Dom Casmurro 12.8 · 12.8

The first fragment surfaces as a refrain: 'Sempre juntos' — always together. It is José Dias's phrase, torn from its accusatory setting and left to echo on its own.

Set off in guillemets and trailing into dots, the words hang unfinished, the way an overheard indictment repeats in the mind. What the agregado meant as a warning the boy now hears as a plain description of happiness: always together is, after all, exactly what he wants. The gap between the phrase's intended menace and its private sweetness is where the whole scene lives.

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