The Alienist and Other Stories of Nineteenth-Century Brazil (6 page)

“What’s her name?”

“She has a thousand names. Change of external soul is a commonplace phenomenon. I have experienced such changes myself, but let me just tell the story that I mentioned, an episode that occurred when I was twenty-five years old.”

The four friends, eager to hear the promised story, forgot about their argument and fell silent, their eyes on Jacobina, who trimmed the ash from the end of his cigar, collecting his memories, and began to narrate:

“I was twenty-five years old and broke, and I had just been named second lieutenant in the National Guard. You can’t imagine what a big deal that was at my house. My mother was so proud of me, so happy. ‘Her lieutenant,’ she called me. My uncles and aunts and cousins, everybody was delighted, pure and simple. In town, of course, a few people got bent out of shape. One heard some ‘wailing and gnashing of teeth,’ as the Scriptures say, because so many other candidates for the distinction were disappointed. And I suppose, too, that part of the unhappiness might have been envy. I remember some fellows, supposedly my friends, who didn’t act so friendly for a while afterward. Then again, a lot of people were delighted, though, and the proof is that the entire uniform—an imposing one, as you know—was given to me by well-wishers.

“So, anyway, my mother’s widowed sister, Aunt Marcolina, whose husband had been Captain Peçanha of the National Guard, and who lived by herself on a remote, solitary farm many leagues from town, sent word that I should go visit her for a few days and wear my uniform. I went, accompanied only by a servant who returned to town within a few days carrying a letter to my mother. Aunt Marcolina had written her to say that, having me in her clutches, she did not intend to let me leave for at least a month. She hugged me repeatedly, called me ‘
her
lieutenant,’ and said that I was a fine-looking young man. She joked that she was jealous of whomever I might marry. She swore that there wasn’t another young man in the whole province who could compete with me. It was ‘lieutenant
this
,’ ‘lieutenant
that
,’ all the time ‘lieutenant.’ I asked her just to call me ‘João,’ as she always had before, but she shook her head, no sir, I was ‘mister lieutenant.’ An older man who was living there, Captain Peçanha’s brother, called me the same thing, not in jest, but seriously, and in front of the slaves, who were soon doing it, too. I occupied the place of honor at the head of the table, and I was the first one served at dinner. You have no idea. Aunt Marcolina even had a large looking glass moved into my bedroom, a beautiful, old mirror in a standing frame that contrasted with the other furnishings of the house, which were simple and modest. It was an heirloom, a gift from her godmother, who had inherited it from her mother, who had supposedly purchased it from a Portuguese noblewoman, one of the courtiers who came with King João to Brazil in 1808. That’s what they said in the family, at least. I don’t know how much is true. The looking glass was really old, of course, with the gold paint worn off the frame in places. It had dolphins and artistic ornaments sculpted at the upper corners, very nicely done and inlaid with mother of pearl. Old, but nice.”

“A big mirror?”

“Full length. And as I say, it was quite an extravagant thing for her to do. The looking glass had stood in the front room, the best piece of furniture in the house. But there wasn’t a power on earth that could dissuade her from the idea. She said that she didn’t need it in the front room, that it was only for a few weeks, and finally that ‘the lieutenant’ deserved the looking glass and much, much more. The truth is that all the attention—the gifts, the honors, the affection—worked a transformation in me, a transformation that the natural feelings of youth encouraged and completed. You can easily imagine, I’m sure.”

“Not really,” replied one of his listeners.

“The lieutenant replaced the human being. I mean, for a few days the two existed together in equilibrium, but the newcomer gained ground, and soon only a wisp of my humanity remained. My external soul—that once had been the sun, the air, the countryside, a girl’s look—had changed into something different. Now it was all social courtesies and deference relating to my new rank, nothing relating to the person. Only the lieutenant remained, the plain citizen was left behind, vanished into the air. You find it difficult to believe, I see.”

“I find it difficult to
understand
.”

“You’ll understand when I tell you what happened next. My actions will explain my feelings. Actions are everything. The most perfect definition of love cannot equal a lover’s kiss, and, if I remember correctly, an ancient philosopher explained movement by walking away. Let’s go to what happened next. As the consciousness of the human being faded, that of the lieutenant became brighter and more intense. Human joys and sufferings could hardly, any longer, awaken in me a smile or a nod of compassion. After three weeks I had become a different person, or, rather, not fully a person at all.

“One day Aunt Marcolina got some alarming news. One of her married daughters, who lived about five leagues distant, had taken ill, deathly ill. Goodbye, nephew! Goodbye, mister second lieutenant! The distraught mother packed her bags at once. She asked for her brother-in-law to go with her and for me to take care of the estate in her absence. I believe that, had she not been so upset, she would have done the opposite, asking him to take care of the estate and me to go with her. As it was, I soon found myself alone with the household servants. Immediately I felt panicked, as if the walls of a prison had risen around me on all sides. My external soul was contracting, you see, limited now to the presence of a few simple slaves. The lieutenant still dominated in me, but my entire being had grown weaker and less intense. Meanwhile, the slaves addressed me with an admiration and humility that compensated, somewhat, for the loss of family affection. That evening, they fussed over me endlessly. ‘Mister lieutenant is so handsome!’ ‘Mister lieutenant is going to be a colonel and marry a general’s daughter.’ … It was music to my ears. I was ecstatic. But little did I suspect their evil intentions, the traitors!”

“To kill you?”

“If only it had been that.”

“What could be worse?”

“Just listen. The next morning I awoke to find myself
alone
. The scheming traitors, whether of their own accord or seduced by someone else, had decided to run away during the night, and that’s what they did. I found myself utterly alone, staring at the four walls of the house, the deserted outbuildings, and the fields beyond, with not a soul in sight. I ran through the house and the slave quarters, everywhere, and saw nothing, nobody, not a living soul. Not even a little slave kid. No, only cocks and hens, a couple of mules philosophically twitching away flies, and three oxen. Even the dogs had gone with the slaves. Not a single human being. Do you think that was better than being killed? It was worse. Not because of fear, though. I was plucky enough to feel no fear, I swear to you, during the first hours. I felt bad for Aunt Marcolina’s financial loss, and I wondered whether I should deliver the sad news to her immediately or stay with the house and take care of it. I adopted the latter plan. My cousin was seriously ill just now. Why should I burden her mother with this further catastrophe that she could do nothing about? And anyway, I expected the return of Uncle Peçanha’s brother that day or the next. He had traveled merely to accompany my aunt, and they had been gone already thirty-six hours. But the morning went by without a trace of him, and in the afternoon I was troubled by an odd sensation, something like a vague numbness affecting my entire body. Peçanha’s brother did not appear that day, nor the next, nor for the rest of that week. My solitude assumed enormous proportions. Days were never longer. Never did the sun scorch the earth with a more grueling obstinacy. The clock struck the hour regularly every
century
it seemed, and the tick-tock, tick-tock of its pendulum tapped at my internal soul like an eternal torment. When, many years later, I read an American poem, by Longfellow I think, ‘The Old Clock on the Stair,’ I confess that I got chills. The pendulum in the poem says ‘Never, forever / Forever, never,’ and that’s just what Aunt Marcolina’s clock said. It wasn’t so much the sound of a pendulum as a dialog in the abyss. The whisper of the void. And, oh, the night! Not that the night was more silent. The silence was the same, day and night. Night was shadow, and the dark made the loneliness simultaneously vaster and more constricted. Tick-tock. No one in the sitting room, or on the veranda, or outside, no one anywhere. … Do you think this is funny?”

“It sounds as though you
were
a little frightened.”

“How I wish I could have been frightened! At least I would have felt alive. In that situation, though, I couldn’t even feel fear, not what people usually call fear, anyway. I was like a zombie, a sleepwalker, a mechanical doll. Sleeping was entirely different from waking, though. Sleep brought relief, and not because it brought oblivion, but for another reason. I think that I can explain the phenomenon this way. Sleep eliminated the need for an external soul and allowed the internal soul to act, instead. In my dreams, I proudly put on my uniform for my family and friends, who repeated that I was handsome and called me ‘lieutenant.’ A close friend of the family arrived, saying I was to be promoted to first lieutenant or captain or major. All that revived me. Then I woke up and, in the light of day, my revived self faded with the dream, my internal soul lost efficacy, and once again I depended on the exterior version, which seemed to have gone away entirely. And it didn’t come back. Where was everyone? I went outside and wandered here and there like Bluebeard’s wife begging to be rescued by her sister in the French legend. ‘
Soeur Anne,
she calls,
soeur Anne, ne vois-tu rien venir
?’
¹
Nothing, nothing at all. Nothing but the dust in the road and the grass on the hillsides. Back in the house, more than a little spooked, I lay down on the sofa. Tick-tock, tick-tock. I got up and walked from room to room, drumming my fingers on the window glass, whistling. Once I got the idea of writing something, a newspaper editorial, a novel, an ode—I couldn’t make up my mind. I sat down and wrote a few random words and phrases to combine thematically, but the theme, like Aunt Marcolina, refused to materialize.
Soeur Anne, soeur Anne …
but no, nothing at all. As I stared at the paper, the ink only looked blacker, and the page, whiter.”

“Weren’t you eating?”

“I ate poorly—fruit, handfuls of manioc flour, roots roasted in the fire—but I would have endured it all cheerfully were it not for my deep depression. I recited passages of Latin oratory, half of the great epic by Camões,
²
and all manner of other verses, a thirty-volume anthology, more or less. Sometimes I did gymnastic exercises; other times I pinched my legs. The effect was a slight physical sensation, pain or fatigue, nothing more. Everything silent, a colossal, infinite silence, only underscored by the eternal tick-tock of the pendulum. Tick-tock, tick-tock …”

“It does sound like enough to drive one crazy.”

“You haven’t heard the worst. I should tell you first that, since I had been left alone, I had not looked in the mirror even once. I had no conscious reason to avoid it. I just hadn’t done it—maybe because, unconsciously, I didn’t want to see two of me in that lonely house. If that is the true explanation, nothing better demonstrates the contradictions of the human condition because, after a week, I got a sudden urge to look in the mirror precisely to see myself duplicated. I took one look, and backed away. The looking glass seemed part of the universal plot against me. It did not show a sharp, complete image, but rather, something blurred, shadowy, diffuse, fragmentary. Unless one questions the laws of physics, we must accept that the mirror reflected my outlines and features accurately. It must have shown me as I was. But that was not my feeling at the moment. On the contrary, I attributed the phenomenon to my upset state, and then I
did
feel fear. If this situation lasted much longer, I could go mad. ‘I’m getting out of here,’ I said to myself. I raised my arm in a gesture of irritation, and also, of decision. Looking in the mirror, I saw the gesture repeated, but in an unraveling, mutilated way.

“I started to get dressed, muttering aloud, coughing for no reason, noisily shaking each garment, and voicing my annoyance with the buttons, just to hear myself speak. Every now and then I glanced furtively at the looking glass. The image was still blurred and confused … I continued to dress. And then I had an unthinking impulse, an inexplicable inspiration. Can you guess what it was?”

“Tell us.”

“I was staring, horrified, at the jumbled outlines of my own slowly dissolving features … when it came to me. No, you’ll never guess what I did.”

“Tell us, then. Tell us.”

“I went to get my uniform. I put it on, laced and buttoned it. When I was entirely ready, I raised my eyes again to the mirror and … do I need to tell you? There in the looking glass was a sharp image of my full self with nothing missing, not a line out of place, a second lieutenant in the National Guard who had recovered his external soul. The soul that had departed with Aunt Marcolina and her runaway slaves reappeared to me on the surface of the glass. Imagine a man who emerges, little by little, from a deep lethargy. He opens his unseeing eyes, then begins to distinguish people from objects but without recognizing them. Then he sees this is So-and-So, and that’s somebody else. This is a chair, and that’s a sofa. Gradually, everything returns to what it was before he lost consciousness. That is how it was with me. I walked here and there, raised my arms, smiled, always watching the mirror—and the image reproduced my actions precisely. I no longer felt like a mechanical doll but like a living being. From then on, I was a different person. Every day at a certain time, I put on my uniform and sat in front of the looking glass to read, meditate, and gaze at myself. After two or three hours, I took it off again and, in that manner, was able to get through six more days of solitude without trouble …”