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The Tragedy of the Street of Flowers, by Eça de Queirós

A Tragédia da Rua das Flores (‘The Tragedy of the Street of Flowers’), was written by Eça de Queirós, who is one of the, if not the, greatest Portuguese writers. As such, it felt downright criminal to read the English edition of the novel, when my first language is Portuguese itself. The novel has an interesting background, as it was only published after the copyright expired in 1980, a hundred years after it was written in 1887. It’s theorized to be an earlier version of The Maias, the one with the sibling incest, or of Cousin Bazilio, the one with cousin incest. Oh, I almost forgot o say, but this on is the one with mother-son incest. (Why is that when Eça de Queirós writes 3 incest novels he is considered one of the most celebrated Portuguese writers, but when I do, I ‘need to stop uploading this kind filth to AO3′?).

One evening as the whole high society of Lisbon is gathered at the opera watching Blue Beard, the beautiful unknown woman with blonde hair walks in, causing everyone to start whispering about her, wondering whether she is the princess. The men as impressed and all try to get a better look at her, including Vítor da Silva, a charming 23 years old Bachelor of Laws, and his friend Dâmaso Mavião. Luckily for him, Dâmaso has a friend who knows the woman, and introduces them. The woman is not the princess, but rather Madame Genoveva de Molineux, a Portuguese woman who is the widow of a French nobleman. They talk and she invites him to visit her in her hotel the next day. Vítor momentarily interacts with Genoveva while Dâmaso tries to get a cab, and is smitten with her. After that, Dâmaso and Vítor go get dinner together, staying out until early in the morning.

That night, Vítor has strange dreams in which he met Genoveva, but before they could touch, Sir Galahad, from the Knights of the Round Table stopped them and said: “I’m strong because I am pure: I’m searching for the Holy Grail and will destroy all shameful lovers”; in the other dream, he sees his father holding a braid of a woman’s black hair. These dreams may seem random now, but they serve as foreshadow the revelations at the end of the book.

At breakfast, Uncle Timóteo notices that he looks tired and guesses that Vítor has fallen in love. When inquired, the uncle proceeds to talk about the only woman he had ever loved: Joaquina dos Melros, Vítor’s mom, who Vítor believes to have died shortly after his birth.

“’Oh no, I promised I'd be in the office by eleven!' said Vítor. He got up and stretched. ‘Well, I've certainly learned a few things this morning. There's so much I don't know about our family.’ And after lighting another cigarette, he went out, adjusting the buckle at the back of his waistcoat, while Timóteo, slumped in his armchair, was muttering: ‘Yes, there's a lot you don't know.’”

Vítor leaves and alone, Timóteo reminisces about how his unrequited love, Joaquina, had married his brother, Pedro, when he had been away, and left right after giving birth to Vítor. Pedro becomes disgusted to his wife, who had taken his name and now was Joaquina da Ega, and therefore changes his and Vítor’s last name to ‘da Silva’, and makes everyone promise to tell Vítor that Joaquina had died. When Timóteo is inquired by a man working for Lord Lovaine about the whereabouts of Pedro da Ega, he lies that Pedro and his child had died in Luanda.

One day, Timóteo runs into Mme. Molineux, wearing an gorgeous outfit and a hat with a a veil and flowers. He sees her kicking a child out of her way and confronts her about her, but she dismisses him, calling him crazy. As she leaves, Timóteo is left with the feeling that he has seen her before. At her house, Genoveva throws a fit over having been insulted for kicking a child and drinks lots of gin (this is to say, she is not portrayed as a likable character). She admires her beauty and the that, despite being 39, she stills looks very young, for she has taken great care of her skin.

If I am mentioning their ages way too much, it to emphasize the approximated 16 years age gap between Genoveva and Vítor; 16 years, which also happened to be the age Joaquina has when she gave birth to Vítor: she was 14 when she rejected Timóteo and shortly after she married Pedro, making her around 14 1/2. One and half years after the wedding, when Vítor was two months old, she had ‘died’ - ergo, she was around 16 when she gave birth. (The author was smart, even if we didn’t already knew the ending, we could go piecing things together by picking up the clues he left.)

Genoveva has been conning man out of money for her whole adulthood, and her newest victim is Dâmaso, who keeps giving her money in exchange of her affection, and is deeply in love with her. As to not damage her reputation, he tells his friends that she is a rich lady, even showing alleged gifts from her, when, in actuality, he himself had bought those things. Dâmaso wants to show her off in public, but she keep giving excuses to avoid it. Finally, she relents and allows Dâmaso to introduce her to Vítor, who she had noticed that first night on the theatre and couldn’t stop thinking of ever since. It’s also revealed that, like some of the opera goers had speculated, she’s not naturally blonde.

“I swear I've never felt like this about any man. I don't even know what I want from him... I want to run away with him, go somewhere where no one will see us, I want to devour him, kill him, bite him. He's so handsome, so sweet. He's such a love. And yet, there's something else... He actually looks like me!”

Here we leave Mme. Molineux’s perspective and go back to Vítor, who, during all this time, has been hearing from Dâmaso how much Genoveva loves him, and therefore has grown jealous and bitter about their affair. However, he eagerly accepts the invitation to Genoveva's soirée. At the party, she declares to be most pleased to meet him, as she had been waiting to meet him properly ever since seeing him at the opera. The two talk, much to Dâmaso’s dislike. They go to Genovena’s bedroom, where she gifts him a red camellia, which he promises to keep for ever.

“Vítor stared at her, enchanted. The proximity of her flesh drew him the way a magnet draws iron; he felt like touching the splendid flesh of her breast, to trace its curve with one fingertip, just to know how it felt. She was brightly lit by two lamps placed on a nearby table, which revealed the pure, soft lines of her chin and her nose, which the light caressed with adorable delicacy.”

These two were hit by a strong case of GSA...

The days after the soirée, Vítor wanders Lisbon hoping to run into Genoveva, but he has no such luck. He finally decides to visit her in her house, where he finds her a little bit ill.

Vítor returns to the house to confess his love for Genoveva, who rejects him but says that they can be friends. She asks about the camellia, and he tells her he has kept it. Vítor goes to another friend of his, a painter called Camilo Gorjão and hires him to paint Genoveva.

Vítor goes to Genoveva’s house once again, but she’s out and he finds only Dâmaso, who gets jealous, causing the two friends to be at odds. Vítor finally meets Genoveva at her place and tells her about the painting he wants done. She laughs at the idea at first, but agrees to be painted. They keep chatting about how similar they are. It comes the time that Dâmaso usually visits and she tells Vítor to go away, and he replies, like a little child, that if he goes, he won’t return, to which she says she’s fine with. He kisses her on the forehead and leaves. When alone, Genoveva confesses to her maid that: “my heart tells me this will end badly.”

The next time Vítor goes to visit, Genovena is out with Dâmaso, and Vítor talks to her English handmaid, Miss Sarah, and gets mad at Genovena, who he now considers to be a whore and wants nothing with. He then moves on to another girl, Aninhas.

He’s ready to move on, but Camilo can’t stop thinking about painting the portrait of Mme. Molineux and Vítor decides that he’s actually still in love with her and will use the portrait as na excuse to get close to her. He returns to Genoveva’s house to arrange the details, but Dâmaso, who is there, says that Camilo is a terrible painter, but Vítor does wins and convinces Genoveva to let Camilo go there the following day. This causes Dâmoso to get mad and she kicks him out of her house. Now alone, Genoveva thinks about Vítor and how much the loves him.

“She loved him with all the vehemence her soul could muster and with every desire in her body; she felt herself capable of serving him as devotedly as a sister of charity or as unstintingly as a mother, but she also wanted to devour him with caresses, as wildly as a bacchante and as shamelessly as a whore.”

(Italics by me. I mean, is it even foreshadowing now? It’s basically spelled out! Oh, how I wish I could read this book not knowing they were mother and son.)

Vítor goes to dinner with two friends, who tell him a lot about Genoveva, including that she lied about her family and age and that she had many lovers. Once more, Vítor returns to his hatred of Genoveva. Meanwhile, Dâmaso and Genoveva get back together, and he moves her to the Street of Flowers.

Camilo bails on Vítor and doesn’t show up for the painting session. They re-schedule for the following day. When they finally show up, Miss Sarah tells them that they are moving houses and that Genoveva is out of town with Dâmaso, this time in Sintra.

(This book does be going in circles, right?)

However, he does snoops around the house, and another of the maids shows him a box that Genoveva keeps, with a lavanda that Vítor had gift her and some gloves he had lost while there, convincing Vítor that she really loves him. He decided to go after her and goes to Sintra. Dâmaso welcomes him in the house, suspecting nothing.

Genoveva sings a sad lullaby and Vítor tells that his mom died when he was very young, so he didn’t grow up with lullabies. He adds that his died in Africa not much later. That night, he once again dreams with his father and Genoveva together, and the father tries to keep Vítor away from her.

Genoveva gives Vítor a letter for him to read in Lisbon, and he decides to leave Sintra. The letter is basically a love letter, with some weird peculiarities, that show me that by now, the author threw the subtlety out of the window and decided to make it very obvious what’s going on.

“If you only knew what I felt when you said that your mother had died. I'll be your mother. That is partly how I feel towards you, dear, adored Vítor.

[...]

I would be your Mama, but a Mama deliriously in love with her baby, who would devour him with kisses and spend nights of wild, unrestrained passion with him.”

When she returns to Lisbon, Vítor goes to the Street of Flowers to visit her and they kiss passionately. These meetings become an recurring thing, with Vítor visiting every day. She reveals to him that she has taken Dâmaso as a lover so she can pay her debt and have enough money to run away with Vìtor, but Vítor’s patience is running thin, specially when he finds out that Dâmaso isn’t the only lover she has. They fight one night when she visits him, but then the reconcile.

Mme. Molineux throws another party, to which Vítor is once again invited. (It doesn’t really matters, but a side character in this party is called João da Maia, which the same last name as the family from The Maias, but no João is mentioned as being part of the family in that book. Maybe another branch?) During the party, Genoveva makes fun of Dâmaso, who gets mad at her. When he goes talk to her about it the next days, she refuses the open the door, and, the day after that, she leaves him a note telling that they are no longer involved. Dâmaso gets furious, both with Genoveva and Vítor, whom he blames for being dumped. He runs into Vítor at the club and they get into a fight, which is stopped by another gentleman, and the two resolve to have a duel. Vítor invites João da Maia to be his second, who goes talk to Dâmaso. To avoid the fight, Dâmaso publishes a written apology on the newspaper.

Genoveva gets ready to leave Lisbon and Vítor isn’t sure if he wants to leave Uncle Timóteo behind, but in the end, he agrees on going with her. However, something I didn’t mention in this recap comes back to bite Vítor: Genoveva discovers that he had cheated on her with Camilo’s wife when they were making the arrangements for the portrait. She gets furious but Vítor calms her down by saying it was only once, which he swears on his mother’s grave. Oh, the irony. Then, he asks her to marry him.

Timóteo forbids the wedding when he discovers Genoveva was a prostitute. However, Vítor convinces him to go talk to Genoveva, because he really loves her and wants to be with her.

Timóteo goes meet Genoveva, and she seems to recognize him but she can’t tell exactly from where. He feels the same way about her. She tries to convince him to let her and Vítor be together, and decides to tell him the truth about her life, hoping he will take pity on her. As she begins, she tells that she had run away from her first husband: Pedro da Ega. Timóteo freezes at the name and then exclaims that Vítor is Vítor da Ega, her son! And he is Timóteo da Ega, who had once loved her. Genoveva becomes panicked and collapses on the floor. Timóteo goes back home, but Vítor is at a bar.

Vítor decides to check how things went and goes to the Street of Flowers, where he finds Genoveva dead. In shock, Vítor falls and hits his head, becoming severely injured. Genoveva’s death is given as a suicide. Timóteo decides to keep the secret and doesn’t tells Vítor about Genoveva being his mother. Vítor recovers from his injury but grieves profoundly, knowing that he’ll forever love Genoveva.

Honestly, I didn’t like that Vítor doesn’t discovers the truth. I’m not surprised with the tragic ending, there’s “tragedy” in the title, after all. There are many similarities with The Maias, which was written after Tragedy, but published first (as, like I mentioned, Tragedy was just a unpublished draft when Queirós died, being published post-mortem). When I write my review of The Maias, I’ll further explain the parallels between them.

I think that he was inspired by Oedipus Rex. Man meets woman, they fall in love, she turns out to be his mom, she kills herself? Sounds like Oedipus.

Also, like I said, Vítor and Genoveva are clearly a case of what nowadays we call genetic sexual attraction. They fall in love so intensely and so quickly, in a away that neither had felt for anyone else before. It’s a shame we had such a sad ending, although it was already expected.

#eça de queirós #the tragedy of the street of flowers #genoveva and vítor #book review #canon #shipcest #mother x son #parent x child #a tragédia na rua das flores #filicest

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