Fifteen, no vocation
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Quinze annos, não havendo vocação,
Fifteen years old, with no vocation,
His age and lack of calling worked against the plan.
Two facts are laid side by side: the boy is fifteen, and he has no 'vocação', no genuine calling to the priesthood. Machado fixes the age precisely — old enough now to feel his own desires, young enough to be still disposable by others — and admits the absence at the heart of the whole plan. There was never a vocation, only a vow.
The distinction is the chapter's sharpest point. A vocation comes from within; the seminary plan came entirely from without, from a mother's bargain made before he was born. The boy was groomed for a calling he never received. This is the injustice the whole book turns on: a life shaped by others' promises rather than one's own desire. And at fifteen, the desire that has actually awakened in him points not toward the altar but toward the girl next door. The lack of vocation and the presence of Capitú are the two forces that will, together, break the vow.
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