I stopped on the verandah; I felt dizzy, stunned, my legs were trembling, and my heart seemed on the point of coming out of my mouth. I did not dare go down into our orchard, and through to the yard next door. I began to walk back and forth, stopping to lean against the wall, starting again and stopping. Confused voices kept repeating what José Dias had said:
“Always together …”
“Whispering …”
“If they start to flirt in earnest …”
Brick paving that I paced back and forth over that afternoon, yellowed columns that passed by to right and left as I came and went, you were imprinted with the better part of that crisis, the sensation of a new joy, which wrapped me up in myself, then dissolved, made me shudder, and poured out some unknown inner balsam. Sometimes I became aware of myself smiling, with a look of satisfied laughter about me which belied the abomination of my sin. And the jumbled voices went on repeating:
“Whispering …”
“Always together …”
“If they start to flirt in earnest …”
A palm tree, seeing me troubled and divining the cause, murmured in its branches that there was nothing wrong with fifteen-year-old boys getting into corners with girls of fourteen; quite the contrary, youths of that age had no other function, and corners were made for that very purpose. It was an old palm tree, and I believed in old palm trees even more than in old books. Birds, butterflies, a cricket trying out its summer song, all the living things of the air were of the same opinion.
So I loved Capitu, and she me? It was true that I did hang around her a great deal, but I could not think of anything between us that was really secret. Before she went to school, it was all just childish mischief; after she left school, it is true that we did not immediately return to the old intimacy, but little by little it came back, and in the last year had been complete again. Nevertheless, the subject of our conversations remained the same. Capitu at times called me handsome, a fine fellow, a real angel; at others, she took my hands to count my fingers. I began to remember these and other gestures and words, the pleasure I felt when she ran her hand through my hair, saying she thought it was very beautiful. Though I did not do the same thing to her, I said that hers was much more beautiful than mine. Then Capitu shook her head with a disappointed, melancholy look, the more astonishing in that she had really wonderful hair; I retorted by saying she was crazy. When she asked if I had dreamed of her the previous night, and I said no, she would tell me that she had dreamed of me. There were extraordinary adventures, in which we flew up to the Corcovado,* danced in the moonbeams, or the angels came to ask us our names, so that they could give them to other angels that had just been born. In all these dreams we were always together. The ones I had of her were not like this: they only reproduced incidents of our daily life together, and often they were no more than a simple repetition of the day, a phrase here, a gesture there. I also recounted mine. One day Capitu pointed out the difference, saying that hers were prettier than mine; I, after some hesitation, told her they were like the dreamer … She blushed bright red.
Well, quite frankly, only now did I understand the emotion that these confessions, and others like them, stirred in me. It was a novel emotion, and a delightful one, but its origin was a mystery to me—one I didn’t even suspect the existence of. Her more recent silences, which had meant nothing to me, I now felt to be signs of something: the same was true of her half-spoken words, curious questions, vague replies, her thoughtful moments, the pleasure she took in remembering our childhood. I also noticed that it was a récent phenomenon for me to wake up thinking about Capitu, to remember her words, and tremble when I heard her steps. If they talked about her at home, I paid more attention than before, and depending on whether it was praise or criticism, the pleasure and pain this brought me were more intense than before, when we were only two mischievous children. I even thought of her during mass that month: not all the time, it is true, but at times I thought of her exclusively.
All of this had now been revealed to me by the mouth of José Dias, who had denounced me to myself, and whom I forgave everything, the evil he had spoken, the evil he had done, and anything that might come of these things. At that moment, eternal Truth itself, eternal Goodness, and all the other eternal Virtues were worth less to me than he was. I loved Capitu! Capitu loved me! And my legs strode back and forth, stopped still, tremulous, certain that they bestrode the whole world. That first throbbing of the sap, that revelation of consciousness to itself, is something I have never forgotten, nor have I ever had a comparable sensation. Naturally because it was mine. Naturally, too, because it was the first.