Dom Casmurro

by Machado de Assis

LXII - A Tip of the Lake

The question was reckless at the time when I was careful to transfer the shipment. He was inclined to confess that the main or only motive of my repulsion to the seminary was Capitú, and to make the trip unlikely. I understood this after I had spoken; he tried to mend me, but I did not know how, nor did he give me time.

"He's been as happy as ever; You're a fool. Aquillo, as long as he does not take some mountain range from the neighborhood, marry her ...

I am soaked; At least I felt a chill run through my body. The news that she lived happily, when I cried every night, produced that effect, accompanied by a heart-beating, so violent that I still care for it now. There is some exaggeration in this; but the human discourse is like that, a compound of excessive parts and tiny parts, which compensate, adjust. On the other hand, if we understand that the audience here is not from the ears, but from the memory, we will arrive at the exact truth. My memory still hears the thud of the heart now. Do not forget it was the emotion of first love. I almost asked José Dias to explain to me the joy of Capitú, what she was doing, whether she was laughing, singing or jumping, but I held back in time, and then another idea ...

Another idea, no, a cruel and unknown feeling, pure jealousy, reader of my insides. This was what bit me when I repeated the words of Jose Dias: "Some mountain of the neighborhood." In truth, he had never thought of such a disaster. It lived so in her, for her and for her, that the intervention of a peralta was like a notion without reality; it never occurred to me that there were cantons in the neighborhood, various age and form, great walkers of the afternoons. Now I remembered that some were looking at Capitú, "and I felt so delighted that it was as if they were looking at me, a simple duty of admiration and envy. Separated from each other by space and destiny, evil appeared to me now, not only possible, but right. And the joy of Capitú confirmed the suspicion; if she lived happily and that she was already dating another, she would accompany him with her eyes in the street, tell her the window, the maroons, exchange flowers and ...

Is that? You know what they would trade more; if you do not find it for yourself, it is unnecessary to read the rest of the chapter and the book, you will not find anything else, although I say it with all the letters of the etymology. But if you have found it, you will understand that I, after shuddering, had an urge to throw myself out the gate, to descend the rest of the slope, to run, to reach the house of Padua, to seize Capitú, and to tell him to confess to me how many, how many , how many had already given him the edge of the neighborhood. I did not do nothing. The same dreams that now tell the story did not have, in those three or four minutes, this logic of movements and thoughts. They were loose, mended and badly mended, with the truncated and crooked design, a confusion, a whirlwind, that blinded and deafened me. When I returned to him, Jose Dias concluded a phrase, whose beginning I did not hear, and the same end was vague: "The account that will give of itself." What account and who? I naturally took care that he was still talking about Capitú, and he wanted to ask him, but the will died at birth, like so many generations of them. I merely inquired of the addressee when I would go home to see my mother.

"I miss Mother." Can I go already this week?

"Come on.

-Habber? Ah! Yes! Yes! Ask Mom to send for me Saturday! Saturday! This Saturday, right? That you send for me, without fail.