Skylight

by José Saramago

While Anselmo was pondering these thoughts, the radio was blaring out the most blatantly plangent, painful, piercing fado ever to emerge from a Portuguese throat. As everyone knew, Anselmo was no sentimentalist, but even he was profoundly moved by this lament. His feelings had much to do with the terrible prospect of that deduction from his wages at the end of the month. Rosália paused, needle in the air, and suppressed a sigh. Maria Cláudia, although apparently unmoved, was following the words of that unhappy love spilling forth from the loudspeaker and softly repeating them to herself.

  What remained after the singer’s final “Ay!” resembled the atmosphere at the end of a Greek tragedy or, in more modern terms, the air of suspense to be found in certain American films. Another song like that and those three normally healthy people would be transformed into hopeless neurotics. Fortunately, the broadcast was coming to an end. There were a few bits of news from abroad, a summary of the schedule for the following day, and then Rosália turned up the volume slightly to hear the twelve chimes at midnight.

  Anselmo stroked his bald head and declared, as he was putting away his papers in the china cabinet:

  “Midnight. Time for bed. Tomorrow we have to work.”

  At these words, everyone stood up. And this flattered Anselmo, who saw in these small things the excellent results of his methods of domestic education. He prided himself on having a model family and believed, moreover, that this was entirely his doing.

  Maria Cláudia planted two smacking kisses on her parents’ cheeks. With the evening newspaper dangling from his fingertips—a little bedtime reading before lights-out—Anselmo set off down the corridor. Rosália stayed on, tidying away her and her daughter’s sewing. She straightened the chairs around the table, put a few other objects back in their proper places and, once she was certain everything was in order, followed her husband.

  When she went into the bedroom, he peered at her over the top of his glasses, then continued reading. Like every good Portuguese citizen, he had his favorite soccer clubs, but was happy to read reports of all the matches, albeit only as a source of more statistical material. Whether they played well or badly was their business. What mattered was knowing who scored the goals and when. What mattered was what history would record.

  According to a tacit agreement between them both, Anselmo did not lower his newspaper when Rosália was getting undressed for bed. To do so would, in his view, be undignified. She, on the other hand, might have seen nothing wrong with it. Once undressed, she lay down without her husband having glimpsed so much as her toes. That was the dignified, decent way to do things.

  He turned off the bedside lamp. A fringe of light was still visible underneath the door opposite. Anselmo saw it and called:

  “Lights out, Claudinha!”

  Seconds later, the light went off. Anselmo smiled in the darkness. It was so good to be respected and obeyed! Darkness, however, is the enemy of smiles and always suggests grave thoughts. Troubled, Anselmo tossed and turned. Beside him, pressed against him, his wife’s body snuggled into the soft mattress.

  “Whatever’s wrong?” asked Rosália.

  “It’s that advance they gave me,” muttered Anselmo. “They’ll take it off my wages at the end of the month and then we’ll be back to square one.”

  “Can’t you pay it off in installments?”

  “The boss doesn’t like that.”

  The sigh that had been trapped inside Rosália’s breast ever since the fado had ended finally burst forth and filled the apartment. Anselmo could not repress a sigh either, albeit a less exuberant, more manly one.

  “But what if they were to give you a raise,” suggested Rosália.

  “Oh, they’re not going to do that. They’re even talking about getting rid of people.”

  “Goodness! I hope they don’t get rid of you!”

  “Me?” said Anselmo, as if this were the first time he had considered such an eventuality. “No, it won’t happen to me. I’m one of the oldest employees there . . .”

  “Things are so bad at the moment, though. All you hear now are complaints.”

  “It’s the international situation . . . ,” began Anselmo.

  But he stopped. What was the point of getting on his soapbox and giving a speech about the international situation in the dark and with the problem of that advance still unresolved?

  “I’m worried they might sack Claudinha. I know the five hundred escudos she earns isn’t much, but every little bit helps.”

  “Five hundred escudos! A pittance!” muttered Anselmo.

  “Maybe, but I just hope we don’t have to do without it.”

  Then she fell silent, seized by an idea. She was about to tell her husband, but decided to approach the subject obliquely:

  “Couldn’t you find her another job with one of your acquaintances?”

  Something in his wife’s voice alerted Anselmo to the possibility of a trap.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “What else would I mean?” she said casually. “It’s a perfectly simple question.”

  Anselmo could see that it was a simple question, but he could see, too, that his wife had something else in mind. He decided not to make things too easy for her.

  “And who was it who got her the job she has now? It was you, wasn’t it?”

  “But couldn’t we find her something better?”

  Anselmo did not reply. He would get his wife to tell him her idea by dint of force or guile. Silence was the best tactic. Rosália shifted in bed. She turned toward her husband, her slightly plump belly pressed against his hip. She tried to drive away the idea, certain that Anselmo would vehemently reject it, but the idea kept coming back, stubborn and seductive. Rosália knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep until she had told him her idea. She cleared her throat so as to make the murmur that followed more audible:

  “I just thought . . . and I know you’ll be angry with me, but I just thought I could perhaps have a word with Dona Lídia downstairs.”

  Anselmo saw immediately what his wife was leading up to, but preferred to pretend otherwise:

  “Why? I don’t understand.”

  As if physical contact might reduce the expected indignant reaction, Rosália moved closer. Years before, that movement would have had a very different meaning.

  “I just thought . . . given that we get on well with her, that she might consider . . .”

  “I still have no idea what you mean.”

  Rosália was sweating now. She moved away again and, without pausing to choose her words, blurted out:

  “She could ask the man who visits her. He’s a director or something of an insurance company and he might have some suitable post for Claudinha.”

  Had Anselmo’s indignation been genuine, it would have burst forth at that very first sentence. Instead, he waited until she had finished, and then he reacted only very quietly, because the night obliges us to speak softly:

  “I can’t believe you could suggest such a thing! You want us to go and ask a favor from that . . . that woman? Have you no dignity? I would never have expected you, of all people, to come up with such an idea!”

  Anselmo was going too far, which would have been fine if, deep down, he did not agree with her suggestion. He didn’t seem to realize that, by speaking in those terms, he was making his eventual acquiescence even more illogical and his wife’s further promotion of the idea near impossible.

  Offended, Rosália moved farther off. Between them lay a small space that could have been leagues. Anselmo saw that he had overstepped the mark. The ensuing silence made them both feel awkward. They knew the matter had to be resolved, but said nothing: she was thinking about how best to broach the subject again, and he was struggling to find a way to make surrender easier, despite what he had just said. Meanwhile, they both knew that they would not be able to sleep until some solution had been found. Anselmo made the first move:

  “All right, we’ll think about it . . . I don’t like the idea at all, but . . .”
>
  15

  As comfortably installed as if he were in his own house, Paulino Morais crossed his legs and lit a cigarillo. When Lídia moved the ashtray closer to him, he smiled his thanks and leaned back again in the maroon armchair, which was “his” armchair on the nights when he visited. He sat there in his shirtsleeves. He was plump and red-faced. His small eyes bulged slightly as if under pressure from his fleshy eyelids. His thick, straight eyebrows met over his nose, whose sharpness was softened by a layer of fat. He had large, prominent, bristle-filled ears. He allowed the hair on the side of his head to grow long enough to be combed carefully over his otherwise bald pate. He had the prosperous air of a fifty-year-old in possession of old money and a young wife. Through the cloud of perfumed smoke surrounding him, his whole face oozed smug contentment; he wore the look of someone who has eaten well and is quietly, easily digesting his food.

  He had just recounted a particularly amusing anecdote and was enjoying Lídia’s laughter, and not just her laughter. He was in an excellent mood, and this led him mentally to congratulate himself on the idea he’d had, sometime before, about what clothes Lídia should wear when he visited her. Feeling slightly spent and worn down by excess and age, he had decided that he needed some new stimuli and that what his mistress wore could be one such stimulus. No male fantasies, nothing pornographic, as he had known some of his friends to indulge in, just something simple and natural. Lídia was to receive him wearing a low-cut negligee, with her arms bare and her hair loose. The negligee had to be made of silk, not so transparent as to reveal everything, but transparent enough not to hide everything either. The result was a kind of chiaroscuro effect that inflamed his brain on those nights when he was in the mood or merely pleased his eye when he was tired.

  Lídia resisted at first, then decided it was best to submit. All men have their eccentricities, and this was certainly not the worst she had known. So she gave in, especially when he bought her an electric heater. In a warm room, she was less likely to catch cold in those skimpy outfits.

  She was sitting on a low stool, leaning toward her lover, showing him her braless breasts, which was how he liked them. She knew that the only thing that bound him to her was her body, and so she took every opportunity to show it off, especially now, when her body was still young and shapely. After all, there wasn’t much difference between exhibiting it here or on the beach, apart from the arousing nature of the clothes she was wearing and her provocative position.

  When the evening went no further than having to exhibit herself in that flimsy attire, she thought the sacrifice well worth the bother and Paulino Morais’s tastes perfectly reasonable. And if things did go further, as she always hoped they would not, she simply resigned herself to it.

  She had been living at his expense for three years now. She knew all his tics and idiosyncrasies and gestures. The gesture she feared most was when he, still seated, unbuttoned both his braces at the same time. Lídia knew what this meant. She was quite relaxed at the moment, though: Paulino Morais was smoking, and for as long as his cigarillo lasted, his braces would remain safely buttoned.

  In a graceful gesture that emphasized the beauty of her neck and shoulders, Lídia turned to look at the small faience clock. Then she got up, saying:

  “It’s time for your coffee.”

  Paulino Morais nodded. On the marble-topped dressing table, the coffeepot stood ready and waiting. Lídia lit the little burner and placed it underneath the pot, then prepared the cup and the sugar bowl. While she was walking to and fro in the room, Paulino Morais followed her with his eyes, ogling her long legs, which were visible beneath the light fabric that clung voluptuously to her hips. He mentally yawned and stretched. He had nearly finished his cigarillo.

  “Guess who asked me for a favor today,” Lídia said.

  “A favor?”

  “Yes, my upstairs neighbors.”

  “What did they want you to do?”

  Lídia was waiting for the water to rise up the funnel into the coffee grounds.

  “Not me, you.”

  “Oh, please! What do they want, Lili?”

  Lídia shuddered. Lili was the pet name he used when he was feeling amorous. The water began to boil, and as if being sucked up from above, it rose into the upper chamber of the pot. Lídia filled his cup, added just the right amount of sugar and gave it to him. Then she sat down again on the stool and said:

  “You may not know it, but they have a nineteen-year-old daughter. She has a job, but according to her mother, she doesn’t earn very much. They asked me to ask you if you could find her something better.”

  Paulino put his cup down on the arm of his chair and lit another cigarillo.

  “And you’d like me to grant this favor, would you?”

  “I wouldn’t be talking to you about it if I didn’t.”

  “It’s just that I have all the staff I need . . . too many, in fact. Besides, I’m not the only one who makes these decisions.”

  “But if you wanted to . . .”

  “There’s the board of directors . . .”

  “But if you really wanted to . . .”

  Paulino picked up his cup again and took a sip. It seemed to Lídia that he wasn’t very keen to help. She felt rather hurt. This was the first time she had ever asked him for such a favor and she could see no reason why he should refuse. Besides, given her irregular situation and the fact that everyone in the building looked down their noses at her, she would like to find a job for Maria Cláudia, because Rosália would be so pleased she’d be sure to tell everyone, and that would give Lídia a certain prestige among the other neighbors. The near isolation in which she lived weighed on her, and although, to be honest, she hadn’t shown much interest when Rosália first came to her with the request, now, given her lover’s resistance, she became determined to get his agreement. She leaned further forward, as if to stroke the pink leather of her slippers, and in doing so revealed her bare breasts.

  “I’ve never asked you for anything like this before. If you can find her a job, then you should. It would please me immensely, plus you’d be helping a family in need.”

  Lídia was exaggerating her interest and, as far as she could judge, she was exaggerating the neediness of her neighbors too, but once launched along the path of exaggeration, she made a gesture that, by its very rarity, surprised Paulino Morais: she placed one hand on her lover’s round, plump knee. Paulino’s nostrils quivered as he said:

  “No need to get sulky about it. I haven’t definitely said no yet . . .”

  From the look on his face, Lídia knew the price she would have to pay for this near acquiescence. She felt disinclined to pull back the bedcovers, and yet she could see that he desired her. She tried to undo the effect she’d had on him, even pretending to have lost all interest in the subject, but Paulino, roused by that caress, was saying:

  “I’ll see what I can arrange. What kind of work does she do?”

  “She’s a typist, I think.”

  Every drop of Lídia’s irritation was distilled in those words “I think.” When she stood up and removed her hand from her lover’s knee, it was as if she had covered herself with the heaviest, thickest clothes she owned. He noticed this transformation and was puzzled, but had no inkling of what was going on in her head. He finished his coffee and stubbed out his cigarillo in the ashtray. Lídia rubbed her arms as if she were cold. She glanced at her dressing gown abandoned on the bed. She knew that if she put it on, Paulino would get annoyed. She felt tempted to put it on anyway, but fear got the better of her. She valued her financial security too much to risk it all with a fit of the sulks. Paulino folded his hands over his belly and said:

  “Tell the young woman to come here on Wednesday and I’ll talk to her.”

  Lídia shrugged and said in a brusque, cold voice:

  “All right.”

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Paulino frown. She scolded herself for creating a scene. She was behaving like a child and decided the mo
ment had come to pour oil on troubled waters. She smiled at him, but her smile froze: Paulino was still frowning. She began to feel afraid. She had to find a way to cheer him up. She tried to speak, but could think of nothing to say. If she ran over to him and kissed him on the mouth, everything would be fine, but she felt incapable of doing that. She didn’t want simply to hand herself over. She wanted to surrender, but not to take the first step.

  Without thinking, and acting entirely on instinct, she turned out the bedroom light. Then, in the darkness, she went over to the dressing table and turned on the standard lamp next to it. She stood quite still for a moment, bathed in that light. She knew that her lover could clearly see the outline of her naked body beneath her negligee. Then, very slowly, she turned. Paulino Morais was unbuttoning his braces.

  16

  Abel paused on the landing to light a cigarette. At that moment, the stairwell lit up. He heard a door open on the floor above and the muffled sound of voices, followed immediately by heavy footsteps that made the stairs creak. He took his key out of his pocket and pretended to be fumbling with the lock. He only “found” it when he felt the person coming down the stairs walk right past him. He turned and saw Paulino Morais, who murmured a polite “Good evening,” to which Abel—who had now opened the front door—responded in the same manner.

  As he walked along the corridor inside the apartment, he heard light footsteps above heading in the same direction. When he went into his room, the footsteps sounded farther off. He turned on the light and looked at his wristwatch: five past two.

  The room was stuffy. He opened the window. The night was overcast. Slow, heavy clouds drifted across the sky, lit by the lights of the city. It had grown hotter, and the atmosphere was warm and humid. The sleeping buildings surrounding the back yards were like the wall around a deep, dark well. The only light was the glow emanating from his room. It flooded out of his open window and spilled into the yard below, revealing the stalks of the shrunken, useless cabbages that, plunged in darkness up until then, now had the startled look of people torn abruptly from sleep.