Skylight (20 page)

Silvestre rolled another cigarette. His hands were shaking slightly and he avoided Abel's eyes:

“One of them died. I only caught a glimpse of his face, but he was very young. He was left lying in the road. A very cold, fine drizzle was falling, and the streets were full of mud. The police arrived, and we ran away before they could identify us. We never found out who had killed the lad.”

A heavy silence fell, as if the dead man had come and sat down between them. Silvestre kept his head lowered. Abel cleared his throat and asked:

“And then?”

“Well, it went on like that for years. Later, I got married. Mariana had a pretty tough time on my account, but she always suffered in silence. She thought I was doing the right thing and never criticized me, never tried to divert me from my path. I owe her that. The years passed, and here I am, an old man.”

Silvestre went into the apartment and returned shortly afterward bearing the bottle of cherry brandy and two glasses:

“Would you like a drink to warm you up?”

“I would.”

With their glasses full, the two men fell silent.

“So,” said Abel a few minutes later.

“So what?”

“Where is this ‘way of seeing life'?”

“You haven't worked it out for yourself yet?”

“Possibly, but I'd prefer you to tell me.”

Silvestre drank his cherry brandy down in one, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said:

“If you haven't worked it out for yourself, that means I've failed to tell you what I feel. Nothing surprising about that. There are some things that are very difficult to put into words. We think we've said all there is to say, and it turns out . . .”

“Now don't run away.”

“I'm not. I learned to see beyond the soles of these shoes. I learned that behind this wretched life we lead there is a great ideal, a great hope. I learned that each individual life should be guided by that hope and by that ideal. And people who don't feel that must have died before they were born.” He smiled and added: “Those aren't my words. It's something I heard someone else say years ago.”

“In your view, then, I belong to the group who died before they were born?”

“No, you belong to another group, the ones who haven't yet been born.”

“Aren't you forgetting about all
my
experience of life?”

“Not at all, but experience is only worth anything when it's useful to other people, and you're not useful to anyone.”

“I agree that I'm not useful, but in what way has your life been useful?”

“I tried to do something, and even if I failed, at least I tried.”

“You tried in your own way, yes, but who's to say it was the best way?”

“Almost everyone nowadays would say it was the worst. Is that the group you belong to?”

“To be perfectly honest, I don't know.”

“You don't know? At your age and after everything you've seen and been through, you still don't know?”

Abel could not look Silvestre in the eye and lowered his head.

“How can you not know?” Silvestre said again. “Has twelve years of living the way you've been living not shown you how badly people live? The poverty, the hunger, the ignorance, the fear?”

“Yes, but times have changed . . .”

“Yes, times have changed, but people haven't.”

“Some have died. Your friend Abel, for example.”

“But others have been born. My other friend Abel, for example, Abel Nogueira.”

“Now you're contradicting yourself. Just now you were saying I belonged to the group who haven't yet been born.”

Silvestre again drew the bench closer to him, picked up the shoe and resumed his work. With a tremor in his voice, he said:

“Perhaps you didn't understand me.”

“I understand you better than you think.”

“Don't you agree that I'm right, then?”

Abel got to his feet and looked out through the glass panes at the back yard. It was a dark night. He opened the window. All was shadows and silence, but there were stars in the sky. From horizon to horizon the Milky Way unfurled its luminous path. And from the city, rising to the heavens, came a dull volcanic rumble.

With the natural vitality of a six-year-old, Henrique made a rapid recovery. And yet, despite the relatively benign nature of the illness, his character seemed to have undergone a radical change. Perhaps the experience of being showered with care and affection had made him more than usually sensitive. At the slightest harsh word, his eyes would well up and he would burst into tears.

The once lively, playful boy had become prudent and sensible. In his father's company he was always serious and silent. He would gaze at him tenderly, in dumb, passionate admiration, even though this sudden interest went unreciprocated and his father was no more affectionate toward him than usual. What attracted Henrique now was exactly what had repelled him before: his father's silence, his few words, his absent air. For reasons unknown to him, and which he would not have understood had he known them, his father had kept vigil at his bedside. His presence there, the anxious yet reserved look on his face, the hostile atmosphere filling the apartment, plus the new receptiveness and keener perception brought on by illness—all these factors, in some obscure way, drove him toward his father. One of the many doors in his small brain, which had until then remained closed, had inched open. Without being conscious of doing so, he had taken a step toward maturity. He began to notice the lack of harmony in the family.

He had, of course, witnessed violent rows between his parents on other occasions, but he had done so as an indifferent spectator, as if he were watching a game that in no way affected him. Not now, though. He was still under the influence of the illness and his weak state, and prior to that he had become, quite against his will, sensitized to the various manifestations of that latent conflict. The prism through which he viewed his parents had shifted very slightly, but enough for him to be able to see them differently. This would inevitably have happened sooner or later, but the illness had sped up the process.

His mother remained undiminished in his eyes, his view of her unchanged, but he saw his father in a different light. Henrique was far too young to realize that the change had taken place inside himself; it must, therefore, have been his father who had changed. In the absence of any real explanation, Henrique had to think back to the care his father had lavished on him during his illness. This then made sense to him. And so Henrique's sudden interest in his father was merely a way of reciprocating his father's interest in him, not now, but then; it was an acknowledgment, a show of gratitude. Each age in life seizes upon the easiest and most immediate explanation available.

This interest manifested itself in both sensible and nonsensical ways. At mealtimes, Henrique's chair was always drawn slightly closer to his father's chair than to his mother's. When, at night, Emílio was sorting through his paperwork—the various orders and invoices he had picked up during the day—his son would stand leaning on the table, watching him. If a piece of paper fell to the floor—and Henrique longed with all his heart for this to happen—he would rush to pick it up, and if his father smiled at him gratefully, Henrique was the happiest of children. There was an even greater happiness, though, one that admitted of no comparison: this was when his father placed a hand on his head. At such moments, Henrique almost fainted.

His son's sudden and apparently inexplicable interest provoked two different and contrary reactions in Emílio. At first he found it very touching. His life was so barren of affection, so removed from love, he felt so isolated, that these small attentions, his son's constant presence at his side, his stubborn devotion to him, touched him deeply. Then he saw how dangerous it was: his son's interest, his own feelings, only made his decision to leave more difficult. He hardened his heart, tried to distance himself from his son, emphasizing the character traits most likely to discourage him. Henrique, however, did not give up. Had Emílio resorted to violence, he might have driven him away, but he couldn't do that. He had never hit him and never would, even if administering such a beating were the price he must pay for his own freedom. He felt almost sick to think that he could attack Henrique with the same hand that had caressed him and which Henrique loved because of that caress.

Emílio thought too much. His brain attached itself to all kinds of things, went over and over the same problems, plunged into them, drowned in them, so that, in the end, his own thoughts became the problem. He forgot what was really important to him and went off in search of motives, reasons. Life was rushing past him and yet he paid it no attention. The matter to be resolved was there, but he could not see it. Even if it could have shouted to him, “Here I am! Over here!,” he would not have heard it. Now, instead of looking for a way of distancing himself from his son, he started pondering the reasons for his son's sudden interest in him. And when he could find none, his brain, caught in the web of his subconscious, produced only a superstitious explanation: his son's illness had gotten worse after he announced to him that he was planning to leave, and this was why Henrique, frightened by the prospect of losing him, was showing all this unexpected interest in him. When he emerged from this paralyzing quagmire of thoughts, Emílio realized how irrational this conclusion was: Henrique had barely heard what he had said, he had paid about as much attention to it as to a passing fly, forgotten almost as soon as it was seen. Besides, he had not heard his final, definitive, irrevocable words, because by then he had fallen asleep. Here, though, Emílio's brain set off once more along the tightrope of his subconscious: words spoken, even if not heard, remain hanging in the air, hovering in the atmosphere, and can, so to speak, be inhaled and have as much effect as if they had found in their path ears that could hear them. A foolish, superstitious conclusion, woven out of evil omens and mysteries.

What was happening was further proof to Carmen of her husband's perverse nature. Not content with having denied her any happiness, he was now trying to steal her one remaining possession, the love of her son. She fought against Emílio's dastardly plans. She heaped affection on her son, but Henrique gave more importance to a simple glance from his father than to all his mother's exuberant displays of affection. In despair, Carmen even came to believe that her husband must have bewitched him, given him some potion to drink that had changed his feelings. And once she had this idea lodged in her head, she knew what to do. In secret, she submitted the boy to prayers and incense, terrifying him with threats of beatings if he breathed so much as a word to his father.

Troubled by these weird ceremonies, Henrique became more nervous and excitable. Frightened by her threats, he drew closer to his father.

All Carmen's efforts were in vain: no amount of witchcraft or affection could divert her son from his obstinate obsession. She became aggressive toward him. She began to find reasons to hit him. The smallest misdemeanor was rewarded with a slap. She knew what she was doing was wrong, but couldn't help herself. When, after hitting him, she saw him crying, she would cry too, but alone and out of anger and remorse. She wanted to beat and beat him until she could beat him no more, although she knew that she would regret forever having done such a thing. She had lost all self-control. She felt like committing some monstrous act, smashing everything around her, rampaging through the apartment kicking the furniture and punching the walls, screaming at her husband and shaking and slapping him. Her nerves were constantly on edge, she had lost all sense of prudence, as well as the vague fear that married women have of their husbands.

One night at supper, Henrique moved his stool so close to his father's that Carmen felt a wave of anger rise in her throat. She felt as if her head were about to burst. Everything around her was swaying and dancing, and in order not to fall she instinctively grabbed hold of the edge of the table, knocking over a bottle in the process. This accident, the shattering of glass, was the lit fuse that allowed her rage to explode. Almost screaming, she said:

“
¡Estoy harta!
I've had enough!”

Emílio, who was eating his soup and had not reacted to the bottle falling over, looked up serenely, regarded his wife with his pale, cold eyes and asked:

“Enough of what?”

Before answering, Carmen shot such a furious glance at her son that he shrank back and clung to his father's arm:

“Enough of you! Enough of this apartment! Enough of your son! I've had enough of this life! I've had enough, I tell you!”

“Well, you know what the solution is.”

“That's exactly what you'd like, isn't it? For me to leave.
¡Pero no iré!
I won't go!”

“Fine, as you wish.”

“And what if I did want to go?”

“Don't worry, I wouldn't come looking for you.”

He accompanied these words with a mocking laugh, which to Carmen was worse than a slap in the face. Certain that she would wound her husband deeply, she retorted:

“You might come looking for me . . . because if I leave, I won't leave alone!”

“What do you mean?”

“I'll take my son with me!”

Emílio felt Henrique's hand grip his arm still harder. He glanced down at him, saw his trembling lips and moist eyes, and was filled with a feeling of intense pity and tenderness. He tried to spare his son this degrading spectacle:

“This is a completely stupid conversation. Haven't you noticed that your son is here listening?”

“
¡No me importa!
I don't care! And don't pretend you don't know what I mean!”

“That's enough!”

“Only when I say so!”