Skylight (11 page)

Suddenly Emílio felt his eyes fill with tears, quite why he didn't know. Then, distracted by the cigarette burning his fingers, he went back to the window. It was still raining, quietly, monotonously. When he thought about what he had said, he felt ridiculous. And imprudent too. His son would doubtless have understood something. He might tell his mother. He wasn't afraid of that, of course, but he didn't want any more scenes, more scoldings, more tears, more protests. He was tired, so tired. Yes, Carmen, I'm tired.

In the street, outside the window, he saw his wife pass by, barely protected from the rain by her umbrella. Emílio said again, out loud this time:

“Do you hear that, Carmen? I'm tired.”

He went into the dining room to fetch his sample case. Carmen came in. They bade each other a cold goodbye. It seemed to her that her husband was leaving with suspicious haste, and she feared that something might have happened. Finding nothing untoward in her son's bedroom, she went into their bedroom and immediately spotted what it was. On the dressing table, next to the ashtray, lay the stub of a cigarette. When she brushed away the ash, she saw the burn mark on the wood. Her anger burst forth in the form of violent words. She overflowed with misery. She bemoaned the fate of the dressing table, her own fate, her own sad life. She mumbled these complaints in between sobs and sniffs. She looked around her, afraid she might find further signs of damage. Then, casting one fond, despairing look at the dressing table, she went back into the kitchen.

While she was preparing lunch, she was imagining what she would say to her husband. He needn't think it would stop there. Oh, she would tell him a thing or two, all right. If he wanted to spoil things, then he should spoil something that belonged to him, not the bedroom furniture bought with money given to them by her parents. So this was his way of saying thank you, was it, the ungrateful wretch!

“He always has to spoil everything,” she was muttering as she walked back and forth between stove and table. “That's the only thing he knows how to do!” Senhor Emílio Fonseca, always so full of fine words! Her father had been quite right; he had never approved of the marriage. Why hadn't she married her cousin Manolo, who owned a brush factory in Vigo? She would be a lady now, the owner of a factory, with maids to do her bidding! Silly fool! She cursed the hour she had decided to come to Portugal to spend some time with her aunt Micaela! She had caused quite a sensation there. All the men had wanted to court her, and that had been her downfall. She had gloried in being so much more sought-after than she had been at home, and this was where her blindness had led her. Her father had told her: “
Carmen, eso no es hombre bueno!
” He's not a good man, Carmen. But she had refused to listen to his advice, had dug in her heels and rejected cousin Manolo and his brush factory.

She stood in the middle of the kitchen and wiped away a tear. She hadn't seen cousin Manolo for nearly six years and suddenly she missed him. She wept for all the good things she had lost. She would be the owner of a factory now, and Manolo had always been so smitten with her.
Ay, desgraciada, desgraciada!

Henrique called out from his room. He had woken up. Carmen ran to his side.

“¿Qué tienes? ¿Qué tienes?”

“Has Papa gone?”

“Yes.”

Henrique's lips began to tremble and, to his mother's astonishment—half resentful, half concerned—he began to weep slow, silent tears.

On the bench a pair of eviscerated shoes were crying out to be mended, but Silvestre pretended not to notice them and went and read the newspaper instead. He always read it from first page to last, from the editorial to the crime reports. He liked to keep up with international affairs and follow their development, and he had his own particular views on things. Whenever he turned out to be wrong, when what he had said was white turned out to be black, he would lay the blame squarely on the newspaper, which never published the most important items and altered or neglected others, with who knows what intentions! Today the newspaper was neither better nor worse than usual, but Silvestre could hardly bear to read it. He kept glancing impatiently at the clock. Then he would laugh at himself and go back to the paper. He tried to take an interest in the political situation in France and the war in Indochina, but his eyes slid over the lines and his brain refused to take in the meaning of the words. In the end, he flung down the paper and called to his wife.

Mariana appeared at the door, almost filling it with her vast bulk. She was drying her hands, having just finished the washing.

“Is that clock right?” he asked.

With infuriating slowness, Mariana studied the position of the hands.

“Yes, I think so . . .”

“Hm.”

She waited for him to expand on that apparently meaningless grunt, but Silvestre merely snatched up the newspaper again. He felt himself observed and had to admit that there was something ridiculous or even childish about his impatience.

“Don't worry, he'll be here,” Mariana said and smiled.

Silvestre looked up.

“Who do you mean? Oh, him. He's the least of it.”

“So what are you so edgy about?”

“Me? Edgy? Honestly!”

Mariana's amused smile grew broader. Then Silvestre smiled too, realizing that he really was getting steamed up about nothing.

“That lad has me bewitched!”

“Bewitched, my eye! He's just found your weak spot—playing checkers. You're a hopeless case!” And she went back into the kitchen to starch some clothes.

Silvestre shrugged good-humoredly, again glanced at the clock, then rolled himself a cigarette to kill time. Half an hour went by. It was nearly ten o'clock. Silvestre was just thinking that he would have no alternative but to start work on those shoes when the doorbell rang. The door to the dining room, where he was sitting, opened onto the corridor. He picked up the newspaper, adopted a studious pose and pretended to be immersed in his reading. Inside, though, he was beaming with pleasure. Abel walked down the corridor, said “Evening, Senhor Silvestre” and continued on to his room.

“Good evening, Senhor Abel,” answered Silvestre, then immediately abandoned the poor, weary newspaper and ran to set up the checkerboard.

Abel went into his room and made himself comfortable. He pulled on some old trousers, replaced his shoes with slippers and took off his jacket. He opened the suitcase where he kept his books, chose one, which he placed on the bed, and prepared to get down to work. No one else would call it work, but that's how Abel thought of it. He had before him the second volume of a French translation of
The Brothers Karamazov,
which he was rereading in order to clarify his thoughts after having read it for the first time. Before sitting down, he looked in vain for his cigarettes. He had smoked them all and forgotten to buy more. He left the room, quite prepared to get wet again rather than be left with nothing to smoke. As he passed the dining room door, he heard Silvestre ask:

“Going out again, Senhor Abel?”

Abel smiled and said:

“Yes, I've run out of cigarettes, so I'm just going down to the local bar to see if they have any.”

“I've got some here. I don't know if it's to your taste, though, it's shag tobacco.”

“Oh, that's fine by me. I'll smoke anything.”

“Help yourself!” said Silvestre, offering him the tobacco pouch and the packet of cigarette papers.

In doing so, he revealed the checkerboard he had kept hidden until then. Abel glanced at Silvestre and caught a look of anguished embarrassment in his eyes. Beneath Silvestre's critical gaze, he quickly rolled himself a cigarette and lit it. Out of pride now, Silvestre was trying to conceal the checkerboard with his body. Abel noticed that the glass fruit bowl, which usually stood in the center of the table, had been pushed to one side and that opposite Silvestre stood an empty chair. The chair, he realized, was intended for him. He murmured:

“Do you know, I fancy a game of checkers. What about you, Senhor Silvestre?”

Silvestre felt a slight tingling in the tip of his nose, a sure sign of excitement. Without quite knowing why, he felt that he and Abel had, at that moment, become very good friends. He said:

“I was just about to say the same thing.”

Abel went back to his room, put away his book and returned to the dining room.

Silvestre had already set out the pieces, placed the ashtray where Abel could reach it and had moved the table slightly so that the ceiling light wouldn't cast any shadows on the board.

They started playing. Silvestre was radiant. Abel, although less demonstrative, reflected Silvestre's contentment and continued to observe him intently.

Mariana finished her work and went to bed. The two men stayed on. At around midnight, after a particularly disastrous game for Abel, he declared:

“That's enough for tonight! You play much better than I do, I've learned that much!”

Silvestre looked slightly disappointed, but no more than that. They had been playing for quite a while and it would, he agreed, be best to stop. Abel picked up the tobacco, rolled another cigarette and, looking around the room, asked:

“Have you lived here long, Senhor Silvestre?”

“A good twenty years. I'm the oldest tenant.”

“And you obviously know the other tenants.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Decent people?”

“Some good, some bad. Well, it's the same the world over, isn't it?”

“Yes, it is.”

Abel began absent-mindedly piling up the checkers, alternating white and black pieces. Then he knocked the pile over and asked:

“And the man next door, I assume, isn't one of the better ones.”

“Oh, he's all right, just rather silent, and I don't usually like silent men, but he's not a bad sort. She's a real viper, though, and Spanish to boot.”

“What's that got to do with it?”

Silvestre regretted the sneering way in which he had said the word “Spanish”:

“I didn't mean it like that, but you know what they say: ‘From Spain expect only cold winds and cold wives.'”

“Ah, so you don't think they get on, then?”

“I know they don't. You hardly hear a peep out of him, but she's got a voice on her like a foghorn—I mean, she talks really loudly.”

Abel smiled at Silvestre's embarrassment and at his careful choice of vocabulary.

“What about the others?”

“Well, I don't understand the couple who live on the first floor left at all. He works for the local newspaper and is a real bastard. I'm sorry, but he is. She, poor thing, has looked as if she was at death's door for as long as I've known her. She gets thinner by the day.”

“Is she ill?”

“She's diabetic, at least that's what she told Mariana. But unless I'm very much mistaken, I reckon she's got TB. Their daughter died of meningitis, and after that, the mother aged about thirty years. As far as I can see, they're a very unhappy pair. She certainly is . . . And as for him, like I said, he's a real brute of a man. I mend his shoes because I have a living to make, but if I had my way . . .”

“And next door to them?”

Silvestre smiled mischievously: he thought that his lodger's interest in the other neighbors was really an excuse to find out more about their upstairs neighbor, and so he was quite put out when he heard Abel add:

“Well, I know about her, of course. What about the top floor?”

This, Silvestre thought, was taking curiosity too far, and yet, although Abel kept asking questions, he didn't really seem that interested.

“On the top floor right lives a man I really can't abide. You could turn him upside down and shake him and you wouldn't get a penny out of him, but anyone looking at him would take him for a . . . for a capitalist.”

“You don't seem to like capitalists,” said Abel, smiling.

Distrust suddenly made Silvestre take a mental step back. He said very slowly:

“I don't like or dislike them really. It was just a manner of speaking.”

Abel appeared not to hear.

“And the rest of the family?”

“The wife's a fool, it's always ‘my Anselmo this' and ‘my Anselmo that' . . . And the daughter, well, it's as clear as day that she's going to give her parents a fair few headaches later on. Especially since they absolutely dote on her.”

“How old is she?”

“She must be about twenty now. We know her as Claudinha. And let's hope I'm wrong.”

“And on the other side?”

“On the other side live four very respectable ladies. I think they had money once, but have fallen on hard times. They're educated folk. They don't stand on the landing gossiping, and that's quite something here. They keep themselves to themselves.”

Abel was now amusing himself arranging the pieces into a square. When Silvestre fell silent, Abel looked up expectantly, but Silvestre didn't feel like saying anything more. It seemed to him there was some other motive behind his lodger's questions and, although he had said nothing compromising, he regretted having talked so much. He remembered his initial suspicions and cursed his own gullibility. Abel's remark about him not liking capitalists bristled with potential booby traps.

The silence between them made Silvestre feel uncomfortable, which bothered him, especially since Abel seemed perfectly at ease. He had lined up the pieces along the length of the table now, like steppingstones in a river. This childish game irritated Silvestre. When the silence became unbearable, Abel gathered the pieces together with exasperating care and then, out of the blue, asked:

“Why didn't you follow up my references, Senhor Silvestre?”

The question dovetailed so well with Silvestre's own thoughts that he sat stunned for a few seconds, not knowing what to say. The only way he could think of to gain time was to take two glasses and a bottle from a cupboard and say: