Rubião

Who He Is

A schoolteacher from Barbacena, in Minas, who becomes the nurse and only friend of the philosopher Quincas Borba (the philosopher) and inherits his entire fortune from him, with a single condition: to take care of the dog Quincas Borba (the dog) as if he were a person. The book opens with him already rich, at a window in Botafogo, and only afterward steps back to tell where the money came from. In Rio, he falls into the hands of the couple Cristiano Palha and Sofia, desires his friend's wife, is exploited by those around him, goes mad convinced that he is an emperor, and returns to Barbacena, where he dies. He is the protagonist of the novel and the point where all its themes cross.

Trajectory

The book opens in Chapter I with Rubião at a window in Botafogo, comparing his past as a teacher with his present as a capitalist: the slippers given by Cristiano Palha, the house, the garden, the cove, the sky, everything enters the same sensation of ownership. Only afterward does the text step back to Barbacena.

There, he looks after the sick philosopher for almost six months (Chapter IV) and, hearing the explanation of Humanitas, agrees to be a disciple (Chapter VI). When the invalid asks him whether he is his friend, he answers that he is, as much as or more than the dog (Chapter VII).

In Chapter VIII, the philosopher registers his will, entrusts the dog to Rubião, and leaves for Rio. The letter in which he says he is Saint Augustine arrives in Chapter X: Rubião judges it madness, hides it from the doctor for fear that the will will be annulled, and calculates the legacy. The remorse he feels is short-lived, and the text says so.

In the newspapers of the Court he reads of his friend's death (Chapter XI), and in Chapter XII, with no allusion to dementia in the notice, he again takes the letter for a jest and resolves to give the dog to his comadre Angélica, since the obligation has ended. Brás Cubas's note, in Chapter XIII, confirms the death and restores his color, thanks to the formalities of the court.

Once the will is opened (Chapter XIV), he is the universal heir, on the condition of keeping the dog, treating him as a person, burying him among flowers, and keeping his bones in an urn. Rubião finds the clause natural and thinks only of the sum, which he estimates at between one hundred and three hundred contos (Chapter XV). Remembering that he gave the dog away, he runs to his comadre, fearing the clause unfulfilled and the inheritance at risk (Chapter XVI), and in the yard he explains that he is only the custodian (Chapter XVII).

It is in Chapter XVIII that the doctrine takes on meaning for him: recalling the philosopher's voice, he understands only now the allegory of the starving tribes, sees himself as the victor, and thinks of a signet ring with the motto.

On the train to Rio, he tells the Palhas about the inheritance, which he estimates at no less than three hundred contos, and Palha, who had glowed at Europe and now reflects, asks for discretion (Chapter XXI). Palha recommends a lawyer to him, a relative of his (Chapter XXIII), and invites him to dinner in Santa Teresa, where Rubião, awkward in front of Sofia, goes down the hill half dizzy (Chapter XXIV). Someone challenges the will on grounds of the philosopher's dementia, the challenge fails, and Palha celebrates the end of the probate (Chapter XXV). Already in Botafogo, Palha guides him in his purchases, and Rubião drags them out to keep Sofia nearby (Chapter XXVI).

In the garden in Botafogo, he struggles with the temptation of Sofia, his friend's wife, while he lets the dog loose (Chapter XXVIII). He receives at his table the parasite Freitas and the cold Carlos Maria (Chapter XXIX, Chapter XXXI); Sofia's strawberries and the dinner invitation unsettle him (Chapter XXXII), and alone he rereads the note, takes the signature for a surrender, and kisses the name (Chapter XXXIII).

By moonlight, in Santa Teresa, suddenly talkative, he compares Sofia's eyes to the stars (Chapter XXXIX) and proposes to buy her soul and body (Chapter XL). He holds her by the arm and asks her to gaze at the Southern Cross at ten at night (Chapter XLI), until Major Siqueira enters the garden and he clumsily sustains the anecdote that Sofia invents to cover the delay (Chapter XLII).

On the way down the hill, between remorse and hope, he remembers the debt and the three promissory notes he accepted for Palha (Chapter XLV). In the Largo de São Francisco he meets a beggar (Chapter XLVI), envies him and, in the tilbury, remembers the hanged man of other times (Chapter XLVII). He wonders whether the dog and the philosopher might be the same creature, by transmigration (Chapter XLVIII), and at home love for Sofia overcomes repentance (Chapter XLIX).

Ashamed, he decides to go to Minas, but Camacho cuts him off on the way (Chapter LVI) and, having won him over days earlier with politics and a lunch (Chapter LVIII), holds him in the Court with Palha, in an agreed-upon glance (Chapter LIX). After pulling a boy from under a carriage (Chapter LX), he puts five contos into the Atalaia, Camacho's paper (Chapter LXI).

He lets chance decide whether he goes to Santa Teresa and, when the first vehicle says no, he amends the rule (Chapter LXIII); there he hears Carlos Maria praise Sofia in front of her portrait (Chapter LXV) and, at home, admires his rival's naturalness (Chapter LXVI). He sees his own name in the Atalaia, irritated and then flattered, and reprints the item in another newspaper (Chapter LXVII).

A partner of Palha's without understanding the numbers (Chapter LXIX), he takes Carlos Maria to the overcoat room at the birthday ball of Camacho's wife, to sound him out, tormented by jealousy of a rival (Chapter LXX). The advice to marry comes from Major Siqueira (Chapter LXXVIII) and returns as a voice that he wonders might come from the dog, in whom the philosopher's spirit would reside, but he dismisses it and, just in case, scratches its neck (Chapter LXXIX). He decides to marry to kill the passion (Chapter LXXX), but in his dreams he marries only titled ladies from the almanac, and all the brides end up with Sofia's face (Chapter LXXXII).

Palha has a hunch, that Rubião is the one who will marry Sofia's cousin, and his friend is astonished and refuses (Chapter LXXXIII). At Praia Formosa, he visits the sick Freitas and leaves six twenty-milreis notes with his mother (Chapter LXXXV), walks through Saúde with nostalgia for his rags (Chapter LXXXVI) and, thinking of the women he could choose, hears the guitar of sin, strummed by Sofia's fingers (Chapter LXXXVII).

The coachman's anecdote about a young man from Rua dos Inválidos and a veiled lady (Chapter LXXXIX) turns into suspicion in him: he looks for evidence among the seamstresses making Sofia's mourning (Chapter XCIII), runs after the figure of a woman (Chapter XCV), and finds in a flower bed a letter in her handwriting to Carlos Maria, which he decides to deliver in order to read the truth on its owner's face (Chapter XCIX). Camacho offers him the candidacy for deputy (Chapter C), and the coupé makes him pass for a man of standing at Freitas's funeral, which he pays for (Chapter CI).

In Flamengo, he tells Sofia everything, louder and louder, hands over the letter, and leaves without hearing her (Chapter CIII, Chapter CIV). When the narrator tells the reader that the coachman gave no names and told no true story (Chapter CVI), the slander ends up being the reader's and Rubião's.

He subscribes five contos to Sofia's subscription and asks Palha for ten, and Palha, who holds his bonds, advises caution and gives in (Chapter CVIII); he pays Camacho for the Atalaia paper (Chapter CX) and, on suggesting that a word in the article be strengthened, feels like half an author (Chapter CXI), until the narrator sums up the operation: he took himself for the author of other people's books (Chapter CXIII).

He sends a diamond to Sofia, hears from her the explanation of the letter, with a tear, and the news that Maria Benedita is going to marry (Chapter CXV); he realizes that the fiancé is Carlos Maria and that he had taken one person for another, and congratulates the girl (Chapter CXVI). Reassured, he attributes Sofia's glances to chance and clings to the tear (Chapter CXXI).

On the return from the steamer, Palha asks for a talk (Chapter CXXVI) and proposes dissolving the partnership to run a bank; Rubião asks whether there is a hidden motive, and accepts the reason (Chapter CXXVIII). The narrator later reveals that the bank did not exist (Chapter CXXIX). On Rua dos Barbonos, he hears from Major Siqueira that the Palhas did not invite him to the birthday or the wedding, speaks of confusion instead of agreeing with him, and promises to dine without an invitation (Chapter CXXX, Chapter CXXXI).

Around him grows the legend of the rich man and philosopher's disciple, and the dinner guests dine at six sharp, with or without the host (Chapter CXXXIII); he patronizes letters, pays two rival societies without noticing (Chapter CXXXV), and spends his mornings in Bernardo's shop in delightful visions, once getting up to see someone who does not exist (Chapter CXXXVII). He invites Sofia to Tijuca, just the two of them (Chapter CXXXIX); she postpones, and on the outing, with the three of them together, Sofia falls from her horse (Chapter CXLIII).

In January 1870 he calls the barber Lucien and, on his march to the moon, does not even see him arrive (Chapter CXLV); he is left with the goatee and mustache copied from the bust of Napoleon III and answers the barber in Portuguese, believing he is speaking French (Chapter CXLVI). Alone, he imagines himself in Compiègne, governing and hearing ministers (Chapter CXLVII).

He comes down from the moon with his new face and alternates between himself and the emperor of the French (Chapter CXLVIII). When he visits Sofia, their faces collide in the air as they reach for the glove (Chapter CXLIX); he gets into her coupé (Chapter CL), lowers the curtains (Chapter CLI) and, calm, praises his own mother and the horses while she pleads for him to get out (Chapter CLII); he speaks to her as a lover, evokes a meeting that never took place, and promises her husband a duke's title (Chapter CLIII).

The mania spreads, and whoever tests it by steering the conversation to France sees him slide into the abyss (Chapter CLV); with the Franco-Prussian War the crises grow more acute, and the dinner guests, promoted to marshals, do not contradict him (Chapter CLVI). Palha moves him, with the dog, to a little house on Rua do Príncipe (Chapter CLXV), and his friends from Botafogo do not follow him (Chapter CLXVI). Dr. Falcão, who examines him, believes he may recover (Chapter CLXVII).

He bursts onto the veranda of Carlos Maria and Maria Benedita to announce the fall of the Ministry and to offer a portfolio (Chapter CLXXI). When he comes back from the delirium and looks for his friends, Camacho receives him coldly (Chapter CLXXIX), and Major Siqueira leads him to the door with the story of a coach in the Campo (Chapter CLXXXI).

He passes along Rua da Ajuda gesticulating at an invisible empress, followed by street urchins, and the father of a boy recognizes in him the man who saved his son (Chapter CLXXXII, Chapter CLXXXIII). Palha, with Dr. Falcão, commits him to a sanatorium (Chapter CLXXXV); Palha comes up with three contos and two hundred from his assets (Chapter CXCI) and, days before he vanishes, finds him sane, gives him a hundred milreis, and asks the director not to rush his discharge (Chapter CXCIV).

Rubião vanishes from the sanatorium (Chapter CXCIII) and returns to Barbacena with the dog, where he shouts the motto he had forgotten and no one receives him (Chapter CXCV). A storm catches him (Chapter CXCVI); he spends the night in the open, takes the stars for ballroom chandeliers (Chapter CXCVII), repeats the motto in the morning sun (Chapter CXCVIII), and is taken in by his comadre Angélica, feverish, talking about the captured king of Prussia (Chapter CXCIX).

He dies a few days later, placing on his head a crown that only he can see (Chapter CC).

The dog falls ill, runs off after his master, and is found dead in the street at dawn, and the narrator leaves it to the reader to weep or to laugh (Chapter CCI).

Themes Embodied

The standard themes that run through him are Money and Wealth, Madness, Desire, Ambition, Appearance and Reality, and Loyalty and Betrayal. The book's symbols revolve around him: Humanitas, the potatoes, the Southern Cross, and the imperial crown.

The book does not give Rubião's madness as a blow, but as a slide: from the calculation of the inheritance, to desire for Sofia, to the vanity of the Atalaia and the candidacy, all the way to Napoleon III's beard, which enters as a comic detail before it becomes a diagnosis. The doctrine of the potatoes, which he understands only after inheriting, returns at the end as an empty word, and the crown he orders kept is invisible to everyone but him.

Almost everything Rubião possesses or desires comes to him from someone else: the inheritance came from a dead man, the house and the purchases passed through Palha, the political ambition came from Camacho, the woman he desires already belonged to a friend, and even the imperial face is copied from a bust. The book shows, case by case, who has taken advantage of this malleability, and leaves it to the reader, in the close, to choose between weeping and laughing.

Relationships

• Sofia: the desire that runs through the book, the woman who receives him, avoids him, and is the addressee of the coupé scene.
• Cristiano Palha: the guide and partner who directs him at every stage, profits from his trust, and commits him at the end.
• Quincas Borba (the philosopher): the friend who leaves him the inheritance and the doctrine, and whose soul Rubião comes to suppose in the dog.
• Quincas Borba (the dog): the obligation of the will, which becomes watchman, consolation, and companion until death.
• Camacho: the politician who sells him grandeur, five contos, and a candidacy, and receives him coldly when the delirium begins.
• Carlos Maria: the rival of his jealousy, who eats at his table and to whom, in his delirium, he offers a minister's portfolio.
• Maria Benedita: the girl whose engagement he applauds after being mistaken about who the fiancé was.
• Dona Fernanda: the only one who looks at him with compassion in his decline and asks that someone treat him.