Skylight by José Saramago

Author:José Saramago
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

22

With the natural vitality of a six-year-old, Henrique made a rapid recovery. And yet, despite the relatively benign nature of the illness, his character seemed to have undergone a radical change. Perhaps the experience of being showered with care and affection had made him more than usually sensitive. At the slightest harsh word, his eyes would well up and he would burst into tears.

The once lively, playful boy had become prudent and sensible. In his father’s company he was always serious and silent. He would gaze at him tenderly, in dumb, passionate admiration, even though this sudden interest went unreciprocated and his father was no more affectionate toward him than usual. What attracted Henrique now was exactly what had repelled him before: his father’s silence, his few words, his absent air. For reasons unknown to him, and which he would not have understood had he known them, his father had kept vigil at his bedside. His presence there, the anxious yet reserved look on his face, the hostile atmosphere filling the apartment, plus the new receptiveness and keener perception brought on by illness—all these factors, in some obscure way, drove him toward his father. One of the many doors in his small brain, which had until then remained closed, had inched open. Without being conscious of doing so, he had taken a step toward maturity. He began to notice the lack of harmony in the family.

He had, of course, witnessed violent rows between his parents on other occasions, but he had done so as an indifferent spectator, as if he were watching a game that in no way affected him. Not now, though. He was still under the influence of the illness and his weak state, and prior to that he had become, quite against his will, sensitized to the various manifestations of that latent conflict. The prism through which he viewed his parents had shifted very slightly, but enough for him to be able to see them differently. This would inevitably have happened sooner or later, but the illness had sped up the process.

His mother remained undiminished in his eyes, his view of her unchanged, but he saw his father in a different light. Henrique was far too young to realize that the change had taken place inside himself; it must, therefore, have been his father who had changed. In the absence of any real explanation, Henrique had to think back to the care his father had lavished on him during his illness. This then made sense to him. And so Henrique’s sudden interest in his father was merely a way of reciprocating his father’s interest in him, not now, but then; it was an acknowledgment, a show of gratitude. Each age in life seizes upon the easiest and most immediate explanation available.

This interest manifested itself in both sensible and nonsensical ways. At mealtimes, Henrique’s chair was always drawn slightly closer to his father’s chair than to his mother’s. When, at night, Emílio was sorting through his paperwork—the various

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