José Saramago - Skylight

“Guess who asked me for a favor today,” Lídia said.

“A favor?”

“Yes, my upstairs neighbors.”

“What did they want you to do?”

Lídia was waiting for the water to rise up the funnel into the coffee grounds.

“Not me, you.”

“Oh, please! What do they want, Lili?”

Lídia shuddered. Lili was the pet name he used when he was feeling amorous. The water began to boil, and as if being sucked up from above, it rose into the upper chamber of the pot. Lídia filled his cup, added just the right amount of sugar and gave it to him. Then she sat down again on the stool and said:

“You may not know it, but they have a nineteen-year-old daughter. She has a job, but according to her mother, she doesn’t earn very much. They asked me to ask you if you could find her something better.”

Paulino put his cup down on the arm of his chair and lit another cigarillo.

“And you’d like me to grant this favor, would you?”

“I wouldn’t be talking to you about it if I didn’t.”

“It’s just that I have all the staff I need… too many, in fact. Besides, I’m not the only one who makes these decisions.”

“But if you wanted to…”

“There’s the board of directors…”

“But if you really wanted to…”

Paulino picked up his cup again and took a sip. It seemed to Lídia that he wasn’t very keen to help. She felt rather hurt. This was the first time she had ever asked him for such a favor and she could see no reason why he should refuse. Besides, given her irregular situation and the fact that everyone in the building looked down their noses at her, she would like to find a job for Maria Cláudia, because Rosália would be so pleased she’d be sure to tell everyone, and that would give Lídia a certain prestige among the other neighbors. The near isolation in which she lived weighed on her, and although, to be honest, she hadn’t shown much interest when Rosália first came to her with the request, now, given her lover’s resistance, she became determined to get his agreement. She leaned further forward, as if to stroke the pink leather of her slippers, and in doing so revealed her bare breasts.

“I’ve never asked you for anything like this before. If you can find her a job, then you should. It would please me immensely, plus you’d be helping a family in need.”

Lídia was exaggerating her interest and, as far as she could judge, she was exaggerating the neediness of her neighbors too, but once launched along the path of exaggeration, she made a gesture that, by its very rarity, surprised Paulino Morais: she placed one hand on her lover’s round, plump knee. Paulino’s nostrils quivered as he said:

“No need to get sulky about it. I haven’t definitely said no yet…”

From the look on his face, Lídia knew the price she would have to pay for this near acquiescence. She felt disinclined to pull back the bedcovers, and yet she could see that he desired her. She tried to undo the effect she’d had on him, even pretending to have lost all interest in the subject, but Paulino, roused by that caress, was saying:

“I’ll see what I can arrange. What kind of work does she do?”

“She’s a typist, I think.”

Every drop of Lídia’s irritation was distilled in those words “I think.” When she stood up and removed her hand from her lover’s knee, it was as if she had covered herself with the heaviest, thickest clothes she owned. He noticed this transformation and was puzzled, but had no inkling of what was going on in her head. He finished his coffee and stubbed out his cigarillo in the ashtray. Lídia rubbed her arms as if she were cold. She glanced at her dressing gown abandoned on the bed. She knew that if she put it on, Paulino would get annoyed. She felt tempted to put it on anyway, but fear got the better of her. She valued her financial security too much to risk it all with a fit of the sulks. Paulino folded his hands over his belly and said:

“Tell the young woman to come here on Wednesday and I’ll talk to her.”

Lídia shrugged and said in a brusque, cold voice:

“All right.”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Paulino frown. She scolded herself for creating a scene. She was behaving like a child and decided the moment had come to pour oil on troubled waters. She smiled at him, but her smile froze: Paulino was still frowning. She began to feel afraid. She had to find a way to cheer him up. She tried to speak, but could think of nothing to say. If she ran over to him and kissed him on the mouth, everything would be fine, but she felt incapable of doing that. She didn’t want simply to hand herself over. She wanted to surrender, but not to take the first step.

Without thinking, and acting entirely on instinct, she turned out the bedroom light. Then, in the darkness, she went over to the dressing table and turned on the standard lamp next to it. She stood quite still for a moment, bathed in that light. She knew that her lover could clearly see the outline of her naked body beneath her negligee. Then, very slowly, she turned. Paulino Morais was unbuttoning his braces.

Abel paused on the landing to light a cigarette. At that moment, the stairwell lit up. He heard a door open on the floor above and the muffled sound of voices, followed immediately by heavy footsteps that made the stairs creak. He took his key out of his pocket and pretended to be fumbling with the lock. He only “found” it when he felt the person coming down the stairs walk right past him. He turned and saw Paulino Morais, who murmured a polite “Good evening,” to which Abel — who had now opened the front door — responded in the same manner.

As he walked along the corridor inside the apartment, he heard light footsteps above heading in the same direction. When he went into his room, the footsteps sounded farther off. He turned on the light and looked at his wristwatch: five past two.

The room was stuffy. He opened the window. The night was overcast. Slow, heavy clouds drifted across the sky, lit by the lights of the city. It had grown hotter, and the atmosphere was warm and humid. The sleeping buildings surrounding the back yards were like the wall around a deep, dark well. The only light was the glow emanating from his room. It flooded out of his open window and spilled into the yard below, revealing the stalks of the shrunken, useless cabbages that, plunged in darkness up until then, now had the startled look of people torn abruptly from sleep.

Another light went on, illuminating the backs of the buildings opposite. Abel could see clothes hung out to dry, flowerpots, and windows glinting. He decided to finish his cigarette sitting on the garden wall, and so as not to have to go through the kitchen, he jumped down from the window. He could hear the chicks piping in the chicken run. He walked through the cabbages bathed in light. Then he turned and looked up. Through the panes of the glazed balcony, he could see Lídia making her way to the bathroom. He smiled a sad, disenchanted smile. At that hour, hundreds of women would be doing the same as Lídia. He was tired, he had walked many streets, seen many faces, followed many nameless shapes. And now there he was in Silvestre’s back yard, smoking a cigarette and shrugging his shoulders at life. “I’m like Romeo in the Capulets’ garden,” he thought. “All that’s missing is the moon. Instead of innocent Juliet, we have the highly experienced Lídia. Instead of a delicate balcony, a bathroom window. A fire escape instead of a ‘tackled stair.’” He lit another cigarette. “Any moment now, she’ll say: ‘What man art thou that, thus bescreen’d in night, so stumblest on my counsel?’”

He smiled smugly, rather pleased with his ability to quote Shakespeare. Carefully avoiding the abandoned cabbages, he went and sat on the wall. He felt strangely sad. Doubtless the influence of the weather. It was very close and there was a hint of thunder in the air. He looked up again: Lídia was coming out of the bathroom. Perhaps because she, too, felt hot, she opened the window and leaned on the sill.