Passed her on

It was the late 1980s, the marriage was not going well, both in the 40-to-50 age range, both no longer respecting each other as they should, but with three children, the youngest still 3 years old, they kept going, somewhat without knowing what to do. It was evident that something was going to happen or was already happening. Whoever has been through this understands.

At a certain point, he realized that something was real: she had stopped complaining about everything, sometimes she was even nice, as she had been more than ten years earlier, when they got married.

It was an anonymous letter, typed and addressed to him, that confirmed the suspicions. He spent the whole night without sleeping, with his pride and vanity wounded; he was being cuckolded.

He was rational and decided to do nothing, for two reasons: a> he needed to confirm it, an anonymous letter could be just gossip, b> he needed time to think and prepare himself for the confusions that some acquaintances had already been through.

The first part was easy: guided by a friend familiar with electronic things, he planted some listening devices on the home telephones and in less than a week the anonymous letter was confirmed, in who, when and where. But he decided to continue not letting on that he knew, partly to get to know the mother of his children better, partly amusing himself with the situation, partly with his conscience relieved for not being the detonator of the problem.

But he was very upset at feeling cuckolded; culturally speaking, he was not prepared for that. For him to cuckold, once in a while and randomly, all right, but to be cuckolded and specifically by only one man, that is, property, habit, affection, did not fit into his concepts and prejudices; it hurt a lot, the shame and wounded pride. Worse would be when everyone knew. He decided to go on silently. It was at that point that, no longer able to bear it alone, he brought me up to date on things.

Some 30 more days passed, she sat beside him, very gentle, and began to discuss the relationship. The famous “DR” they had never had. After half an hour that seemed to him like an eternity, she proposed that they separate. He asked whether there was someone else, she denied it, swore fidelity forever and ever, etc. and so on. He continued without saying that he knew, etc. and so on. He took advantage of it to go on screwing the bitch, now already as the lover-client of the little whore, feeling that the cuckold had now become the other man, and even noticed that, with a certain lack of respect, the thing got better and she even sought him out, which she had not done in some time. How things are, he thought.

They began to discuss the division of property, which all came from his father, but which she said she deserved half of, she also worked, she would stay with the children, she had been a faithful woman, etc. and so on, that she did not insist on the house in the capital, nor on the one in Guarujá. Of course, the other man, who was a coworker of hers, he even knew the SOB, also married, also with children, would not want it or they sensed that it would be too much for our friend. The more the matters evolved, the more he asked himself: “why did I marry this thing?” (Dicró).

But he kept his cool. He announced that he needed some time to think and went away for about 30 days, alone, Christmas and New Year’s included. I remember he called me from where he was and did not tell me where, to know how things were going here. I had to show up there in Alto de Pinheiros, looking for him, as if I did not want anything.

He came back saying that it had been good to take that sabbatical month, that he had organized his ideas, that he had found a mitigating factor: she had chosen to take the initiative, so all the blame stayed with her. But he was still extremely bothered by the horns, the betrayal. When everything became public, what shame, what humiliation.

Although a lawyer, he decided to go see a college classmate called Dernier Rosado, I never forgot that name, specialized in Family Courts, to anticipate the issues that would certainly arise. He took me along, as friend, confidant and driver. We arrived at the colleague’s residence, a beautiful house in Alto da Boa Vista, and began drinking whisky by the pool.

He began telling the situation, from the beginning, but the narrative was not linear and there was a certain difficulty in understanding the story. The colleague realized that he was very emotional, downcast, sad, but intuited everything and came out with this:

_ Antônio, let me see if I understood: cheating on your woman is easy, the hard part is passing her on, but you managed it... What are you upset about?

Our friend, who had the glass at his lips, drinking the whisky and had put an ice cube in his mouth, remained paralyzed for about 5 seconds. Suddenly he began to laugh and, without meaning to, spat out the ice cube and the mouthful of whisky. I remember perfectly the ice flying, hitting the ground and ending up in the pool.

Eureka! There was light! Antônio was reborn.

The three of us laughed. A lot.

And we celebrated the friend’s “liberation” there, at that moment. The rest of the divorce would be a piece of cake for him. And it was.

Dernier should have been a psychiatrist, not a “lawyur”.

Miguel Fernández y Fernández, engineer, chronicler and columnist, member of the National Academy of Engineering and of the Institute of Engineering # R2025 Dec Rb, 4,834 characters.