Only the agregado
Read the full text in our reader
lá em casa; era só o aggregado.
there at home; it was only the agregado.
The nickname belonged to José Dias alone — the household dependent.
The sentence closes the parenthesis with a word that reverberates through the whole book: 'o aggregado,' the agregado, the live-in dependent. Only he called Pádua the Tortoise. Machado has quietly done two portraits at once — sketching Pádua's body while defining José Dias's function, the tolerated hanger-on whose currency is the sly nickname.
The agregado is one of Machado's great social types: neither servant nor equal, lodged inside a family on sufferance, repaying his keep with usefulness and flattery and the occasional cruelty aimed safely sideways. That he alone keeps the mocking name alive tells us what his position produces — a man who observes his hosts and their neighbors with an appraiser's eye and files each away under a label. The reader who remembers what José Dias's labels eventually do to Bento will not read 'só o aggregado' as a throwaway line.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Dom Casmurro 15.22 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the Dom Casmurro — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Dom Casmurro 15.22 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/domcasmurro/15.22/