Skylight (6 page)

“It's late, Isaura. Time to stop reading,” Adriana murmured.

“OK, OK!” Isaura said impatiently. “It's not my fault you don't like reading.”

Adriana shrugged, as she so often did. She turned her back on her sister, pulled the bedclothes up so that the light wasn't in her eyes and, moments later, she was asleep.

Isaura continued to read. She had to finish the book that night because it was due back at the library the next day. It was nearly one o'clock when she reached the final page. Her eyes were sore and her brain overexcited. She put the book down on the bedside table and turned out the light. Her sister was sleeping. She could hear her regular, rhythmic breathing and felt a twinge of irritation. In her view, Adriana was as cold as ice, and that diary of hers was merely a childish way of making people think she had some mysterious secret to hide. A faint glow from the streetlamp lit the room. In the darkness she could hear the gnawing of a woodworm. From the room next door came a muffled voice: Aunt Amélia talking in her sleep.

The whole building was sleeping. With eyes wide open to the dark, her hands folded behind her head, Isaura was thinking.

“Don't make too much noise, you know I hate to disturb the neighbors,” whispered Anselmo.

He was going up the stairs, with his wife and daughter behind him, using matches to light their way. However, distracted by his own words of advice, he burned his fingers. He let out an involuntary yelp and lit another match. Maria Cláudia had a fit of the giggles. Her mother muttered a reproof:

“Whatever's got into you, girl?”

They reached their apartment and entered furtively, like burglars. As soon as they went into the kitchen, Rosália sat down on a stool:

“Oh, I'm exhausted!”

She took off her shoes and stockings and showed them her swollen feet:

“Look at them!”

“Your albumin levels are too high, that's what it is!” declared her husband.

“Goodness,” said Maria Cláudia, smiling. “He's quite the expert, isn't he?”

“If your father says my albumin levels are high, it's because they are,” retorted her mother.

Anselmo nodded gravely. He studied his wife's feet, which only confirmed him in his diagnosis:

“Yep, that's what it is.”

Maria Cláudia screwed up her small face in disgust. She found the sight of her mother's feet and the thought of some possible illness boring. Everything ugly bored her.

More in order to change the subject than out of any desire to be helpful, she took three cups out of the cupboard and filled them with tea. They always left the thermos full, ready for their return home. The five minutes devoted to that small late-night feast made them feel rather special, as if they had suddenly left the mediocrity of their lives behind them and risen a few rungs on the economic ladder. The kitchen disappeared and gave way to an intimate little drawing room with expensive furniture and paintings on the wall and a piano in one corner. Rosália no longer had high albumin levels, and Maria Cláudia was wearing a dress in the latest fashion. Only Anselmo did not change. He was always the same tall, distinguished, decorative gentleman, bald and slightly stooped and stroking his small mustache. His face was fixed and inexpressive, the product of years spent repressing all emotion as a way of guaranteeing respectability.

Alas, that illusion never lasted for more than five minutes. Rosália's bare feet once again dominated the scene, and Maria Cláudia was the first to go to bed.

In the kitchen, husband and wife began the dialogue-monologue of couples who have been married for more than twenty years. Banalities, things said merely in order to say something, a mere prelude to the tranquil sleep of middle age.

Gradually the noises died away, leaving the expectant silence that precedes sleep. Then the silence thickened. Only Maria Cláudia was still awake. She always had difficulty falling asleep. She had enjoyed the film. At the cinema during intermission, a boy had kept looking at her. On the way out, he had come right up to her, so close she had felt his breath on the back of her neck. What she didn't understand was why he hadn't followed her, otherwise what was the point of looking at her so insistently. She forgot about the cinema then and turned, instead, to her visit to Dona Lídia's apartment. She was so pretty. “Much prettier than me,” she thought. She was sorry not to be more like Dona Lídia. Then she remembered the car she had seen parked outside. She was suddenly on tenterhooks, quite incapable now of going to sleep. She had no idea what time it was, but reckoned it couldn't be far off two o'clock. Like everyone else in the building, she knew that Dona Lídia's night visitor usually left at about two in the morning. Whether because of the film, the boy or that morning's visit to Dona Lídia, she felt brimful of curiosity, even though she found that curiosity wrong and inappropriate. She waited. Minutes later, coming from the floor below, she heard the sound of a bolt being drawn and a door opening, followed by the vague sound of voices and footsteps going down the stairs.

Gingerly, so as not to wake her parents, Maria Cláudia slipped out of bed and tiptoed over to the window, where she peered around the curtain. The car was still parked opposite. She saw a bulky male figure cross the street and get into the car.

The car set off and soon disappeared from view.

Dona Carmen had her own particular way of enjoying the morning. She was not one for staying in bed until lunchtime, which would have been impossible anyway because she had to prepare her husband's breakfast and get Henriquinho ready for school, but she made a point of never washing or brushing her hair until midday. She liked to wander about the house, still in her nightclothes, her hair loose and looking generally disheveled and slovenly. Her husband loathed this habit of hers, which went against what he considered the norm. He had tried over and over to persuade his wife to mend her ways, but time had taught him that he was wasting his breath. Although his job as a sales rep imposed no rigid timetable on him, he always escaped as early as he could so as not to begin the day in a bad mood. For her part, Carmen could not bear her husband to linger at home after breakfast. Not because this would oblige her to abandon her own beloved habits, but because her husband's presence made the morning so much less pleasurable. The result was that, whenever he did stay longer than usual, it ruined the whole day for both of them.

As Emílio Fonseca was preparing his case of samples that morning, he discovered that someone had tampered with both prices and samples. Not only were the necklaces out of their proper places, they were all mixed up with the bracelets and the brooches, which, in turn, had become jumbled together with the earrings and the dark glasses. The only possible culprit was his son. He considered confronting him, but decided against it. If his son denied all knowledge, Emílio would think he was lying, and that would be bad; if Henrique owned up, then Emílio would have to beat him or tell him off, and that would be even worse. And, of course, if his wife got angry and launched herself into the discussion, it would become an all-out row. And he was heartily sick of rows. He put his case on the dining table and, without a word, set about restoring order.

Emílio Fonseca was a small, wiry man, not thin, but wiry. He was about thirty years old and had sparse, pale hair, a rather wishy-washy blond color. He had a very high forehead, of which he had always been proud. Now, however, that it had grown still higher due to incipient baldness, he would have preferred a rather lower hairline. Meanwhile, he had learned to accept the inevitable, and the inevitable was not just his lack of hair, but the present need to sort out his sample case. In eight miserable years of marriage he had learned to remain calm. His firm mouth was marred by a few bitter lines, and when he smiled his mouth twisted slightly, lending his face a sarcastic look in keeping with the general tenor of his words.

With the awkward air of a criminal returning to the scene of the crime, Henriquinho came to see what his father was doing. He had the face of an angel and was fair-haired like his father, but his hair was of a warmer color. Emílio didn't even glance at him. There was no love lost between father and son; they merely saw each other every day.

The flip-flap of Carmen's slippers could be heard out in the corridor, an aggressive sound, more eloquent than any words. Emílio had almost finished restoring order to the contents of his case. Carmen peered around the dining room door in order to calculate how much longer her husband would be. He had, in her view, already taken quite long enough.

At that point, the doorbell rang. Carmen frowned. She wasn't expecting anyone at that hour. The baker and the milkman had already been by, and it was too early for the postman. The bell rang again. With an impatient “Coming!” she went to the door, her son dogging her heels. A small woman wearing a shawl was standing there clutching a newspaper. Dona Carmen eyed her distrustfully and asked:

“¿Qué desea?”
(There were times when she would not speak Portuguese even if her life depended on it.)

The woman smiled humbly:

“Good morning, senhora. I understand you have a room to rent, is that right? Could I see it?”

Carmen was astonished.

“A room to rent,
aquí?
No, there's no room to rent here.”

“But the advertisement in the newspaper—”

“What advertisement? Let me see.”

Her voice trembled with ill-concealed irritation. She breathed deeply, trying to calm herself. The woman pointed at the advertisement with a finger that bore the scars of an old nail infection. There it was, in the section “Rooms to Let.” No doubt about it. All the facts were there: the name of the street, the number of the building and, clear as day, ground floor, left. She handed the newspaper back and said curtly:

“Well, there are no rooms to let here!”

“But the newspaper says—”

“I've told you already. Besides, the advertisement specifies a gentleman,
un caballero.
”

“There are so few rooms to let, and I—”

“If you'll excuse me.”

And with that, Dona Carmen slammed the door in the woman's face and went to find her husband. From the doorway, she asked:

“Did you put an ad in the paper?”

Holding a necklace made of colored stones in each hand and raising one eyebrow, Emílio Fonseca looked at her and responded in a cool, ironic tone:

“An ad? Only if it was to drum up more customers.”

“No, an ad offering a room to let.”

“A room? No, my dear. When I married you, I agreed that we would share all our worldly goods, and I would never dream of renting out a room without consulting you first.”

“No seas gracioso.”

“I'm not being funny. What man would dare to be funny with you?”

Carmen did not respond. Her imperfect knowledge of Portuguese meant that she was always at a disadvantage in these exchanges of barbed remarks. She chose instead to explain in a soft, insinuating voice:

“It was a woman,
una mujer.
She was carrying a newspaper and had come about the ad. It was definitely this apartment,
no había confusión.
And since she was a woman, I thought that perhaps you had put the ad in . . .”

Emílio Fonseca closed the case with a loud snap. It was not entirely clear what his wife meant, but he could see what she was getting at. He looked at her with his cold, pale eyes and said:

“And if it had been a man, should I then immediately have assumed that
you
had put the advertisement in?”

Carmen blushed, offended:

“You brute!”

Henriquinho, who was listening to the conversation unblinking, stared at his father to see how he would react. Emílio, however, merely shrugged and murmured:

“You're right. I'm sorry.”

“I don't want your apologies,” retorted Carmen, already getting agitated. “Whenever you apologize, what you're actually doing is making fun of me. I'd rather you hit me!”

“I've never hit you.”

“And don't you dare, either.”

“Don't worry. You're taller and stronger than me. Allow me at least to preserve the illusion that I belong to the stronger sex. It's the only illusion left to me. And, please, let's not argue.”

“And what if I want to argue?”

“There would be no point. I always have the final word. I'm going to put on my hat now and leave, and I won't be back until tonight. Always assuming I do come back, of course.”

Carmen went into the kitchen to fetch her purse. She gave some money to her son and sent him off to the grocer's to buy some sweets. Henriquinho tried to resist, but the pull of the sweets proved stronger than his curiosity and his courage, which was telling him to take his mother's side. As soon as the front door had closed, Carmen returned to the dining room. Her husband had sat down at one end of the table and was lighting a cigarette. His wife plunged straight into the argument:

“So you're not coming back, eh? I knew it. You've got somewhere else to stay, haven't you? So the little god has clay feet, has he?
Y aquí estoy yo,
the skivvy, the slave, working away all day for whenever his majesty chooses to come home!”

Emílio smiled. His wife grew more furious still:

“Don't you laugh at me!”

“Why shouldn't I laugh? What do you expect? This is all complete nonsense. There are plenty of boarding houses in the city. What's to prevent me staying in one of those?”

“
¡Yo!
Me!”

“You? Oh, don't be silly! Look, I have things to do. Just stop all this nonsense, will you?”

“Emílio!”

Carmen barred the way, trembling with rage. She was slightly taller than he; she had a square face and a strong jaw, and despite the two deep lines that ran from the sides of her nose down to the corners of her mouth, there was still the remnant of a now almost faded beauty, of warm, luminous skin, velvety, liquid eyes, youth. For a moment Emílio saw her as she had been eight years before. It was only a moment, a flash, then the memory flickered and burned out.