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The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas · Chapters LXIV to LXXVI

The Little House, the Penis, and Dona Plácida

Appearance and RealityDesireLanguage and NarrationSlavery

Chapter LXIV: The Transaction

Desire

Section summary

Brás Cubas does not go to the theater, where Virgília went with her husband, because he judges that he would arrive late, that going would be a sign of weakness, and that she was beginning to tire of him. He spends the night imagining her desired by everyone, until he wants to undress her and make her his alone. The next day, finding her in tears, he hears that he treated her the night before like a dog. Without the heart to accuse her, he says he is jealous of the other man and proposes taking up the idea of flight again. Virgília answers with the image of a little house hidden in a garden and asks what they would flee for; he calls her selfish, she weeps, the fear of being overheard calms her, and only then does she say she will not leave her son and that, if he takes the boy, her husband will come after her to the end of the world. Brás asks for forgiveness, and the two return to talking about the little house.

Analysis

Brás moves from jealousy to a negotiation: since the only grievance he has is that the husband loves his wife, he cannot accuse her of anything, and yet he accuses her of selfishness; only after her weeping does he ask forgiveness, and the two take up the little house again as an exit that serves them both. Virgília does not give up her son, whom she will not leave behind, and the title says so: each pays with what they can. Her weeping may be pain and may be a weapon, and the text only records that the fear calms her.

It was not her fault that her husband loved her.
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Chapter LXV: Lookouts and Eavesdroppers

Appearance and RealitySlavery

Section summary

Interrupted by the arrival of Baroness X, Brás and Virgília receive her, he suggesting beforehand that, given her headache, it would be best not to receive anyone. The baroness asks why he missed the theater, says he must be close to forty, and invites him for Saturday. In the street Brás regrets having gone out, because the baroness was one of those who suspected them most, and he reviews who is watching them: the baroness, with her art of listening while spying; Viegas, a relative of Virgília, an old, sick miser; their cousin Luís Dutra, whom he disarms by speaking of his verses; some ladies, the fops, and the servants. Brás makes the inventory to show the risk he runs and the tactic it demands.

Analysis

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Chapter LXVI: The Legs

Section summary

Lost in thought about the lookouts, Brás discovers that his legs have carried him to the Hotel Pharoux, where he usually dines. Since he did not decide to walk, he attributes the action to his legs, whom he imagines telling each other that he needs to eat, and he promises to immortalize them on the page.

Analysis

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Chapter LXVII: The Little House

Desire

Section summary

Brás Cubas finds at home a box of cigars sent in the name of Lobo Neves, with a note from Virgília saying that they are suspected and that all is lost. He runs to her house and overhears, in the recess of a window, that the baroness has told her what was said at the theater about his absence from the box; when he hints that it would be best for them to flee, Virgília replies "Never". Brás realizes that she does not separate love from public esteem, lets the spite pass and arranges the little house, on a street in Gamboa, to be occupied by a former seamstress and hanger-on of Virgília's, who would accept without being told everything. The house promises him exclusive possession, an end to the curtains and the dinners with the husband, and the absence of Virgília's son, "my accomplice and my enemy".

Analysis

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Chapter LXVIII: The Whip

Slavery

Section summary

Walking back on foot through the Valongo, right after seeing and settling the house, Brás Cubas comes upon a crowd: a Black man is lashing another in the square, and the one who is beaten only begs for forgiveness. The one lashing is Prudêncio, the boy whom Brás's father freed years before. Prudêncio asks Brás for his blessing and explains that he beats his own slave for being idle and drunk; Brás tells him to forgive, and Prudêncio obeys. Brás says he has lost the reflections he made afterward, but gives the one that remains: Prudêncio gets rid of the blows he received by passing them on to another, and now pays, with interest, what he received when he was the mount of the boy Brás.

Analysis

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Chapter LXIX: A Grain of Folly

Slavery

Section summary

Brás recalls a madman he knew, Romualdo, who said he was Tamerlane and explained it thus: he fell ill, took so much tartar that he became a Tartar, and tartar has the virtue of making Tartars. Brás confesses that he finds no humor in the story, told on paper and apropos of a lash received and passed on, and proposes to leave "the Romualdos and Prudêncios" to return to the little house.

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Chapter LXX: Dona Plácida

Appearance and Reality

Section summary

Brás tells the reader that the little house was torn down and replaced by another "three times larger" and, he swears, much smaller than the first, and that virtues now sleep where sins once slept. Virgília furnishes the house and Brás brings books. The care of the house falls to Dona Plácida, the front woman who is the nominal owner. She accepts with difficulty, for she had sniffed out the intention and the trade pained her, and she keeps her eyes lowered for the first two months. Brás, after winning her goodwill and trust with affection and respect, invents a novel of love affairs prior to Virgília's marriage, which she accepts whole because it was a need of her conscience. At the end of six months, anyone who saw the three of them together would say she was Brás's mother-in-law; he gives her five contos as a nest egg, the same ones he had found on the beach at Botafogo (chapter LII), and she starts praying for him every night, and so his disgust ends.

Analysis

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Chapter LXXI: The Flaw of the Book

Language and NarrationThe Meaning of Life

Section summary

Brás confesses that he is beginning to regret the book: not that it wearies him, but the book is tedious, smells of the tomb, and has a certain cadaverous contraction. The greatest defect, he says, is the reader, who is in a hurry to grow old and wants direct narration and a fluent style, while the book and his style veer like drunkards. Then he addresses the leaves of his cypress, which will fall like any others, and says that the advantage of death is that it leaves no eyes to weep.

Analysis

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Chapter LXXII: The Bibliomaniac

Language and Narration

Section summary

Brás thinks of suppressing the previous chapter, because its last lines have a phrase that looks like nonsense, and he imagines the future: seventy years from now, a thin, yellowed bibliomaniac who bought a unique copy for two hundred réis scrutinizes the page without finding the nonsense. He does not know the author, would reject everything for that single copy, and ends up content with the possession; not even a Caesar or a Cromwell passing under the window would divert him from the book.

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Chapter LXXIII: The "Luncheon"

Section summary

The nonsense cost Brás another chapter, and he compares the style to the meals with Virgília in the little house in Gamboa: wine, fruit and preserves, a way of eating "punctuated" with sweet little words and sulks, which he takes up again just as he takes up the narration. Dona Plácida never agrees to sit with them. When Virgília says that Dona Plácida no longer seems to like her, the latter exclaims that she loves Iaiá, stares at her until her eyes well up, and Brás leaves a little silver coin in the pocket of her dress.

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Chapter LXXIV: The Story of Dona Plácida

Section summary

Days later, finding Dona Plácida alone, Brás hears her story. Natural daughter of a sacristan of the Sé cathedral and of a confectioner, she lost her father at ten and married a tailor who died of consumption, leaving her a daughter. She supported her daughter and her mother with sweets, sewing and lessons, resisted the makeshift suitors her mother pushed on her, since her mother wanted her married, and saw her daughter run off with a man. She then became a dependent in Iaiá's family, and left when Iaiá married. She fears ending up begging, and in saying it she seems to realize she has spoken to the lover of a married woman; she laughs, calls herself a fool and, tired of Brás's silence, withdraws.

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Chapter LXXV: With Me

Section summary

Brás warns that whoever skipped the previous chapter should read it, and repeats what he said to himself right after Dona Plácida left the room. He imagines the sacristan of the Sé who, serving at Mass, saw a lady enter, liked her, paid her a compliment, stepped on her foot while lighting the altars, and from that conjunction of idle lusts Dona Plácida sprouted. If she had spoken at birth and asked why she had been called, her parents would have answered that it was to burn her fingers at the cooking pots and her eyes at the sewing, until she ended in the mud or in the hospital.

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Chapter LXXVI: The Manure

Section summary

Brás's conscience accuses him of having made Dona Plácida's probity capitulate, forcing her into a base role after a long life of work: a go-between was no better than a concubine, and he had lowered her with obsequies and money, taking advantage of Virgília's fascination with her, her gratitude and her need. Brás spends about ten minutes without an answer and finally argues that her old age is now sheltered from begging, which would be a compensation; from there, he says, one could deduce that vice is often the manure of virtue. The conscience agrees, and he goes to open the door to Virgília.

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