He returned home late, feeling slightly weary. The few glum streetlamps cast only the dimmest of lights. All the windows were closed and dark. As were his.
When he opened the door, he was immediately aware of the uncanny silence. He walked from room to room, leaving the lights on behind him and the doors open, like a child. Not that he was afraid, of course, but the stillness, the absence of familiar voices, the vaguely expectant atmosphere, made him feel uneasy. He sat down on the bed of which he would be the sole occupant for the months of May, June, July and possibly part of August. What better time to savor freedom! Sun, heat, fresh air. He would go to the beach every Sunday and lie in the sun like a lizard just woken from its winter sleep. He would stare up at the cloudless blue sky. He would take long walks in the countryside. The woods of Sintra, the Castelo dos Mouros, the beaches on the opposite shore. He would do all these things alone. All that and more, things he could not even imagine now, because he had lost the habit of imagining. He was like a bird who, on seeing the cage door open, hesitates before making the leap that will carry it beyond the bars.
The silence in the apartment closed about him like a hand. All his plans, whatever they might be, would have to be paid for. He had to work very hard and that would eat up his time. But he would work more enthusiastically, and if he had to cut back on anything it would be food. He now regretted the expensive supper and the foreign cigarettes, but it was, after all, only the first day, and it was natural that he should get carried away. Others, in his place, might have done much worse.
He got up and went to turn out the lights before returning to bed. He felt bewildered, like someone who has won the lottery and doesn’t know what to do with the money. He discovered that, having achieved his longed-for freedom, he now had no idea how to enjoy it. The plans he had made earlier seemed paltry and frivolous. He would simply be doing alone what he had done with his family. He would be visiting the same places, sitting under the same trees, lying on the same sand. That wasn’t good enough. He had to do something more important than that, something he could look back on when his wife and son returned. But what? Orgies? Drunken sprees? Love affairs? He had experienced those things when he was single, and had no desire to revisit them. He knew that such excesses always leave a bitter, melancholy aftertaste of regret. To repeat them would be to sully his freedom. However, apart from going on a few outings and indulging his baser instincts, he couldn’t see how else to fill the months that lay before him. He wanted something loftier, more dignified, but didn’t know what that might be.
He lit another cigarette, then got undressed and lay down on the bed. There was only one pillow: it was as if he were a widower or a bachelor or divorced. And he thought: “What am I going to do tomorrow? Well, I have to go to the shop. In the morning I’ll do a round of my customers. I need to get some really substantial orders in. And in the afternoon? The movies perhaps? No, that’s a sheer waste of time. There are no films worth watching. But if I don’t go to the movies, where will I go? For a walk, I suppose, somewhere or other. But where? Lisbon is a city where you can only really live if you’ve got plenty of money. If you don’t, then you have to work to fill up the time and earn enough to eat. And I don’t earn that much. And at night? What will I do at night? The movies again? Great! It looks like I’m going to spend my days watching films, as if there were nothing else to see or do! And what about money? Just because I’m on my own doesn’t mean I can stop eating and paying the rent. I’m free, yes, but what’s the use of freedom if I don’t have the means to make the most of it? If I continue in this vein, I’ll end up wishing they were back…”
He sat up in bed, feeling anxious: “I’ve so longed for this day, and I enjoyed it thoroughly until I came home, but the moment I got here, my head started filling up with these idiotic thoughts. Have I become like one of those battered wives who, despite the beatings, can’t live without their husbands? That would be stupid, absurd. It would be positively comical to have spent all these years longing for my freedom and, after only one day, feel like running back to the very person who had deprived me of it.” He took a long drag on his cigarette and murmured:
“It’s all a question of habit. Smoking’s bad for the health too, but do I give that up? No. And yet I could if the doctor said to me: ‘Smoking is killing you.’ Man is a creature of habit, and all this indecision is just one of the consequences of habit. I simply haven’t gotten used yet to being free.”
Reassured by this conclusion, he lay down again. He aimed his cigarette end at the ashtray and missed. It rolled across the marble top of the bedside table and onto the floor. To prove to himself that he was a free man, he made no attempt to pick it up. The cigarette gradually burned down, scorching the wooden floor. The smoke rose slowly, and the lighted end disappeared into ash. Emílio pulled the bedclothes up around his ears and turned out the light. The apartment grew still more silent. “It’s a new habit… the habit of freedom. A starving man would die if you gave him too much food at once. His stomach would have to get used to it first…” Then sleep abruptly overwhelmed him.
It was late morning when he woke. He rubbed his eyes and felt a pang of hunger. He was about to open his mouth and call out to his wife when he remembered that she had left and he was alone. He leaped out of bed. Barefoot, he ran through all the rooms. No one. He was alone, just as he had wanted to be. But he didn’t think, as he had when he went to bed, that he didn’t know how to enjoy his freedom. He thought only that he was free. And he laughed. He washed, shaved, got dressed, picked up his sample case and went out into the street, and he did all these things as if he were dreaming.
It was a bright morning of clear skies and warm sun. The buildings were ugly and so were the people walking past. The buildings were tethered to the earth and all the passersby looked like condemned men and women. Emílio laughed again. He was free. With money or without, he was free. Even if all he could do was take the same steps he had taken before and see what he had seen before, he was free.
He pushed back his hat as if bothered by the shadow it cast. And then he set off down the street, with a new light in his eye and a bird singing in his heart.
34
At last the day had come when all secrets would be revealed. After performing veritable miracles of diplomacy, Amélia had finally persuaded her sister to accompany Isaura to the shop for which Isaura made shirts, declaring that it was a lovely day and a bit of sunshine and fresh air would do her good, that it was a crime to stay indoors when, outside, the spring seemed quite mad with joy. She waxed positively lyrical in her praise of spring, so eloquent, in fact, that her sister and her niece made gentle fun of her. Since she was so inspired, they said, why didn’t she come too? She declined, however, saying that she had supper to prepare, and, with that, propelled them toward the front door. Fearing that one of them might come back for something, she watched from the window. Cândida had grown forgetful and almost always left something behind.