José Saramago - Skylight

Caetano felt very pleased with himself. Even the pimples on his neck didn’t burst when he ran the razor over them. He was feeling calmer now. She may have had him under her thumb before, but now he had her in the palm of his hand. Even if his old feelings of repugnance returned, as they were bound to, he would not deny her his services as a husband.

The word “services” made him smile: “Services, eh? What a joke!”

He washed, using a lavish amount of soap and water. While he was combing his hair, he was thinking: “What a fool I’ve been. Anyone could have seen that the anonymous letter wasn’t going to work…”

He stopped, slowly opened the window and peered out. It came as no surprise to him to see Lídia; in fact, that’s why he’d stopped what he was doing. Lídia was looking down at something and smiling. Caetano followed her gaze, and in the yard belonging to the ground-floor apartment where the cobbler and his wife lived, he saw their lodger chasing after a chicken while Silvestre, leaning against the wall with a cigarette in his mouth, was slapping his thighs and laughing:

“If you don’t catch her, Abel, it means no soup for lunch!”

Lídia laughed too. Abel looked up and smiled:

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t see you there. Would you like to give me a hand?”

“No, I’d only make matters worse.”

“Well, it’s not very kind of you to laugh at my misfortunes!”

“I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at the chicken—” She broke off to greet both men. “Good morning, Senhor Silvestre! Good morning, Senhor…”

“Abel,” said the young man. “No need to bother with surnames, you’re too far away for formal introductions.”

Safe in a corner, the chicken was ruffling its feathers and clucking.

“She’s making fun of you,” said Silvestre.

“Really? Well, I’m going to make her give that lady up there another good laugh.”

Caetano preferred not to hear any more. He closed the window. The chicken resumed its agitated clucking. Smiling, Caetano sat down on the toilet seat while he put his thoughts in order: “That first letter may not have worked, but this one will…” He wagged his finger at the window in Lídia’s direction and murmured:

“I’m going to have my revenge on you too, or my name’s not Caetano.”

All of Amélia’s endeavors bumped up against her nieces’ obstinate defenses. She tried to make the girls confess outright, reminding them of the harmony and perfect understanding that had once reigned in the family. Isaura and Adriana responded with laughter. They tried to demonstrate, in every way possible, that they were not angry with each other, that it was only because Amélia was used to seeing them constantly happy that she had now started imagining things that simply did not exist.

“We all get annoyed sometimes,” Adriana would say.

“I know, I’m the same, but don’t think you can deceive me. You still talk and smile, but Isaura doesn’t. You’d have to be blind not to see it.”

She gave up trying to coax from them the reason behind the coldness between them. She could see they had made a kind of pact to delude both her and her sister. However, while Cândida might be taken in by appearances, Amélia would only be satisfied with hard facts. She began, quite openly, to observe her nieces. She forced them into a state of tension verging on panic. They only had to make some slightly obscure comment for Amélia to come out with an insinuating riposte. Adriana made light of the matter, and Isaura took refuge in silence, as if afraid her aunt might draw unwarranted conclusions from even the most innocent of words.

“Cat got your tongue, Isaura?” Amélia would ask.

“No, I simply have nothing to say.”

“We all used to get on so well here. Everyone talked and everyone had something to say. We’ve gotten to the point where we don’t even listen to the radio anymore!”

“That’s because you don’t want to, Auntie.”

“What’s the point when our minds are all on something else!”

If it hadn’t been for Isaura’s behavior, she might have abandoned her idea, but her niece still seemed cowed and tormented by some hidden thought. Amélia decided not to bother with Adriana and to focus all her efforts on Isaura. Whenever Isaura went out, Amélia would follow her. She would return disappointed. Isaura spoke to no one and never once diverged from the path that led her to the shop she worked for, and she neither wrote letters nor received them. She no longer went to the library from which she used to borrow books:

“You’ve stopped reading, Isaura.”

“I don’t have time.”

“You have just as much time as you had before. Was someone at the library unpleasant to you?”

“Of course not!”

When her aunt asked Isaura about her sudden indifference to books, Isaura blushed. She bowed her head and avoided her aunt’s eyes. Amélia noticed her embarrassment and thought that therein lay the root of the problem. She went to the library on the pretext of inquiring about its opening hours, but what she really wanted was to see who worked there. She left no wiser than she had entered, for the staff consisted of two bald, toothless old gentlemen and a young woman. Her suspicions vanished into the air like smoke. Feeling all doors closing on her, she turned to her sister, but Cândida pretended not to understand.

“There you go again, you and your ideas!”

“Yes, and I won’t give up either. I know you’re acting as a cover for your daughters. When you’re with them, you’re all sweetness and light, but you don’t fool me. I’ve heard you sighing at night.”

“I’m thinking about other things, old things.”

“The time for sighing over those ‘old things’ is long gone. You have the same griefs as me, but I put them away, as did you. Now you’re sighing over new things, over the girls…”

“You’re obsessed, woman! You and I have fallen out time and again and made up time and again too! Why, only the other day—”

“Exactly. We fell out with each other and we made up. They haven’t fallen out, you’re right, but you won’t convince me that there isn’t something wrong.”

“I’m not trying to convince you of anything. If you enjoy making a complete idiot of yourself, then go on, but you’re ruining our lives. We were all getting along so nicely…”

“It’s not my fault everything’s gone wrong. I’m doing my best to make everything go right again, but”—she blew her nose hard to disguise her emotion—“what I can’t bear is to see the girls like this!”

“Adriana seems cheerful enough. Why, only the other day, when she was telling us about how her boss tripped on the carpet—”

“Pure pretense. Would you say Isaura was cheerful too?”

“We all have our off days…”

“Yes, but she has an awful lot of them. You’ve come to some agreement, haven’t you? You know what’s going on!”

“Me?!”

“Yes, you. If you didn’t, you would be just as worried as I am.”

“But only a moment ago you said you’d heard me sighing at night.”

“Aha, caught you!”

“Oh, very clever. But you’re quite wrong if you think I know anything. You and your silly ideas.”

Amélia was indignant. Silly ideas indeed! When the bomb went off, then she’d see how silly — or not — they were. She changed tactics. She stopped tormenting her nieces with questions and insinuations. She pretended to have lost interest, to have forgotten about the whole business. She noticed at once that the tensions eased. Even Isaura began to smile at her sister’s tall tales of the office, but Isaura’s attitude only convinced Amélia that there was still some hidden mystery. Free from the pressure of suspicion and persecution, Isaura was able to relax a little; she seemed to want to help her aunt to forget. But Amélia did not forget. She merely took a few steps back in order to be able to jump still farther.