Select a Portuguese sentence to reveal its English support.
Tap a Portuguese sentence to reveal its English support; tap it again or tap outside to close it.
With a keyboard, focus or activate a sentence. Press Escape to dismiss its English support.
My name is Teodoro, and I was a copyist at the Ministry of the Realm. At that time, I lived at number 106, Travessa da Conceição, in Lisbon. The boarding house belonged to D. Augusta, the widow of Major Marques. My companions were Cabrita and Lieutenant Couceiro. Cabrita worked in the central district administration and was very thin. Couceiro was strong and exuberant, and he played the French guitar.
My life was calm and well organised. During the week, I copied official phrases in a fine cursive hand. 'I have the honour of informing Your Excellency...' I would write. On Sundays, I rested on the dining-room sofa. On Mass days, D. Augusta removed Couceiro's dandruff with egg white. The heat, the bells, the doves and the flies made the afternoon slow. I called D. Augusta an angel, and she laughed. D. Augusta called me Enguiço.
They gave me that name because I was thin, superstitious, fearful and hunchbacked. I always entered with my right foot first and trembled when I saw rats. Beside my bed, I kept an image of Our Lady of Sorrows that had belonged to my mother. My hunch came from so many years of bowing before professors and directors-general. That obedient posture maintained discipline and gave me peace. It also guaranteed me some clean linen and twenty thousand réis a month.
However, I was ambitious. I did not want to rule peoples from a throne. I wanted to dine at the Hotel Central and drink champagne. I wanted to shake the delicate hands of viscountesses. And I wanted to fall asleep on Venus's breast twice a week. The well-dressed young men going to São Carlos made me sigh. The carriages full of Andalusian women on their way to the bullfight hurt me too. My salary and my bent body kept me away from those pleasures.
Even so, I did not consider myself a man with no place in society. A humble life also had pleasant moments. I liked reading the Diário de Notícias over a grilled steak. In the afternoon, I sat on the free benches of the Passeio; at night, I listened to discussions in the Martinho café. I said that I was not very unhappy because I had no imagination. I called myself practical and desired only real and attainable things. Every night, I asked Our Lady of Sorrows for happiness. I also bought lottery shares to hasten that happiness.
I could not write poems to escape the boredom of work. After paying for my room and tobacco, I had no money for a vice either. So I bought old, unmatched books at the Feira da Ladra. At night, I read those volumes in my room. I liked the old type, the yellow paper and the solemn covers. Those books gave me the peace of an old convent at the end of the day. One night, years ago, I began reading in my room. The old folio lay open at the chapter 'Brecha das Almas', and I was beginning to fall asleep.
Suddenly, a passage shone on the page like a gold medal. 'In the depths of China there is a Mandarin richer than all kings,' the book said. 'You do not know that man's name, face or clothing.' 'To receive the whole fortune, you need only ring a bell beside you.' 'The Mandarin will sigh far away, in Mongolia, and die.' 'Then you will have more gold than a miser can dream of.' 'You, mortal man who reads me, will you ring the bell?'
I stopped before the page, frightened and deeply disturbed. The question seemed like a joke, but it would not leave me in peace. The other lines seemed to flee, and only the question remained. In a modern book, I would have closed the cover and forgotten the vision. That old folio, however, seemed full of magic. A supernatural force was drawing me away from reality and reason. I imagined an old Mandarin dying without pain and a mountain of gold at my feet. Then I saw a real bell on top of my French dictionary.
From the other side of the table, a voice told me to ring and be strong. I raised the green lampshade and saw a man sitting there quite calmly. He was stout and dressed in black, with gloves, a top hat and an umbrella. There was nothing fantastical about him. He looked like a modern, ordinary middle-class man. But he had an eagle's nose, a hard mouth and eyes like gunshots. Suddenly, I thought that he might be the Devil. At once my reason rejected that idea.
I had never believed in the Devil or in God. I never said so in public, so as not to displease the authorities. To me, Heaven and Hell were social ideas for poor people. I belonged to the middle class. It was true that I prayed to Our Lady of Sorrows. I had previously asked favours of a professor and a member of parliament. In the same way, I wanted divine protection from illness, knives and accidents. A prudent man, I thought, should flatter the powerful on Earth and in Paradise. So I asked the visitor whether he truly advised me to ring.
The visitor replied that twenty thousand réis a month was a social disgrace. He spoke of rare wines costing ten or eleven thousand réis a bottle. He spoke of smooth carriages and houses more comfortable than Heaven. Then he spoke of women as if they were the most expensive luxury. He described lace, silks, jewels, hair, arms and breasts. He said that men's hands could touch those soft things if the men paid. The visitor asked me to admit that money could buy women, and I blushed. - Yes.
The visitor asked what I thought of one hundred and five or one hundred and six thousand contos. He called that fortune merely a beginning in the conquest of happiness. According to him, the old Mandarin was rich, ill, decrepit and useless. The visitor said that a dead man's matter could return as a flower or cabbage. He said that a murderer could kill a politician and give a flower to a poor seamstress. - The murderer is a philanthropist! - he concluded. That man's death, he continued, would fill my pockets. - You will be able to kick the public authorities and appear in the newspapers. - Here you will see neither blood nor agony. Ringing the bell would be as simple as calling a servant.
He again mentioned one hundred and five or one hundred and six thousand contos, as he could not quite remember. He also said that he had been cast down from the heights after fighting a tyrant. But he ended with another figure: - In any case, it is six thousand contos. Then he pointed to the bell and told me to be a man.
I knew how a Christian should answer if the tempter offered him kingdoms on a mountain. Yet I was in an ordinary room, facing a man with a top hat and umbrella. And it was more than a hundred thousand contos. Then I did not hesitate. With a steady hand, I rang the bell. Perhaps it was an illusion, but I heard a vast bell ring through the Universe. The visitor wiped away a tear and said: - Poor Ti-Chin-Fú! I asked whether he had died. The visitor said that Ti-Chin-Fú had been peaceful in his garden, preparing a paper kite. The bell surprised him, and now he lay dead beside a stream. He wore yellow silk and held the paper kite in his cold arms. The visitor hoped that the wisdom of Confucius would help Ti-Chin-Fú's soul.
Then he rose, respectfully removed his hat and left with the umbrella. When I heard the door, I felt that I was waking from a nightmare. I ran into the corridor, heard a cheerful voice speaking to D. Augusta and saw the door to the staircase close. I asked who had just left. - It was little Cabrita, who is going to gamble for a while - D. Augusta replied. In the room, everything was calm, unchanged and real. The folio was still open, but it now seemed like the dull prose of an old moralist.
I went to bed and dreamt that I was beyond Peking, near Tartary. In a lamas' monastery, a living Buddha spoke gentle maxims with the scent of tea.