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Chapter 1

On How Itaguaí Gained a Madhouse

THE CHRONICLES OF ITAGUAÍ record that a long time ago there lived in the town a certain physician, Dr. Simão Bacamarte, the son of landed gentry, and the greatest physician in Brazil, Portugal, and the two Spains. He had studied at Coimbra and Padua. At thirty-four, he returned to Brazil, the king being unable to persuade him to stay in Coimbra, running the university, or in Lisbon, attending to matters of state.

“Science,” he said to His Majesty, “is my sole concern; Itaguaí is my universe.”

Having said this, he took himself off to Itaguaí and devoted himself body and soul to the study of science, alternating healing with reading, and demonstrating theorems with poultices. When he reached the age of forty, he married Dona Evarista da Costa e Mascarenhas, a lady of twenty-five, the widow of a magistrate, who was neither pretty nor charming. One of his uncles, an inveterate meddler in the affairs of others, was frankly surprised by his nephew’s choice, and told him so. Simão Bacamarte explained to him that Dona Evarista combined physiological and anatomical attributes of the first order: good digestion, regular sleep, a steady pulse, and excellent eyesight; she was thus fit to provide him with healthy, sturdy, intelligent offspring. If, in addition to such accomplishments—the only ones with which a sensible man should concern himself—Dona Evarista’s features were somewhat badly formed, then, far from regretting it, he thanked God, since he would thereby not run the risk of ignoring the interests of science in the exclusive, trivial, and vulgar contemplation of his wife.

Dona Evarista failed to live up to her husband’s expectations, providing him with neither sturdy nor sickly offspring. Science is an inherently patient pursuit, and so our doctor waited three years, then four, then five. At the end of this period, he carried out a rigorous study of the matter, reread all the authoritative texts, Arab and otherwise, which he had brought with him to Itaguaí, sent inquiries to the Italian and German universities, and concluded by advising his wife to follow a special diet. The eminent lady, accustomed to eating only succulent Itaguaí pork, did not heed her husband’s advice, and to her understandable but unpardonable resistance we owe the total extinction of the Bacamarte dynasty.

Science, however, has the ineffable gift of curing all ills; our physician immersed himself entirely in the study and practice of medicine. It was at this point that one of its lesser nooks and crannies caught his particular attention: that pertaining to the psychic, to the examination of cerebral pathology, also known at that time as alienism. Nowhere in the colony, or even the kingdom, was there a single expert on this barely explored, indeed almost unexplored, subject. Simão Bacamarte saw an opportunity for Lusitanian, and in particular Brazilian, science to garland itself in “everlasting laurels”—the expression he himself used, but only in a moment of ecstasy within the privacy of his own home; externally, he was modest, as befits a man of learning.

“The health of the mind,” he declaimed, “is the worthiest occupation for a physician.”

“For a true physician,” added Crispim Soares, the town’s apothecary and one of Bacamarte’s close friends and supper companions.

Among the other sins of which it stands accused by the historians, the Itaguaí municipal council had made no provision for the insane. Those who were raving mad were simply locked away in their own homes, and remained uncured and uncared-for until death came to rob them of the gift of life. The tamer ones were left to wander the streets. Simão Bacamarte quickly resolved to remedy such harmful practices; he requested permission from the council to build a hospital that would provide treatment and lodgings for all the lunatics of Itaguaí and the surrounding towns and villages, in return for a stipend payable by the municipality when the patient’s family were unable to do so. The proposal excited the curiosity of the whole town and met with great resistance, for it is always hard to uproot absurd or even merely bad habits.

“Look here, Dona Evarista,” said Father Lopes, the parish priest, “why don’t you try to interest your husband in a trip to Rio de Janeiro? All this studying can’t be good for him; it gives him all sorts of strange ideas.”

Greatly alarmed, Dona Evarista went to her husband and told him that she was filled by various consuming desires, in particular the desire to go to Rio de Janeiro and eat everything that he considered would help with his previously stated objective. But with the rare wisdom that distinguished him, the great man saw through this pretense and replied, smiling, that she need have no fear. He then went straight to the town hall, where the councillors were debating his proposal, and defended it with such eloquence that the majority resolved to authorize his request, and, at the same time, voted through a local tax destined to fund the treatment, board, and lodging of any of the insane who had no other means of support. It was not easy to find something new to be taxed, for everything in Itaguaí had already been earmarked. After lengthy study, the tax was imposed on the use of plumes on funeral horses. Anyone who wished to add feathers to the headdresses of horses drawing a hearse would pay two tostões to the council for each hour that elapsed between the time of death and the final blessing at the graveside. The town clerk got himself in a terrible muddle calculating the potential revenue arising from the new tax, and one of the councillors, who had little faith in the doctor’s undertaking, asked that the clerk be relieved of such a pointless task.

“The calculations are entirely unnecessary,” he said, “because Dr. Bacamarte’s scheme will never come to anything. Whoever heard of putting all the lunatics together in the same building?”

The worthy councillor was mistaken, and the doctor’s scheme was duly implemented. As soon as he had received permission, he began to build the house. It was in Rua Nova, which was the finest street in Itaguaí at the time; it had fifty windows on each side, a courtyard in the middle, and numerous cells to house the inmates. An eminent Arabist, the doctor had read in the Koran that Muhammad had declared that the insane were to be revered, for Allah had deprived them of their wits so that they would not sin. This struck him as a beautiful and profound idea, and he had it engraved on the front of the house. However, since he feared the parish priest’s reaction, and through him that of the bishop, he attributed this sentiment to Benedict VIII, an otherwise pious fraud, which earned him, over lunch, a lengthy exposition from Father Lopes on the life of that eminent pontiff.

The asylum was given the name “Casa Verde” on account of its green shutters, this being the first time such a color had been used for that purpose in Itaguaí. It was inaugurated with great pomp; people flocked from all the towns and villages near and far, as well as from the city of Rio de Janeiro itself, to attend the ceremonies, which went on for seven days. Many patients had already been admitted, and their relatives were able to see for themselves the paternal care and Christian charity with which they would be treated. Basking in her husband’s glory, Dona Evarista put on her finest clothes and decked herself in jewels, flowers, and silks. During those memorable days, she was a veritable queen; despite the rather prim social customs of the time, everyone made a point of visiting her two or even three times, and their praise went beyond mere compliments, for—and this fact is a credit to the society of the time—they saw in Dona Evarista the happy wife of an illustrious man, a man of lofty ideals, and, if they envied her, theirs was the blessed and noble envy of true admirers.

At the end of seven days, the public festivities came to an end; Itaguaí finally had a madhouse.

Chapter 2

A Food of Lunatics

Three days later, Simão Bacamarte, now the town’s official alienist, opened his heart to Crispim Soares the apothecary, and revealed to him his most intimate thoughts.

“Charity, Senhor Soares, certainly enters into my way of thinking, but only as seasoning—like salt, you might say—for that is how I interpret Saint Paul’s words to the Corinthians: “And if I know all that can be known, and have not charity, I am nothing.” The real purpose, though, in this Casa Verde project of mine, is to carry out an in-depth study of madness in its various degrees, classifying each type and finally discovering both the true cause of the phenomenon and its universal remedy. Therein lies the mystery of my intentions. And I believe that in this I will be doing a great service to humanity.”

“A very great service indeed,” said the apothecary.

“Without this asylum,” continued the alienist, “I could achieve very little, but with it, my studies will have much greater scope.”

“Much greater,” echoed the apothecary.

And they were right. Lunatics from all the neighboring towns and villages poured into the Casa Verde. There were the violent, the meek, the monomaniacs, indeed the entire family of all those strangers to reason. By the end of four months, the Casa Verde was a hive of activity. The initial cells soon filled up, requiring a further wing with thirty-seven more cells to be added. Father Lopes admitted that he had never imagined there to be so many lunatics in the world, nor that some cases would be so totally inexplicable. There was, for example, the ignorant and uncouth young man who, every day after breakfast, would launch into an academic lecture embellished with tropes, antitheses, and apostrophes, with a few Greek and Latin flourishes and the odd snippet from Cicero, Apuleius, and Tertullian. The priest could scarcely believe his ears. What! A boy he had seen only three months before playing handball in the street!

“Oh, I agree,” said the alienist, “but the truth is there before your very eyes, Your Reverence. It happens every day of the week.”

“As far as I’m concerned,” replied the priest, “this can only be explained by the confounding of languages in the Tower of Babel, as described in the Scriptures; since the languages were all mixed up in ancient times, it must be easy to switch between them when reason is absent.”

“That could well be the divine explanation for the phenomenon,” agreed the alienist after a moment’s reflection, “but it is not impossible that there is also a human, indeed purely scientific, explanation, and that is what I intend to look into.”

“Very well, but it troubles me, it really does.”

There were three or four inmates who had been driven to madness by love, but only two stood out because of the curious nature of their symptoms. The first, a young man of twenty-five by the name of Falcão, was convinced he was the morning star; he would stand with his legs apart and his arms spread wide like the rays of a star, and stay like that for hours on end asking if the sun had come up yet so that he could retire. The other fellow paced endlessly around the rooms or courtyard, and up and down the corridors, searching for the ends of the earth. He was a miserable wretch whose wife had left him to run off with a dandy. As soon as he discovered she was gone, he armed himself with a pistol and went after them; two hours later, he found them by a lake and murdered them both with exquisite cruelty. The avenger’s jealousy was satisfied, but at the price of his sanity. That was the beginning of his obsessive wanderings, relentlessly pursuing the fugitive lovers to the ends of the earth.

There were several interesting cases of delusions of grandeur, the most notable of which was the wretched son of a poor tailor, who would recount to the walls (for he never looked anyone in the face) his entire family pedigree, as follows:

“God begat an egg, the egg begat the sword, the sword begat David, David begat the purple, the purple begat the duke, the duke begat the marquis, the marquis begat the count, and that’s me.”

Then he would slap his forehead, snap his fingers, and repeat it again, five or six times in a row: “God begat an egg, the egg begat . . .” and so on.

Another of the same type was a humble clerk who fancied himself to be the king’s chamberlain; another was the cattle drover from Minas Gerais who had a mania for distributing herds of cattle to everyone he met: he would give three hundred head to one, six hundred to another, twelve hundred to someone else, and so on. I won’t mention the many cases of religious monomania, save for one fellow who, on account of his Christian name being João de Deus—John of God—went around saying he was John the God, and promising the kingdom of heaven to whoever would worship him and the torments of hell to everyone else. Then there was Garcia, a university graduate, who never said anything because he was convinced that if he uttered so much as a single word, all the stars would fall from the sky and set the earth on fire, for such was the power with which God had invested him.

That, at least, is what he wrote on the piece of paper provided by the alienist not so much out of charity as out of scientific interest.

For the alienist’s dedication was more extraordinary than all the manias residing in the Casa Verde; it was nothing short of astonishing. Bacamarte set about putting in place two administrators, an idea of Crispim Soares’s that Bacamarte accepted along with the apothecary’s two nephews, whom he charged with implementing a set of rules and regulations, approved by the council, for the distribution of food and clothing, as well as keeping the accounts and other such matters. Bacamarte himself was thus free to concentrate on his medical duties.

“The Casa Verde,” he said to the priest, “is now a world unto itself, in which there is both a temporal and a spiritual government.” Father Lopes laughed at this godly quip and added, with the sole aim of making his own little joke: “Any more of that and I’ll have you reported to the Pope himself.”

Once relieved of his administrative burdens, the alienist embarked upon a vast enterprise, that of classifying his patients. He divided them, first, into two main categories—the violent and the meek—and from there proceeded to the subcategories of monomanias, deliria and various kinds of hallucinations. When that was done, he began a long and unremitting analysis of each patient’s daily routine, when their outbursts occurred, their likes and dislikes, their words, gestures, and obsessions; he would inquire into their lives, professions, habits, how their illness had first manifested itself, any accidents suffered in childhood or adolescence, any other illnesses, any family history of mental illness; in short, an inquiry beyond that of even the most scrupulous of magistrates. And each day, he noted down a new observation, some interesting discovery or extraordinary phenomenon. At the same time, he studied the best diets, medicines, cures, and palliatives, both those handed down by his beloved Arabs and those which he himself discovered by dint of wisdom and patience. This work took up most of his time. He barely slept or ate, and even when he did eat he carried on working, either consulting an ancient text or ruminating over some particular matter; he would often spend an entire meal without saying a single word to Dona Evarista.

Chapter 3

God Knows What He Is Doing!

By the end of two months, that illustrious lady was the unhappiest of women; she fell into a deep melancholy, grew thin and sallow, ate little, and sighed at every turn. She did not dare to criticize or reproach Bacamarte in any way, for she respected him as her husband and master, but she suffered in silence and was visibly wasting away. One evening over dinner, when her husband asked her what was wrong, she replied sadly that it was nothing; then she summoned up a little courage and went as far as to say that she considered herself just as much a widow as before, adding:

“Who would have imagined that half a dozen lunatics . . .”

She did not finish the sentence, or, rather, she finished it by raising her eyes to the ceiling—those eyes which were her most appealing feature: large, dark, and bathed in a dewy light. As for the gesture itself, it was the same one she had employed on the day Simão Bacamarte had asked her to marry him. The chronicles do not say if Dona Evarista deployed that weapon with the wicked intention of decapitating science once and for all, or at least chopping off its hands, but it is a perfectly plausible conjecture. In any case, the alienist did not suspect her of having any ulterior motive. The great man was neither annoyed nor even dismayed; his eyes retained the same hard, smooth, unchanging metallic gleam, and not a single wrinkle troubled the surface of his brow, which remained as placid as the waters of the bay at Botafogo. A smile may have crossed his lips, as he uttered these words, as sweet as the oil in the Song of Songs:

“All right, you can go to Rio.”

Dona Evarista felt the ground beneath her feet give way. She had never been to Rio, which, although but a pale shadow of what it is today, was still considerably more exciting than Itaguaí. For her, seeing Rio de Janeiro was something akin to the dream of the Hebrew slaves. Now that her husband had settled for good in that provincial town, she had given up all hope of ever breathing the airs of our fine city. And yet now there he was inviting her to fulfill her childhood and adolescent dreams. Dona Evarista could not conceal her delight at his proposal. Simão Bacamarte took her by the hand and smiled—a smile that was both philosophical and husbandly, and in which the following thought could be discerned: “There is no reliable remedy for the ailments of the soul; this woman is wasting away because she thinks I do not love her. I’ll give her Rio de Janeiro, and that will console her.” And since he was a studious man, he made a note of this observation.

Then a doubt pierced Dona Evarista’s heart. She controlled herself, however, saying only that if he was not going, then she would not go, either, since there was no question of her undertaking a journey like that by herself.

“You can go with your aunt,” said the alienist.

It should be noted that this same thought had occurred to Dona Evarista, but she had not wanted to ask or even suggest it, in the first place because it would be causing her husband even more expense, and secondly, because it would be better, more methodical, and more rational for the idea to come from him.

“Oh! But just think how much it would cost!” sighed Dona Evarista, without conviction.

“So? We’ve made a lot of money,” said her husband. “Why, only yesterday the accountant showed me the figures. Would you like to see?”

And he showed her the ledgers. Dona Evarista was dazzled by that Milky Way of numbers. Then he showed her the coffers where the money was kept.

Goodness! There were heaps of gold; piles and piles of doubloons and mil-cruzado coins, a veritable treasure trove.

The alienist watched while she devoured the gold coins with her dark eyes, and whispered in her ear this most perfidious of remarks:

“Who would have imagined that half a dozen lunatics . . .”

Dona Evarista understood his meaning, smiled, and gave a heavy sigh:

“God must know what He is doing!”

Three months later, they set off: Dona Evarista, her aunt, the apothecary’s wife, and one of their nephews, together with a priest whom the alienist had met in Lisbon and who happened to be in Itaguaí, five or six footmen, and four slave-women; this was the entourage that the townsfolk watched depart on that May morning. The farewells were a sad affair for everyone concerned, apart, that is, from the alienist. Although Dona Evarista’s tears were abundant and sincere, they were not enough to move him. As a man of science, and only of science, nothing beyond science could dismay him, and the only thing bothering him on that occasion, as he cast an uneasy, policeman’s gaze over the crowd, was the thought that some madman might be lurking among those of sound mind.

“Goodbye!” sobbed the ladies and the apothecary.

And so the entourage left. As the apothecary and the doctor returned home, Crispim Soares kept his gaze fixed firmly between the ears of his mule, while Simão Bacamarte’s eyes were fixed on the horizon ahead, leaving his horse to deal with how to get home. What a striking image of the genius and the common man! One stares at the present, filled with tears and regrets, while the other scrutinizes the future with its promise of new dawns.

Chapter 4

A New Theory

As Dona Evarista’s journey brought her, tearfully, closer to Rio de Janeiro, Simão Bacamarte was studying, from every angle, a bold new idea that stood to enlarge substantially the foundations of psychology. He spent any time away from his duties at the Casa Verde roaming the streets, or going from house to house, talking to people about anything and everything, and punctuating his words with a stare that put fear into even the most heroic of souls.

One morning, about three weeks later, while Crispim Soares was busy concocting some medicine or other, someone came to tell him that the alienist wanted to see him.

“He says it’s important,” added the messenger.

Crispim blenched. What important matter could it be, if not some sad news of the traveling party, in particular his wife? For this point must be clearly stated, given how much the chroniclers insisted upon it: Crispim loved his wife dearly and, in thirty years of marriage, they had never been apart for even one day. This would explain the muttered private monologues he often indulged in, and which his assistants often overheard: “What on earth were you thinking of? What possessed you to agree to letting Cesária go with her? Lackey, miserable lackey! And all to get into Dr. Bacamarte’s good books. Well, now you just have to grin and bear it; that’s right, grin and bear it, you vile, miserable lickspittle. You just say Amen to everything, don’t you? Well, now you’ve got your comeuppance, you filthy blackguard!” And many other such insults that a man should never say to anyone, still less to himself. Thus it is not hard to imagine the effect of Bacamarte’s message. Soares instantly dropped what he was doing and rushed to the Casa Verde.

Simão Bacamarte received him with the joy that befits a man of learning, that is to say, a joy buttoned up to the neck with circumspection.

“I am very happy,” he said.

“News of our womenfolk?” asked the apothecary, his voice trembling.

The alienist made a grand gesture and replied:

“No, it concerns something far more exalted: a scientific experiment. I say experiment, because I am not so rash as to assert my conclusions with absolute certainty, and because science, Senhor Soares, is nothing if not a constant search. So we shall call it, therefore, an experiment, but one that will change the very face of the Earth. Madness, the object of my studies, was, until now, considered a mere island in an ocean of reason; I am now beginning to suspect that it is a continent.”

Upon saying this, he fell silent, the better to savor the apothecary’s astonishment. Then he explained his idea at length. As he saw it, insanity afflicted a vast swath of humanity, an idea he expounded with copious arguments, texts, and examples. He cited examples both from Itaguaí itself and from history: being the rarefied intellectual he was, he recognized the dangers of drawing all his examples from Itaguaí, and sought refuge in history. He thus drew particular attention to several famous persons such as Socrates, who had his own personal demon, to Pascal, who always imagined a yawning abyss lay somewhere to his left, to Caracalla, Domitian, Calig­ula, and so on, a whole string of cases and people, the repulsive and the ridiculous. Since the apothecary seemed taken aback by such a promiscuous mixture, the alienist told him that it all amounted to the same thing, even adding sententiously:

“Ferocity, Senhor Soares, is merely the serious side of the grotesque.”

“Witty, very witty indeed!” exclaimed Crispim Soares, throwing his hands in the air.

As for the idea of expanding the territory of insanity, the apothecary thought it somewhat extravagant, but since modesty, the principal ornament of his mind, would not suffer him to admit to anything other than a noble enthusiasm, he declared it sublime and utterly true, adding that it was definitely one for the town crier.

I should explain. At that time, Itaguaí, like all other towns, villages, and hamlets throughout the colony, had no printing press. There were, therefore, only two means of circulating news: either by nailing a handwritten notice to the doors of the town hall and the parish church, or by means of the town crier, who would roam the streets of the town with a rattle in his hand. From time to time, he would shake the rattle, townspeople would gather, and he would announce whatever he had been instructed to announce—a cure for fever, plots of arable land for sale, a sonnet, a church donation, the identity of the nosiest busybody in town, the finest speech of the year, and so on. The system had its inconveniences in terms of the inhabitants’ peace and tranquility, but was preserved due to its effectiveness in disseminating information. For example, one of the municipal councillors—the very one who had been most vehemently opposed to the establishment of the Casa Verde—enjoyed a reputation as a tamer of snakes and monkeys, despite never having domesticated even one such creature. He did this simply by taking good care, every month, to employ the services of the town crier. Indeed, the chronicles say that some people attest to having seen rattlesnakes dancing on the councillor’s chest, a claim that is perfectly false, but that was accepted as true entirely on account of the absolute confidence in which the system was held. As you can see, not every institution of the old regime deserves our own century’s disdain.

“There is only one thing better than announcing my new theory,” replied the alienist to the apothecary’s suggestion, “and that is putting it into practice.”

And, not wishing to diverge significantly from the alienist, the apothecary agreed that it would indeed be better to begin with action.

“There’ll be time enough for the town crier,” he concluded.

Simão Bacamarte reflected further for a moment, then said:

“Let’s suppose, Senhor Soares, that the human spirit is an enormous seashell. My goal is to see if I can extract from it the pearl of reason. Or, in other words, to delineate definitively the boundaries of reason and insanity. Reason is the perfect equilibrium of all the faculties; beyond that lies madness, madness, and only madness.

Father Lopes, to whom the alienist also confided his new theory, declared bluntly that he could make neither head nor tail of it, that it was an absurd endeavor, and, if not absurd, then it was such a grandiose endeavor that it was not worth even embarking upon.

“Using the current definition, which is the one that has existed since time immemorial,” he added, “madness and reason are perfectly delineated. We all know where one ends and the other begins. Why start moving the fence?”

Across the thin, discreet lips of the alienist danced the faintest shadow of an incipient laugh, in which disdain marched arm in arm with pity. But not a single word emerged.

Science merely extended its hand to theology, and with such self-assurance that theology no longer knew whether to believe in one or the other. Itaguaí and the universe stood on the brink of a revolution.

Chapter 5

The Terror

Four days later, the inhabitants of Itaguaí heard with some consternation that a certain fellow by the name of Costa had been taken to the Casa Verde.

“Impossible!”

“What do you mean, ‘impossible’? He was taken there this morning.”

“But surely he is the last person to deserve that . . . After all he’s done!”

Costa was one of the most highly respected of Itaguaí’s citizens. He had inherited four hundred thousand cruzados in the good coinage of King João V, a sum of money that would, as his uncle had declared in his will, provide income enough to live on “until the end of the world.” No sooner had he received his inheritance than he began to share it out in the form of loans, at no interest; one thousand cruzados here, two thousand there, three hundred to this fellow, eight hundred to the next, so much so that, after five years, there was nothing left. Had penury befallen him suddenly, Itaguaí would have sat up and taken notice. But it came little by little; he slipped from opulence to affluence, from affluence to moderation, from moderation to poverty, and from poverty to penury, all in gradual steps. By the end of those five years, people who had once raised their hats to him as soon as they spotted him at the end of the street, would now clap him familiarly on the back, tweak his nose, and make all sorts of rude comments. And Costa would always laugh amiably. He seemed not even to notice that the least courteous men were precisely those who still owed him money; on the contrary, he would embrace them with even greater pleasure, and even more sublime resignation. One day, when one of these incorrigible debtors jeered at him and Costa simply laughed, a skeptical bystander commented, somewhat perfidiously: “You only put up with that fellow in the hope he will repay you.” Costa did not hesitate for a second; he went up to the man who owed him money and canceled the debt on the spot. “Don’t be surprised,” interjected the bystander, “all Costa has given up is a far-distant star.” Costa was perceptive enough to realize that the onlooker was mocking the worthiness of his actions, alleging that he was only relinquishing something he would never receive anyway. Costa prized his honor, and, two hours later, he found a means of proving that such a slander was untrue: he got hold of a few coins and sent them to the debtor as a new loan.

“Let’s hope that now . . .” he thought, not even bothering to finish the sentence.

This last good deed of Costa’s persuaded both the credulous and incredulous; no one now doubted the chivalrous sentiments of that worthy citizen. Even the most timid of paupers ventured out in their old slippers and threadbare capes to knock at his door. One worm, however, still gnawed at Costa’s soul: it was the idea of that bystander disliking him. But even this came to an end: three months later, the very same bystander came and asked him for one hundred and twenty cruzados, promising to pay him back two days later. This was all that was left of Costa’s inheritance, but it was also a noble revenge: Costa lent him the money that very instant, and without interest. Unfortunately, time ran out before he was repaid; five months later he was bundled off to the Casa Verde.

One can well imagine the consternation in Itaguaí when people learned what had happened. People spoke of nothing else; it was said that Costa had gone mad over breakfast, others said it was in the middle of the night. Accounts were given of his outbursts, which were either violent, dark, and terrifying, or gentle and even funny, depending on which version you heard. Many people rushed to the Casa Verde, where they found poor Costa looking quite calm, if a little dazed, and talking perfectly lucidly and asking why he had been taken there. Some went to see the alienist. Bacamarte applauded such sentiments of kindness and compassion, but added that science was science, and that he could not leave a madman wandering the streets. The last person to intercede on his behalf (because after what I am about to tell you everyone was too terrified to go anywhere near the doctor) was an unfortunate lady, one of Costa’s cousins. The alienist told her confidentially that this worthy man was not in perfect command of his mental faculties, as could be seen from the way in which he had dissipated his fortune—

“No! Absolutely not!” the good lady said emphatically, interrupting him. “It’s not his fault he spent all the money so quickly.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No, sir. I will tell you what happened. My late uncle was not a bad man, but when he was angry he was capable of anything, even failing to remove his hat in the presence of the Holy Sacrament. Then, one day, shortly before he died, he discovered that a slave had stolen one of his oxen. You can imagine his reaction. He was shaking all over, he turned bright red, and started foaming at the mouth—I remember it as if it were yesterday. Just then, an ugly, long-haired man, in shirtsleeves, came up to him and asked for some water. My uncle, God rest his soul, told the man that he could go drink from the river or, for all he cared, go to hell. The man looked at my uncle, raised his hand menacingly, and laid this curse upon him: ‘All your wealth will last no more than seven years and a day, as sure as this thing here is the Seal of Solomon.’ And he showed my uncle the Seal of Solomon tattooed on his arm. That’s what caused it, sir; it was the evil man’s curse that caused it.”

Bacamarte fixed the woman with eyes as sharp as daggers. When she finished, he politely offered her his hand, as if to the wife of the viceroy himself, and invited her to come and speak to her cousin. The unfortunate woman believed him, and he took her to the Casa Verde and locked her up in the hallucination wing.

News of the illustrious Bacamarte’s duplicity struck terror into the souls of the townspeople. No one wanted to believe that, for no reason, with no apparent animosity, the alienist had locked up in the Casa Verde a lady of perfectly sound mind, whose only crime had been to intercede on behalf of a poor unfortunate wretch. The matter was discussed on street corners and in barbershops; a whole web of romantic intrigue was concocted, tales of amorous overtures that the alienist had once made to Costa’s cousin, to Costa’s outrage and the lady’s disdain. And this was his revenge. It was as clear as day. But the alienist’s austere and studious lifestyle seemed to belie such a hypothesis. Nonsense! Surely that was just a façade. And one particularly credulous person even began to mutter that he knew a few other things, too, but he wouldn’t say what they were since he wasn’t absolutely certain, but he knew them nonetheless, and could almost swear they were true.

“Since you’re such a close friend of his, can’t you tell us what’s happening, what happened, what reason . . . ?”

Crispim Soares was in raptures. These urgent inquiries from worried and curious neighbors and astonished friends were for him like a public coronation. There could be no doubt about it; the whole town finally knew that he, Crispim Soares, the apothecary, was the alienist’s closest friend, the great man’s confidant in all important matters; hence the general rush to see him. All this was evident in the apothecary’s cheery face and discreet smile, a smile accompanied by silence, for he said nothing in reply, or only, at most, a few abrupt monosyllables, cloaked in that fixed, unvarying half smile, full of scientific mysteries that he could not, without danger or dishonor, reveal to any living person.

“Something’s afoot,” thought the most suspicious.

One such person limited himself to merely thinking this, before turning his back and going on his way. He had personal matters to attend to. He had just finished building a sumptuous new house. The house alone was enough to attract people’s attention, but that was not all. There was the furniture, which he told everyone he had ordered from Hungary and Holland and which could be seen from the street, since he always left the windows wide open. And then there was the garden, a masterpiece of art and good taste. This man, who had made his fortune from the manufacture of saddles for mules and donkeys, had always dreamed of owning a magnificent house, a lavish garden, and exquisite furniture. He did not entirely give up his saddlemaking business, but sought repose from it in the quiet contemplation of his new house, the finest in Itaguaí, grander than the Casa Verde, nobler even than the town hall. Among the town’s most illustrious denizens there was a wailing and gnashing of teeth whenever anyone thought of, mentioned, or praised the saddler’s house—a mere donkey saddler, for goodness’ sake!

“There he is again, mouth agape,” said the morning passersby.

It was, in effect, Mateus’s custom each morning to stretch himself out in the middle of his garden and stare lovingly at his house for a good hour, until he was summoned in for lunch. His neighbors all addressed him most respectfully, but laughed gleefully behind his back. One of them even commented that Mateus would be even better off, a millionaire in fact, if he made the donkey saddles for himself; an unintelligible witticism if ever there was one, but it made the others howl with laughter.

“There he is, making a spectacle of himself as usual,” they would say as evening fell.

The reason for this was that in the early evenings, when families would take a stroll (having dined early), Mateus would position himself majestically at the window, in full view of everyone, his white suit standing out against the dark background, and he would stay like that for two or three hours until the light had completely faded. It can be assumed that Mateus’s intention was to be admired and envied, although it was not something he confessed to anyone, not even to his great friends, the apothecary and Father Lopes. At least that is what the apothecary said when the alienist informed him that the saddlemaker could well be suffering from a love of stones, a mania that Bacamarte had himself discovered, and had been studying for some time. The way he stared at his house . . .

“No, sir,” Soares answered vehemently.

“No?”

“Forgive me, but you are perhaps unaware that in the mornings he is examining the stonework, not admiring it, and, in the afternoons, it is other people who are doing the staring, at him and at the house.” And he recounted the saddlemaker’s habit of standing there every evening, from dusk until nightfall.

Simão Bacamarte’s eyes glinted with scientific delight. Perhaps he was indeed unaware of all of the saddlemaker’s habits, or perhaps, by interrogating Soares, he was seeking only to confirm some lingering doubt or suspicion. In any event, the apothecary’s explanation satisfied him; but since his were the refined pleasures of a learned man, the apothecary noticed nothing to suggest a sinister intention. On the contrary, it was early evening and the alienist suggested they take a stroll together. Good heavens! It was the first time Simão Bacamarte had bestowed such an honor upon his friend. Trembling and dazed, Crispim replied that yes, indeed, why not? Just at that moment, two or three customers came in; Crispim silently cursed them; not only were they delaying the stroll, there was a risk that Bacamarte might invite one of them to accompany him, and dispense with Crispim entirely. Such impatience! Such torment! Finally, the interlopers left. The alienist steered him toward the saddlemaker’s house, saw the saddlemaker standing at the window, passed slowly back and forth five or six times, pausing frequently to study the man’s posture and expression. Poor Mateus noticed only that he was the object of the curiosity or perhaps admiration of Itaguaí’s leading light, and struck an even grander pose. And thus, sadly, very sadly, he merely sealed his fate; the very next day he was carted off to the Casa Verde.

“The Casa Verde is nothing but a private jailhouse,” commented a doctor who had no clinic of his own.

Never did an opinion take root and flourish so quickly. Private jail: this was repeated throughout Itaguaí from north to south and from east to west. It was said in fear, because during the week that followed poor Mateus’s incarceration, some twenty people—two or three of whom were persons of rank—were carted off to the Casa Verde. The alienist said that only pathological cases were admitted, but few believed him. Popular theories abounded. Revenge, greed, divine retribution, the monomania of the doctor himself, a secret plot hatched by Rio de Janeiro to stamp out any germ of prosperity that might take root and flourish in Itaguaí to the disadvantage of the capital, and a thousand other explanations that explained nothing at all, but such was the daily produce of the public’s imagination.

This coincided with the return from Rio de Janeiro of the alienist’s wife, her aunt, Crispim Soares’s wife, and all—or nearly all—of the entourage that had left Itaguaí several weeks earlier. The alienist went to greet them, along with the apothecary, Father Lopes, the municipal councillors and various other worthy officials. The moment when Dona Evarista laid eyes upon her husband is considered by the chroniclers of the time to be one of the most sublime in the annals of the human spirit, on account of the contrast in their two natures, both extreme and both admirable. Dona Evarista uttered a cry, managed to stammer out a word or two, and then threw herself upon her spouse in a movement that can best be described as a combination of jaguar and turtledove. Not so the illustrious Bacamarte, who, with clinical detachment, not for an instant unbending from his scientific rigor, held out his arms to his wife, who fell into them and fainted. This lasted only a moment, and only two minutes later, Dona Evarista was being warmly greeted by her friends, and the procession once again moved on.

Dona Evarista was the hope of Itaguaí; the town counted on her to be a moderating influence on that scourge of the Casa Verde. Hence the public acclaim, the crowds thronging the streets, the flags, the flowers, and the damask silk banners hanging from the windows. With her arm resting on that of Father Lopes—for the eminent Bacamarte had entrusted his wife to the priest and was walking pensively beside them—Dona Evarista turned her head from side to side, curious, restless, brazen even. The priest inquired about Rio de Janeiro, which he had not seen since the reign of the previous viceroy, and Dona Evarista replied enthusiastically that it was the most beautiful thing in the whole wide world. The Passeio Público gardens were now finished and were indeed a paradise; she had gone there many times, as well as to the infamous Rua das Belas Noites, and to the Marrecas fountain . . . Ah, the Marrecas fountain! Yes, there really were Marrecas ducks there, made out of metal and spouting water from their beaks. A most exquisite thing! The priest agreed that Rio de Janeiro must indeed be even lovelier now; after all, it had been very beautiful even back in the old days! And no wonder, for it was bigger than Itaguaí and, moreover, the seat of government. But nor could it be said that Itaguaí was ugly; after all, it had beautiful houses such as Mateus’s, and the Casa Verde . . .

“And speaking of the Casa Verde,” said Father Lopes, gliding expertly onto the topic of the moment, “your ladyship will find it remarkably full these days.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, indeed. Mateus is there . . .”

“The saddlemaker?”

“The very one. And Costa, along with his cousin, as well as many others . . .”

“They’ve all gone mad?”

“Or nearly mad,” the priest replied judiciously.

“And?”

The priest turned down the corners of his mouth, as if to say he did not know, or did not wish to say; a vague response that could not be repeated to anyone else, since it contained no words. Dona Evarista thought it truly extraordinary that all of those people had gone mad; one or two, perhaps, but all of them? On the other hand, it was difficult for her to doubt it; her husband was a man of learning, and would never commit anyone to the Casa Verde without clear proof of insanity.

“Indeed . . . indeed . . .” repeated the priest at regular intervals.

Three hours later, fifty guests or so were seated around Simão Bacamarte’s table for a dinner to welcome home the travelers. Dona Evarista was the obligatory subject of toasts, speeches, verses of every kind, metaphors, hyperboles, and apologues. She was the wife of the new Hippocrates, the muse of Science, an angel, divine, the shining dawn, charity, life, and sweet consolation; her eyes were two stars, in the more modest version proposed by Crispim Soares, or two suns, according to the musings of a councillor. The alienist listened to these things, feeling mildly bored, but showing no visible signs of impatience. He merely whispered in his wife’s ear that such rhetorical flourishes were not to be taken seriously. Dona Evarista tried hard to share her husband’s opinion, but, even after discounting three-quarters of such fawning flattery, there was still more than enough to swell her pride. For example, one of the orators was a young man of twenty-five called Martim Brito, a consummate dandy well versed in amorous adventures and affairs; he delivered a speech in which the birth of Dona Evarista was explained in the most provocative manner. “After God gave the world both man and woman, who are the diamond and the pearl of His divine crown,” he said, triumphantly drawing out this part of the sentence as he took in the entire table, from one end to the other, “God wished to surpass even Himself, and so He created Dona Evarista.”

Dona Evarista lowered her eyes with exemplary modesty. Two ladies, considering such flattery excessive and even audacious, looked inquiringly at their host, where they indeed found the alienist’s expression clouded by suspicion, menace, and, quite possibly, bloodlust. The young man had shown great impudence, thought the two ladies. And each of them prayed to God to ward off any tragic consequences that might arise, or at the very least postpone them until the following day. Yes, that was it: postpone them. The more pious of the two ladies even admitted to herself that Dona Evarista scarcely merited such suspicion, being so far from being either attractive or witty. An insipid little simpleton. But then, if everyone liked the same color, what would happen to yellow? The thought made her tremble once again, although less than before; less, because now the alienist was smiling at Martim Brito and, when everyone got up from the table, he went over to him to exchange a few words about his speech. He congratulated the young man on his dazzling improvisation, full of magnificent flashes of wit. Was the idea about Dona Evarista’s birth his own invention, or had he found it in some book? No, sir, it was his own idea; it had occurred to him on that very occasion and seemed entirely fitting as an oratorical flourish. Besides, his ideas tended to be bold and daring rather than tender or jocular. He was a man suited to the epic. Once, for example, he had composed an ode to the fall of the Marquis of Pombal’s government, in which he had described the noble minister as the “harsh dragon of Nothingness,” crushed by the “vindictive claws of Everything.” There were others in a similar vein, always rather original, for he liked ideas that were rare and sublime, and images that were grand and noble . . .

“Poor boy!” thought the alienist. “Undoubtedly a case of cerebral lesion; not a life-threatening phenomenon, but certainly worthy of study.”

Dona Evarista was astounded when, three days later, she discovered that Martim Brito had been taken to the Casa Verde. A young man with such charming ideas! The two ladies blamed it on the alienist’s jealousy. What else could it be? The young man’s declaration had been far too bold.

Jealousy? But how then to explain, shortly afterward, the incarceration of the highly regarded José Borges do Couto Leme, the inveterate merrymaker Chico das Cambraias, the clerk Fabrício, and others besides? The terror grew. No one knew any longer who was sane and who was mad. Whenever their husbands left the house, wives would light a candle to the Virgin Mary; and some husbands didn’t even have the courage to venture out without one or two thugs to protect them. Palpable terror reigned. Those who could, left the town. One such fugitive was captured a mere two hundred paces from the town. He was a likable young man of thirty, chatty and polite, indeed so polite that whenever he greeted someone he would bow so low as to sweep the ground with his hat; in the street he would often run a distance of ten or twenty yards to shake the hand of a worthy gentleman, a lady, sometimes even a mere boy, as had happened with the chief magistrate’s son. He had a vocation for bowing. Besides, he owed his good standing in the town not only to his personal attributes, which were unusual, but also to the noble tenacity with which he never gave up, even after one, two, four, or even six scowling rejections. Gil Bernardes’s charms were such that, once invited into someone’s house, he was disinclined to leave and his host equally disinclined to let him leave. But, despite knowing he was well liked, Bernardes took fright when he heard one day that the alienist had his eye on him; the following day he fled the town before dawn, but was quickly apprehended and taken to the Casa Verde.

“We have to put an end to this!”

“It can’t go on!”

“Down with tyranny!”

“Despot! Brute! Goliath!”

These were whispers in houses rather than shouts in the street, but the time for shouts would come soon enough. Terror mounted; rebellion approached. The idea of petitioning the government to have Simão Bacamarte arrested and deported crossed several people’s minds, even before Porfírio, the barber, gave full expression to it in his shop, accompanied by grand, indignant gestures. And let it be noted—for this is one of the purest pages of this whole somber story—let it be noted that ever since the Casa Verde’s population had begun to grow in such an extraordinary fashion, Porfírio had seen his profits greatly increase on account of the incessant demand for leeches from the asylum; but his own personal gain, he said, must give way to the public good. And, he added: “the tyrant must be defeated!” It should also be noted that he unleashed this cry on the very day Bacamarte had committed to the Casa Verde a man by the name of Coelho who had brought a lawsuit against Porfírio.

“Can anyone tell me in what sense a man like Coelho is mad?” railed Porfírio.

No one could answer him; they all repeated one after another that Coelho was perfectly sane. Coelho’s lawsuit against the barber, concerning some plots of land in the town, arose from a dispute over some old and very obscure property deeds, and not from any hatred or greed. An excellent fellow, Coelho. His only detractors were a handful of grumpy individuals who, claiming they didn’t have time to chat, would duck around the corner or into a shop as soon as they caught sight of him. In truth, Coelho did love a good chat, a long chat, slowly sipped or in deep drafts, and so it was that he was never alone, always preferring those who could string two words together, but never turning his back on the less loquacious. Father Lopes, who was a devotee of Dante and an enemy of Coelho, could never watch the man tear himself away from a companion without reciting from Inferno, with his own witty amendment:

La bocca sollevò dal fiero pasto

Quel “seccatore” . . .

However, while some people knew that the priest disliked Coelho, others assumed this was just a prayer in Latin.

Chapter 6

The Rebellion

Roughly thirty people joined forces with the barber, drafting a formal complaint and taking it to the town hall.

The council refused to accept the complaint, declaring that the Casa Verde was a public institution and that science could not be amended by administrative vote, still less by the mob.

“Go back to work,” concluded the mayor. “That’s our advice to you.”

The agitators were furious. The barber declared that they would raise the banner of rebellion and destroy the Casa Verde; that Itaguaí could no longer serve as a cadaver to be studied and experimented on by a despot; that many estimable and even distinguished people were languishing in the cells of the Casa Verde, as well as other, humbler individuals no less worthy of esteem; that the alienist’s scientific despotism was complicated by issues of greed, given that the insane, or rather those accused of insanity, were not being treated for free: their families, or, failing that, the council, were footing the bill—

“That’s quite false!” interrupted the mayor.

“False?”

“About two weeks ago, we received formal notification from the eminent doctor that, since the experiments he was performing were of the highest psychological value, he would no longer accept the stipend approved by the council, just as he would no longer accept any payment from the patients’ families.

The news of such a pure and noble act somewhat dampened the rebels’ spirits. The alienist could very well be wrong, but clearly he was motivated by no interest other than science, and if they were to prove that mistakes had been made, then something more than noisy rabble-rousing was needed. Thus spoke the mayor, to vigorous cries of, “Hear, hear!” from the whole council. After a few moments of reflection, the barber declared that he had been given a mandate from the people and would not let matters rest until the Casa Verde, “that Bastille of human reason”—an expression he had heard from a local poet and which he now emphatically repeated—had been razed to the ground. Having said his piece, he left the building with all his followers.

The position of the councillors can easily be imagined: there was a pressing need to forestall the mob and head off revolt, battle, and bloodshed. To make matters worse, one of the councillors who had previously supported the mayor, on hearing the Casa Verde described as a “Bastille of human reason,” thought it such an elegant turn of phrase that he changed his mind. It would, he said, be advisable to come up with some measures to control the Casa Verde. When the mayor expressed his indignation in energetic terms, the councillor made this observation:

“I don’t know much about science, but if so many apparently sane men are being locked up as lunatics, who’s to say that it isn’t the alienist himself who has become alienated from reason?”

Sebastião Freitas, the dissenting councillor, was a gifted speaker and carried on talking for some time, choosing his words prudently, but emphatically. His colleagues were astonished; the mayor requested that he at least set an example of respect for the rule of law by keeping his ideas to himself in public, so as not to give form and substance to the rebellion, which at that moment was still “nothing but a swirl of scattered atoms.” The appeal of this image somewhat mitigated the effect of the earlier one, and Sebastião Freitas promised to refrain from taking any overt course of action, although he reserved the right to pursue all legal avenues in order to bring the Casa Verde to heel. And, still enamored of the phrase, he repeated to himself: “A Bastille of human reason!”

Meanwhile, the protests grew. Now there were not thirty but three hundred persons accompanying the barber, whose nickname deserves mentioning at this point because it became the name of the revolt; they called him Canjica, after a kind of milky porridge, and so the movement became known as the Canjica Rebellion. The action itself may well have been limited, given that many people, by virtue of fear or upbringing, did not take to the streets, but the feeling was unanimous, or almost unanimous, and the three hundred who marched to the Casa Verde could well be compared, give or take the evident differences between Paris and Itaguaí, to those brave citizens who stormed the Bastille.

Dona Evarista got wind of the approaching mob; one of the houseboys came to tell her as she was trying on a new silk dress (one of the thirty-seven she had brought back from Rio de Janeiro), but she refused to believe it.

“Oh, it must be some revelry,” she said, adjusting a pin. “Now then, Benedita, check to see if the hem is straight.”

“It is, mistress,” replied the slave-woman squatting on the floor. “It’s just fine. Could you turn a little? Yes, it’s fine.”

“They’re not revelers, ma’am; they’re shouting, ‘Death to Dr. Bacamarte the tyrant!’ ” exclaimed the terrified houseboy.

“Shut up, you idiot! Benedita, look there on the left side; don’t you think the seam is a bit crooked? The blue stripe doesn’t go the whole way down; it looks terrible like that. You’ll need to unpick the whole thing and make it exactly the same as—”

“Death to Dr. Bacamarte! Death to the tyrant!” shouted three hundred voices outside. It was the mob emerging into Rua Nova.

The blood drained from Dona Evarista’s face. At first she was too petrified to move. The slave-woman instinctively made for the back door. As for the houseboy whom Dona Evarista had refused to believe, he enjoyed a moment of sudden, imperceptible triumph, a deep-seated sense of moral satisfaction, on seeing that reality had taken his side.

“Death to the alienist!” shouted the voices, closer now.

Dona Evarista may not have found it easy to resist the siren calls of pleasure, but she knew how to confront moments of danger. She did not faint, but instead ran into the next room, where her husband was immersed in his studies. When she entered the room, the illustrious doctor was hunched over a text of Averroes; his eyes, shrouded in meditation, traveled from book to ceiling and from ceiling to book, blind to the outside world, but clear-sighted enough when it came to the innermost workings of his mind. Dona Evarista called to her husband twice without him paying her the slightest attention; the third time, he heard her and asked what was wrong, if she was feeling ill.

“Can’t you hear them shouting?” she asked tearfully.

The alienist listened; the shouts were drawing nearer, terrifying and threatening; he immediately understood the situation. He stood up from his high-backed chair, closed his book, strode calmly and purposefully over to the bookshelf, and put the book back in its place. Inserting it slightly disturbed the alignment of the two volumes on either side, and Simão Bacamarte took care to correct this minor yet interesting imperfection. Then he told his wife to go to her room and stay there, no matter what.

“No, no,” implored the worthy lady, “I want to die by your side . . .”

Simão Bacamarte insisted that it was not a case of life and death, and that even if it were, she must on all accounts stay put. The poor woman tearfully and obediently bowed her head.

“Down with the Casa Verde!” shouted the Canjicas.

The alienist walked over to the balcony at the front of the house, arriving at the same time as the mob, those three hundred faces shining with civic virtue and dark with rage. “Die! Die!” they shouted from all sides the moment the alienist appeared on the balcony. When Simão Bacamarte gestured to them to let him speak, the rebels indignantly shouted him down. Then, waving his hat to silence the crowd, the barber managed to calm his companions, and told the alienist that he could speak, adding that he must not abuse the people’s patience as he had been doing up until then.

“I will say little, or even nothing at all, if that is what’s required. First of all, I want to know what you are asking for.”

“We’re not asking for anything,” replied the barber, shaking. “We’re demanding that the Casa Verde be demolished, or, at the very least, that the poor unfortunates within be set free.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You understand perfectly well, tyrant; we want to liberate the victims of your hatred, your cruel whims, your greed . . .”

The alienist smiled, but the great man’s smile proved invisible to the eyes of the multitude; it was a faint contraction of two or three muscles, nothing more. He smiled and replied:

“Gentlemen, science is a serious matter, and deserves to be treated as such. I do not answer to anyone for my professional actions, save to God and the great masters of Science. If you are seeking changes in how the Casa Verde is run, I am prepared to listen; but if you are asking me to reject everything I believe in, you will go away empty-handed. I could invite some of you, as a delegation, to come and visit the poor deranged inmates with me, but I won’t do so, because that would entail explaining my whole system, which is something I will never reveal to laymen, still less to rebels.”

Thus spoke the alienist to the astonished crowd; they were clearly not expecting him to exhibit such determination, still less such serenity. Their amazement grew still greater when the alienist gave a solemn bow to the crowd, then turned and went slowly back inside. The barber quickly came to his senses and, brandishing his hat, invited his friends to go with him and tear down the Casa Verde. Only a few half-hearted voices responded. It was at this decisive moment that the barber felt the first stirrings of an ambition to govern; it seemed to him that by demolishing the Casa Verde and defeating the alienist, he would be able to seize control of the municipal council, confound the agents of the Crown, and make himself master of Itaguaí. For years he had been struggling to get his name included on the ballot from which the councillors were drawn, but had always been rejected because his station in life was considered incompatible with such high office. It was now or never. Besides, he had taken this mutiny so far now that defeat would mean imprisonment, or perhaps even the gallows, or exile. Unfortunately for the barber, the alienist’s reply had tempered the crowd’s fury. When he realized this, the barber felt a surge of indignation; he wanted to yell: “Coward! Scoundrels!” but he restrained himself and took another tack:

“Let us fight, dear friends, to the very end! The salvation of Itaguaí is in your noble and heroic hands! Let us tear down the prison of your sons and fathers, of your mothers and sisters, of your relatives and friends, and of your own good selves. If not, you will waste away on a diet of bread and water, or perhaps be flogged to death, in the dungeons of that despicable man.”

The crowd grew agitated again, muttering, then shouting, then shaking its fists, before thronging around the barber. The revolt was recovering from its brief dizzy spell, and threatening once again to raze the Casa Verde.

“Onward!” cried Porfírio, with a flourish of his hat.

“Onward!” bellowed the crowd.

But something stopped them: a corps of dragoons came marching at double time into Rua Nova.

Chapter 7

Something Unexpected

When the dragoons reached the Canjicas there was a moment of bewilderment; the rebels could scarcely believe that the full force of the state had been sent in against them, but the barber immediately grasped the situation and waited. The dragoons stopped, and the captain ordered the crowd to disperse. However, while some were inclined to obey, others rallied strongly around the barber, who responded with these rousing words:

“We will not disperse. If it is our corpses you want, you can have them, but only our corpses, for you will not take from us our honor, our reputation, or our rights, and with them the very salvation of Itaguaí.”

Nothing could be more reckless than this response from the barber, and nothing more natural. Call it the giddy impulse of all moments of crisis. Perhaps it was also an excess of confidence, an assumption that the dragoons would not resort to violence, an assumption that the captain quickly dispelled by ordering his troops to charge the Canjicas. What followed defied description. The crowd bellowed with rage; some managed to escape by climbing into the windows of houses, others by running down the street, but most remained, howling in angry indignation, spurred on by the barber’s exhortations. The defeat of the Canjicas was imminent, when, for reasons the chronicles do not reveal, a third of the dragoons suddenly switched to the rebels’ side. This unexpected reinforcement gave new heart to the Canjicas, while sowing despondency among the ranks of law and order. The loyal troops had no desire to attack their own comrades, and, one by one, they crossed over to join them, so that after a few minutes, the picture had completely changed. On one side stood the captain, accompanied by only a handful of men, facing a dense throng calling for his head. There was nothing to be done; he acknowledged defeat and surrendered his sword to the barber.

The triumphant revolution lost not a single moment; the wounded were taken to nearby houses, and the mob set off toward the town hall. Troops and citizens fraternized, shouting three cheers for the king, the viceroy, Itaguaí, and their illustrious leader, Porfírio. The man himself walked in front, grasping the sword as deftly as if it were nothing but a rather long razor. Victory had surrounded him with a mysterious aura. The dignity of office had begun to stiffen his sinews.

The councillors, peering at the crowd and soldiers from the windows, assumed that the troops had subdued the rabble, and, without further ado, went back inside and approved a petition to the viceroy asking him to pay a month’s wages to the dragoons, “whose bravery saved Itaguaí from the abyss into which it had been driven by a bunch of rebels.” This phrase was proposed by Sebastião Freitas, the dissenting councillor whose defense of the Canjicas had so scandalized his colleagues. However, any illusion of victory was quickly shattered. The cries of, “Long live the barber,” “Death to the councillors,” and “Death to the doctor,” revealed to them the sad truth. The chairman did not lose heart: “Whatever our own fate may be,” he said, “let us remember that we serve His Majesty and the people.” Sebastião Freitas suggested that they could better serve both Crown and town by slipping out the back door and going to confer with the chief magistrate, but all the other councillors rejected this proposal.

Seconds later, the barber, accompanied by some of his lieutenants, entered the council chamber and peremptorily informed the council that they had been overthrown. The councillors offered no resistance, surrendered, and were taken off to jail. The barber’s followers then proposed that he assume control of the town, in the name of His Majesty. Porfírio accepted, despite (he added) being all too aware of the pitfalls of high office. He went on to say that he could not do it without the support of all those present, to which they promptly agreed. The barber went to the window and relayed these decisions to the people, who ratified them with cheers of acclamation. The barber assumed the title of “Protector of the Town in the Name of His Majesty and the People.” Various important edicts were quickly issued, including official communications from the new administration and a detailed report to the viceroy filled with many protestations of loyal obedience to His Majesty. Finally, there was a short but energetic proclamation to the people:

PEOPLE OF ITAGUAÍ!

A corrupt and violent council was found to be conspiring against the interests of His Majesty and the People, and was roundly condemned by the public; as a consequence, a handful of Citizens, bravely supported by His Majesty’s loyal dragoons, have this very day ignominiously dissolved said Council, and with the unanimous consent of the town, the Supreme Mandate has been entrusted to me, until such time as His Majesty sees fit to order whatever may best serve his royal Person. People of Itaguaí! All that I ask is that you give me your trust, and that you assist me in restoring peace and the public finances, so wantonly squandered by the Council that has now met its fate at your hands. You may count on my dedication and self-sacrifice, and be assured that we will have the full backing of the Crown.

Protector of the Town in the Name of His Majesty and the People
PORFÍRIO CAETANO DAS NEVES

Everyone noticed that the proclamation made no mention of the Casa Verde, and, according to some, there could be no clearer indication of the barber’s evil intentions. The danger was even more pressing given that, in the midst of these momentous events, the alienist had locked up seven or eight more people, including two women, one of the men being a relative of the Protector. This was undoubtedly not intended as a deliberate challenge or act of defiance, but everyone interpreted it as such and the town was filled with the hope that, within twenty-four hours, the alienist would be in irons and that fearful prison destroyed.

The day ended merrily. While the town crier went around reading out the proclamation on every corner, people spilled out into the streets and swore to defend to the death their illustrious Porfírio. If few bothered to protest against the Casa Verde, this was merely proof of their confidence in the new government. The barber issued a decree declaring the day to be a public holiday, and because the combination of temporal and spiritual powers struck him as highly desirable, he suggested to the priest that a “Te Deum” might be sung. Father Lopes, however, bluntly refused.

“I trust that, in any event, Your Reverence will not join forces with the new government’s enemies?” the barber said to him darkly.

To which Father Lopes replied without replying:

“How could I do that, if the new government has no enemies?”

The barber smiled; it was absolutely true. Apart from the captain, the councillors, and a handful of grandees, the whole town was on his side. Even those grandees who hadn’t publicly backed him, had not come out against him, either. Not one of the municipality’s officials had failed to report for duty. Throughout the town, families blessed the name of the man who would at last liberate Itaguaí from the Casa Verde and the terrible Simão Bacamarte.

Chapter 8

The Apothecary’s Dilemma

Twenty-four hours after the events narrated in the preceding chapter, the barber, accompanied by two orderlies, left the government palace—as the town hall was now called—and went to the home of Simão Bacamarte. He was not unaware that it would be more fitting for the government to send for Bacamarte; however, fearing that the alienist might not obey, he felt obliged to adopt a tolerant, moderate stance.

I will not describe the apothecary’s terror upon hearing that the barber was on his way to the alienist’s house. “He’s going to arrest him,” he thought, his anxieties redoubling. Indeed the apothecary’s moral torment during those revolutionary days exceeds all description. Never had a man found himself in a tighter spot: his close acquaintance with the alienist urged him to join his side, while the barber’s victory inclined him toward the other. News of the uprising itself had already shaken him to the core, for he knew how universally the alienist was hated, and the victorious rebellion was the last straw. Soares’s wife, a redoubtable woman and close friend of Dona Evarista, told him in no uncertain terms that his place was at Simão Bacamarte’s side; meanwhile, his heart was screaming that this was a lost cause and that no one, of his own free will, shackles himself to a corpse. “True enough, Cato did it, sed victa Catoni,” he thought, remembering one of Father Lopes’s favorite phrases. “But Cato did not attach himself to a lost cause: he himself had been the lost cause, he and his republic; moreover, his act was that of an egotist, a miserable egotist; my situation is entirely different.” His wife, however, would not give in, so Crispim Soares was left with no other option than to declare himself ill and take to his bed.

“There goes Porfírio, off to Dr. Bacamarte’s house,” said his wife to him the following day, at his bedside. “He’s got people with him.”

“They’re going to arrest the doctor,” thought the apothecary.

One thought leads to another; the apothecary was convinced that once they’d arrested the alienist, they would come after him as an accomplice. This thought proved to be a more effective remedy than any caustic lotion. Crispim Soares sat up, pronounced himself better, and said that he was going out. Despite all his wife’s efforts and protestations, he got dressed and left the house. The chroniclers are unanimous in recording that her certainty that the apothecary was about to place himself nobly at the alienist’s side was a great consolation to her; they go on to note very shrewdly just how powerful our illusions can be; for the apothecary resolutely made his way not to the alienist’s house, but to the government palace. On arrival, he expressed surprise on finding that the barber was not there, explaining that he had come to pledge his allegiance, having been unable to do so the previous day due to illness. With some effort he managed a cough. The functionaries who heard his declaration, knowing full well the apothecary’s close links with the alienist, understood the significance of this new declaration of allegiance, and treated Crispim Soares with punctilious kindness. They assured him that the barber would return shortly; His Lordship had gone to the Casa Verde on important business, but would not be long. They offered him a chair, refreshments, and compliments; they told him that the cause of the illustrious Porfírio was the cause of every patriot, to which the apothecary responded that, yes, indeed, he had never doubted it for a minute, and would be sure to have it brought to His Majesty’s attention.

Chapter 9

Two Fine Cases

The alienist did not delay in receiving the barber, declaring that since he had no means to resist, he was ready to obey. He asked only that he should not be obliged to witness the destruction of the Casa Verde.

“You are much mistaken, Your Lordship” said the barber after a short pause, “in attributing such barbarous intentions to my government. Rightly or wrongly, public opinion believes that the majority of patients placed here are perfectly sane, but the government recognizes that this is a purely scientific matter and does not intend to attempt to regulate the matter with municipal bylaws. Furthermore, the Casa Verde is a public institution, for that is how we received it from the hands of the now-disbanded council. However, there is—as indeed there must be—an intermediate proposal that may restore the public’s peace of mind.”

The alienist could barely conceal his astonishment; he confessed that he had been expecting an entirely different outcome: the tearing down of the asylum, prison for him, or even exile, indeed anything but—

“You are surprised,” interrupted the barber gravely, “because you have not paid close enough attention to the heavy responsibilities of government. The people, blinded by compassion, which, in such cases, provokes a perfectly legitimate sense of indignation, may demand from their government a certain series of measures, but the government, with the responsibilities incumbent upon it, should not carry them out, or at least not in their entirety. Such is the situation we find ourselves in. The valiant revolution that yesterday brought down a despised and corrupt council, clamored for the destruction of the Casa Verde, but can a government take it upon itself to abolish madness? Certainly not. And if governments cannot abolish madness, are they any better qualified to detect and identify it? Again, no—it is a matter for science. Hence, in such a delicate matter as this, the government neither can nor should dispense with the aid and counsel of Your Lordship. What we ask of you is that, together, we find some means to satisfy public opinion. Let us join forces, and the people will fall into line. One acceptable solution, unless Your Lordship has a better suggestion, would be to remove from the Casa Verde those patients who are almost cured, as well as those who are simply harmless eccentrics. In that way, and without great danger, we can show a certain degree of benign tolerance.”

After a pause of about three minutes, Simão Bacamarte asked: “How many dead and injured were there in yesterday’s altercations?”

The barber was taken aback by the question, but quickly replied that there had been eleven dead and twenty-five wounded.

“Eleven dead and twenty-five wounded!” the alienist repeated two or three times.

The alienist intimated that he wasn’t entirely happy with the proposal, but that he would come up with an alternative within a few days. He asked a number of questions about the previous day’s events, the attack, the defense, the dragoons switching sides, any resistance offered by the councillors, and so on, to which the barber gave fulsome answers, laying great emphasis on how utterly discredited the council was. The barber confessed that the new government did not yet enjoy the backing of the town’s leading citizens, but then that was something where the alienist himself could make all the difference. The government, concluded the barber, would be greatly relieved if it could count on the sympathy, if not the goodwill, of the loftiest mind in Itaguaí, and, no doubt, in the entire kingdom. But none of this made a button of difference to the noble, austere features of that great man, who listened in silence, showing neither pride nor modesty, as impassive as a stone deity.

“Eleven dead and twenty-five wounded,” repeated the alienist, after accompanying the barber to the door. “Here we have two fine cases of cerebral incapacity. This barber exhibits clear symptoms of shameless duplicity. As for the idiocy of those who cheered him, what further proof is needed than those eleven dead and twenty-five wounded? Yes, two fine cases!”

“Long live noble Porfírio!” shouted the thirty-odd people waiting for the barber outside.

The alienist peered out the window and managed to catch the end of the barber’s short address to the excited crowd.

“. . . for I will be vigilant, of this you can be certain, yes, ever vigilant in fulfilling the wishes of the people. Trust in me, and everything will be resolved in the best possible manner. I only wish to remind you of the need for order. Order, my friends, is the very foundation of government!”

“Long live noble Porfírio!” shouted the thirty voices, waving their hats.

“Two fine cases!” murmured the alienist.

Chapter 10

The Restoration

Within five days, the alienist had committed to the Casa Verde around fifty supporters of the new government. The people were outraged. The government, bewildered, did not know how to react. João Pina, another barber, said openly in the streets that Porfírio had “sold his soul to Simão Bacamarte,” a phrase which rallied the most ardent of the town’s citizens to Pina’s side. Seeing his old rival in the arts of the razor at the head of this new insurrection, Porfírio understood that all would be lost if he did not move decisively; he issued two decrees, one abolishing the Casa Verde and the other banishing the alienist. João Pina ably demonstrated, with eloquent turns of phrase, that Porfírio’s actions were nothing but a ruse and should not be taken seriously. Two hours later, Porfírio was ignominiously defeated, and João Pina assumed the heavy task of government. Finding in the filing cabinets drafts of the proclamation, the loyal address to the viceroy, and other inaugural documents left by the previous government, he lost no time in having them copied and dispatched; the chroniclers specifically state, and indeed it can be safely assumed, that he took care to change the names, so that where the other barber had written “corrupt council,” the new barber referred to “an impostor steeped in evil French doctrines contrary to the sacrosanct interests of His Majesty,” and so on.

At this point, a detachment of troops sent by the viceroy entered the town and restored order. The alienist immediately demanded that Porfírio be handed over to him, along with fifty or so other individuals, whom he declared to be mentally deranged. Furthermore, they promised to hand over a further nineteen of the barber’s followers, who were convalescing from injuries inflicted in the initial rebellion.

This moment in Itaguaí’s crisis also marked the zenith of Simão Bacamarte’s influence. Everything he asked for they gave him, and one of the most vivid proofs of the eminent doctor’s influence can be found in the alacrity with which the councillors, restored to their positions, agreed that Sebastião Freitas should also be committed to the asylum. Aware of the extraordinary inconsistency of this particular councillor’s opinions, the alienist identified the case as pathological, and locked the man up. The same thing happened to the apothecary. Ever since he had learned of Soares’s instantaneous decision to back the rebellion, the alienist had weighed it against the apothecary’s consistent expressions of support for him, even on the very eve of the revolt, and had him arrested too. Crispim Soares did not deny the fact, but tried to explain it away by saying that he had succumbed to an impulse of fear upon seeing the rebellion triumphant, pointing out in his own defense that he had quickly returned to his sickbed and played no further part in events. Simão Bacamarte did not argue with him, remarking to the others present that fear can also be father to insanity, and that Crispim Soares’s case struck him as one of the clearest examples of such a phenomenon.

But the most obvious proof of Simão Bacamarte’s influence was the docility with which the town council handed over its own chairman. This worthy official had declared in open session that he would be content with no less than a tun of blood to cleanse him of the Canjicas’s effrontery, and his words reached the alienist’s ears via the mouth of the town clerk, who came to him flushed with excitement. Simão Bacamarte began by putting the town clerk in the Casa Verde, and from there he went to the town hall and informed the council that the chairman of the council was suffering from “bull mania,” a type of madness he intended to make a study of, to the great benefit of mankind. The council at first hesitated, but finally gave in.

From then on this harvest of men proved unstoppable. A man could not invent or repeat the simplest of lies, even when it was to the advantage of the inventor or spreader of the lie, without being thrown into the Casa Verde. Everything was madness. Composers of riddles, aficionados of puzzles and anagrams, slanderers, nosy parkers, preening dandies, and pompous officials: no one escaped the alienist’s emissaries. He spared sweethearts but not strumpets, saying that the first yielded to a natural impulse, the second only to vice. A man could be a miser or a spendthrift and still be hauled off the Casa Verde; hence the claim that there was no rule for determining what constituted complete sanity. Certain chroniclers believe that Simão Bacamarte did not always act in good faith, and they cite in support of this allegation (which I cannot entirely vouch for) the fact that he persuaded the council to pass a bylaw authorizing the wearing of a silver ring on the thumb of the left hand by any person who, without any further proof, documentary or otherwise, claimed to have a drop or two of blue blood in his or her veins. These chroniclers say that Bacamarte’s secret goal was to enrich a certain silversmith in the town, who was a close friend. However, while it is certainly true that the jeweler saw his business prosper following the new municipal ordinance, it is no less true that the bylaw also provided the Casa Verde with a host of new inmates; it would therefore be reckless to determine which of these was the eminent doctor’s true objective. As for the reason justifying the arrest and incarceration of all those who wore the ring, that is one of the obscurest aspects of the entire history of Itaguaí. The likeliest theory is that they were locked up for going around waving their hands about for no good reason, in the streets, at home, even in church. Everyone knows that lunatics wave their hands about a lot. In any event, this is pure conjecture; there is no concrete evidence.

“Where will it all end?” exclaimed the local gentry. “Ah, if only we had supported the Canjicas . . .”

Then one morning, on the day that the council was due to hold a grand ball, the whole town was shaken by the news that the alienist’s own wife had been committed to the Casa Verde. No one could believe it; some scoundrel must surely have made it up. But no, it was absolutely true. Dona Evarista had been taken away at two o’clock in the morning. Father Lopes rushed to see the alienist and inquired discreetly about the matter.

“I’ve had my doubts for some time now,” her husband said gravely. “Her previous matrimonial modesty, in both her marriages, cannot be reconciled with the positive frenzy for silks, velvets, laces, and precious stones she has displayed since her return from Rio de Janeiro. That was when I began to observe her closely. Her conversations revolved entirely around such fripperies; if I talked to her about the royal courts of olden times, she would immediately ask about the dresses worn by the ladies; if she received a visit from a lady when I was out, before telling me the purpose of the visit she would first describe the visitor’s outfit, approving of some items and criticizing others. One day, which I am sure Your Reverence will remember, she offered to make a new dress every year for the statue of Our Lady in the parish church. These were all serious symptoms in themselves, but it was last night that her complete insanity manifested itself. She had carefully selected and made all the final alterations to the gown she was planning to wear to the municipal ball; her only hesitation was between a garnet or sapphire necklace. The day before yesterday, she asked me which one she should wear; I replied that either one would go very well. Yesterday, she repeated the question over breakfast; shortly after lunch I found her silent and thoughtful.

“ ‘What’s the matter?” I asked her.

“ ‘I’d like to wear the garnet necklace, but the sapphire one is so pretty!’

“ ‘So wear the sapphire one.’

“ ‘But then what about the garnets?’

“Anyway, the afternoon and evening passed without any further developments. We had supper and went to bed. In the middle of the night, sometime around one-thirty, I woke up and she wasn’t there. I got out of bed, went to our dressing room, and found her with the two necklaces, trying them on in front of the mirror, first one, then the other. She was obviously deranged, so I had her committed at once.”

The alienist’s response did not satisfy Father Lopes, but he said nothing. The alienist, however, understood the priest’s silence and explained to him that Dona Evarista’s case was one of “sumptuary mania,” not incurable, and certainly worthy of study.

“In six weeks she’ll be cured,” he concluded. “I’m sure of it.”

The eminent doctor’s selfless devotion further enhanced his standing in the town. Rumors, suspicions, and doubts all crumbled into dust, for he had not hesitated to lock up his own wife, whom he loved with all his heart. No one could oppose him now, still less accuse him of having anything but strictly scientific motives.

He was a great and austere man, Hippocrates and Cato rolled into one.

Chapter 11

Itaguaí Astonishment

And now, dear reader, prepare yourself to feel as astonished as did the townspeople of Itaguaí when it was announced that the lunatics in the Casa Verde would all be released.

“All of them?”

“All of them.”

“That’s impossible. Some of them, perhaps . . . but all?”

“All. That’s what he said in the memorandum he sent to the council this morning.”

The alienist had indeed sent an official memorandum to the council, setting out the following points, in numbered paragraphs:

1.    Having consulted statistics relating to both the town and the Casa Verde, four-fifths of the population are currently residing in said establishment.

2.    This displacement of population leads me to examine the fundamental basis of my theory of mental illness, pursuant to which all persons whose faculties are not in perfect equilibrium must be considered insane.

3.    As a result of said examination and in the light of said statistics, I am now convinced that the true doctrine is the contrary, and that the disequilibrium of mental faculties should therefore be considered normal and exemplary, whereas those whose mental equilibrium is undisturbed should henceforth be treated as probably pathological.

4.    In the light of this discovery, I hereby inform the council that I will set free the current inmates of the Casa Verde, and replace them with such persons as fulfill the conditions set out above.

5.    I will spare no effort in the pursuit of scientific truth, and I expect the same dedication on the part of the council.

6.    I will repay the council and individuals concerned the sum total of the stipend received for lodging the presumed lunatics, minus any amounts already spent on food, clothing, etc., which the council can verify upon inspection of the Casa Verde’s account ledgers and coffers.

You can imagine the astonishment of the people of Itaguaí, and the joy of the inmates’ friends and relations. Banquets, dances, colored lanterns, and music—no expense was spared in celebrating the happy event. I shall not describe the festivities since they are not relevant to our purposes, but they were magnificent, highly emotional, and prolonged.

As is always the way with human affairs, in the midst of the rejoicing provoked by Simão Bacamarte’s memorandum, no one paid any attention to the words at the end of the fourth paragraph, which were later to prove of such importance.

Chapter 12

The End of the Fourth Paragraph

Lanterns were extinguished, families reunited, and everything seemed to return to its rightful place. Order reigned, and the council once again governed without any external interference; its own chairman and Councillor Freitas returned to their respective positions. Porfírio the barber, chastened by events and having “experienced all in life,” as the poet said of Napoleon (and even more than that, because Napoleon never experienced the Casa Verde), decided that the obscure glories of razor and scissors were preferable to the brilliant calamities of power. He was, of course, prosecuted by the authorities, but the townspeople begged His Majesty to show clemency, and a pardon was duly granted. João Pina was cleared of all charges, since his actions had brought down a rebel. The chroniclers think it was this that gave birth to our adage, “When a thief robs a thief the sentence is but brief,” an immoral saying, it’s true, but still highly useful.

All complaints against the alienist ceased, as did any lingering traces of resentment for what he had done. Ever since he had declared the Casa Verde’s inmates to be completely sane, they had all been filled with a sense of profound gratitude and fervent enthusiasm. Many of them felt that the alienist deserved special recognition for his services and even gave a ball in his honor, followed by further dinners and celebrations. The chronicles say that, at first, Dona Evarista considered asking for a separation, but the sad prospect of losing the companionship of such a great man overcame any wounded feelings, and the couple ended up even happier than before.

The friendship between the alienist and the apothecary remained equally close. The latter concluded from Simão Bacamarte’s memorandum that, in times of revolution, prudence is the most important virtue, and he greatly appreciated the alienist’s magnanimity in extending him the hand of friendship when he granted him his liberty.

“He is indeed a great man,” said Soares to his wife, referring to the alienist’s gesture.

Needless to say, Mateus the saddler, Costa, Coelho, Martim Brito, and all the others mentioned earlier were free to return to their former habits and occupations. Martim Brito, locked up on account of that overenthusiastic speech in praise of Dona Evarista, now gave another speech in honor of the eminent doctor “whose exalted genius spreads its wings far above the sun and leaves beneath it all other spirits of the earth.”

“Thank you for your kind words,” replied the alienist, “which only serve to remind me how right I was to release you.”

Meanwhile, the council, which had replied to Simão Bacamarte’s memorandum saying that it would set out its position concerning the end of paragraph four in due course, finally set about legislating on the matter. A bylaw was adopted, without debate, authorizing the alienist to detain in the Casa Verde anyone whose mental faculties were found to be in perfect equilibrium. And after the council’s previous painful experience, a clause was included stating that such authorization was provisional in nature and limited to one year, so that the new theory could be put to the test, and authorizing the council to close down the Casa Verde at any time, should this be deemed advisable for reasons of public order. Councillor Freitas also proposed a provision that under no circumstances should any councillor be committed to the mental asylum, and this clause was accepted, voted through, and included in the bylaw, despite Councillor Galvão’s objections. The latter’s main argument was that the council, in passing legislation relating to a scientific experiment, could not exclude its own members from the consequences of the law; such an exemption was both odious and ridiculous. As soon as he uttered those two words, the other councillors erupted in howls of disapproval at their colleague’s audacity and foolishness; for his part, he heard them out and simply repeated, calmly, that he would vote against the exemption.

“Our position as councillors,” he concluded, “grants us no special powers, nor does it exclude us from the foibles of the human mind.”

Simão Bacamarte accepted the bylaw with all its restrictions. As for the councillors being exempted, he declared that he would have been deeply saddened had he been compelled to commit a single one of them to the Casa Verde; the clause itself, however, was the best possible proof that their mental faculties did not suffer from perfect equilibrium. The same could not, however, be said for Councillor Galvão, whose wisdom in objecting to the exemption, and moderation in responding to his colleagues’ abusive tirades, clearly demonstrated a well-organized brain, and on this account Bacamarte respectfully requested the council to hand him over for treatment. The council, still somewhat offended by Councillor Galvão’s behavior, considered the alienist’s request and voted unanimously in favor.

It goes without saying that, according to the new theory, a person could not be committed to the Casa Verde on the basis of a single incident or word; rather, a long examination was required, exhaustively covering both past and present. For example, it took thirty days after the bylaw was passed for Father Lopes to be arrested, and forty days for the apothecary’s wife. This lady’s detention filled her husband with indignation. Crispim Soares left his house spitting with rage, and declaring to whoever he met that he was going to box the tyrant’s ears. Upon hearing this in the street, one of the alienist’s sworn enemies immediately set aside his animosity and rushed to Simão Bacamarte’s house to warn him of the danger. Bacamarte expressed his gratitude to his erstwhile adversary, and in a matter of minutes ascertained the worthiness and good faith of the man’s sentiments, his respect and generosity toward his fellow man; he thereupon shook him warmly by the hand and committed him to the Casa Verde.

“A most unusual case,” he said to his astonished wife. “Now let’s wait for our good friend Crispim.”

Crispim arrived. Sorrow had overcome anger, and the apothecary did not after all box the alienist’s ears. The latter consoled his dear friend, assuring him that all was not lost; his wife might well have some degree of cerebral imbalance, and he, Bacamarte, would examine her very thoroughly to find out. In the meantime, though, he could scarcely let the woman roam the streets. Seeing certain advantages in reuniting them—on the basis that the husband’s slippery duplicity might in some way cure the moral refinement he had detected in the wife—Bacamarte told Soares:

“You can work in your dispensary during the day, but you will have lunch and dinner here with your wife, and stay overnight, and spend all day here on Sundays and public holidays.”

The proposal placed the poor apothecary in the position of Buridan’s ass. He very much wanted to be with his wife, but feared returning to the Casa Verde; he remained caught in this dilemma for some time, until Dona Evarista rescued him by promising to visit her dear friend and relay messages back and forth between them. Crispim Soares gratefully kissed her hands. This gesture of cowardly egotism struck the alienist as almost sublime.

After five months, there were some eighteen persons residing at the Casa Verde, but Simão Bacamarte did not let up; he went from street to street and house to house, observing, asking questions, and taking notes, and the internment of even one new patient gave him the same pleasure he had once enjoyed when herding them in by the dozen. It was precisely this disparity that confirmed his new theory; he had finally discovered the truth about cerebral pathology. One day, he succeeded in committing the chief magistrate to the Casa Verde, but only after he had scrupulously carried out a detailed study of all his judicial decisions and spoken to all the important people in the town. On more than one occasion, he had found himself on the verge of committing someone who turned out to be perfectly unbalanced; this is what happened with a certain lawyer, in whom he had identified such a fine array of moral and mental qualities that he considered it positively dangerous to leave the man at large in society. He ordered him to be arrested, but the bailiff had doubts and asked Bacamarte if he could conduct an experiment; he went to see a friend of his who had been accused of forging a will, and advised him to engage Salustiano (the name of the lawyer in question) to defend him.

“So do you really think he’ll . . . ?”

“No doubt about it. Tell him everything, the whole truth, whatever it may be, and leave the matter entirely in his hands.”

The man went to see the lawyer, confessed to having forged the will, and asked him to take on the case. The lawyer agreed, studied all the papers, pleaded the case before the court, and proved beyond a shadow of doubt that the will was completely genuine. The defendant was solemnly declared innocent by the judge, and the inheritance was his. To this experiment the distinguished lawyer owed his freedom. However, nothing escapes an original and penetrating mind. Simão Bacamarte, who had already noted the bailiff’s dedication, wisdom, patience, and restraint, recognized the skill and good judgment with which he had conducted such a tricky and complicated experiment, and ordered him to be committed forthwith to the Casa Verde. He did, however, give him one of the best cells.

Once again, the lunatics were lodged according to their different categories. One wing housed those madmen with a particular tendency for modesty; one was for the tolerant, one for the truthful, one for the innocent, one for the loyal, one for the magnanimous, one for the wise, one for the sincere, and so on. Naturally, the inmates’ friends and family objected strongly to this new theory, and some tried to force the council to rescind its authorization. However, the council had not forgotten the language used by Councillor Galvão, and, since he would be released and restored to his former position if they rescinded the bylaw, they refused. Simão Bacamarte wrote to the councillors, not to thank them, but to congratulate them on this act of personal vindictiveness.

Disenchanted with the lawful authorities, some of the leading townspeople went secretly to Porfírio the barber and promised him their wholehearted support, as well as money and influence at court, if he would lead another uprising against the council and the alienist. The barber declined, saying that ambition had driven him to break the law on that first occasion, but that he had seen both the error of his ways and the fickleness of his followers. Since the council had seen fit to authorize the alienist’s new experiment for one year, then, in the event of the council rejecting their request, they should either wait until the year was up or petition the viceroy. He, Porfírio, could never advise resorting to means that had already failed him once and resulted in deaths and injuries that would be forever on his conscience.

“What’s this you say?” asked the alienist when one of his spies told him about the conversation between the barber and the leading citizens.

Two days later, the barber was taken to the Casa Verde. “I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t!” cried the poor man.

The one-year period came to an end, and the council authorized a six-month extension to allow some new therapies to be tested. The conclusion of this episode in the chronicles of Itaguaí is of such magnitude, and so unexpected, that it deserves a full explanation of no less than ten chapters; I will, however, make do with just one, which will form both the grand finale of my account, and one of the finest-ever examples of scientific conviction and selflessness.

Chapter 13

Plus Ultra!

Now it was the turn of therapy. Simão Bacamarte, so assiduous and wise in finding his patients, exceeded even himself in the foresight and diligence with which he began their treatment. On this point all of the chroniclers are in complete agreement: the eminent alienist performed the most astonishing cures, earning him Itaguaí’s most ardent admiration.

Indeed, it would be difficult to imagine a more rational system of therapy. Having divided the lunatics into categories according to their predominant moral perfection, Simão Bacamarte set about attacking the leading attribute head-on. Take, for example, modesty. Bacamarte would apply a treatment designed to instill precisely the opposite characteristic—in this case, vanity. Rather than starting immediately with the maximum dose, he would increase it gradually, taking into account the patient’s age, condition, temperament, and social position. Sometimes all it took was a tailcoat, a ribbon, a wig, or a cane to restore the patient’s sanity; in more stubborn cases he would resort to diamond rings, honorary titles, etc. There was one patient, a poet, who resisted everything. Simão Bacamarte was beginning to despair of finding a cure, when he had the idea of sending out the town crier to proclaim him as great a poet as Garção or Pindar.

“It’s a miracle,” said the poet’s mother to one of her closest friends, “a blessed miracle.”

Another patient, also suffering from modesty, exhibited the same resistance to medical treatment; but since he wasn’t a writer (he could barely sign his name), the town-crier cure could not be applied. Simão Bacamarte had the idea of petitioning for the man to be appointed secretary of the Academy of Hidden Talents that had been established in Itaguaí. The posts of president and secretary were by royal appointment, in memory of His Late Majesty King João V, and carried with them both the title of “Your Excellency” and the right to wear a gold medallion on one’s hat. The government in Lisbon initially refused the appointment, but when the alienist indicated that he was not proposing it as a legitimate distinction or honorary award, but merely as a therapeutic remedy in a difficult case, the government made an exception and granted his request, although not without extraordinary efforts on the part of the Minister for the Navy and Colonies, who just so happened to be the alienist’s cousin. Yet another blessed miracle.

“Quite remarkable!” people said in the street, on seeing the healthy, puffed-up expressions of the two former lunatics.

Such was his system. The rest can be imagined. Each moral or mental refinement was attacked at the point where its perfection seemed strongest, and the effect was never in doubt. There were some instances in which the predominant characteristic resisted all attempts at treatment; in such cases the alienist would attack another element, conducting his therapies much as a military strategist would, assailing first one bastion and then another until the fortress falls.

After five and a half months, the Casa Verde was empty: everyone was cured! Councillor Galvão, so cruelly afflicted by principles of fairness and moderation, had the good fortune to lose an uncle; I say good fortune because the uncle left an ambiguously worded will and Galvão obtained a favorable interpretation by corrupting the judges and deceiving the other heirs. The alienist’s sincerity was apparent on this occasion; he freely admitted that he had played no part in the cure, and that it had been all down to the healing power of nature. With Father Lopes it was an entirely different matter. Knowing that the priest knew absolutely no Hebrew or Greek, the alienist asked him to write a critical analysis of the Septuagint. The priest accepted and performed the task in short order; within two months he had written the book and was a free man. As for the apothecary’s wife, she did not stay long in the cell allocated to her and where she was always treated kindly and affectionately.

“Why doesn’t Crispim come to visit me?” she asked every day.

In reply they gave her one excuse after another; in the end they told her the truth. The worthy matron could not contain her shame and indignation. During her fits of rage, she would utter random words and phrases such as these:

“Scoundrel! Villain! Ungrateful cheat! Nothing but a peddler of spurious, rancid lotions and potions . . . Oh, the scoundrel!”

Simão Bacamarte recognized that, even if the accusation itself might not be true, her words were enough to show that the excellent lady was at last restored to a state of perfect mental disequilibrium, and he promptly discharged her.

Now, if you think that the alienist was delighted to see the last inmate leaving the Casa Verde, you will only be revealing how little you know our man. Plus ultra! was his motto: Ever Onward! It was not enough for him to have discovered the true theory of insanity; nor was he content to have restored the reign of reason in Itaguaí. Plus ultra! Rather than feeling elated, he grew troubled and pensive; something was telling him that his new theory held within it another, even newer theory.

“Let’s see,” he thought, “let’s see if I can finally reach the ultimate truth.”

Such were his thoughts as he paced the length of the vast room, which contained the richest library in all His Majesty’s overseas possessions. The eminent alienist’s majestic and austere body was wrapped in an ample damask robe, tied at the waist by a silken cord with gold tassels (a gift from a university). A powdered wig covered his broad and noble pate, polished smooth by daily scientific cogitations. His feet, neither slim and feminine nor large and uncouth, but entirely in proportion with his shape and size, were protected by a pair of shoes adorned with nothing but a plain brass buckle. Observe the contrast: his only luxuries were those of a scientific origin; everything that related to his own person bore the hallmark of simplicity and moderation, fitting virtues for a sage.

Thus it was that he, the great alienist, paced from one end of the vast library to the other, lost in his own thoughts, oblivious to anything beyond the darkest problems of cerebral pathology. Suddenly he stopped. Standing in front of a window, with his left elbow supported on the palm of his right hand, and his chin resting on the closed fist of his left hand, he asked himself:

“But were they really insane, and cured by me—or was what appeared to be a cure nothing more than the discovery of their natural mental disequilibrium?”

And, digging further into his thoughts, he reached the following conclusion: the well-organized brains he had been so successfully treating were, after all, just as unbalanced as all the rest. He could not pretend, he realized, to have instilled in his patients any sentiment or mental faculty they did not already possess; both of these things must have already existed, in a latent state, perhaps, but there nevertheless.

Upon reaching this conclusion, the eminent alienist experienced two opposing sensations, one of pleasure, the other of dejection. The pleasure was on seeing that, at the end of long and patient investigation, involving unrelenting work and a monumental struggle against the entire population, he could now confirm the following truth: there were no madmen in Itaguaí; the town possessed not one single lunatic. But no sooner had this idea refreshed his soul than another appeared, completely neutralizing the effect of the first: a doubt. What! Not one single well-adjusted brain in the whole of Itaguaí? Would such an extreme conclusion not, by its very nature, be erroneous? And would it not, moreover, destroy the entire majestic edifice of his new psychological doctrine?

The chroniclers of Itaguaí describe the illustrious Simão Bacamarte’s anguish as one of the most terrifying moral maelstroms ever to afflict mankind. But such tempests only terrify the weak; the strong brace themselves and stare into the eye of the storm. Twenty minutes later, the alienist’s face lit up with a gentle glow.

“Yes, that must be it,” he thought.

And here is what it was. Simão Bacamarte had discovered within himself all the characteristics of perfect mental and moral equilibrium. It seemed to him that he possessed wisdom, patience, perseverance, tolerance, truthfulness, moral vigor, and loyalty; in other words, all the qualities that together defined a confirmed lunatic. It’s true that doubts immediately followed, and he even concluded that he was mistaken; but, being a prudent man, he gathered together a group of friends and asked them for their candid opinion. Their verdict was affirmative.

“Not a single defect?”

“Not one,” they replied in unison.

“No vices?”

“None.”

“Absolutely perfect?”

“Absolutely.”

“No,” cried the alienist, “it’s impossible! I don’t recognize in myself the superiority you have so generously described. You’re just saying these things out of kindness. I’ve examined myself and I can find nothing to justify the excesses of your affections.”

The assembled friends insisted; the alienist resisted; finally, Father Lopes explained everything with this astute observation:

“Do you know why you can’t see in yourself those lofty virtues we all so admire? It’s because you have one further quality that outshines all the rest: modesty.”

His words were decisive. Simão Bacamarte bowed his head, both happy and sad, and yet more happy than sad. Without further ado, he committed himself to the Casa Verde. In vain his wife and friends told him to stay, that he was perfectly sane and balanced; but no amount of begging or pleading or tears would detain him for even one moment.

“It is a matter of science,” he said. “It concerns an entirely new doctrine, of which I am the very first example. I embody both the theory and the practice.”

“Simão! My darling Simão!” wailed his wife, tears streaming down her face.

But the illustrious doctor, his eyes shining with scientific conviction, shut his ears to his wife’s pleas, and gently pushed her away. Once the door of the Casa Verde was locked behind him, he devoted himself entirely to the study and cure of himself. The chroniclers say that he died seventeen months later, in the same state in which he entered the Casa Verde, having achieved nothing. Some even speculate that he had always been the sole lunatic in Itaguaí; but this theory, based upon a rumor that circulated after the alienist’s death, has no basis beyond the rumor itself, and it is a dubious rumor at that, being attributed to Father Lopes, who had so ardently praised the great man’s virtues. In any event, his funeral took place with great pomp and rare solemnity.