with the girl next door
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com a visinha.
with the neighbor girl.
Capitú, unnamed, is the neighbor at the center of it all.
The passage ends on 'a visinha' — the girl next door — and the periphrasis is telling. Bento does not name Capitú even in his own narration here; she is 'the neighbor,' defined by the proximity that is the whole scandal, the shared wall that made the love possible and now makes it dangerous.
The echo of the third chapter is precise, where José Dias located the trouble 'na casa ao pé,' in the house alongside. Nearness is again the charge. Machado closes the exchange by returning to the intimate geography at the novel's root: two children raised side by side, whose ordinary closeness the adults read as peril. Capitú goes unnamed because she does not need naming; for Bento she is simply the person next door, already the fixed center around which his fear, and the book, revolve.
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Dom Casmurro 21.62 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/domcasmurro/21.62/