José Saramago - Skylight

Life was not easy for Saramago. Not only was his book ignored by the publishers — a book written at night, after days spent engaged in unrewarding tasks — he was ignored too, because he was unknown, had no university education, and wasn’t one of the intellectual elite, all of which were important factors in the small world of 1950s and ’60s Lisbon society. Those who later became his colleagues made fun of him because he stammered, and his stammer, which he eventually managed to overcome, made him rather withdrawn; he let others do the talking while he watched, living very much in his own inner world, which is perhaps why he was able to write so much. After Skylight, he published nothing for another twenty years. He began again with poetry— Os poemas possíveis ( Possible Poems ) and Provavelmente alegria ( Joy Probably ) — then wrote O ano de 1993 ( The Year of 1993 ), which is already on its way to becoming a narrative, followed by two collections of his newspaper articles, which are also fictions in embryo. Skylight is there in his articles too — even though no one knew it existed — waiting for the moment when it would reach the reader as something more than just a lost book.

Skylight is the gift that Saramago readers deserved to receive. It is not the closing of a door; on the contrary, it flings the door wide open so that we can go back inside and read or reread his other novels in the light of what he was writing as a young man. Skylight is the gateway into Saramago’s work and will be a real discovery for its readers. As if a perfect circle had closed. As if death did not exist.

Pilar del Río

President, José Saramago Foundation

Through the swaying veils filling his sleep came the clatter of crockery, and Silvestre could almost swear that light was beginning to filter through the loose weft of those veils. Just as he was starting to feel slightly irritated, he realized suddenly that he was waking up. He blinked several times, yawned, then lay quite still, as he felt sleep slowly moving off. Then he quickly sat up in bed and stretched, making the joints in his arms crack. Beneath his vest, the muscles in his back rolled and rippled. He had a powerful chest, solid, sturdy arms and sinewy shoulder blades. He needed those muscles for his work as a cobbler. His hands were as hard as stone and the skin on his palms so thick that he could pass a threaded needle through it without drawing blood.

Then, more slowly, he swung his legs out of bed. Silvestre was always deeply grieved and saddened by the sight of his scrawny thighs and his kneecaps worn white and hairless by constant friction with his trousers. He was proud of his chest, but hated his legs, so puny they looked as if they belonged to someone else.

Gazing glumly down at his bare feet on the rug, Silvestre scratched his graying head of hair. Then he ran one hand over his face, feeling his bones and his beard. Finally, reluctantly, he got up and took a few steps across the room. Standing there, in vest and underpants, perched on those long, stilt-like legs, he bore a faint resemblance to Don Quixote, with that tuft of salt-and-pepper hair crowning his head, his large, beaked nose and the powerful trunk that his legs seemed barely able to sustain.

He looked for his trousers and, failing to find them, peered around the door and shouted:

“Mariana! Where are my trousers?”

From another room, a voice called:

“Hang on!”

Given the slow pace of the approaching footsteps, one sensed that Mariana was fairly plump and could not walk any faster. Silvestre had to wait some time, but he did so patiently. At last she appeared at the door.

“Here you are.”

The trousers were folded over her right arm, which was considerably stouter than one of Silvestre’s legs. She said:

“I don’t know what you do with the buttons on your trousers to make them disappear every week. I’m going to have to start sewing them on with wire…”

Mariana’s voice was as plump as its owner and as kindly and frank as her eyes. She certainly hadn’t intended her remark as a joke, but her husband beamed at her, revealing every line on his face as well as his few remaining teeth. He took the trousers from her and, under his wife’s benign gaze, put them on, pleased with the way his clothes restored proportion and regularity to his body. Silvestre was as vain about his body as Mariana was indifferent to the one Nature had given her. Neither of them had any illusions about the other, and both were more than aware that the fire of youth had long since burned out, but they loved each other dearly, as much today as they had thirty years ago, when they got married. Indeed, their love was perhaps even greater now, because it was no longer fueled by real or imagined perfections.

Silvestre followed his wife into the kitchen. Then he slipped into the bathroom and returned ten minutes later, having washed. He was still not particularly kempt, however, because it was impossible to tame the tuft of hair that dominated his head (and “dominate” is the right word) — his “cockscomb,” as Mariana called it.

Two steaming bowls of coffee stood on the table, and the kitchen smelled fresh and newly cleaned. Mariana’s round cheeks glowed, and her whole large body trembled and shook as she moved about the kitchen.

“You get fatter by the day, woman!”

And Silvestre laughed, and Mariana laughed with him. They were like two children. They sat down at the table and drank the hot coffee, making playful, slurping noises, each trying to outslurp the other.

“So, what’s it to be, then?”

Silvestre was no longer laughing. Mariana had grown serious too. Even their faces seemed paler.

“I don’t know. You decide.”

“Like I said yesterday, the leather for soling is getting more and more expensive. My customers keep complaining about the price, but that’s how it is. I can’t perform miracles. Where are they going to find anyone to do the work more cheaply, that’s what I’d like to know, but that doesn’t stop them complaining.”

Mariana interrupted him, saying that moaning would get them nowhere. What they had to do was decide whether or not to take in a lodger.

“It would certainly be useful. It would help us pay the rent, and if he’s a man on his own and you don’t mind doing his laundry for him, we could just about break even.”

Mariana drained the last sugary drop of coffee from her bowl and said:

“That’s fine by me. Every little bit helps.”

“I know, but it does mean taking in lodgers again, when we’ve only just managed to rid ourselves of that so-called gentleman…”

“Oh well, maybe the next one will be a decent sort. I can get on with anyone, as long as they get on with me.”

“Let’s give it another go, then. A man on his own, who just needs a bed for the night, that’s what we need. I’ll put an ad in this afternoon.” Still chewing his last piece of bread, Silvestre stood up and declared: “Right, I’m off to work.”

He went back into the bedroom and walked over to the window. He drew aside the curtain that acted as a screen separating the window area from the rest of the room. Behind it was a high platform on which stood his workbench. Awls, lasts, lengths of thread, tins full of tacks, bits of sole and scraps of leather and, in one corner, a pouch containing French tobacco and matches.

Silvestre opened the window and looked out. Nothing new to be seen. A few people walking along the street. Not far off, a woman was crying her wares, selling a kind of bean soup that people used to eat for their breakfast. Silvestre could never understand how she could possibly make a living. No one he knew ate bean soup for breakfast anymore; he himself hadn’t eaten it for more than twenty years. Different times, different customs, different food. Having thus neatly summed the matter up, he sat down. He opened his tobacco pouch, rummaged around for his cigarette papers among the hotchpotch of objects cluttering the bench and rolled himself a cigarette. He lit it, inhaled the smoke and set to work. He had some uppers to put on, a job requiring all his knowledge and skill.