She understood nothing
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Tambem pouco ouvio ella e nada comprehendeo do rapido dialogo, que tivera lugar entre Malvina e seo marido.
She too heard little and understood nothing of the quick exchange that had taken place between Malvina and her husband.
She too heard little and understood nothing of the quick exchange that had taken place between Malvina and her husband.
The cruelty is completed by her ignorance: she 'nada comprehendeo do rapido dialogo', understood nothing of the quick exchange between Malvina and Leôncio — the exchange, that is, in which her own freedom was demanded and dodged. The one conversation in the world that most concerned her, the promise of her liberty raised and put off, happened a few feet away and passed her by entirely. This is the condition the whole book anatomizes, rendered in a single sentence: the enslaved person as the subject of every discussion and party to none. Her life is decided in dialogues she does not hear, by people who move her out of the room precisely so she will not. Isaura sits there having grasped only that she was stared at — never knowing that, in the same minutes, the door to her freedom was opened a crack by one who loves her and pushed shut by one who owns her.
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