Part 1 · Chapter 2: Radical Reforms

For a full ten days Major Quaresma had not left the house. In his pleasant, quiet home in São Cristóvão he filled his days in the manner most useful and agreeable to the needs of his mind and temperament. In the morning, after washing and dressing and having his coffee, he sat on the divan in the main sitting room and read the newspapers. He read several, for he always hoped to find in one or another some curious item of news, the suggestion of an idea useful to his beloved country. His office habits had accustomed him to an early lunch, and although he was on leave, he continued, so as not to lose them, to take his first meal requiring knife and fork at half past nine in the morning.

After lunch he would stroll about the grounds, where Brazilian fruit trees predominated, the pitanga and the cambuí receiving the most painstaking care recommended by pomology, as though they were indeed cherries or figs.

The stroll was long and philosophical. Talking with Anastácio, the Black man who had served him for thirty years, about old things—the marriages of princesses, the breaking of the Souto, and suchlike—the major went on with his mind absorbed in the problems that had lately preoccupied him. After an hour or less, he returned to the library and immersed himself in the journals of the Historical Institute, in Fernão Cardim, in the letters of Nóbrega, in the annals of the Library, in von den Stein, and took notes upon notes, keeping them in a small folder beside him. He studied the Indians. It would not be quite right to say studied, because he had done so long before, not only with regard to their language, which he now almost spoke, but also in their simpler ethnographic and anthropological aspects. He recalled—it is better to put it that way—and affirmed certain notions from his earlier studies, seeing that he was organizing a system of ceremonies and festivals based on the customs of our forest dwellers and embracing all social relationships.

To understand the reason for this properly, one must not forget that after thirty years of patriotic meditation, study, and reflection, the major had now reached the period of fruition. The conviction he had always held that Brazil was the first country in the world, and his great love for the Fatherland, were now active and impelled him to great undertakings. He felt within him imperious impulses to act, to work, and to give concrete form to his ideas. They were small improvements, simple touches, because in itself—in his opinion—the great Fatherland of the Southern Cross needed only time to become superior to England.

It had every climate, every fruit, every useful mineral and animal, the best lands for cultivation, the bravest, most hospitable, most intelligent, and sweetest people in the world. What more could it need? Time and a little originality. Therefore, doubts no longer floated in his spirit; but as regards originality of customs and usages, they had not dissipated. Rather, after taking part in the revelry of the “Tangolomango,” at a party the general had given at home, they had transformed into certainty.

It happened that Ricardo’s visit, and his guitar, to the brave military man awakened in the general and his family a taste for festivities, songs, and genuinely national customs, as they say around here. In all of them arose a desire to feel, to dream, to poetize in the popular manner of the old days. Albernaz, the general, remembered having seen such ceremonies in his childhood: Dona Maricota, his wife, could still remember some verses of Reis; and his children, five girls and a boy, saw in the affair a pretext for parties and therefore applauded their parents’ enthusiasm. The modinha was not enough; their spirits demanded something more plebeian, more characteristic, and more extravagant.

Quaresma was delighted when Albernaz spoke of organizing a chegança in the northern manner on the occasion of the anniversary of his military post. At the general’s house it was thus: every anniversary had its celebration, so that there were some thirty celebrations a year, not counting Sundays, holidays, and religious observance days on which they also danced.

Until then, the major had thought little about such things as traditional festivals and dances; nevertheless, he immediately saw the highly patriotic significance of the plan. He approved and encouraged his neighbor. But who would rehearse it, provide the verses and the music? Someone mentioned Aunt Maria Rita, an old Black woman who lived in Benfica and had formerly been a laundress for the Albernaz family. The two of them, General Albernaz and Major Quaresma, went there, cheerful and hurried, on a beautiful, crystalline April afternoon.

The general had nothing of the martial about him, not even the uniform, which perhaps he did not own. Throughout his military career, he had never seen a single battle, had never held a command, and had done nothing that bore any relation to his profession or his course in artillery. He had always been adjutant, assistant, put in charge of this or that, clerk, quartermaster, and was secretary of the Supreme Military Council when he retired as a general. His habits were those of a good head of a section, and his intelligence was not very different from his habits. He understood nothing of war, strategy, tactics, or military history; his wisdom in such matters was reduced to the battles of the Paraguayan War, which were for him the greatest and most extraordinary war of all time.

The lofty-sounding title of general, which evoked the superhuman deeds of Caesars, Turennes and Gustavus Adolphuses, sat ill upon that placid, mediocre, good-natured man, whose only concern was to marry off his five daughters and find influential “backers” to get his son through the examinations at the Military College. Nevertheless, it would not do to question his martial abilities. Aware of his own very civilian air, he would now and then relate an episode of war, a military anecdote. “It was at Lomas Valentinas,” he would say… If anyone asked, “Was the general at the battle?” he would promptly reply: “I couldn’t be. I fell ill and came back to Brazil on the eve of it. But I heard from Camisão, from Venâncio, that things were very grim.”

The tram that carried them to old Maria Rita’s passed through one of the city’s most interesting stretches. It went by Pedregulho, an old gate to the city, formerly the terminus of a track leading to Minas Gerais, branching toward São Paulo and opening communications with the parish of Santa Cruz.

Along that road, on the backs of pack animals, the gold and diamonds of Minas had come to Rio, and more recently the so-called produce of the country. Not a hundred years had passed since the carriages of King João VI, heavy as ships, swaying on their four widely spaced wheels, had travelled that way to distant Santa Cruz. One can hardly believe the spectacle was very imposing; the Court was short of money, and the king was slovenly. Nevertheless, despite the soldiers in patched uniforms, sadly mounted on dispirited “nags,” the procession must have had its grandeur, not in itself, but in the humiliating displays of respect that everyone was obliged to offer his lamentable majesty.

Among us everything is inconsistent, provisional, and does not last. There was nothing there to recall that past. The old houses, with large, nearly square windows and panes of small glass, dated from only a short while before, less than fifty years.

Quaresma and Albernaz passed through all of it without reminiscences and went on to the tram stop. Before that, they surveyed the turf district, a small part of the city where coach stables and paddocks for racehorses were crowded together, with large horseshoes, horse heads, panoplies of whips, and other equestrian emblems on gateposts, door cushions, and everywhere such distinctions would look well and catch the eye.

The old Black woman’s house lay beyond the tram stop, toward the sections near the Leopoldina railway station. They went there. They passed the station. Across a broad muddy yard, black with coal dust, there were piles of firewood and immense heaps of coal sacks; farther on stood a locomotive depot, and on the tracks some engines were shunting while others panted under pressure.

They finally found the lane on which Maria Rita’s house stood. The weather had been dry, and so it was possible to travel along it. Beyond the road stretched the vast region of mangroves, an immense, sad, and ugly tract extending to the depths of the bay and, on the horizon, dying at the foot of the blue mountains of Petrópolis. They reached the old woman’s house. It was low, whitewashed, and covered with heavy Portuguese tiles. It stood a little apart from the road. On the right was a heap: kitchen refuse, rags, seashells, pieces of household crockery—a sambaqui in the making for the amusement of an archaeologist of the remote future; on the left grew a papaya tree, and very close to the fence, on the same side, was a rue shrub. They knocked. A young Black girl appeared at the open window.

“What do you want?”

They told her what they wanted and approached. The girl called from inside the house:

“Grandma, there are two ‘young men’ here who want to speak with you. Come in, please,” she said afterward, addressing the general and his companion.

The room was small, with no ceiling beneath the roof tiles. Old calendar chromolithographs, pictures of saints and illustrations clipped from newspapers jostled together on the walls, climbing two-thirds of the way up. Beside an image of Our Lady of Penha hung a portrait of Vítor Emanuel with enormous, dishevelled moustaches; a sentimental calendar print, a woman’s head in a dreamy pose, seemed to gaze at a Saint John the Baptist beside it. Above the door leading farther into the house, an oil lamp on a corner shelf covered a porcelain Virgin of the Immaculate Conception with soot.

The old woman soon came. She entered in a shirt with lace-edged frills, showing her thin chest, adorned with a double strand of glass beads. She limped on one foot and seemed to try to help her progress with her left hand resting on the corresponding leg.

“Good afternoon, Aunt Maria Rita,” the general said.

She replied, but gave no sign of having recognized the person speaking to her. The general cut in:

“Don’t you know me any longer? I’m the general—Colonel Albernaz.”

“Ah! It’s you, Colonel!… How long has it been! How is Dona Maricota?”

“She is well. My old girl, we wanted you to teach us some songs.”

“Who am I, sir!”

“Come now, Aunt Maria Rita… you’ll lose nothing… don’t you know “Bumba-meu-Boi”?”

“Oh, sir, I’ve forgotten it.”

“And “Boi Espácio”?”

“Old thing, from slavery days—what would the colonel know about that?”

She spoke dragging out her syllables, with a sweet smile and a vague expression.

“It’s for a party… Which one do you know?”

The granddaughter, who had listened silently until then, grew animated and said something, quickly revealing the bright string of her immaculate teeth:

“Grandma doesn’t remember any more.”

The general, whom the old woman called colonel because she had known him in that rank, paid no attention to the girl’s observation and insisted:

“Forgotten what? You must still know something, mustn’t you, Auntie?”

“I only know ‘Bicho Tutu’,” the old woman said.

“Sing it, then!”

“You know it, sir! Don’t you? Why, you do!”

“I don’t know; sing it. If I knew it, I wouldn’t have come here. Ask my friend here, Major Policarpo, whether I know it.”

Quaresma nodded, and the old Black woman, perhaps deeply longing for the time when she had been a slave and a nurse in some great, wealthy, well-provisioned household, raised her head as though the better to remember, and began to sing:

Tutu is coming

Behind the big mound

To eat little master

With a mouthful of cornmeal mush.

“Come now!” the general said impatiently. “That is an old ditty for hushing children. Don’t you know another?”

“No, sir. I’ve forgotten it.”

The two left saddened. Quaresma came away discouraged. How was it that the people had not preserved the traditions of thirty years before? With what rapidity his pleasures and songs were dying in his memory! It was surely a sign of weakness, a demonstration of inferiority before those tenacious peoples who preserved theirs for centuries! It was necessary to react, to develop the cult of tradition, to keep it always alive in memories and customs...

Albernaz came away irritated. He had counted on arranging a good number for the party he was going to give, and it had escaped him. It was almost the hope of marriage for one of the four daughters—the four, because one of them was already settled, thank God.

Dusk came, and they entered the house immersed in the melancholy of the hour.

Their disappointment, however, lasted only days. Cavalcânti, Ismênia’s fiancé, informed them that a man of letters lived in the vicinity, a stubborn cultivator of Brazil’s popular tales and songs. They went to see him. He was an old poet whose fame had reached its height around the seventies, a sweet and ingenuous man who had allowed himself to be forgotten in his lifetime as a poet and now amused himself by publishing collections that no one read, made up of tales, songs, proverbs, and popular sayings.

His joy was great when he learned the purpose of those gentlemen’s visit. Quaresma was animated and spoke warmly; and so was Albernaz, because he saw in his party a way, by means of a folklore number, to draw attention to his house, attract people, and... marry off his daughters.

The room in which they were received was spacious; but it was so full of tables, shelves, heaps of books, folders, and tins that one could scarcely move about in it. On a tin one could read: Santa Ana dos Tocos; on a folder: São Bonifácio do Cabresto.

“You do not know,” the old poet said, “what a treasure our popular poetry is! What surprises it has in store!... Only the other day I received a letter from Urubu-de-Baixo with a lovely song. Would you like to see it?”

The collector rummaged through the folders and finally brought out a sheet of paper, from which he read:

If God could see the poor

He would not leave me so:

He would place in her heart

A little place for me.

The love I bear for her

No longer fits my breast;

It escapes through my eyes

And flies straight to the clouds.

“Isn’t it lovely?... Very! If only you knew the monkey cycle, the collection of stories the people have about the simian?... Oh! A true comic epic!”

Quaresma looked at the old poet with the satisfied astonishment of someone who had found a kindred spirit in the desert; and Albernaz, for a moment infected by the folklorist’s passion, looked at him with more intelligence.

The old poet put away the song from Urubu-de-Baixo in a folder and went straight to another, from which he took out several sheets of paper. He came over to the two visitors and said:

“I am going to read the gentlemen a little story about the monkey, one of the many our people tell... I alone have nearly forty, and I intend to publish them under the title Stories of Master Simão.”

And, without asking whether they were disturbed or willing to listen, he began:

“The Monkey before the Magistrate. A band of monkeys was fooling about, jumping from tree to tree along the edges of a ravine. Lo and behold, one of them saw at the bottom a jaguar that had fallen there. The monkeys took pity on her and resolved to save her. To do so, they pulled down vines, joined them well, tied the rope thus made to each of their waists, and threw one end to the jaguar. By the combined effort of all of them, they managed to hoist her up and immediately untied themselves and fled. One of them, however, could not do so in time, and the jaguar seized him immediately.

“Monkey, my co-parent,” she said, “have patience. I am hungry, and you will do me the favor of letting yourself be eaten.”

The monkey begged, insisted, and wept; but the jaguar seemed implacable. Simão then remembered that the dispute should be settled by the magistrate. They went to him, the monkey still held by the jaguar. The magistrate among the animals was the turtle, whose hearings were held at the edge of rivers, with him seated on a stone. The two arrived, and the monkey set forth his reasons.

The turtle heard him out and finally ordered:

“Clap your hands.”

Although held by the jaguar, the monkey was still able to clap his hands. Then it was the jaguar’s turn, and she too set out her reasons and motives. As on the first occasion, the judge ordered the feline:

“Clap your hands.”

The jaguar had no choice but to release the monkey, who escaped, and also the magistrate, who threw himself into the water.”

When he had finished reading, the old man addressed the two:

“Don’t you find it interesting? Very good! Among our people there is much invention, much creation, true material for interesting fabliaux... On the day when a man of letters of genius appears who will fix it in an immortal form... Ah! Then!”

As he said this, a slow smile of satisfaction played over his features, and two furtive tears welled in his eyes.

“Now,” he continued, after his emotion had passed, “let us get down to what matters. The ‘Boi Espácio’ or the ‘Bumba-meu-Boi’ is still a great deal for you… It would be better to go slowly and begin with the easiest… The ‘Tangolomango’ is right there, do you know it?”

“No,” the two said.

“It is amusing. Get ten children, an old man’s mask, and an outlandish costume for one of the gentlemen, and I will rehearse it.”

The day arrived. The general’s house was full. Cavalcânti had come; and he and his bride, apart, in the embrasure of a window, seemed to be the only ones not interested in the entertainment. He, talking a great deal, his glance full of affectations; she, rather cool, from time to time casting her fiancé a look of gratitude.

Quaresma enacted the “Tangolomango”; that is, he put on one of the general’s old frock coats, donned an enormous old man’s mask, seized a curved staff in the shape of a crozier, and entered the room. The ten children sang in chorus:

A mother had ten children

All ten inside a pot:

They gave the Tangolomango to him

And only nine remained.

Then the major advanced, striking the floor with his crozier and crying: hu! hu! hu!; the children fled, and at last he caught one and carried her inside. Thus he proceeded amid the great rejoicing of the room, when, at the fifth stanza, his breath failed him, his sight darkened, and he fell. They took off his mask, gave him a few shakes, and Quaresma recovered.

The accident, however, did not turn him against folklore. He bought books and read all the publications on the subject, but his disappointment came after a few weeks of study.

Almost all the traditions and songs were foreign; the “Tangolomango” itself was foreign too. It therefore became necessary to find something of our own, something original, a creation of our land and our airs.

This idea led him to study Tupinambá customs; and, since one idea brings another, he soon enlarged his purpose. Hence the reason he was organizing a code of relationships, greetings, domestic ceremonies, and festivals, modeled on Tupí precepts.

He had been devoted to this arduous task for ten days when, on a Sunday, someone knocked at his door in the midst of his work. He opened it, but did not shake hands. He began to cry, howl, and tear out his hair, as though he had lost his wife or a child. His sister ran in from the inner room, and Anastácio as well; and his compadre and the girl, for it was they, remained astonished on the threshold.

“But what is this, co-parent?”

“What is it, Policarpo?”

“But, my godfather...”

He still sobbed for a little while. He wiped away his tears and then explained with the greatest naturalness:

“There you have it! You have not the slightest conception of the things of our land. You wanted me to shake hands. This is not our custom! Our greeting is to weep when we meet our friends; that is how the Tupinambás did it.”

His compadre Vicente, Vicente’s daughter and Dona Adelaide looked at one another, not knowing what to say. Was the man mad? What an eccentricity!

“But, Mr. Policarpo,” his compadre said to him, “it may be very Brazilian, but it is very sad, compadre.”

“Certainly, godfather,” the girl added animatedly; “it even seems like an omen...”

This compadre of his was Italian by birth. The story of their friendship is worth telling. A travelling fruit and vegetable seller, he had supplied Quaresma’s household twenty-odd years before. The major already held his patriotic ideas, but did not disdain to talk with the vendor, and even liked to see him sweating, bent under the weight of his baskets, with two red roses on the very white cheeks of a European newly arrived. One fine day, however, Quaresma was crossing Largo do Paço, lost in thought about the architectural marvels of Mestre Valentim’s fountain, when he came upon the travelling merchant. He spoke to him with that simplicity of soul so characteristic of him, and noticed that the young man had some serious worry. Not only did he occasionally utter exclamations quite unconnected with their conversation, but he also pressed his lips together, ground his teeth and clenched his fists in anger. Quaresma questioned him and learned that he had quarrelled over money with a fellow trader and was determined to kill him, for he had lost his credit and would soon be destitute. There was such force in his declaration, such a strong and strange note of ferocity, that the major used all his gentleness and powers of persuasion to dissuade him. Nor did he stop there: he also lent him money. Vicente Coleoni opened a greengrocer’s shop, earned a few contos of réis, soon became a contractor, grew rich, married and had that daughter, whom his benefactor carried to the baptismal font. Needless to say, Quaresma did not notice the contradiction between his patriotic ideas and his action.

It is true that his ideas were not yet very firm, but they already floated in his head and reacted upon his conscience as faint desires, the fancies of a lad of barely more than twenty, fancies that would not be long in gaining substance and that waited only for the years to blossom into acts.

It was thus his compadre Vicente and his goddaughter Olga whom he had received with the most authentic Guaitacá ceremonial greeting; and if he had not worn the prescribed attire of that most interesting people, it was not because he lacked it. It was ready to hand, but he had no time to undress.

“Do you read a lot, godfather?” his goddaughter asked, laying her very luminous eyes upon him.

There was a great affection between the two. Quaresma was rather reserved, and the embarrassment of showing his feelings made him economical in his expressions of affection. It can be guessed, however, that in his heart the girl occupied the place of the children he had never had and would never have. The vivacious young woman, accustomed to speaking loudly and freely, did not hide her affection any the less because she vaguely sensed in him something superior: a longing for an ideal, a tenacity in pursuing a dream, an idea, a flight, in short, toward the high regions of the spirit, which she was not accustomed to see in anyone among the people she frequented. This admiration did not come from education. She had received the education common to girls of her birth. It came from an innate tendency, perhaps from the European proximity of her birth, which made her a little different from our girls.

It was with a luminous, searching look that she had asked her godfather:

“Then, godfather, do you read a lot?”

“A great deal, my daughter. Imagine that I am meditating great works, a reform, the emancipation of a people.”

Vicente had gone with Dona Adelaide into the interior of the house, and the two conversed alone in the library. The goddaughter noticed that Quaresma had something more than usual about him. He was speaking now with such confidence—he who formerly had been so modest, even hesitant in speaking—what the devil! No, it was impossible... But, who knew? And what singular joy shone in his eyes—the joy of a mathematician who had solved a problem, of a happy inventor!

“Don’t go getting involved in some conspiracy,” the girl said teasingly.

“Don’t be alarmed by that. Things will proceed naturally; no violence is needed...”

At this point Ricardo Coração dos Outros entered, wearing his long, tail-coat of serge and his guitar in a chamois cover. The major made the introductions.

“I already know you by name, Mister Ricardo,” Olga said.

Coração dos Outros filled with the bright-eyed joy of a suitor. His meager features expanded under the glow of his satisfied glance; and his skin, which was dry and of the hue of old marble, seemed to become soft and young. That girl looked rich, was delicate and beautiful, and knew him—what satisfaction! He, who was always a little foolish and awkward when he found himself before young women, whatever their condition, took courage, loosened his tongue, softened his voice, and became eloquent and expansive.

“So you have read my verses, have you not, madam?”

“I have not had that pleasure, but some months ago I read an assessment of one of your works.”

“In O Tempo, was it not?”

“It was.”

“Very unfair!” Ricardo added. “All the critics cling to this question of metrification. They say that my verses are not verses... They are, but they are verses for the guitar. Your Excellency knows that verses for music are somewhat different from ordinary ones, do you not? There is therefore nothing surprising in my verses, made for the guitar, following another meter and another system, do you think?”

“Indeed,” the young woman said. “But it seems to me that you make verses for the music rather than music for the verses.”

And she smiled slowly, mysteriously, keeping her luminous gaze fixed, while Ricardo, distrustful, probed her intention with his small, lively, mouse-like eyes.

Quaresma, who had remained silent until then, intervened:

“Ricardo, Olga, is an artist... He tries and works to elevate the guitar.”

“I know, godfather. I know...”

“Between ourselves, madam,” Coração dos Outros said, “people do not take these national attempts seriously, but in Europe everyone respects and supports them... What is the name, major, of that poet who wrote in popular French?”

“Mistral,” Quaresma supplied, “but it is not popular French; it is Provençal, a genuine language.”

“Yes, that is it,” Ricardo confirmed. “Surely Mistral is held in respect? As for the guitar, I am doing the same.”

He looked triumphantly at each of those present; and Olga, addressing him, said:

“Continue with your attempt, Mister Ricardo; it is worthy of praise.”

“Thank you. Rest assured, madam, that the guitar is a beautiful instrument and presents great difficulties. For example...”

“Nonsense!” Quaresma interrupted abruptly. “There are others that are more difficult.”

“The piano?” Ricardo asked.

“What piano! The maracá, the inúbia.”

“I don’t know it.”

“You don’t know it? It’s good! The most national instruments imaginable, the only ones that truly are; instruments of our ancestors, of that brave people who fought and still fights for possession of this lovely land. The caboclos!”

“A caboclo instrument, really!” Ricardo said.

“An Indian language! What of it? Léry says their languages are very sonorous and pleasant to hear… If being Indian is reason enough, the guitar is no good either: it’s an instrument for loafers.”

“For a dandy, major! Don’t say that...”

And the two went on arguing heatedly before the young woman, surprised and astonished, unable to understand or account for that sudden change in the temper of her godfather, who until then had been so peaceful and calm.