words that he would address to his wife: miserable wretch, unworthy, vile woman … All those names sounded good to the ears of her desire. She was able to bring out her own rage with them. She could only bring her down that way, placing her beneath her husband’s feet, since she couldn’t do it herself… Vile, unworthy, miserable woman …
    That explosion of inner rage lasted for a long time—close to twenty minutes. But her soul grew tired, and she became herself again. Her imagination couldn’t do anything further, and the reality around her caught her sight. She looked about, looked at her old maid’s bedroom, artistically arranged—that ingenious art which turns cotton into silk and an old swatch into a ribbon, which decorates, arranges, embellishes the nakedness of things as much as possible, adorns sad walls, beautifies the few modest pieces. And everything there seemed made to receive a loving bridegroom.
    Where did I read that an ancient tradition made a virgin in Israel wait for divine conception during a certain night of the year? Wherever it was, let’s compare her to this other one, who differs from the first only in that she doesn’t have one fixed night but all of them, all, all... The wind whistling outside never brought her the hoped–for male, nor did maiden dawn tell her the spot on earth where he lived. It was only waiting, waiting…
    Now, with her imagination and resentment soothed, she looks and looks again at her lonely bedroom. She remembers her friends from school and family, the closest ones, all married. The last of them married a naval officer at the age of thirty, and that was what made the hopes of her unmarried friend bloom again. She wasn’t asking for so much because a cadet’s uniform had been the first thing to seduce her eyes at the age of fifteen … Where did they go? But that was five years ago. She was thirtynine and would soon be forty. An old maid of forty. Dona Tonica shuddered. She kept on looking, remembering everything. She stood up suddenly, turned around twice, and threw herself onto the bed weeping …

XLIV
     
    Y ou mustn’t believe that the pain here was more real than the anger. By themselves they were equal; the effects were what was different. Anger didn’t lead anywhere. Humiliation dissolved into legitimate tears. And, nonetheless, that lady still had an urge to strangle Sofia, to trample her, tear out her heart in pieces, telling her to her face the cruel names she’d attributed to her husband … All of it was imagined! Believe me, there are tyrants by intention. Who knows? In that lady’s soul there was a slight touch of Caligula …

XLV
     
    “w hile one is weeping, the other one laughs. It’s the law of the world, my fine fellow, it’s universal perfection. Nothing but weeping would be monotonous, nothing but laughter would be wearisome. But a proper distribution of tears and polkas, sobs and sarabands ends up by giving the soul of the world the necessary variety, and it becomes the balance of life.
    The other one that’s laughing is Rubião’s soul. Listen to the merry, bright tune with which it goes down the hill, saying the most intimate things to the stars, a kind of rhapsody made of a language that no one ever gave an alphabet to because it’s impossible to find a sign to convey the words. Down below the deserted streets seemed full of people to him, the silence a tumult, and leaning out of all the windows were the figures of women, pretty faces and thick eyebrows, all Sofias and one single Sofia. Over and over Rubião thinks he was rash, indiscreet; he remembers that business in the garden, the resistance, the young woman’s annoyance, and he begins