Dom Casmurro 19.21 · 19.21

The self-encouragement hardens into a cold appraisal: 'elle é um simples aggregado.' He is only a dependent — the word 'simples' doing the demeaning work, reducing José Dias to a household fixture without standing. Then, in the same breath, Bento notes his usefulness: 'Geitoso é' — he is handy, adroit, capable. The two judgments together are the whole instrumental logic: the man is beneath me, and the man can be used.

The four suspension points before 'Geitoso' mark a pause, a turn of the thought as Bento passes from putting José Dias down to picking him up as a tool. It is not an attractive moment, and Machado does not soften it. The boy who a page ago fretted about being 'improper' toward a grown man now coolly files him under assets. This is the education of the will beginning — Bento learning, at Capitú's side, to see people as means, a lesson whose darker maturity the whole memoir will trace.

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