Imagine a field of potatoes and two starving tribes. There are only enough potatoes to feed one of the tribes, who in that way will get the strength to cross the mountain and reach the other slope, where there are potatoes in abundance. But, if the two tribes peacefully divide up the potatoes from the field, they won’t derive sufficient nourishment and will die of starvation. Peace, in this case, is destruction; war is preservation. One of the tribes will exterminate the other and collect the spoils. This explains the joy of victory, anthems, cheers, public recompense, and all the other results of warlike action. If the nature of war were different, those demonstrations would never take place, for the real reason that man only commemorates and loves what he finds pleasant and advantageous, and for the reasonable motive that no person can canonize an action that actually destroys him. To the conquered, hate or compassion; to the victor, the potatoes.”

“But what about the point of view of those exterminated?”

“Nobody’s exterminated. The phenomenon disappears, but the substance is the same. Haven’t you ever seen boiling water? You must recall that the bubbles keep on being made and unmade and everything stays the same in the same water. Individuals are those transitory bubbles.”

“Well, the opinion of the bubble …”

“A bubble has no opinion. Does anything seem sadder than those terrible epidemics that devastate some point on the globe? And, yet, that supposed evil is a benefit, not only because it eliminates weak organisms, incapable of resistance, but because it leads to observation, to the discovery of the drug that will cure it. Hygiene is the offspring of century–old putrescences. We owe it to millions of cases of corruption and infection. Nothing is lost, everything is gained. I repeat, the bubbles stay in the water. Do you see this book? It’s Don Quixote. If I were to destroy my copy I wouldn’t eliminate the work, which goes on eternally in surviving copies and editions yet to come. Eternal and beautiful, beautifully eternal, like this divine and supradivine world.”

VII

 

Quincas Borba fell silent out of exhaustion and sat down panting. Rubião hastened to help him, bringing some water and*asking him to lie down and rest, but the sick man, after a moment, replied that it was nothing. He was out of practice in making speeches, that’s what it was. And, having Rubião move himself back so he could face him without effort, he undertook a brilliant description of the world and its wonders. He mingled his own ideas with those of others, images of all sorts, idyllic and epic, to such a degree that Rubião wondered how it was that a man who was going to die at any moment could deal so gallantly with those matters.

“Come, rest a little.”

Quincas Borba reflected:

“No, I’m going for a walk.”

“Not now, you’re too tired.”

“Bah! It’s passed.”

He stood up and laid his hands paternally on Rubião’s shoulders.

“Are you my friend?”

“What a question!”

“Answer me.”

“As much as or more than this animal here,” Rubião replied in a burst of tenderness.

Quincas Borba squeezed his hands:

“Good.”

VIII

 

The next day Quincas Borba woke up with a resolve to go to Rio de Janeiro. He would be back after a month. He had

certain business to attend to ... Rubião was flabbergasted. What about his illness, and the doctor? The patient replied that the doctor was a charlatan and that illness needed to be distracted, just like health. Illness and health were two pits of the same fruit, two states of Humanitas.

“I’m going on some personal matters,” the sick man ended, saying, “and in addition to that I’ve got a plan that’s so sublime that not even you will be able to understand it. You have to pardon my frankness, but I prefer being frank with you, more than with any other person.”

Rubião was positive that with time this project would pass like so many others, but he was mistaken. It so happened that the patient seemed to be getting better.