Listen! I could have told you my whole life story, where you’d have found other items of interest, but for that I’d need time, stamina and paper, and all I’ve got left is paper; my stamina needs to lie down and my time is like a lamp at dawn. Another sort of sun will soon be rising on another sort of day, a diabolical sun, as impenetrable as life. Farewell, my dear sir! Read this and wish me well. Forgive me for what seems bad, and don’t be too hard on the rue for not smelling of roses. You asked for a human document and here you have it. Apart from that, I can’t give you the Grand Mogul’s empire, I can’t give you a photograph of the Maccabees, but ask me for my dead man’s shoes… and they’re yours.

As I said, it was 1860. The year before, sometime in August, when I was forty-two, I became a theologian. That’s to say, I was transcribing the theological studies of a priest from Niterói, an old college friend of mine; that was his thoughtful and kindly way of providing me with board and lodging. In the month of August 1859 he’d received a letter from the vicar of a little town in the interior, asking if he knew of someone competent, discreet and patient who’d agree to look after an invalid called Colonel Felisberto in return for a good wage. The priest put it to me and I grabbed it with both hands: I’d had enough of copying Latin quotations and ecclesiastical formulas to last a lifetime. I came over to Rio to say goodbye to a brother of mine and set off for the town.

What I heard about the colonel from the townsfolk, once I’d arrived, was not good. He was insufferable, depraved, demanding; no one could stand him, not even his own friends. He went through more carers than medications. Two of them had ended up black and blue. I said I wasn’t scared of healthy people, let alone sick people; and after I’d sorted things out with the vicar, who confirmed what I’d just heard and recommended meekness and charity, I continued to the colonel’s house.

I found him stretched out on a chair in the veranda, breathing with difficulty. My welcome wasn’t too bad. He started off by not saying anything, simply fixing me with his penetrating, feline eyes; then a sort of malign chuckle lit up his hard features. Finally he told me all my predecessors had been a waste of time: they slept too much, were insolent and only had an eye for the female slaves; two of them even turned out to be thieves.

‘Are you a thief?’

‘No, sir.’

Then he asked what my name was. When I told him, he made a gesture of disbelief.

‘Colombo?’

‘No, sir: Procópio José Gomes Valongo.’

‘Valongo?!’

He didn’t think that was a proper name for anyone, so he suggested calling me just Procópio, to which I replied that he could call me whatever he liked. I’m telling you this not only because I think it gives a good picture of him, but also because the colonel was much taken with my response – so much so that he informed the vicar and added that I was the nicest carer he’d ever had. The truth is that our honeymoon lasted a week.

On the eighth day I entered into the life of my predecessors, a dog’s life of no sleep, of not having a moment for anything else, of being sworn at and, occasionally, of shrugging my shoulders with an air of resignation and conformity, which I noticed was a way of paying him homage. A merry-go-round of abuse arising from his illness and his temperament. The illness was actually a whole litany of illnesses: he suffered from an aneurysm, from rheumatism and from three or four lesser ailments. He was nearly sixty and, ever since he’d been five, everyone had done his bidding. If he’d just been grumpy it wouldn’t have mattered; but he was evil, enjoying nothing so much as to see others hurt and humiliated. At the end of three months I could stand it no more; I resolved to leave and was just waiting for an opportunity.

Which soon arrived. One day, because I hadn’t given him his poultice on time, he grabbed his walking stick and gave me a few whacks. That was the opportunity; I took my leave and went to pack my bag. He followed me to my room and asked me to stay: ‘It’s not worth losing your temper about a grumpy old man.’ He insisted so much that I relented.

‘I’m done for, Procópio,’ he said to me that night, ‘I won’t live much longer. One foot in the grave. You must come to my funeral, Procópio. No excuses! You must come and you must say a prayer at my grave. If you don’t,’ he added, laughing, ‘I’ll come back at night and haunt you! Do you believe in ghosts, Procópio?’

‘Not a bit!’

‘But why don’t you believe, you donkey?’ he snapped back, his eyeballs bulging.

If that’s what we were like in peacetime, just imagine us at war. He went easy on the walking-stick, but the insults were just as bad, if not worse. I was gradually acquiring a thick skin and stopped taking any notice: I was a donkey’s arse, a camel, a mule, an idiot, a nincompoop, I was everything. And there wasn’t anyone else around who could share the insults with me. He didn’t have any relatives; a nephew had died of tuberculosis at the end of May or the beginning of July, in Minas. His friends came once in a while to flatter him and pay obeisance, but nothing more; a five or ten-minute visit. That left me, just me, as the target for a whole dictionary. More than once I decided to leave, but the vicar always dissuaded me.

And not only were things turning difficult, but I was anxious to return to Rio. At the age of forty-two I shouldn’t have had to put up with the life of a recluse in the interior, with an aggressive invalid for company. For an idea of how isolated I was, it’s enough to know I didn’t even read the papers; apart from the occasional piece of news they brought him, I knew nothing of the outside world. So I was determined to return to Rio at the first opportunity, even if it meant arguing with the vicar. I should add (this being a general confession) that because I hadn’t bought anything and had saved up all my wages, I was anxious to get back here and splash out.

It was only a matter of time. The colonel was going downhill; he made his will, giving the notary, in the process, almost as hard a time as he gave me. The way he treated me had got worse; the brief lapses into meekness and mildness were becoming rarer. By that time I’d already lost the modest dose of goodwill that had made me overlook his excesses; a torment of hatred and aversion was seething inside me. At the beginning of August I decided that was really it; the vicar and the doctor acknowledged my reasons but asked me to stay on a bit longer. I agreed to stay a month, at the end of which I was going, whatever the patient’s state. The vicar started looking for a successor.

And now to what happened. On the night of the twenty-fourth of August, the colonel had a fit of rage: he attacked me, called me a lot of rude names, threatened to shoot me and ended up throwing a bowl of porridge at me because he thought it was cold. It smashed into the wall.

‘You’ll pay for this, you villain,’ he shouted.

Then he muttered angrily to himself for ages. At eleven o’clock he fell asleep. While he was asleep, I took a book out of my pocket, an old novel by d’Arlincourt, in translation, that I’d found there, and I started reading it, in his bedroom, at a little distance from his bed. (I needed to wake him at midnight to give him his medicine.) Whether it was tiredness or the book, before I’d got to the end of the second page I’d dozed off as well. I was woken up by the colonel’s shouts and got to my feet, half-asleep. He seemed demented and continued shouting, eventually grabbing hold of a water jug and hurling it at me. I didn’t have time to duck; the jug hit me on the left side of my face and it hurt so much that everything went black. I charged at him, caught him by the throat, we struggled, and I strangled him.

When I saw that the patient was dying, I recoiled in horror and shouted out; but no one heard me. I returned to the bed and tried to shake him back to life, but it was too late: his aneurysm had burst and the Colonel had died. I went to the next room and, for two hours, didn’t dare go back to the bedroom. I can’t begin to say everything I went through during that time. I’d been stunned into a vague and stupid delirium. It seemed as if the walls had faces. I could hear muffled voices. The victim’s shouts, before and during the struggle, carried on echoing inside me and, wherever I turned, the very air seemed to be in tumult. Please don’t think I’m writing this for effect or for the sake of style: I’m telling you I distinctly heard voices shouting ‘Murderer, murderer!’

Everything else was silence. Even the ticking of the clock – slow, regular and crisp – merely emphasised the silence and loneliness. I put my ear to the bedroom door in the hope of hearing a groan, a word, an imprecation, anything that would signal life and give me back my peace of mind. I’d gladly have taken a beating from the colonel, ten, twenty, a hundred times over. But nothing, nothing; just silence. I started randomly pacing the room again, sitting down, burying my head in my hands; I wished I’ve never gone there.

‘Damn the moment I agreed to do anything like this!’

And I cursed the priest from Niterói, the doctor, the vicar, those who’d got me the job, and those who’d asked me to stay on a bit longer. I was trying to assuage my conscience with their complicity.

Because the silence was beginning to terrify me, I opened one of the windows, to listen to the sound of the wind, were there any. There was none. The night was still, the stars were shining as indifferently as people who doff their hats when a funeral procession passes, and continue talking about something else. I leant by the window for some time, gazing at the night and letting my life run past me in the hope that it would ease my present pain. It was only then that the thought of punishment hit me fully. There I was, red-handed, with no way out. That was when fear started to complicate remorse. I could feel my hair standing on end. A few minutes later I saw three or four shapes of people slinking about in the yard, as if preparing an ambush; I stepped back, the figures dissolved in the air; I’d imagined it.

Before dawn I applied a compress to the bruise on my face. Only then did I dare return to the bedroom. I hesitated twice, but there was no alternative; I entered; but even then I didn’t go straight to the bed. My legs were shaking; my heart was thumping; I thought of running away, but that would have been an admission of guilt when what was important was to remove the evidence of the crime. I went over to the bed; I saw the corpse, with its eyes bulging and its mouth open, as if emitting that ancient question: ‘Cain, what hast thou done to thy brother?’ I saw the marks of my fingernails on his neck. I buttoned his shirt up and pulled the sheet up to his chin. Then I called a slave, told him the colonel had died in his sleep and sent a message to the vicar and the doctor.

My first idea was to leave as soon as possible, on the pretext that my brother was ill (and I really had received a letter from him a few days before, telling me he wasn’t feeling well). But I realised a rapid departure might look suspicious, so I stayed. I laid the body out myself, with the help of an old, myopic black man. I didn’t leave that mortuary room; I was afraid they’d discover something. I wanted to read from other people’s faces whether they suspected anything, but I didn’t dare look at them. Everything was making me jumpy: the stealthlike way they entered the bedroom, the whispering, the rituals, the vicar’s prayers. When the time came, I closed the coffin with trembling hands, trembling so much that I heard someone whisper:

‘Poor Procópio! He’s grief-stricken, despite all he’s had to put up with.’

I thought it was sarcasm and was anxious to get it over and done with. We went out to the road. The transition from the gloom of the house to the brightness outside was a shock; I was afraid it would no longer be possible to hide my crime. I fixed my eyes on the ground and started walking.

I heaved a sigh of relief when it was all over. I was at peace with men. But not with my conscience, and my next few nights were – naturally – full of anxiety.

I hardly need to say I came straight to Rio, nor that I hid myself away here, even though I was far from the crime; I didn’t laugh, I kept quiet, I hardly ate, I had hallucinations, nightmares…

‘Put it behind you,’ people told me. ‘He’s dead. There’s no reason to be so sad.’

And I made the most of appearances: I eulogised the deceased, said what a good soul he was, a little cantankerous – true –, but with a heart of gold. And the more I praised him, the more I believed what I was saying, at least for a few moments.

You might also be interested to know that, although I’m not religious, I had a mass said at the Holy Sacrament church for the eternal repose of the colonel’s soul – and maybe it’s done him some good. I invited no one and didn’t mention it to anyone. I went on my own and spent the whole time on my knees, crossing and re-crossing myself. I paid the priest twice the going rate and gave money to the beggars at the church door. All for the soul of the deceased. I didn’t intend to deceive anyone; the proof is that I went on my own. To conclude this point, let me say I never mentioned the colonel without adding, ‘May God have mercy on his soul!’ And I told a few cheery anecdotes, the funny side of his rages…

Seven days after arriving in Rio I received the vicar’s letter I showed you, telling me the colonel’s will had been found and that I was the sole beneficiary. Imagine my amazement! Thinking I must have misread it, I went and showed it to my brother and my friends; none of them had any doubt. There it was in black and white: I was the colonel’s sole beneficiary. It even occurred to me it might be a trap, but I immediately realised there would’ve been easier ways to catch me if the crime had been discovered. And then I thought what an upright man the vicar was: he would never lend himself to deception. I re-read the letter five, ten times, over and over; that’s definitely what it said.

‘How much did he have?’ my brother asked.

‘All I know is, he was rich.’

‘Well, that just goes to show he thought the world of you.’

‘Yes… yes…’

‘Without a shadow of doubt…’

Thus, by an irony of fate, the colonel’s possessions ended up with me. I thought of refusing the inheritance. It seemed vile to accept even a cent from such a source; it would be worse than becoming a hired assassin. I spent three days thinking it over, but I always came up against the thought that refusal might cause suspicion. At the end of those three days I arrived at a compromise: I’d accept the inheritance, but – secretly and bit by bit – I’d give it all away. It wasn’t just scruples: it was my way of redeeming my crime, of wiping the slate clean.

I got ready and set off for the town. The nearer I got, the more I replayed in my mind what had happened; the outskirts of the town had a tragic air about them, and everywhere I looked I saw the colonel’s shadow. My imagination was reproducing the words, the gestures, that whole terrible night of the crime…

Crime or struggle? In reality it was a struggle in which, having been attacked, I’d defended myself, and self-defence… It was an unfortunate struggle, an accident. I held on to that idea. I weighed up the case for the defence: how he’d mistreated me, the blows, the insults… I knew very well the colonel couldn’t help it; it was his illness that made him so bad-tempered, so… evil. But I forgave him everything, everything. It was all down to that ill-fated night… Another thing I considered was that the colonel wouldn’t have lived much longer anyway; he was at death’s door; that’s what he felt and used to say himself. But how much longer? Two weeks, or one; it might have been even less. It was no longer life, it was a travesty of life, and even that was probably an inadequate expression for the continual suffering of the poor man. And who knows whether the struggle and the death weren’t, themselves, just coincidental? It was possible, it was even highly probable; that was exactly what happened. That was another idea I clung to…

When I got near the town I started having palpitations and almost turned back; but I pulled myself together and carried on. They gave me an enthusiastic welcome. The vicar told me about the provisions of the will, including some pious bequests, and along the way he lavished praise on me for the Christian meekness and dedication with which I’d looked after the colonel, who – despite being a grumpy old stick – knew the meaning of gratitude.

‘Without doubt,’ I said, averting my gaze.

I felt numb. Everyone was lauding my dedication and patience. The initial requirements of the inventory detained me in the town for some time. I hired a solicitor; things ran smoothly. During that time I often spoke about the colonel. People came to tell me things about him, but without the vicar’s moderation; I defended the colonel, pointing out the odd virtue; he was an austere man…

‘Austere, my foot! He’s dead and gone, but he was the devil incarnate.’

And they told me bad things about him, perversities, some of them quite extraordinary. Shall I tell you the truth? At first I was really curious when I listened to all this; but I soon started taking a strange pleasure in it, even though – honestly – I tried not to. And I kept on defending him, explaining why he’d been like that, excusing his behaviour as, in part, the result of local rivalries; I conceded that, yes, he could be a little violent…

‘A little?! He was a vicious snake!’ interrupted the barber; and all of them – the taxman, the apothecary, the clerk –, they all said the same thing, which led to yet more anecdotes, the whole life story of the deceased. The older ones remembered how cruel he’d been as a boy. And meanwhile the feeling of inner satisfaction grew quietly within me, like an insidious moral tapeworm which – no matter how much you rip it out – immediately reconstitutes itself and stays put.

The distraction provided by the demands of the inventory, together with the town’s extremely low opinion of the colonel, caused the pall I’d initially felt hanging over the place to begin to lift. When I’d taken possession of my inheritance, I converted it into securities and money. By that time, several months had passed and the idea of distributing it all in alms and donations to deserving causes no longer had its original force; it even seemed like an affectation. I cut back on my original plan: I distributed a little bit to the poor, I gave new vestments to the parish church, I made a donation to the orphanage etc.: all in all, thirty-two crowns. I also commissioned a tomb for the colonel, made entirely of marble; the mason was a Neapolitan who lived in Brazil until 1866 and died – I think – in Paraguay.

The years have passed and my memory of that time has faded. Although I sometimes remember the colonel, it’s no longer with the terror of those first days. All the doctors I’ve told about his ailments have said he was facing certain death; they were only surprised he lasted so long. Maybe I unwittingly overstated his symptoms a little, but the truth is he was bound to die, even if that fateful accident hadn’t happened…

Farewell, my dear sir! If you think these notes have some value, you can show your appreciation with another marble tomb – for me – and you can engrave on it this amendment I’ve made to the divine sermon on the mount: ‘Blessed they that have, for they shall be comforted.’