There was a struggle at this point, because she, heavy with her unborn child, kept moaning and resisting. Anyone passing by or standing in a shop doorway would have realized what was going on and would, naturally, have done nothing to help. Arminda was telling him that her master was a very bad man and would probably beat her, and in her present state that would be even harder to endure. Yes, there was no doubt about it, he would have her beaten.

“It’s your own fault. Who told you to get pregnant and then run away?” Cândido Neves asked.

He was not in the best of moods because he had his own child waiting for him at the pharmacy, and, besides, he had never been a great talker. He continued to drag her down Rua dos Ourives toward Rua da Alfândega, where her master lived. On the corner, she struggled still more fiercely, planting her feet against the wall and trying vainly to pull away from him. All that she achieved, though, with the house now so near, was to delay her arrival a little. They did at last arrive, she reluctant, desperate, panting. Even then, she knelt down, but again to no avail. Her master was at home and ran out to see what all the noise and shouting were about.

“Here’s your runaway,” said Cândido Neves.

“So it is.”

“Master!”

“Come on, in you come!”

In the hallway, Arminda stumbled and fell. And there and then her master opened his wallet and took out two fifty-mil-réis notes, which Cândido Neves immediately pocketed, while the master again ordered Arminda to come into the house. Instead, on the floor where she lay, overcome by fear and pain, she went into labor and gave birth to her now-dead child.

That unripe fruit entered the world amid the cries and moans of the mother and the despairing gestures of the master. Cândido Neves watched the whole spectacle. He had no idea of the time, but whatever the hour, he urgently needed to go back to Rua da Ajuda, which is precisely what he did, quite indifferent to the consequences of the disaster he had just witnessed.