The Alienist and Other Stories of Nineteenth-Century Brazil Read Online Free PDF

ministry.
    “A minister, imagine! And Gonçalves his future son-in-law!”
    “Quit joking around,” laughed Gonçalves.
    “What’s the matter?”
    “I don’t like jokes. Me, a son-in-law? Anyway, you know my political views. There is a huge gap between us. In politics, I am a radical.”
    “Yes, but radicals also marry,” observed one of his friends.
    “They marry radical beauties,” added another.
    “Exactly, radical beauties.”
    “She’s beautiful, but radical?”
    “This coffee is cold!” exclaimed Gonçalves. “Hey, another coffee! Somebody have a cigarette? Me, a radical, the future son-in-law of an imperial minister? That’s a good one! Haven’t you read Aristotle?” 1
    “I haven’t.”
    “Me, neither.”
    “They say he’s good.”
    “Excellent,” insisted Gonçalves. “Hey, Lamego, do you remember that fellow who wanted a costume for the masked ball, and we put that hat on him and said that his costume was Aristotle?”
    And he told the story, which really was funny, and everyone laughed, starting with Gonçalves himself, in long belly laughs. The waiter brought his second coffee, which he found hot enough but too scant, and he asked for a third cup and another cigarette. One of his classmates then told a similar story, and when he happened to mention Wagner, the conversation turned suddenly to music and the Wagnerian revolution underway in Europe. From there, the conversation naturally turned to modern science, to Darwin, Spencer, and all the other big names, and between one thing and another—here a serious note, there a lighthearted one, here a cigarette, there a coffee, and lots of general hilarity—they were surprised to hear a clock strike five.
    “Five o’clock!” said two or three of them at once.
    “In my stomach it feels more like seven o’clock,” considered another.
    “Where do you fellows eat supper?”
    They decided to pool their funds and eat together. They scraped together six milréis and went to a modest hotel where they ate well and kept the bill in mind. It was half past six o’clock when they stepped outside, dusk on a beautiful summer evening. They walked toward São Francisco Square. They saw some girls still out on Ouvidor Street, only a few stragglers, though, and more girls at the São Cristóvão streetcar stop. One of these really got their attention. She was tall, good-looking, and recently widowed. Gonçalves thought that she looked a lot like Chiquinha Coelho, but the others disagreed. Whether she resembled Chiquinha or not, Gonçalves got excited and proposed that all of them get on whatever streetcar she did. His friends just laughed.
    Night was really falling by that time, and they went back to Ouvidor Street. At half past seven, they headed for a theater, not to see the show, because they had only cigarettes and a stray coin or two in their pockets, but to watch the fine ladies arrive. An hour later we could find them at Rocio Square, discussing physics. Then they recited poetry, both well-known works and verses of their own. Next there were more funny stories, puns, horsing around, and general high spirits. Gonçalves was the noisiest and most expansive of all, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. At nine o’clock, he was back on Ouvidor Street, now by himself, and since he was out of smokes, he bought a pack for twenty-two milréis, on credit.
    To be twenty years old!

THE EDUCATION OF A POSER
    In this story, Machado de Assis goes on the attack, critiquing the emptiness and superficiality of the imperial elite. Here there is no narrator at all. Instead, the reader “overhears” a conversation between a father and a son who has just finished his law degree. The scene is the parlor of a rich family following a dinner party on the young man’s twenty-first birthday. Unsurprisingly, it’s time for a little fatherly advice. The surprise is the shocking character of that advice, in which the father lays out the routine techniques of social