Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas

169 years ago today the great 19th-century Brazilian author Joaquim Maria Marchado de Assis was born.

In honor of his birthday we are pleased to present the forty-second page of Gregory Rabassa's English translation of Machado de Assis's 1881 novel, “Memórias Pósthumas de Brás Cubas.”

(Machado de Assis dedicated this novel "to the worm who first gnawed on the cold flesh of my corpse, I dedicate with fond remembrances these Posthumous Memoirs.")

On page 42 of Rabassa's translation we read (some emphasis added):

the vizier's wife, she beckoning to you with possession and you running, running, up to the long tree-lined drive from where you came out onto the street where all the harness-makers jeered at you and thrashed you. Then it seemed to me that Marcela's hallway was the drive and the street was in Baghdad. As a matter of fact, looking toward the door I saw three harness-makers on the sidewalk, once in a cassock, another in livery, another in civilian clothes, as all three entered the hallway, took me by the arms, put me into a carriage, my father on the right, my canon uncle on the left, the one in the livery on the driver's seat, and from there they took me to the house of a police official, from where I was transported to a ship that was to leave for Lisbon. You can imagine my resistance, but all resistance was useless.

Three days later I left the harbor behind, downcast and silent. I wasn't even weeping. I had an id&eeacute;e fixe... Damned id&eeacute;es fixes! The one on that occasion was to dive into the ocean repeating Marcela's name.

XIX

On Board

We were eleven passangers: a crazy man accompanied by his wife, two youths going on an excursion, four businessmen, and two servants. My father entrusted me to all of them, starting with the ship's captain, who had much of his own to look after as well because, on top of everything else, he was carrying his wife, who was in the last stages of tuberculosis.

I don't know whether the captain suspected anything of my lugubrious project or whether my father had put him on the alert, but I do know that he never took his eyes off me, called to me everywhere. When he couldn't be with me he brought me to his wife. The woman was almost always on a low couch, coughing a lot, and promising to show me the sights in Lisbon. She wasn't thin, she was transparent. It was impossible to know why she didn't die from one moment to the

More information about “The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas” (and the book itself) is available from:

• Powell's Books
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