Dom Casmurro 21.35 · 21.35

The verb 'completou' quietly frames Justina as a bringer of news, a role she fills all through the book. She does not merely gossip; she rounds out reports, supplies the missing piece, finishes what others leave half-said.

Machado's diction here is almost journalistic — 'a noticia' — as if a bulletin were being delivered across the parlor. It fits the household economy in which information is currency and Justina, the dependent relation, is one of its chief traders. The neutral, reportorial verb also keeps Bento's narration at a slight remove: he records her completing the news the way one records a fact, saving his own reaction for the pretended brow. The machinery of the scene keeps turning through her.

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