A Escrava Isaura 9.145 · 9.145

The chapter closes on water and motion, and on a father's strength doing what all his words could not: 'impellida pelo braço vigoroso de Miguel' — driven by Miguel's vigorous arm. The old man who moved on cautious, thieving feet a page ago now rows for both their lives, and his body, not his savings or his pleading, at last carries his daughter free. 'Perdeo de vista a fazenda' — lost the plantation from sight — is the sentence Isaura has waited the whole book for, the house of her bondage sliding away behind the riverbank. Guimarães ends the great confrontation not with a shout but with the hush of a canoe on the Paraíba, and opens, on that quiet water, the novel of flight that the rest of the story will be. The cage is behind her; the world, with all its perils and its possible 'alma piedosa', lies downstream.

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