'Not far from the truth'
Read the full text in our reader
E tanta, interrompeo o doutor, que talvez não andem muito longe da verdade.
And so much so, interrupted the doctor, that perhaps they are not far from the truth.
Geraldo pounces on the word 'plausibilidade' with the instinct of a man who trusts his suspicions: perhaps Álvaro's invented suspicions 'não andem muito longe da verdade' — are not far from the truth. He means his own theory (that they are criminals), and he is right that the lies ring true, though wrong about why. The doctor keeps functioning as the reader's unsettling double, the one voice in the room forever circling the real secret without ever touching it. His scepticism is not malice but a kind of accuracy misapplied: he senses concealment everywhere and reasons, wrongly, to crime. Guimarády uses him to keep the danger present in the bright room — a reminder that the world is full of Geraldos, quick to suspect, and that it will take only one whose suspicion lands on the truth to destroy her.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open A Escrava Isaura 10.62 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the A Escrava Isaura — 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:
A Escrava Isaura 10.62 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/escravaisaura/10.62/