Dom Casmurro

by Machado de Assis

CXLIV - A Late Question

So weep for me all the eyes of friends and friends that I leave in this world, but it is not probable. I've made myself forget. Far away and I leave little. It is not that he has effectively connected the two ends of life. This house of the Engenho Novo, while reproducing that of Matacavallos, only reminds me of that one, and more by comparison and reflection than of feeling. I already said that.

They will ask me why, having their own old house on the same old street, I did not stop them from demolishing it and I came to reproduce it in this one. The question should have been asked at first, but here is the answer. The reason is that as soon as my mother died, wanting to go there, I first made a long inspection visit for a few days, and the whole house did not know me. In the yard, the mason and the pitangueira, the well, the old bucket and the washing machine, knew nothing about me. The casuarina was the same one I had left in the background, but the trunk, instead of straight, as an old one, now had a question mark air; naturally he was amazed by the intruder. I ran my eyes through the air, searching for some thought left there, and found none. On the contrary, the branch began to whisper something that I did not understand soon, and it seems that it was the song of the new mornings. At the foot of this sonorous and jovial music, I also heard the grunting of pigs, a sort of concentrated mockery and philosophical.

Everything was strange and adverse to me. I let them demolish the house, and later, when I came to the New Mill, he reminded me to make this reproduction for explanations that I gave to the architecto as I counted in time.