Who He Is
House boy of the Cubas family whom Brás Cubas as a boy turned into his daily horse, and who reappears, freed by Brás's father, whipping an enslaved man of his own in the Valongo. The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas shows him only a few times and hardly gives him a voice; in the second scene, the narrator offers a reading of the violence that passes from hand to hand.
Trajectory
In Brás's childhood, he is Brás's horse: the boy rides and whips him, and the only "ai, nhonhô!" he receives in return is "Shut up, you beast!" (chapter XI).
Prudêncio, um moleque de casa, era o meu cavalo de todos os dias, Prudêncio, a house boy, was my horse for every day
He accompanies Brás to Tijuca after their mother's death, and it is Brás who recalls that Dona Eusébia dressed her body (chapter XXV). In the division of the inheritance he appears as free for two years: the manumission, granted by the father without informing anyone, enters the inventory as a surprise and as a loss, and Cotrim asks whether the father did not also free the silver (chapter XLVI).
At the Valongo, he whips a Black man in the square; when he sees Brás, he asks for his blessing, explains that he beats his slave for being lazy and drunk, and obeys when Brás orders him to forgive (chapter LXVIII).
Nhonhô manda, não pede., Nhonhô commands, he doesn't ask.
Era um modo que o Prudêncio tinha de se desfazer das pancadas recebidas, [...] transmitindo-as a outro., It was a way Prudêncio had of ridding himself of the beatings he had received, [...] passing them on to another.
Brás places him beside the madman Romualdo, who claimed to be Tamerlane, and dismisses both to return to the little house (chapter LXIX).
Themes Embodied
The theme that runs through him is Slavery: from the boy's horse to the master of another enslaved man, the book shows him as a link in a chain of blows, and Brás is the first link (chapter XI, chapter LXVIII).
Prudêncio is free and goes on obeying: he stops beating because the one asking is his former master. The scene in the square has two readings that the text supports: the irony of Machado against Brás's joy, which laughs at what it should not, and a clear-eyed analysis in which the violence received repeats itself in whoever has someone beneath him. In both, Brás is the first link of the chain he describes.
Relationships
- Brás Cubas: the boy who rode him and the man he still obeys, asking for his blessing.
- Bento Cubas: Brás's father, who freed him without informing anyone.
- Cotrim: the brother-in-law who puts the freed man and the silver in the same column of the inventory.