José Saramago - Skylight

“Sometimes I feel like showing it to you just to shut you up!”

“Do I annoy you?”

“No, but you could keep your thoughts to yourself. I simply don’t see why you have to say those things. It’s so rude. Don’t I have a right to some privacy?”

Behind the thick lenses of her glasses, Adriana’s eyes glinted with annoyance. Clutching the exercise book to her chest, she confronted her sister’s ironic smile.

“Of course you do,” said Isaura. “Go on, then, scribble away. But the day will come when you yourself will give me that notebook to read.”

“Well, you’re in for a long wait,” retorted Adriana.

And with that she stormed out of the room. Isaura made herself more comfortable beneath the bedclothes, positioned the book at the best angle for reading and forgot all about her sister. Having walked through the now dark bedroom where her mother and aunt were sleeping, Adriana locked herself in the bathroom. Only there, away from her family’s prying eyes, did she feel safe enough to write down her impressions of the day. She had started writing the diary shortly after she got her job. She had now written dozens of pages. She gave her pen a shake and began:

Wednesday, 3/19/52, five minutes to midnight. Aunt Amélia is very grumpy today. I hate it when they mention how little I earn. It’s insulting. I almost answered back, saying that at least I earned more than she did, but, fortunately, I bit my tongue. Poor Aunt Amélia. Mama says she wears herself out trying to keep the books straight, and I can believe that. After all, that’s how I spend my days. Tonight we listened to Beethoven’s Third Symphony. Mama said it was pretty, and I said it was beautiful, and Aunt Amélia agreed. I love my aunt. I love my mother. I love Isaura. But what they don’t know is that I wasn’t thinking about the symphony or about Beethoven, I mean, I wasn’t only thinking about that… I was thinking… and then I remembered that mask of Beethoven and how much I wanted it. But I was also thinking about “him.” I’m feeling happy today. He spoke to me so nicely. When he gave me the invoices to check, he put his right hand on my shoulder. Oh, it was lovely! I trembled inside and went bright red. I had to pretend to be concentrating on my work so that no one would notice. Then came the bad bit. Thinking I couldn’t hear, he started talking to Sarmento about some blond girl. The only reason I didn’t burst into tears was because it would have looked bad and I wouldn’t want him to know how I feel. He “toyed” with the girl, he said, for a few months, then dumped her. Good heavens, would it be the same with me? At least he doesn’t know how I feel about him. He might make fun of me. If he did, I would kill myself!

She paused and chewed the end of her pen. She had begun by saying that she was happy, and now there she was talking about killing herself. This didn’t seem right. She thought for a moment and closed with: Still, it was so lovely when he touched me on the shoulder!

That was better, as it should be, closing that day’s entry with a hope, a small joy. Whenever the events of the day left her feeling discouraged or sad, she made a point in her diary of not being entirely honest. She reread what she had written and closed the exercise book.

She had brought her nightdress with her from the bedroom, a white nightdress, buttoned up to the neck and with long sleeves because the nights were still chilly. She quickly got undressed. Her inelegant body, freed from the constraints of her clothes, looked heavier, baggier, lumpier. Her bra cut into her back. When she took it off, a red weal encircled her body like the mark left by a beating. She put on her nightdress and, after performing her usual ablutions, went back to the bedroom.

Isaura was still reading. She had her free arm bent back behind her neck, a position that revealed one dark armpit and the curve of her breasts. Absorbed in her reading, she didn’t look up when her sister got into bed.

“It’s late, Isaura. Time to stop reading,” Adriana murmured.

“OK, OK!” Isaura said impatiently. “It’s not my fault you don’t like reading.”

Adriana shrugged, as she so often did. She turned her back on her sister, pulled the bedclothes up so that the light wasn’t in her eyes and, moments later, she was asleep.

Isaura continued to read. She had to finish the book that night because it was due back at the library the next day. It was nearly one o’clock when she reached the final page. Her eyes were sore and her brain overexcited. She put the book down on the bedside table and turned out the light. Her sister was sleeping. She could hear her regular, rhythmic breathing and felt a twinge of irritation. In her view, Adriana was as cold as ice, and that diary of hers was merely a childish way of making people think she had some mysterious secret to hide. A faint glow from the streetlamp lit the room. In the darkness she could hear the gnawing of a woodworm. From the room next door came a muffled voice: Aunt Amélia talking in her sleep.

The whole building was sleeping. With eyes wide open to the dark, her hands folded behind her head, Isaura was thinking.

“Don’t make too much noise, you know I hate to disturb the neighbors,” whispered Anselmo.

He was going up the stairs, with his wife and daughter behind him, using matches to light their way. However, distracted by his own words of advice, he burned his fingers. He let out an involuntary yelp and lit another match. Maria Cláudia had a fit of the giggles. Her mother muttered a reproof:

“Whatever’s got into you, girl?”

They reached their apartment and entered furtively, like burglars. As soon as they went into the kitchen, Rosália sat down on a stool:

“Oh, I’m exhausted!”

She took off her shoes and stockings and showed them her swollen feet:

“Look at them!”

“Your albumin levels are too high, that’s what it is!” declared her husband.

“Goodness,” said Maria Cláudia, smiling. “He’s quite the expert, isn’t he?”

“If your father says my albumin levels are high, it’s because they are,” retorted her mother.

Anselmo nodded gravely. He studied his wife’s feet, which only confirmed him in his diagnosis:

“Yep, that’s what it is.”

Maria Cláudia screwed up her small face in disgust. She found the sight of her mother’s feet and the thought of some possible illness boring. Everything ugly bored her.

More in order to change the subject than out of any desire to be helpful, she took three cups out of the cupboard and filled them with tea. They always left the thermos full, ready for their return home. The five minutes devoted to that small late-night feast made them feel rather special, as if they had suddenly left the mediocrity of their lives behind them and risen a few rungs on the economic ladder. The kitchen disappeared and gave way to an intimate little drawing room with expensive furniture and paintings on the wall and a piano in one corner. Rosália no longer had high albumin levels, and Maria Cláudia was wearing a dress in the latest fashion. Only Anselmo did not change. He was always the same tall, distinguished, decorative gentleman, bald and slightly stooped and stroking his small mustache. His face was fixed and inexpressive, the product of years spent repressing all emotion as a way of guaranteeing respectability.

Alas, that illusion never lasted for more than five minutes. Rosália’s bare feet once again dominated the scene, and Maria Cláudia was the first to go to bed.

In the kitchen, husband and wife began the dialogue-monologue of couples who have been married for more than twenty years. Banalities, things said merely in order to say something, a mere prelude to the tranquil sleep of middle age.