Francisca Page #3

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They lock themselves in their rooms,

eat croquettes

and laugh about everything.

Listen! Friendship is the only thing

that Gods envy about humans.

Back in Oporto, on a theatre night.

Why don't you greet him?

I will not feed

the pride of that stupid man.

Do you think he loves Raquel?

He loves her if others covet her.

If she cheats on him,

he'll love her as long as they say:

- "What a beautiful woman!"

- We are all like that.

Love is but a crystallization of desire.

Jos Augusto is whimsical,

but not perfidious.

At the age of twenty-three,

nobody is yet a Marquis de Sade.

Wake up and think about it.

I think you are sleeping

in the shadow of your feuilletons.

Novels are harmful to many people,

but not their authors.

There are people who can't

find their own place in life

and then want to conquer it by force.

They think they are exceptional and

accuse others of not understanding them.

Jos Augusto is one of them.

He thinks he is D. Juan, or Hamlet.

His mother died before he could

understand death as a law of nature.

He sees it as an unforgivable vileness.

He has a passion for novels.

He reads up until 4 a.m.,

which is too little for a vocation

and too much for an aristocrat.

You envy him.

- I don't envy a man

who does not define himself

in his consciousness or experience.

When he looks stern,

he's an idiot.

When people think he is melancholic,

he's just a scoundrel.

And even when behaving as if he is

rich, he lies with the sole

determination that I recognize in him.

I advised him to

wed a rich woman

who writes poems

and offers him a cigar box

with the figure of Psyche

having the wings of a butterfly.

You are being a moralist...

the country deserves that from you

because it is more inclined to

commerce than to imagination.

Every retired poet

enrolls in an academy

and sells olive oil.

Our efforts to be delicate

are worth something.

Virtue will cost you much

if you're not an expert in it.

The sky wasn't made for the sparrows,

no matter how high they can fly.

In my opinion,

you are jealous of Jos Augusto.

If he deserves it or not,

that is another question.

Camilo and Jos Augusto returned

to Santa Cruz do Douro.

The great secret

is not the romantics.

Only their ignorance is romantic.

Let's take the other way.

I don't want to be seen.

This is not my place,

it's the cottier's.

You'll see. They will soon ask for

cigarettes and liquor.

That's what they ask for.

We don't know if that's what they want.

Those are the words.

But what are words?

They are a kind of law,

but nobody knows, in fact,

to what it applies.

- They are drunkards, nothing more.

- About visible things

one should never say "nothing more".

I need solitude and I need you.

And you need me

to help you create another heart.

From now on, I am in charge of you.

House of Vilar do Paraso.

When Jos Augusto

came to the Owens' house,

as he did everyday to see Maria,

he bumped into Camilo.

See what you did!

Don't be so fastidious, Fanny,

Jos Augusto didn't notice it.

"Or is it that the dryness of Spring

no longer shows you the flowers?"

Camilo had rented

a small house in Vilar de Paraso

which was close to Jos Augusto's.

"There are secrets among the living

that conjure shadows of the dead".

- Who are you writing to?

- Someone to whom I am a slave

and who must pay me

for this slavery with tears.

Who? Is it Fanny?

If someone loved Fanny, I'd kill him.

Come on...

Friendship is usually less bloodthirsty.

The landlady is a pious vareira;

by giving me this room

with the blue bunk bed, she's informing

me of her ritual procedures,

which are lugubrious,

related to the tragedies in the sea.

And she forgets to put oil in this lamp.

You didn't understand.

I meant to say that Fanny

is not a plaything for an ennuied man.

I also think that way.

She is there, in that house,

between vulgarity and spite,

like Daphne, transformed into a

laurel tree to escape god Apollo.

Don't you love her?

No. But I know what I'm rejecting.

You have no way of knowing it.

Am I some sort of handicap?

Do you think I cannot love Fanny?

Well, I'm going to arouse an

immense love in her.

A love censored by me,

excited by my own severeness.

To promise, to subdue, to give hope,

to feed desire

just to study

the consequences of nonsatiation.

To skim her forehead with a kiss

and then pass by without a touch.

To look at her,

with a deep and austere gaze.

To seed illusions and reap shame,

humiliation and guilt.

To create an angel

in the plenitude of martyrdom.

- Could you do it?

- To promise, to subdue, to give hope,

to feed desire just to study

the consequences of nonsatiation.

To skim her forehead with a kiss

and then pass by without a touch.

To look at her

with a deep and austere gaze.

To seed illusions and reap shame,

humilliation and guilt.

To create an angel

in the plenitude of martyrdom.

- Could you do it? - Wouldn't it be

more beautiful than procreation?

Isn't it to be truly fertile and

in greater harmony with the work of God?

- No talking about God here!

- Why not? He is in my genealogy.

Wait, Jos Augusto.

We promised to trust one another.

I risked my honor when I trusted you.

Virtue interests you

as a road to an easy triumph.

To me, only perfection means

something.

Perfection, even if in vice.

But regardless of any agreement

with others.

Do you have a soul, Jos Augusto?

I'm asking you if you have a soul.

The soul!

If I could cry over my wasted,

ridiculed youth,

then I would have a soul.

My ferocity

is what clings me to life.

Isn't this a soul as well?

- You are a child, Jos Augusto.

A child made man through disgrace.

Now I see that

there are no superficial men.

I used to laugh at them.

My talent could fool your

lazy stupidity ten times. And suddenly

one single aristocrat avenged you all.

You made me learn that imagination,

even of the pettiest bourgeois,

knows no law!

You are a portent,

but isn't it better to put you off

like I did with that lamp?

Ashes instead of desire.

Consciousness instead of passion.

Can this be a soul?

On the next day,

by providential chance,

Manuel Negro passed by his door.

Well, if it isn't Manuel Negro!

- Glad to see you.

- Cheers, my friend!

I'm going on a trip to Lisbon,

to visit my grandmother.

I remember her very well,

The Countess of Mag.

Exactly. And, of course,

I could not go without stopping by.

Here, in this stagnant place.

What about Coronel Owen's daughters?

Talent is corrupted

with amorous banalities,

in conversations with Fanny

on the church steps

and in strolls with her

along the beach.

I hold the silk umbrella

so that she can remove her shoes

and I carry them in my hand.

Ridiculous, these maneuvers

around a girl who is always

sad and sleepy.

And in whom I truly have no interest.

I'm going with you,

this must end.

I'm going with you.

The troops reached Vila Pouca

under a coat of thin snow.

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