José Saramago - Skylight

A few minutes later, the doorbell rang. Cândida went to answer it, was gone for a few seconds, then returned looking anxious and upset, muttering:

“Didn’t I tell you, didn’t I tell you?”

Amélia looked up:

“What is it?”

“It’s the downstairs neighbor come to complain about the noise. You go, will you?”

Amélia stopped doing the washing, dried her hands on a cloth and went to the front door. Their downstairs neighbor was on the landing.

“Good morning, Dona Justina. What can I do for you?”

At all times and in all circumstances, Amélia was the very soul of politeness, but that politeness could easily turn to ice. Her tiny pupils would fix on the face they were looking at, arousing irrepressible feelings of unease and embarrassment in the other person.

The neighbor had been getting on fine with Cândida and had almost finished what she had come to say. Now there appeared before her a far less timid face and a far more direct gaze. She said:

“Good morning, Dona Amélia. I’ve come about my husband. As you know, he works nights at the newspaper, and so can only sleep in the morning. If he’s woken up, he gets really angry and I’m the one who has to bear the brunt. If you could perhaps make a little less noise with the sewing machine, I’d be very grateful…”

“Yes, I understand, but my niece needs to work.”

“Of course, and if it was up to me, I wouldn’t mind, but you know what men are like…”

“Yes, I do, and I also know that your husband shows very little consideration for his neighbors’ sleep when he comes home in the early hours.”

“But what am I supposed to do about that? I’ve given up trying to persuade him to make less noise on the stairs.”

Justina’s long, gaunt face grew lively. A faint, malicious gleam appeared in her eyes. Amélia brought the conversation to a close.

“All right, we’ll wait a while longer. You needn’t worry.”

“Thank you very much, Dona Amélia.”

Amélia muttered a brusque “Now, if you’ll excuse me” and shut the door. Justina went down the stairs. Dressed in heavy mourning, her dark hair parted in the middle, she cut a tall, funereal figure; she resembled a gangling doll, too large to be a woman and without the slightest hint of feminine grace. Only her dark, hollow eyes, the eyes of a diabetic, were, paradoxically, rather beautiful, but so grave and serious that they lacked all charm.

When she reached the landing, she stopped outside the door opposite hers and pressed her ear to it. Nothing. She pulled a sneering face and moved away. Then, just as she was about to enter her own apartment, she heard voices and the sound of a door opening on the landing above. She busied herself straightening the doormat so as to have an excuse not to go in.

From upstairs came the following lively dialogue:

“The only trouble with her is that she doesn’t want to go to work!” said a female voice in harsh, angry tones.

“That may well be, but we have to treat her with care. She’s at a dangerous age,” said a man’s voice. “You can never be sure how these things might develop.”

“What do you mean ‘a dangerous age’? You never change, do you? Is nineteen a dangerous age? If so, you’re the only one who thinks so.”

Justina thought it best to announce her presence by giving the doormat a good shake. The conversation upstairs stopped abruptly. The man started coming down the stairs, saying as he did so:

“Don’t make her go to work. And if there’s any change, call me at the office. See you later.”

“Yes, see you later, Anselmo.”

Justina greeted her neighbor with a cool smile. Anselmo walked past her on the stairs, solemnly tipped his hat and, in his warm, mellow voice, uttered a ceremonious “Good morning.” There was, however, a great deal of venom in the way the street door slammed shut behind him. Justina called up the stairs:

“Good morning, Dona Rosália.”

“Good morning, Dona Justina.”

“What’s wrong with Claudinha? Is she ill?”

“How did you know?”

“I was just shaking out the doormat here and I thought I heard your husband say…”

“Oh, she’s putting it on as usual, but she only has to whimper and my Anselmo’s convinced she’s dying. She’s the apple of his eye. She says she has a headache, but what she’s really got is a bad case of lazyitis. Her headache’s so bad she’s gone straight back to sleep!”

“You can’t be too sure, Dona Rosália. Remember, that’s how I lost my little girl, God rest her soul. It was nothing, they told us, and then meningitis carried her off.” She took out a handkerchief and blew her nose loudly before going on: “Poor little thing. And only eight years old. How could I forget… It’s been two years, you know, Dona Rosália.”

Rosália did know and wiped away a polite tear. Encouraged by her neighbor’s apparent sympathy, Justina was about to recall more all-too-familiar details when a hoarse voice interrupted her:

“Justina!”

Justina’s pale face turned to stone. She continued talking to Rosália until the hoarse voice grew still louder and more violent:

“Justina!!”

“What is it?” she asked.

“Come inside, will you? I don’t want you standing out there on the landing, talking. If you worked as hard as I do, you wouldn’t have the energy to gossip!”

Justina shrugged indifferently and went on with the conversation, but Rosália, finding the scene embarrassing, said it was time she went in. After Justina had gone back into her apartment, Rosália crept down a few stairs and listened hard. Through the door she heard a few angry exclamations, then silence.

It was always the same. You would hear the husband tearing into his wife, then the wife would utter some almost inaudible words and he would immediately shut up. Rosália found this very odd. Justina’s husband had a reputation as a bit of a brute, with his big, bloated body and his crude manners. He wasn’t quite forty and yet his flaccid face, puffy eyes and moist, drooping lower lip made him seem older. No one could understand why two such different people had ever married, and it was true that they had never been seen out in the street together. And, again, no one could understand how two such unpretty people (Justina’s eyes were beautiful, not pretty) could have produced a delightful daughter like Matilde. It was as if Nature had made a mistake and, realizing its mistake later on, had corrected it by having the child disappear.

The fact is that, after he had made just two or three aggressive comments, all it took to silence violent, rude Caetano Cunha — that obese, arrogant, ill-mannered Linotype operator on a daily newspaper — was a murmured comment from his wife, the diabetic Justina, so frail she could be blown away in a high wind.

It was a mystery Rosália could not unravel. She waited a little longer, but absolute silence continued to reign. She withdrew into her own apartment, carefully closing the door so as not to wake her sleeping daughter, always assuming she was asleep rather than merely pretending.

Rosália peered around the door. She thought she saw her daughter’s eyelids flutter. She opened the door properly and advanced on the bed. Maria Cláudia had her eyes closed so tightly that tiny lines marked the spot where crow’s-feet would one day appear. Her full lips still bore traces of yesterday’s lipstick. Her short brown hair gave her the look of a young ruffian, which only made her beauty more piquant and provoking, almost equivocal.

Rosália glanced at her daughter, not quite trusting that deep but strangely unconvincing sleep. She gave a little sigh. Then, with a maternal gesture, she drew the bedclothes up around her daughter’s neck. The reaction was immediate. Maria Cláudia opened her eyes and chuckled. She tried to suppress her laughter, but it was too late.