The first edition sold out as soon as it appeared. The composer’s fame was enough to guarantee sales, and in itself the tune was well suited to the genre, being original, danceable, and easily learned by heart. Within one week it was famous. For the first few days Pestana was truly in love with his new creation; he enjoyed humming it to himself, would stop in the street to listen to it being played in some house, and get annoyed when it was played badly. Soon the theater orchestras were playing it, and he even went to one of the performances. Nor was he displeased to hear it whistled, one night, by a shadowy figure coming down Rua do Aterrado.

The honeymoon lasted only a quarter moon. As on previous occasions, and even more quickly than before, the old masters in the portraits made him bleed with remorse. Angry and ashamed, Pestana raged against the muse who had so often consoled him, she with her impish eyes and warm embraces, so easygoing and so gracious. Back came his self-disgust and his loathing of anyone who asked him to play his latest polka, and he resumed his efforts to compose something along classical lines, even if it was only a page, just one, but one that would deserve to be bound between those of Bach and Schumann. A futile enterprise, a vain effort. He plunged himself into that Jordan, but emerged from it unbaptized. He wasted night after night, confidently and stubbornly convinced that it was only a matter of willpower, and that if he could only let go of the easy stuff . . .

“To hell with polkas; let the devil dance to them,” he said to himself one morning, at dawn, as he was getting into bed.

But the polkas did not want to go quite that far. They came to Pestana’s house, to the very room where the portraits hung, bursting in so profusely that he scarcely had time to set them down, have them published, enjoy them for a few days, get bored with them, and return to the same old wellsprings whence nothing flowed. And thus his life swung between those two extremes until he married, and after he married too.

“Who’s he marrying?” Sinhazinha Mota asked her uncle the notary, who gave her this news.

“A widow.”

“Is she old?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Pretty?”

“No, but not ugly, either. Just so-so. I’m told he fell in love with her because he heard her sing at the last feast day of Saint Francis of Paola. But I also heard that she possesses another great gift, less rare and not as worthy: she has consumption.”