Cândido Neves—known to his family as Candinho—is the person caught up in this tale of an escaped slave; he had already sunk into poverty when he began recapturing fugitive slaves. He had one grave fault: an inability to hold down any job or trade; he had no staying power, although he himself put this down to bad luck. He started out wanting to be a typographer, but soon saw that it would take a long time to become really good, and that even then he might not earn enough, or so, at least, he told himself. Then a career in commerce seemed a good idea, and he eventually found a job as a clerk in a notions store. However, being obliged to attend to and serve all and sundry wounded his self-esteem, and, after five or six weeks, he left of his own volition. Bookkeeper to a notary, office boy in a department attached to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, postman, and other positions were all abandoned shortly after he took them up.

When he fell in love with Clara, all he had were debts, although not as yet that many, for he lived with a cousin, a wood-carver by trade. After several attempts to get work, he decided to take up his cousin’s trade, and had already had a few lessons. It was easy enough to get his cousin to give him a few more, but, because he wanted to learn quickly, he learned badly too. He never made anything very fine or complicated, just claw-and-ball feet for sofas or mundane carvings for chair backs. He wanted to be working when he eventually married, and marriage was not far off.

He was thirty years old, and Clara was twenty-two. She was an orphan and lived with her Aunt Mônica, with whom she made a living as a seamstress. Her work was not so arduous that she had no time for flirtations, but none of her potential suitors proved serious. Whole evenings passed with her looking at them and with them looking at her, until it grew dark and she had to return to her sewing. What she noticed was that she did not really miss any of them and none filled her with desire; she didn’t even know the names of some. She did, of course, want to marry, but, as her aunt said, it was like fishing with a rod and waiting for a fish to bite, but all the fish swam straight past, apart from the occasional one who stopped, swam around the bait, looked at it, sniffed, then swam away to inspect other bait.