Free The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Machado de Assis Page B

those months of our happiness alone together, I repeated our pet names from past times to her, sitting on the floor with my head between her knees, squeezing her hands, gasping, delirious, I begged her, tearfully, not to abandon me … Marcela sat looking at me for a few seconds, both of us silent, until she pushed me away softly and with an annoyed air.
    “Stop annoying me,” she said.
    She got up, shook her dress, still wet, and went to her bedroom. “No,” I shouted. “You’re not going in there … I don’t want you to …” I went to reach out my hands to her. It was too late, she’d gone in and locked the door.
    I ran out, crazy. I spent two fatal hours wandering through the most distant and deserted neighborhoods, where it would have been hard to find me. I went along gnawing on my despair with a kind of morbid gluttony. I brought back the days, the hours, the instants of delirium, and now I was gratified in believing that they were eternal, that all of this was a nightmare. Deceiving myself now, I tried to push them away like a useless burden. Then I resolved to embark immediately in order to cut my life into two halves, and I pleased myself with the idea that Marcela, learning of my departure, would be tormented by longing and remorse. Since she’d been madly in love with me, she would have to feel something, some kind of remembrance, like that of Lieutenant Duarte … At that point the fangs of jealousy buried themselves in my heart. All of nature roared that I had to take Marcela with me.
    “By force …, by force …,” I kept saying, hitting the air with my fist. Finally I got an idea that would save things … Oh! trapeze of my sins, trapeze of abstruse notions! The saving idea worked out on it like the one about the poultice ( Chapter II ). It was nothing less than bewitching her, bewitching her greatly, dazzling her, pulling her along. It reminded me to ask her by more concrete means than entreaty. I didn’t measure the consequences: I had recourse to one last loan. I went to the Rua dos Ouvires, bought the finest piece of jewelry in the city, three large diamonds inlaid on an ivory comb. I ran to Marcela’s house.
    Marcela was lying in a hammock with a soft and weary expression, one leg hanging down, showing her little foot clad in a silk stocking, her hair loose and flowing, her look quiet and dreamy.
    “Come with me,” I said. “I’ll get the money … we’ve got lots of money, you can have anything you want… Look, take it.”
    And I showed her the comb with the diamonds. Marcela gave a slight start, raised up halfway, and, leaning on an elbow looked at the comb for a few short seconds. Then she withdrew her eyes, got control of herself. I thrust my hands into her hair, drew it together, quickly wove into braids, improvised a hairdo that wasn’t very neat, and topped it off with the comb and the diamonds. I drew back, went closer again, adjusted the braids, lowered the comb on one side, tried to find some kind of symmetry in that disorder, all with the careful touch and care of a mother.
    “There,” I said.
    “Lunatic!” was her first response.
    The second was to pull me to her and reward my sacrifice with a kiss, the most ardent ever. Then she took off the comb, admired the materialand the craftsmanship for a long time, looking at me every so often and nodding her head with a scolding look.
    “What am I going to do with you!” she said.
    “Are you coming with me?”
    Marcela thought for a moment. I didn’t like the expression with which her eyes passed from me to the wall and from the wall to the jewel. But that bad impression vanished completely when she answered resolutely:
    “I’ll go. When do you sail?”
    “Two or three days from now.”
    “I’ll go.”
    I thanked her on my knees. I’d found the Marcela of my early days and I told her that. She smiled and went to put the jewel away while I went down the stairs.

XVIII
A Vision in the Hall
     
    At the bottom of the