Dom Casmurro 19.9 · 19.9

Here is the sentence that gives the chapter its title: 'Preciso falar-lhe, sem falta, amanhã; escolha o logar e diga-me.' After a page of anxious preparation, the actual words are startlingly plain and brisk — an urgency ('sem falta'), a deadline ('amanhã'), and a delegation ('escolha o logar'). It is a good line, businesslike and slightly imperious, and its confidence is entirely Capitú's, not Bento's.

The irony the reader feels is the distance between the labour and the product. All that calibration, and what emerges is a handful of blunt clauses. 'Sem falta' will now become an object of obsession, repeated and stressed as if the whole plan hung on those two words. Machado shows us a boy who mistakes fussing over a message for controlling its outcome — a small, recognisable human vanity, and a first sketch of the older man who will pore over every sign for a meaning it may not hold.

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