The Alienist and Other Stories of Nineteenth-Century Brazil by Machado de Assis Page A

because it brought oblivion, but for another reason. I think that I can explain the phenomenon this way. Sleep eliminated the need for an external soul and allowed the internal soul to act, instead. In my dreams, I proudly put on my uniform for my family and friends, who repeated that I was handsome and called me ‘lieutenant.’ A close friend of the family arrived, saying I was to be promoted to first lieutenant or captain or major. All that revived me. Then I woke up and, in the light of day, my revived self faded with the dream, my internal soul lost efficacy, and once again I depended on the exterior version, which seemed to have gone away entirely. And it didn’t come back. Where was everyone? I went outside and wandered here and there like Bluebeard’s wife begging to be rescued by her sister in the French legend. ‘ Soeur Anne, she calls, soeur Anne, ne vois-tu rien venir ?’ 1 Nothing, nothing at all. Nothing but the dust in the road and the grass on the hillsides. Back in the house, more than a little spooked, I lay down on the sofa. Tick-tock, tick-tock. I got up and walked from room to room, drumming my fingers on the window glass, whistling. Once I got the idea of writing something, a newspaper editorial, a novel, an ode—I couldn’t make up my mind. I sat down and wrote a few random words and phrases to combine thematically, but the theme, like Aunt Marcolina, refused to materialize. Soeur Anne, soeur Anne … but no, nothing at all. As I stared at the paper, the ink only looked blacker, and the page, whiter.”
    “Weren’t you eating?”
    “I ate poorly—fruit, handfuls of manioc flour, roots roasted in the fire—but I would have endured it all cheerfully were it not for my deep depression. I recited passages of Latin oratory, half of the great epic by Camões, 2 and all manner of other verses, a thirty-volume anthology, more or less. Sometimes I did gymnastic exercises; other times I pinched my legs. The effect was a slight physical sensation, pain or fatigue, nothing more. Everything silent, a colossal, infinite silence, only underscored by the eternal tick-tock of the pendulum. Tick-tock, tick-tock …”
    “It does sound like enough to drive one crazy.”
    “You haven’t heard the worst. I should tell you first that, since I had been left alone, I had not looked in the mirror even once. I had no conscious reason to avoid it. I just hadn’t done it—maybe because, unconsciously, I didn’t want to see two of me in that lonely house. If that is the true explanation, nothing better demonstrates the contradictions of the human condition because, after a week, I got a sudden urge to look in the mirror precisely to see myself duplicated. I took one look, and backed away. The looking glass seemed part of the universal plot against me. It did not show a sharp, complete image, but rather, something blurred, shadowy, diffuse, fragmentary. Unless one questions the laws of physics, we must accept that the mirror reflected my outlines and features accurately. It must have shown me as I was. But that was not my feeling at the moment. On the contrary, I attributed the phenomenon to my upset state, and then I did feel fear. If this situation lasted much longer, I could go mad. ‘I’m getting out of here,’ I said to myself. I raised my arm in a gesture of irritation, and also, of decision. Looking in the mirror, I saw the gesture repeated, but in an unraveling, mutilated way.
    “I started to get dressed, muttering aloud, coughing for no reason, noisily shaking each garment, and voicing my annoyance with the buttons, just to hear myself speak. Every now and then I glanced furtively at the looking glass. The image was still blurred and confused … I continued to dress. And then I had an unthinking impulse, an inexplicable inspiration. Can you guess what it was?”
    “Tell us.”
    “I was staring, horrified, at the jumbled outlines of my own slowly dissolving features … when it came to me. No,