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

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

Good, kind Conceição! People called her “a saint,” and she did full justice to that title, given how easily she put up with her husband’s neglect. Hers was a very moderate nature, with no extremes, no tearful tantrums, and no great outbursts of hilarity. In this respect, she would have been fine as a Muslim woman and would have been quite happy in a harem, as long as appearances were maintained. May God forgive me if I’m misjudging her, but everything about her was contained and passive. Even her face was average, neither pretty nor ugly. She was what people call “a nice person.” She never spoke ill of anyone and was very forgiving. She wouldn’t have known how to hate anyone, nor, perhaps, how to love them.

On that particular Christmas Eve, the notary went off to the theater. It was around 1861 or 1862. I should have been in Mangaratiba on holiday, but I had stayed until Christmas because I wanted to see what midnight mass was like in the big city. The family retired to bed at the usual time, and I waited in the front room, dressed and ready. From there I could go out into the hallway and leave the house without disturbing anyone. There were three keys to the front door: the notary had one, I would take the second, and the third would remain in the house.

“But Senhor Nogueira, what will you do to fill the time?” Conceição’s mother asked.

“I’ll read, Dona Inácia.”

I had with me a novel, The Three Musketeers, in an old translation published, I think, by the Jornal do Commercio. I sat down at the table in the middle of the room, and by the light of an oil lamp, while the rest of the house was sleeping, I once again climbed onto D’Artagnan’s scrawny horse and set off on an adventure. I was soon completely intoxicated by Dumas. The minutes flew past, as they so rarely do when one is waiting; I heard the clock strike eleven, but barely took any notice, as if it were of no importance. However, the sound of someone stirring in the house roused me from my reading: footsteps in the passageway between the parlor and the dining room. I looked up and, soon afterward, saw Conceição appear in the doorway.

“Still here?” she asked.

“Yes, it’s not yet midnight.”

“Such patience!”

Conceição came into the room, her bedroom slippers flip-flapping. She was wearing a white dressing gown, loosely tied at the waist. She was quite thin and this somehow lent her a romantic air, rather in keeping with my adventure story. I closed the book, and she went and sat on the chair next to mine, near the couch. When I asked if I had unwittingly woken her by making a noise, she immediately said:

“No, not at all. I simply woke up.”

I looked at her and rather doubted the truth of this. Her eyes were not those of someone who had been asleep, but of someone who had not yet slept at all. However, I quickly dismissed this observation—which might have borne fruit in someone else’s mind—never dreaming that I might be the reason she hadn’t gone to sleep and that she was lying so as not to worry or annoy me. She was, as I said, a kind person, very kind.

“It must be nearly time, though,” I said.

“How do you have the patience to stay awake while your neighbor sleeps? And to wait here all alone too. Aren’t you afraid of ghosts? I bet I startled you just now.”

“I was a little surprised when I heard footsteps, but then you appeared immediately afterward.”

“What were you reading? Don’t tell me, I know: it’s The Three Musketeers.”

“Exactly. It’s such a good book.”

“Do you like novels?”

“I do.”

“Have you read The Dark-Haired Girl?”

“By Macedo? Yes, I have it at home in Mangaratiba.”

“I love novels, but I don’t have much time to read anymore. What novels have you read?”

I began listing a few titles. Conceiçao listened, leaning her head against the chair back, looking at me fixedly through half-closed eyelids. Now and then, she would run her tongue over her lips to moisten them. When I finished speaking, she said nothing, and we sat in silence for a few seconds. Then, still gazing at me with her large, intelligent eyes, she sat up straight, interlaced her fingers, and rested her chin on them, her elbows on the arms of the chair.

“Perhaps she’s bored,” I thought. Then, out loud, I said:

“Dona Conceição, I think it must be nearly time, and I—”

“No, no, it’s still early. I just looked at the clock and it’s only half-past eleven. You still have time. If you ever do miss a night’s sleep, can you get through the next day without sleeping at all?”

“I have in the past.”

“I can’t. If I miss a night’s sleep, I’m no use for anything the next day and have to have a nap, even if it’s only for half an hour. But then I’m getting old.”

“What do you mean, ‘old,’ Dona Conceição?”

I spoke these words with such passion that it made her smile. She usually moved very slowly and serenely, but now she sprang to her feet, walked over to the other side of the room, and paced up and down between the window looking out onto the street and the door of her husband’s study. Her modestly rumpled appearance made a singular impression on me. Although she was quite slender, there was something about that swaying gait, as if she were weighed down by her own body; I had never really noticed this until then. She paused occasionally to examine the hem of a curtain or to adjust the position of some object on the sideboard; finally, she stopped in front of me, with the table between us. Her ideas appeared to be caught in a very narrow circle; she again remarked on her astonishment at my ability to stay awake; I repeated what she already knew, that I had never attended midnight mass in Rio and did not want to miss it.

“It’s just the same as mass in the countryside, well, all masses are alike, really.”

“I’m sure you’re right, but here it’s bound to be more lavish and there’ll be more people too. After all, Holy Week is much prettier in Rio than it is in the countryside. Not to mention the feasts of Saint John or Saint Anthony . . .”

She gradually leaned forward, resting her elbows on the marble tabletop, her face cupped in her outspread hands. Her unbuttoned sleeves fell back to reveal her forearms, which were very pale and plumper than one might have expected. This was not exactly a novelty, although it wasn’t a common sight, either; at that moment, however, it made a great impression on me. Her veins were so blue that, despite the dim light, I could count every one. Her presence was even better at keeping me awake than my book. I continued to compare religious festivals in the countryside and in the city, and to give my views on whatever happened to pop into my head. I kept changing the subject for no reason, talking about one thing, then going back to something I’d mentioned earlier, and laughing in the hope that this would make her smile, too, thus affording me a glimpse of her perfect, gleaming white teeth. Her eyes were very dark, almost black; her long, slender, slightly curved nose gave her face an interrogative air. When I raised my voice a little, she told me off:

“Ssh! You might wake Mama!”

Much to my delight, though, she didn’t move from where she was, our faces very close. It really wasn’t necessary to speak loudly in order to be heard; we were both whispering, I even more softly than her, because I was doing most of the talking. At times, she would look serious—very serious—even frowning slightly. She eventually grew tired and changed position and place. She walked around to my side of the table and sat down on the couch. I turned and could just see the toes of her slippers, but only for the time it took her to sit down, because her dressing gown was long enough to cover them. I remember that the slippers were black. She said very softly:

“Mama’s room is quite some way away, but she sleeps so very lightly, and if she were to wake up now, it would take her ages to get back to sleep.”

“I’m the same.”

“What?” she asked, leaning forward to hear better.

I went and sat on the chair beside the couch and repeated what I’d said. She laughed at the coincidence of there being three light sleepers in the same house.

“Because I’m just like Mama sometimes: if I do wake in the night, I find it hard to go back to sleep, I toss and turn, get up, light a candle, pace up and down, get into bed again, but it’s no use.”

“Is that what happened tonight?”

“No, not at all,” she said.

I couldn’t understand why she denied this, and perhaps she couldn’t, either. She picked up the two ends of her dressing-gown belt and kept flicking them against her knees, or, rather, against her right knee, because she had crossed her legs. Then she told some story about dreams, and assured me that she had only ever had one nightmare, when she was a child. She asked if I ever had nightmares. The conversation continued in this same slow, leisurely way, and I gave not a thought to the time or to mass. Whenever I finished some anecdote or explanation, she would come up with another question or another subject, and I would again start talking. Now and then she would hush me:

“Ssh! Speak more softly!”

There were pauses too. Twice I thought she had dropped asleep, but her eyes, which had closed for an instant, immediately opened again with no sign of tiredness or fatigue, as if she had merely closed them in order to see more clearly. On one such occasion, I think she became aware of my rapt gaze, and she closed her eyes again, whether quickly or slowly I can’t recall. Other memories of that night appear to me as truncated or confused. I contradict myself, stumble. One memory does still remain fresh, though; at one point, she, who I had only thought of as “nice-looking” before, looked really pretty, positively lovely. She was standing up, arms folded; out of politeness, I made as if to stand up, too, but she stopped me, placing one hand on my shoulder and obliging me to sit down again. I thought she was about to say something, but, instead, she shivered, as if she suddenly felt cold, then turned and sat in the chair where I had been sitting when she entered the room. From there, she glanced up at the mirror above the couch and commented on the two engravings on the wall.

“They’re getting old, those pictures. I’ve already asked Chiquinho to buy some new ones.”

Chiquinho was her husband. The pictures exemplified the man’s main interest. One was a representation of Cleopatra, and I can’t remember the other one, but both were of women. They were perhaps rather vulgar, but, at the time, I didn’t think them particularly ugly.

“They’re pretty,” I said.

“Yes, but they’re rather faded now. And frankly I would prefer two images of saints. These are more suited to a boy’s bedroom or a barber’s shop.”

“A barber’s shop? But you’ve never been in one, have you?”

“No, but I imagine that, while they’re waiting, the customers talk about girls and love affairs and, naturally, the owner brightens up the place with a few pretty pictures. The ones over there just don’t seem appropriate in a family home. At least, that’s what I think, but then I often have strange thoughts. Anyway, I don’t like them. In my prayer niche I have a really beautiful statuette of Our Lady of the Conception, my patron saint, but you can’t hang a sculpture on the wall, much as I would like to.”

This talk of prayer niches reminded me of mass, and it occurred to me that it might be getting late, and I was just about to mention this. I did, I think, get as far as opening my mouth, but immediately closed it again to listen to what she was saying, so gently, touchingly, softly, that my soul grew indolent and I forgot all about mass and church. She was talking about her devotions as a child and as a young girl. She then moved on to stories about dances, about outings she’d made, memories of Paquetá, all woven almost seamlessly together. When she grew tired of the past, she spoke about the present, about her household duties and the burdens of family life, which, before she married, she had been told were many, but which were not, in fact, burdensome at all. She didn’t mention that she was twenty-seven when she married, but I knew that already.

She was no longer pacing up and down as she had been to begin with, but stayed almost frozen in the same pose. She no longer kept her large eyes fixed on me, but glanced around at the walls.

“This room needs repapering,” she said after a while, as if talking to herself.

I agreed, simply in order to say something and to try to shake off that strange, magnetic sleep or whatever it was trammeling my tongue and my senses. I both wanted and didn’t want to end that conversation; I made an effort to take my eyes off her, and I did so out of a sense of respect, but then, fearing that she might think I was bored, when I wasn’t at all, I quickly brought my gaze back to her. The conversation was gradually dying. Out in the street, utter silence reigned.

We sat without speaking for some time, I don’t know for how long. The only sound came from the study, the faint noise of a mouse gnawing away at something, and this did at last rouse me from my somnolent state; I tried to speak, but couldn’t. Conceição appeared to be daydreaming. Then, suddenly, I heard someone banging on the window outside, and a voice shouting:

“Midnight mass! Midnight mass!”

“Ah, there’s your friend,” she said, getting up. “How funny! You were the one who was supposed to wake him up, but there he is waking you. Off you go. It must be time.”

“Is it midnight already?” I asked.

“It must be.”

“Midnight mass!” came the voice again, accompanied by more banging on the window.

“Quick, off you go. Don’t keep him waiting. It was my fault. Good night. See you tomorrow.”

And, with the same swaying gait, Conceição slipped silently back down the corridor. I went out into the street, where my neighbor was waiting. We set off to the church. More than once during mass, the figure of Conceição interposed itself between me and the priest, but let’s put that down to my seventeen years. The following morning, over breakfast, I described the mass and the congregation, but Conceição showed not a flicker of interest. During the day, she was her usual natural, benign self and made no mention of our conversation the previous night. At New Year, I went home to Mangaratiba. By the time I returned to Rio in March, the notary had died of apoplexy. Conceição was living in Engenho Novo, but I neither visited her nor met her again. I later heard that she had married her late husband’s articled clerk.