Dom Casmurro

by Machado de Assis

XLII - Reflecting Capitu

I went home the next day as soon as I could. Capitú took leave of three friends who had gone to see her, Paula and Sandia, schoolmates, fifteen, the seventeen years old, the first daughter of a doctor, the second of an American objects merchant. She was depressed, with a handkerchief tied around her head; the mother told me that she had been over-reading in the evening, before and after tea, in the living room and in the bed, long after midnight, and with a lamp ...

"If I set the candle on, Mom would get mad. I'm good already.

And as he unfastened the handkerchief, his mother told him timidly that it was best to get him, but Captain replied that it was not necessary, it was good.

We were alone in the living room; Capitú continued his mother's narration, adding that he had been ill because of what he had heard in my house. I also told her what to do with me, the interview with my mother, my supplications, her tears, and finally the last decisive answers: in two or three months I would go to the seminary. What would we do now? Capitú listened to me with attentive words, then somber; when I finished, he was breathing hard, as if about to snap, but he restrained himself.

It has been so long since I have been able to say with certainty whether I have cried devas, or whether I have only wiped my eyes; I believe that you have dried them up. Seeing the gesture, I took her hand to pet her, but I also needed to be excited. We fell on the settee, and stared into the air. Minto; She was staring at the floor. I did the same, as soon as I saw her like this ... But I believe that Capitú was looking inside herself, while I was looking at the ground, the roaring of the crevices, two flies walking, and one foot of a chipped chair. It was little, but I was distracted from the affliction. When I looked at Capitú again, I saw that he did not move, and I was so afraid that I shook her gently. Capitú brought me outside and asked me to tell him again what had happened to my mother. Satisfy it, attenuating the text this time, not amofinal it. Do not call me disguised, call me compassionate; it is certain that he feared to lose Capitú, if all his hopes died, but it hurts me to suffer. Now, the ultimate truth, the truth of truths, is that I already regretted having spoken to my mother, before any effective work on the part of Jose Dias; examining it well, he had not perhaps heard a disappointment that I thought was right, albeit time-consuming. Capitú reflected, reflected, reflected ...