Dom Casmurro 25.44 · 25.44

The revelation lands, and it is small, and that is the whole point: 'os meus sapatos acalcanhados' — my run-down shoes, the heels worn crooked. The imposing case against Pádua and, through him, against Capitú, comes to rest on a neighbor's laugh at José Dias's shabby footwear. The mighty structure had a comic foundation all along.

But the detail is also poignant, and Machado knows it. The worn-down shoes are the badge of the agregado's poverty, the visible mark of his dependent, borrowed life. Pádua, secure in his own house, could afford to laugh; José Dias, who owns nothing, felt the laugh where it hurt most — in the very shoes that betray his station. His snobbery and his humiliation are the same wound. The chapter that gave us 'olhos de cigana obliqua e dissimulada,' the phrase that will haunt Bento for a lifetime, closes on a pair of crooked heels. Great consequences, Machado suggests, spring from the pettiest hurts.

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