Freeze everything—things, people, moments—then rip off their veils one by one in order to take a long, hard look at them, and keep looking until your eyes hurt and your eyelids close from sheer exhaustion. Do this just so you can summon up enough courage. Scrutinize everything you’re leaving behind, everything; see it properly and fearlessly for the first time, simply to confirm that you really don’t have any regrets about leaving. No running away, no escaping down side streets, no ducking into the first open doorway. No dreaming. Above all, no dreaming.
He has lived—for how many years now?—on hopes built in the air with no foundations, no supporting walls, no roof, only open windows he never actually looks out of because he doesn’t even dare to, or, at most, he takes a peep; besides, the windows all open onto an impossibility that he is gradually, fearfully beginning to absorb. He could not have survived without those hopes.
Suddenly, though, for some unknown reason, his dreams are not enough. Now there is always a broad, white swath of anxiety that coils around his chest like a serpent, squeezing him until it hurts and stopping him from breathing. And now it’s not just his chest; the whole of him is being squeezed and squashed by multiple invisible rings.
In his dreams, his boss, Senhor Valdemar, would frequently heap praise on him and promote him, and Fausto would leave his office and stride back through the main office, past his colleagues’ desks, as if he were walking down the aisle of a church. Everyone would look at him admiringly and respectfully, and trailing behind him would be the long, heavy mantle of his new post, that of office manager. This, of course, would have major consequences. His daughter could fulfill her dream of having piano lessons; his wife could afford to rest a little (they might even hire a maid); and, after twenty years of waiting, despairing and hoping in shared houses or in rented rooms, they would finally be able to move to an apartment all to themselves. And he, Fausto, could have a new suit made. How many years had it been since he had done that?
In other dreams, prosperity would arrive not through him, but through his daughter, who would marry—not the pale, scrawny boyfriend who planned to marry her and came each night to talk to her outside in the street (the landlady would not allow such shameless behavior in the house), and who earned a measly six hundred escudos a month, but a rich man with a car, a man who smoked American cigarettes like Senhor Valdemar. Or why not Senhor Valdemar himself? He wasn’t that old, and he had plenty of money. Then, of course, they would immediately move, and he would get his new suit. The suit is one of his main preoccupations and has been for some time. The one he wears has been darned and patched from top to bottom. His wife has added patches inside to make it more resistant, but every day the cloth around the patches frays a little more, and she spends most nights darning.
Needless to say, he had a few supplementary dreams too. For example, finding a wallet in the street, which went unclaimed by its owner; or his Uncle Bento, who had left for Brazil when he was a boy, suddenly resurfacing after a nearly forty-year silence as an old man, on his last legs and stinking rich. And with him as sole heir. This, however, is an almost frighteningly lavish dream, and Fausto is a modest man. What would he do with Uncle Bento’s millions? This is why he prefers the dream of being promoted—quite rightly—to the post of office manager or the one about Isaura getting married, which is, after all, perfectly possible. You hear such stories on the radio every day.
That would have been his preference. Now, though, he can no longer dream, and he wouldn’t, even if he had the chance, even if that thing, whatever it is, didn’t keep tightening its grip around his chest. What he wants is to look at things frankly, lucidly, and to see them clearly outlined against the backdrop of his empty life. Suddenly, his wife is that old woman, old and flaccid, worn out before her time, and it is all his fault. Is it? If it wasn’t for him, if it wasn’t for his dead-end office job, if that wasn’t the only job he was capable of doing, they could both have had a very different life, in the village where they still had family. Their daughter could even have married a farmer with a little land of his own, who would have been delighted to marry a delicate beauty like her from the big city. A delicate beauty? The moment of truth has arrived. Isaura is ugly, like him; she has the same sharp nose, the same weak mouth, the same deep-set eyes. He no longer wants to delude himself, to dream. No, absolutely not. The dark room—the only room—with no sun, no view, no fresh air coming in through the window. No window. Not even a crack letting in the gray weather from the hallway. The paper-thin wall separating them from their daughter. The bathroom and the smell of the bathroom. The arguments in the kitchen when the wives are preparing the meals, and the smell of the rancid oil in which the typographer’s wife fries potatoes. The shabby shoes with holes in them that they can never afford to get mended. Perhaps at the beginning of the month… But at the beginning of the month, there’s never enough money to get the shoes mended, unless they do without something else: bus fare, for example. And for a few days—eight, ten, fifteen days—Fausto leaves home earlier than usual to arrive at work in time to sign on. His daughter spending all day sewing. His wife’s lined face and her legs so swollen she can barely walk. The sharp-tongued landlady, who always demands that the rent be paid on the first day of the month and who is always hinting that, if they don’t like it, they can leave. And if that hypothetical marriage did take place, well, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t—after all, he got married and so did his wife—his daughter would move into a room identical to theirs, possibly worse, possibly without even a narrow transom window giving onto the hallway, where she would live to the end of her days.
Dreams are no longer enough, because everything has become too big, too sad. And Fausto wishes he could die. Death seems to him the only solution. It would bring calm and serenity. And God? Gradually, without even realizing it, he has completely lost sight of God, ever since the day he and his wife got married in the village church full of white roses. The fact is that God had never again made his presence felt, and Fausto has never been good at asking favors of others, or asking for their love, be they gods or men. And now he’s all alone.
Despite not feeling hungry (his stomach hurts, he says), he has just finished his evening meal of tomato rice and fried fish. He leaves the table and puts on his hat. He’s going for a walk, he says, he won’t be long, see you later. His wife stares at him in bewilderment, and says, yes, all right, see you later; and Isaura says nothing because she has noticed nothing and is concentrating on finishing the dress she has to deliver tomorrow afternoon.
Fausto looks around, taking in, in that one glance, his wife, his daughter, and the rickety furniture that grows frailer with each change of address. Not that he waxes sentimental—he is not a sentimentalist. He doesn’t kiss either of the women goodbye; he doesn’t say a word that they might be able to interpret later on. He has made his decision: He is going to be the victim of an accident.
He starts walking, and his footsteps echo strangely in the night. He walks down Rua das Pretas and finds himself on the Avenida. He crosses it carefully, looking right and left (the moment has not yet arrived), and then continues walking slowly along, keeping very close to the edge of the sidewalk, near the road itself. There are not many cars at that hour; he has not chosen a good time. But he can’t go home now. He feels that to do so would be an act of cowardice, and Fausto doesn’t want to be a coward, anything but that. He hears the long, slow steps of other passers-by, people out for a post-supper walk. A black car is approaching fast, and Fausto feels that he must seize the opportunity. He waits for the right moment, closes his eyes, then launches himself into the road.
However, he steps back as quickly as he stepped forward. There is a strange noise, as if something inside him had torn, perhaps his heart, which feels suddenly larger, and the black car whisks past his feet, leaving him untouched. Fausto struggles, but the hand gripping his right arm is strong, or perhaps stubborn, and won’t give an inch. He stops struggling and surrenders, then turns cautiously round.
“What were you about to do?” someone asks.
Fausto gives a faint smile, but that suggestion of a smile didn’t have its origins within him; it’s quite independent of him, meaningless. It simply appeared.
“I was about to cross the Avenida,” he says at last. “I was going home…”
“You were about to throw yourself under that car. I could see that you were about to step forward. I was watching you, just in case, and I saw what you were going to do. Fortunately, I have good reflexes.”
In a dull, foolish voice, Fausto repeats, “Fortunately…good reflexes…” but he doesn’t know what he’s saying. He has still not quite understood what has just happened. He is in a state of utter incomprehension, and even the sounds he makes seem somehow different. Slowly, though, normality is returning, and Fausto is standing on the edge of the sidewalk beside a man who still has a firm grip on his arm, as if he were afraid Fausto might try to throw himself under another car.
Fausto delicately tries to free himself. Life has taught him to be delicate, even with busybodies, or especially with them. This is why, with an effortless bow of his head, he says:
“Thank you.”
A happy smile appears on his companion’s young face. Young? Perhaps he isn’t so very young. An unlined face anyway, with youthful, unfinished features. They begin to walk along together in silence. Then the stranger starts talking, quickly, about fate, chance, and God, carefully measuring out each concept and placing them in separate compartments. Sometimes the ideas overflow and intermingle a little, and God and chance find themselves face to face. This, however, is a brief, fortuitous encounter, and one of them is immediately obliged to withdraw and make way for the other, and this happens so quickly, and the man’s voice is so convincing, that Fausto doesn’t even notice and, even if he had, he might perhaps have found such an encounter perfectly natural.
He tries to leave. Once and then again. He is straying too far from the dark, malodorous room to which he will, ultimately, return. He has spent all his courage, squandered all possibilities in that one failed attempt. He tries to pull away. The other man, however, continues to grip his arm, and, as Fausto now realizes, he is drawing him along with him.
“Let’s go to my house. You need a drink. Then you’ll feel better.”
“It’s getting late…my family…”
“For someone who had no intention of going back home, my friend, it’s still early.”
Yes, it’s still early. And Fausto listlessly allows himself to be led who knows where. They turn to the left, cross the tram line, walk up another street, stop, get into an elevator full of mirrors.
“I wouldn’t want to inconvenience anyone…”
“I live alone.”
“Yes, but isn’t it getting late?”
A small hall with lights on the wall and curtains covering the doors; a living room where two of the walls are lined with books, paintings, and trinkets that seem quite marvelous to Fausto; the deep, soft, welcoming armchair into which he allows himself respectfully to fall.
Now he has a glass in his hand, and a golden liquid he had believed lost in the mists of time—How long has it been since he drank a good cognac? How many has he drunk in his entire life?—is filling him with a strange feeling of wellbeing, a light, gently euphoric state. He has a vague memory of trying to throw himself under a black car, but he doesn’t know exactly why or where this happened or if it was a long time ago or right now.
“You may not appreciate what this means to me.”
It’s the other man speaking. He has an odd face, a very fixed gaze. Fausto finds himself smiling wryly, as if he found the situation amusing.
“Perhaps not.”
Suddenly, he is waiting, almost eagerly, for the other man’s response. However, the man says only that it’s hardly surprising that Fausto should feel confused and offers him a Chesterfield cigarette. Fausto has seen such cigarettes in Senhor Valdemar’s office but has never smoked one. Besides, it’s many years since he smoked anything, since he lost that expensive habit. Now though… Today is different… Today perhaps…
The man uses a lovely golden lighter to light his cigarette and looks in his direction, but not at him. His gaze is so intense that it goes straight through him, is lost—more sword than gaze.
“I turned thirty-nine a week ago, and so far nothing has ever happened to me. Nothing. And yet here I am, having saved someone’s life. Your life. I didn’t choose to; I just happened to be there, close enough to reach out a hand. But it was so important to me, my friend, do you understand?”
“Not many important things do happen in people’s lives,” says Fausto, not knowing what else to say.
“True. And that’s true of anyone’s life. But people don’t realize this and believe that important things do happen. I was waiting for something…I’ve always been waiting. For what? I don’t know… To make someone happy perhaps. Completely happy, I mean. To give them everything I have, for example, although that’s impossible. I did actually try to do that once, but without success. She didn’t understand; she never understood anything. She thought it all rather vulgar… And, when I think about it now, I’m not sure I even loved her. Ridiculous, eh? The stuff of a cheap novel, don’t you agree?”
No, Fausto doesn’t agree. He understands, he corroborates, even while disagreeing. Does he openly disagree? No. The truth is that he has already drunk his cognac and is gazing absently at his empty glass. He is no longer in the room he first entered, but in an atmosphere into which he has slowly dissolved. He is studying, with neither wonder nor admiration, the large multi-colored painting to his left.
“That’s an abstract painting, isn’t it?”
The other man looks at him, surprised at this sudden leap in space, and follows his gaze.
“Yes, it is. Don’t you like abstract painting?”
Fausto shakes his head, and the other man starts talking about Braque. Who’s Braque? thinks Fausto fleetingly as he begins his second drink.
“I must go,” he says. “It’s getting late.”
Late, late, LATE! says the echo inside his head. How often has he uttered the same meaningless words?
The other man makes a gesture that prevents him from standing up. From a distance, without a word. Or perhaps all Fausto saw was that one white hand, and the words were lost in his incipient drunkenness. Whatever the truth, the gesture immobilizes him; he remains motionless, pinned to the spines of the books on the shelves.
“I would like to do something for you, to help you, insofar as I can. Why did you want to die? Lack of money?”
Fausto opens his mouth, but cannot find any words. In that room, holding that glass, he can’t explain to the man that he wanted to die because of the bad smell in the house where he lives; because of the dark, sunless room; because of his daughter’s marriage and his shabby shoes and his threadbare suit and so much else, so much else… He can’t, it’s too complicated.
“It’s too complicated,” he murmurs. “We reach a certain stage in life and discover that… how can I put it…that we…”
His sentence remains hanging in the air, and no one takes it up in order to continue it, not even him. There is no way of continuing.
He stands up and only then does he notice that his right sleeve is ripped from wrist to elbow. This leaves him feeling so distraught that he cannot even hear what is being said to him, the explanation. He knows only that his sleeve is ripped and that tomorrow he won’t be able to go to the office. And, of course, he has to go to the office tomorrow. That is the natural order of things, the very order he has so signally failed to escape from. The man says:
“That was my fault. I must have done it when I grabbed your arm.”
As if this admission of guilt could console him. As if the fact that the other man had done it, and not him or the cloth itself, could be of any help.
Why did that man have to be there at precisely that moment, why there and not a few feet behind or ahead or to one side? Why?
If he had been a few feet away, or even a few inches, he wouldn’t have been able to reach out his hand, and Fausto wouldn’t be sitting in this apartment or anywhere else. He raises his eyes from his empty glass, once again empty, and which he doesn’t recall having emptied, but the other man is no longer there—he has run out of the room only to return at once carrying a brown suit.
“Put it on and see if it fits. I’m sure it will. We seem to be about the same size or similar. You’re thinner, but that might help, because I may be a little shorter. Go on, put it on. The tailor sent it to me yesterday. It’s brand new, never been worn. It’s lambswool, feel it.”
Faust feels it, puts it on, buttons it up, bends down, turns around, and he’s surprised. The suit fits him well, like a glove. Should he thank the man? Should he accept it as a perfectly natural gift? The other man, however, is pressing a visiting card into his hand.
“Come and see me tomorrow at this address. I’ll see what I can do to help you. Really. Tomorrow.”
Fausto steps out into the cold street. He feels happy.
The effects of the alcohol? Possibly, but largely it’s that brand-new suit that has never been worn before and that is made to last ten years or more; and it’s also the visiting card in his pocket, the card that his fingers are holding and stroking. He can’t wait to get home and tell his wife and daughter everything. But tell them what? He can’t tell them he tried to kill himself. He could say he met a friend he hadn’t seen for years. Maybe… He feels happy. He has forgotten all about the bad smell, the rancid oil, even the boyfriend who only earns 600 escudos a month and wants to marry his daughter. Everything seems suddenly possible, as if he had regained the ability to believe in his dreams again. Tomorrow, he would go to that address… Yes, now he knows that something is going to happen; he is quite sure of this. Things can’t go on as they are, not now he has that lambswool suit. Yes, it would be strange, almost ridiculous, now that he has that brand-new, never-before-worn lambswool suit and that visiting card in his pocket: with those two things and his wife…and his daughter…and the house… No, no, it’s impossible. Everything is going to change.
It was at precisely this moment, as he was crossing the Avenida to walk back up Rua das Pretas, that Fausto was struck by a car. He died on the way to hospital. And that brown lambswool suit remained an indecipherable mystery to Isaura and her mother.