Repository path: workshop/translations/o-enfermeiro/R06-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

«O enfermeiro» — Machado de Assis, two passages, R06 (frozen first draft)

Source. Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, «O enfermeiro», in Várias Histórias (Rio de Janeiro: Laemmert & C., 1896), pp. 169–189. Public domain. Text from Portuguese Wikisource's transcription of the 1896 reference edition (Várias histórias.djvu, pages 175–195), fetched 2026-08-05; the two passages are stored byte-for-byte at workshop/experiments/E-20260805e-naturalness-wording/materials/enfermeiro-A-pt.txt (307 words, sha256 e2ad2b9b…) and …-B-pt.txt (310 words, sha256 0a1155cb…).

What this artifact is. R04 §Procedure 2a: the draft written out and frozen before the self-revision begins. It is an R06 output — R06 is R04 stopped before the second pass — and it may be used as one. The revised text is T-o-enfermeiro-R04-v1.

Contamination: suspected, and the basis is specific rather than assumed. A free English rendering of this whole story exists and is reachable: "The Attendant's Confession", tr. Isaac Goldberg, in Brazilian Tales (Boston: Four Seas, 1921; Project Gutenberg #21040). Before the passages were chosen, the lead read Goldberg's English of the story's opening — roughly its first 1,000 words, down to the colonel's speech about his burial. Neither passage translated here is inside that span: passage A is ¶20–23 and passage B is ¶43–46 of the story, and no English of either was read before this draft was written or before it was frozen. R04 §Procedure 1 requires the priming to be declared where any occurred, and this is the declaration. Whether remembered Goldberg wording nonetheless reaches these paragraphs is a measurable question and is measured: tools/dependence_check.py against the whole Goldberg text, reported on the R04 artifact.

Passage A — ¶20–23

You shall see what happened. On the night of the twenty-fourth of August the colonel had a fit of rage, knocked me about, called me every foul name, threatened to shoot me, and ended by throwing at me a plate of gruel, which he found cold; the plate went and struck the wall, where it broke to pieces.

"You'll pay for it, you thief!" he roared.

He went on grumbling a long while. At eleven o'clock he dropped off to sleep. While he slept I drew a book out of my pocket, an old novel of d'Arlincourt's, in translation, which I had found there, and set myself to read it, in the same room, a short distance from the bed; I had to wake him at midnight to give him his medicine. Whether from weariness or from the book, before reaching the end of the second page I fell asleep too. I woke to the colonel's shouts and got up half-stunned with sleep. He seemed to be raving; he kept up the same shouting, and ended by laying hold of the water jug and hurling it at me. I had no time to get out of the way; the jug struck me on the left cheek, and the pain was such that I saw nothing more; I threw myself upon the sick man, put my hands to his throat, we struggled, and I strangled him.

When I saw that he was dying, I drew back in terror and let out a cry; but nobody heard me. I went back to the bed and shook him to call him back to life; it was too late — the aneurism had burst, and the colonel was dead. I passed into the next room, and for two hours I did not dare to go back into the bedroom. I cannot even tell you all that I went through in that time. It was a stupefaction, a vague and stupid delirium. It seemed to me that the walls had shapes in them; I heard muffled voices. The victim's cries, before the struggle and during the struggle, went on echoing inside me, and the air, whichever way I turned, appeared cut through with convulsions. Do not believe I am making images or fine style; I tell you that I heard distinctly certain voices shouting at me: murderer! murderer!

Passage B — ¶43–46

I thought about it for three days, and always came up against the consideration that a refusal might make people suspect something. At the end of the three days I settled on a middle course: I would receive the inheritance and give it all away, bit by bit and in secret. It was not only scruple; it was also a way of redeeming the crime by an act of virtue; it seemed to me that in this way the accounts came out even.

I made ready and set off for the town. On the way, as I drew nearer, I kept recalling the sorry business; the country around the town had an aspect of tragedy about it, and the colonel's shade seemed to me to rise up on every side. My imagination went on reproducing the words, the gestures, the whole horrible night of the crime...

Crime or struggle? Really it was a struggle, in which I, being attacked, defended myself, and in defending myself... It was a wretched struggle, a fatality. I fastened on that idea. And I weighed up the wrongs, I put the blows and the insults on the credit side... It was not the colonel's fault, I knew that well, it was the disease, which made him so peevish and even wicked... But I forgave everything, everything... The worst of it was the fatality of that night... I considered too that the colonel could not live much longer; he was near the end; he felt it himself and said so. How long would he live? Two weeks, or one; it might even be less. It was no longer a life, it was a rag of a life, if one could give that name at all to the poor man's continual suffering... And who knows, indeed, whether the struggle and the death were not merely coincident? It might be; it was even the most likely thing; it was nothing else. I fastened on that idea too...

Near the town my heart tightened, and I wanted to turn back; but I mastered myself and went on. They received me with congratulations. The vicar told me the provisions of the will, the pious bequests, and as he went he was praising the Christian meekness and the zeal with which I had served the colonel, who, harsh and hard as he was, had known how to be grateful.

Translator's log — R06 (frozen 2026-08-05, before the second pass)

Written at drafting time. Decisions and alternatives; no quality claims.

• atropelou-me — left as knocked me about, and it is the draft's least settled word. The verb is literally ran me over; in this sentence it sits between a fit of rage and a volley of names, so it may be physical or may be purely verbal bullying. Alternatives held open: went at me, rode over me, trampled me.
• passou pelo sono — drafted flatly as dropped off to sleep. The Portuguese has sleep as something he passes through rather than something he does.
• estremunhado — no single English word. Drafted half-stunned with sleep; the state is specifically being jolted awake and not yet in possession of oneself.
• esganei-o — drafted strangled. esganar is the coarser, more throat-specific verb; throttled is the nearer register and was not taken in the draft.
• o triste sucesso — sucesso here is event, not success: the false friend is live and was avoided. Drafted the sorry business.
• balanceava os agravos, punha no ativo — bookkeeping metaphor, continuous with contas saldas three paragraphs earlier. Drafted weighed up the wrongs / on the credit side; the draft does not yet keep the two accounting figures in one vocabulary.
• um molambo de vida — kept literal, a rag of a life.
• Ellipses: Machado's ... are the syntax of the self-exculpation in ¶45 and are kept at every occurrence rather than normalised.