Dom Casmurro

by Machado de Assis

LXXXI - A Word

So told what I discovered later, I can translate here a word from my mother. Now it will be understood that she told me, on the first sabbath, when I got home, and I knew that Capitú was in the street of the Invalides, with Little Miss Gurgel.

"Why do not you go?" Did not you tell me that Sancha's mother offered you the house?

-Offered.

-So? But it's if you want. Capitú should have returned today to finish a job with me; her friend was certainly asked to sleep there.

"Maybe they were dating," cousin Justina hinted.

I did not kill her because I did not have my hand iron or rope, pistol or dagger; but the eyes I laid on him, if they could kill, would have suppressed everything. One of Providence's mistakes was to leave to man only his arms and teeth as weapons of attack, and his legs as weapons of escape or defense. The eyes were enough for the first effect. A movement of them would make an enemy or a rival fall or fall, they would carry out revenge, with this accoutrement, that in order to bewilder justice, the same murderous eyes would be pious eyes, and would run to weep the victim. Prima Justina escaped mine; I did not escape the point of insinuation, and on Sunday, at eleven o'clock, I ran to the street of the Invalides.

Sancha's father received me in disarray and sad. The daughter was ill; he had fallen in the evening with a fever that was aggravating. As he loved his daughter very much, he thought he was already dead, and he announced that he would kill himself too. Here is a funeral chapter like a cemetery, deaths, suicides and murders. I craved a light beam of light and blue sky. It was Capitú who brought them to the door of the room, coming to tell his mother that his daughter had sent for him.

"Is it worse?" asked Gurgel, startled.

"No, sir, but you want to talk to him."

"Stay here a little," he told her; and turning to me: She is Sancha's nurse, who wants no other; I'll be right back.

Capitú carried signs of fatigue and commotion, but he saw me so quickly, every other girl remained, the young girl of always, fresh and lepida, no less than astonished. It cost him to believe it was me. He spoke to me, perhaps speaking, and we spoke for a few minutes, but so low and so muffled that even the walls did not hear, they who have ears. Besides, if they heard anything, they understood nothing, neither they nor the furniture, which were as sad as the owner.