José Saramago - Skylight

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.

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.”