Shake your head, reader; make all the incredulous gestures you like. Throw the book out, even, if boredom hasn’t made you do it already; anything is possible. But, if you haven’t done so and only now do you feel like it, I trust that you will pick the book up again and open it at the same page, without believing that the author is telling the truth. However, nothing is more true. That was the way that Capitu spoke, with just those words and in that manner. She spoke of her first child, as if it were her first doll.
As for my shock, great as it was, a strange sensation was mixed in with it. A fluid went through me. That threat of a first child, Capitu’s first child, her marriage to someone else, and so our complete separation, the loss, the annihilation, all this produced such an effect that I was at a loss for words or gestures: I was struck dumb. Capitu was smiling; I saw her first child playing on the floor…