In the kitchen the two old ladies were still talking. They were very similar in appearance—white hair, brown eyes, the same simple black clothes—and they spoke in shrill, rapid tones, without pauses or modulation.
“I’ve told you already. The coal is nothing but dust. We should complain to the coal merchant,” one was saying.
“If you say so,” said the other.
“What are you talking about?” asked Isaura, entering the room.
The more erect and brighter-eyed of the two old ladies said:
“This coal is just terrible. We should complain.”
“If you say so, Auntie.”
Aunt Amélia was, so to speak, the household administrator. She was in charge of the cooking, the accounts and the catering generally. Cândida, the mother of Isaura and Adriana, was responsible for all the other domestic arrangements, for their clothes, for the profusion of embroidered doilies decorating the furniture and for the vases full of paper flowers, which were replaced by real flowers only on high days and holidays. Cândida was the elder of the sisters and, like Amélia, she was a widow, one whose grief had long since been assuaged by old age.
Isaura sat down at the sewing machine, but before starting work, she looked out at the broad river, its farther shore hidden beneath the mist. It looked more like the sea than a river. The rooftops and chimney pots rather spoiled the illusion, but even if you did your best to blot them out, the sea was right there in those few miles of water, the white sky somewhat sullied by the dark smoke belching forth from a tall factory chimney.
Isaura always enjoyed those few moments when, just before she bent her head over her sewing machine, she allowed her eyes and thoughts to wander over the scene before her. The landscape never varied, but she only ever found it monotonous on stubbornly bright, blue summer days when everything was too obvious somehow, too well defined. A misty morning like this—a thin mist that did not entirely conceal the view—endowed the city with a dream-like imprecision. Isaura savored all this and tried to prolong the pleasure. A frigate was traveling down the river as lightly as if it were floating on a cloud. In the gauze of mist, the red sail turned pink, then the boat plunged into the denser cloud licking the surface of the water, reappeared briefly, then vanished behind one of the buildings obscuring the view.
Isaura sighed, her second sigh of the morning. She shook her head like someone surfacing from a long dive, and the machine rattled furiously into action. The cloth ran along beneath the pressure foot, and her fingers mechanically guided it through as though they were just another part of the machine. Deafened by the noise, Isaura suddenly became aware that someone was speaking to her. She abruptly stopped the wheel, and silence flooded back in. She turned around.
“Sorry?”
Her mother said again:
“Don’t you think it’s a bit early?”
“Early? Why?”
“You know why. Our neighbor . . .”
“But what am I supposed to do? It’s hardly my fault the man downstairs works at night and sleeps during the day, is it?”
“You could at least wait until a bit later. I just hate to annoy people.”
Isaura shrugged, put her foot down on the pedal again and, raising her voice above the noise of the machine, added:
“Do you want me to go to the shop and tell them I’m going to be late delivering?”
Cândida slowly shook her head. She lived in a constant state of perplexity and indecision, under the thumb of her sister—three years her junior—and keenly aware that she was dependent financially on her daughters. She wanted, above all, not to inconvenience anyone, wanted to go unnoticed, to be as invisible as a shadow in the darkness. She was about to respond, but, hearing Amélia’s footsteps, said nothing and went back to the kitchen.
Meanwhile, Isaura, hard at work, was filling the apartment with noise. The floor vibrated. Her pale cheeks gradually grew red and a bead of sweat appeared on her brow. She again became aware of someone standing beside her and slowed down.
“There’s no need to work so fast. You’ll wear yourself out.”
Aunt Amélia never wasted a word. She said only what was absolutely necessary, but she said it in a way that made those listening appreciate the value of concision. The words seemed to be born in her mouth at the very moment they were spoken and to emerge replete with meaning, heavy with good sense, virginal. That’s what made them so impressive and convincing. Isaura duly slowed her pace of work.
A few minutes later, the doorbell rang. Cândida went to answer it, was gone for a few seconds, then returned looking anxious and upset, muttering:
“Didn’t I tell you, didn’t I tell you?”
Amélia looked up:
“What is it?”
“It’s the downstairs neighbor come to complain about the noise. You go, will you?”
Amélia stopped doing the washing, dried her hands on a cloth and went to the front door. Their downstairs neighbor was on the landing.
“Good morning, Dona Justina. What can I do for you?”
At all times and in all circumstances, Amélia was the very soul of politeness, but that politeness could easily turn to ice. Her tiny pupils would fix on the face they were looking at, arousing irrepressible feelings of unease and embarrassment in the other person.
The neighbor had been getting on fine with Cândida and had almost finished what she had come to say. Now there appeared before her a far less timid face and a far more
