On the eighth day, my life became exactly the same as that of my predecessors. It was a dog’s life, with no sleep, no thoughts of my own, and being constantly showered with insults, which, at times, I laughed at with an air of resignation and deference, for I had noticed that this was one way of mollifying him. His rudeness stemmed as much from his illness as from his temperament, for he suffered from a litany of complaints: an aneurism, rheumatism, and three or four lesser afflictions. He was nearly sixty, and from the age of five everyone had indulged his every whim. Had he been merely grumpy, that would have been fine; but he had a mean streak in him, and took pleasure in the pain and humiliation of others. At the end of three months I’d had enough and decided to leave; I waited only for the right opportunity.

It wasn’t long in coming. One day, when I failed to give him his embrocation at the correct time, he grabbed his stick and struck me two or three times. That was the last straw; I quit there and then and went to pack my bags. Later, he came to my room and begged me to stay, saying that there was no need to take offense at an old man’s bad temper. He was so insistent that I stayed.

“I’m in a terrible pickle, Procópio,” he told me that night. “I won’t live much longer. One foot in the grave, you might say. But you must go to my funeral, Procópio; I absolutely insist. You must go, and you must pray at my graveside. If you don’t,” he added with a chuckle, “I’ll come back at night and torment you. Do you believe in spirits from the other world, Procópio?”

“Certainly not!”

“Why wouldn’t you believe, you donkey?” he retorted excitedly, opening his eyes very wide.

If these were the truces, just imagine the wars! He stopped hitting me with the stick, but the insults were just as bad, if not worse. With time I became inured to them and stopped noticing; I was an ass, a dolt, an idiot, a good-for-nothing lazybones, everything under the sun. There wasn’t even anyone to share these insults with me. He had no relatives; there had been a nephew up in Minas Gerais, but he had died of consumption sometime between the end of May and the beginning of July. His friends came by occasionally to flatter and indulge him; a five- or ten-minute visit, nothing more. So there was no one but me, just me, for an entire dictionary of expletives. More than once I resolved to leave, but each time, at the priest’s insistence, I ended up staying.