It was a tactless question to ask, at the very moment when I was attempting to put the journey off. It amounted to a confession that the principal or only motive for my aversion of the seminary was Capitu, and it would make him think that the journey was unlikely. I realized this as soon as I had spoken; I wanted to correct myself, but I didn’t know how, nor did he give me time.
“She’s been as happy as ever; she’s a giddy little thing. Just waiting to find some local beau to marry her …”
I’m sure I went pale; at least, I felt a cold shiver running through my whole body. The news that she was happy while I cried every night produced that effect, and it was accompanied by such a violent beating of the heart that even now I seem to hear it. There might be some exaggeration in this; but that’s the way with human discourse, a mixture of the overblown and the undersized, which make up for each other, and in the end level out. On the other hand, if we take it that I hear it not in my ears but in my memory, we will come at the real truth. My memory still now hears my heart thumping at that moment. Don’t forget that these were the emotions of first love. I almost asked José Dias to explain Capitu’s happiness to me, what she was doing, if she was laughing, singing or jumping up and down, but I stopped myself in time, and then another idea…
Not another idea—a cruel, unknown feeling, pure jealousy, dearly beloved reader. That was what bit into me, as I repeated to myself José Dias’ words: “some local beau.” The truth is that I had never thought of such a calamity. I lived so much in her, of her and for her, that the intervention of some beau was almost a notion lacking in reality; it had never occurred to me that there were local beaux, of varying ages and types, who always went out for rides of an afternoon. Now I remembered that some of them looked at Capitu—and I felt myself so much her master that it was as if they were looking at me, as if they were fulfilling a simple duty of admiration and envy. Separated one from the other by space and destiny, the evil seemed not only possible, but certain. And Capitu’s happiness confirmed the suspicion; if she was continually happy it was because she was already flirting with someone else, following him with her eyes in the street, talking to him at the window in the evening, exchanging flowers and…
And… what? You know what else they would exchange; if you can’t work it out for yourself, there’s no point in reading the rest of the chapter and the book, you’ll find nothing more, even if I lay it out as explicitly as possible, complete with etymologies. But if you have worked it out, you’ll understand that after shuddering, I had an impulse to rush out through the gate, run down the hill, get to Pádua’s house, grab Capitu and order her to confess how many, how many, how many the local beau had already given her. I did nothing. Even the dreams I’m telling you of did not have, in those three or four minutes, as much logic in their movements and thoughts. They were fragmentary, patched, botched, like a twisted, unfinished drawing, a confusion, a whirlwind, blinding and deafening me. When I came to again, José Dias was finishing a sentence, whose beginning I didn’t hear, and whose end was vague also: “the account she’ll give of herself.” What account, who to? I naturally thought he was still speaking of Capitu, and I wanted to ask him if he was, but the impulse was no sooner born than it died, like so many other generations of thoughts. I limited myself to asking the dependent when I would go home to see my mother.
“I’m missing Mamma. Can I go this week?”
“On Saturday.”
“Saturday? Oh, yes, yes! Ask Mamma to send for me on Saturday! Saturday! This Saturday, right? Ask her to send for me without fail.”