What It Is
The names of Bentinho and Capitu fused into a single word, which Capitu scratches with a nail onto the yard wall and which Bentinho reads before she erases it. It is Capitu's first written word in the book, and the narrator copies it in capitals, like someone copying a find. The symbol brings together what the wall keeps and what echoes from it: the declaration she made alone, the haste with which she erases it, and her other writings, which change medium and course.
Where It Appears
In Chapter XIII, Bentinho goes into the neighboring yard and finds Capitu scratching the wall with a nail. She leans against it when she sees him, as someone hiding something, and when he notices the marks she runs and wipes out the writing. The gesture only kindles in him the desire to read.
In Chapter XIV, he leaps up and reads, before she scrapes it off, the two names cut with a nail and fused into one. They do not speak: their hands reach out and clasp, and the narrator says the wall spoke for them.
BENTOCAPITOLINA
Right after, the old man cuts the scene and announces that he is cutting it.
Confissão de crianças, tu valias bem duas ou três páginas, mas quero ser poupado., Childhood confessions, you would have been worth two or three pages, but I want to be spared.
In Chapter XV, when Pádua appears at the back door, Capitu erases the names, draws a profile that she says is her father's portrait, and answers for both of them that they were playing siso.
Há coisas que só se aprendem tarde; é mister nascer com elas para fazê-las cedo., Some things are learned only late; one must be born with them to do them early.
In Chapter XXX, in the procession of the Blessed Sacrament, Capitu's image goes with him: Bentinho imagines her laughing, writing on the wall and saying his name, and the lit torches seem to him a bridal chandelier.
In Chapter XXXIV, after the kiss, the narrator counts among the upheavals of adolescence the sight of the names she cut into the wall, and says the sensation of the kiss was worth nothing. The names, like the hands, could be lies or illusions, and, if true, were only the bones of the truth.
In Chapter XLIII, seated on the edge of the well, Capitu draws profiles in the ground with a bamboo stick. Bentinho, recalling the names she cut into the wall, wants to do the same on the ground and asks for the stick, and she does not give it to him.
In Chapter XLIV, the ground receives a word: Capitu writes "liar" after hearing that he would come from the seminary, against his mother's orders, if she were about to die of longing. She answers the rest of the conversation by promising that he will baptize her first child.
prometo que há de batizar o meu primeiro filho, I promise you will baptize my first child
In Chapter XCVIII, the writing passes through other hands: Escobar serves as go-between in the exchange of letters between Bentinho and Capitu, who preferred José Dias as the carrier, and she hands over the first letter, mortified.
Ele foi o terceiro na troca das cartas entre mim e Capitu., He was the go-between in the exchange of letters between me and Capitu.
In Chapter CXLI, from afar, Capitu writes submissive letters, without hatred, sometimes affectionate and at the end wistful, and Bentinho answers them briefly and coldly.
What It Means
The inscription is the simplest document in the book: two names together, written by someone who felt them and shown without a word. The two names were cut before Bentinho arrived, so they are a declaration that Capitu made alone and began to erase when she saw the young man. The scene leaves open whether it was out of modesty, out of fear of her mother, or because a hidden secret draws the one who seeks it. The old narrator treats the find as a scene worth pages and spares the reader, and it is he who gives only the gesture of the hands.
The wall echoes afterward in two directions. The young man rereads it among the discoveries of adolescence and places it beneath the kiss, which is the flesh and blood of the thing (Chapter XXXIV). And Capitu's writing changes medium: from the names of the two on the wall to the word "liar" on the ground, which does not last, and from there to the letters, which arrive through an intermediary (Chapter XCVIII) or from afar and without warmth in the reply (Chapter CXLI). The wall that separated the Matacavalos houses returns in the house shared with Escobar (Chapter CXVII).
Everything Capitu writes reaches the book through Bentinho's hand, and what remains is his text. It can be read as a simple consequence of the novel being narrated in the first person, or as a figure of the theme: whoever writes keeps, and whoever is written about remains at the mercy of how the other copies them. On both readings, the only words written by her that the book reproduces are the names on the wall, which the young man read in time, and the word "liar" on the ground.
Relationships
- Work: Dom Casmurro.
- Default themes: Language and Narration and Memory and the Past.
- Characters: Capitu, who writes, Bentinho, who reads and later narrates, and Escobar, go-between in the exchange of letters.
- See also: the house at Matacavalos and Language and Narration.