Skylight

33

When, after much bureaucratic toing and froing and at vast expense, Emílio finally came home bearing all the documents that his wife and son needed in order to leave, Carmen almost jumped up and down with delight. The days of waiting had seemed to her like years. She had feared that some obstacle would force her to postpone the journey for longer than her impatience could bear. Now, though, there was nothing to fear. She kept leafing through her passport with childlike curiosity. She read it from cover to cover. Everything was in order, she just had to decide on a date and forewarn her parents. Had it been up to her, she would have left the very next day and sent a telegram, but there were still the suitcases to be packed. Emílio helped her, and the evenings taken up with this task were some of the happiest they had spent together as a family. Henrique, quite unwittingly, cast a pall over the general mood of contentment when he expressed his regret that his father would not be coming with them. However, once Carmen and Emílio’s combined efforts and combined goodwill had convinced him that this was a matter of no importance, he soon forgot about that minor cloud. If his parents were happy, then he should be too. If his parents did not weep as they apportioned clothes and other personal items, it would be absurd for him to cry. After just three of these evening sessions, everything was ready. The suitcases already bore the wooden labels with Carmen’s name and destination on them. Emílio bought the tickets and told his wife that they would sort out these matters on her return, for, since her parents had promised to pay for the tickets and Emílio had been obliged to borrow money in order to buy them, there would have to be a settling of accounts. Carmen assured him that she would send him the money as soon as she arrived, so that he would not get into any financial difficulties. Both husband and wife took great pains to be as considerate to each other as possible, and so Henrique had the joy of spending those last few hours with his parents reconciled and more communicative than he had ever seen them before.

Carmen learned what had happened to Dona Lídia only the day before her departure. On the pretext of wishing Carmen a safe journey, Rosália spent a large part of the morning telling her about Paulino’s justifiable anger. She explained the reasons and, entirely on her own initiative, suggested that this was not the first time Lídia had abused Senhor Morais’s good faith. She was prodigal in her praise of her daughter’s employer and the delicate, noble way in which he had dealt with the whole affair. And she was quick to mention, too, that after only one month in her new post, Claudinha had already received a wage increase.

At the time, Carmen merely expressed the natural dismay of anyone hearing such a sorry tale. She shared Rosália’s outrage, bemoaned the immoral behavior of certain women and, like her neighbor, rejoiced privately that she was not like them. When Rosália left, she realized that she was still thinking about the affair, which would be fine if she wasn’t about to leave the next day and if it didn’t distract her from other concerns. What did it matter that Dona Lídia, about whom she personally had no complaints (on the contrary, Dona Lídia had been very kind to her and always gave Henriquinho ten tostões for running errands for her), what did it matter to her that she had committed such a vile act?

The act in itself did not matter, but the consequences did. After what had happened, Paulino would never be able to return to Lídia’s apartment: it would be too shameful. And somehow or other Carmen felt that she was in the same situation as Paulino, or almost. No public scandal separated her and her husband, but they shared a whole past life, a difficult, disagreeable life, full of resentments and enmities, violent scenes and painful reconciliations. Paulino had left, doubtless for good. She was leaving too, but would be back in three months. But what if she didn’t come back? What if she stayed in her hometown with her son and her family?

When she admitted this as a possibility, when she thought that she might never come back, she felt quite dizzy. What could be simpler? She would say nothing now, but would set off with her son and, when she arrived in Spain, write a letter to her husband, telling him of her decision. And then? She would start all over again from the beginning, as if she had just been born. Portugal, Emílio and their marriage would merely be a nightmare that had dragged on for years. And perhaps later she could… although they would have to divorce, of course… yes, perhaps later… It was then that Carmen remembered that, as the law stood, she could not stay abroad without her husband’s consent. She was leaving with his authorization, and she could only stay on with his authorization.

These thoughts clouded her happiness. She would, of course, leave anyway, but the temptation not to come back made her happiness almost painful. Would it not be the worst of punishments to have to return to Lisbon after three months of freedom? To condemn herself to spending the rest of her life putting up with the presence and the words, the voice and the shadow, of her husband, would that not be like going down into hell again after having regained paradise? She would have to fight constantly to keep her son’s love. And when her son (Carmen’s imagination vaulted over the years) — and when her son married, it would be even worse because she would have to live alone with her husband. Everything would be resolved if he would agree to a divorce. But what if, on a whim or out of sheer malice, he forced her to return?

All day she was tormented by these thoughts. She had forgotten the good times in their marriage, of which there had been a few. She could think only of Emílio’s cold, ironic gaze, his censorious silence, his permanent look of a man who has failed and doesn’t care who knows it, who makes of his failure a placard that everyone can read.

Night fell without her having moved a step closer to finding answers to the questions that kept surfacing in her mind. She was so silent that her husband asked if something was worrying her. No, nothing, she said. She was just excited about their imminent departure. Emílio understood and did not insist. He felt excited too. In a few hours’ time he would be free. Three whole months of solitude, freedom and an unencumbered life…

They left the next day. All the neighbors knew they were leaving and almost all came to the windows to watch. Carmen said goodbye to those neighbors with whom she was on good terms and got into the car with her husband and son. They reached the station shortly before the train was due to leave. They just had time to put the luggage on board, take their seats and say their farewells. Henrique barely had time to cry. The train vanished into the mouth of the tunnel, leaving behind it a cloud of white smoke that dissolved into the air, like a white handkerchief swallowed up by the distance.

It was his first day of freedom. Emílio wandered the city for hours. He discovered places he had never known existed, had lunch in a cheap restaurant in Alcântara and looked so happy that the owner charged him double for the meal. Emílio uttered not a word of protest and even left a tip. He caught a cab back to the Baixa, bought some foreign cigarettes and, when he walked past an expensive restaurant, cursed himself for having had lunch at that other, cheaper place. He went to the movies and, during intermission, drank a coffee and struck up a conversation with a stranger who, on the subject of coffee, discoursed at length on his terrible stomach problems.

When the film ended, he followed a woman out into the street, but soon lost sight of her, not that he cared. He stood on the pavement, smiling up at the tall monument in Praça dos Restauradores. In one leap, he thought, he could reach the very top, but he didn’t make that leap. He spent more than ten minutes watching the traffic policeman and listening to his whistle. He found everything amusing and looked at people and things as if seeing them for the first time, as if he had recovered his sight after years of blindness. Approached by a young man trying to persuade passersby to have their photo taken, he promptly agreed. He took up his position and, at a signal from the photographer, walked straight ahead, with a determined step and a smile on his face.

He had dinner that night at the expensive restaurant. The food was good, so was the wine. He had very little money left after all these extravagances, but he didn’t regret it. He didn’t regret anything. He had done nothing that merited any feelings of regret. He was free, not as free as the birds, who have no obligations or duties, but as free as he could hope to be. When he left the restaurant, all the neon signs in the Rossio were blazing out. He looked at them, one by one, as if they were the stars of the Annunciation. There was the sewing machine, the two watches, the glass of port wine that emptied of its own accord, the carriage that never went anywhere, with its two horses, one blue, one white. And down below were the two fountains with their fishtailed ladies holding cornucopias so parsimonious that only water poured forth from them. And there were the statue of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico and the columns of the Teatro Nacional, and the cars trundling over the tarmac roads, and the cries of the newspaper vendors and the pure air of freedom.

He returned home late, feeling slightly weary. The few glum streetlamps cast only the dimmest of lights. All the windows were closed and dark. As were his.

When he opened the door, he was immediately aware of the uncanny silence. He walked from room to room, leaving the lights on behind him and the doors open, like a child. Not that he was afraid, of course, but the stillness, the absence of familiar voices, the vaguely expectant atmosphere, made him feel uneasy. He sat down on the bed of which he would be the sole occupant for the months of May, June, July and possibly part of August. What better time to savor freedom! Sun, heat, fresh air. He would go to the beach every Sunday and lie in the sun like a lizard just woken from its winter sleep. He would stare up at the cloudless blue sky. He would take long walks in the countryside. The woods of Sintra, the Castelo dos Mouros, the beaches on the opposite shore. He would do all these things alone. All that and more, things he could not even imagine now, because he had lost the habit of imagining. He was like a bird who, on seeing the cage door open, hesitates before making the leap that will carry it beyond the bars.

The silence in the apartment closed about him like a hand. All his plans, whatever they might be, would have to be paid for. He had to work very hard and that would eat up his time. But he would work more enthusiastically, and if he had to cut back on anything it would be food. He now regretted the expensive supper and the foreign cigarettes, but it was, after all, only the first day, and it was natural that he should get carried away. Others, in his place, might have done much worse.

He got up and went to turn out the lights before returning to bed. He felt bewildered, like someone who has won the lottery and doesn’t know what to do with the money. He discovered that, having achieved his longed-for freedom, he now had no idea how to enjoy it. The plans he had made earlier seemed paltry and frivolous. He would simply be doing alone what he had done with his family. He would be visiting the same places, sitting under the same trees, lying on the same sand. That wasn’t good enough. He had to do something more important than that, something he could look back on when his wife and son returned. But what? Orgies? Drunken sprees? Love affairs? He had experienced those things when he was single, and had no desire to revisit them. He knew that such excesses always leave a bitter, melancholy aftertaste of regret. To repeat them would be to sully his freedom. However, apart from going on a few outings and indulging his baser instincts, he couldn’t see how else to fill the months that lay before him. He wanted something loftier, more dignified, but didn’t know what that might be.

He lit another cigarette, then got undressed and lay down on the bed. There was only one pillow: it was as if he were a widower or a bachelor or divorced. And he thought: “What am I going to do tomorrow? Well, I have to go to the shop. In the morning I’ll do a round of my customers. I need to get some really substantial orders in. And in the afternoon? The movies perhaps? No, that’s a sheer waste of time. There are no films worth watching. But if I don’t go to the movies, where will I go? For a walk, I suppose, somewhere or other. But where? Lisbon is a city where you can only really live if you’ve got plenty of money. If you don’t, then you have to work to fill up the time and earn enough to eat. And I don’t earn that much. And at night? What will I do at night? The movies again? Great! It looks like I’m going to spend my days watching films, as if there were nothing else to see or do! And what about money? Just because I’m on my own doesn’t mean I can stop eating and paying the rent. I’m free, yes, but what’s the use of freedom if I don’t have the means to make the most of it? If I continue in this vein, I’ll end up wishing they were back…”

He sat up in bed, feeling anxious: “I’ve so longed for this day, and I enjoyed it thoroughly until I came home, but the moment I got here, my head started filling up with these idiotic thoughts. Have I become like one of those battered wives who, despite the beatings, can’t live without their husbands? That would be stupid, absurd. It would be positively comical to have spent all these years longing for my freedom and, after only one day, feel like running back to the very person who had deprived me of it.” He took a long drag on his cigarette and murmured:

“It’s all a question of habit. Smoking’s bad for the health too, but do I give that up? No. And yet I could if the doctor said to me: ‘Smoking is killing you.’ Man is a creature of habit, and all this indecision is just one of the consequences of habit. I simply haven’t gotten used yet to being free.”

Reassured by this conclusion, he lay down again. He aimed his cigarette end at the ashtray and missed. It rolled across the marble top of the bedside table and onto the floor. To prove to himself that he was a free man, he made no attempt to pick it up. The cigarette gradually burned down, scorching the wooden floor. The smoke rose slowly, and the lighted end disappeared into ash. Emílio pulled the bedclothes up around his ears and turned out the light. The apartment grew still more silent. “It’s a new habit… the habit of freedom. A starving man would die if you gave him too much food at once. His stomach would have to get used to it first…” Then sleep abruptly overwhelmed him.

It was late morning when he woke. He rubbed his eyes and felt a pang of hunger. He was about to open his mouth and call out to his wife when he remembered that she had left and he was alone. He leaped out of bed. Barefoot, he ran through all the rooms. No one. He was alone, just as he had wanted to be. But he didn’t think, as he had when he went to bed, that he didn’t know how to enjoy his freedom. He thought only that he was free. And he laughed. He washed, shaved, got dressed, picked up his sample case and went out into the street, and he did all these things as if he were dreaming.

It was a bright morning of clear skies and warm sun. The buildings were ugly and so were the people walking past. The buildings were tethered to the earth and all the passersby looked like condemned men and women. Emílio laughed again. He was free. With money or without, he was free. Even if all he could do was take the same steps he had taken before and see what he had seen before, he was free.

He pushed back his hat as if bothered by the shadow it cast. And then he set off down the street, with a new light in his eye and a bird singing in his heart.