Skylight

10

Reclining on two pillows and still somewhat drugged with sleep, Caetano Cunha was waiting for his lunch. The light from the bedside lamp left half his face in darkness and emphasized the ruddy glow of his illuminated cheek. With a cigarette in one corner of his mouth, one eye half closed against the smoke, he looked like a villain from a gangster film whom the scriptwriter had abandoned in the inner room of some sinister house. To his right, on the dresser, the photograph of a little girl was smiling at him with unnerving concentration.

Caetano was not looking at the photo, therefore his smile had nothing to do with his daughter’s. The smile in the photo bore no resemblance to his. The one in the photo was open and happy, and it was only its fixed quality that made one uneasy. Caetano’s smile was lubricious, almost repellent. When grownups smile like that, they should not do so in the presence of children’s smiles, even smiles in photographs.

After leaving work, Caetano had had a little “adventure,” a sordid adventure — the kind he liked best. That’s why he was smiling. He enjoyed the good things of life and enjoyed them twice over, once when he was experiencing them and again in retrospect.

Justina came in at that point and spoiled the second part of his pleasure. She entered carrying the lunch tray and placed it on her husband’s lap. Caetano stared at her mockingly, his eyes bright. The lampshade was red and so the whites of his eyes glowed bloodily, reinforcing the malice in his gaze.

Justina was oblivious to his stare, just as she was to the fixity of her daughter’s smile, having grown used to both. She returned to the kitchen, where a frugal, insipid, diabetic lunch awaited her. She ate alone. Her husband was never there for supper, except on Tuesdays, his day off; and at lunch they ate separately, he in bed and she in the kitchen.

The cat leapt up from his cushion beside the fireplace, where he had lain dreaming and drowsing. He arched his back and, tail aloft, rubbed against Justina’s legs. Caetano called to him. The cat jumped onto the bed and stared at his owner, slowly twitching his tail. His green eyes, unaffected by the red light, were fixed on the plates of food on the tray. He was waiting for his friendliness to be rewarded. He knew perfectly well that the only thing he ever got from Caetano were beatings, but he nonetheless persisted. Perhaps in his cat brain he was curious to find out when, if ever, his owner would tire of hitting him. Caetano was not tired yet: he picked up a slipper and threw it. The cat was quicker than he and escaped in one bound. Caetano laughed.

The silence that filled the apartment from top to bottom, like a solid block, shattered at the sound of his laughter. Unaccustomed as it was to the noise, the furniture seemed to shrink in upon itself. The cat, forgetting that he was hungry, and still frightened by that loud guffaw, retreated once more into the oblivion of sleep. Justina remained unmoved, as if she had heard nothing. At home, she spoke only when necessary, and she did not consider it necessary to take the cat’s part. She lived inside herself, as if she were dreaming a dream with no beginning or end, a dream about nothing and from which she did not wish to awaken, a dream composed of clouds that drifted silently past, covering a sky she had long since forgotten.