José Saramago - Skylight

He sat up in bed, feeling anxious: “I’ve so longed for this day, and I enjoyed it thoroughly until I came home, but the moment I got here, my head started filling up with these idiotic thoughts. Have I become like one of those battered wives who, despite the beatings, can’t live without their husbands? That would be stupid, absurd. It would be positively comical to have spent all these years longing for my freedom and, after only one day, feel like running back to the very person who had deprived me of it.” He took a long drag on his cigarette and murmured:

“It’s all a question of habit. Smoking’s bad for the health too, but do I give that up? No. And yet I could if the doctor said to me: ‘Smoking is killing you.’ Man is a creature of habit, and all this indecision is just one of the consequences of habit. I simply haven’t gotten used yet to being free.”

Reassured by this conclusion, he lay down again. He aimed his cigarette end at the ashtray and missed. It rolled across the marble top of the bedside table and onto the floor. To prove to himself that he was a free man, he made no attempt to pick it up. The cigarette gradually burned down, scorching the wooden floor. The smoke rose slowly, and the lighted end disappeared into ash. Emílio pulled the bedclothes up around his ears and turned out the light. The apartment grew still more silent. “It’s a new habit… the habit of freedom. A starving man would die if you gave him too much food at once. His stomach would have to get used to it first…” Then sleep abruptly overwhelmed him.

It was late morning when he woke. He rubbed his eyes and felt a pang of hunger. He was about to open his mouth and call out to his wife when he remembered that she had left and he was alone. He leaped out of bed. Barefoot, he ran through all the rooms. No one. He was alone, just as he had wanted to be. But he didn’t think, as he had when he went to bed, that he didn’t know how to enjoy his freedom. He thought only that he was free. And he laughed. He washed, shaved, got dressed, picked up his sample case and went out into the street, and he did all these things as if he were dreaming.

It was a bright morning of clear skies and warm sun. The buildings were ugly and so were the people walking past. The buildings were tethered to the earth and all the passersby looked like condemned men and women. Emílio laughed again. He was free. With money or without, he was free. Even if all he could do was take the same steps he had taken before and see what he had seen before, he was free.

He pushed back his hat as if bothered by the shadow it cast. And then he set off down the street, with a new light in his eye and a bird singing in his heart.

At last the day had come when all secrets would be revealed. After performing veritable miracles of diplomacy, Amélia had finally persuaded her sister to accompany Isaura to the shop for which Isaura made shirts, declaring that it was a lovely day and a bit of sunshine and fresh air would do her good, that it was a crime to stay indoors when, outside, the spring seemed quite mad with joy. She waxed positively lyrical in her praise of spring, so eloquent, in fact, that her sister and her niece made gentle fun of her. Since she was so inspired, they said, why didn’t she come too? She declined, however, saying that she had supper to prepare, and, with that, propelled them toward the front door. Fearing that one of them might come back for something, she watched from the window. Cândida had grown forgetful and almost always left something behind.

She was now alone in the apartment: her sister and niece would be gone for a good two hours, and Adriana wouldn’t be home until later on. She went to fetch the keys she had hidden away and returned to her nieces’ bedroom. The dresser had three small drawers; the one in the middle belonged to Adriana.

As she approached the drawer, Amélia felt a sudden wave of shame. She knew that what she was about to do was wrong. It might help her find out what it was that her nieces were so carefully concealing from her, but if forced to confess, how could she admit that she had shown such a lack of respect? Once they knew, they would all fear further raids on their privacy, and they would hate her for that. Discovering their secret by chance or by some more dignified means would not, of course, have damaged her moral authority, but using a fraudulently acquired key and tricking those people — who might get in her way — into leaving the house, well, one really couldn’t sink much lower.

With the keys in her hand, Amélia wrestled with her desire to know and the undignified nature of what she was about to do. And what guarantee was there that she wouldn’t find something she would prefer not to know at all? Isaura seemed fine now, Adriana was as cheerful as ever, and Cândida, as always, had total confidence in her daughters, regardless of what might be going on in their heads. The lives of all four seemed set to return to calm, tranquil, serene ways. Would violating Adriana’s secrets make such a return impossible? Once those secrets were unveiled, would there be no going back? Would they all turn against her? And even if her niece had committed some grave fault, would Amélia’s good intentions be enough to justify her infringing the right we all have to keep our secrets secret?

These same scruples had troubled Amélia before and been successfully repelled. However, now that it would require just one small movement to open the drawer, they returned in force, like the last, desperate burst of energy from a dying man. She looked at the keys in her open hand. And while she was thinking, she noticed, unconsciously, that the smaller key would not fit. The opening in the lock was too wide.

Scruples continued to rush in upon her, each trying to appear more urgent and more convincing than the others, and yet already they were growing less forceful, less confident. Amélia took one of the larger keys and put it in the lock. The clink of metal, the creak as the key turned, banished all scruples. It was the wrong key. Forgetting that she had one more key to try, she persisted and was alarmed when it seemed to stick. Tiny beads of sweat appeared on her brow. In the grip of an irrational panic, she tugged hard at the key, then tugged harder still and finally managed to pull it out. The other key was clearly the right one. But after that physical effort, Amélia felt so weak and tired she had to sit down on the edge of her nieces’ bed, her legs shaking. After a few minutes, feeling calmer, she got up. She tried the other key, and slowly turned it in the lock. Her heart began to pound so loudly that her head throbbed. The key worked. There was no going back.

The first thing she noticed when she opened the drawer was the intense smell of lavender soap. Before moving any of the objects in the drawer, she made a point of noting their various positions. At the front were two monogrammed handkerchiefs, which she recognized at once as having belonged to her brother-in-law, Adriana’s father. To the left, a bundle of old photographs, bound together with an elastic band. To the right, a black box embossed in silver, but with no lock. Inside were some loose beads from a necklace, a brooch with two stones missing, a sprig of orange blossom (a souvenir from a friend’s wedding) and little else. At the back was a larger box, this time with a lock. She ignored the photographs: they were too old to be of any interest. Carefully, so as not to displace any of the other objects, she removed the larger box. She opened it with the smallest key and found what she was looking for: the diary, as well as a bundle of letters tied up with a faded green ribbon. She did not bother to untie the knot: she already knew about those letters, which dated from between 1941 and 1942. They were all that remained of a failed romance, Adriana’s first and only one. It seemed ridiculous to Amélia to hang on to those letters ten years after the breakup.