The house he lived in
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e a vida era barata. Demais, a casa em que morava,
and life was cheap. Besides, the house he lived in,
Cheap living, and the house itself comes into view.
'A vida era barata' closes the portrait of means and 'Demais' opens the one detail that lifts Pádua slightly above a poor clerk: he owns his roof. The narrator lays the facts end to end without comment, letting economy speak. Cheap living plus a modest salary plus a thrifty wife equals, improbably, a house of one's own.
The pivot 'demais' — besides, moreover — is the accountant's connective, adding one more line before the sum. Machado is building toward a reversal: the house was not saved for, it was won, and the winning is its own small comedy. But first the geography must be established, because in Dom Casmurro geography is destiny. This is the house at the foot of the Santiagos', the wall Bento shares with Capitú, and the narrator lingers on it because everything that matters to him happened a step from that door.
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