The silence that filled the apartment from top to bottom, like a solid block, shattered at the sound of his laughter. Unaccustomed as it was to the noise, the furniture seemed to shrink in upon itself. The cat, forgetting that he was hungry, and still frightened by that loud guffaw, retreated once more into the oblivion of sleep. Justina remained unmoved, as if she had heard nothing. At home, she spoke only when necessary, and she did not consider it necessary to take the cat’s part. She lived inside herself, as if she were dreaming a dream with no beginning or end, a dream about nothing and from which she did not wish to awaken, a dream composed of clouds that drifted silently past, covering a sky she had long since forgotten.
11
Her son’s illness had completely disrupted Carmen’s peaceful, lazy mornings. Henriquinho had been in bed for two days, suffering from mild tonsillitis. If she’d had her way, they would have called the doctor, but Emílio, thinking of the expense, said it wasn’t worth it, that the illness wasn’t that serious. A bit of gargling, a few applications of mercurochrome, lots of loving care, and their son would soon be up and about again. This provided Carmen with an opening to accuse Emílio of not caring about their child and, once in that accusatory mode, she seized the opportunity to give voice to her innumerable complaints. Emílio spent an entire evening listening to this litany of woes without saying a word. Finally, so that things did not become still more acrimonious and last long into the night, he agreed to do as his wife wanted. This unexpected agreement on his part had the effect of thwarting Carmen’s permanent desire for contradiction. Accepting gracefully would mean that she then had nothing to complain about. She immediately went on the attack, with equal or greater vehemence, opposing the very position she had been defending. Weary and worn down, Emílio abandoned the fight, leaving it to his wife to make whatever decision she chose. This left her in something of a quandary: on the one hand, she wanted to call the doctor; on the other, she could not resist the desire to go against her husband’s wishes, which would now mean not summoning the doctor. Unaware of this whole dispute, Henriquinho took the easiest way out and simply got better. Like any good mother, Carmen was pleased, but, deep down, she would not have minded some worsening of his condition (as long as Henriquinho was not in any real danger), just so her husband could see how reasonable and right she was.
Whatever the end result, however, she was obliged to give up her lazy mornings for as long as Henriquinho lay ill in bed. She had to do the shopping before her husband went off to work and could not spend long about it either for fear of making him late. Had this not also involved some risk to the family budget, she would have leapt at the chance to play a nasty trick on her husband, but life was hard enough without making it worse purely for the sake of some mean-minded act of revenge. Even in this, Carmen felt that she was acting reasonably. Whenever she was alone and could give full vent to her despair, she would weep and feel sorry for herself because her husband did not recognize her many good qualities, while he, of course, had only faults: he was, in her view, either a frivolous spendthrift who took no interest in their home and child, or a self-centered bore with the permanently stricken air of someone who feels unloved and out of place. Early on in their marriage, Carmen had often asked herself what lay behind the constant friction between her and her husband. They had fallen in love like everyone else, they had loved each other, and then it had all ended, to be replaced by arguments, bickering and sarcastic remarks; but it was his air of victimhood that most enraged her. She was convinced now that her husband had a mistress, a girlfriend. That, in her view, was the source of all their marital disagreements. Men are like cockerels, who, even while they’re treading one hen, already have their eye on the next.
That morning, very reluctantly because it was raining, Carmen went out to do the shopping. The apartment was suddenly peaceful, a small island surrounded by the silence emanating from their neighbors’ apartments and by the soft murmur of rain. The building was enjoying one of those marvelous moments of quietness and tranquillity, as if it were inhabited not by flesh-and-blood creatures, but only by inanimate objects.
Emílio Fonseca, however, found nothing soothing about the quietness and peace surrounding him. Instead, he found it positively oppressive, as if the air had grown thick and suffocating. He was enjoying the pause, his wife’s absence, his son’s silence, but what weighed on him was the certainty that it was only a pause, a provisional calm, a postponement that resolved nothing. He was standing at the window that looked out onto the street, watching the gentle rain and smoking, although most of the time he merely played with the cigarette between his nervous fingers.
His son called to him from the next room. He put his cigarette down in an ashtray and went to see what he wanted.
“What is it?”
“I’m thirsty.”
On the bedside table stood a glass of water. He helped his son sit up and gave him a drink. Henrique swallowed carefully, grimacing with pain. He looked so weak and fragile from enforced fasting that Emílio felt his heart contract with fear. “What has he done to deserve this?” he thought. “Or indeed what have I done?” When Henrique had finished drinking, he lay down again and thanked his father with a smile. Emílio stayed where he was and sat on the edge of the bed, saying nothing and looking at his son. At first Henrique returned his gaze and seemed pleased to see him there. Moments later, though, Emílio realized that he was embarrassing the child. He glanced away and made as if to get up, but something stopped him. A new thought had entered his head. (Was it new? Or had he always brushed it aside because he found it too troubling?) Why did he feel so ill at ease with his son? Why was it that his son seemed so decidedly ill at ease with him? What was it that kept them apart? He took out his pack of cigarettes, then immediately put it away again, remembering that the smoke would be bad for Henrique’s throat. He could have gone elsewhere to smoke, but he didn’t. He again looked at his son, then blurted out the question:
“Do you love me, Henrique?”
This was such a strange question for his father to ask that the child responded lamely:
“Yes . . .”
“A lot?”
“Yes, a lot.”
“Words,” thought Emílio, “mere words. If I were to die now, he’d forget all about me within a year.”
Emílio gave Henrique’s toes an affectionate, absent-minded squeeze. Henrique found this funny and giggled—cautiously so as not to hurt his throat. Emílio squeezed harder, and Henrique, seeing that his father seemed happy, did not complain, although he was relieved when he slackened his grip.
“If I were to leave, would you be sad?”
“Yes . . .” murmured his son, perplexed.
“And would you then forget me?”
“I don’t know.”
What other answer could he expect? Of course the child didn’t know if he would forget him. No one can know that he’s forgetting someone until they’re forgotten. If it were possible to know things beforehand, it would be so much easier to resolve all kinds of knotty problems. Again Emílio’s hand reached for the pocket where he kept his cigarettes, but it stopped halfway and withdrew, as if it had forgotten what it was about to do. It wasn’t only his hands that were confused. The expression on his face was that of someone who has reached a crossroads where there are no signposts, or only signs written in a strange, indecipherable language. All around lies the desert, and there’s no one to tell us: “This is the way.”
Henrique was looking at his father curiously. He had never seen him like this or known him to ask such questions.
Emílio’s hands rose slowly, confidently this time. Palms uppermost, they were confirming what his mouth was saying:
“Of course you would forget me . . .”
He paused for a second, but an irrepressible desire to speak drove out all hesitancy. He wasn’t sure if his son would understand him, but that didn’t matter. He didn’t even want him to understand. He would not necessarily choose words that were
within his grasp. What he needed to do was talk and talk until he had said everything or had nothing more to say.
“Of course you would forget me, I’m sure of that. In a year from now, you would no longer remember me. Or perhaps it would take less time than that. After three hundred and sixty-five days of absence, my face would be a thing of the past. Later on, even if you saw a photo of me, you still wouldn’t remember my face. And after still more time had passed, you wouldn’t recognize me if I were standing right in front of you. Nothing about me would tell you that I am your father. For you I’m just a man you see every day, someone who gives you water when you’re thirsty, a man your mother calls by his first name, a man your mother shares a bed with. You love me because you see me every day. You don’t love me for who I am, you love me because of what I do or don’t do. You don’t know who I am. If I had been swapped for another man when you were born, you wouldn’t even notice and you would love him just as you love me. And if I were to come back one day, it would take a very long time for you to get used to me. Indeed, despite the fact that I am your real father, you might still prefer the other one. You would see him every day too, and he’d take you to the movies like I do . . .”
Emílio had spoken almost without stopping, not looking at his son’s face. Then, unable to resist the desire to smoke any longer, he lit a cigarette. He glanced at his son. He saw the look of astonishment on his face and felt sorry for him. But he still hadn’t finished:
“You don’t know who I am and you never will. No one knows . . . I don’t know who you are either. We don’t know each other. I could leave, and all you would lose are my wages . . .”
No, that wasn’t what he really wanted to say. He breathed in the smoke and continued talking. As he spoke, the smoke emerged along with the words in short, articulated bursts. Henrique was watching the smoke intently, oblivious to what his father was saying:
“When you grow up, you’ll want to be happy. You don’t give a thought to that now, which is why you are happy. The moment you think about it, the moment you want to be happy, you will cease to be happy. Forever. Possibly forever. Do you hear? Forever. The stronger your desire to be happy, the unhappier you will be. Happiness isn’t something you can conquer. People will tell you that it is. Don’t believe them. Happiness either is or isn’t.”
This, too, led him far away from his objective. He again looked at his son and saw that his eyes were closed, his face calm, his breathing easy and regular. He had fallen asleep. Then, very softly, his eyes fixed on his son’s face, Emílio murmured:
“I’m unhappy, Henrique, very unhappy. One day I will leave. I don’t know when, but I know that I will. Happiness isn’t something you conquer, but I want to try to conquer it anyway. I can’t do that here. Everything has died. My life is a failure. I live in this house as if I were a stranger. I love you and possibly even your mother, but there’s something missing. It’s like living in a prison. Then there are all these rows, all this . . . Yes, one day I’ll leave.”
Henrique was sleeping deeply. A lock of fair hair lay across his forehead. His half-open mouth revealed small, bright teeth. His whole face was lit by a faint smile.
Suddenly Emílio felt his eyes fill with tears, quite why he didn’t know. Then, distracted by the cigarette burning his fingers, he went back to the window. It was still raining, quietly, monotonously. When he thought about what he had said, he felt ridiculous. And imprudent too. His son would doubtless have understood something. He might tell his mother. He wasn’t afraid of that, of course, but he didn’t want any more scenes, more scoldings, more tears, more protests. He was tired, so tired. Yes, Carmen, I’m tired.
In the street, outside the window, he saw his wife pass by, barely protected from the rain by her umbrella. Emílio said again, out loud this time:
“Do you hear that, Carmen? I’m tired.”
He went into the dining room to fetch his sample case. Carmen came in. They bade each other a cold goodbye. It seemed to her that her husband was leaving with suspicious haste, and she feared that something might have happened. Finding nothing untoward in her son’s bedroom, she went into their bedroom and immediately spotted what it was. On the dressing table, next to the ashtray, lay the stub of a cigarette. When she brushed away the ash, she saw the burn mark on the wood. Her anger burst forth in the form of violent words. She overflowed with misery. She bemoaned the fate of the dressing table, her own fate, her own sad life. She mumbled these complaints in between sobs and sniffs. She looked around her, afraid she might find further signs of damage. Then, casting one fond, despairing look at the dressing table, she went back into the kitchen.
While she was preparing lunch, she was imagining what she would say to her husband. He needn’t think it would stop there. Oh, she would tell him a thing or two, all right. If he wanted to spoil things, then he should spoil something that belonged to him, not the bedroom furniture bought with money given to them by her parents. So this was his way of saying thank you, was it, the ungrateful wretch!
“He always has to spoil everything,” she was muttering as she walked back and forth between stove and table. “That’s the only thing he knows how to do!” Senhor Emílio Fonseca, always so full of fine words! Her father had been quite right; he had never approved of the marriage. Why hadn’t she married her cousin Manolo, who owned a brush factory in Vigo? She would be a lady now, the owner of a factory, with maids to do her bidding! Silly fool! She cursed the hour she had decided to come to Portugal to spend some time with her aunt Micaela! She had caused quite a sensation there. All the men had wanted to court her, and that had been her downfall. She had gloried in being so much more sought-after than she had been at home, and this was where her blindness had led her. Her father had told her: “Carmen, eso no es hombre bueno!” He’s not a good man, Carmen. But she had refused to listen to his advice, had dug in her heels and rejected cousin Manolo and his brush factory.
She stood in the middle of the kitchen and wiped away a tear. She hadn’t seen cousin Manolo for nearly six years and suddenly she missed him. She wept for all the good things she had lost. She would be the owner of a factory now, and Manolo had always been so smitten with her. Ay, desgraciada, desgraciada!
Henrique called out from his room. He had woken up. Carmen ran to his side.
“¿Qué tienes? ¿Qué tienes?”
“Has Papa gone?”
“Yes.”
Henrique’s lips began to tremble and, to his mother’s astonishment—half resentful, half concerned—he began to weep slow, silent tears.
12
On the bench a pair of eviscerated shoes were crying out to be mended, but Silvestre pretended not to notice them and went and read the newspaper instead. He always read it from first page to last, from the editorial to the crime reports. He liked to keep up with international affairs and follow their development, and he had his own particular views on things. Whenever he turned out to be wrong, when what he had said was white turned out to be black, he would lay the blame squarely on the newspaper, which never published the most important items and altered or neglected others, with who knows what intentions! Today the newspaper was neither better nor worse than usual, but Silvestre could hardly bear to read it. He kept glancing impatiently at the clock. Then he would laugh at himself and go back to the paper. He tried to take an interest in the political situation in France and the war in Indochina, but his eyes slid over the lines and his brain refused to take in the meaning of the words. In the end, he flung down the paper and called to his wife.
Mariana appeared at the door, almost filling it with her vast bulk. She was drying her hands, having just finished the washing.
“Is that clock right?” he asked.
With infuriating slowness, Mariana studied the position of the hands.
“Yes, I think so . . .”
“Hm.”
She waited for him to expand on that apparently meaningless grunt, but Silvestre merely snatched up the newspaper again. He felt
himself observed and had to admit that there was something ridiculous or even childish about his impatience.
“Don’t worry, he’ll be here,” Mariana said and smiled.
Silvestre looked up.
“Who do you mean? Oh, him. He’s the least of it.”
“So what are you so edgy about?”
“Me? Edgy? Honestly!”
Mariana’s amused smile grew broader. Then Silvestre smiled too, realizing that he really was getting steamed up about nothing.
“That lad has me bewitched!”
“Bewitched, my eye! He’s just found your weak spot—playing checkers. You’re a hopeless case!” And she went back into the kitchen to starch some clothes.
Silvestre shrugged good-humoredly, again glanced at the clock, then rolled himself a cigarette to kill time. Half an hour went by. It was nearly ten o’clock. Silvestre was just thinking that he would have no alternative but to start work on those shoes when the doorbell rang. The door to the dining room, where he was sitting, opened onto the corridor. He picked up the newspaper, adopted a studious pose and pretended to be immersed in his reading. Inside, though, he was beaming with pleasure. Abel walked down the corridor, said “Evening, Senhor Silvestre” and continued on to his room.
“Good evening, Senhor Abel,” answered Silvestre, then immediately abandoned the poor, weary newspaper and ran to set up the checkerboard.
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