Dom Casmurro 15.6 · 15.6

The word 'disfarçadamente' — under cover, in disguise — is the one the reader is meant to snag on. It is a small, innocent secrecy: a child hiding a scribble from a parent. But it is exactly the vocabulary of concealment that Casmurro's memory will later magnify, until every 'disguise' of the young Capitú becomes an indictment. Machado plants the loaded word inside a wholly forgivable act.

There is also a quiet symbolism in what is erased: 'os nossos nomes,' the two names set side by side on the wall, rubbed out almost as soon as they were joined. The union is written and unwritten in a single scene. Whatever the couple builds, the novel keeps suggesting, is provisional, effaceable — a name in plaster that a nail can take back as easily as it wrote it.

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