Skylight (12 page)

“Do you like cherry brandy?”

“I do.”

“With a cherry or without?”

“With.”

He filled their glasses while he was pondering what to say, but became so absorbed in getting the cherries out of the jar that, by the time he'd done so, he still hadn't come up with an answer. Abel sniffed his drink and said innocently:

“You haven't answered my question.”

“Ah, yes, your question!” Silvestre's discomfort was obvious. “I didn't follow them up because . . . because at the time I didn't think it was necessary.”

He said this in such a way that any attentive listener would understand that he now had his doubts. Abel understood.

“And do you still think that?”

Feeling cornered, Silvestre tried to go on the attack:

“You're a bit of a mind reader, aren't you, Senhor Abel?”

“No, I'm simply in the habit of listening to what people say and how they say it. It's not hard. Anyway, do you or do you not distrust me?”

“Why would I distrust you?”

“That's what I'm hoping to find out. I gave you the chance to check up on me, and you chose not to . . .” He took a sip of his drink, smacked his lips and, with his smiling eyes fixed on Silvestre, asked: “Or would you prefer me to tell you?”

Silvestre, his curiosity aroused, could not help leaning slightly forward in interested anticipation. Abel added:

“Although, of course, who's to say I'm not pulling the wool over your eyes?”

Silvestre suddenly understood how a mouse must feel when caught between the paws of a cat. He had a strong desire to put the young man firmly in his place, but that desire quickly melted away and he didn't know what to say. Abel, however, as if he hadn't really expected an answer to either of his questions, went on:

“I like you, Senhor Silvestre. I like your home and your wife and I feel very comfortable here. I may not stay long, but when I leave, I will take some very good memories with me. I noticed from the very first day that you, whom I already, if I may, consider to be my friend . . . Am I right to do that?”

Silvestre, busy biting into his cherry, nodded.

“Thank you,” said Abel. “I noticed a certain initial distrust, mainly in the way you looked at me. Whatever the reason for that distrust, I feel it's only fair that I should tell you about myself. It's true that, alongside that distrust, there was a touching warmth. I can still see that combination of warmth and distrust in your face . . .”

Silvestre's expression shifted from warmth to unalloyed distrust and back again, and Abel watched this putting on and taking off of masks with an amused smile.

“And there they both are. When I've finished telling you my tale, I hope to see only warmth. So let's get straight on with the story. May I take a little more of your tobacco?”

Silvestre had now eaten his cherry, but did not feel it necessary to respond. He was slightly put out by the young man's lack of ceremony and was afraid that, had he responded, he might have done so somewhat brusquely.

“It's rather a long story,” said Abel, having lit his cigarette, “but I'll try and keep it short. It's getting late and I don't want to exhaust your patience. I'm twenty-eight now and have still not done my military service. I have no fixed profession, and you'll soon see why. I'm single and unattached and know the dangers and advantages of freedom and solitude and am equally at home with both. I've been living like this for twelve years, since I was sixteen. My memories of childhood are of no interest here, partly because I'm not yet old enough to enjoy recounting them, but also because they would do nothing to contribute to either your distrust or your warmth. I was a good student at junior and senior school. I was well liked by both classmates and teachers, which is quite rare. There was, I can assure you, nothing calculated about this; I neither flattered my teachers nor kowtowed to my classmates. Anyway, I reached the age of sixteen, at which point I . . . Ah, but I haven't yet told you that I was an only child and lived with my parents. You're free to imagine what you like now: that they both died in some disaster or that they separated because they could no longer bear to live with each other. You choose. It comes down to the same thing anyway: I was left alone. If you choose the second option, you'll say that I could have continued living with one of them. Imagine, then, that I didn't want to live with either of them. Perhaps because I didn't love them. Perhaps because I loved them both equally and couldn't choose between them. Think what you like, because, as I say, it comes to the same thing: I was left alone. At sixteen—can you remember being sixteen?—life is a wonderful thing, at least for some people. I can see from your face that, for you, life at that age wasn't wonderful at all. It was for me, unfortunately, and I say ‘unfortunately' because it didn't help me at all. I left school and looked for work. Some relatives in the country asked me to go and live with them. I refused. I had taken a bite out of the fruit of freedom and solitude and wasn't prepared to let them take it away from me. I didn't know at the time how very bitter that fruit can be sometimes. Am I boring you?”

Silvestre folded his strong arms and said:

“You know very well you're not.”

Abel smiled.

“You're right. Onward. For a sixteen-year-old boy who wants to set up on his own, but who knows nothing—and what I knew was as good as nothing—finding work isn't easy, even if you're not that choosy. And I wasn't choosy. I just grabbed the first thing that came my way, which was an ad for an assistant in a cake shop. There were a lot of applicants, I found out later, but the owner chose me. I was lucky. Perhaps my clean suit and my good manners helped. I tested this theory out later on, when I tried to find another job. I turned up looking like a scruffy, badly brought-up kid, and as people say nowadays, enough said. They hardly looked at me. Anyway, my wages at the cake shop just about kept me from starving, and I had accumulated enough reserves from sixteen years of being well fed to survive. When those reserves were exhausted, the only thing I could do was fill up on my boss's cakes. I can't so much as look at a cake now without wanting to throw up. Could I have another cherry brandy?”

Silvestre filled his glass. Abel took a sip and went on:

“If I keep going into so much detail, we'll be here all night. It's past one o'clock already, and I'm only on my first job. I've had loads, which is what I meant when I said that I have no fixed profession. At the moment, I'm clerk of works on a building site over in Areeiro. Tomorrow, I don't know what I'll be. Unemployed possibly. It wouldn't be the first time. I don't know if you've ever been without work, without money or a place to live. I have. Once, it coincided with a medical inspection to see if I was fit enough to do my military service. I was in such a debilitated state that they rejected me outright. I was one of those men the nation did not want. I didn't care, to be honest, although a couple of years of guaranteed bed and board does have its attractions. I managed to get a job shortly afterward, though. You'll laugh when I tell you what it was. I was employed as a salesman, selling a marvelous tea that could cure all ills. Funny, don't you think? You certainly would've found it funny if you'd heard me talking about it. I have never lied so much in my life, and I hadn't realized how many people are prepared to believe lies. I traveled all over the country, selling my miraculous tea to whoever would believe me. I never felt guilty about it. The tea didn't do any harm, I can assure you, and my words gave such hope to those who bought it that I reckon they might still owe me money, because hope is beyond price . . .”

Silvestre nodded in agreement.

“You agree, don't you? Well, there you have it, there hardly seems any point in telling you much more about my life. I've been cold and starving. I've known excess and privation. I've eaten like a wolf who can't be sure he'll catch anything tomorrow and I've fasted as if determined to starve myself to death. And here I am. I've lived in every part of this city. I've slept in dormitories where you can count the fleas and the bedbugs in their millions. I've even set up ‘home' with certain good ladies of whom there are hundreds in Lisbon. Apart from the cakes I stole from my first employer, I've only ever stolen once, and that was in the Jardim da Estrela. I was hungry, and as someone who knows what hunger is, I can safely say that I had never been that hungry before. A pretty little girl came over to me. No, it's not what you're thinking. She was only about four years old at most. And if I describe her as pretty, that's perhaps to make up for having robbed her. She was carrying a slice of bread and butter, almost uneaten. Her parents or her nursemaid must have been around somewhere, but I didn't even think about that. She didn't scream or cry, and a few moments later I was standing behind the church eating my bread and butter . . .”

There was a glimmer of tears in Silvestre's eyes.

“And I've always paid my rent, so you don't need to worry about that.”

Silvestre shrugged. He wanted Abel to go on talking, because he liked listening to him and, more than that, he still didn't know how to answer his question. There was something he wanted to ask, but he feared it might be too soon to do so. Abel preempted him:

“This is only the second time I've told anyone this story. The first time was to a woman. I thought she would understand, but women never understand anything. I was wrong to tell her. She wanted to settle down and thought she could hold on to me. She was wrong about that. I don't even know why I've told my story to you now. Perhaps because I like your face, perhaps because I haven't spoken about it for some years and needed to get it off my chest. Or perhaps for some other reason. I don't know . . .”

“You told me so that I would stop distrusting you,” said Silvestre.

“No, it wasn't that. Plenty of people have distrusted me, but never heard my story. It was possibly the lateness of the hour, the game of checkers, the book I would be reading if I hadn't joined you in here. Who can say? Whatever the reason, you now know all about my life.”

Silvestre scratched his unruly head of hair with both hands. Then he filled his glass and drank it down all at once. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and asked:

“Why do you live like this? And forgive me if I'm being indiscreet . . .”

“No, not at all. I live like this because I want to. I live like this because I don't want to live any other way. Life as other people understand it has no value for me. I don't want to be trapped, and life is an octopus with many tentacles. It just takes one to trap a man. Whenever I start to feel trapped, I cut off the tentacle. Sometimes that's painful, but there's no other way. Do you understand?”

“I understand perfectly, but that doesn't lead anywhere useful.”

“I'm not interested in usefulness.”

“You must have hurt a few people along the way.”

“I've done my best not to, but when there's no alternative, I don't hesitate.”

“You're a hard man!”

“Hard? No, I'm really fragile. And it's probably my fragility that makes me avoid any ties that bind. If I give myself, if I allow myself to be trapped, I'll be lost.”

“But one day . . . Look, I'm an old man, and I have experience of life . . .”

“So do I.”

“Mine is the experience of many years . . .”

“And what does it tell you?”

“It tells me that life, as you said, does indeed have many tentacles, but however often you cut them off, there's always one that resists, and that's the one that ends up getting a hold of you.”

“I didn't think you were so . . . how can I put it?”

“Philosophical? As someone once said, all cobblers have a little of the philosopher in them . . .”

They both smiled. Abel looked at the clock:

“It's two in the morning, Senhor Silvestre. It's long past our bedtime. But first I wanted to say something else. I started living like this on a whim, I continued out of conviction, and I continue still out of curiosity.”

“I don't understand.”

“You will. I have a sense that life, real life, is hidden behind a curtain, roaring with laughter at our efforts to get to know it. And I want to know life.”

Silvestre gave a gentle, slightly weary smile:

“But there's so much to do on this side of the curtain, my friend. Even if you lived for a thousand years and experienced everything that everyone had experienced, you would never know life!”

“You may be right, but it's still too early to give up the struggle.”

He got to his feet and held out his hand to Silvestre:

“See you tomorrow!”

“Yes, see you tomorrow . . . my friend.”

Left alone, Silvestre slowly rolled a cigarette. The same gentle, weary smile was on his lips. He was staring down at the tabletop, as if figures from a distant past were moving across it.

From Adriana's diary:

 

Sunday, 3/23/52, half past ten at night. It's been raining all day. You would never know it was spring. I remember lovely spring days when we were children and they started being lovely from March 21st onward. It's the 23rd now and it's done nothing but rain. Maybe it's the weather, but I don't feel at all well. I haven't even been out. My mother and aunt went to visit some cousins in Campolide after lunch. They arrived home soaked to the skin. My aunt was in a bad mood because of something that was said, I've no idea what. They brought some cakes back for us, but I didn't eat any. Isaura didn't want them either. It's been a really boring day. Isaura has barely put down the book she's reading. She carries it around with her everywhere, as if she didn't want anyone else to look at it. I've been embroidering a sheet for my trousseau. Sewing the lace onto the sheet takes ages, but there's no hurry. I might never use it. I feel sad. If I'd known I was going to feel like this, I would have gone with them to Campolide. It would have been better than spending the day here. I feel like crying. It can't be because of the rain. It rained yesterday too. It's not because of him either. At first I found it hard to spend Sundays without seeing him. Not anymore. I'm pretty sure now that he doesn't care for me. If he did, he wouldn't make those phone calls in the office. Unless he wants to make me jealous. Oh, I'm so stupid. Why would he want to make me jealous when he doesn't even know I like him? And why would he like me anyway, when I'm so ugly? Yes, I know I'm ugly, I don't need anyone to tell me. When people look at me, I know what they're thinking. I'm better than the other girls, though. Beethoven was ugly too, and no woman ever loved him, and he was Beethoven! He didn't need to be loved in order to do what he did. He just needed to love and he did. If I'd been alive in his day, I would have kissed his feet, and I bet none of those pretty women would have done that. In my view, pretty women don't want to love, they just want to be loved. Isaura says I don't understand these things. Perhaps it's because I don't read novels. The fact is, though, she seems to understand about as much as I do, despite all the novels she's read. I think she reads too much. Take today, for example. Her eyes were red, as if she'd been crying. And she was so edgy. I've never seen her like that before. At one point, I touched her on the arm, just to say something or other, and she almost screamed. It quite frightened me. Later on, I came in from the bedroom and there she was, reading. (I think she had finished the book and started again from the beginning.) She had such a strange look on her face, a look I've never seen before on anyone's face. It was as if she were in pain, but happy too. No, not happy. How can I put it? It was as if the pain gave her pleasure, or as if the pleasure caused her pain. Oh, I'm not making any sense today. My brain isn't working. Everyone else has gone to bed now. I'm going too. What a miserable day! Roll on tomorrow!