The act in itself did not matter, but the consequences did. After what had happened, Paulino would never be able to return to Lídia’s apartment: it would be too shameful. And somehow or other Carmen felt that she was in the same situation as Paulino, or almost. No public scandal separated her and her husband, but they shared a whole past life, a difficult, disagreeable life, full of resentments and enmities, violent scenes and painful reconciliations. Paulino had left, doubtless for good. She was leaving too, but would be back in three months. But what if she didn’t come back? What if she stayed in her hometown with her son and her family?
When she admitted this as a possibility, when she thought that she might never come back, she felt quite dizzy. What could be simpler? She would say nothing now, but would set off with her son and, when she arrived in Spain, write a letter to her husband, telling him of her decision. And then? She would start all over again from the beginning, as if she had just been born. Portugal, Emílio and their marriage would merely be a nightmare that had dragged on for years. And perhaps later she could . . . although they would have to divorce, of course . . . yes, perhaps later . . . It was then that Carmen remembered that, as the law stood, she could not stay abroad without her husband’s consent. She was leaving with his authorization, and she could only stay on with his authorization.
These thoughts clouded her happiness. She would, of course, leave anyway, but the temptation not to come back made her happiness almost painful. Would it not be the worst of punishments to have to return to Lisbon after three months of freedom? To condemn herself to spending the rest of her life putting up with the presence and the words, the voice and the shadow, of her husband, would that not be like going down into hell again after having regained paradise? She would have to fight constantly to keep her son’s love. And when her son (Carmen’s imagination vaulted over the years)—and when her son married, it would be even worse because she would have to live alone with her husband. Everything would be resolved if he would agree to a divorce. But what if, on a whim or out of sheer malice, he forced her to return?
All day she was tormented by these thoughts. She had forgotten the good times in their marriage, of which there had been a few. She could think only of Emílio’s cold, ironic gaze, his censorious silence, his permanent look of a man who has failed and doesn’t care who knows it, who makes of his failure a placard that everyone can read.
Night fell without her having moved a step closer to finding answers to the questions that kept surfacing in her mind. She was so silent that her husband asked if something was worrying her. No, nothing, she said. She was just excited about their imminent departure. Emílio understood and did not insist. He felt excited too. In a few hours’ time he would be free. Three whole months of solitude, freedom and an unencumbered life . . .
They left the next day. All the neighbors knew they were leaving and almost all came to the windows to watch. Carmen said goodbye to those neighbors with whom she was on good terms and got into the car with her husband and son. They reached the station shortly before the train was due to leave. They just had time to put the luggage on board, take their seats and say their farewells. Henrique barely had time to cry. The train vanished into the mouth of the tunnel, leaving behind it a cloud of white smoke that dissolved into the air, like a white handkerchief swallowed up by the distance.
It was his first day of freedom. Emílio wandered the city for hours. He discovered places he had never known existed, had lunch in a cheap restaurant in Alcântara and looked so happy that the owner charged him double for the meal. Emílio uttered not a word of protest and even left a tip. He caught a cab back to the Baixa, bought some foreign cigarettes and, when he walked past an expensive restaurant, cursed himself for having had lunch at that other, cheaper place. He went to the movies and, during intermission, drank a coffee and struck up a conversation with a stranger who, on the subject of coffee, discoursed at length on his terrible stomach problems.
When the film ended, he followed a woman out into the street, but soon lost sight of her, not that he cared. He stood on the pavement, smiling up at the tall monument in Praça dos Restauradores. In one leap, he thought, he could reach the very top, but he didn’t make that leap. He spent more than ten minutes watching the traffic policeman and listening to his whistle. He found everything amusing and looked at people and things as if seeing them for the first time, as if he had recovered his sight after years of blindness. Approached by a young man trying to persuade passersby to have their photo taken, he promptly agreed. He took up his position and, at a signal from the photographer, walked straight ahead, with a determined step and a smile on his face.
He had dinner that night at the expensive restaurant. The food was good, so was the wine. He had very little money left after all these extravagances, but he didn’t regret it. He didn’t regret anything. He had done nothing that merited any feelings of regret. He was free, not as free as the birds, who have no obligations or duties, but as free as he could hope to be. When he left the restaurant, all the neon signs in the Rossio were blazing out. He looked at them, one by one, as if they were the stars of the Annunciation. There was the sewing machine, the two watches, the glass of port wine that emptied of its own accord, the carriage that never went anywhere, with its two horses, one blue, one white. And down below were the two fountains with their fishtailed ladies holding cornucopias so parsimonious that only water poured forth from them. And there were the statue of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico and the columns of the Teatro Nacional, and the cars trundling over the tarmac roads, and the cries of the newspaper vendors and the pure air of freedom.
He returned home late, feeling slightly weary. The few glum streetlamps cast only the dimmest of lights. All the windows were closed and dark. As were his.
When he opened the door, he was immediately aware of the uncanny silence. He walked from room to room, leaving the lights on behind him and the doors open, like a child. Not that he was afraid, of course, but the stillness, the absence of familiar voices, the vaguely expectant atmosphere, made him feel uneasy. He sat down on the bed of which he would be the sole occupant for the months of May, June, July and possibly part of August. What better time to savor freedom! Sun, heat, fresh air. He would go to the beach every Sunday and lie in the sun like a lizard just woken from its winter sleep. He would stare up at the cloudless blue sky. He would take long walks in the countryside. The woods of Sintra, the Castelo dos Mouros, the beaches on the opposite shore. He would do all these things alone. All that and more, things he could not even imagine now, because he had lost the habit of imagining. He was like a bird who, on seeing the cage door open, hesitates before making the leap that will carry it beyond the bars.
The silence in the apartment closed about him like a hand. All his plans, whatever they might be, would have to be paid for. He had to work very hard and that would eat up his time. But he would work more enthusiastically, and if he had to cut back on anything it would be food. He now regretted the expensive supper and the foreign cigarettes, but it was, after all, only the first day, and it was natural that he should get carried away. Others, in his place, might have done much worse.
He got up and went to turn out the lights before returning to bed. He felt bewildered, like someone who has won the lottery and doesn’t know what to do with the money. He discovered that, having achieved his longed-for freedom, he now had no idea how to enjoy it. The plans he had made earlier seemed paltry and frivolous. He would simply be doing alone what he had done with his family. He would be visiting the same places, sitting under the same trees, lying on the same sand. That wasn’t good enough. He had to do something more important than that, something he could look back on when his wife and son returned. But what? Orgies? Drunken sprees? Love affairs? He had experienced those things when he was single, and had no desire to revisit them. He knew that such excesses always leave a bitter, melancholy aftertaste of regret. To repeat them would be to sully his freedom. However, apart from going on a few
outings and indulging his baser instincts, he couldn’t see how else to fill the months that lay before him. He wanted something loftier, more dignified, but didn’t know what that might be.
He lit another cigarette, then got undressed and lay down on the bed. There was only one pillow: it was as if he were a widower or a bachelor or divorced. And he thought: “What am I going to do tomorrow? Well, I have to go to the shop. In the morning I’ll do a round of my customers. I need to get some really substantial orders in. And in the afternoon? The movies perhaps? No, that’s a sheer waste of time. There are no films worth watching. But if I don’t go to the movies, where will I go? For a walk, I suppose, somewhere or other. But where? Lisbon is a city where you can only really live if you’ve got plenty of money. If you don’t, then you have to work to fill up the time and earn enough to eat. And I don’t earn that much. And at night? What will I do at night? The movies again? Great! It looks like I’m going to spend my days watching films, as if there were nothing else to see or do! And what about money? Just because I’m on my own doesn’t mean I can stop eating and paying the rent. I’m free, yes, but what’s the use of freedom if I don’t have the means to make the most of it? If I continue in this vein, I’ll end up wishing they were back . . .”
He sat up in bed, feeling anxious: “I’ve so longed for this day, and I enjoyed it thoroughly until I came home, but the moment I got here, my head started filling up with these idiotic thoughts. Have I become like one of those battered wives who, despite the beatings, can’t live without their husbands? That would be stupid, absurd. It would be positively comical to have spent all these years longing for my freedom and, after only one day, feel like running back to the very person who had deprived me of it.” He took a long drag on his cigarette and murmured:
“It’s all a question of habit. Smoking’s bad for the health too, but do I give that up? No. And yet I could if the doctor said to me: ‘Smoking is killing you.’ Man is a creature of habit, and all this indecision is just one of the consequences of habit. I simply haven’t gotten used yet to being free.”
Reassured by this conclusion, he lay down again. He aimed his cigarette end at the ashtray and missed. It rolled across the marble top of the bedside table and onto the floor. To prove to himself that he was a free man, he made no attempt to pick it up. The cigarette gradually burned down, scorching the wooden floor. The smoke rose slowly, and the lighted end disappeared into ash. Emílio pulled the bedclothes up around his ears and turned out the light. The apartment grew still more silent. “It’s a new habit . . . the habit of freedom. A starving man would die if you gave him too much food at once. His stomach would have to get used to it first . . .” Then sleep abruptly overwhelmed him.
It was late morning when he woke. He rubbed his eyes and felt a pang of hunger. He was about to open his mouth and call out to his wife when he remembered that she had left and he was alone. He leaped out of bed. Barefoot, he ran through all the rooms. No one. He was alone, just as he had wanted to be. But he didn’t think, as he had when he went to bed, that he didn’t know how to enjoy his freedom. He thought only that he was free. And he laughed. He washed, shaved, got dressed, picked up his sample case and went out into the street, and he did all these things as if he were dreaming.
It was a bright morning of clear skies and warm sun. The buildings were ugly and so were the people walking past. The buildings were tethered to the earth and all the passersby looked like condemned men and women. Emílio laughed again. He was free. With money or without, he was free. Even if all he could do was take the same steps he had taken before and see what he had seen before, he was free.
He pushed back his hat as if bothered by the shadow it cast. And then he set off down the street, with a new light in his eye and a bird singing in his heart.
34
At last the day had come when all secrets would be revealed. After performing veritable miracles of diplomacy, Amélia had finally persuaded her sister to accompany Isaura to the shop for which Isaura made shirts, declaring that it was a lovely day and a bit of sunshine and fresh air would do her good, that it was a crime to stay indoors when, outside, the spring seemed quite mad with joy. She waxed positively lyrical in her praise of spring, so eloquent, in fact, that her sister and her niece made gentle fun of her. Since she was so inspired, they said, why didn’t she come too? She declined, however, saying that she had supper to prepare, and, with that, propelled them toward the front door. Fearing that one of them might come back for something, she watched from the window. Cândida had grown forgetful and almost always left something behind.
She was now alone in the apartment: her sister and niece would be gone for a good two hours, and Adriana wouldn’t be home until later on. She went to fetch the keys she had hidden away and returned to her nieces’ bedroom. The dresser had three small drawers; the one in the middle belonged to Adriana.
As she approached the drawer, Amélia felt a sudden wave of shame. She knew that what she was about to do was wrong. It might help her find out what it was that her nieces were so carefully concealing from her, but if forced to confess, how could she admit that she had shown such a lack of respect? Once they knew, they would all fear further raids on their privacy, and they would hate her for that. Discovering their secret by chance or by some more dignified means would not, of course, have damaged her moral authority, but using a fraudulently acquired key and tricking those people—who might get in her way—into leaving the house, well, one really couldn’t sink much lower.
With the keys in her hand, Amélia wrestled with her desire to know and the undignified nature of what she was about to do. And what guarantee was there that she wouldn’t find something she would prefer not to know at all? Isaura seemed fine now, Adriana was as cheerful as ever, and Cândida, as always, had total confidence in her daughters, regardless of what might be going on in their heads. The lives of all four seemed set to return to calm, tranquil, serene ways. Would violating Adriana’s secrets make such a return impossible? Once those secrets were unveiled, would there be no going back? Would they all turn against her? And even if her niece had committed some grave fault, would Amélia’s good intentions be enough to justify her infringing the right we all have to keep our secrets secret?
These same scruples had troubled Amélia before and been successfully repelled. However, now that it would require just one small movement to open the drawer, they returned in force, like the last, desperate burst of energy from a dying man. She looked at the keys in her open hand. And while she was thinking, she noticed, unconsciously, that the smaller key would not fit. The opening in the lock was too wide.
Scruples continued to rush in upon her, each trying to appear more urgent and more convincing than the others, and yet already they were growing less forceful, less confident. Amélia took one of the larger keys and put it in the lock. The clink of metal, the creak as the key turned, banished all scruples. It was the wrong key. Forgetting that she had one more key to try, she persisted and was alarmed when it seemed to stick. Tiny beads of sweat appeared on her brow. In the grip of an irrational panic, she tugged hard at the key, then tugged harder still and finally managed to pull it out. The other key was clearly the right one. But after that physical effort, Amélia felt so weak and tired she had to sit down on the edge of her nieces’ bed, her legs shaking. After a few minutes, feeling calmer, she got up. She tried the other key, and slowly turned it in the lock. Her heart began to pound so loudly that her head throbbed. The key worked. There was no going back.
The first thing she noticed when she opened the drawer was the intense smell of lavender soap. Before moving any of the objects in the drawer, she made a point of noting their various positions. At the front were two monogrammed handkerchiefs, which she recognized at once as having belonged to her brother-in-law, Adriana’s father. To the left, a bundle of old photographs, bound together with an elastic band. To the right, a black box embossed in silver, but with no lock. Inside were some loose beads from a ne
cklace, a brooch with two stones missing, a sprig of orange blossom (a souvenir from a friend’s wedding) and little else. At the back was a larger box, this time with a lock. She ignored the photographs: they were too old to be of any interest. Carefully, so as not to displace any of the other objects, she removed the larger box. She opened it with the smallest key and found what she was looking for: the diary, as well as a bundle of letters tied up with a faded green ribbon. She did not bother to untie the knot: she already knew about those letters, which dated from between 1941 and 1942. They were all that remained of a failed romance, Adriana’s first and only one. It seemed ridiculous to Amélia to hang on to those letters ten years after the breakup.
She thought all this while she was removing the diary from the box. From the outside, it looked utterly banal and prosaic. It was an ordinary school exercise book. On the cover, in her best handwriting, Adriana had obediently written her name in the space provided, along with the word DIARY in capital letters that had a slightly Gothic look to them, at once childish and earnest. She must have been really concentrating when she wrote that word, her tongue between her teeth, like someone marshaling all her calligraphic skills. The first page was dated January 10, 1950, more than two years ago.
Amélia began to read, but soon realized that there was nothing of interest. She jumped over dozens of pages, all written in the same upright, angular writing, and stopped at the final entry. When she read the first few lines, she thought perhaps she had found the source of the problem. Adriana was writing about some man. She didn’t give his name, referring to him only as he or him. He was a colleague at work, that much was clear, but nothing led Amélia to suspect the grave fault she had feared. She read the preceding pages. Complaints about his indifference, disdainful outbursts about how foolish it was to love someone who proved unworthy of that love, all mixed up with minor domestic events, comments about the music she had heard on the radio—in short, nothing definitive, nothing that might justify Amélia’s suspicions. Until she came to the entry where Adriana talked about the visit her mother and aunt had made on March 23 to the cousins in Campolide. Amélia read the passage attentively: the tedium of the day . . . the embroidered sheet . . . the acknowledgment of her own ugliness . . . her pride . . . the comparison with Beethoven, who was also ugly and unloved . . . If I’d been alive in his day, I would have kissed his feet, and I bet none of those pretty women would have done that. (Poor Adriana! Yes, she would have loved Beethoven, and she would have kissed his feet as if he were a god!) The book Isaura was reading . . . Isaura’s face, at once happy and as if contorted in pain . . . the pain that caused pleasure and the pleasure that caused pain . . .
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