Who He Is
Ezequiel is the only son of Bentinho and Capitu, named in honor of Escobar after Uncle Cosme takes the post of godfather for himself (chapter CVIII). His entire existence in the book comes down to the question Bentinho asks and never proves: whether or not he is Escobar's biological son. No scene in the novel shows any fact that settles the question; what exists is an impression of resemblance, and whoever records it is always someone with a stake in the outcome.
Trajectory
He is born after years of his parents waiting, and is baptized with Escobar's name (chapter CVIII); at five, his clear and already restless eyes appear in the description without any notice being taken (chapter CIX). As a child, he imitates the gestures of several people in the house, José Dias and Cousin Justina (chapter CXII), and the text itself records his imitation of Escobar among the others, without marking any suspicion in the scene (chapter CXVI).
Alguns dos gestos já lhe iam ficando mais repetidos, como o das mãos e pés de Escobar; ultimamente, até apanhara o modo de voltar a cabeça deste, quando falava, e o de deixá-la cair, quando ria, Some of his gestures were becoming more and more repeated, like those of Escobar's hands and feet; lately he had even picked up the way Escobar turned his head when he spoke, and the way he let it fall when he laughed
It is Capitu who says aloud, at the dinner table, that the boy's gaze is strange, and that she has seen it in only two people, a friend of her father's and the late Escobar, in the year 1872 according to the dating the text gives in chapter CXXXI.
Você já reparou que Ezequiel tem nos olhos uma expressão esquisita? [...] Só vi duas pessoas assim, um amigo de papai e o defunto Escobar, Have you noticed that Ezequiel has a strange expression in his eyes? [...] I have seen only two people like that, a friend of Papa's and the late Escobar
Bentinho, provoked by the remark, examines his son and agrees that they are Escobar's eyes, but notes at the time that he found nothing strange in them, "there would be no more than half a dozen such expressions in the world" (chapter CXXXI). Only later, alone with his own jealousy, does he begin to read the same resemblance as proof (chapter CXXXII). Ezequiel is then sent to a boarding school, from which he comes home only on Saturdays: on the way he cries, asks whether his father will come to see him, and receives Bentinho's promise that he will; the book does not say whether the promise was kept, but it tells that, at home on Saturdays, the father avoids him as the resemblance to Escobar grows stronger (chapter CXXXII).
Months later, on a morning when he plans to poison himself, Bentinho brings his son close to the cup of coffee prepared with poison and asks whether he has had his coffee yet; he draws back at the last instant and says instead to the boy, without any explanation (chapter CXXXVII): Não, não, eu não sou teu pai!
, No, no, I am not your father!
After the separation and the exile in Europe with his mother (chapter CXLI), he returns as an adult to Brazil, already orphaned of Capitu, with the same face as Escobar, Bentinho says, except for the coloring, a little shorter and less full of body, with the same way of putting his face into his plate when eating, and the same passion for numbers, now applied to archaeology (chapter CXLV). Bentinho receives him, hesitates, and ends up becoming his father in fact (chapter CXLV). Ezequiel dies eleven months later, of typhoid fever, on a study trip to Palestine, and is buried near Jerusalem under an inscription taken from the prophet Ezekiel, "Thou wast perfect in thy ways"; Bentinho later checks the Vulgate and finds the complement, "from the day of thy creation," which leads him to a last question without an answer, which he himself records (chapter CXLVI): Quando seria o dia da criação de Ezequiel?
, When would the day of Ezequiel's creation be?
Themes Embodied
The themes that pass through him are Appearance and Reality and Jealousy.
Ezequiel is the character who most suffers the structure of the novel without ever having a voice of his own on what matters: he speaks, plays, cries, grows, but he is never asked about the one thing that decides his place in the story, because that decision never depends on anything he says or does. Every piece of evidence against him is a visual and sonic impression reported by someone who already wants to reach a conclusion; the text itself never produces a fact, a letter, a confession, a document, only eyes, gestures and the way he eats.
It is significant that Capitu is the one who points out the resemblance at the table, and not Bentinho: if she were as calculating as the accusatory reading supposes, she would hardly raise the subject on her own, at the table (chapter CXXXI), with no need at all. The book records the fact and does not resolve it, leaving open whether it was her naivety or whether that loose comment, replayed and amplified by Bentinho's imagination over months, ended up becoming proof.
Divergent Readings
Part of the criticism reads the scene of the coffee cup (chapter CXXXVI, chapter CXXXVII) as the most revealing moment of the book about Bentinho's character, not about Ezequiel's paternity: a man who, out of a doubt that no proof ever confirms, comes close to offering poison to his own son. Another part of the criticism, taking the narrator's word as sufficient, reads the scene as indirect confirmation, the paternal instinct recoiling before its own discovery.
The text gives the reader nothing beyond what it gives Bentinho: no speech by the adult Ezequiel, no document, no confession by Capitu resolves the question; what resolves it is only Bentinho's decision, first to disown the boy and then, with the young man at his door, to make himself his father in truth.
Relationships
- Bentinho: legal father who nearly gives him the poisoned coffee and later rejects him with a sentence (chapter CXXXVII), without ever having proof against him beyond his own reading of his face.
- Capitu: mother who points out, without embarrassment, at the table, the son's resemblance to Escobar (chapter CXXXI), and who accompanies him, without the husband, in exile until her own death (chapter CXLI).
- Escobar: sees his own first name given to the boy, by Bentinho's choice, while still alive (chapter CVIII), without knowing that the coincidence would become, after his death, the book's main accusation.
- José Dias: asks Capitu, when he is already old, for his portrait (chapter CXLIII), projecting onto him the continuation of his own bond with the family.