Getting up? Already? Was he planning to spend all morning with her? Perhaps he was going out… She went into the bedroom, opened the wardrobe and handed him his pajamas. He took them from her without a word. Justina didn’t even look at him. Deep down, she still despised him, despised him more and more, but she lacked the courage to look him in the face. She was trembling when she returned to the kitchen. “I’m afraid, afraid of him! Me! If someone had told me yesterday that one day I would feel afraid of him, I would have laughed.”
Hands in his pockets, slippers flapping, Caetano slouched through the kitchen on his way to the bathroom. His wife breathed again: she had feared he might speak to her and she was not prepared for that.
In the bathroom, Caetano was whistling a tuneful fado. He stood in front of the mirror and interrupted his whistling in order to run his hand over his rough beard. Then, while he was preparing his razor, he began again. He lathered up his face and again stopped whistling to concentrate on his shaving. He had nearly finished when he heard his wife’s voice outside the closed door:
“Your coffee’s ready.”
“All right, coming.”
Caetano didn’t care two hoots about the conversation he’d had with his wife. He knew he had won. A bit of resistance on her part would just make things all the more interesting. Dona Justina was going to have to pay, however reluctantly, for the shabby way she’d treated him. He had caught her out. Why had it never occurred to him before that sex would be the best way to humiliate her? Her scorn and pride lay shattered and broken! And the slut had enjoyed it too! True, she’d spat in his face, but he’d make her pay for that as well. He’d do the same to her one day, possibly more than once. Yes, next time she began moaning and writhing around, he’d give her a taste of her own medicine — take that! How would she react, he wondered. She might get angry… but only afterward.
Caetano felt very pleased with himself. Even the pimples on his neck didn’t burst when he ran the razor over them. He was feeling calmer now. She may have had him under her thumb before, but now he had her in the palm of his hand. Even if his old feelings of repugnance returned, as they were bound to, he would not deny her his services as a husband.
The word “services” made him smile: “Services, eh? What a joke!”
He washed, using a lavish amount of soap and water. While he was combing his hair, he was thinking: “What a fool I’ve been. Anyone could have seen that the anonymous letter wasn’t going to work…”
He stopped, slowly opened the window and peered out. It came as no surprise to him to see Lídia; in fact, that’s why he’d stopped what he was doing. Lídia was looking down at something and smiling. Caetano followed her gaze, and in the yard belonging to the ground-floor apartment where the cobbler and his wife lived, he saw their lodger chasing after a chicken while Silvestre, leaning against the wall with a cigarette in his mouth, was slapping his thighs and laughing:
“If you don’t catch her, Abel, it means no soup for lunch!”
Lídia laughed too. Abel looked up and smiled:
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t see you there. Would you like to give me a hand?”
“No, I’d only make matters worse.”
“Well, it’s not very kind of you to laugh at my misfortunes!”
“I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at the chicken—” She broke off to greet both men. “Good morning, Senhor Silvestre! Good morning, Senhor…”
“Abel,” said the young man. “No need to bother with surnames, you’re too far away for formal introductions.”
Safe in a corner, the chicken was ruffling its feathers and clucking.
“She’s making fun of you,” said Silvestre.
“Really? Well, I’m going to make her give that lady up there another good laugh.”
Caetano preferred not to hear any more. He closed the window. The chicken resumed its agitated clucking. Smiling, Caetano sat down on the toilet seat while he put his thoughts in order: “That first letter may not have worked, but this one will…” He wagged his finger at the window in Lídia’s direction and murmured:
“I’m going to have my revenge on you too, or my name’s not Caetano.”
30
All of Amélia’s endeavors bumped up against her nieces’ obstinate defenses. She tried to make the girls confess outright, reminding them of the harmony and perfect understanding that had once reigned in the family. Isaura and Adriana responded with laughter. They tried to demonstrate, in every way possible, that they were not angry with each other, that it was only because Amélia was used to seeing them constantly happy that she had now started imagining things that simply did not exist.
“We all get annoyed sometimes,” Adriana would say.
“I know, I’m the same, but don’t think you can deceive me. You still talk and smile, but Isaura doesn’t. You’d have to be blind not to see it.”
She gave up trying to coax from them the reason behind the coldness between them. She could see they had made a kind of pact to delude both her and her sister. However, while Cândida might be taken in by appearances, Amélia would only be satisfied with hard facts. She began, quite openly, to observe her nieces. She forced them into a state of tension verging on panic. They only had to make some slightly obscure comment for Amélia to come out with an insinuating riposte. Adriana made light of the matter, and Isaura took refuge in silence, as if afraid her aunt might draw unwarranted conclusions from even the most innocent of words.
“Cat got your tongue, Isaura?” Amélia would ask.
“No, I simply have nothing to say.”
“We all used to get on so well here. Everyone talked and everyone had something to say. We’ve gotten to the point where we don’t even listen to the radio anymore!”
“That’s because you don’t want to, Auntie.”
“What’s the point when our minds are all on something else!”
If it hadn’t been for Isaura’s behavior, she might have abandoned her idea, but her niece still seemed cowed and tormented by some hidden thought. Amélia decided not to bother with Adriana and to focus all her efforts on Isaura. Whenever Isaura went out, Amélia would follow her. She would return disappointed. Isaura spoke to no one and never once diverged from the path that led her to the shop she worked for, and she neither wrote letters nor received them. She no longer went to the library from which she used to borrow books:
“You’ve stopped reading, Isaura.”
“I don’t have time.”
“You have just as much time as you had before. Was someone at the library unpleasant to you?”
“Of course not!”
When her aunt asked Isaura about her sudden indifference to books, Isaura blushed. She bowed her head and avoided her aunt’s eyes. Amélia noticed her embarrassment and thought that therein lay the root of the problem. She went to the library on the pretext of inquiring about its opening hours, but what she really wanted was to see who worked there. She left no wiser than she had entered, for the staff consisted of two bald, toothless old gentlemen and a young woman. Her suspicions vanished into the air like smoke. Feeling all doors closing on her, she turned to her sister, but Cândida pretended not to understand.
“There you go again, you and your ideas!”
“Yes, and I won’t give up either. I know you’re acting as a cover for your daughters. When you’re with them, you’re all sweetness and light, but you don’t fool me. I’ve heard you sighing at night.”
“I’m thinking about other things, old things.”
“The time for sighing over those ‘old things’ is long gone. You have the same griefs as me, but I put them away, as did you. Now you’re sighing over new things, over the girls…”