The Hidden Cause by Machado de Assis, 1885
The magic trick:
Taking the story into surprisingly grisly territory
This story goes to grisly places most do not.
Our narrator’s attempt to figure out the mysterious Fortunato takes him (and the reader) into a scene that is hard to read and harder to forget. We’re talking seriously messed up stuff here.
But there are more twists to come – twists I do not want to spoil. Let’s just say the story becomes a psychological study so twisted you’re not sure who you’re studying or what to believe.
And that’s quite a trick on de Assis’s part.
The selection:
He told the story of the Rua de Dom Manuel. She listened, astonished. Instinctively, she stretched out her hand and grasped her husband’s wrist, grateful and smiling, as if she’d just discovered his heart. Fortunato shrugged his shoulders, but he wasn’t unmoved. He himself then told the story of Gouveia’s visit, with all the details of his appearance, his gestures, the words struggling to get out, the silences – he was a halfwit, in fact. He laughed a lot as he told the story. It wasn’t false laughter either. Falsity is evasive and oblique; his laughter was jovial and open.
‘Strange man!’ thought Garcia.
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