Dom Casmurro 15.17 · 15.17

Here the narrator's own hand shows. 'Duvidoso, ou menos que duvidoso' — dubious, or less than dubious — is Casmurro correcting himself in real time, first calling the caught moment suspect, then instantly downgrading the charge. The self-revision is the whole art of the sentence: he wants to plant the word 'dubious' and also to seem fair enough to withdraw it.

This is the retrospective narrator intruding on the childhood scene, unable to describe two children holding hands without reaching for the language of guilt. The 'gesto duvidoso' is, in the moment, nothing — a boy and girl surprised close together. But the older man cannot let it stay nothing; he must name the doubt even as he pretends to dismiss it. Machado lets us watch the machinery of a jealous memory at work, seeding suspicion and then, too late and too lightly, taking it half back.

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