A Escrava Isaura 3.84 · 3.84

The verb is violent even inside the compliment. 'Alguém impreterivelmente virá arrancar-te delle' — someone will inevitably come to tear you from captivity. 'Arrancar', to wrench or tear out, is what you do to a nail or a root, not what you do to set a person free; the word admits, almost by accident, that Isaura is a thing to be pulled loose and carried off. And 'impreterivelmente', inevitably, without fail, frames her as a prize that will certainly change hands — the only question being whose. Henrique is not imagining her freed so much as re-owned, and he is quietly nominating himself.

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