All this the mischievous little book kept on repeating, with its old print and its Latin quotations. I saw the outlines of many seminarists arise from its pages—the Albuquerque brothers, for instance, one of whom is a canon in Bahia, while the other pursued medicine as a career and, so they say, has discovered a specific against yellow fever.* I saw Bastos, a skinny lad, who’s a vicar in Meia-Ponte, if he’s not already dead; Luís Borges, though a priest, became a politician, and ended up a Senator of the Empire … How many other faces stared at me from the cold pages of the Panegyric! No, they weren’t cold; they had the warmth of budding youth, of the past, my own warmth. I wanted to read them again, and managed to understand parts of the text, just as if I had been reading it for the first time, though it seemed shorter. It was delightful to wander through it; at times, unconsciously, I turned the page over as if I were really reading; I think it was when my eyes went to the bottom of the page, and the hand, so used to helping out, did its usual job …
Here is another seminarist. His name was Ezequiel de Sousa Escobar. He was a slim youth, with pale eyes, a little elusive, like his hands, like his feet, like his speech, like everything about him. If you weren’t used to him, he could make you feel dizzy, not knowing where to take a hold on him. He didn’t look you in the eye, and didn’t speak clearly and continuously; his hand didn’t grip yours, nor let itself be gripped, because, when you thought you had hold of his fingers, they were so slender and short you found there was nothing there. The same can be said of the feet, here one moment, gone the next. This difficulty in settling was the greatest obstacle he found in adapting to seminary ways. He had a instant smile, but also a hearty, relaxed laugh. One thing, perhaps, was not elusive as the rest, and that was his habit of reflecting; often we would find him, with his eyes turned inwards, thinking. He always told us he was meditating on some spiritual matter, either that or committing yesterday’s lesson to memory. When he became an intimate of mine, he frequently asked me for explanations and detailed repetitions, and had the capacity to memorize them all, every last word. It may be that this faculty got in the way of some other.
He was three years older than I, the son of a lawyer from Curitiba who was related to a businessman in Rio de Janeiro who acted as his agent.* The father was a strongly devout Catholic. Escobar had a sister, who was an angel, he said.
“It’s not only her beauty that’s angelic—it’s her goodness, too. You can’t imagine what a good creature she is. She writes to me a lot: I must show you her letters.”
Indeed they were simple and affectionate, full of endearments and advice. Escobar told me interesting stories about her, all of which came down to illustrating the goodness and the intelligence of this sweet creature; such were her virtues that they might have made me marry her, had it not been for Capitu. She died not long after. Seduced by his words, I was on the point of telling him my story then and there. At first I was shy, but he found his way into my confidence. Those elusive ways ceased when he wanted them to, and time and the new environment made them settle down, too. Escobar opened up his whole soul, from the front door to the bottom of the garden. Our souls, as you know, are laid out like houses, often with windows on every side, lots of light and fresh air. There are also houses that are closed and dark, with no windows at all, or with a few barred windows, like convents or prisons. In the same way, there are chapels and bazaars, simple lean-tos and sumptuous palaces.
I don’t know what mine was. I was not yet Casmurro, nor Dom Casmurro. Shyness prevented me being open, but since the doors had neither keys nor locks, all that was needed was to push them, and Escobar pushed and entered. I found him inside, and here he stayed, until…