Skylight

by José Saramago

  Now and then he would glance out at the street. The morning was gradually brightening, although the sky was still cloudy and a slight mist blurred the edges of things and people alike.

  From among the multitude of noises already filling the building, Silvestre could make out the sound of an immediately identifiable pair of heels clicking down the stairs. As soon as he heard the street door open, he leaned forward.

  “Good morning, Adriana!”

  “Good morning, Senhor Silvestre.”

  The girl stopped beneath the window. She was rather short and dumpy and wore thick glasses that made her eyes look like two small, restless beads. She was nearly thirty-four years old and her modest hairstyle was already streaked with the odd gray hair.

  “Off to work, eh?”

  “That’s right. See you later, Senhor Silvestre.”

  It was the same every morning. By the time Adriana left the house, the cobbler was already seated at the ground-floor window. It was impossible to escape without seeing that unruly tuft of hair and without hearing and responding to those inevitable words of greeting. Silvestre followed her with his eyes. From a distance, she resembled, in Silvestre’s colorful phrase, “a sack of potatoes tied up in the middle.” When she reached the corner of the street, Adriana turned and waved to someone on the second floor. Then she disappeared.

  Silvestre put down the shoe he was working on and craned his neck out of the window. He wasn’t a busybody, he just happened to like his neighbors on the second floor; they were good customers and good people. In a voice constrained by his somewhat awkward position, he called out:

  “Hello there, Isaura! What do you make of the weather today, eh?”

  From the second floor came the answer, attenuated by distance:

  “Not bad, not bad at all. The mist . . .”

  But we never found out whether she thought the mist spoiled or embellished the beauty of the morning. Isaura let the conversation drop and slowly closed the window. It wasn’t that she disliked the cobbler, with his simultaneously thoughtful and cheery air, she simply wasn’t in a mood to chat. She had a pile of shirts to be finished by the weekend, by Saturday at the very latest. Given the choice, she would have carried on with the novel she was reading. She only had another fifty pages to go and had reached a particularly interesting part. She found them very gripping, these clandestine love affairs, buffeted by endless trials and tribulations. Besides, the novel was really well written. Isaura was an experienced enough reader to be a judge of this. She hesitated for a moment, but realized at once that she did not even have time to do that. The shirts were waiting. She could hear the murmur of voices inside: her mother and aunt talking. They talked a lot. Whatever did they find to talk about all day that they hadn’t already said a hundred times before?

  She crossed the bedroom she shared with her sister. The novel was there on her bedside table. She cast a greedy, longing glance at it, then paused in front of the wardrobe mirror, which reflected her from head to toe. She was wearing a housecoat that clung to her thin, yet still flexible, elegant body. She ran the tips of her fingers over her pale cheeks, where the first fine, barely visible lines were beginning to appear. She sighed at the image shown her by the mirror and fled.

  In the kitchen the two old ladies were still talking. They were very similar in appearance—white hair, brown eyes, the same simple black clothes—and they spoke in shrill, rapid tones, without pauses or modulation.

  “I’ve told you already. The coal is nothing but dust. We should complain to the coal merchant,” one was saying.

  “If you say so,” said the other.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Isaura, entering the room.

  The more erect and brighter-eyed of the two old ladies said:

  “This coal is just terrible. We should complain.”

  “If you say so, Auntie.”

  Aunt Amélia was, so to speak, the household administrator. She was in charge of the cooking, the accounts and the catering generally. Cândida, the mother of Isaura and Adriana, was responsible for all the other domestic arrangements, for their clothes, for the profusion of embroidered doilies decorating the furniture and for the vases full of paper flowers, which were replaced by real flowers only on high days and holidays. Cândida was the elder of the sisters and, like Amélia, she was a widow, one whose grief had long since been assuaged by old age.

  Isaura sat down at the sewing machine, but before starting work, she looked out at the broad river, its farther shore hidden beneath the mist. It looked more like the sea than a river. The rooftops and chimney pots rather spoiled the illusion, but even if you did your best to blot them out, the sea was right there in those few miles of water, the white sky somewhat sullied by the dark smoke belching forth from a tall factory chimney.

  Isaura always enjoyed those few moments when, just before she bent her head over her sewing machine, she allowed her eyes and thoughts to wander over the scene before her. The landscape never varied, but she only ever found it monotonous on stubbornly bright, blue summer days when everything was too obvious somehow, too well defined. A misty morning like this—a thin mist that did not entirely conceal the view—endowed the city with a dream-like imprecision. Isaura savored all this and tried to prolong the pleasure. A frigate was traveling down the river as lightly as if it were floating on a cloud. In the gauze of mist, the red sail turned pink, then the boat plunged into the denser cloud licking the surface of the water, reappeared briefly, then vanished behind one of the buildings obscuring the view.

  Isaura sighed, her second sigh of the morning. She shook her head like someone surfacing from a long dive, and the machine rattled furiously into action. The cloth ran along beneath the pressure foot, and her fingers mechanically guided it through as though they were just another part of the machine. Deafened by the noise, Isaura suddenly became aware that someone was speaking to her. She abruptly stopped the wheel, and silence flooded back in. She turned around.

  “Sorry?”

  Her mother said again:

  “Don’t you think it’s a bit early?”

  “Early? Why?”

  “You know why. Our neighbor . . .”

  “But what am I supposed to do? It’s hardly my fault the man downstairs works at night and sleeps during the day, is it?”

  “You could at least wait until a bit later. I just hate to annoy people.”

  Isaura shrugged, put her foot down on the pedal again and, raising her voice above the noise of the machine, added:

  “Do you want me to go to the shop and tell them I’m going to be late delivering?”

  Cândida slowly shook her head. She lived in a constant state of perplexity and indecision, under the thumb of her sister—three years her junior—and keenly aware that she was dependent financially on her daughters. She wanted, above all, not to inconvenience anyone, wanted to go unnoticed, to be as invisible as a shadow in the darkness. She was about to respond, but, hearing Amélia’s footsteps, said nothing and went back to the kitchen.

  Meanwhile, Isaura, hard at work, was filling the apartment with noise. The floor vibrated. Her pale cheeks gradually grew red and a bead of sweat appeared on her brow. She again became aware of someone standing beside her and slowed down.

  “There’s no need to work so fast. You’ll wear yourself out.”

  Aunt Amélia never wasted a word. She said only what was absolutely necessary, but she said it in a way that made those listening appreciate the value of concision. The words seemed to be born in her mouth at the very moment they were spoken and to emerge replete with meaning, heavy with good sense, virginal. That’s what made them so impressive and convincing. Isaura duly slowed her pace of work.

  A few minutes later, the doorbell rang. Cândida went to answer it, was gone for a few seconds, then returned looking anxious and upset, muttering:

  “Didn’t I tell you, didn’t I tell you?”

  Amélia looked up:

  “What is it?”

&nbs
p; “It’s the downstairs neighbor come to complain about the noise. You go, will you?”

  Amélia stopped doing the washing, dried her hands on a cloth and went to the front door. Their downstairs neighbor was on the landing.

  “Good morning, Dona Justina. What can I do for you?”

  At all times and in all circumstances, Amélia was the very soul of politeness, but that politeness could easily turn to ice. Her tiny pupils would fix on the face they were looking at, arousing irrepressible feelings of unease and embarrassment in the other person.

  The neighbor had been getting on fine with Cândida and had almost finished what she had come to say. Now there appeared before her a far less timid face and a far more direct gaze. She said:

  “Good morning, Dona Amélia. I’ve come about my husband. As you know, he works nights at the newspaper, and so can only sleep in the morning. If he’s woken up, he gets really angry and I’m the one who has to bear the brunt. If you could perhaps make a little less noise with the sewing machine, I’d be very grateful . . .”

  “Yes, I understand, but my niece needs to work.”

  “Of course, and if it was up to me, I wouldn’t mind, but you know what men are like . . .”

  “Yes, I do, and I also know that your husband shows very little consideration for his neighbors’ sleep when he comes home in the early hours.”

  “But what am I supposed to do about that? I’ve given up trying to persuade him to make less noise on the stairs.”

  Justina’s long, gaunt face grew lively. A faint, malicious gleam appeared in her eyes. Amélia brought the conversation to a close.

  “All right, we’ll wait a while longer. You needn’t worry.”

  “Thank you very much, Dona Amélia.”

  Amélia muttered a brusque “Now, if you’ll excuse me” and shut the door. Justina went down the stairs. Dressed in heavy mourning, her dark hair parted in the middle, she cut a tall, funereal figure; she resembled a gangling doll, too large to be a woman and without the slightest hint of feminine grace. Only her dark, hollow eyes, the eyes of a diabetic, were, paradoxically, rather beautiful, but so grave and serious that they lacked all charm.

  When she reached the landing, she stopped outside the door opposite hers and pressed her ear to it. Nothing. She pulled a sneering face and moved away. Then, just as she was about to enter her own apartment, she heard voices and the sound of a door opening on the landing above. She busied herself straightening the doormat so as to have an excuse not to go in.

  From upstairs came the following lively dialogue:

  “The only trouble with her is that she doesn’t want to go to work!” said a female voice in harsh, angry tones.

  “That may well be, but we have to treat her with care. She’s at a dangerous age,” said a man’s voice. “You can never be sure how these things might develop.”

  “What do you mean ‘a dangerous age’? You never change, do you? Is nineteen a dangerous age? If so, you’re the only one who thinks so.”

  Justina thought it best to announce her presence by giving the doormat a good shake. The conversation upstairs stopped abruptly. The man started coming down the stairs, saying as he did so:

  “Don’t make her go to work. And if there’s any change, call me at the office. See you later.”

  “Yes, see you later, Anselmo.”

  Justina greeted her neighbor with a cool smile. Anselmo walked past her on the stairs, solemnly tipped his hat and, in his warm, mellow voice, uttered a ceremonious “Good morning.” There was, however, a great deal of venom in the way the street door slammed shut behind him. Justina called up the stairs:

  “Good morning, Dona Rosália.”

  “Good morning, Dona Justina.”

  “What’s wrong with Claudinha? Is she ill?”

  “How did you know?”

  “I was just shaking out the doormat here and I thought I heard your husband say . . .”

  “Oh, she’s putting it on as usual, but she only has to whimper and my Anselmo’s convinced she’s dying. She’s the apple of his eye. She says she has a headache, but what she’s really got is a bad case of lazyitis. Her headache’s so bad she’s gone straight back to sleep!”

  “You can’t be too sure, Dona Rosália. Remember, that’s how I lost my little girl, God rest her soul. It was nothing, they told us, and then meningitis carried her off.” She took out a handkerchief and blew her nose loudly before going on: “Poor little thing. And only eight years old. How could I forget . . . It’s been two years, you know, Dona Rosália.”

  Rosália did know and wiped away a polite tear. Encouraged by her neighbor’s apparent sympathy, Justina was about to recall more all-too-familiar details when a hoarse voice interrupted her:

  “Justina!”

  Justina’s pale face turned to stone. She continued talking to Rosália until the hoarse voice grew still louder and more violent:

  “Justina!!”

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Come inside, will you? I don’t want you standing out there on the landing, talking. If you worked as hard as I do, you wouldn’t have the energy to gossip!”

  Justina shrugged indifferently and went on with the conversation, but Rosália, finding the scene embarrassing, said it was time she went in. After Justina had gone back into her apartment, Rosália crept down a few stairs and listened hard. Through the door she heard a few angry exclamations, then silence.

  It was always the same. You would hear the husband tearing into his wife, then the wife would utter some almost inaudible words and he would immediately shut up. Rosália found this very odd. Justina’s husband had a reputation as a bit of a brute, with his big, bloated body and his crude manners. He wasn’t quite forty and yet his flaccid face, puffy eyes and moist, drooping lower lip made him seem older. No one could understand why two such different people had ever married, and it was true that they had never been seen out in the street together. And, again, no one could understand how two such unpretty people (Justina’s eyes were beautiful, not pretty) could have produced a delightful daughter like Matilde. It was as if Nature had made a mistake and, realizing its mistake later on, had corrected it by having the child disappear.

  The fact is that, after he had made just two or three aggressive comments, all it took to silence violent, rude Caetano Cunha—that obese, arrogant, ill-mannered Linotype operator on a daily newspaper—was a murmured comment from his wife, the diabetic Justina, so frail she could be blown away in a high wind.

  It was a mystery Rosália could not unravel. She waited a little longer, but absolute silence continued to reign. She withdrew into her own apartment, carefully closing the door so as not to wake her sleeping daughter, always assuming she was asleep rather than merely pretending.

  Rosália peered around the door. She thought she saw her daughter’s eyelids flutter. She opened the door properly and advanced on the bed. Maria Cláudia had her eyes closed so tightly that tiny lines marked the spot where crow’s-feet would one day appear. Her full lips still bore traces of yesterday’s lipstick. Her short brown hair gave her the look of a young ruffian, which only made her beauty more piquant and provoking, almost equivocal.

  Rosália glanced at her daughter, not quite trusting that deep but strangely unconvincing sleep. She gave a little sigh. Then, with a maternal gesture, she drew the bedclothes up around her daughter’s neck. The reaction was immediate. Maria Cláudia opened her eyes and chuckled. She tried to suppress her laughter, but it was too late.

  “You tickled me!”

  Furious because she had been tricked and, even more, because she had been caught showing her daughter some motherly affection, Rosália said irritably:

  “So you were sleeping, were you? The headache’s gone, has it? Your trouble is you don’t want to work, you lazy so-and-so!”

  As if to prove her mother right, the girl stretched slowly and luxuriously, and, as she did so, her lace-trimmed nightdress gaped open to reveal two small, round breasts. Although
Rosália did not know why that careless gesture offended her, she could not conceal her displeasure and muttered:

  “Cover yourself up, will you? Young women nowadays aren’t even embarrassed in the presence of their own mothers!”

  Maria Cláudia opened her eyes wide. She had blue eyes, a very brilliant blue, but cold, like the distant stars whose light we see only because they are far, far away.

  “What does it matter? Anyway, I’m decent now!”

  “If I’d shown myself to my mother like that when I was your age, I’d have gotten a slap in the face.”

  “That seems a bit extreme.”

  “You think so, do you? Well, I reckon you could do with a good slap too.”

  Maria Cláudia raised her arms again, pretending to stretch. Then she yawned.

  “Times have changed.”

  Rosália opened the window and said:

  “They have indeed, and for the worse.” Then she went back over to the bed. “So, are you going to work or not?”

  “What time is it?”

  “Nearly ten o’clock.”

  “It’s too late now.”

  “It wasn’t a little while ago.”

  “I had a headache then.”

  This short, sharp exchange indicated irritation on both sides. Rosália was seething with suppressed anger, and Maria Cláudia was annoyed by her mother’s moralizing.

  “A headache indeed! You’re a malingerer, that’s what you are!”

  “Is it my fault I have a headache?”

  Rosália exploded:

  “Don’t you talk to me like that, young lady. I’m your mother, remember.”

  The girl was unimpressed. She merely shrugged, as if to say that this last point was hardly worth discussing, then she jumped out of bed and stood there, barefoot, her silk nightdress draped about her soft, shapely body. Her daughter’s youthful beauty cooled Rosália’s irritation, which vanished like water into dry sand. Rosália felt proud of Maria Cláudia and her lovely body. Indeed, what she said next was tantamount to a surrender:

  “You’d better tell the office.”

  Maria Cláudia, apparently oblivious to that subtle change of tone, replied dully: