Both women had kissed and embraced her and offered their sincere condolences in tremulous, tearful, deeply felt words: “You poor thing, what dreadful luck!” “When I found out, my dear, I was just speechless, I couldn’t believe it…” “How is such a thing possible, how is it possible?” They asked for details. How had it happened? What exactly had happened? The newspaper had explained things so badly, been so unclear… And Joana repeated the same story over and over, in the same flat, weary voice. He had called her the evening before and told her that the next day—yesterday—he was going to the beach with some friends after work. “We’re going to nip over to Carcavelos for a swim.” It was as if she’d had a presentiment, because she’d done her very best to dissuade him. He had insisted though: it was all arranged, etc. etc. And so, he had gone to the beach. That’s all she knew. No one knew any more than that.
“It was death calling him.”
“Yes…”
“We can’t avoid our fate, my dear, whatever people might say. If he hadn’t gone for a swim at Carcavelos, something else would have happened to him. He might have been run over, for example. Yesterday was simply his day to die.”
“Yes, yesterday was his day, and who knows when our own will be?”
There was a brief silence, full of unspoken questions. Elsa, a dark-haired woman wearing a lot of makeup, got to her feet and said with a sigh:
“I have to go. I just wanted to see you and give you a hug, but now I really have to go. I have a dentist appointment at half past five, so I’d better get a move on.”
The other woman, who was sitting near the window, asked if her dentist was downtown. If so, she would go with her, because she needed to buy some buttons. “You don’t mind, do you, it’s just that I really do need some!”
More loud kisses and pleas or, rather, exhortations for her to accept her fate. There was nothing she could do about it now. She must be brave and simply face up to the facts. Elsa was just about to add that there was no point in shedding tears, but stopped herself in time when she realized that Joana wasn’t actually crying, but was looking straight at them, with not a tear in her eye and wearing her usual expression. Her usual expression? No, perhaps not. Her expression wasn’t her usual one at all, but a very new one, different from all her other expressions. However, neither Guida nor Elsa could grasp its meaning. They were simple souls, who rarely peered beneath the surface of things.
The door closed slowly behind them, and they began going down the stairs. The late afternoon sun, grubby and yellow, barely penetrated the skylight.
“Poor thing,” said Guida, opening her handbag to look at herself in the mirror. “She hasn’t exactly had much luck. It took her ages to find a man, and then he goes and dies just like that. Death by drowning too—horrible!”
“I’ve always had a terrible fear of drowning,” said Elsa. “I mean, I know how to swim…but then so did he. I don’t know what it is, but out at sea you get those hideous creatures, don’t you? Eels, I mean, those things that look like snakes. I remember seeing two eels at the aquarium in Algés. They had very bright eyes, and they were fixed on me. It gave me nightmares every time I went there. When I was a child, of course. I haven’t been back since. They’re probably dead by now. How long does the average eel live?”
The other woman laughed.
“I have no idea! Anyway, I doubt there are many eels in the sea at Carcavelos. But yes…you’re right… We don’t know where he is—where his body is, I mean. It hasn’t been found. It hasn’t been washed ashore yet. In that case, he must be… Yuck. I’m not going to eat any fish for a very long time.”
She shuddered. “Poor Joana, she’ll never meet anyone else. Not with her looks. Do you think he really was going to marry her?”
“It certainly seemed like it. They had even bought some bedroom furniture… So…”
“Yes, but it’s odd, don’t you think?”
“Well, there are plenty of odd things in this world. Look at me, for example, I don’t have a dental appointment at all. Zé will be waiting for me at the bus stop.”
The other woman burst out laughing.
“And I’m not going downtown to buy buttons. I’m going to the second showing at the Tivoli. And I’d better hail a cab; otherwise I’ll be late.”
They parted gaily. Deep down, they were nice enough girls and hadn’t wanted to talk about boyfriends or movies because they did at least have a sense of what was appropriate and what was not.
Joana was alone again. Her friends had just left, and her brother had not yet arrived. Her mother wouldn’t be long though; she had gone out to buy her a black blouse and stockings. She hadn’t even kissed her or offered a single consoling word. She was never aggressive, never; that was one advantage she had over the others. She remained stiff and unmoving, as if enclosed inside her own narrow, hermetic world. She was a good wife and a good mother—the nights she had spent and still spent at their bedside if one of them was ill!—and they couldn’t really ask her for more than that, nor did they. Her brother came and went and was never at home. But that’s boys for you. Boys will be boys. As for her father, he considered anything that wasn’t entirely transparent, anything that seemed to him even slightly obscure, as mere complications dreamed up by a load of hysterics. And he always spoke with the confident air of someone who has a right to offer an opinion on everything because he knows everything.
Was she really their daughter? Was she her brother’s sister? Whenever she thought this, it felt to her as if she had given birth to herself and that no ties bound her to anyone else. And yet, how she needed those ties now! A seed blown in from who knows where that the wind just happened to drop here. She felt distant from her family, from their petty ambitions, from their mean-minded envy. “As Rebelo’s righthand man,” her brother would say, “I’m going to really clean up. Rebelo, poor thing, is a good fellow, but not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, and he’s allowed that rabble to get away with things for far too long. Everything’s going to get back on track now, though, you just wait. They know me, and they know I always play fair.” When the post of deputy chief of staff was given to that waste of space, that illiterate, Silva, her father had said, “That post was intended for me; everyone said so.” Her brother had smiled a superior smile, which their mother silently applauded: “Dad’s such an innocent. The job was there for the taking, but he failed to seize the opportunity. Do you remember that afternoon when he found out Felismino had had his hand in the till? He missed his chance, and now, of course, it’s too late. That’s why I…”
In her head, Joana referred to them by their proper names, responded to them with her silence, with the book she would read during mealtimes so as not to be obliged to hear them, to refuse to hear them. She didn’t hate them, no: They simply didn’t interest her. She felt far away, alone in the world, alone in a kind of no man’s land. That was all.
She and her small plain rabbit face, her thick glasses, her heavy, graceless figure. These were not the only barriers that kept her isolated from the outside world, barring the door to anyone who came, not that anyone tried. She was so alone, poor thing. She would look at herself in the mirror, study her new hairstyle à la Farah Diba, try out a face cream raved about in the latest issue of Elle, but that little rabbit face of hers proved stronger than all those things. It was always too center stage somehow.
Then one day, he had appeared. A handsome young man and very pleasant too. She had never bothered to ask herself whether she really loved him. All she needed were those eyes of his looking at her, those words she had never heard before that he was saying to her, the promise of his hands.
When her mother learned that they were courting, she was quite worried. It was as if she were looking everywhere for a reason—because there must be one—why that man, the first ever, should be attracted to Joana. Her father, without even looking up from his newspaper, merely commented that it was about time, asking in the same indifferent tone of voice if anyone knew how much he earned. As for her brother, he had regarded her with an almost insulting air of astonishment and advised her to be sure to hang on to him and to get married as quickly as possible.
At first, he had wanted to do just that, and they had even bought some furniture with their joint savings. Then he had begun talking about an excellent job he had been offered in Africa. In the end, he had avoided mentioning either of those things. He rarely came to visit her, and whenever he called, he was always in a hurry, always had some urgent piece of work to do: “You will forgive me, won’t you? I’ll explain tomorrow.” He never did explain, because he never came to see her tomorrow, only days later, and, by then, he’d forgotten all about it, as was only natural, given all the many things he had to think about. And it reached the point where it would have seemed strange to her to remind him of what was now a thing of the past.
Gradually, the barriers that had fallen away months before began to rise up around her. She rediscovered things once lost and found again: Her small, now thirty-year-old rabbit face, for example; her awkward body; and she heard her own voice asking herself questions she refused to answer. She felt a great desire to weep, and every morning she would wake in terror, wondering if today would be the day.
The day before, he had called to give her that message about going to the beach. Joana had begged him not to go. Why didn’t he come and see her instead? They had so much to talk about! He hadn’t been to visit her for nearly a week. “A week? You’re kidding…” She wasn’t. A week. “Goodness, how time flies!” he had declared. Goodness, how time drags, she was thinking. How slowly time passes!
Then, that morning, she had read the news in the paper. It was accompanied by a photo of him, an old one she didn’t know, but then there were so many things and so many people she knew nothing about… People talking and her listening and responding and expressing opinions. What opinions? What had she said? Her actual thoughts were adrift somewhere in a very gentle atmosphere, lightly beating their wings, brushing over the surface of things. All her anxiety had vanished. She was no longer filled with dread; she would no longer wake each morning thinking that it would all be over before the day was out. Even though she couldn’t see it, she felt that same great calm on her face, in her still hands, in the voice that emerged confidently, almost sternly. It was the serenity he had bequeathed her! She felt like smiling even though she wasn’t happy, but precisely because she was sad. Smiling at her mother when she arrived bearing the black clothes she would always wear from now on, at her father, her brother, the two friends who had just left, at everyone. She was suddenly another person. The inconsolable fiancée of the man who had just died.