“What’s that got to do with it?”
Silvestre regretted the sneering way in which he had said the word “Spanish”:
“I didn’t mean it like that, but you know what they say: ‘From Spain expect only cold winds and cold wives.’”
“Ah, so you don’t think they get on, then?”
“I know they don’t. You hardly hear a peep out of him, but she’s got a voice on her like a foghorn — I mean, she talks really loudly.”
Abel smiled at Silvestre’s embarrassment and at his careful choice of vocabulary.
“What about the others?”
“Well, I don’t understand the couple who live on the first floor left at all. He works for the local newspaper and is a real bastard. I’m sorry, but he is. She, poor thing, has looked as if she was at death’s door for as long as I’ve known her. She gets thinner by the day.”
“Is she ill?”
“She’s diabetic, at least that’s what she told Mariana. But unless I’m very much mistaken, I reckon she’s got TB. Their daughter died of meningitis, and after that, the mother aged about thirty years. As far as I can see, they’re a very unhappy pair. She certainly is… And as for him, like I said, he’s a real brute of a man. I mend his shoes because I have a living to make, but if I had my way…”
“And next door to them?”
Silvestre smiled mischievously: he thought that his lodger’s interest in the other neighbors was really an excuse to find out more about their upstairs neighbor, and so he was quite put out when he heard Abel add:
“Well, I know about her, of course. What about the top floor?”
This, Silvestre thought, was taking curiosity too far, and yet, although Abel kept asking questions, he didn’t really seem that interested.
“On the top floor right lives a man I really can’t abide. You could turn him upside down and shake him and you wouldn’t get a penny out of him, but anyone looking at him would take him for a… for a capitalist.”
“You don’t seem to like capitalists,” said Abel, smiling.
Distrust suddenly made Silvestre take a mental step back. He said very slowly:
“I don’t like or dislike them really. It was just a manner of speaking.”
Abel appeared not to hear.
“And the rest of the family?”
“The wife’s a fool, it’s always ‘my Anselmo this’ and ‘my Anselmo that’… And the daughter, well, it’s as clear as day that she’s going to give her parents a fair few headaches later on. Especially since they absolutely dote on her.”
“How old is she?”
“She must be about twenty now. We know her as Claudinha. And let’s hope I’m wrong.”
“And on the other side?”
“On the other side live four very respectable ladies. I think they had money once, but have fallen on hard times. They’re educated folk. They don’t stand on the landing gossiping, and that’s quite something here. They keep themselves to themselves.”
Abel was now amusing himself arranging the pieces into a square. When Silvestre fell silent, Abel looked up expectantly, but Silvestre didn’t feel like saying anything more. It seemed to him there was some other motive behind his lodger’s questions and, although he had said nothing compromising, he regretted having talked so much. He remembered his initial suspicions and cursed his own gullibility. Abel’s remark about him not liking capitalists bristled with potential booby traps.
The silence between them made Silvestre feel uncomfortable, which bothered him, especially since Abel seemed perfectly at ease. He had lined up the pieces along the length of the table now, like steppingstones in a river. This childish game irritated Silvestre. When the silence became unbearable, Abel gathered the pieces together with exasperating care and then, out of the blue, asked:
“Why didn’t you follow up my references, Senhor Silvestre?”
The question dovetailed so well with Silvestre’s own thoughts that he sat stunned for a few seconds, not knowing what to say. The only way he could think of to gain time was to take two glasses and a bottle from a cupboard and say:
“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?”