Dom Casmurro

by Machado de Assis

CX - Childhood Traits

The rest still eat me many chapters; there are lives that have less of them, and still become complete and finished.

At five and six years, Ezekiel did not seem to contradict my dreams of Glory's beach; on the contrary, all possible vocations could be divined in him, from idle to apostle. Vadio is here put in the good sense, in the sense of a man who thinks and says; He would sometimes meditate with himself, and in this he reminded his mother from an early age. So, too, everything stirred and urged me to go and persuade the women that the sweets I brought to her were sweet devas; they did not do it before they were tired of them, but the apostles did not carry good doctrine until after they had it all in their hearts. Escobar, a good merchant, thought that the main cause of this other inclination might be to implicitly invite the ministers to the same apostolate when the paes brought him candy; and he laughed at his own grace, and told me that he would make him his partner.

I liked music, not less than sweet, and I told Capitú to take the piano from the black one of Matacavallos' cocadas ...

"You do not remember me."

-Do not say that; you do not remember that black that sold sweet, in the evenings ...

"I remember a black man who sold candy, but I do not know about it.

"Not the words?"

-No of the words.

The reader, who will still remember the words, given that she has read me with attention, will be astonished at such forgetfulness, all the more so as to remind her of the voices of her childhood and adolescence; there will be some forgotten, but not everything is in the head. So said Capitú to me, and I found none. I did, however, what she did not expect; I ran to my old papers. In Sao Paulo, when I was a student, I asked a music teacher to transcribe me to the press of the press; he did it with pleasure (it was enough for me to repeat it by heart), and I kept the little paper; I went to procural. D'ahi soon interrupted a romance she played, with the little piece of paper in her hand. I explained it to him; she keyed in the sixteen notes.

Capitú found a particular flavor, almost delicious; told his son the history of the prey, and so he sang and keyed it. Ezekiel took advantage of the music to ask me to disentangle the text by giving him some money.

He was a doctor, a military man, an actor and a dancer. I never gave him oratories; but the horses of the sword and the sword were with him. I no longer speak of the battalions that passed in the street, and that he ran to see: all the creancas do. What they do not all do is have the eyes they had. In no way did he see the pleasure of the troop, and he heard the march of the drums.

-Look, papae! Look!

"I see, my son!

Look at the commander! Look at the commander's cavallo! Look at the soldiers!

One day he was playing trumpet with his hand; I gave him a little metal cornet. I bought him lead soldiers, battle pictures that he had been looking at for a long time, wanting him to explain a piece of artillery, a fallen soldier, one with a raised sword, and all his loves went to the sword with a raised sword. One day (naive!) He asked me impatiently:

"But, Papa, why does not he let his sword fall at once?"

"My son, it's because it's painted.

"But then why did he paint himself?"

I laughed at the deception and explained that it was not the soldier who had painted himself on the paper, but the tape recorder, and I had to explain also what was a tape recorder and what was an engraving: the curiosities of Captain Summa.

These are the main features of childhood: one more and I finish the chapter. One day, in Escobar's chacara, he found a cat that had a rat in its mouth. The cat did not leave its prey, nor did it see where it had fled. Ezekiel said nothing, stopped, crouched, and stared. When we saw him thus, we asked him from afar what he was; made us signal that we should be calmed. Escobar concluded:

"You'll see it's the cat that caught some time." The rats continue to infest me the house, which is the devil. We will see.

Capitú also wanted to see his son; I accompanied them. Effectively, it was a cat and a mouse, banal bid, without interest or grace. The only particular circumstance was that the rat was alive, kicking, and my little son of a bitch. Besides, the instant was short. The cat, as soon as it felt more people, it disposed to run; the boy, without taking his eyes off him, made another signal of silence; and the silence could not be greater. I was going to say religious, I stumbled over the word, but here I put it again, not only because it signified the totality of the silence, but also because there was something in the cat and the mouse something that held ritual. The only rumor was the last hoot of the mouse, and we laughed; his legs were barely moving and disorderly. Somewhat annoyed, I clapped my hands so the cat would run away, and the cat ran away. The others did not even have time to cut me short, Ezekiel was depressed.

-Ora, papae!

-What is it? At this time the mouse is eaten.

"Yes, but I wanted to see.

The two of them laughed; I myself found it amusing.