Dom Casmurro 16.64 · 16.64

The image is startlingly physical: 'cosido á parede' — sewn to the wall, as though shame were a thread stitching the man to the plaster he passes. Machado does not name the feeling; he gives the body of it, and the body says everything. A face turned down to the ground is the whole grammar of a public embarrassment.

The verb-adjective 'cosido' is the phrase's small genius. It makes Pádua not merely close to the wall but fastened to it, without will, as if the house itself now held him in place. Against the earlier Pádua, who wore his hat out greeting the street, this hugging of corners is a portrait of vanity's exact cost, drawn entirely in posture.

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