Dom Casmurro

by Machado de Assis

XXXIV -I'm a Man!

We heard footsteps in the hallway; it was D. Fortunata. Capitú made up quickly, so quickly that when her mother pointed at the door, she shook her head and laughed. No laivo amarello. no contraction of shyness, a spontaneous and clear laugh, which she explained by these cheerful words:

"Mother, look how this gentleman hairdressed me; asked me to finish the hairstyle, and did this. See what braids!

-That has? his mother came, overflowing with benevolence. It's fine, no one will say it's from a person who does not know how to comb.

"What, Mama?" This? said Capitú, undoing the braids. Why, Mother!

And with a graceful and voluntary annoyance he sometimes had, he took the comb and smoothed his hair to renew the hairstyle. Fortunata called her a fool, and she told me not to listen, it was nothing, she was crazy about her daughter. She looked at me tenderly for her. Then I think he suspected. Seeing me silent, stuck, stitched to the wall, he thought perhaps that there had been something more than a hairstyle among us, and he smiled through dissimulation ...

Since I wanted to speak also to disguise my condition, I called a few words from the inside, and they came forward with promptitude, but with an attack, and filled my mouth without being able to leave any. Capitú's kiss closed my lips. An exclamation, a simple article, no matter how hard they invested, could not break from within. And all the words gathered to his heart, murmuring: "Here is one who will not make a great career in the world unless his emotions overpower him ..."

So, caught by his mother, we were two and opposites, she covering up with the word what I published by silence. D. Fortunata took me out of that hesitation, saying that my mother had told me to call for the Latin license; Father Cabral was waiting for me. It was an exit; I said goodbye and went down the hall. Walking, I heard her mother blame her daughter's ways, but her daughter said nothing.

I ran to my room, picked up the books, but did not go through the licensing room; I sat on the bed, remembering the hairstyle and the rest. I had shudders, I had some forgetfulness in which I lost consciousness of myself and the things that surrounded me, to live, I do not know where or how. And he would turn to me, and see the bed, the walls, the books, the floor, hear some sound of fóra, vague, near or remote, and soon lose everything to feel only the lips of Capitú ... He felt them stretched, beneath mine, equally stretched out to the della, and uniting with one another. Suddenly, unintentionally, without thinking, this word of pride left me:

-I'm a man!

Supposing they had listened to me, for the word went out in a loud voice, and I ran to the bedroom door. There was no one else. I went back inside, and quietly repeated that I was a man. I still have the fool in my ears. The taste this gave me was enormous. Columbus did not have it bigger, discovering America, and forgive banality in favor of the fitting; with each effect, there is in each adolescent a hidden world, an admiral and an October sun. I made other findings later; none of them blew me so much. The denunciation of Jose Dias had disturbed me, the license of the old coconut tree too, the sight of our names opened by it on the wall of the yard gave me great shock, as you have seen; none of this was worth the kiss. It could be a lie or an illusion. True, they were the bones of truth, not flesh and blood. His hands touched, tight, as if cast, could not say everything.

-I'm a man!

When I repeated this, for the third time, I thought of the seminary, but how do you think of danger that passed, an aborted evil, an extinct nightmare; all my nerves told me that men are not fathers. Blood was the same. Again I felt the lips of Capitú. Maybe I misuse some of the skeletal reminiscences; but the longing is this; is to pass and pass on the old memories. Now, of all of that time, I believe that the sweetest is this, the newest, the most comprehensive, to which I have fully revealed myself. Others I have, vast and numerous, sweet too, of various species, many intellectuals, even intense. Great man, the memory was less than this.