Now that I have recounted what I found out later, I can put in here something my mother said. Now we can understand why, on the next Saturday, when I got home and found out that Capitu was at the Rua dos Inválidos with Miss Gurgel, she said:
“Why don’t you go and see her? Didn’t you say that Sancha’s father offered you his house?”
“Yes.”
“Well then? But only if you want to. Capitu should have come back today to finish off some needlework with me; her friend must have asked her to stay the night.”
“Maybe they’ve been flirting,” cousin Justina insinuated.
I didn’t kill her because I didn’t have steel or cord, a pistol or a dagger at hand; but the look I gave her, if it could have killed, would have made up for all these things. One of the mistakes of Providence was to have given men only their arms and teeth as offensive weapons, and their legs as means of flight or defense. For the first of these, the eyes should be enough. A single movement of them would make an enemy or a rival stop or fall to the ground, they would carry out swift vengeance, with the added advantage that, to delude justice, these same murderous eyes would be full of mercy, and would make haste to weep for the victim. Cousin Justina escaped mine; but I did not escape from the effect of her insinuation, and on Sunday at eleven, I ran to the Rua dos Inválidos.
Sancha’s father received me looking dishevelled and unhappy. His daughter was ill; she had come down with a fever the day before, and it was getting worse. As he loved his daughter a great deal, he thought he saw her already dead, and announced to me that he would kill himself too. Here’s a chapter as funereal as a cemetery, full of deaths, suicides, and murders. I was longing for a bright ray of sunshine and blue sky. It was Capitu who brought them to the doorway, coming to tell Sancha’s father that his daughter had asked for him.
“Is she worse?” asked Gurgel in alarm.
“No, but she wants to talk to you.”
“Stay here for a while,” he said to her, and turning to me: “She’s Sancha’s nurse, and she’ll have no other; I’ll be back in a moment.”
Capitu showed signs of exhaustion and concern, but no sooner did she see me than she changed completely, and became the same girl I knew, fresh and sprightly, and no less surprised. She could hardly believe it was me. She spoke to me, wanted me to speak to her, and in fact we did converse for some minutes, but in such low, hushed voices that even the walls didn’t hear, and they, as we know, have ears. Or in any case, if they heard anything, they didn’t understand, neither they nor the furniture, which was as sad as its owner.