José Saramago - Skylight

She thought all this while she was removing the diary from the box. From the outside, it looked utterly banal and prosaic. It was an ordinary school exercise book. On the cover, in her best handwriting, Adriana had obediently written her name in the space provided, along with the word DIARY in capital letters that had a slightly Gothic look to them, at once childish and earnest. She must have been really concentrating when she wrote that word, her tongue between her teeth, like someone marshaling all her calligraphic skills. The first page was dated January 10, 1950, more than two years ago.

Amélia began to read, but soon realized that there was nothing of interest. She jumped over dozens of pages, all written in the same upright, angular writing, and stopped at the final entry. When she read the first few lines, she thought perhaps she had found the source of the problem. Adriana was writing about some man. She didn’t give his name, referring to him only as he or him. He was a colleague at work, that much was clear, but nothing led Amélia to suspect the grave fault she had feared. She read the preceding pages. Complaints about his indifference, disdainful outbursts about how foolish it was to love someone who proved unworthy of that love, all mixed up with minor domestic events, comments about the music she had heard on the radio — in short, nothing definitive, nothing that might justify Amélia’s suspicions. Until she came to the entry where Adriana talked about the visit her mother and aunt had made on March 23 to the cousins in Campolide. Amélia read the passage attentively: the tedium of the day… the embroidered sheet… the acknowledgment of her own ugliness… her pride… the comparison with Beethoven, who was also ugly and unloved… If I’d been alive in his day, I would have kissed his feet, and I bet none of those pretty women would have done that. (Poor Adriana! Yes, she would have loved Beethoven, and she would have kissed his feet as if he were a god!) The book Isaura was reading… Isaura’s face, at once happy and as if contorted in pain… the pain that caused pleasure and the pleasure that caused pain…

Amélia read and reread. She had a vague feeling that the answer to the mystery lay somewhere there. She no longer suspected Adriana of having committed any grave fault. Adriana obviously liked that man, but he didn’t love her. Why would he want to make me jealous when he doesn’t even know I like him? Even if Adriana had spoken of her love to her sister, she couldn’t have said any more than she’d written in the diary. And even if she was afraid of being indiscreet and hadn’t confided to her diary everything that had happened, she wouldn’t have written that he didn’t love her! However insincere she was when writing the diary, she wouldn’t conceal the whole truth. If she did, what then would be the point of keeping a diary? A diary is made for unburdening oneself. The only thing she had to unburden herself about was the pain of an unrequited, indeed totally unsuspected love. So why were the two sisters so cold and distant with each other?

Amélia continued to read, going back in time. Always the same complaints, problems at work, some mistake she had made adding up a column of figures, music, the names of musicians, her mother’s and her aunt’s occasional tantrums, her own tantrum over the matter of her wages… She blushed when she read what her niece had to say about her: Aunt Amélia is very grumpy today. But immediately after that, she was touched to read: I love my aunt. I love my mother. I love Isaura. Then back to Beethoven again, the mask of Beethoven, Adriana’s god. And always that ever-futile he. She went further back in time: days, weeks, months. The complaints vanished. Now it was love newborn and full of uncertainty, but still at too early a stage to doubt him. Before the page on which he appeared for the first time, there were only banalities.

Sitting with the notebook open on her lap, Amélia felt cheated and, at the same time, pleased. There was nothing terrible, only a secret love turned in upon itself, a failed love like the one recorded in that bundle of letters tied up with green ribbon. So where was the secret? Where was the reason behind Isaura’s tears and Adriana’s pretended good humor?

She leafed through the diary again to find the entry for March 23: Isaura’s eyes were red… as if she had been crying… she was in a nervous state… the book… the pleasurable pain or the painful pleasure…

Was that the explanation? She put the diary back in the box. She locked it. She locked the drawer. She could get no further information from it. Adriana, it seemed, had no secrets, and yet there clearly was a secret, but where?

All paths were blocked. There was that book, of course… Now what was the last book Isaura had read? Amélia’s memory resisted and closed all doors. Then suddenly it opened them again to reveal the names of authors and the titles of novels, although not the one she was looking for. Her memory kept one door shut, a door to which she could not find the key. Amélia could remember it all. The small package on the table next to the radio. Isaura had told her what it was and the name of the author. Then (she remembered this clearly) they had listened to Honegger’s The Dance of the Dead. And she recalled the ragtime music coming from the neighbors’ apartment and the argument with her sister.

Perhaps Adriana had written about that in her diary. She opened the drawer again and looked for Adriana’s entry for that day. Honegger and him were there, but that was all.

Having closed the drawer again, she looked at the keys in the palm of her hand. She felt ashamed. She was certainly guilty of having committed a grave fault. She knew something she was not supposed to know: Adriana’s thwarted love.

She left the room, crossed the kitchen and opened the window of the enclosed balcony. The sun was still high and bright. The sky and the river were bright too. Far off, the hills on the other side were blue with distance. Her throat tightened with sadness. That was what life, her life, was like — sad and dull. Now she, too, had a secret to keep. She clutched the keys more tightly in her hand. The buildings opposite were not as tall as theirs. On one of the rooftops, two cats were lazing in the sun. With a sure, determined hand, she threw the keys down at them one by one.

The cats scattered beneath this unexpected onslaught. The keys rolled down the roof and into the gutter. And that was that. And it was then that it occurred to Amélia that one other possibility remained: she could open Isaura’s drawer. But no, what would be the point? Isaura didn’t keep a diary, and even if she did… Amélia felt suddenly weary. She went back into the kitchen, sat down on a bench and wept. She had been defeated. She had tried and she had lost. Just as well. She hadn’t discovered her nieces’ secret and now she didn’t want to. Even if she could remember the title of that book, she wouldn’t go to the library to find it. She would make every effort to forget, and if that closed door in her memory should ever open, she would lock it again with every key she could find, apart from the “stolen” ones she had just thrown out of the window. Stolen keys… violated secrets… No more! She was too ashamed ever to repeat what she had done.

She dried her eyes and stood up. She had to get the supper ready. Isaura and her mother would soon be back and would wonder what had delayed her. She went into the dining room to fetch a utensil she needed. There was a copy of Rádio-Nacional on the radio set. It had been such a long time since she had listened properly to any music. She picked up the magazine, opened it and looked for that day’s program. News, talks, music… then her eyes were drawn irresistibly to one particular line. She read and reread the three words. Just three words — a whole world. She slowly put the magazine down again. Her eyes remained fixed on some point in space. She appeared to be waiting for a revelation. And the revelation duly came.