Skylight

4

“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.

Gradually the noises died away, leaving the expectant silence that precedes sleep. Then the silence thickened. Only Maria Cláudia was still awake. She always had difficulty falling asleep. She had enjoyed the film. At the cinema during intermission, a boy had kept looking at her. On the way out, he had come right up to her, so close she had felt his breath on the back of her neck. What she didn’t understand was why he hadn’t followed her, otherwise what was the point of looking at her so insistently. She forgot about the cinema then and turned, instead, to her visit to Dona Lídia’s apartment. She was so pretty. “Much prettier than me,” she thought. She was sorry not to be more like Dona Lídia. Then she remembered the car she had seen parked outside. She was suddenly on tenterhooks, quite incapable now of going to sleep. She had no idea what time it was, but reckoned it couldn’t be far off two o’clock. Like everyone else in the building, she knew that Dona Lídia’s night visitor usually left at about two in the morning. Whether because of the film, the boy or that morning’s visit to Dona Lídia, she felt brimful of curiosity, even though she found that curiosity wrong and inappropriate. She waited. Minutes later, coming from the floor below, she heard the sound of a bolt being drawn and a door opening, followed by the vague sound of voices and footsteps going down the stairs.

Gingerly, so as not to wake her parents, Maria Cláudia slipped out of bed and tiptoed over to the window, where she peered around the curtain. The car was still parked opposite. She saw a bulky male figure cross the street and get into the car.

The car set off and soon disappeared from view.