Lips still quivering with rage, Lídia went back into the bedroom to get dressed and put on her makeup. She was going for a stroll in the Baixa, just as she had told her mother. What could be more innocent? And yet her mother’s insinuating comments almost made her feel like going back to doing what she had done for years: meeting some man in a furnished room in the city, a room intended for brief assignations, with the inevitable bed, the inevitable screen, the inevitable bits of furniture with empty drawers. While she was applying cream to her face, she remembered what used to happen during those evenings and nights, and the thought depressed her. She didn’t want to go back to that. Not because she loved Paulino Morais; she would have no compunction about deceiving him, and the only reason she didn’t was because she valued her security. She knew men too well to love any of them. Start over again? No! How often had she gone in search of a satisfaction she never received? She did it for the money, of course, and she got that because she deserved it. But how often had she emerged from one of those rooms feeling dissatisfied, offended, deceived! How often had the whole sequence been repeated — room, man, dissatisfaction! Later, it might be a different man, a different room, but the dissatisfaction never disappeared, never diminished.
On the marble top of the dressing table, among the bottles and jars, next to the photo of Paulino Morais, lay the second volume of The Maias. She leafed through it, looking for the passage she had marked with lipstick. She reread it, then slowly put the book down and, with her eyes fixed on her own reflection — where she saw a look of amazement reminiscent of her mother’s — she rapidly reviewed her life: light and dark, farce and tragedy, dissatisfaction and deceit.
It was almost half past four by the time she had finished dressing. She looked very pretty. She had excellent taste in clothes and never wore anything outlandish. She had put on a gray tailored suit that gave her body a sinuous, supple shape, a body that obliged men in the street to stop and look. A combination of the miraculous skills of the dressmaker and the instincts of a woman who earns her living with her body.
She went down the stairs with a light step to avoid making too much noise with her heels. There were people outside Silvestre’s apartment. The door stood wide open, and the cobbler was helping a young man carry in a large trunk. Out on the landing, Mariana was holding a smaller suitcase. Lídia greeted them:
“Good afternoon.”
Mariana responded. Silvestre, in order to return her greeting, had to pause and look around. Lídia’s gaze passed over his head and alighted with some curiosity on the face of the young man. Abel looked at her too. Seeing his new lodger’s questioning expression, Silvestre smiled and winked at him. Abel understood.
8
When Adriana appeared around the corner, walking fast, the day was already growing dark and one could sense the night in the quiet onset of twilight, which all the noise of the city could not cancel out. She took the stairs two at a time, her heart protesting at the effort, then rang the bell frantically and waited with some impatience for her mother to open the door.
“Hello, Mama. Has it started yet?” she asked, kissing her mother on the cheek.
“Slow down, child, slow down. No, it hasn’t started yet. Why all the rush?”
“I was afraid I might miss it. I was kept late at the office, typing some urgent letters.”
They went into the kitchen. The lights were on. The radio was playing softly in the background. Isaura was still busy sewing, hunched over a pink shirt. Adriana kissed her sister and her aunt, then sat down to catch her breath.
“I’m absolutely exhausted! Good heavens, Isaura, what is that hideous thing you’re making?”
Her sister looked up and smiled:
“The man who’s going to wear this shirt must be a complete and utter idiot. I can see him now in the shop, gazing goggle-eyed at this ‘thing of beauty,’ ready to give the clothes off his back to pay for it!”
They both laughed. Cândida commented:
“You two don’t have a good word to say about anyone!”
Amélia agreed with her nieces and, addressing Cândida, said:
“So, in your opinion, would it be a sign of good taste to wear a shirt like that?”
“People can dress as they like,” said Cândida with unusual forthrightness.
“That’s not an opinion!”
“Shh!” said Isaura. “Listen!”
The announcer was introducing a piece of music.
“No, that’s not it,” said Adriana.
There was a package next to the radio. Given the size and shape, it looked like a book. Adriana picked it up and asked:
“What’s this? Another book?”
“Yes,” said her sister.
“What’s it called?”
“The Nun.”
“Who’s the author?”
“Diderot. I’ve never read anything by him before.”
Adriana put the book down and promptly forgot about it. She didn’t care much for books. Like her sister, mother and aunt, she adored music, but she found books boring. They took pages and pages to tell a story that could have been told in just a few words. She couldn’t understand how Isaura could spend so much time reading, sometimes into the small hours. With music, on the other hand, Adriana could happily sit up all night listening and never tire of it. And it was a pleasure they all enjoyed, which was just as well, because there would have been terrible arguments if they didn’t.
“That’s it,” said Isaura. “Turn the volume up.”
Adriana twiddled one of the knobs. The announcer’s voice filled the apartment.
“… The Dance of the Dead by Honegger. Libretto by Paul Claudel. Performed by Jean-Louis Barrault.”
In the kitchen, a coffeepot was whistling. Aunt Amélia removed it from the gas. They heard the sound of the needle being placed on the record, and then the stirring, dramatic voice of Jean-Louis Barrault made the four walls tremble. No one moved. They stared at the luminous eye on the front of the radio, as if the music were coming from there. In the interval between the first record and the second, they could hear, coming from the next room, the strident, grating, metallic sound of ragtime. Aunt Amélia frowned, Cândida sighed, Isaura stabbed her needle hard into the shirt, and Adriana shot a murderous glance at the wall.
“Turn it up,” said Aunt Amélia.
Adriana did as asked. Jean-Louis’s voice roared out “J’existe!” the music swirled across the “vaste plaine,” and the jittery notes of ragtime mingled heretically with the dance “sur le pont d’Avignon.”
“Louder!”
The chorus of the dead, in a thousand cries of despair and sorrow, declared their pain and remorse, and the Dies Irae smothered and overwhelmed the giggling of a lively clarinet. Blaring out of the loudspeaker, Honegger managed finally to vanquish that anonymous piece of ragtime. Perhaps Maria Cláudia had grown tired of her favorite program of dance tunes, or perhaps she had been frightened by the bellowing of divine fury made music. Once the last notes of The Dance of the Dead had dissolved in the air, Amélia, grumbling, set about making supper. Cândida moved away, fearing an approaching storm, even though she felt equally indignant. The two sisters, carried away by the music, were ablaze with holy anger.
“It just seems impossible,” Amélia said at last. “I don’t mean that we’re better than other people, but it just seems impossible that anyone could possibly like that music of the mad!”