José Saramago - Skylight

It was almost half past four by the time she had finished dressing. She looked very pretty. She had excellent taste in clothes and never wore anything outlandish. She had put on a gray tailored suit that gave her body a sinuous, supple shape, a body that obliged men in the street to stop and look. A combination of the miraculous skills of the dressmaker and the instincts of a woman who earns her living with her body.

She went down the stairs with a light step to avoid making too much noise with her heels. There were people outside Silvestre’s apartment. The door stood wide open, and the cobbler was helping a young man carry in a large trunk. Out on the landing, Mariana was holding a smaller suitcase. Lídia greeted them:

“Good afternoon.”

Mariana responded. Silvestre, in order to return her greeting, had to pause and look around. Lídia’s gaze passed over his head and alighted with some curiosity on the face of the young man. Abel looked at her too. Seeing his new lodger’s questioning expression, Silvestre smiled and winked at him. Abel understood.

When Adriana appeared around the corner, walking fast, the day was already growing dark and one could sense the night in the quiet onset of twilight, which all the noise of the city could not cancel out. She took the stairs two at a time, her heart protesting at the effort, then rang the bell frantically and waited with some impatience for her mother to open the door.

“Hello, Mama. Has it started yet?” she asked, kissing her mother on the cheek.

“Slow down, child, slow down. No, it hasn’t started yet. Why all the rush?”

“I was afraid I might miss it. I was kept late at the office, typing some urgent letters.”

They went into the kitchen. The lights were on. The radio was playing softly in the background. Isaura was still busy sewing, hunched over a pink shirt. Adriana kissed her sister and her aunt, then sat down to catch her breath.

“I’m absolutely exhausted! Good heavens, Isaura, what is that hideous thing you’re making?”

Her sister looked up and smiled:

“The man who’s going to wear this shirt must be a complete and utter idiot. I can see him now in the shop, gazing goggle-eyed at this ‘thing of beauty,’ ready to give the clothes off his back to pay for it!”

They both laughed. Cândida commented:

“You two don’t have a good word to say about anyone!”

Amélia agreed with her nieces and, addressing Cândida, said:

“So, in your opinion, would it be a sign of good taste to wear a shirt like that?”

“People can dress as they like,” said Cândida with unusual forthrightness.

“That’s not an opinion!”

“Shh!” said Isaura. “Listen!”

The announcer was introducing a piece of music.

“No, that’s not it,” said Adriana.

There was a package next to the radio. Given the size and shape, it looked like a book. Adriana picked it up and asked:

“What’s this? Another book?”

“Yes,” said her sister.

“What’s it called?”

“The Nun.”

“Who’s the author?”

“Diderot. I’ve never read anything by him before.”

Adriana put the book down and promptly forgot about it. She didn’t care much for books. Like her sister, mother and aunt, she adored music, but she found books boring. They took pages and pages to tell a story that could have been told in just a few words. She couldn’t understand how Isaura could spend so much time reading, sometimes into the small hours. With music, on the other hand, Adriana could happily sit up all night listening and never tire of it. And it was a pleasure they all enjoyed, which was just as well, because there would have been terrible arguments if they didn’t.

“That’s it,” said Isaura. “Turn the volume up.”

Adriana twiddled one of the knobs. The announcer’s voice filled the apartment.

“… The Dance of the Dead by Honegger. Libretto by Paul Claudel. Performed by Jean-Louis Barrault.”

In the kitchen, a coffeepot was whistling. Aunt Amélia removed it from the gas. They heard the sound of the needle being placed on the record, and then the stirring, dramatic voice of Jean-Louis Barrault made the four walls tremble. No one moved. They stared at the luminous eye on the front of the radio, as if the music were coming from there. In the interval between the first record and the second, they could hear, coming from the next room, the strident, grating, metallic sound of ragtime. Aunt Amélia frowned, Cândida sighed, Isaura stabbed her needle hard into the shirt, and Adriana shot a murderous glance at the wall.

“Turn it up,” said Aunt Amélia.

Adriana did as asked. Jean-Louis’s voice roared out “ J’existe! ” the music swirled across the “ vaste plaine, ” and the jittery notes of ragtime mingled heretically with the dance “ sur le pont d’Avignon. ”

“Louder!”

The chorus of the dead, in a thousand cries of despair and sorrow, declared their pain and remorse, and the Dies Irae smothered and overwhelmed the giggling of a lively clarinet. Blaring out of the loudspeaker, Honegger managed finally to vanquish that anonymous piece of ragtime. Perhaps Maria Cláudia had grown tired of her favorite program of dance tunes, or perhaps she had been frightened by the bellowing of divine fury made music. Once the last notes of The Dance of the Dead had dissolved in the air, Amélia, grumbling, set about making supper. Cândida moved away, fearing an approaching storm, even though she felt equally indignant. The two sisters, carried away by the music, were ablaze with holy anger.

“It just seems impossible,” Amélia said at last. “I don’t mean that we’re better than other people, but it just seems impossible that anyone could possibly like that music of the mad!”

“But some people do, Aunt,” said Adriana.

“I can see that!”

“Not everyone grows up listening to good music,” added Isaura.

“I know that too, but surely everyone should be capable of separating the wheat from the chaff, putting the bad on one side and the good on the other.”

Cândida, who was getting the dishes out of the cupboard, ventured to say:

“That’s just not possible. The good and the bad, the bad and the good, are always intermingled. No one and nothing is ever completely good or completely bad. At least that’s what I think,” she added timidly.

Amélia turned to her sister, brandishing the spoon she was using to taste the soup.

“Now this soup is pretty good, and surely that’s how you know if something is good, because you like it.”

“Not necessarily.”

“So why do you like it, then?”

“I like it because I think it’s good, but I don’t know it’s good.”

Amélia pursed her lips scornfully. Her sister’s general inability to be sure of anything and to make fine distinctions grated on her practical common sense, her desire to divide the world into two clear halves. Cândida said nothing, regretting having spoken at all. Not that this subtle way of reasoning came naturally to her; she had learned it from her husband, simplifying its more problematic aspects.

“That’s all very nice,” Amélia went on, “but someone who knows what he wants, and what he has, runs the risk of losing what he has and not getting what he wants.”

“How very confusing!” said Cândida, smiling.

Her sister was aware that she had been unnecessarily obscure, and this only irritated her all the more.

“It’s not confusing, it’s true. There is good music and bad music. There are good people and bad people. There is good and evil. And you can choose between them…”