Dom Casmurro 25.76 · 25.76

Having refused, Bentinho rushes to reassure. 'Estou por tudo o que ella quizer' — I am for whatever she wants. The refusal is instantly hedged with a vast, unconditional obedience, as though the boy needed to buy back the one 'no' with a hundred 'yeses.' It is the psychology of a child who has never before opposed his mother and cannot bear the weight of it.

The future subjunctive 'quizer' opens the promise onto anything at all, any command yet unspoken. Machado catches the exact shape of filial devotion under the Second Empire household: total submission, one narrow exception, and the anxious need to smother the exception in professions of loyalty.

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