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  “I’ll ask Dona Lídia if I can use her phone.”

  Rosália grew irritated again, perhaps because her daughter had put on a housecoat, and her more discreetly clothed body had lost its power to enchant.

  “You know I don’t like you going to see Dona Lídia.”

  Maria Cláudia’s eyes were even more innocent than usual.

  “Why ever not?”

  If the conversation was to continue, Rosália would have to say things she would prefer not to. She knew that her daughter understood perfectly well what she meant, but she nonetheless felt that there were subjects best not touched on in the presence of a young woman. She had been brought up with the idea that parents and children should respect each other, and she still clung to that. She therefore pretended not to have heard her daughter’s question and left the room.

  Once she was alone again, Maria Cláudia smiled. Standing in front of the mirror, she unbuttoned her housecoat and her nightdress and looked at her breasts. A shiver ran through her and she flushed slightly. Then she smiled again, feeling vaguely nervous, but pleased too, something like a frisson of pleasure tinged with guilt. Then she buttoned up her housecoat, took one last glance at herself in the mirror and left the room.

  In the kitchen, she went over to her mother, who was making some toast, and kissed her on the cheek. Rosália could not deny that the kiss pleased her, and while she did not reciprocate, her heart beat faster with contentment.

  “Go and have a wash, dear, the toast is nearly ready.”

  Maria Cláudia shut herself in the bathroom. She returned looking fresh and cool, her skin glossy and clean, her now unpainted lips slightly stiff from the cold water. Her mother’s eyes shone when she saw her. Cláudia sat down at the table and began eagerly devouring the toast.

  “It is nice to stay home sometimes, isn’t it?” Rosália said.

  The girl giggled:

  “You see, I was right, wasn’t I?”

  Rosália felt she had gone too far and tried to backtrack a little:

  “Yes, up to a point, but you mustn’t make a habit of it.”

  “The people at work won’t mind.”

  “They might, and you need to keep that job. Your father doesn’t earn very much, you know.”

  “Don’t worry, I can handle it.”

  Rosália would like to have asked her what she meant by this, but chose not to. They finished their breakfast in silence, then Maria Cláudia got up and said:

  “I’m going to ask Dona Lídia if I can use her phone.”

  Her mother opened her mouth to object, but said nothing. Her daughter had already disappeared down the corridor.

  “There’s no need to close the door if you’re not going to be gone very long.”

  Rosália heard the front door close, but preferred not to think that her daughter had done this on purpose in order to go against her wishes. She filled the sink and started washing the breakfast things.

  Maria Cláudia did not share her mother’s scruples about their downstairs neighbor; on the contrary, she really liked Dona Lídia. Before ringing the doorbell, she straightened the collar of her housecoat and smoothed her hair. She regretted not having applied a touch of color to her lips.

  The bell rang out stridently and echoed down the stairwell. Maria Cláudia felt a slight noise behind her and was sure that Justina was peering through the spyhole in the door opposite. She was just about to turn and look when Dona Lídia’s door opened.

  “Good morning, Dona Lídia.”

  “Good morning, Claudinha. What brings you here? Won’t you come in?”

  “If I may . . .”

  In the dark corridor, Maria Cláudia felt the warm, perfumed air wrap about her.

  “So what can I do for you?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you again, Dona Lídia.”

  “You’re not bothering me at all. You know how much I enjoy your visits.”

  “Thank you. I wondered if I could phone the office to tell them I won’t be coming in today.”

  “Of course, feel free, Claudinha.”

  She gently ushered her toward the bedroom, a room that Maria Cláudia could not enter without feeling slightly troubled, for the atmosphere made her positively dizzy. She had never seen such lovely furnishings; there were mirrors and curtains, a red sofa and a soft rug on the floor, bottles of perfume on the dressing table, the smell of expensive cigarettes, but none of those things alone could explain her disorderly feelings. Perhaps it was the whole situation, the presence of Lídia herself, something as vague and imponderable as a burning, corrosive gas that slips unnoticed through every filter. In that room, she always felt as if she somehow lost all self-control. She became as tipsy as if she had drunk champagne and felt an irresistible desire to do something silly.

  “There’s the phone,” said Lídia. “I’ll leave you in peace.”

  She made as if to go, but Maria Cláudia said urgently:

  “No, no, really, Dona Lídia, there’s no need. It’s not a matter of any importance . . .”

  The intonation she gave to these words and the smile that accompanied them seemed to suggest that there were other matters of importance and that Dona Lídia knew precisely what those were. Seeing Maria Cláudia still standing, Lídia exclaimed:

  “Why don’t you sit down on the bed, Cláudia?”

  Legs trembling, Maria Cláudia did as she was told. She placed one hand on the blue satin eiderdown and, unaware of what she was doing, began to stroke the soft fabric almost voluptuously. Lídia appeared not to notice. She opened a pack of Camel cigarettes and lit one. She did not smoke out of habit or necessity, but because the cigarette formed part of a complicated web of attitudes, words and gestures, all of which had the same objective: to impress. This had become so much second nature to her that, regardless of whom she was with, she always tried to impress. The cigarette, the slow striking of the match, the first long, dreamy outbreath of smoke, were all part of the game.

  With many gestures and exclamations, Maria Cláudia was explaining over the phone that she had the most terrible headache. She pouted tragically, as if she really were seriously ill. Lídia observed this performance out of the corner of her eye. Finally, Maria Cláudia put down the phone and got to her feet.

  “Right. Thank you very much, Dona Lídia.”

  “There’s no need to thank me. You know I’m always glad to help.”

  “May I give you the five tostões for the phone call?”

  “Don’t be silly. Keep your money. When are you going to stop trying to pay me for using the phone?”

  They both smiled and looked at each other, and Maria Cláudia felt afraid, even though there was no reason to, certainly not such intense, physical fear, but she had suddenly become aware of a frightening presence in the room. Perhaps the atmosphere that had initially made her merely dizzy had all at once become suffocating.

  “I’d better be going. Anyway, thank you again.”

  “Won’t you stay a little?”

  “No, I have things to do, and my mother’s waiting for me.”

  “I won’t keep you, then.”

  Lídia was wearing a stiff, red taffeta dressing gown, which had the iridescent gleam one sees on the wing cases of certain beetles, and she left behind her a trail of strong perfume. The rustle of taffeta and, above all, the warm, intoxicating smell given off by Lídia—an aroma that came not just from her perfume, but from her body—made Maria Cláudia feel as if she were about to lose control completely.

  When Maria Cláudia left, having thanked Lídia yet again, Lídia went back into the bedroom. Her cigarette was slowly burning down in the ashtray. She stubbed it out, then lay full-length on the bed. She clasped her hands behind her neck and made herself comfortable on the same soft eiderdown that Maria Cláudia had been stroking. The telephone rang. With a lazy gesture she picked up the receiver.

  “Hello . . . Yes, speaking . . . Oh, hello. (. . .) Yes, I do. What’s on the menu today? (. . .) Yes, go on. (. . .) No
, not that. (. . .) Hm, all right. (. . .) And what is the fruit today? (. . .) No, I don’t like that. (. . .) It really doesn’t matter. It’s just that I don’t like it. (. . .) All right. (. . .) Good. Don’t be too late. (. . .) And don’t forget to send the monthly bill. (. . .) Goodbye.”

  She put the phone down and again fell back onto the bed. She yawned widely, with the ease of someone who knows no one is watching, a yawn that revealed the absence of one of her back teeth.

  Lídia was not pretty. Analyzed feature by feature, her face could not be categorized as either beautiful or ordinary. She was at a disadvantage just now because she had no makeup on. Her face was shiny with night cream and her eyebrows needed plucking at the ends. No, Lídia was not pretty, and there was, too, the important fact that she had already passed her thirty-second birthday and her thirty-third was not far off. And yet there was something irresistible about her. Her dark brown eyes, her dark hair. When she was tired, her face took on an almost masculine hardness, especially around the mouth and nostrils, but with just the slightest change of expression it became flattering and seductive. She was not the kind of woman who relies solely on her body to attract men; instead, she radiated sensuality from head to toe. She was skillful enough to be able to dredge up from within herself the kind of tremulous, shivering cry that could drive a lover quite mad with passion and render him incapable of defending himself against something he assumed to be perfectly natural and spontaneous, against that simulated wave into which he plunged in the belief that it was real. Yes, Lídia knew how to do that. These were the cards she had to play, her trump card being that sensual body of hers, slim as a reed and sensitive as a slender rod of steel.

  She could not decide whether to go back to sleep or to get up. She was thinking about Maria Cláudia, about her fresh, adolescent beauty, and for a moment, though she knew it was foolish to compare herself to a mere child, she felt her heart contract and a frown of envy wrinkle her brow. She decided to get dressed, apply her makeup and put the greatest possible distance between Maria Cláudia’s youthfulness and her own seductive powers as an experienced woman of the world. She sat up. She had turned on the boiler earlier, and the water for her bath was ready. She removed her dressing gown in a single movement, then grasped the hem of her nightdress and pulled it up over her head. She stood there completely naked. She tested the water and allowed herself to slide into the tub. She washed herself slowly. Lídia knew the value of cleanliness for someone in her situation.

  Clean and refreshed, she wrapped herself in a bathrobe and went into the kitchen. Before returning to the bedroom, she put the kettle on to boil for tea.

  Back in her bedroom, she chose a simple but charming dress, which clung to her body and made her look younger, and quickly applied a little makeup, pleased with herself and the night cream she was currently using. Then she returned to the kitchen, where the kettle was already boiling. She took it off the gas. When she looked in the tea caddy, however, she found it was empty. She frowned, put down the tin and went back to her bedroom. She was about to phone the grocer’s and had even picked up the receiver when she heard someone talking out in the street. She opened the window.

  The mist had lifted and the sky was blue, the watery blue of early spring. The sun seemed to come from very far away, so far away that the air was refreshingly cool.

  From the window of the ground-floor apartment a woman was issuing instructions, then repeating them to a fair-haired boy who was gazing up at her, wrinkling his little nose in concentration. The woman spoke voluminously and with a strong Spanish accent. The boy had already grasped that his mother wanted him to buy ten tostões’ worth of pepper and was ready to set off, but she kept repeating what it was she wanted out of the sheer pleasure of talking to her son and hearing her own voice. When it seemed she had no further instructions to give, Lídia called out:

  “Dona Carmen!”

  “¿Quién me llama? Ah, buenos días, Dona Lídia!”

  “Good morning. Would you mind asking Henriquinho to get me something from the grocer’s too? I need some tea . . .”

  She told him what sort of tea and sent a twenty-escudo note fluttering down to him. Henriquinho set off at a run down the street as if pursued by a pack of dogs. Lídia thanked Dona Carmen, who answered in her own strange idiolect, alternating Spanish and Portuguese words and murdering the latter in the process. Lídia, who preferred not to show herself for too long at her window, said goodbye. Henriquinho returned shortly afterward, red-faced from running, to bring her the packet of tea and her change. She thanked him with a ten-tostão tip and a kiss, and the boy left.

  With her cup full and a plate of biscuits beside her, Lídia returned to bed. While she ate, she continued reading the book she had taken from a small cupboard in the dining room. This is how she filled the emptiness of her idle days: reading novels, some good, some bad. At the moment she was immersed in the foolish, inconsequential world of The Maias. She sipped her tea and nibbled on the biscuits while she read the passage in which Maria Eduarda is flattering Carlos with her declaration: “Not only my heart remained asleep, but my body too, it was always cold, cold as marble.” Lídia liked that image. She looked for a pencil so that she could underline it, but, unable to find one, she got up and, still holding the book, went over to the dressing table, where she found a lipstick with which she made a mark in the margin, a red line highlighting that moment of drama or perhaps farce.

  From the stairs came the sound of someone sweeping. Then she heard Dona Carmen begin a mournful song, accompanied, in the background, by the continuing clatter of the sewing machine and the sole of a shoe being hammered into place.

  Taking another delicate bite of a biscuit, Lídia resumed her reading.

  2

  In the living room, the weary old clock—inherited by Justina after the death of her parents—gave a long, asthmatic wheeze followed by nine nasal chimes. The apartment was so quiet it seemed uninhabited. Justina wore felt-soled shoes and moved from room to room as subtly as a ghost. She and the apartment were so perfectly matched that, seeing them together, one could understand at once why they were as they were. Justina could exist only in that apartment, and the bare, silent apartment could not be as it was without Justina’s presence. A smell of mold emanated from both furniture and floor, and a musty aroma hung in the air. The permanently closed windows contributed to the tomb-like atmosphere, and Justina was so slow and lackadaisical that the house was never entirely clean.

  The vibrations from the chimes—which had temporarily driven out the silence—slowly died away, ever more tenuous and distant. Justina turned out all the lights, then went and sat by the window that gave onto the street. She liked sitting there, motionless, vacant, her hands lying limp in her lap, her eyes open to the darkness, waiting for what? Even she did not know. The cat, her sole companion in the evenings, came and curled up at her feet. He was a quiet creature with questioning eyes and a sinuous gait, and appeared to have lost the ability to meow. He had learned silence from his mistress and, like her, surrendered himself to it.

  Time slipped slowly by. The tick-tock of the clock kept nudging the silence, trying to shoo it away, but the silence resisted with its dense, heavy mass, in which all sounds drowned. Both fought unremittingly on, the ticking clock with the obstinacy of despair and the certain knowledge of death, while the silence had on its side disdainful eternity.

  Then another, louder noise interposed itself: people going down the stairs. Had it been daylight, Justina would immediately have rushed to see who it was, more out of habit or because she had nothing better to do than out of any real curiosity, but the night drained her of energy, leaving her tired and listless and filled with a foolish desire to weep and to die. However, she would unhesitatingly have said that it was Rosália, along with her husband and daughter, going off to see a film. She recognized the laugh: it belonged to Maria Cláudia, who was mad about the cinema.

  The cinema . . . How long had it been since Justina went
to the cinema? Yes, there had been the death of her daughter, but even before that, it had been a long time. Matilde used to go with her father, but she always stayed at home. Why? She had no idea, she just didn’t go. She disliked walking down the street with her husband. She was very tall and thin, while he was short and stocky. On their wedding day, boys in the street had laughed when they saw them leave the church. She had never forgotten that laughter, just as she could never forget the photograph: the best man and maid of honor and the other guests lined up on the steps of the church like spectators in the stands at a soccer match; and she standing there stiffly, her bouquet drooping, her dark eyes dull and perplexed; and he, already fat, squeezed into a tailcoat and wearing a borrowed top hat. She had buried that ridiculous photograph in a drawer and never wanted to see it again.

  The dialogue between the clock and the silence was again interrupted. From outside came the rumble of tires over the uneven surface of the street. The car stopped. There was a confusion of noises in the night: the creak of a hand brake being put on, the characteristic noise of a car door opening, the dull thud as it closed, a tinkling of keys. Justina did not need to get up to know who had arrived. Dona Lídia had a visitor, her usual visitor, the man who came to see her three times a week. He would leave at around two in the morning. He never spent the entire night there. He was methodical, punctual, correct. Justina did not like her neighbor. She hated her because she was pretty and, above all, because she was a kept woman and, more to the point, had a nicely furnished apartment, as well as enough money to pay for a cleaning lady, have meals from a restaurant sent up to her, and appear in public laden with jewelry and reeking of perfume. She was, however, grateful to Lídia because she had given her the excuse she needed to break off relations with her husband forever. Thanks to Lídia, she had added to her thousand other reasons the biggest reason of all.

  Slowly, painfully, as if her body were refusing to move, she got up and turned on the light. The dining room, where she was sitting, was quite large, and the bulb that lit it was so feeble that it could only just manage to keep the darkness at bay, leaving shadows lurking in the corners. The bare walls, the hard, unwelcoming stiff-backed chairs, the table unpolished and unadorned by flowers, the stark, drab furniture—and alone in the midst of all that coldness sat tall, thin Justina, in her black dress and with her deep, dark, silent eyes.