Dom Casmurro 21.49 · 21.49

'Isto e aquillo' is a dismissive shrug in words — this and that, and so on, whatever. Justina cannot be bothered to reproduce José Dias's praises in full; she waves them away as interchangeable padding, so much oratorical filler.

The gesture is deflating and funny. By reducing his eloquence to 'this and that,' she denies it any real content, implying the speeches are all manner and no substance. Machado gives his minor characters this kind of comic exactness: Justina's impatience does more to puncture José Dias than any argument could. Where he multiplies words, she collapses them into a vague pair of demonstratives, and the collapse is a judgment. The vocation being sold to Bento turns out, in her retelling, to be a heap of noise she can't be troubled to unpack.

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