The little old lady leaned very slightly to the right and ran one wrinkled hand—dark, tremulous, with ridged fingernails—over the cat’s soft, furry back. The cat uttered a brief purr of pleasure—or was it merely world-weary gratitude?—and she gave the very faintest of smiles. She was someone whom age had clearly rendered both slow and also, perhaps, indifferent to the world around her, with a few, very few, possible exceptions, things that others deemed almost worthless, but that to her, were still important despite everything: the cat, the warm sun, her hot water bottle, her afternoon cup of tea, the lace she sometimes made, the flowers on the balcony… Her whole being seemed imbued with a great languor or, possibly, a complete absence of enthusiasm or even will. She had time: She always had plenty of time; nothing was urgent. Her colorless, wizened lips blended in with her equally wizened face, and they took their time before beginning to smile, as if they needed to think about it first, like a rehearsal before the final performance. And it was as if all this happened without her knowledge, without her noticing. Then, equally slowly and gradually, the smile would vanish from her face. Time was vast and far from fleeting. Time never flees except when people are afraid. And she was no longer afraid of anything. What was there to fear? Death? But the tides had eaten away at all the mooring ropes. Nothing bound her to life now. This is why, for years, she had drifted around in that third-floor apartment in the crumbling building where she lived with that cat and a maid almost as old as her. And each day, she woke feeling a little closer. Closer to what? She didn’t know.
The armchair she was sitting in had very slender, carved legs and ball feet. On the floor, the faded, foot-worn rug was more canvas than wool. A pillar, a begonia in a cracked and yellowing ceramic pot, and, in one corner, an old piano with, on the lid, a photograph of her when she was twenty: her ample bosom filling out her high-necked white blouse, her fair hair framing her plump, contented face. A ray of sunlight entered from the balcony, penetrating the net curtains she herself had once made and embroidered with two cupids at play, and the light cast a checkered shadow on the floor and ended up on the satin cushion on which the cat had once again fallen asleep—assuming it had actually woken up—next to the hot water bottle and the old lady’s feet, horribly swollen with rheumatism. Beyond the curtains, a large bluebottle beat against that invisible but brightly lit wall, then skittered down the glass with a wild beating of metallic wings, and the cat, suddenly interested, twitched its small gray ears. The old lady said in a soft, slow, slightly quavery voice:
“Now then, pussy cat, now then… It’s not worth getting up for a fly, a mere fly. You just stay where you are…”
Then the noise stopped. The fly, having flitted across the floor, had doubtless alighted on a piece of furniture or somewhere on the dark floral wallpaper. And everything was once again sunk in silence.
The other woman, dressed all in black, her eyes red from crying, sat perched right on the edge of her chair, right on the very edge as if she too were about to take flight. Feeling that she had been forgotten, she tentatively cleared her throat because she was sure she would startle the old lady if she abruptly broke the silence and began to speak without first announcing her presence. This is why she coughed, a short, dry, very artificial cough. The old lady looked up, blinking, and said slowly:
“Oh, you’re still here… I’d quite forgotten. Yes, I’d completely forgotten. Oh dear, my poor head… I thought… You will forgive me, won’t you. I’m so sorry!”
The visitor opened her handbag and produced a handkerchief with which she dabbed at her eyes. Please don’t worry; think no more about it. It was only natural. It had happened to her as well on occasions, and she was much younger…
“But do try and remember. It’s so important to me, how can I put it…it’s really vital!”
She had started out speaking in the gentle, drawling, wheedling voice of a child asking for a cake, but now her voice had grown firmer, harsher, as if she were demanding something that was her due, something that was hers and that she had come looking for. The old lady, however, didn’t appear to take offense, as though the visitor’s tone of voice were a matter of complete indifference to her, as if she hadn’t even noticed:
“I really don’t remember. It’s hard at my age, you know. I’ll be eighty-five next month. Or am I eighty-six? I’ve never had a good memory, not even when I was young, and it’s a lot worse now…and yet…”
“And yet?”
The woman almost sprang from her chair. The old lady was about to remember something; the veil was about to be torn asunder and the light would come pouring in. What light? For her, there would never again be any light. Never. The gloom of dusk or black night were all she could hope for. But the old lady had stopped, poised on the edge of an abyss full of clouds, unable to go any further.
“And yet, there was something,” she said at last. “Something that might be important to you and that, at the time, made a real impression on me. But I just don’t know what it was. If you had come right away, I would definitely have remembered. But it happened two weeks ago… I think whatever it was is lost. I am eighty-five, you know.”
“No, I couldn’t have come then. I came as soon as I could. I’ve been ill. I was…”
No, it was impossible. The woman had seen everything, and had said as much the moment the visitor entered the room: “You’re the lady who lives across from her, aren’t you? The mother of that poor child. I saw everything, I was standing at the window…” She had seen everything. She had been the sole witness to the accident. If it was an accident? Theirs was a narrow street; their two buildings were directly opposite each other, and they both lived on the third floor. But hers was a new building, with an elevator, whereas this was an old, only partially inhabited building, with graffiti scrawled on the broken windowpanes, a building just waiting for the old lady to die to be demolished. The mother of the present owner had been a friend of the old lady’s and had promised she would never be forcibly evicted. Everyone knew this; the whole neighborhood knew. She alone had seen the child, who, at the time, was on the balcony watering the flowers. The others had merely seen the broken doll lying where it fell in the street. “Lost,” said the old lady calmly. “Lost a long way back, at the end of a white road I can’t recall ever having walked along.”
“But you must remember. Wouldn’t you have told your maid?”
The old lady shook her head, and the woman suddenly noticed her sparse, white hair, neatly combed over her pink scalp. No, she hadn’t told the maid anything. She was so deaf, the poor thing—“and she’s younger than me too, only seventy!”—so deaf that she had to write down anything she needed her to do. And she couldn’t bear to shout; she’d never been able to shout. Now…
“You’re absolutely sure…”
“Oh, yes, absolutely. I didn’t tell her or anyone else. I haven’t had any visitors for nearly a month. It’s still rather cold, don’t you think? And none of my friends—my few remaining friends—are exactly young…”
The woman moved her chair closer to the armchair where the old lady was once again lost in her own thoughts, a smile on her face.
“Senhora…forgive me, I don’t know your name.”
“My name’s Cristina, Cristina Rita, at your service.”
“Senhora Dona Cristina, I’m going to tell you everything, and God knows how hard that is for me.”
“But I’m not interested, my dear, not interested at all. I live here in my apartment and know almost no one. The friends who come to see me, to keep me amused they say, to keep me company, well, all they do is tire me out. I’m eighty-five now… If I could, I would tell you everything you want to know, really I would. But I can’t. However much I want to draw those memories up from the well, they refuse to come to the surface. They have drowned in the depths. So why bother telling me painful things? What do you gain by that? The poor child died, and that’s all there is to it.”
The woman sat back in her chair and sighed.
“You saw my daughter fall, didn’t you? You were looking at her, weren’t you? Did you see her…throw herself off…”
And at this, she burst into tears.
“There, there…” The old lady’s voice was gentle and persuasive. “You must calm yourself. What can you do about it now? She was an angel, and now she’s in Heaven.”
“She was. She should be. If there is a Heaven, then she should be there.” She spoke these stark words angrily. “If she hadn’t been an angel, she would be alive now.”
“But who told you it wasn’t an accident, that she didn’t just lean over and fall? I don’t know, I can’t remember, but it’s possible.”
“And who’s to say that it didn’t happen the other way, the way I fear it did? I didn’t bring her up properly: I let her be an angel, and that doesn’t work in this life. Life wasn’t made for angels. It’s an unhealthy air we breathe, and we need a good dose of microbes inside us to fight off those coming from outside. Gininha was defenseless. And I was foolish.”
“Be brave. It’s too late now, isn’t it?”
“Is it? Yes, you’re right, it is.”
She sat silent and thoughtful for a long while. Then she spoke again, this time very quickly.
“She was all I had, I swear she was all I had: I lived only for her, I worked only for her. I was widowed four years ago. I’m thirty-five. That afternoon, a friend came to visit, a man. I thought Gininha had gone out; I completely forgot it was a holiday and that she had no classes that morning. At one point, we heard a dull thud, like a huge hand striking a table, calling for silence. Then there was a scream, a lot of screams all at once. I went to the window, and I saw her. I saw her, do you understand?”
She covered her face with her hands, unable to speak for a moment. The old lady said:
“It must have been terrible for you.”
“It was terrible. She was my only child, and she was only eleven. He didn’t mean anything to me, or not very much. I told him I never wanted to see him again, and I never do want to see him again. She was eleven years old, Senhora. She knew nothing of life, nothing. And I was proud of that, imagine…”
The old lady frowned and said:
“There was something, I know there was, but what?”
“A look of horror perhaps? Tears? Did she look very pale? She always turned really pale whenever she’d had a big shock. She was a nervous child, very sensitive. You perhaps saw her jump into the street or just lean out very slowly… Do you think perhaps she saw something interesting, one of those acrobats who sometimes turns up and puts down a mat and performs tricks?” she asked with sudden urgency. “At the time, I didn’t notice anything else… I only saw you; in fact, I think I saw you even before I looked down. She was still holding the watering can. Think, please, try and remember…”
The woman was standing up now; she held out one cold hand to her. No, she needn’t get up—she knew where the front door was.
“But promise me that you’ll make a note if you do remember anything, all right? And, if you don’t mind, if it wouldn’t be too much bother, I’ll come back tomorrow.”
“Come back whenever you like, my dear. I never go out. But I really do feel that it’s lost forever.”
The street door banged lightly, and the old lady shivered. The bluebottle started buzzing again, beating against the window before skittering down. The cat stretched and yawned, gave the insect a dismissive glance, and closed its yellow eyes. The old lady closed her eyes too, her head dropped onto her chest and she fell into a doze.