A Sick Man

Coelho Netto (Caxias-MA, 1864-02-21 -- Rio de Janeiro, 1934-11-28)
From: Contos da Vida e da Morte
Translation by Herculano de Lima Einloft Neto

-- It depends on me. It's a question of will, say you. It seems to you. You think, perhaps, that I don't react, that I let myself be dominated passively by this kind of possession. You're wrong. I do as much as I can to combat it. I walk by foot, hours and hours, tiring myself, I search for distractions and diversions: I smoke, I drink; I have already even tried the stupefacients. It was worse. The excitation was aggravated. In the silence or in the rumour, isolated or in the multitude I'm always the same martyr, the same tortured one. The idea accompanies me, doesn't leave me for a single instant: it is an interior shadow held to my soul as the exterior one is held to my body.

-- However, whoever sees you in society, as yet, days ago, in the small palace of senator Balduino, joyful, making phrases and puns from group to group and dancing all the marks...

-- Ah! yes... whoever sees me...

'How many people which laugh perhaps exist
Whose only venture consists
In seeming venturous to the others.'

I'm in the roll of these miserable people, of these hypocrite wretches who cloak themselves in laughter so that their sufferings are not discovered. I'm like that peach of which speaks Dumas the son in the 'Demimonde' when he refers to occult rottennesses; sane aspect, however whoever examines it meticulously will discover in it a little black point, almost imperceptible defect by where penetrated the larva which makes itself worm in the pulp and goes slowly devouring it.

In me this point does not appear but in hours of solitude, when the despair irritates me[1]. Only I know what I suffer! The terrible worm does not leave me and, the more I combat it, it seems that the more I excite and irritate it. Everything I do is in vain. I open a book, I put myself to reading. Soon it opposes itself to my eyes a kind of brume which obscures and stuns the attention and I'm taken from the subject by the exciting idea and there's no escaping it anymore. So must it be with the octopus in the holes[2] of the ocean. Wherever I am it is always it which governs me. I hold myself to a book, contemplate a work of art, stare at a woman, all useless: the obsession drags me, attracts me, captivates me and it's over. I converse animatedly, I seem attentive to the spectacle, to the game, or to whatever it is I have before my eyes... mistake, everything is appearance, illusory placidity -- the torment continues latent. I'm under the dominion of the one infernal idea, it is it which fills vassalizingly my brain, which agitates itself in it, which goes corroding it, as the worm does to the fruit. Travels... Why? At sea, at the mountains, everywhere I find it, as that eye which pursued Cain even in the depths of the earth:

'O mon père! L'oeil a-t-il disparu?' dit en tremblant Tsilla. Et Cain répondit: 'Non, il est toujours là.'

That's it. Elle est toujours là! Is the people freed from the shadow moving from a site to another? No. Thus is the idea. How was it formed? How did it appear to me? I don't know.

-- But what is that idea, after all?
-- I won't ever tell it. It is a satanic idea or even worse: ridiculous, repugnant. So repugnant that I vex myself of bringing it in thought. If someone was pointed to me who found themselves in my case, I swear to you that I'd have aversion of receiving them. It is one of those anomalies which are not explained, an aversive extravagance; sickness, my friend, sickness as the carbuncle or cancer. A corrosive degeneration, an evil which invades us and suddenly explodes, whose origin we search for in this, in that, attributing it, at length, to heredity. I don't know! The cancerous one resigns or revolts himself. Some await patiently for death, letting themselves be devoured little by little; others run from the torture by the door of suicide. I...

-- But listen. If that idea is that sordid... Forgive my expression.
-- Sordid, you say well.
-- Well then there it goes. If it is a sordid idea... Criminous, I don't believe it is?
-- Criminous... And do I know, in truth, what crime is? Before the bar of conventionalism everything which deviates from the guide line of the duty is crime. The Morals has a privative code, a kind of internal regiment for the domestic cases and everything which transgresses the rules of such an advertence[3] is considered crime against the virtue of the home, profanation, outrage and so on. It is as I tell you. My case, studied serenely, can only have one name: madness.
-- And if you realized[4] that idea, which does not involve crime, as you affirm to me, don't you think you'd be cured?
-- Maybe.
-- Well then, my friend, do not hesitate. Do as if you were taking a bitter remedy or one of those theriacs[5] which provoke nausea in us, but which cure. What you must not is continue in this state of suffering. It can be only a caprice, a depravation of taste, as the craving[6] in the pregnant women. Whatever it is it is a torment.
-- Yes, a torment which can take me to the worst of deaths, which is insanity.
-- Not that.
-- How not? Where do I have the sense? I'm a plaything of this idea which has become an axis, around which my soul spins in vertiginous turbillion and everything which tries to settle on it is repelled with the violence with which a rotating disk throws off[7] what is thrown at it. That's it. I'm a plaything of this fixed idea which tortures me, which does not consent for me a moment of peace, which pursues me day and night, and, sometimes, even in sleep manifests itself in dreams the most bizarre. Already one night it occurred to me to do as you counsel me. I tried and do you want me to tell you? It was not for fear that I gave up, it was for shame, pudency.
-- You took the remedy to mouth and repelled it. You did bad.
-- I did bad? Do you think then...?
-- Yes, my friend. We have the obligation of defending life against everyone and against everything. If you feel that that idea goes each time penetrating more in your spirit and in it destroying all the faculties, why won't you try the supreme resource? It is not about a crime which stains with infamy or blood, but a question of scruple.
-- Of cleanliness, my friend; of cleanliness. Depravation, you said well. That cannot be but sickness.
-- Well you have the remedy at hand. Cure yourself.
-- And then? Let us admit that I cure myself, that the idea disappears, how will I behave before this raffish creature, which will be capable of imagining that I... It is horrible! my friend. Horrible.
-- Listen here. After you take the remedy what does it matter to you, the glass or the box which contained it? The cure you were searching for you had it in the drug, the rest... glass or box, break it, lay it off, and it's over. Look, my old one, there is no worse thing than castor oil and I, in my crises, it is to it that I appeal. You're sick, you've got the medicine at hand, cure yourself and retake your place in life. That's it.

Notes:

[1] me assoma, irritates me, or comes over me.
[2] madrigueiras.
[3] monita.
[4] realizasse, realized, executed, effected, did, etc.
[5] triaga, lit. theriac; Latin theriaca; antidote, bitter substance, etc.
[6] antojo, craving, desire, etc.
[7] alija, jettisons, throws off.