Damião froze. Oh, cruel moment! A kind of cloud passed before his eyes. Had he not sworn to help the young girl, who had only fallen behind with her work because of him?

“Give me the cane, Senhor Damião!”

Damião began to walk over to the sofa. The young black girl begged him by all that he held most sacred, his mother, his father, Our Lord . . .

“Help me, sir!

Sinhá Rita, face aflame, eyes bulging, was demanding the cane, still not letting go of the girl, who was now convulsed by a coughing fit. Damião was terribly touched by her plight, but . . . he had to get out of that seminary. He went over to the sofa, picked up the cane, and handed it to Sinhá Rita.

Midnight Mass

MIDNIGHT MASS

I’VE NEVER QUITE understood a conversation I had with a lady many years ago, when I was seventeen and she was thirty. It was Christmas Eve. Having arranged to attend midnight mass with a neighbor, I had agreed that I would stay awake and call for him just before midnight.

The house where I was staying belonged to the notary Meneses, whose first wife had been one of my cousins. His second wife, Conceição, and her mother had both welcomed me warmly when, months before, I arrived in Rio de Janeiro from Mangaratiba to study for my university entrance exams. I led a very quiet life in that two-story house on Rua do Senado, with my books, a few friends, and the occasional outing. It was a small household, consisting of the notary, his wife, his mother-in-law, and two slave-women. They kept to the old routines, retiring to bed at ten and with everyone sound asleep by half-past. Now, I had never been to the theater, and more than once, on hearing Meneses announce that he was going, I would ask him to take me with him. On such occasions, his mother-in-law would pull a disapproving face, and the slave-women would titter; he, however, would not even reply, but would get dressed, leave the house, and not return until the following morning. Only later on did I realize that the theater was a euphemism in action. Meneses was having an affair with a lady who was separated from her husband and, once a week, he slept elsewhere. At first Conceição had found the existence of this mistress deeply wounding, but, in the end, she had resigned herself and grown accustomed to the situation, deciding that there was nothing untoward about it at all.