Dom Casmurro 18.144 · 18.144

The fable is sealed with a verdict: this roundabout, disguising method 'era a feição particular do caracter' of Capitú. The word 'particular' insists that indirection was not a passing tactic but her defining feature, the signature of her whole nature.

The undercurrent is the tender word 'amiga.' At the moment he most thoroughly anatomises Capitú as a mind of concealment, the narrator calls her 'minha amiga' — my friend, the childhood name from before jealousy, before the marriage that soured. The dissonance is characteristic of Casmurro: the fondness and the indictment coexist in a single clause. He cannot describe her cunning without also, helplessly, loving her, and this doubleness is the true subject of the book. The affection in 'amiga' does not soften the charge; it makes it sadder, the portrait of a man dissecting the very person he could never stop cherishing.

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