In the hall and the street, I still asked myself if he really might have suspected something, but thought not and began to walk home. I was very pleased with the visit, with Capitu’s happiness, with Gurgel’s praises, so much so that I didn’t reply immediately to a voice calling me:
“Senhor Bentinho! Senhor Bentinho!”
Only when the voice grew louder and its owner came to the door, did I stop and see what it was and where I was. I was already in the Rua de Matacavalos. The house was a china shop, bare and poor; the doors were half shut, and the person calling me was a poor man, gray-haired and shabbily dressed.
“Senhor Bentinho,” he said in tears, “do you know that my son Manduca is dead?”
“Dead?”
“He died half an hour ago—he’ll be buried tomorrow. I sent a note to your mother just now, and she was so kind as to send me some flowers to put on the coffin. My poor son! He had to die, and it was a good thing he did, poor lad, but even so it still hurts. What a life he had! … Not long ago he remembered you, and asked if you were in the seminary … Do you want to see him? Come in, come and see him …”
It’s painful for me to say this, but it is better to sin by saying too much than too little. I wanted to say no, that I did not want to see Manduca, and I even made a move as if to get away. It was not fear; I might have gone in on another occasion quite readily and with a certain curiosity, but I was so happy at that moment! To see a dead body on my way back from seeing my sweetheart… There are things that don’t mix or fit in with each other. Even the news itself upset me. My golden thoughts all lost their color and metallic sheen, turning into dull, ugly ashes, and I felt utterly confused. I think I went so far as to say that I was in a hurry, but probably I didn’t speak in clear words, or even in human speech, because he, leaning in the entrance way, was motioning me in, and I, without the heart to enter or run away, let my body do what it could, and it ended up going in.
I don’t blame the man; for him, the most important thing at the moment was his son. But don’t blame me either, for me, the most important thing was Capitu. The trouble was that the two things came together in the same afternoon, and the death of one poked its nose into the life of the other. That was the whole trouble. If I had come by before or after, or if Manduca could have waited a few hours to die, no discordant note would have come to interrupt the sweet melodies of my soul. Why die exactly half an hour before? Any time is appropriate for dying; you can perfectly well die at six or seven in the afternoon.