Dom Casmurro 3.12 · 3.12

The hook is set with the softest possible verb: 'póde haver' — there may be, there could be. Nothing asserted, nothing owned; just a possibility floated into the room. 'Uma difficuldade' — a difficulty — is deliberately vague, an opened door he will make Dona Glória walk through by asking. José Dias never simply tells; he makes his listener draw the news out of him, so that the alarm feels like theirs, not his. The whole scene's suspense is loaded into that mild, ominous noun.

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