José Saramago - Skylight

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.

Gingerly, so as not to wake her parents, Maria Cláudia slipped out of bed and tiptoed over to the window, where she peered around the curtain. The car was still parked opposite. She saw a bulky male figure cross the street and get into the car.

The car set off and soon disappeared from view.

Dona Carmen had her own particular way of enjoying the morning. She was not one for staying in bed until lunchtime, which would have been impossible anyway because she had to prepare her husband’s breakfast and get Henriquinho ready for school, but she made a point of never washing or brushing her hair until midday. She liked to wander about the house, still in her nightclothes, her hair loose and looking generally disheveled and slovenly. Her husband loathed this habit of hers, which went against what he considered the norm. He had tried over and over to persuade his wife to mend her ways, but time had taught him that he was wasting his breath. Although his job as a sales rep imposed no rigid timetable on him, he always escaped as early as he could so as not to begin the day in a bad mood. For her part, Carmen could not bear her husband to linger at home after breakfast. Not because this would oblige her to abandon her own beloved habits, but because her husband’s presence made the morning so much less pleasurable. The result was that, whenever he did stay longer than usual, it ruined the whole day for both of them.

As Emílio Fonseca was preparing his case of samples that morning, he discovered that someone had tampered with both prices and samples. Not only were the necklaces out of their proper places, they were all mixed up with the bracelets and the brooches, which, in turn, had become jumbled together with the earrings and the dark glasses. The only possible culprit was his son. He considered confronting him, but decided against it. If his son denied all knowledge, Emílio would think he was lying, and that would be bad; if Henrique owned up, then Emílio would have to beat him or tell him off, and that would be even worse. And, of course, if his wife got angry and launched herself into the discussion, it would become an all-out row. And he was heartily sick of rows. He put his case on the dining table and, without a word, set about restoring order.

Emílio Fonseca was a small, wiry man, not thin, but wiry. He was about thirty years old and had sparse, pale hair, a rather wishy-washy blond color. He had a very high forehead, of which he had always been proud. Now, however, that it had grown still higher due to incipient baldness, he would have preferred a rather lower hairline. Meanwhile, he had learned to accept the inevitable, and the inevitable was not just his lack of hair, but the present need to sort out his sample case. In eight miserable years of marriage he had learned to remain calm. His firm mouth was marred by a few bitter lines, and when he smiled his mouth twisted slightly, lending his face a sarcastic look in keeping with the general tenor of his words.

With the awkward air of a criminal returning to the scene of the crime, Henriquinho came to see what his father was doing. He had the face of an angel and was fair-haired like his father, but his hair was of a warmer color. Emílio didn’t even glance at him. There was no love lost between father and son; they merely saw each other every day.

The flip-flap of Carmen’s slippers could be heard out in the corridor, an aggressive sound, more eloquent than any words. Emílio had almost finished restoring order to the contents of his case. Carmen peered around the dining room door in order to calculate how much longer her husband would be. He had, in her view, already taken quite long enough.

At that point, the doorbell rang. Carmen frowned. She wasn’t expecting anyone at that hour. The baker and the milkman had already been by, and it was too early for the postman. The bell rang again. With an impatient “Coming!” she went to the door, her son dogging her heels. A small woman wearing a shawl was standing there clutching a newspaper. Dona Carmen eyed her distrustfully and asked:

“¿Qué desea?” (There were times when she would not speak Portuguese even if her life depended on it.)

The woman smiled humbly:

“Good morning, senhora. I understand you have a room to rent, is that right? Could I see it?”

Carmen was astonished.

“A room to rent, aquí? No, there’s no room to rent here.”

“But the advertisement in the newspaper—”

“What advertisement? Let me see.”

Her voice trembled with ill-concealed irritation. She breathed deeply, trying to calm herself. The woman pointed at the advertisement with a finger that bore the scars of an old nail infection. There it was, in the section “Rooms to Let.” No doubt about it. All the facts were there: the name of the street, the number of the building and, clear as day, ground floor, left. She handed the newspaper back and said curtly:

“Well, there are no rooms to let here!”

“But the newspaper says—”

“I’ve told you already. Besides, the advertisement specifies a gentleman, un caballero. ”

“There are so few rooms to let, and I—”

“If you’ll excuse me.”

And with that, Dona Carmen slammed the door in the woman’s face and went to find her husband. From the doorway, she asked:

“Did you put an ad in the paper?”

Holding a necklace made of colored stones in each hand and raising one eyebrow, Emílio Fonseca looked at her and responded in a cool, ironic tone:

“An ad? Only if it was to drum up more customers.”

“No, an ad offering a room to let.”

“A room? No, my dear. When I married you, I agreed that we would share all our worldly goods, and I would never dream of renting out a room without consulting you first.”

“No seas gracioso.”

“I’m not being funny. What man would dare to be funny with you?”

Carmen did not respond. Her imperfect knowledge of Portuguese meant that she was always at a disadvantage in these exchanges of barbed remarks. She chose instead to explain in a soft, insinuating voice:

“It was a woman, una mujer. She was carrying a newspaper and had come about the ad. It was definitely this apartment, no había confusión. And since she was a woman, I thought that perhaps you had put the ad in…”