And I think that these attacks of laughing that we’ve had are due to our having as a guest a man who’s never seen us before, and his being silent, without saying a word, in the house and at the table. Now mama’s forbidden us to come to the table, but even in the kitchen we shake with laughter to see the man and mama sitting there in silence! I don’t know what she’ll tell papa. He’s been here three days and it already seems like a week. I envy people who don’t have giggling spells the way I have.
At the saddest moments, sometimes, when we shouldn’t have had cheerful faces, we’ve laughed.…
When papa got back he asked mama if we had treated the guest in our house well, and said, “He and his family couldn’t have done more for me at their house; they almost overwhelmed me with attention. His daughters are homely and not very attractive. I thought he’d come back enchanted with my girls, but when he got back he was silent and didn’t say a thing. I couldn’t keep from asking him if he’d seen my daughters and he told me, ‘I never saw their faces; they laughed from the minute I got there until I left.’”
* * *
… Today we went to Jogo da Bola Street for lunch. There were two guests there, friends of the family. The man is called Anselmo Coelho. He’s good-looking and very nice, married to a terribly homely woman, who speaks through her nose, called Toninha. I asked my cousins why such a handsome man had married such an ugly woman, and they said that he was the widower of a very pretty wife, and, living in Itaipava, he met this teacher, and because she wouldn’t be any expense to him, he married her.
At the table I noticed how little feeling the man had for his wife, and I felt sorry for her, coitada! After lunch we stayed at the table and he got the conversation onto his first wife. He praised her brains, her beauty, and her sympathy so much that I kept looking at the poor creature and feeling sorry for her. He said, “But she was so jealous that she made me suffer. When I miss her I always try to remember how jealous she was. If I had to go out alone on business, before I got to the door she’d fall down in a faint.” He told all this and then added, “I even miss the faints.”
After a while he looked at his watch and said, “It’s time. I have to go.” He got up to go and that fool of a homely wife ran and held onto his arm, trying to imitate the other wife. He kept going out, saying, “Stop it, Toninha. Stop this nonsense!” And the woman kept clinging to his arm and he kept on going. We stayed at the table pretending not to notice in order not to embarrass him. Suddenly we heard a noise, the sound of a body falling on the doorstep. We all ran and there was the poor homely woman stretched out on the ground, with a horrible face, and her husband prodding her with his foot and saying, “Get up, fool! Stop acting! Get up! Don’t disgrace me!” He said this still prodding his wife with his foot, without leaning over. Naninha said, “Coitada! She’s had an attack!” He said, “She wants to do what I said the other one did. But you can leave her here, it isn’t anything. She’ll get up in a little while.” And off he went.
We waited a little for her to open her eyes. When she didn’t open them, we carried her, two with her arms, two with her legs, almost dragging her, and put her on the bed and ran outside to laugh.
Aunt Agostinha said to us, “Now you see, while you’re girls, that men don’t care for silly women. He treats her well, but you see what she did today.”
* * *
… Today I’m tired because it’s one of the days when I have the most work. But shouldn’t I tell what happened to me yesterday, here in my dear diary? I imagine that today all Diamantina hasn’t any other subject of conversation: “Did you see Helena and Luizinha dancing all night long last night, with their aunt lying in her coffin?” I’m only sorry that they won’t say it to me personally, because I could explain. But what bad luck we have! Aunt Neném spent the whole month dying and then had to draw her last breath yesterday.
I know very well that Aunt Neném is my father’s oldest sister and that he esteems her highly. But I confess that I can’t cry for the death of an English aunt whom I didn’t know. She’s been sick for many years at the fazenda and none of her nephews or nieces knew her. When my father learned that she was very low he went there, a week ago. We’d already been invited to Leontina’s wedding here. It was the first dance I’d ever been to. My rose-colored dress was the first pretty dress I’d ever had. How could I miss all that?
Then, I don’t know how, the news spread through town. Papa only wrote to mama, who was all ready to go to the wedding, too, and didn’t go; but she herself thought it was a shame that we couldn’t go, after getting the news at the last minute. She planned it with us: “You go with your cousins and I won’t tell anyone about Neném’s death today. I’ll keep the news until tomorrow.” But I’m so unlucky that I’d barely put my foot in the door of the bride’s house when I received condolences. It seemed like spite. But I lied bravely, with a blank face. “Condolences for what?” “The death of your aunt.” “Who said that? It isn’t true. My father’s at the fazenda and he hasn’t sent word to mama.” But they wouldn’t leave me alone until they convinced themselves that I was more interested in amusing myself than in weeping for the death of an unknown aunt.
Oh! What a wonderful night! In spite of everybody’s eagerness to spoil my fun, they didn’t succeed. It was the first time I’d gone to a dance. How wonderful dancing is! And how quickly I learned all the steps! If I hadn’t gone to the wedding yesterday I could never have been consoled for having missed it. There’s a party like that so seldom! And then I think nobody’s going to remember the lack of feeling we showed for very long. It would have been better if Aunt Neném had died after the wedding and we could have shown more feeling. But it wasn’t God’s will. What could we do?
* * *
… Superstition in Diamantina. Since I was little, I’ve suffered from all sorts of superstitions. If there were thirteen people at the table, I was always the one who had to leave. Combing one’s hair at night, under any circumstances, sends one’s mother straight to hell. Sweeping the house at night upsets one’s life. Breaking a mirror is bad luck. Rubbing one foot against the other, walking backwards, and other things I don’t remember now, are all unlucky. They can explain why some of them do harm, but not others. Such as, for example, if a visitor stays too long, stand the broom behind the door, or throw salt in the fire, and she’ll go away. I believe that salt in the fire works if the visitor hears it crackle, because she knows what it means.
The funny thing is that everybody knows that superstition is a sin, but they prefer to confess it rather than do something that somebody says brings bad luck.
Once I asked grandma, “The Senhora doesn’t like to sin, and how is it that you know superstition is a sin and yet have so many superstitions?” She answered, “There are things that are born in us, daughter. Nobody can see proofs, the way I have — such as thirteen people at the table and within a year one of them dying, or a mirror that fell and broke in Henrique’s house and he had such bad luck afterward — without being afraid. The priests all say it’s a sin, but I don’t doubt that they believe in it, too. It’s something we’re born knowing, the people’s voice is the voice of God.” I said, “I know for my part that I’m not going to believe these things, grandma. If it’s a sin it’s because God thinks it’s absurd.” And she said, “Yes, my child, I don’t say that you should believe in a lot of them, I think that’s nonsense. But some are true and you oughtn’t to ignore them. Like thirteen people at the table, and a broken mirror, you can’t make light of them.”