Dom Casmurro 3.51 · 3.51

'Pois eu hei de crer…?' — Am I really to believe…? The sentence collapses before its object, and the collapse is telling. She cannot even finish naming what José Dias wants her to credit; the suspicion is still too foreign to her, too ugly to say. But the unfinished question is also the sound of a door opening — she is entertaining the thing, holding it up, and the very fact that she asks whether she must believe it means she has begun to. The broken sentence is where her certainty cracks.

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