Dom Casmurro 21.19 · 21.19

A single adjective gives the game away. 'Esquivo' — evasive, sidling — the narrator labels his own reply before we hear it, an old man owning the boy's small cowardice. He did not answer the question; he slipped it.

This self-naming is pure Dom Casmurro. The narrator is forever both actor and analyst, catching himself in the act and telling us the name of the move. The word prepares the reader to hear the coming line not as an opinion but as a dodge, a pretty generality offered in place of a true feeling. Bento evades Justina here exactly as he will evade so much else — by praising the surface of a thing rather than confessing what he wants underneath it.

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