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.