The Alienist and Other Stories of Nineteenth-Century Brazil (16 page)

And at that point the wife of the alienist returned from Rio de Janeiro, along with her aunt, the wife of Crispim Soares, and the rest of the party that had departed from Itaguaí a few weeks earlier. The alienist went to receive her, along with the apothecary, Father Lopes, and a number of town councilmen and magistrates. The moment when Dona Evarista laid eyes on her husband is considered by many chroniclers to be among the most sublime in human annals, because of the perfect contrast between these two noble temperaments, both extreme, both worthy. Dona Evarista let out a shriek, babbled a few words, and hurled herself at her consort in a manner that cannot be better defined than “part jaguar and part turtledove.” Not so the illustrious Bacamarte. Cold as a diagnosis, full of scientific rigidity, he wordlessly reached out to his lady, who fell into his arms and fainted. The incident did not last long. Within two minutes Dona Evarista’s friends were welcoming her back and the homeward procession had begun.

Dona Evarista was the great hope of Itaguaí. Everyone counted on her to save the town from the Casa Verde. Hence the public acclaim, the banners, the press of people in the street, the flowers and damask window dressings. Walking arm in arm with Father Lopes—because the eminent Bacamarte had confided his wife to the vicar and accompanied them a few steps away, lost in meditation—Dona Evarista swiveled her head from side to side, curious, stirred, swollen with pride. The vicar inquired about Rio de Janeiro, where he had not traveled since the reign of the previous viceroy, and Dona Evarista responded enthusiastically that Rio de Janeiro was the most beautiful thing that could possibly exist in the whole world. The Public Promenade and Gardens, a veritable paradise, had finally opened, and she had gone there several times, and the main streets were so impressive, and … oh, the Fountain of Ducks! Real ducks, made of metal, with water coming out of their mouths! Unbelievably lovely. The vicar said that, yes, Rio de Janeiro must be lovely now, indeed. It was already nice years ago. And no wonder, being much bigger than Itaguaí, after all, and home to the viceroy … not that Itaguaí could be called ugly, of course. It had fine buildings, like the mansion that Mateus built, and the Casa Verde …

“And speaking of the Casa Verde,” said Father Lopes, gliding skillfully into the topic at hand, “I believe that you’ll find it quite full of people.”

“Is that so?”

“Very full. Let’s see, there’s Mateus—”

“The mule outfitter?”

“The mule outfitter. And then there’s Costa, and Costa’s cousin, and old So-and-So, and—“

“They’re all crazy?”

“Apparently,” prevaricated the clergyman.

“But how? Why?”

The vicar drew down the corners of his mouth as if he knew nothing or would rather not say, an answer that could not be quoted for lack of text. Dona Evarista found it really extraordinary that all those people had lost their minds. One or two, maybe, but all of them? Still, she found it difficult to doubt her husband’s judgment. He was a brilliant man. Surely he wouldn’t commit anyone to the Casa Verde without proof of insanity.

“No, surely not … of course not,” agreed the vicar.

Three hours later, nearly fifty guests sat around the table of Simão Bacamarte for the home-coming dinner. Dona Evarista was the obligatory subject of toasts, speeches, metaphors, eulogies, and all manner of tributes in verse and prose. She was the wife of the new Hippocrates, the muse of Science, an angel, divine, the Dawn, Charity, a Consolation, Life itself. Her eyes were “twinkling stars” in the modest metaphor of Crispim Soares, “blazing suns” in the more robust version of a town councilman. The alienist listened to it all without visible impatience. He merely explained in his wife’s ear that she should regard such flights of fancy as poetic license. Dona Evarista tried to follow her husband’s advice, but even discounting three quarters of the flattery, the rest was enough to swell her head. One of the orators, for example, Martim Brito, a pretentious twenty-five-year-old lover boy with quite a reputation in Itaguaí, gave a speech in which he described the birth of Dona Evarista. “After creating man and woman, who are the diamond and the pearl of his heavenly crown,” intoned the orator, dragging that last phrase triumphantly from one end of the table to the other, “God decided to outdo God, and so … he created Dona Evarista.”

Dona Evarista lowered her eyes with exemplary modesty. Two ladies who found young Brito’s flattery excessive or audacious interrogated the head of the household with their eyes, and they did find his expression clouded with misgiving, threatening a storm and, possibly, mayhem. Excessive audacity, thought the two ladies. Each of them prayed silently that God prevent a tragedy, or, better, that he postpone it until tomorrow. One of the ladies, the more charitable of the two, had to admit that Dona Evarista was so far from being attractive or pretty as to be practically above suspicion. An unappetizing dish! But then, there is no accounting for taste, the lady reflected, with renewed alarm, although less this time. Less, because now the alienist was smiling at Martim Brito, and, when everyone rose from the table, going to chat with him about his speech. He couldn’t deny that it was a tour de force of extemporaneous speaking, loaded with brilliant images. Was that bit about Evarista’s birth his own idea, or inspired by something that he had read? … No, sir! It was entirely original, an improvisation inspired purely by the occasion. His ideas were typically bold rather than delicate or jocular, you see. Bold, tending toward the epic. Once, for example, he had composed an ode about the 1777 fall of the Marquis de Pombal in which he compared the king’s famous minister to “a jagged dragon of Nothingness” torn asunder by “the avenging talons of Everything.” He liked that sort of unusual trope. He went for the sublime …

“Poor lad,” thought the alienist. And he silently elaborated: some sort of cerebral lesion, probably not life threatening, but still worthy of study …

Dona Evarista was astounded to learn, three days later, that Martim Brito had been taken to the Casa Verde. A young man with such lovely ideas! The two ladies blamed the alienist’s jealousy. What else could it be? The young man’s remarks had really been too provocative.

Jealousy? How, then, to explain the similar fate of the frolicsome and harmless Chico, the colorless scribe Fabrício, the unquestionably respectable José Borges do Couto Leme, and others taken into custody along with Martim Brito, none of whom had given the alienist any reason for jealousy? The atmosphere of terror intensified. One no longer knew who was sane and who was crazy. Women lit candles to the Virgin whenever their husbands left home, and some husbands would not leave home unless accompanied by armed men. Absolute terror. Whoever could, got out of town. One such fugitive got no farther than a few hundred steps, however. He was fellow of about thirty years old, friendly, well-spoken, polite—so polite that he doffed his hat and bowed to greet everyone he met: ladies, gentlemen, even children. He had a sort of vocation for social pleasantries. To know Gil Bernardes was to love him. And yet, once informed that the alienist was watching him, not even Gil Bernardes felt safe. He tried to get away in the early morning hours of the very next day but was stopped at the edge of town and escorted to the Casa Verde.

“This has got to stop!”

“We can’t let this go on!”

“Down with this tyranny!”

“And with the tyrant!”

Not yet cries in the street, these complaints were heard in people’s houses, and as the terror mounted, the hour of open rebellion approached. The idea of petitioning the government to arrest and deport Simão Bacamarte had crossed several people’s minds even before Porfírio the barber expressed it loudly in his barbershop, shaking his fist with indignation. Let it be noted that Porfírio—who, as barbers did in those days, served his clients by applying leeches and using his razor as a scalpel for minor surgeries—was getting rich since the sick people of Itaguaí had stopped consulting Simão Bacamarte for any reason. And yet, in a gesture of selfless civic virtue, he proclaimed that private gain took second place to the public interest, and he shouted: “The despot must be overthrown!” Let it be noted, furthermore, that he raised the cry of rebellion on the very day that Bacamarte arrested a certain Coelho, who had a lawsuit pending against the barber.

“So, is Coelho crazy?” he inquired.

And nobody answered him. Everybody considered Coelho perfectly sane. Coelho’s lawsuit against Porfírio, concerning a couple of vacant lots in town, derived from a confusion of obscurely worded property titles rather than from greed or rancor. A fine fellow, Coelho. The only people who didn’t like him were a couple of grumps (always in a hurry, according to them) who would duck into a shop or around a corner in order not to talk to Coelho when they saw him coming down the street. The truth is that Coelho did like to talk. Nothing pleased him more than meeting someone with the time and inclination to chew the fat, but any passerby would do for a start. Father Lopes, one of Coelho’s few enemies, liked to insult him slyly using quotations from Dante, which he thought a harmless amusement, given that neither Coelho nor anyone else in Itaguaí (except, of course, the alienist) could understand him. If asked, he claimed to be praying in Latin.

VI
The Revolution

The barber soon had thirty followers. They wrote a petition and took it to the town council, but the council refused to accept it, declaring that the Casa Verde was a public institution and that the progress of Science could not be governed by administrative decree, much less by the demands of an unruly mob.

“Our best advice to you,” concluded the president of the town council, “is to return to your labors.”

The agitators were furious. The barber called for rebellion and the destruction of the Casa Verde. No longer could Itaguaí be a guinea pig for experimentation. Too many people, whether prominent or humble, languished in the cubicles of the Casa Verde. And moreover, the scientific despotism of the alienist had been complicated by a profit motive, because his patients were not treated free of charge. Their families or, in some cases, the town council had to foot the bill.

“False!” interrupted the mayor.

“False?”

“Not two weeks ago the illustrious physician informed us that, in view of the enormous scientific value of his experiments, he could not accept further payment from the town council or the families of the lunatics.”

News of an action so pure, so noble, softened the rebels’ hearts. Surely he had committed errors, but the alienist’s motives were wholly scientific, after all. And an uproar did not help to clarify the errors, whatever they might be. So spoke the president of the town council, to the applause of its assembled members. After a moment’s reflection, the barber declared that he had a public mandate and would not rest until destroying the Casa Verde, “that Bastille of human reason,” in the phrase of a local poet that he repeated with great emphasis. At that, he exited the town hall with all his followers.

The town council had an emergency on its hands. It had to control the menace of riot, rack, and ruin. To make matters worse, one of the councilmen who had applauded the president’s initial statement, upon hearing the barber refer to the Casa Verde as “that Bastille of human reason,” found the phrase so eloquent that he changed his mind and called for measures against the Casa Verde. When the president expressed his vigorous indignation at the idea, the councilman responded in the following terms:

“I know nothing of Science, but if he has locked up so many people who are apparently sane, who’s to say that the alienist isn’t insane himself?”

Sebastião Freitas, the dissident councilman, had a gift for words, and he continued to speak for some time with firmness, prudence, and good sense. His colleagues were dumfounded, and the president of the town council begged him, at least, to set an example of respect for law and order by not repeating such things in the street, where his ideas would “give body and soul to the whirlwind.” The effect of this phrase was to counterbalance, somewhat, the effect of the other. Sebastião Freitas promised to do nothing more, for the moment, but reserved the right to demand legal measures against the Casa Verde. “That Bastille of human reason,” he repeated under his breath, shaking his head in admiration.

Meanwhile, the riot outside was gaining force. Not thirty, but three hundred followers now marched behind the barber, whose nickname, Pork Chop, should be mentioned at this point, because the movement eventually became famous in the chronicles of Itaguaí as the Pork Chop Revolution. The participants would have been more numerous, but many townspeople—whether as a matter of fear or upbringing—hesitated to join a riot led by somebody called “Pork Chop.” Nonetheless, the general spirit of the day was unanimous, or nearly unanimous, and the three hundred who marched in the direction of the Casa Verde might even be compared, allowing for the differences between Itaguaí and Paris, to the crowd that stormed the Bastille.

Dona Evarista got news of the mob before it arrived. A slave boy brought it to her while she was trying on a silk dress (one of the thirty-seven she had brought from Rio de Janeiro), and she refused to believe it.

“It must be some prank,” she said modifying the position of a pin. “Benedita, see if the hem is straight.”

“It is, ma’am,” responded the black chambermaid squatting beside her on the floor. “It’s fine. Turn just a bit. Like that. Yes, ma’am, it’s fine.”

“It’s no prank, no ma’am,” continued the boy, quite frightened. “They’re shouting, ‘Down with the tyrant Bacamarte!’”

“Hush, silly! … Benedita, see over here on the left side? Doesn’t the hem look a little crooked? See? That looks awful. We’ll have to unsew that part and—”

“Death to Bacamarte! Down with the tyrant!” howled three hundred voices in the street.

All the blood drained from Dona Evarista’s face. For a moment, petrified with terror, she stood stock-still. The slave girl at her feet ran instinctively toward the backdoor of the house. As for the boy who had brought the news, a quick and almost imperceptible movement indicated his sense of vindication at having been proved correct.