1
Francisca
"Most illustrious and excellent Madam.
My dearest friend,
Your Excellency has certainly
given due recognition
to my pungent sorrow,
and equal afflictions.
I wish to give you
and Mr. Raimundo Borges,
my condolences
for the fateful event.
Your excellencies feel it
as the loss of a brother,
but I feel it as the loss of a son,
whom I loved so much.
I miss you, my friend,
as I miss the angel that I lost.
Goodbye dear friend,
I cannot continue now,
because my eyes
will not allow me too.
Keep believing, my good friend,
you true friend.
And accept my
deepest feelings,
even though I'm not
going to visit you.
My regards to your husband.
Yours truly:
Of your Excellency
a friend like no other,
Maria Rita da Rocha Owen
Vilar de Paraso
September 23rd, 1854."
Most Illustrious and excellent madam.
Your Excellency has certainly
due recognition
to my pungent sorrow,
and equal afflictions.
I wish to give you
and Mr. Raimundo Borges,
my condolences
for the fatal event.
Your excellencies feel it
as the loss of a brother,
but I feel it as the loss of a son,
whom I loved so much.
I miss you, my friend,
as I miss the angel that I lost.
Goodbye, dear friend,
I cannot continue now,
because my eyes
will not allow me to.
Keep believing, my good friend,
you true friend.
And accept
my deepest feelings,
even though I'm not
going to visit you.
My regards to your husband.
Yours truly:
Of your Excellency
a friend like no other,
Maria Rita da Rocha Owen
Vilar de Paraso
September 23rd, 1854."
With the independence of Brazil,
Portugal was taken by
a wave of instability
and despair.
The death of D. Joao VI
divided the kingdom
between the partisans of his two sons,
D. Pedro and D. Miguel,
who were leaders
of antagonistic movements,
liberalism and absolutism.
Many young men, whose
traditionalist ideals were, in 1847,
defeated by the civil war,
now incarnate a sceptical type,
given to destructive passions.
This is the true story
of the destructive passion
of Jos Augusto
and Fanny (Francisca).
It was a masked ball,
in Oporto, and Jos Augusto
had come in only to
ward off boredom.
Soon he regretted
having done so,
for his mourning for his mother
was still much too recent.
Sad?
Camilo's room
in the Paris Hotel, in Oporto.
- What are you staring at, Jos
Augusto? - Nothing.
We were talking about infinity,
about love and magnetism.
We were talking about women,
and yet you seem distant.
Don't you want to come with me to
Lodeiro, to spend a season?
I do. But weren't you supposed
to be traveling?
I intend to. But I must close
some deals before that.
Come with me.
You know what I'm offering.
The house looks like a mausoleum,
with an old out of tune piano
and alcoves that stink of death.
Then I'll go, my friend Jos.
Two poor devils are the best
consolation for one another.
How can one be virtuous
in a prosperous city
that yet cannot move
a single inch forward?
Here, in this city, the literati
praise each other
because they are
equally poor.
Here we must be sensible
to gratitude,
so that we do not become
accustumed to the role of well-doers.
Let us go to Lodeiro, my friend.
What shall we do there?
You will write. I will walk.
Both occupations are
protected from ridicule.
Oh, no, they're not.
Ridicule can survive
even in the mansion of the dead.
Just read the epitaphs.
But it does not matter.
We'll see if we, accustumed
as we are to listen to small talk,
will find it tedious
to have serious conversations.
Santa Cruz do Douro
House of Lodeiro
Lovely! I had guessed so!
So you are byronian,
like five percent
of elegant Portuguese men.
- Five percent? What about the others?
- Others are
simply great men.
Byron is fashionable.
And in literature, fashion
is worse than anywhere else.
I don't know if I read this somewhere
but if I didn't,
I say it myself.
Fashionable or not, when it comes
to amorous literature,
you and I
both have dusty wigs
and buckled shoes.
- Was it in the ball that you saw her?
- It was there that we met.
You must come with me to the ball,
and I will see you
showing off those silken socks
in the delirium of a waltz.
I don't dance.
I am not a mechanical toy,
embracing the alabaster statue
who is the feuilletonist's muse.
But, tell me, how is she like?
Her face does not belong to this time
or to this climate.
She reminds me of the Viragos
that Virgil described.
I didn't like it, I tell you without the
slightest fatuousness. I didn't like it.
Then they told me that she was
very conversant with literature.
In women, intelligence is either
born with the heart,
or kills it, if it comes later.
You know very well that
what I wanted
was to find a new heart, without
experience, without knowledge.
- And to educate it myself.
- Now that is fatuousness.
In any case, we exchanged
three letters, and that was all.
After the third one, I packed my
luggage and came to the Douro.
- Things didn't go beyond that.
- The things that lure us.
- What did you tell her in the
last letter? - I called her sister.
When I'm not interested in a woman,
I offer her the honors of a relative.
- And she?
- She replied to me.
She said something
like this:
"Your sister!
With that affection I shall once
understand everyone's pleasures.
My friend, she has caught you!
What? Me?
Didn't you create
the need for a distance?
Didn't you calculate the incoveniences
of intimacy, as you say?
Come on, my friend.
Let us not be strong
when the honorable thing is to be weak.
Distance? Intimacy? It was her
who broke the distance.
Any other man
would have taken the opportunity.
You talk of Maria in a spiteful
manner; you are an obstinate man.
You can't forgive Maria her suffering.
You have no love,
you are jealous of pain.
You are a case for study.
A few days later.
My friend and illustrious writer,
Camilo Castelo Branco.
Mi sister-in-law,
Dona Josefa.
and my brother Raimundo.
Portugal is becoming a model
for equality. The Baron's kind.
I live in a street with
five barons, two viscounts
and ten commendators.
All of which are highly commendable.
Don't think that I reproach it. No.
I have some bats
of scepticism flying around my head
with their black wings.
But, forgetting this crisis,
I am a poor devil and I think,
seriously and daily,
about becoming a baron.
Brother, can't you achieve that with
the conspiracies at the royal court?
Now that they want to reinstitute
the processions
that D. Pedro had abolished,
and that they are even thinking of
dressing up soldiers as friars,
I could well be a Baron,
for I also have the talent for that.
What's wrong, Jos Augusto? Have a
seat; you didn't have your dessert.
Jos Augusto is in love.
Do you know what love is?
It's the soul's louse,
the vine's mildew.
And Jos Augusto is in love,
for the 20th time in his lifetime.
A very good lady.
Are there many like that around here?
Women dress up in such a manner
that they falsify the gospels.
The husband cannot say:
"Flesh from my flesh"
when half of it
is cotton paste.
- Why don't you go take a rest?
- I will in a minute.
The cottier had a strife
with his wife, and...
Please help my mother,
he wants to kill her!
Please help!
During a ball in the banquet halls
of the Baron de Corvo.
An ass loaded with money can climb
wherever he wants to.
That man who is laughing
is Ricardo Browne,
who owes me a duel,
which is not exactly the same
a handful of straw.
Come see the most beautiful
three women in this hall.
Are they not the prettiest
in Oporto?
The entire Oporto is here.
Come see.
This is a chimera.
I prefer more classical things.
This woman loves someone.
- Who is he?
- He is a pernicious man.
- Pernicious? Why?
- He has no soul.
And what is a soul?
A butterfly doesn't have a soul either.
Yet it knows, like no one,
how to touch flowers.
Let him be.
With every word he says,
a flower falls off your crown.
Every smile you send him
will extinguish one of the thousand
lights that brighten his world.
- Let him pass.
- I thought you were his friend.
Friendship does not preclude
the ungratefulness of lucidity.
I am ungrateful, perhaps.
But without any infamy.
He has told me once:
"My existence shall not be long".
To think of death at the age of 25
is either poetry or a crime.
- Is he your friend?
- He paid my debts
and saved from death.
That doesn't mean that he's my friend.
He who knows what a friend is
will know what a soul is.
The soul is not a chair that you
offer to a visit. The soul is...
- Is?
- The soul is a vice.
- What?
- Don't treat me like an ignorant.
One can be innocent
without being ignorant.
My God! In your face I can read
curiosity, compassion,
offended dignity,
fear of your own candor
or of the intention of manly courage.
Everything that ends in pernicious love.
Pernicious...
A soul is not a chair
that you offer to a visit... A soul is
The soul is a vice.
- What?
- Don't treat me like an ignorant.
One can be innocent
without being ignorant.
My God! In your face I can read
curiosity, compassion,
offended dignity,
fear of your own candor
or of the intention of manly courage.
Everything that ends in pernicious love.
Pernicious...
- How is the ball?
- The ball is magnificent.
I don't dance and I don't like
the music, it's true.
I was born to be a judge,
in Terras do Bouro,
where bitches mate
with wolves.
I don't belong in this society.
Here, digestion is easy
and spirits are witty.
Spirit is something
you don't lack, Camilo.
And you will die an independent man,
all bitten by your genius
and smallpox,
as they say.
And sing the poems of Cames
every time
I am called to testify
in favor of my century.
Can you see that woman over there?
It is Raquel, married to man
twenty-five years older
than her. She has fourteen lovers,
as far as it is known, but all sceptical
poets in Oporto love her.
When each of their victories
in the obtention of this woman's
favors represents
nothing but defeat.
Taken by jealousy and all the
mistakes of rivalry's prejudices,
they all end up as deserters,
yet not being unfaithful to her.
But have you also been her lover?
I've been indiscrete...
For indiscretion or frivolity,
I let her read a letter
that Maria had written to me.
She returned it to me and said:
"I could never challenge you to
exchange letters.
When written, these things
should be prohibited".
- You were imprudent!
She is a beautiful woman,
with a thick mouth and the
dull skin of creole women.
You were fascinated
with the prestige of being her lover,
but, in fact, you avoided
provocative encounters.
I pretended to respect her, something
that Raquel considered wise.
When you do not want a woman,
you should promote her confusion,
something which is not hurtful
like a simple "no".
Oporto is particularly tolerant
of unfaithful women
as long as they are intelligent enough
not to prefer the lover to
her duties before society.
Tastes are not to be discussed,
as long as we don't
make mistakes because of them.
It is a mistake to be tendered
by a destiny,
when it is only about loving
a man,
something brief
and of little importance.
Beautiful Raquel, furthermore,
has but one passion:
To pile up a solid fortune
and administer her rents.
The way she fights
with the servants
or settles accounts
with a foreman,
will harden even
the most enchanted heart.
Truth is, things are made easy for
her everywhere.
Deeds, land acquisitions,
innumerable businesses.
It is more harmless to offer her
favors with corruption
than feelings
with consequences.
- We scared the cattle away from
the fair! - And spilt our drinks!
We smashed those cakes and buns!
- We made women scream!
- Ora pro nobis.
- We blew up mortars!
- Ora pro nobis.
When a sad man laughs, it's because
he found someone even sadder.
If you suffer at the
age to be happy,
you'll never believe
in happiness again.
Neither as a casual thing,
nor as a reward.
I know what that is.
You'll want sorrow forever
if it has carried you in its bosom
and been your nursemaid.
Unhappiness
is a form of renouncement;
it has nothing to do
with disgrace.
It is the most torrid of lovers
and for her we'll sacrifice everything:
honor and friends,
and even God.
We are 23 years old.
When we are old,
will we know what youngsters
talk about?
I wish I could live in a place
like this.
To be what I could have been,
in my village,
if I had never left.
Here, a woman would have the value
given to her
by the first passion.
The women who live
in that house
must often sit
under this tree.
- Who lives in that house?
- Maria and Fanny.
Let's leave.
This sadness is too much.
We almost reached a point
in which we love women
we have seen
only once in our lifetimes.
I'll never forget this place,
this day, the nostalgia that I feel.
Let's eat fried shad
and find two young girls.
You are right.
- Which one do you prefer?
- They are not my type.
- What if we fall in love?
- You, in love?
Weren't you sceptical?
Isn't your heart
like the trunk in my room,
hard and empty?
Do you think I cannot love a woman?
You can. But only as an effect
of a galvanic shock.
You'd drop dead.
I shouldn't tell you this.
Sometimes we say cruel things
so that we don't cry.
Listen, Jos Augusto, some people
were not born to love someone.
Loving thy neighbor is a trifle that
distracts us from frightening things.
Passion is one
of those frightening things.
Not the passion for glory,
or for a woman.
It is perhaps the consequence
of this lack of eternity.
I feel spiteful for not being a god.
Let us forget all that, Jos Augusto.
Let us never return
to Vilar de Paraso.
Those two girls are snobs.
Their mother is a smug woman.
I bet that all of them would laugh
at everything that makes us cry.
They lock themselves in their rooms,
eat croquettes
and laugh about everything.
Listen! Friendship is the only thing
that Gods envy about humans.
Back in Oporto, on a theatre night.
Why don't you greet him?
I will not feed
the pride of that stupid man.
Do you think he loves Raquel?
He loves her if others covet her.
If she cheats on him,
he'll love her as long as they say:
- "What a beautiful woman!"
- We are all like that.
Love is but a crystallization of desire.
Jos Augusto is whimsical,
but not perfidious.
At the age of twenty-three,
nobody is yet a Marquis de Sade.
Wake up and think about it.
I think you are sleeping
in the shadow of your feuilletons.
Novels are harmful to many people,
but not their authors.
There are people who can't
find their own place in life
and then want to conquer it by force.
They think they are exceptional and
accuse others of not understanding them.
Jos Augusto is one of them.
He thinks he is D. Juan, or Hamlet.
His mother died before he could
understand death as a law of nature.
He sees it as an unforgivable vileness.
He has a passion for novels.
He reads up until 4 a.m.,
which is too little for a vocation
and too much for an aristocrat.
You envy him.
- I don't envy a man
who does not define himself
in his consciousness or experience.
When he looks stern,
he's an idiot.
When people think he is melancholic,
he's just a scoundrel.
And even when behaving as if he is
rich, he lies with the sole
determination that I recognize in him.
I advised him to
wed a rich woman
who writes poems
and offers him a cigar box
with the figure of Psyche
having the wings of a butterfly.
You are being a moralist...
the country deserves that from you
because it is more inclined to
commerce than to imagination.
Every retired poet
enrolls in an academy
and sells olive oil.
Our efforts to be delicate
are worth something.
Virtue will cost you much
if you're not an expert in it.
The sky wasn't made for the sparrows,
no matter how high they can fly.
In my opinion,
you are jealous of Jos Augusto.
If he deserves it or not,
that is another question.
Camilo and Jos Augusto returned
to Santa Cruz do Douro.
The great secret
is not the romantics.
Only their ignorance is romantic.
Let's take the other way.
I don't want to be seen.
This is not my place,
it's the cottier's.
You'll see. They will soon ask for
cigarettes and liquor.
That's what they ask for.
We don't know if that's what they want.
Those are the words.
But what are words?
They are a kind of law,
but nobody knows, in fact,
to what it applies.
- They are drunkards, nothing more.
- About visible things
one should never say "nothing more".
I need solitude and I need you.
And you need me
to help you create another heart.
From now on, I am in charge of you.
House of Vilar do Paraso.
When Jos Augusto
came to the Owens' house,
as he did everyday to see Maria,
he bumped into Camilo.
See what you did!
Don't be so fastidious, Fanny,
Jos Augusto didn't notice it.
"Or is it that the dryness of Spring
no longer shows you the flowers?"
Camilo had rented
a small house in Vilar de Paraso
which was close to Jos Augusto's.
"There are secrets among the living
that conjure shadows of the dead".
- Who are you writing to?
- Someone to whom I am a slave
and who must pay me
for this slavery with tears.
Who? Is it Fanny?
If someone loved Fanny, I'd kill him.
Come on...
Friendship is usually less bloodthirsty.
The landlady is a pious vareira;
by giving me this room
with the blue bunk bed, she's informing
me of her ritual procedures,
which are lugubrious,
related to the tragedies in the sea.
And she forgets to put oil in this lamp.
You didn't understand.
I meant to say that Fanny
is not a plaything for an ennuied man.
I also think that way.
She is there, in that house,
between vulgarity and spite,
like Daphne, transformed into a
laurel tree to escape god Apollo.
Don't you love her?
No. But I know what I'm rejecting.
You have no way of knowing it.
Am I some sort of handicap?
Do you think I cannot love Fanny?
Well, I'm going to arouse an
immense love in her.
A love censored by me,
excited by my own severeness.
To promise, to subdue, to give hope,
to feed desire
just to study
the consequences of nonsatiation.
To skim her forehead with a kiss
and then pass by without a touch.
To look at her,
with a deep and austere gaze.
To seed illusions and reap shame,
humiliation and guilt.
To create an angel
in the plenitude of martyrdom.
- Could you do it?
- To promise, to subdue, to give hope,
to feed desire just to study
the consequences of nonsatiation.
To skim her forehead with a kiss
and then pass by without a touch.
To look at her
with a deep and austere gaze.
To seed illusions and reap shame,
humilliation and guilt.
To create an angel
in the plenitude of martyrdom.
- Could you do it? - Wouldn't it be
more beautiful than procreation?
Isn't it to be truly fertile and
in greater harmony with the work of God?
- No talking about God here!
- Why not? He is in my genealogy.
Wait, Jos Augusto.
We promised to trust one another.
I risked my honor when I trusted you.
Virtue interests you
as a road to an easy triumph.
To me, only perfection means
something.
Perfection, even if in vice.
But regardless of any agreement
with others.
Do you have a soul, Jos Augusto?
I'm asking you if you have a soul.
The soul!
If I could cry over my wasted,
ridiculed youth,
then I would have a soul.
My ferocity
is what clings me to life.
Isn't this a soul as well?
- You are a child, Jos Augusto.
A child made man through disgrace.
Now I see that
there are no superficial men.
I used to laugh at them.
My talent could fool your
lazy stupidity ten times. And suddenly
one single aristocrat avenged you all.
You made me learn that imagination,
even of the pettiest bourgeois,
knows no law!
You are a portent,
but isn't it better to put you off
like I did with that lamp?
Ashes instead of desire.
Consciousness instead of passion.
Can this be a soul?
On the next day,
by providential chance,
Manuel Negro passed by his door.
Well, if it isn't Manuel Negro!
- Glad to see you.
- Cheers, my friend!
I'm going on a trip to Lisbon,
to visit my grandmother.
I remember her very well,
The Countess of Mag.
Exactly. And, of course,
I could not go without stopping by.
Here, in this stagnant place.
What about Coronel Owen's daughters?
Talent is corrupted
with amorous banalities,
in conversations with Fanny
on the church steps
and in strolls with her
along the beach.
I hold the silk umbrella
so that she can remove her shoes
and I carry them in my hand.
Ridiculous, these maneuvers
around a girl who is always
sad and sleepy.
And in whom I truly have no interest.
I'm going with you,
this must end.
I'm going with you.
The troops reached Vila Pouca
under a coat of thin snow.
Soldiers were hungry and were
wearing the white shoes
they stole from
S da Bandeira's uniform.
I entered a hostel and just as I
was making myself comfotable
with a fire made of old cork oak,
while waiting for a chicken and a ham
cooked in an iron pot,
Antnio Rangel,
MacDonnel's lieutenant,
called me from the door:
"Either you are a deserter or you are
coming with us right away.
Bring the chicken if you want to".
It would be wise to retreat, but I took
the chicken. I ate it with everyone
in the ridge's ravines,
which were covered with snow.
Only when we reached Saborosa
did we have a long break.
The General Staff took refuge
in the Pensalves Mansion.
Pieces of linen were falling over my
head, from a stretcher
where an old woman was spinning.
The wind hit the shutters
as if it were a human hand,
and I fell into a deep sleep
in the kitchen's warmth. At dawn,
the general ordered us to gather.
I was sixteen, and was
taken by the idea
to follow MacDonnell
until death.
I know the rest. Farewell, Negro.
Take the chicken, take MacDonnell
and whatever you want to.
And let me stay here.
Just tell me one thing:
Where was the general?
- What general?
- General Santiago,
That Spaniard that women
loved so much.
- MacDonnell had demoted him.
- Life is cruel!
I was jealous of him!
Men like those
rob us of our self-respect.
He could speak to women like
nobody else. What a tone!
What a look! What a moustache!
- He married a noble lady
who had been the lover
of Dom Miguel.
He was the only one who
sacrificed everything for the cause.
Look. There is the stupid
city of Coimbra.
I wish to have a honest notion
of my ignorance;
that's why I didn't graduate.
The revolution of "Maria da Fonte"
saved me.
Goodbye.
I miss my Spanish cloak
Listen, don't tell this
to anyone.
I don't like being
under the spotlight.
When he left Coimbra, he did not
come back to Vilar de Paraso.
He returned to Oporto. Until Jos
Augusto came to his door, and
not waiting for an answer,
entered the house with his horse.
I was thrown out
of Paraso.
And Eva... did she stay?
It was Eva who threw me out.
We had a serious conversation.
Tell me. I have ten minutes
for a serious conversation.
And then I'm going to write a
theatre chronicle, or even worse.
- Tell me.
- An unbearable intrigue
took over the Owen house.
Maria reproached me.
She accused me of being cold.
And the colonel, I think he wrote
from Lisbon demanding an explanation.
Well, the atmosphere
grew tense and full of suspicion.
- Was there any talk about marriage?
- No. And I wouldn't allow it.
You know how I am
when someone imposes conditions.
Even Maria never discussed
that subject with me.
- And Fanny?
- What about Fanny?
How does she see this? What does
she do in the middle of all that?
- Fanny is an angel.
- Of course she is.
But isn't your constant presence
a form of compromise?
I don't think so. In any case,
I never asked for Maria's hand.
If I had done it,
I would keep my word,
even if I had to shoot myself in
the head on the wedding day.
If there ever is any misunderstanding,
I will retreat, honestly.
That sounds wise.
Next day, Jos Augusto returned
and took his horse to the living room,
indifferent to the
landlady's reproaches.
Stop! Stop! This
is no place for a horse!
There is no better way to evaluate
the robustness of a house
than to park
a horse in the living room.
Damn you! I told you, this is
no place for a horse!
Horses grow nervous
when the floor
creaks or vibrates too much.
You can sleep peacefully.
This place is safe.
Here goes the deepest and most
well-kept secret of my life:
I love Fanny.
I am not surprised. That's why you
wanted to kill me some time ago.
- What about her? Does she love you?
- Necessarily.
No one falls in love like this
without knowing that he's loved.
You don't tell me!
I know one hundred and twenty
cases that are an exception,
to put it like that!
But how am I to enter
Paraso again?
Through the door of honor,
if that's the one by which you left.
The heart's honor cannot be
measured by a common pattern.
Try to understand the situation.
Maria believes she was abandoned;
she will believe she was betrayed.
Projects which are born in passion
widen the reach of our ideas.
I recall that you
told me this,
up there, in Lodeiro.
Think about it and decide.
- I can't give you any advice.
- I'll write to Fanny.
Camilo left Oporto.
Fanny replied to Jos Augusto,
treating him like a brother and
forbidding him to talk about love.
He cried and fell
into great despair.
When Camilo returned, he met
with a very distinct situation.
Jos Augusto was loved by Fanny.
Camilo had gone to visit
a friendly family,
in the Lugar da Rasa, in Gaia,
where he met Jos Augusto.
- Will you ask for her hand now?
- I will abduct her.
- That is an useless scandal.
- Useless or not, that's what I will do.
I had two alcoves in a boat
furnished.
I'll take her up the river to Lodeiro
and then we'll marry in my chapel.
I have nothing else to say.
- Reconsider it!
- It will happen today.
- What?
- The escape.
- Think it over, wait a few days.
- Impossible. She is waiting.
I will write to her;
she will understand.
She will understand.
- Don't write to her, it's too late.
Then go.
Your youth ends here.
Within one hour you will be
the most unfortunate of men.
Wait! Save yourself,
there's still time.
Do not worry.
Men are never unhappy.
What is a man, for God's sake?
What is a man?
The abduction.
- Are you hurt?
- No, no, I'm fine.
- Where are we?
- I don't know, I don't know.
Let me take some rest here.
We should continue.
Continue?
We're lost.
I don't know where the river is,
nor the road.
- Do you regret this, Fanny?
- No, I don't.
We will continue when there is light.
Soon the day will break.
These are your letters.
Wait, Jos Augusto.
Let's see if this horse
also flees.
It's the fisherwomen.
I will ask them where we are.
It frightens him that people will notice
that he's in a difficult situation.
This is Vilar de Andorinho.
Nearby is the Soeime farmstead,
owned by Jos de Melo.
I will call for help.
- Don't leave me here.
- I won't.
But you can't walk
much further.
Don't leave me alone
Paddle.
There is land.
Paddle.
There is land.
Paddle.
Paddle.
What is a honest person?
Paddle.
- Did I sleep?
- Just a little.
Paddle.
Paddle.
There is land.
Paddle.
He'll kill you, Fanny.
He'll kill you.
Your love is made of things
that don't belong to you.
It is made of my desire, my joy,
my sorrow.
I have given you a soul and, with it,
everything that a soul can do.
I can wrap my soul in my shadow
and take it with me.
What will become of you two then?
Do you think you are a god?
No, I'm not a god. I'm ugly, scrawny
and my eyes are diseased.
Nor do I need anything
from you two.
I exist spontaneously.
Life does not disconcert me,
nor does it delude or terrify me.
And Jos Augusto?
Jos Augusto is nothing
but a vulgar servant.
- Let me out.
- No, no, wait.
He is a servant and nothing more.
A servant who bends
before any semblance
of prestige.
He is a servant of pretty words,
pretty deeds,
and pretty silly things.
Your love
is a pretty silly thing
only for as long as
I am with you.
After that, it will be
just a silly thing.
Get out of my sight,
you envious and evil man.
Now I know why honest people
hate you.
What are these honest people,
after all?
They are a consequence.
So goodbye, my consequence,
beautiful woman of Paraso.
Paddle.
There's land.
Paddle.
The arrival at Lodeiro had
the expectable discretion.
Fanny at once retreated to the old
room of Jos Augusto's mother.
Next day...
Don't go out. Take a rest.
Give your orders. Feel at home.
I'm going out and coming at night.
I won't be near you very often.
Things must go
in the proper manner.
We're getting married
in a short while.
I must write to my mother.
And my father too.
Love me, and do whatever
you want.
Are you coming back very late?
What did you say, Fanny?
- And my little horse?
- Everything is in order, master.
A fine little animal you have here.
You are the portrait of
master Jos Augusto's mother.
Madam had very beautiful dresses.
Had...
Don't bother,
I will take care of that.
Madam.
Master Jos Augusto
has sent you a note.
To tell you not wait for him
because he's not coming for dinner.
Very well, Clotilde.
What shall I serve?
I have eels with brown gravy.
But your Excellency doesn't like it.
- Anything is fine.
Tea and bread will be enough.
- But Madam will starve.
Don't bother, Clotilde,
I'll be fine.
Come in.
Master Jos Augusto
left you this note.
He's gone to Oporto.
Has he left yet?
Master Jos Augusto?
He has left one hour ago.
- Who has gone with him?
- Marques, who else?
A chaplain with no miter,
a squire with no duty.
Some men are lucky,
others are patient.
D. Josefa ordered me to tell you
that she'll come to visit you,
Madam.
I lent him two towels and I never
saw them again. Men's houses..!
They were made of damask linen.
I'll be very sorry if they are lost.
Jos Augusto, when is he coming?
In five days.
I don't know.
He didn't tell me.
Were it not for men and their ways,
everything would be much better.
Tell me something about
your life in Paraso.
Well...
I'd tender my flowers and go for
a walk by the end of the day.
I'd sit on the church steps
and make drawings of the fields;
an irrigation ditch covered with vines
and a mare with a foal on the side.
Children would sometimes come
to see the drawings. They'd laugh,
as if there was something magical
about it. The sea wind would
blow the drawings away
and children would run to grab them.
Children here are rude.
All they do is begging.
This is a forsaken breed.
- Why?
Their fathers are drunkards. What will
they learn but bad words
and how to steal rabbits from the
warren? They are raised like savages
and then one day
they kill a priest, a friend,
or the mother of their
own sons.
- Kill?
- What do you think, Fanny?
This is not Paraso, nor a greenery
for tuberous begonias.
This is the countryside, with
rude, jealous and miserable people.
They are lazy and beg like blind men.
But they say it's even worse in Douro.
They only work
if the foreman threatens them.
They throw their food onto the floor
if they think it's cold or salty.
They don't attend church.
I don't even know if they feel pain.
They die like animals in a stable,
on a bundle of straw.
Old women beg till they are
one hundred years old.
I met one who came walking from
Marco every Friday.
She talked about the time
when she was a young girl.
Do you know what she talked about?
About her first romance, when she
was twelve. It was the most beautiful
thing that ever happened to her.
Poor woman.
This girl knows nothing about life.
It is bad marriage.
Things you learn too late won't bring
you any experience, only unhappiness.
- Do you want to stay over for dinner?
- No. I must go.
Maybe some other day.
Goodbye, my daughter. If it were
not for men, and their ways,
the world wouldn't be as it is.
Hugo Owen is responsible for
organizing my wedding with Fanny,
but he refused to
meet me.
It seems to me that everybody
has calmed down now.
Only you know the secret
of my arrival in Oporto.
You know, Jos Augusto, it is bad
to be a scoundrel twice.
I know a few stories about
that woman when she was single.
Of the time when she was married,
I hope you'll tell me.
I hope you laugh
and love her.
When it comes to love,
being serious is a great misfortune.
Your friend Camilo said it,
a merchant of words
whom we both despise.
- You are an old child, Raquel.
And I love you.
You are the only woman that I miss.
And missing someone is love.
You have a silly smile
and you love me.
You have a farmer's moustache
and you love me.
I thought you only had three passions:
"Reading Byron,
marrying a rich lady
and living in Terreiro do Pao".
Me, a minister?
I may be eccentric,
but I'm not out-fashioned.
- What they say
is that you are ruined and that you
would marry a rich widow
even if her dowry included her cook,
her old dog,
and her first husband's portraits.
But now you abduct an English woman
who writes poetry
and is nothing more than well-off,
the worst situation
for a witted woman.
- Why?
- Come on... Why?
Mediocrity is the religion
of jurists and their wives.
Balzac said: "She had wits, although
her husband was a jurist".
You're waging war
against me, Raquel.
And Balzac didn't say "jurist";
he said "notary".
"She was faithful to him,
although she was a notary's wife".
What memory you have,
Jos Augusto!
Romantics have
an incredible memory.
I'm going to the Browne's house.
They are original,
but not typical. You are, from now on,
a typical man.
Your only salvation is to go insane.
Every house will then
receive you again,
and people will admire you once more.
Colonel Owen will give you his
daughter, but without a dowry.
Her mother offers a few diamonds,
as a simple souvenir.
I don't need souvenirs.
These people annoy me.
They think I want their daughter
for their money and their name.
- I don't want anything from those
spies. - Spies? Mind your tongue.
Wasn't Owen the counselor of Dom Pedro?
During the Oporto siege,
he used to visit the King at 11 p.m.
The king was coughing up blood,
he was already sick. But he listened to
Owen's words, it is known.
Political hatred created
those images.
Hatred is a boat, and those
who paddle it remain nameless.
- There is too much hatred.
- Not enough.
If it were enough we wouldn't
endure this life without glory,
without future,
without nothing.
- Where is Camilo?
- He's around. He writes a lot.
He flirts with the nuns with
an unbelievable conviction.
He is a Luther without a doctrine
Come have dinner today.
- Come have dinner today?
- Look, it seems that he's here.
- I've heard much about you lately.
- Good or bad?
When people talk about us
it's always bad.
When it's good,
they speak low and not openly.
- What do they say of me in Oporto?
- What they said of Socrates in Athens.
That you are vain and very ugly.
Listen, do you want to
join me for lunch tomorrow?
- I must write an article.
- Does the article pay your lunch?
Not with partridges and oysters, no.
Virtue is like that:
give in quickly to atone earlier.
Would you like to have a calessino
like this one?
Jos Augusto, would you like to
have a calessino like this one?
They make them here now.
I would. I'll think about it.
Don't miss lunch tomorrow.
You were the angel
whom I begged God to
send and save me.
Not a very recommendable place
for a lonesome man like you.
Normally a lonesome man is someone
who likes being alone,
with many people around.
- Solitude, the Oporto way,
is usually like that.
Oh, my friend Jos Augusto.
Let's joke around!
I'm tired of serious conversations.
Just yesterday I heard a lady
quoting a book
on the harvesting of rice.
- Do you have fun with those things?
- I don't have fun.
The hatred of success
has soaked my spirit.
I lost the humor
of the anonymous genius.
When they read my articles,
there are people who say:
"This poor devil is not a bad writer".
And you?
- I'm going to get married.
There's still time,
Jos Augusto, don't get married.
I love her, she's in love,
and society demands it from me.
Society demands that you jump into
the river, that you drink vinegar.
It demands you a fraudulent love
and the importance of
being the hero of a mediocre romance.
Is that what you want?
Is that what you want?
What I feel
is perfect love, Camilo.
Beyond perfection
there is tedium.
Or else, if made perfect,
it vanishes completely.
Don't get married.
You're going to kill her.
Kill her?
But I love her!
You love with pride. You only love
the luxury of loving, nothing more.
Fanny's love and the friendship
of a literati like me...
A man who is rich
at the age of twenty-five cannot
have greater
ambitions than these.
The only thing than cannot be greater
is your malice.
It surpasses the reputation
you already had.
You're wrong.
It can be much greater.
Do you know who I am, Camilo?
I could just put you out of here
with a good whipping right now.
I know who you are...
You are a poor devil.
You know how to say it all with few
words. That's good, because
what I really can't stand is those
moralizing feuilletons of yours.
Tonight I must
pick Raquel at the theatre.
If you wish to wait for me at the
Guichard, we can continue this talk.
"These are not
railroad stock shares
for those are not yet
in the catalogue of utopias.
It is just petty literature, to keep you
busy on your honey moon. Camilo".
I shall read them.
Fanny!
- Can't you forgive me?
- I can. What I can't do is love you.
I could love you much,
but I don't.
Love is our second creator.
You had no love for me.
You don't have
enough seduction for me,
nor am I hypocritical
enough for you.
But you will forget me.
If there is a person who can make
me forget you, I shall hate that person.
Were those letters that bad?
I only know that you complained about
me to a stranger.
You said I don't understand you.
I offer you
a brother's name, Fanny.
Your sister, your daughter,
your friend.
your wife, your slave
if you want it.
I swear that you love me and that the
world is a paradise. Man is good,
God is merciful, I am your equal,
soul of your soul, blood of your blood.
- No, I'm nothing for you.
- Your letters have been
circulating among my friends.
They can be copied
and be printed in the newspapers
like a vulgar feuilleton,
word by word.
To whom did you write those letters?
I love you, Jos Augusto.
I love you the way God loves sinners.
You need to be loved that way.
Vicente! Vicente!
From now on, from now on,
I want you to bring me
lunch and dinner!
Women annoy me!
You wretch!
I had seen this coming.
Madam, do not worry.
The hearts of men
are made of garlic vine.
Even dead they don't deserve our tears.
Is there something you need?
No, nothing. Thank you.
I'll be in my room.
- Good night.
- Good night, Madam.
Camilo had a new room
in the Quinta do Pinheiro.
Manuel Negro, who had gone visiting
him, thought that he didn't look well...
Have you read Manon Lescault?
Do you know who Tiberge was?
Such was the man that I lost.
I was ungrateful to him.
But without any infamy.
- Certainly, certainly.
But you can hardly stand on your feet.
- Leave me. He doesn't love her.
- It's a mistake.
- Jos Augusto?
What is not a mistake?
Within nine months,
and by mistake,
a small child will be born and
it will continue the line
of mistakes, for eternity.
Within nine moths
death will be the midwife
of what we create in our heart.
I tell you: I'd give my talent
to the first beggar
who'd come and say:
"She loves you".
Did you love Fanny?
What else is new?!
Find consolation in a lock of her hair.
"Little does he know about sadness,
he who tells a sad man to cheer up".
The deepest sorrows
grow with consolation.
To assuage them
sounds like an offense.
How were you taken by such a passion?
I never thought Fanny interested you,
or that she looked at you.
I know you.
Satire will overcome tragedy,
and you can save yourself.
- I can save myself,
but through the roads of hell.
which are not that bad.
I suppose they are paved with
absurdity, betrayal, slander.
They're bad for you, Negro,
for you hate to be on the spotlight.
Go away. I must write a chronicle.
- I can see you're cured. - I am dead!
But what difference does it make?
Jos Augusto and Fanny
went visiting Raimundo and Josefa
in the Casa da Capela.
I will consult my friends
to see if they approve of my wedding
after the episode with the letters.
I've written to Jos de Melo
to gather my closest friends
and debate this matter of honor.
Are you insane, my brother?
Who can be a judge of that,
but for your own consciousness?
Do not worry.
My heart tells me that we
will never be strangers.
Gentlemen.
You all know the facts
that brought me ill fame.
I have taken Fanny Owen from her
house and given her my own.
Now I came to know
of some letters
that this child wrote
to another man
when compromise had already
been declared between us.
Shall I keep my word
and get married?
In this case bereft of logic,
logic orders you to marry.
- I loved Fanny but not anymore.
- A wedding out of mercy
may tempt you as a new emotion,
but it will bore you tomorrow.
You came to investigate
Fanny's past
so that you can relinquish
your responsibility in a story
that lost the merits of novelty.
I believe that all this is unwise.
If you don't marry, maybe Fanny
will meet with another love
who can make her forget
the shame of the first one.
I only regret that
our character as men
makes our affections
so strong
and that we can't withdraw our heart
as fast as the hand
we offer to a friend.
I'm going to marry Fanny,
and I don't love her.
My consciousness is enlightened,
but it loses me.
The best way for an aristocrat
to enlighten something
is to be hung on a street lamp!
Read Byron, eleventh stanza,
twenty-eighth verse of "D. Juan".
Represented by an attorney, Fanny's
family didn't attend the wedding
in the Church of Santo Ildefonso.
Mr. Jos Augusto
Pinto de Magalhes,
here represented by his legal
attorney, Marcelino de Matos,
do you take Francisca Owen,
here represented
by her legal attorney Jos de Melo
e Silveira, as your lawful wife,
as per the rites of the Holy
Church?
I do.
Miss Francisca Owen,
here represented
by her legal attorney,
Jos de Melo e Silveira,
do you take Jos Augusto
Pinto de Magalhes,
here represented by his
legal attorney, Marcelino de Matos,
as your lawful husband, as per
the rites of the Holy Church?
I do.
It rains. The newlyweds
will be happy.
To whom did Fanny write
those cursed letters?
To a Spaniard, it is said.
Calumny needs imagination
to make itself forgivable.
Camilo's hand is all over this.
A Spaniard!
This is obviously his idea.
Words slide through
the populace's memory
like water through tiles:
they leave more filth than they clean.
That same day, in the Casa da
Capela in Santa Cruz do Douro.
Madam, the master has ordered me
to tell me that he's gone to Oporto,
and that you should not wait for him.
Very well.
You can go to sleep.
- Goodnight, Madam.
- Goodnight, Franzina.
Fanny often talked
with a relative of her mother,
from the Rocha Pinto family.
Animals are happier;
their instinct never lies to them.
With us, when instinct
approaches us,
all the duties, conveniences,
and even worse things emerge.
You will be very happy. This is just
a bad phase of your marriage.
- All weddings are like that.
- Be it, but...
What sort of consolation is that for
me? I don't want any consolation.
I want to die
and I will eventually die.
I have a destiny to fulfill
and I will fulfill that destiny.
You can't live by feelings only, Fanny.
No, I can't.
That thing they call poetry is madness.
What is real is energy, matter,
blood and body.
Nothing will remind him of me
if he does not feel me.
I wanted to conquer him, tie him to me,
steal him from everything, even himself.
To rob him from the sorrows
which are his own.
From the cupidity that his heart feels
for all that is himself.
I'd offer him, in exchange,
a blazing and boundless love.
If I don't see him today, I'll die.
Fanny, Fanny.
Unhappiness is a rare gift!
Wait.
It's them, and I don't feel any joy.
What an absurd heart!
When I feel less distant from him,
I value my love less.
The men of the house have reached.
Good afternoon.
When men reach home
even green firewood burns.
How's the weather outside?
We know it's windy,
it comes from the sea.
They're not listening.
I could confess a crime right now
and I wouldn't have
neither a judge nor an executioner.
Passion turns sins
into matters of little importance.
What a beautiful gaze!
If angels are pure intelligence
they must gaze like this.
Men and women!
I wish I were
a tree by the road,
instead of the good wife
and Mr. husband.
Back in the Lodeiro house.
Sister, I can see you are very tired.
You must take care of yourself.
You know, sister, this stubborn
attitude from my father,
of forbidding me to write
to my beloved ones,
especially my mother,
makes me sad.
Just today I received
one of my own letters back.
Letters are returned,
unopened.
It is Maria who sends them back,
with her handwriting.
You shuold dismiss Franzine.
- Why? - She behaves in
a very inconvenient manner.
Sister, don't you see how she stares
at Jos Augusto?
- What's wrong with that?
- Don't say I didn't warn you.
Don't stand so close to me.
You stink!
Feeling better, Franzina?
God help you, my daughter.
You are so young.
Never think about anything
with your heart is sealed and unhappy.
Oh, my dear, my dear!
One day, Fanny saw a letter
in the hands of Jos Augusto
and recognized Maria's handwriting.
No, but give me that letter.
What's wrong?
It is a letter like any other letter.
- No letter is like any other.
Some are pigeons, others are crows.
I know who wrote that letter.
To know so much mortifies a person.
Fanny!
My Fanny!
The goddess of love
usually enjoys malice.
The remedy for malice is
to let go... to suffer.
Wherever I go I leave the imprint
of a crime. Damn it!
We are not unhappy, are we?
We ferociously live our happiness,
that is the case.
Do you love another?
If you do,
I'm her friend.
I will make a shawl for her
to use it the theatre, by your side.
No, I don't want to do that.
It would have to be
drawn with blood
and pierced with needles,
taken from my heart.
Do I bring you that much harm?
Why don't you go out like you used
to do when you went to the river?
That one over there.
It's a small river, not a big one.
You used to say it was made
of your tears.
- That was so long ago, Fanny.
- Then take your horse to the hill,
through the pine grove,
from where, if you scream,
the wind carries your voice
to the sea.
Go! When you're far away,
my heart has only room for your return.
Jealousy disappears
like a dog we throws stones at,
and despair hides
with shame.
I'll wait for you,
and that's all that matters to me.
Fanny, men do not wish
to be loved like that.
They were not made for a love
like that. It humiliates us.
- Whose letter is that?
- The letter? You obstinate woman!
Angel of perils and malice,
that's what you are.
Is that the reason why I live like this,
imprisoned and surveilled?
Is that why behind every door
I find a spy?
They know if I'm sad,
If I'm happy.
If I eat meat
or decline wine.
They know all,
and they tell all.
To whom? To whom?
In this house Camilo has
servants who are more his than yours.
He pays them to know how we live.
Tomorrow he will say that you beat me,
and the entire Oporto will know it.
Take that letter, and let it burn
the air that you have in your chest,
the same air with which
you utter such hateful words.
It was Fanny who had the idea
to go to Bom Jesus do Monte
to spend a season.
Camilo went there to visit them.
- What a surprise! You look much better.
- I am not.
There's no cure for heart matters. Only
different stages of the same disease.
What are you reading, Fanny?
Byron, Jos Augusto's favorite reading.
Listen:
"When you've never been
and you will never be lovers,
Earth offers absolutely
no friendship compared
to a woman's.
Byron is the gospel of the egotists.
"She loved her husband, or, at least,
she believed to love him.
But this love demanded her
an effort;
A painful obligation!
She had no reason
to complain, or reproach him
no questions
or domestic strives.
This was an exemplary union,
serene and noble, yet cold".
Don Juan and that chaste Adelina.
"This friendship that man feels for man,
she was capable of that
like no other woman has been before.
like no other woman
had been before"
Fanny!
What's happening to me is terrible.
"No doubt that here,
much like with the laws of blood,
the secret influence of sex
will exert its innocent power".
Was it him who convinced you
of such a monstrosity?
- Was it him who convinced you?
- Not at all.
A woman is capable of everything
when a foot is pressing her heart.
- It was you who told me that.
- You're lost, Fanny.
I now know a demon
called stubbornness.
Yawning has become
my most authentic emotion.
I learnt that we can use
more liveliness in affections
when we are distant
from passions.
Everybody
should know that.
It should be taught
in schools.
No one can reproach me
for what I feel.
Camilo went visiting Manuel Negrao
in the Quinta do Mosteiro.
Fanny is dead!
I've seen her not long ago.
She has the putrid stench of a corpse,
and those eyes that you knew
are translucent like the eyes of an owl.
Translucent...
- You exaggerate! - I don't. And that
fills my heart with grief.
Nobody there
is perfectly sane.
They all cry
and fell into deep sorrow.
Mortified lives
have a reward.
They end with a smile,
like you say.
But I could have ended, with
a smile, when I was sixteen,
quite far from a mortified life.
- You would die like a hero,
which is the only way
to pay all our debts.
Rangel was full of debts,
and that's why he gave his life
side by side with MacDonnell.
- It's possible.
"Miguelism" was not about D. Miguel.
It was about us, the inaccomplishable.
When Jos Augusto
came with Fanny to Oporto,
and stayed in the Barths Hotel,
Camilo was already reluctant
to visit them.
If you are to cry like that,
I wish you hadn't recognized me.
What's wrong, Fanny?
What is the reason
for your suffering?
Nobody tells me anything.
Nothing serious. It's a pain, here,
underneath the left kidney.
And it had reached the chest.
I had a chest ailment as a child,
and I used to cough a lot.
I'd take poppy syrup at night,
to soothe me.
She is very weak.
We are going to Madeira,
to spend a season.
Would you like to come?
They never left continental land.
But Jos Augusto's house
in Vilar de Paraso
was still furnished.
Upon returning to the Lodeiro house,
Fanny wasn't feeling well
and so they stayed there. Dona Maria
Rita came to visit her daughter.
Fanny, Maria is going
to get married.
What dress will she wear?
Mine will be of white satin.
I want my night to be so brilliant
as to dispel darkness.
Don't cry. Oh, don't listen to me,
and don't cry!
The spirit of a sick woman
is called presumption.
- Isn't there a man who can love me?
- He loves you, Fanny. Very much.
Yet you are not
ordinary people.
Fire burns in the innermost
of vulgar things.
Look, Jos Augusto.
I started on the wrong track, but it
doesn't matter. I will be back.
Jos Augusto.
Son!
What is an ordinary person?
Tell me, Jos Augusto.
Once I walked down a street,
one of those nobody talks about.
At least,
in the presence of girls.
I walked by,
by mistake.
To take the shortest cut.
Because something was dragging me there.
And I saw it.
Sitting by the door of their houses,
that looked like dovecotes.
I saw them, vulgar women.
On their skins,
coarse levantine gowns
with small bouquets
of wild pansies.
And so many bowknots, ribbons,
fringed cords and plumes
that they looked like
large cradles
prepared to accommodate a child,
a princes' son.
They were coarse. They were
teaching lust,
the coarse kindred of eternity.
I love you. I wish to die,
before the mystery of our love
becomes a banal sin.
Tell Camilo that my heart grieves
for being unable to love him.
If I could be happy with you,
I would always see a dark cloud
hovering over that happiness.
It would be his sadness.
I believe that the heat of my passion
would make you go
beyond the limits of pleasure.
I want to conquer you,
Jos Augusto.
To possess you, steal you
from everyone else
and yourself.
From your genius,
from your genius.
I told you about my star.
But who do you see in that star?
Surrender will be easy.
You know, Jos Augusto?
I no longer suffer
with those who suffer.
Your disgrace
does not stir me anymore.
The only thing I miss is my heart,
which I lost.
Jos Augusto isn't here, Fanny.
It's the doctor,
doctor Joaquim Ferreira.
Memory has gone with the soul.
It seems that
there is something...
How were the shoes she was
wearing when ran off with me?
How were they? Of goat-skin?
With a silken lace? Of cotton?
If we drop some
holy wax over her heart,
she will awake. But no one
wants to summon the dead.
- I'm to blame for much of this.
- No, that's not true.
She had a propensity; she was
anemic since childhood.
She was sick at the age of 12.
I think she had a bruised lung
since then.
- If I could be sure!
I wouldn't feel this weight, this
remorse, this darkness.
- But you can't vouch for that.
- Only with the autopsy.
In any case, a medical report.
I'd rather see you distressed
than impatient.
There is some sort of offense
that is burning your heart.
Three days ago I asked Fanny
to see the diary she was writing.
The pages had been torn.
Her mystery wasn't there anymore.
I can't even imagine
what made her suffer so much
It is something that shall
remain obscure forever.
Nevertheless, he trusted
doctor Joaquim Ferreira
in his famous testimony
about Fanny's virginity,
something that Camilo himself
asks him to verify.
The autopsy episode
suggests that Jos Augusto
wanted to know for sure
if Fanny had had a past.
- Do I frighten you, girl?
- No, sir.
It's just that it affects me
to enter this place.
It is a heart,
a stagnant muscle,
like a stopped clock.
It didn't affect you when
you could feel it beating in her chest,
in her pulse. Then,
yes, it was frightening.
Amazing things came out of it:
the destiny of a man,
and even of others.
The absolute and vengeful truth
was also produced there.
And even God, on his throne,
built Himself inside of it,
like an engineering work,
a bridge or a sidewalk.
Now look at it.
It's clean, harmless,
odorless and fireless,
with nothing to bring disorder
into the world.
Let me go, Mr. Jos Augusto.
Did you like her?
She was a good woman.
But you didn't love her.
She was an angel but you didn't love
her. She had virtues, talents,
marvelous beauty.
But all that was useless for you.
No, don't rush.
Wait here.
What makes us love someone?
We are broken in pieces,
searching for our bodies,
which are scattered
all over the world.
The womb that wants
to forget sin screams;
the kidney that wants
to cling to the right-side rib moans.
And the heart, in a thousand pieces,
enters the most miserable alleys
and asks for the whereabouts
of the blood of which it is made.
- Do I frighten you, girl?
- No, sir.
It's just that it affects me
to enter this place.
It is a heart,
a stagnant muscle,
like a stopped clock.
It didn't affect you when
you could feel it beating in her chest,
in her pulse. Then,
yes, it was frightening.
Amazing things came out of it:
the destiny of a man,
and even of others.
The absolute and vengeful truth
was also produced there.
And even God, on his throne,
built Himself inside of it,
like an engineering work,
a bridge or a sidewalk.
Now look at it.
It's clean, harmless
odorless and fireless,
with nothing to bring disorder
into the world.
Let me go, Mr. Jos Augusto.
Did you like her?
- She was a good woman.
- But you didn't love her.
She was an angel, but you didn't love
her. She had virtues, talents,
marvelous beauty.
But all that was useless for you.
No, don't rush.
Wait here.
What makes us love someone?
We are broken in pieces,
searching for our bodies,
which are scattered
all over the world.
The womb that wants
to forget sin screams;
the kidney that wants
to cling to the right-side rib moans.
And the heart, in one thousand pieces,
enters the most miserable alleys
and asks for the whereabouts
of the blood of which it is made.
It's good to know
that I don't make you suffer;
that's what freedom is about.
I am very impressed with
a black butterfly
that has been flying
around me all night.
What can it be?
What can it be?
In days of great sadness,
those in which I felt your absence,
this house was full of
white butterflies.
That apparition
was pleasing to the heart.
Can you hear it?
Can you hear it?
It's our master.
So? If he feels like it, why shouldn't
he take a stroll in the early morning?
People say that he looks like a
werewolf, his eyes like embers
and his horse's feet
sparking fire in the stones.
Let them talk.
Dear Raimundo,
I got your letter,
which seized me thoroughly.
In this situation there is nothing
that will ease the pain.
I believe that this wound
will never heal; only in the grave.
Then, yes, for the idea of going
where that angel of virtue has gone
will be pleasing to me.
I've been living in solitude.
The parish rector sometimes comes
to keep me company,
and I go on trying to fool my sorrow.
But this illusion won't last.
All this did not happen in vain,
because from now on
life will be a grave burden.
I intend to go to Lisbon, by land,
but I will inform you before I leave;
I shall stay for the whole month.
As you see,
the departure in not that painful.
How will I live on this year
remembering the previous year?
And how could I forget?
The world is like that,
life carries such changes,
but I've been too unhappy.
Goodbye. Keep sending news
and thank your wife
for her kind letter.
I apologize for not replying, but the
mailman's hurry and my condition
haven't allowed me to.
I will always be your brother
and friend,
Jos Augusto.
Vilar de Paraso, 12/8/54
My dear sister, I'm leaving today
to Lisbon on the Cysne.
My body and soul ache.
Give my regards to Raimundo,
and tell him that I expect to see him
in Lisbon. I offer you this portrait
of me and your friend.
I cannot be a friend but of those
who respect
the memory of that angel.
I will write as soon as I arrive.
As for the other portrait, I ask you
to put in the visiting hall,
where it used to be.
Your grateful friend,
Jos Augusto
Oporto, 9/9/54
Jos Augusto searched
for Hugo Owen
in the hotel where he was settled
in Lisbon,
hoping to rummage
through Fanny's past.
And since I am
one of those men
to whom love
is a source of life,
I have the right to a better
knowledge of Fanny's past.
Don't haunt me
with Fanny's memory.
Your sense of humanity
does not coincide with mine.
You are a perfect example
of the chaotic state of society.
Full of noble principles
but without the spirit to apply them.
Sensibility and
selfishness that feigns it.
Pompous speeches
and miserable experience.
Some organizations are so susceptible
that it would be difficult to believe
in their truth.
If I were to ask myself who I am,
I would be in great difficulty.
I am not to be believed;
I cannot go any further than this.
Yet this is not about me now,
but about Fanny and her mystery.
Let silence fall over
that insane story that was her life,
my sister's life with you,
and perhaps it can still.
be of some use.
Fanny's mystery, you say!
If indeed there was a mystery,
let it reach a ripe age.
Maybe it will a fecund subject,
many years from now.
It is not for us to discover it.
Give me exact details
of all that happened.
- You already know that he's dead.
- Dead? Who?
Another poet? They die by the
bunches at this time of the year.
The soul's dysentery
grabs them, and farewell.
Let me listen, Vieira de Castro
A friend's death
is a serious matter.
There are only two serious things:
honor and money.
Death is nothing but a moral accident.
Bring us brandy.
A provoked accident, Vieira de Castro.
The fact is that his death
was suspicious.
Jos de Melo wrote to Raimundo
asking for a clarification
on the matter.
He thinks, and we all think,
that there was something
very uncanny about it.
Why was Fanny's brother
in the same hotel
where Jos Augusto died?
All I know is that Jos Augusto
represents society,
exactly as we find it today.
Talent without common-sense,
savagery blended with culture,
sensibility and
the most entrenched egotism.
I think he didn't want to kill himself.
He took a little opium to ease
that disquiet he carried all the time.
And the dose, it seems,
was not even larger than the one
he used on other occasions.
But the outcome was fatal.
The outcome of all things
in the world is always fatal.
Had he survived,
that too would be fatal.
Nothing corrupts fatality.
If fatality were a woman,
I would marry her.
If I ever write about this case,
I will say he died of a brain fever.
It is more elegant,
and the readers like it.
Listen!
Bring more brandy.
for Karagarga.
Kindly sponsored by
Dudu & Stiller.