AN HONEST PRETEXT
No, the idea of going to the funeral did not arise from thinking about the coach and its attractions. The origin was something else: it was that by going to the funeral the following day I would not return to the seminary and would be able to pay a longer visit to Capitu. That’s what it was. The memory of the coach might have added weight later, but that was the immediate and principal reason. I would go back to the Rua dos Invalidos on the pretext of asking after Sancha. I counted on everything happening as it had done today, with Gurgel looking worried, Capitu and I holding hands on the sofa, and her hair …
‘I’ll go and ask my mother.’
I opened the gate. Before passing through, just as I had remembered the words of the dead boy’s father, I now heard those of his mother, and I murmured them to myself: ‘Poor Manduca!’