Dom Casmurro

by Machado de Assis

CXXVII - The Barber

Close to home was a barber, who knew me by sight, loved the fiddle, and did not play badly. On the occasion when I was passing, I executed what I did not know. I stopped on the sidewalk and listened to him (everything is pretexts to an agonized heart), he saw me, he continued to play. He did not attend to one of his friends, and soon to another, that there they went, despite the hour and of being Sunday, to entrust the faces to him with the razor. He lost them without losing a note; was playing for me. This consideration made me frankly reach the store door, facing him. In the background, pulling up the calico curtain that closed the interior of the house, I saw a young woman with a dark hair, a light dress, with her hair. She was his wife; I believe you found me from within, and you came to thank me with the presence of the favor I made to your husband. If I'm not mistaken, he came to say it with his eyes. As for her husband, she was now hotter; without seeing the woman, without seeing freguezes, glued the face to the instrument, passed the soul to the bow, and touched, touched ...

Divine art! A group was forming, I left the store door and walked home; I went down the corridor and up the stairs without a sound. I have never forgotten the case of this barber, or because I am connected to a serious moment of my life, or by this maximum, that the compilers, can get out of here and insert in the school digests. The maximum is that you slowly forget the good deeds you practice, and truly never forget them. Poor barber! lost two beards that night, which were the bread of the next day, all to be heard from a passerby. Suppose now that, instead of leaving, as I was, I stood at the door to hear him and to date his wife; then he, every bow, every fiddle, would play desperately. Divine art!