Skylight

by José Saramago

  The clock whirred twice and very timidly struck the quarter hour. A quarter past nine. Justina yawned slowly. Then she turned out the light and went into her bedroom. On the chest of drawers the photo of her daughter smiled cheerily out at her, the only brightness in that somber, musty room. With a sigh of resignation, Justina lay down.

  She always slept badly. She spent the night jumping from dream to dream, confused dreams from which she awoke exhausted and perplexed. Try as she might, she could never reconstruct them. The only thing she could remember—and even then it was more like a presentiment or perhaps the memory of a presentiment—was the obsessive presence of someone behind a door that all the strength in the world could not open. Before falling asleep, she would try over and over to recall Matilde’s face, her voice, her gestures, her laughter, yes, even her dead face, as if in her dreams she might succeed in breaking down that eternally locked door. All in vain. When Justina closed her eyes, Matilde would hide away so effectively that Justina would only find her again, beyond the mystery of dreams, when she woke the following morning. But finding her in that way meant losing her again; seeing her as if she were still alive meant not seeing her at all.

  Her eyelids drooped beneath the weight of shadows and silence. The silence and the shadows entered Justina’s mind. The slow saraband of dreams was about to begin, the strange, distressing presence was about to reappear, along with the locked door behind which lay the mystery. Suddenly, far off, dull, desperate moans could be heard. The night shuddered at these supernatural noises. Justina’s already clouded eyes opened onto the darkness. Rolling down mountains and across plains, awakening echoes in shadowy caves and in the hollows of ancient trees, hurling out into the night a thousand tragic sounds, those moans came nearer and the moaning became weeping and each lament a tear as big as a fist that fell as hard as a fist.

  Justina’s eyes battled against the anxiety provoked by the noises filling her ears. She felt as if she were being dragged down into a deep, dark abyss and was struggling not to fall in. As she fell, though, Matilde’s bright smile appeared to her and, clinging desperately to that smile, she plunged into sleep.

  Penetrating the walls and rising to the stars, the music continued, the slow movement of the Eroica Symphony, crying out against pain, crying out against the injustice of man’s mortality.

  3

  The final notes of the funeral march dropped like violets onto the tomb of the hero. Then came a pause. A tear that falls and dies, followed immediately by the dionysiac vitality of the scherzo, still heavy with the shades of Hades, but already savoring the joy of life and victory.

  A tremor ran through the four women, who were sitting, heads bent. The enchanted circle of light falling from the ceiling held them fast in the grip of the same fascination. Their grave faces bore the intense expression of people witnessing the celebration of mysterious, impenetrable rites. The music, with its hypnotic power, opened doors in the minds of those women. They did not look at one another. Their eyes were focused on their work, but only their hands were present.

  The music ran freely about in the silence, and the silence received it on its dumb lips. Time passed. The symphony, like a river that rushes down a mountain, floods the plain and flows into the sea, ended in the profundity of that silence.

  Adriana reached out a hand and turned off the radio. A sharp click like a key turning in a lock. The mystery was over.

  Aunt Amélia looked up. Her usually hard pupils had a moist gleam to them. Cândida murmured:

  “It’s so . . . so lovely!”

  Timid, indecisive Cândida was not an eloquent speaker, but her pale lips were trembling, just as the lips of young girls tremble when they receive their first kiss. Aunt Amélia was dissatisfied with her choice of adjective:

  “Lovely? Any silly song could be described as ‘lovely,’ but that music, well, it’s . . .”

  She hesitated. The word she wanted to say was there on her lips, but it seemed to her that she would profane it by speaking it. There are certain words that draw back, that refuse to be uttered, because they are too laden with significance for our word-weary ears. Amélia had suddenly lost some of her unerring confidence with words. It was Adriana who, in a tremulous voice, in the voice of someone betraying a secret, murmured:

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “Yes, Adriana. That’s precisely what it is.”

  Adriana looked down at the stocking she was darning, a prosaic task, like that of Isaura, who was sewing buttonholes into a shirt, or like that of their mother, who was counting the stitches on the crochet work she was doing, or like that of Aunt Amélia, who was adding up the day’s expenses. Tasks appropriate to plain, dispirited women, to narrow shriveled lives, lives lit by viewless windows. The music had ended, the music that kept them company each evening, their daily visitor, consoling and stimulating—and now they could speak about beauty.

  “Why should the word ‘beautiful’ be so difficult to say?” asked Isaura, smiling.

  “I don’t know,” said her sister. “But it is, and yet it should be just like any other word. It’s easy enough to say, it only has three syllables. I don’t understand the difficulty either.”

  Aunt Amélia, still shocked by her earlier inability to pronounce the word, attempted an explanation:

  “I think I do. It’s like the word ‘God’ for believers. It’s a sacred word.”

  Yes, Aunt Amélia could always come up with the right answer, but it stopped the flow of the debate. There was nothing more to be said. Silence, a silence bare now of music, weighed heavily on the air. Cândida asked:

  “Isn’t there anything else on?”

  “No, nothing of any interest,” said Isaura.

  Adriana was daydreaming, the sock she had been darning lay forgotten in her lap. She was thinking about the mask of Beethoven she had seen in the window of a music shop many years before. She could still see that broad, powerful face, which, even in the form of an inexpressive plaster cast, bore all the marks of genius. She had cried for a whole day because she didn’t have enough money to buy it. That had happened shortly before their father died. His death had meant a sudden diminution in their income and obliged them to leave their old home—and now, even more than it had been then, buying that mask of Beethoven was an impossible dream.

  “What are you thinking about, Adriana?” asked her sister.

  Adriana smiled and shrugged:

  “Oh, silly things.”

  “Did you have a bad day?”

  “Not particularly. It’s always the same: invoices to receive, invoices to pay, debiting and crediting someone else’s money.”

  They both laughed. Aunt Amélia finished her accounts and asked:

  “Has there been any mention of a wage increase?”

  Adriana shrugged again. She hated being asked this question. It seemed to her that the others thought she didn’t earn enough, a suggestion she found offensive. She said sharply:

  “Business is bad, apparently . . .”

  “It’s always the same old story. Some get a lot, some get a little, and others get nothing at all. When are they going to learn to pay people enough to live on?”

  Adriana sighed. Aunt Amélia had a real bee in her bonnet about money matters, about employers and employees. It wasn’t envy; she was simply outraged by how much waste there was in a world where millions of people were poor and starving. They weren’t poor, and there was always food on the table, but they existed on a very tight budget, which excluded anything superfluous, even those superfluous things without which our lives are reduced almost to the level of animals. Aunt Amélia went on:

  “You must speak up for yourself, Adriana. You’ve been working there for two years now, and what you earn barely pays for your tram fare.”

  “But what do you expect me to do, Auntie?”

  “You know what to do! And don’t look at me with those great, frightened eyes of yours!”

  These words struck Adriana like a blow. Isaura shot
her aunt a stern look:

  “Auntie!”

  Amélia turned first to her, then back to Adriana and said:

  “Forgive me.”

  She got up and left the room. Adriana got up too, but her mother made her sit down again.

  “Pay no attention, child. She’s the one who has to do the shopping, and she really has to struggle to make ends meet, and very often they don’t. You’re both earning, you’re both working, but she, poor thing, is the one who does all the worrying, and I’m the only one who knows just how much she worries.”

  Aunt Amélia appeared in the doorway. She seemed upset, but her voice was no less brusque, or perhaps she had to be brusque in order not to reveal how upset she was.

  “Would anyone like a cup of coffee?”

  (Just like in the good old days! A cup of coffee! Yes, why not, Aunt Amélia! Sit down here with us, that’s right, with your face of stone and your heart of wax. Drink a cup of coffee and tomorrow you can redo your accounts, invent recipes, eliminate expenses, even eliminate this cup of coffee, this pointless cup of coffee!)

  The evening resumed, slower and quieter now. Two old women and two who had already turned their backs on youth. They had their past to remember, the present to live in and the future to fear.

  Around midnight, sleep slipped into the room. There were a few yawns. Cândida suggested (she was always the first to make the suggestion):

  “Shall we go to bed?”

  They stood up, their chairs scraping the floor. As usual, Adriana hung back to give the others time to get ready for bed. Then she put away her sewing and went into the bedroom. Her sister was reading her novel. Adriana took a bunch of keys from her bag and opened a drawer. With another, smaller key she opened a box and took out a thick exercise book. Isaura peered up at her over the top of her book and smiled:

  “Ah, the diary! One day I’ll find out what it is you write in that book.”

  “Oh no, you won’t!” answered her sister angrily.

  “There’s no need to get nasty with me.”

  “Sometimes I feel like showing it to you just to shut you up!”

  “Do I annoy you?”

  “No, but you could keep your thoughts to yourself. I simply don’t see why you have to say those things. It’s so rude. Don’t I have a right to some privacy?”

  Behind the thick lenses of her glasses, Adriana’s eyes glinted with annoyance. Clutching the exercise book to her chest, she confronted her sister’s ironic smile.

  “Of course you do,” said Isaura. “Go on, then, scribble away. But the day will come when you yourself will give me that notebook to read.”

  “Well, you’re in for a long wait,” retorted Adriana.

  And with that she stormed out of the room. Isaura made herself more comfortable beneath the bedclothes, positioned the book at the best angle for reading and forgot all about her sister. Having walked through the now dark bedroom where her mother and aunt were sleeping, Adriana locked herself in the bathroom. Only there, away from her family’s prying eyes, did she feel safe enough to write down her impressions of the day. She had started writing the diary shortly after she got her job. She had now written dozens of pages. She gave her pen a shake and began:

  Wednesday, 3/19/52, five minutes to midnight. Aunt Amélia is very grumpy today. I hate it when they mention how little I earn. It’s insulting. I almost answered back, saying that at least I earned more than she did, but, fortunately, I bit my tongue. Poor Aunt Amélia. Mama says she wears herself out trying to keep the books straight, and I can believe that. After all, that’s how I spend my days. Tonight we listened to Beethoven’s Third Symphony. Mama said it was pretty, and I said it was beautiful, and Aunt Amélia agreed. I love my aunt. I love my mother. I love Isaura. But what they don’t know is that I wasn’t thinking about the symphony or about Beethoven, I mean, I wasn’t only thinking about that . . . I was thinking . . . and then I remembered that mask of Beethoven and how much I wanted it. But I was also thinking about “him.” I’m feeling happy today. He spoke to me so nicely. When he gave me the invoices to check, he put his right hand on my shoulder. Oh, it was lovely! I trembled inside and went bright red. I had to pretend to be concentrating on my work so that no one would notice. Then came the bad bit. Thinking I couldn’t hear, he started talking to Sarmento about some blond girl. The only reason I didn’t burst into tears was because it would have looked bad and I wouldn’t want him to know how I feel. He “toyed” with the girl, he said, for a few months, then dumped her. Good heavens, would it be the same with me? At least he doesn’t know how I feel about him. He might make fun of me. If he did, I would kill myself!

  She paused and chewed the end of her pen. She had begun by saying that she was happy, and now there she was talking about killing herself. This didn’t seem right. She thought for a moment and closed with: Still, it was so lovely when he touched me on the shoulder!

  That was better, as it should be, closing that day’s entry with a hope, a small joy. Whenever the events of the day left her feeling discouraged or sad, she made a point in her diary of not being entirely honest. She reread what she had written and closed the exercise book.

  She had brought her nightdress with her from the bedroom, a white nightdress, buttoned up to the neck and with long sleeves because the nights were still chilly. She quickly got undressed. Her inelegant body, freed from the constraints of her clothes, looked heavier, baggier, lumpier. Her bra cut into her back. When she took it off, a red weal encircled her body like the mark left by a beating. She put on her nightdress and, after performing her usual ablutions, went back to the bedroom.

  Isaura was still reading. She had her free arm bent back behind her neck, a position that revealed one dark armpit and the curve of her breasts. Absorbed in her reading, she didn’t look up when her sister got into bed.

  “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.

  4

  “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,” re
torted 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.