Perhaps a year
Read the full text in our reader
talvez um anno.
perhaps a year.
Bento hazards a guess at how long it has been.
The estimate is loose — 'perhaps a year' — the vagueness of a boy not really counting. Bento tosses out a round figure the way one does when the exact date does not matter to the speaker. But it matters very much to José Dias, and the gap between Bento's careless 'talvez' and the older man's precise correction is about to become the whole small drama of the scene.
Machado loves this kind of asymmetry in memory. One person waves a hand at the past; another has kept an exact ledger. José Dias's coming reply — that it was not a year but under three months — reveals a man who tracks Bento's movements closely enough to overrule the boy about his own life. The vague 'anno' is the setup; the precise 'tres mezes' will be the sprung trap.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Dom Casmurro 25.8 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the Dom Casmurro — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Dom Casmurro 25.8 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/domcasmurro/25.8/