I bear the poet no grudge
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O meu poeta do trem ficará sabendo que não lhe guardo rancor.
My poet of the train will come to know that I bear him no grudge.
My poet of the train will come to know that I bear him no grudge.
Bento makes his peace, warmly and on the record: 'o meu poeta do trem ficará sabendo que não lhe guardo rancor' — my poet of the train will learn that I hold no grudge against him. The young man has become 'meu poeta', mine, almost affectionately possessed, and the whole slight is forgiven in public. It is a graceful, generous close — and it is the second time in this short chapter that Bento has gone out of his way to assure us he harbours no resentment ('nem por isso me zanguei' was the first). Once might be good nature; twice is a pattern, and the pattern is the thing to hold. Here is a narrator unusually concerned that we believe him incapable of a grudge, insisting on his own magnanimity over an injury most people would simply forget. The word he uses, 'rancor', is precisely the emotion the rest of the book will be soaked in — a slow, buried, lifelong resentment. To deny it so pointedly, so early, over so small a matter, is either the mark of a truly forgiving soul or the first tell of a man protesting too much. Machado leaves the question open, and the whole novel is the answer.
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