Who He Is
A Portuguese man, owner of the shop and of the quarry next to the townhouse of Miranda, who builds the São Romão tenement with the savings of Bertoleza and material taken from the neighboring building sites, and remakes it, chapter by chapter, into a tenement ever cleaner and ever costlier. He begins by selling the egg he likes; he ends in a dress coat, on his way to a marriage with his neighbor's daughter and a viscount's title, and the book closes with him receiving, as a benefactor member, the abolitionists who arrive at the warehouse at the very hour when Bertoleza kills herself. He is the figure in whom the work's ambition is measured in money, in name, and in place.
Trajectory
A shop employee, he inherits the business from his employer and one conto and five hundred in payment of wages, and lives on privation. When the partner of Bertoleza, a street vendor and the slave of an old blind man, dies, he offers himself as her confidant, keeps the savings she had been putting aside for her manumission, begins to command what she earns and to live with her; then he reads her a letter of freedom that he forged himself (ch. I).
a tal carta de liberdade era obra do próprio João Romão, e nem mesmo o selo, que ele entendeu de pespegar-lhe em cima, para dar à burla maior formalidade, representava despesa porque o esperto aproveitara uma estampilha já servida, that letter of freedom was the work of João Romão himself, and not even the seal, which he saw fit to slap on top of it to give the swindle greater formality, had cost him anything, because the sly fellow had reused a stamp already used
With her savings he buys the plot for the first little house and, with the profit from the shop and the material stolen from the quarry and the neighboring building sites, he raises three little houses, buys part of the quarry, and takes the land at the back. When Miranda buys the townhouse next door and asks him for a piece of the ground, he refuses, because he is saving it for an enormous tenement, and he raises ninety-five little houses, the wall, and the gate (ch. I). The narrator calls this an illness.
Aquilo já não era ambição, era uma moléstia nervosa, uma loucura, um desespero de acumular; de reduzir tudo a moeda, That was no longer ambition, it was a nervous illness, a madness, a desperation to accumulate; to reduce everything to coin
On the tenement's first morning he attends to the quarryman only after the rush at the shop has passed (ch. III); he gives in to seventy milreis after working out that the money comes back to the drawer, and in the courtyard he assures them that the police have never entered there (ch. IV).
Os meus setenta mil-réis voltar-me-ão à gaveta. Tudo me fica em casa, My seventy milreis will come back to my drawer. It all stays at home with me
Nunca nos entrou cá a polícia, nem nunca a deixaremos entrar, The police have never come in here, and we will never let them in
Within two months, beaming at the profit that Jerônimo brings him at the quarry, he comes to respect him as he respects no one else (ch. V). He promises the tenement that the clerk Domingos will marry Florinda or she will have the dowry and, alone with the young man, he denies him the accounts (ch. IX).
O seu saldo não chega para pagar o dote da rapariga, His balance does not cover the girl's dowry
The news of Miranda's baron's title robs him of sleep, and the bad mood of the next day falls on the inspector, the Italians, Libório, and Marciana, whom he has evicted; that night, in the battle at the gate, he shouts "Hold on!" like a general (ch. X).
aquele ente atrofiado pela cobiça e que parecia ter abdicado dos seus privilégios e sentimentos de homem; aquele desgraçado, que nunca jamais amara senão o dinheiro, invejava agora o Miranda, that being stunted by greed, who seemed to have given up his privileges and feelings as a man; that wretch, who had never loved anything but money, now envied Miranda
um desejo forte de querer saltar e um medo invencível de cair e quebrar as pernas, a strong wish to leap and an unconquerable fear of falling and breaking his legs
After the police, he thinks of recovering the loss from the residents with a tax and goes to the deputy sheriff with the tenement in procession (ch. XI). He sees a rival in the Cabeça-de-Gato, pursues it with inspectors and guards, and three months later remakes himself from the inside out, in fine clothes, dance lessons, and newspapers; he agrees with Botelho on the bridge to Zulmira for twenty contos and, on returning from dinner at the townhouse, discovers that Bertoleza will be a hindrance (ch. XIII).
João Romão, com efeito, tão ligado vivera com a crioula e tanto se habituara a vê-la ao seu lado, que nos seus devaneios de ambição pensou em tudo, menos nela., João Romão, in fact, had lived so closely tied to the Creole woman and had grown so used to seeing her at his side that in his daydreams of ambition he thought of everything except her.
From Miranda's window, he looks down on the people who made him rich (ch. XIV).
lançava para baixo olhares de desprezo sobre aquela gentalha sensual, que o enriquecera, e que continuava a mourejar estupidamente, de sol a sol, sem outro ideal senão comer, dormir e procriar, he cast down looks of contempt on that sensual rabble, which had made him rich and which went on toiling stupidly from sunrise to sunset, with no other ideal than to eat, sleep, and breed
In the fight between Piedade and Rita Baiana he guards the shop's money and arms himself with a bar, while Bertoleza boils water to defend his property (ch. XVI). In the fire he follows old Libório to his hiding place and wrests from him the eight bottles of money; when he counts it, he discovers expired banknotes, regrets not having taken the money earlier, and says it would have been an act of justice (ch. XVIII).
Libório, por única resposta, arregaçou os beiços, mostrando as gengivas sem dentes e tentando morder a mão que o vendeiro estendia já sobre as garrafas., Libório, as his only answer, curled back his lips, showing his toothless gums and trying to bite the hand the shopkeeper was already stretching out over the bottles.
Seria um ato de justiça!, It would have been an act of justice!
With the insurance he had taken out, the fire leaves him a profit, and he announces to Miranda the rebuilding into four or five hundred rooms (ch. XVIII). The building works begin, he raises a townhouse taller than his neighbor's, frequents the Stock Exchange, dines on Sundays at the townhouse, and spends on gifts for Zulmira, while Bertoleza stops being his lover and remains only a slave of labor (ch. XIX). The tenement grows from a hundred and some to more than four hundred rooms and gets the signboard "Avenida São Romão" (ch. XX).
O prédio do Miranda parecia ter recuado alguns passos, perseguido pelo batalhão das casinhas da esquerda, Miranda's building seemed to have backed away a few steps, pursued by the battalion of little houses on the left
On the night when Miranda confirms the marriage to him, he goes down at midnight with a candle thinking of strangling Bertoleza, and backs off when she lifts her head with her eyes open. In the morning, Botelho asks him whether she was a slave, and he finds the way out he had been missing: return her to her owner (ch. XXI).
Em primeiro lugar fazia-se membro de uma família tradicionalmente orgulhosa, como era, dito por todos, a de Dona Estela; em segundo lugar aumentava consideravelmente os seus bens com o dote da noiva, que era rica e, em terceiro, afinal, caber-lhe-ia mais tarde tudo o que o Miranda possuía, In the first place he would become a member of a traditionally proud family, as everyone said Dona Estela's was; in the second place he would considerably increase his wealth with the bride's dowry, since she was rich; and in the third, finally, everything Miranda owned would eventually come to him
Bertoleza devia ser esmagada, devia ser suprimida, porque era tudo que havia de mau na vida dele!, Bertoleza had to be crushed, had to be eliminated, because she was everything bad in his life!
entregá-la ao seu senhor, restituí-la legalmente à escravidão., hand her over to her master, legally restore her to slavery.
The tenement becomes aristocratic (ch. XXII), and at the confectioner's on Rua do Ouvidor he waits for Miranda's family, while Botelho warns that Bertoleza's owner is coming that afternoon with the police. When she kills herself, he flees to the dark corner of the warehouse and, on hearing the committee, orders it taken to the drawing room (ch. XXIII).
O cortiço aristocratizava-se., The tenement was becoming aristocratic.
João Romão fugira até ao canto mais escuro do armazém, tapando o rosto com as mãos., João Romão had fled to the darkest corner of the warehouse, covering his face with his hands.
Era uma comissão de abolicionistas que vinha, de casaca! trazer-lhe respeitosamente o diploma de sócio benemérito., It was a committee of abolitionists who had come, in dress coats! to present him respectfully with the diploma of benefactor member.
Themes Embodied
The standard themes that run through him are Ambition, Greed, Money and Wealth, Social Class, and Slavery. The symbols that accompany him are the São Romão tenement, which he builds and then makes aristocratic, the quarry, where he made his first profit, and the baron's title, what Miranda has and he does not, and which moves him from envy to marriage.
In chapter I the narrator diagnoses an illness, and the rest of the book shows the object of the illness changing: the pennies, then the title that money cannot buy alone, then the neighbor's daughter and the figure he cuts in the drawing room. At each step of the climb there is something that already existed and that he merely takes advantage of: the forged letter, the clerk's balance, Libório's bottles, the paper of slavery he kept.
Romão almost never appears deciding out loud. The text catches him after the calculation, when the money "comes back to the drawer," when appropriation becomes justice, when the legal solution spares him the crime. One can read this as the cynicism of a man who knows what he is doing, or as the inability to see himself except through the account book, and the final scene admits both: he hides his face and, the next instant, orders the abolitionists to be received.
Relationships
- Bertoleza: the woman whose savings and labor build the business, and whom he returns to captivity when she gets in the way of the marriage.
- Miranda: the neighbor he envies, imitates, surpasses, and in the end makes his father-in-law, after measuring himself against him throughout the book.
- Botelho: the parasite of the townhouse who sells him the bridge to Zulmira and suggests the way out for Bertoleza.
- Zulmira: Miranda's daughter, the prize of the marriage he pursues out of interest.
- Jerônimo: the quarryman he hires for seventy milreis and who returns the money to him as profit.
- Libório: the miserly old man from whom he takes the bottles in the fire.