Dom Casmurro 21.61 · 21.61

The dreaded word arrives: 'denuncia,' the denunciation, the exposure. It reaches back to the novel's opening, where José Dias's very function was to denounce, to raise Bento and Capitú's closeness before Dona Glória. Bento fears the agregado has done it again, this time naming the 'namoro' outright.

'Namoro' is the tender, ordinary word for a young courtship, and setting it beside the harsh 'denuncia' captures the boy's whole predicament: an innocent first love that the household treats as a thing to be reported and policed. Machado has been circling this fear through the entire scene, letting Justina talk of seminary and speeches while Bento waited to hear whether the real secret had surfaced. Only now, in the narrator's admission, does the true stake of the conversation stand fully named.

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