Between midnight and one o’clock, Pestana did little except stand at the window and gaze at the stars, or back at the portraits in the room. From time to time he went to the piano and, without sitting down, played a few random chords, as if searching for a thought. But the thought did not appear and he returned to the window. To him the stars resembled a host of musical notes fixed in the night sky waiting for someone to reach out and unstick them; a time would come when the sky would be empty, and the Earth would be a constellation of musical scores. Nothing, no image, no reverie or reflection reminded him of Sinhazinha Mota, who, at that very moment, was drifting off to sleep thinking about him, that famous composer of so many well-loved polkas. Perhaps the idea of marriage deprived that young lady of several moments of sleep? And why shouldn’t it? She was about to turn twenty, and he was thirty, a good age. The young lady fell asleep to the sound of the polka, which she knew by heart, whereas its composer was thinking of neither the polka nor of her, but of the great classics of old, while he endlessly quizzed the heavens and the night, asking the angels and, as a last resort, the devil himself. Why could he not write just one of those immortal pages?

At times, the dawn of an idea seemed to rise up from the depths of his unconscious, and he would run to the piano in order to set it down whole, translate it into sounds, but in vain; the idea vanished. At other times, sitting at the piano, he would let his fingers run wild, to see what fantasias blossomed from them, as they had from Mozart’s hands. But nothing, absolutely nothing; inspiration failed him, his imagination slumbered. If by any chance an idea did appear, fully formed and beautiful, it was merely the echo of another piece repeated from his memory, and which he thought he had invented. Then he would leap angrily to his feet and swear that he would give up his art, go and plant coffee or push a cart around the streets. But ten minutes later there he would be once again at the piano, with his eyes fixed on Mozart, trying to mimic his genius.

Two, three, four o’clock. Sometime after four he went to bed; he was weary, disheartened, dead with fatigue; he had to give lessons the following day. He only slept a little, awoke at seven, got dressed, and ate breakfast.

“Would Sir like the cane or the umbrella?” the servant asked, following orders, for his master was often distracted.

“The cane.”

“But it looks like rain today, sir.”

“Rain,” Pestana repeated mechanically.

“Yes, sir. Seems so. The sky’s quite dark.”

Pestana looked at the servant vaguely, his mind elsewhere. Suddenly:

“Wait right there.”