The Opportune Moment, Take 2

Back in May, I wrote a post about a short selection from a novel on the opportune moment. Well, I found the piece in an old journal. Here it is:

From “Epitaph of a Small Winner” by Machado de Assis
Translated from the Portuguese by William L. Grossman

Chapter 56. THE OPPORTUNE MOMENT: How the devil can you account for it? How can you explain the change? One day we saw each other, we considered marriage, we broke up, we went our respective ways, coldly, painlessly, for there had been no love; I was bitten a little by resentment, and that was all. Years go by, we see each other again, we take three of four turns of a waltz together, and there we are, madly in love. Virgilia’s beauty, to be sure, had reached a high degree of perfection, but we were substantially the same people, and I, for my part, had become neither better looking nor more elegant. How can you explain the change?

Perhaps it is all a matter of the opportune moment. The first moment was not opportune because, even if neither of us was unripe for love, we were both unripe for our love: a fundamental distinction. Love is impossible unless the time is opportune for both parties. I discovered this explanation myself two years after the kiss, one day when Virgilia complained to me about the persistent attentions that she was receiving from a certain young coxcomb who used to frequent her house.

“He’s so importune!” she said, and she made an angry face.

I shuddered, I searched her face, I saw that her indignation was sincere. Then it occurred to me that perhaps at one time I had provoked that same expression on her face, and I understood how great had been my evolution. I had come all the way from importunity to opportunity.