You little devil!”
Yes, my father adored me. My mother was a weak woman with not much brain and lots of heart, quite credulous, sincerely pious—homespun in spite of being pretty and modest in spite of being well-off, afraid of thunder and of her husband. Her husband was her god on Earth. My upbringing was born of the collaboration of those two people and although there was some good about it, in general it was corrupt,incomplete, and in some ways negative. My uncle the canon would sometime? remark to his brother about it, telling him that he was giving me more freedom than education and more affection than correction, but my father would answer that he was applying a system to my education that was completely superior to the usual system, and in that way, while not confusing his brother, he was duping himself.
Along with communication with education there was also outside example, the domestic milieu. We’ve seen the parents, now let’s have a look at the uncles and the aunt. One of them, João, was a man with a loose tongue, a dashing life, and picaresque conversation. From the age of eleven on I was admitted to his anecdotes, true or otherwise, all contaminated with obscenity or filth. He didn’t respect my adolescence any more than he respected his brother’s cassock, with the difference that the latter would flee as soon as some scabrous subject was touched upon. Not 1.1 allowed myself to stay without understanding anything at first, later understanding, and finally finding him amusing. After a time the one who sought him out was I and he liked me a lot, gave me candy, took me for walks. At home, when he would come to spend a few days, it happened quite often that I would find him in the rear of the house in the laundry chatting with the slave girls who were washing clothes. ‘That’s where he’d string together stories, comments, questions, and there’d be an explosion of laughter that nobody could hear because the laundry was too far away from the house. The black women, with clothes around their middle, their dresses hiked up a little, some inside the tank, others outside, leaning over the articles of clothing, beating them, soaping them, twisting them, went on listening to Uncle Joéo’s jokes and commenting on them from time to time, saying:
“Get thee behind me, Satan! This Master Joao is the devil himself!” My uncle the canon was quite different. He was full of austerity and purity. Those traits weren’t elevating a superior spirit, however, but only compensating for a mediocre one. He was not a man who saw the substantive side of the church. He saw the superficial side; hierarchy, pre-eminences, vestments, genuflections. He was closer to sacristy than to altar. A slip in ritual would arouse him more than an infraction of the commandments. Now, after so many years away from it, I’m not sure whether or not he could easily understand a passage from Tertullian or expound without hesitation the story of the Nicene symbol. But no one at high mass knew better than he the number and type of bows to be made to the officiant. Being canon was the only ambition in his life. And he said with all his heart that it ‘was the only honor to which hecould aspire. Pious, austere in his habits, precise in his observance of the rules, limp, timid, subordinate, he possessed some few virtues in which he was exemplary, but he was absolutely lacking in the strength to instill them or impose them on others.
I won’t say anything about my maternal aunt, Dona Emerenciana, or add that she was the person who had the most authority over me. That made her quite different from the others, but she only lived with us a short time, a couple of years. Other relatives and a few close friends aren’t worth mentioning. We had no life in common, only intermittently and with great spans of separation. What is important is the general description of the domestic milieu and that has been shown here—vulgarity of character, love of
Yes, my father adored me. My mother was a weak woman with not much brain and lots of heart, quite credulous, sincerely pious—homespun in spite of being pretty and modest in spite of being well-off, afraid of thunder and of her husband. Her husband was her god on Earth. My upbringing was born of the collaboration of those two people and although there was some good about it, in general it was corrupt,incomplete, and in some ways negative. My uncle the canon would sometime? remark to his brother about it, telling him that he was giving me more freedom than education and more affection than correction, but my father would answer that he was applying a system to my education that was completely superior to the usual system, and in that way, while not confusing his brother, he was duping himself.
Along with communication with education there was also outside example, the domestic milieu. We’ve seen the parents, now let’s have a look at the uncles and the aunt. One of them, João, was a man with a loose tongue, a dashing life, and picaresque conversation. From the age of eleven on I was admitted to his anecdotes, true or otherwise, all contaminated with obscenity or filth. He didn’t respect my adolescence any more than he respected his brother’s cassock, with the difference that the latter would flee as soon as some scabrous subject was touched upon. Not 1.1 allowed myself to stay without understanding anything at first, later understanding, and finally finding him amusing. After a time the one who sought him out was I and he liked me a lot, gave me candy, took me for walks. At home, when he would come to spend a few days, it happened quite often that I would find him in the rear of the house in the laundry chatting with the slave girls who were washing clothes. ‘That’s where he’d string together stories, comments, questions, and there’d be an explosion of laughter that nobody could hear because the laundry was too far away from the house. The black women, with clothes around their middle, their dresses hiked up a little, some inside the tank, others outside, leaning over the articles of clothing, beating them, soaping them, twisting them, went on listening to Uncle Joéo’s jokes and commenting on them from time to time, saying:
“Get thee behind me, Satan! This Master Joao is the devil himself!” My uncle the canon was quite different. He was full of austerity and purity. Those traits weren’t elevating a superior spirit, however, but only compensating for a mediocre one. He was not a man who saw the substantive side of the church. He saw the superficial side; hierarchy, pre-eminences, vestments, genuflections. He was closer to sacristy than to altar. A slip in ritual would arouse him more than an infraction of the commandments. Now, after so many years away from it, I’m not sure whether or not he could easily understand a passage from Tertullian or expound without hesitation the story of the Nicene symbol. But no one at high mass knew better than he the number and type of bows to be made to the officiant. Being canon was the only ambition in his life. And he said with all his heart that it ‘was the only honor to which hecould aspire. Pious, austere in his habits, precise in his observance of the rules, limp, timid, subordinate, he possessed some few virtues in which he was exemplary, but he was absolutely lacking in the strength to instill them or impose them on others.
I won’t say anything about my maternal aunt, Dona Emerenciana, or add that she was the person who had the most authority over me. That made her quite different from the others, but she only lived with us a short time, a couple of years. Other relatives and a few close friends aren’t worth mentioning. We had no life in common, only intermittently and with great spans of separation. What is important is the general description of the domestic milieu and that has been shown here—vulgarity of character, love of
Similar Books
