Quincas Borba (Library of Latin America) by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis Page B

What a friendship!”
    “You can’t imagine, old friend. Goodbye, I promise you a son of his.”

XVIII
     
    R ubião and the dog, when they entered the house, sensed, heard the person and the voice of their departed friend. While the dog sniffed about everywhere, Rubião went to sit in the chair where he’d been when Quincas Borba referred to thedeath of his grandmother with scientific explanations. The memory brought back the philosopher’s arguments, albeit confused and frayed. For the first time he gave careful consideration to the allegory of the starving tribes, and he understood the conclusion: “To the victor, the potatoes!” He clearly heard the dead man’s voice expounding the situation of the tribes, the fight, and the reason for the fight, the extermination of one and the victory of the other, and he murmured in a low voice:
    “To the victor, the potatoes!”
    So simple! So clear! He looked at his worn drill pants and his patched waistcoat, and he noted that up until a short time before he’d been, in a manner of speaking, someone exterminated, a burst bubble, but not now, now he was a victor. There was no doubt about it, the potatoes had been made for the tribe that eliminates the other in order to get over the mountain and reach the potatoes on the other side. His case precisely. He was going to go down from Barbacena to dig up and eat the potatoes in the capital. He had to be hard and implacable, he was powerful and strong. And leaping up, all excited, he raised his arms, exclaiming:
    “To the victor, the potatoes!”
    He liked the formula, found it ingenious, compendious, and eloquent in addition to being profound and true. He imagined the potatoes in their various shapes; he classified them as to taste, aspect, nutritive power; he stuffed himself in advance at the banquet of life. It was time to have done with the poor, dry roots that only deceived the stomach, the sad meal of so many long years. Now full, solid, perpetual eating until the day he died, and dying on silk cushions, which is better than on rags. And he went back to the affirmation of being hard and implacable and to the formula from the allegory. He got to composing in his head a seal for his use with this motto: TO THE VICTOR, THE POTATOES.
    He forgot about the seal, but the formula, lived on in Rubião’s spirit for a few days: “To the victor, the potatoes!” He wouldn’t have understood it before the will. On the contrary, we saw that he’d considered it obscure and in need of an explanation. It’s so true that the landscape depends on the point of view and the best way to appreciate a whip is to have its handle in your hand.

XIX
     
    W e mustn’t forget to mention that Rubião took it upon himself to have a mass sung for the soul of the deceased, even though he knew or sensed that Quincas Borba hadn’t been a Catholic. He didn’t say anything nasty about priests nor did he discredit Catholic doctrine, but he never spoke of the Church or its servants. On the other hand, his worship of Humanitas made his heir suspect that this was the testator’s religion. Nonetheless, he had a mass sung, considering that it wasn’t following the wishes of the dead man, but a prayer for the living. He further considered that it would be scandalous in the town if he, named as heir by the deceased, neglected to give his protector the prayers that are not denied the most miserable and avaricious people in the world.
    If some people didn’t appear, in order not to be part of Rubião’s glory, many did come—and not riffraff—who saw the true grief of the former schoolteacher.

XX
     
    A s soon as the preliminary motions for the liquidation of the inheritance were under way, Rubião made ready to go to Rio de Janeiro, where he would settle as soon as it was all over. There were things to do in both places, but things promised to move along swiftly.

XXI
     
    A t the station in Vassouras, Sofia and her husband, Cristiano de Almeida e Palha,