Chapter I: João Romão Gets Rich and Builds the Tenement
Section summary
João Romão inherits the grocery store from his employer, along with a conto and five hundred milreis in unpaid wages, and begins living in privation to get rich. When the companion of Bertoleza, a street vendor and the slave of a blind old man, dies, he offers himself as her confidant, keeps the savings she had been putting aside for her manumission, starts running everything she earns and moves in with her. Later he reads her a letter of freedom that he himself forged, and the former master never finds out; Bertoleza believes herself free and goes on as his shop assistant, cook and lover, working from before dawn until night.
With her savings he buys the lot for the first little house and, with the profit from the grocery and the material stolen from the quarry and nearby construction sites, he builds three little houses, buys part of the quarry and keeps taking over the land behind, until Miranda, a Portuguese merchant, buys the townhouse next door. Miranda moves in with Dona Estela and Zulmira to keep his wife out of reach of the shop clerks, for since their second year of marriage he has known of her adultery, yet he does not leave her because of the dowry, and he doubts that Zulmira is his daughter. He wants to buy a strip of Romão's land for the backyard, and Romão refuses because he is keeping the ground for an enormous tenement. Romão builds ninety-five little houses, closes the front with a wall and gate and rents tubs to the washerwomen, and the tenement fills up with people right in front of Miranda's townhouse.
Analysis
that so-called letter of freedom was the work of João Romão himself, and not even the stamp, which he thought to slap on top of it to lend the hoax more formality, was an expense, since the sly man had reused a stamp that had already been used
Romão makes Bertoleza believe she is free without returning her savings or granting her freedom, and he only calms down when the old master dies three months later: the text shows that he fears being found out. His care to save even on the stamp can be read as the calculation of someone who will not spend even on fraud, and the scene of her tears shows that the only proof Bertoleza has of her freedom is what he reads aloud to her.
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Chapter II: Miranda's Envy and the Parasite Botelho
Section summary
Two years later, Miranda cannot stand the prosperity of João Romão: the noise and the smell of the tenement reach his window, and he, who considered himself clever, concludes that he tied himself to Dona Estela for her dowry while the neighbor grew rich without marrying anyone. To give his life an object and somewhere to spend money without returning it to his wife or leaving it to anyone, he starts dreaming of a baron's title, puts on social scruples and opens his house for parties. His daughter Zulmira is twelve or thirteen, and Henrique, fifteen, son of a farmer who brings good profits to Miranda's house, arrives from Minas; Miranda takes him to Botafogo because it does not suit him to displease the boy's father, and Estela takes charge of his allowance, with the purchases charged to the father's account at a usurer's commission.
In the same house lives Botelho, an old man who was a slave broker and lost his fortune, and who now vegetates in Miranda's shadow, full of resentment toward anyone who has what he never had. He listens to the complaints each of the two heads of the house makes against the other and agrees with both, without repeating to either what the other said. Catching Estela and Henrique in a corner of the yard, he does not denounce them: he reassures them, advises more caution, promises to protect the young man's dealings with the lady and strokes Henrique's hands, and Henrique pulls away with disgust.
Analysis
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Analysis