Read The Double Death of Quincas Water-Bray for Free Online

that absurd day when, after labeling Leonardo a “blockhead,” he stared at her and Otacília and out of nowhere threw into their faces, “Vipers!” And with the greatest of calm in the world, as though he were simply carrying out some exceedingly banal act, he left and never came back.
    But Vanda didn’t want to think about that. She went back to her childhood again. It was there that she found the figure of Joaquim in sharper focus. For example, when she was a girl of five, with hair in braids, and quick to tears, she came down with an alarming fever. Joaquim never left her room, sitting beside the little patient, holding her hands, doling out her medicine. He was a good father and a good husband. With that last memory Vanda felt she had been sufficiently sentimental and—had there been anyone else there at the wake—capable of a bit of weeping, as is the obligation of a good daughter.
    With a melancholy look on her face, she stared at the corpse. Polished shoes where the light of the candles gleamed, trousers with a perfect crease, a well-fitting blackjacket, devout hands folded over his chest. Her eyes lighted on the shaved chin, and she received her first shock.
    She saw the smile. The cynical, immoral smile of someone who was enjoying himself. The smile hadn’t changed. The experts from the funeral parlor had been unable to do anything about it. Also she, Vanda, had forgotten to tell them, to ask for an expression more in keeping with the solemnity of the dead. That smile of Quincas Water-Bray’s was still there, and in the face of that smile of mockery and pleasure, what good were the new shoes, brand-new while poor Leonardo had to get his half-soled for a second time? What good were the dark suit, the white shirt, the shaved chin, the pomaded hair, the hands placed in prayer? Because Quincas was laughing at all that, a laugh that was growing louder and longer and in a short time would be echoing all over that filthy den. He was laughing with his lips and with his eyes, the eyes staring at the pile of dirty, ragged clothes, tossed in a corner and forgotten by the men from the funeral parlor. The laugh of Quincas Water-Bray.
    And Vanda could clearly hear the insulting neatness of the syllables in the funereal silence.
    “Viper!”
    Vanda was startled. Her eyes flashed like Otacília’s, but her face turned pale. That was the word he had used, spitting it out, when she and Otacília had sought him out at the beginning of that madness to lead him back to the comforts of home, his established habits, and his lost decency. Not even now, dead and lying in a coffin, with candles by his feet, dressed in good clothing, would he surrender. He was laughing with his lips and with his eyes. It wouldn’t have been all that strange had he started whistling. And, to make matters worse, one of his thumbs—the one on his left hand—wasn’t folded properly over his other one but was sticking up, anarchic and taunting.
    “Viper!” he said again, and whistled playfully.
    Vanda shuddered in her chair and ran her hand over her face. “Can I be going mad?” She felt a need for air; the heat was becoming unbearable, and her head was swimming. Heavy breathing on the stairs: Aunt Marocas, dripping fat, was entering the room. She saw how upset her niece was there on the chair, pale, her eyes fixed on the mouth of the dead man.
    “You’re all done in, child. And it’s so hot in this cubbyhole.”
    Quincas’s devilish smile got wider when he caught sight of his sister’s monumental bulk. Vanda wanted to cover her ears. She knew from past experience the words he loved to use to define Marocas, but what good were hands held over her ears in shutting out the voice of a dead man? She heard: “Fart-sack!”
    Marocas, recovered now after her climb, opened the window wide without even a glance at the corpse. “Did they put perfume on him? It stinks to high heaven.”
    The street noises came in through the open window, multiple and