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Quincas Borba · Chapters XXIX to XL

Strawberries, Moonlight, and Rubião's Declaration

Appearance and RealityDesireMoney and WealthLoyalty and Betrayal

Chapter XXIX: Sunday Lunch and the Parasite Freitas

Section summary

On a Sunday, Rubião receives two friends for lunch: Carlos Maria, a young man of twenty-four who is spending his mother's first property, and Freitas, about forty-five, who has nothing to spend. He had met Freitas in a grocery store and at first took him for a castaway of no use, but Freitas, cheerful and full of anecdotes, asked to see the roses in the garden, praised the house and the liqueurs, and began to lunch and dine there often, always leaving with cigars in his pockets.

Analysis

Freitas comes to see the roses and stays at the table: he praises the garden, the house, and the liqueur, and says that Rubião "lives like a nobleman." Rubião accepts because the word is sweet to hear and because the praise gives him back the image of the rich man he wants to be. What Freitas is after the text shows in the cigars he carries away and in how often he comes back.

Freitas praised everything, greeting each dish and each wine with a phrase of his own, delicate
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Chapter XXX: The Architect of Ruins

Section summary

Once, Rubião asks Freitas whether he would accompany him to Europe, should he take it into his head to go. Freitas says no, because he is a free friend and the two might disagree already on the itinerary, and says that the cheerful mask he wears hides a sad man, an architect of ruins, who would visit the ruins of Athens, a drama about ruins and the bankruptcy courts. Rubião laughs, because he likes his expansive and frank manners.

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Chapter XXXI: Carlos Maria, the Superior Guest

Section summary

At the same lunch arrives, late, Carlos Maria, slow, cold, and superior, who is introduced to Freitas without a glance at him; Freitas, who had already sent him to the devil for being late, begins to court him. Rubião, who likes Freitas more but respects the other more, had waited for him until then. At the table, Carlos Maria listens to Freitas's anecdotes with seriousness, in order to humiliate him, so that Rubião no longer dares to laugh, and he changes the subject when Freitas asks him for facts about his amorous adventures. At the end of the lunch, the servant brings a little basket and a letter.

Analysis

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Chapter XXXII: Sofia's Strawberries

Desire

Section summary

The little basket comes from Sofia, with a letter that signs her as "true friend" and summons Rubião, by her husband's order, to dine in Santa Teresa. Rubião, who did not know her handwriting, reads the letter trembling, and Freitas discovers that the basket holds strawberries. Freitas and Carlos Maria suppose the gift comes from a lover, perhaps a married one, and Rubião, flushed, denies it until he explains that they are from the wife of a friend; afterward he is pleased with the supposition of an adulterous love. At parting, he kicks the Quincas Borba (dog), from which Carlos Maria had recoiled in disgust.

Analysis

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Chapter XXXIII: The Note Reread

Section summary

After Freitas and Carlos Maria leave, Rubião returns to the drawing room and rereads Sofia's note. To him every word is a mystery, "true friend" is a metaphor, and the signature, with only her name, is a surrender. Reading it this way, without proof and by the force of instinct, he ends up kissing the girl's name and repeating: Sofia, Sofia, Sofia.

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Chapter XXXIV: Visits in Santa Teresa

Section summary

In Santa Teresa, Sofia scolds Rubião for his lateness, saying it is always too late for friends, in front of four ladies who were waiting for the capitalist; one of them, single, thirty-nine years old, is Dona Tônica, daughter of Major Siqueira. The major appears and drowns Rubião in a flood of stories, among them that of an apothecary nicknamed João das Pantorrilhas, without his managing to interrupt, until Cristiano Palha arrives and rescues him.

Analysis

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Chapter XXXV: Portrait of Sofia and Palha

Appearance and Reality

Section summary

The narrator portrays Sofia, ever more beautiful, and Cristiano Palha, who foresaw the bankruptcies of 1864, spends everything and displays her with a low neckline. She likes being seen, but keeps her heart. For the expenses of vanity she needs only her eyes, smiling, restless, inviting, and only inviting, which the narrator compares to the lantern of an inn with no rooms for guests.

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Chapter XXXVI: Glances in the Room

Section summary

That evening, in Santa Teresa, while a lady sings at the piano accompanied by Cristiano Palha, Rubião, leaning against the window, contemplates Sofia, thinks he feels capable of making a scandal, and sees that she looks back at him. Palha, at the piano, does not notice the gazing of the two, and of the others present the narrator guarantees only that Dona Tônica, the major's daughter, sees it.

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Chapter XXXVII: Dona Tônica's Hope

Desire

Section summary

Since Rubião arrived, Dona Tônica, thirty-nine years old and without a husband, thinks of nothing but attracting him: she believes Heaven destines this rich man from Minas for her, though she had asked only for a husband, not riches. When she notices that his eyes and Sofia's move toward each other, she suspects they love each other, but consoles herself thinking that marriage and family may erase any other inclination of his; during the singing at the piano, seeing them absorbed in each other, she feels despair and yet goes on with the struggle. She manages to have him sit at her side, but Rubião answers absently, repeating "the airs" when she asks about the airs of Barbacena, his eyes on Sofia.

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Chapter XXXVIII: Resolute Rubião

Section summary

After so much looking, Rubião is resolved: Sofia's soul had never seemed to invite his with such insistence to fly off together to the clandestine lands, the name the narrator gives to love carried on in secret. From those lands souls generally return old and worn out; some do not return, others stop halfway, and many never get past the rooftops.

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Chapter XXXIX: The Moon and the Stars

Desire

Section summary

In the garden of Santa Teresa, under the moonlight, Sofia takes Rubião by the arm to see the moon; when invited, Dona Tônica declines, claiming a numb foot. Rubião, suddenly talkative and fearless, calls Sofia's eyes stars of the earth and the stars eyes of the sky, and says her eyes are lovelier and brighter. Sofia, so used to his shyness, is astonished, like someone who has carried a gentle dove in her lap and sees a hawk fly out. She does not know whether to show that she understands or that she does not, since understanding him without sending him out of the house is the delicate point.

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Chapter XL: The Chaste Stars

Desire

Section summary

Up above, the moon and the stars witness the hopeless situation; the narrator says the moon knows not how to mock and the stars are chaste. They hear Rubião, reserved for long months and now a libertine, propose to Sofia that he buy not only her soul but her soul and body, like a Devil who, after deceiving the girl with archangel's wings, puts them in his pocket and shows the malignant horns sprouting from his brow.

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Reading of the block of chapters

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