"The Front Room" (A Story)

Is the sense of honor a reality necessary to existence? Is honor something of the very substance of our life? And when it departs, does dignity depart with it?

The Brazilian woman of letters Elena Silveira speaks to us of this honor in the literary masterpiece that follows.

The man was speaking without choosing his words, in a humble voice and a single, unvarying tone. The heat was stifling in the clinic with its white walls, its closed windows keeping out the least stirring of air. Dr. Sergio was listening to the patient, his eyes half shut, and from time to time he tipped his body back in the revolving chair, which gave out an irritating creak. The sick man would pause a little, his hands trembling; then the doctor would open his eyes encouragingly, and the sick man would take up his tale:

"Do the two gentlemen wish me to tell the whole truth? I will try to speak without forgetting anything of what has happened in this last stretch of time, for my memory has begun to betray me.

"At first we lived a good life — the life of the poor, of course. We went to bed early and rose with the dawn and economized in our spending, here and there... but we lived in comfort: there were the Sundays and the holidays and the hours at the cinema. My wife Anita was a housewife and a good mother... working without interruption, and our children looked handsome, the smell of cleanliness rising from them. The money multiplied between her hands, for she helped me with the household expenses by her sewing, and she was gifted in that art, so that our house filled with ladies of the better class.

"As for our children: Maria earned good marks at school, and though she was fourteen years old, her growing frame made her look older than she was. My wife dreamed of putting her into the teachers' training school so that she would become a teacher. Carlos, for all his small body, was well advanced in his lessons. And little Luiza was a baby who wandered the house by day holding to the walls, and at night pressed close to me so that I would tell her a story."

Here the sick man's voice shook and his hands quivered; then he went on:

"I felt, after those days had gone, that all of this had been 'happiness'... I worked hard, and my one pleasure was to see my family growing and getting on; I never laid my head on the pillow but to sleep a deep, contented sleep.

"One day, while we were at table, my wife came out with an idea that had been turning in her head for a long while. She said:

"'Why don't we buy a house on small monthly installments?'

"I told her: because we have no money, and because my work as a mechanic at the garage is not steady. She said: house rents are a calamity, for what we pay goes and never comes back. And so her view prevailed, as it did every time, and I accepted the idea, though I reckoned it far from practicable. Then I sought the help of my employer, who directed me to a real-estate company and took me himself to a newly built house with a small garden in front and another behind the house, a white kitchen, and a bathroom such as in the houses of the well-to-do. My wife went wild with joy and began doubling her work and economizing, to persuade me that we would not 'suffocate' in paying the installments.

"The bargain was concluded. I still remember our first night in our new house... We were in our room; I had stretched out on my bed, and Anita, in her nightclothes, refused to go to sleep and talked... and talked... pacing the room back and forth, laying plans and saying: We shall raise chicks in the corner of the garden and do this and that. I shall raise my sewing prices a little, for my 'customers' have grown many. Do you remember the little house in the last film? And the beautiful curtains on the windows? I shall sew ones like them and iron them with starch, and... and...

"At last she lay down, and I put out the light; but I noticed that she did not sleep, for excess of joy.

"Though I am calm by nature, I caught fire like her with enthusiasm for the new house. The floor and the doors and the windows shone from sheer care, and the windows were arrayed in beautiful curtains; I built in the garden a house for the chicks and planted vegetables, and the days passed without our feeling them.

"When Christmas came we held a little party for the children, and at midnight we lit the candles on the tree and put out the lights. The scene was beautiful, and happiness fluttered about me, until I fancied I was watching a film or a play, or hearing one of the tales of the fairies. Suddenly I felt something tighten at my throat, and the tears rose to my eyes; I was ashamed to weep before my children, so I went out into the garden. I remember the sky of that luminous night, and the shadows of the white roses on the earth, and the radio in the house broadcasting

a song that was all feeling and beauty, and the cries of the children as they clapped, and then Anita's voice as she began to speak quietly and reverently. I lit a cigarette, and my palms were wet with tears. Then Anita came, and it seemed to me that her dress was whiter still and that it shed light... and I touched her with reverence, as though the Virgin Lady had appeared to me on Christmas night. But Anita was not conscious of her own grandeur, and she said with her accustomed simplicity:

"'Emotion has taken hold of you... I saw it... We are so very happy that we feel we do not deserve it!'

"Then we embraced, and behold, she was weeping. The sight of the sky with its crowding stars was a sight to madden, and I felt within me a spiritual strength, and it seemed to me that I could lift the house upon my arms!!"

He fell silent, and the doctor rose and walked toward the window. The sick man said in a broken voice:

"A man speaks of these things as though he were living them over again. I see that I have wearied the Doctor. Shall I pass over these events, or tell everything?"

The doctor answered him:

"Tell all that memory keeps, be it good or bad."

But he did not tell the sick man that at that hour he was not the doctor of nervous diseases alone. He did not say that there was that age-old curiosity — "Man" bent over the misery and the happiness of mankind, analysis flashing in the eye, the one same flash in every case.

The doctor returned to his chair, and the sick man's hands went back to trembling and twitching, so the doctor closed his eyes to calm his fright. And the man began, and went on telling how everything had happened according to plan, how the installments were paid on time and Anita's machine rattled until a late hour of the night, and all of life was contentment and serenity — until there came a day when the son, Carlos, was stricken with pneumonia:

"We called in a doctor, and when he entered our house, care entered with him. This doctor was not a wicked man; he was like all the people who come to earn by their work, and that is a right. The mason earns by laying stones and the engineer by building bridges, and everyone moves by the motive of interest. People understand that this is right and just. And yet I cannot picture that doctor bent over my boy's bed without thinking of the crow."

And the doctor smiles, and reflects that he himself is a strange white crow, listening with eagerness to the tale of this poor sick man — the tale of the misery of this unknown "Man," cut off from everything around him except his memories.

"And my boy lost his health. He escaped the pneumonia, but he became like a threadbare rag... his color yellowed, his eyes sank, his bones showed. Down poured the prescriptions and the injections, the pictures taken by the unknown rays, and the sputum tests in the laboratories. And one day the doctor said to me in a natural tone, as though he were talking of the weather:

"'Senhor Armando, your son has tuberculosis of the lungs!'

"I took him to the sanatorium in the city of Saint Joseph, paid a month's fees, commended him to the doctor and the nurses, and came back consoling myself that his cure would be the best recompense for every financial sacrifice.

"As for Anita, from that day she changed. She worked bravely, night and day, her back bent over the sewing machine. And I went looking for extra work at night to meet my debts, which had piled up because of the expenses of the hospital and the medicines.

"Sometimes I would lie down tired and not sleep for much thinking, and I would notice that my wife was not sleeping either; but we would not breathe a word, believing that talk only adds to our pains. Our silence was like a sheet spread over our calamity, so that we should not see it whole. There was a kind of agreement between us, and we never once spoke of the boy. Two months after he entered the sanatorium, Anita went to visit him and came back with reddened eyes and went up to her room without tasting food. I followed her. She was lying in the dark, weeping quietly. I said nothing, but took her hand in mine. Her skin was dry and rough, and I remembered the days of our engagement, when it was soft as velvet and I would touch it fearfully lest I hurt her. And I began to ask her forgiveness. Forgiveness for what? I do not know. But I asked her forgiveness because I felt myself in some way answerable for all this. She wept long, long, without complaint. She wept until I felt she was cutting my heart; and at last she spoke and said that the boy was improving, but the money must be found — there must be butter and fruit and eggs, in plenty.

"And one night my wife said:

"'Listen, Armando. The front room of the house is of little use to us. I can receive my customers in the dining room; and we, after all, are not people of luxury.'

"I agreed with her, and published an advertisement in a newspaper, and there came to us a dignified lodger, gentle of manner, light of presence, who ate at set hours and lost himself among his books. He stayed in our house three months, then went off to a town in the interior. His going was sudden, and we were in utmost need of the room's rent, so we were obliged to place a new advertisement in the papers.

"When I reached home in the evening, my wife said:

"'You cannot imagine what a strange thing happened today. A lodger came to me for the room — enormously rich, and strange in appearance. He paid me double what I asked, and told me he wanted no food.'

"I did not understand, and asked my wife to tell me the story entire. She spoke of a splendid motorcar that stopped at the door, and of an elegant, well-bred man who stepped out of it, who was pleased with the house because there were children in it, unlike the other houses that had been offered him. Then he paid sixty liras as one month's rent.

"I said, feeling a cold current run down my spine:

"'Sixty liras — and he does not eat in the house?'

"'That is just what I found strange. He said that he wants the room only as a refuge for a few hours, away from the noise of the city; that he found the house beautiful; that he will send a furnisher to fit out the front room to his taste; and that he will receive in it a distinguished, superior person.'

"At this the blood fled from my limbs and gathered in my head. I stared at my wife, dumbfounded, and asked myself whether I had not suffered a sunstroke; then I took pity on her purity. Poor Anita — how pure she was, how clean her heart! Then I explained to her the enormity of what the man was asking; but she would not listen. She said that overstrain at work was changing my thinking, and that a well-bred man like that could not be aiming at anything base.

"I was like one seized with dizziness. I sat down on the chair and looked about me at my beautiful, orderly house; then I looked before me and saw a wife worn out with overwork, a wife grown old, with deep wrinkles about her mouth and that sadness spread over her face. I thought that she was a 'lady,' higher and loftier than all the women glittering with jewels who go about in their splendid motorcars — and that a man of the breed of the small had been able to make her that shameful offer. I clenched my fists and felt the need to crush life, and that thing of which people do not know whether it is fate — that thing like a force descending from above, annihilating. I felt the need to strike out blindly. I do not remember exactly what I said. But I saw my wife shrink back and press herself to the wall and stare at me thunderstruck, as though madness had touched me.

*

"Doctor, sir, when I think of those days, they seem to me covered with a black curtain, and I taste bitterness in my mouth. Great is this trial, to come down upon one man.....

"One Sunday I went to the sanatorium to see Carlos. I found the little one gay and strong, but the director said that he ran a fever at night; for this they had used on him the pneumothorax — 'le pneumothorax' — and I must pay an additional sum of 1,400 piasters...

"When we were returning in the train, my wife began to talk to me fearfully, then stopping and looking out of the window at the darkness that had begun to wrap the green fields and the pretty little houses roofed with red tile. She talked and talked, and the jolting of the wheels magnified her tones:

"'Armando! Where shall we find the money needed for this month? Do you mean to borrow again? The room is still without a tenant.'

"'Armando! Carlos has no warm clothes for the cold days; I must buy him what he needs of them.'

"'Armando! I still keep that man's address. Armando, will you forgive me if I tell you that yesterday I went to him and told him I would bring you to consent — and he promised me to pay three months' rent in advance?'

"I came home with fever devouring me. I kept to my bed four days. Anita wanted to call the doctor, and I forbade her. She came and went, bringing me tea and medicine, and looking at me with the look of a beggar pleading for mercy. When I got up I asked her about the man. She said he had come one day and said he had found a room somewhere, but that he preferred our house because of the presence of the children and the presence of the sewing sign on the outer door — and this wards off suspicion.

"I looked at my wife to see whether it was really she who was reciting all these effronteries. I saw that she understood what she was saying, and that she accepted everything. She understood my look and said calmly:

"'Armando! The poor may not enjoy whatever they please. We are poor now, because of Carlos's illness and the installments on the house that must be paid every month. We are honorable people, and honorable we shall remain. Let us reckon that this room is not in our house. We rent it, and after that the lodger does with it as he pleases — we want our dignity. It is he who receives his visitors, not we! The room has an independent entrance, and we shall know nothing of anything...'

"I bowed my head, beaten, my face blazing with shame.

*

"Then workmen came, and set to plying their hammers and hanging curtains. And the furniture was brought in.

"One day Anita placed in my palm 180 liras — three months' rent.

"And from that time... a stillness took possession of me, and I could no longer speak. I felt that my life was over.

"One night my daughter Maria said to me:

"'Dona Maud has invited me to go to the cinema with her on Tuesday.'

"My wife gave her a hard look, but the girl did not understand, and asked again:

"'Will you let me go?'

"When I went up to my room, the phantoms were dancing in my head. It seemed to me that in the rented room there was a woman with a face like the devil's face, daubed with every paint. She was sitting with my daughter on the edge of the bed, and kissing her; then my wife came and took the girl's place, and began helping the woman on with her clothes. And a dissolute man stood there, looking on...

"When Anita came up to me I seized her by the wrists and shouted:

"'The room has an independent entrance? Eh? We shall know nothing of anything! Eh? And you let our daughter talk with that woman?'

"She began to say that I was deluded, and that Dona Maud was one of her customers. But I was certain that she was lying, and that Dona Maud was the 'superior' lady whom the lodger awaited on his Wednesdays and Saturdays.

"I became like a man into whom a devil has entered, and began throwing things to the floor while Anita wept and pleaded; then I went out into the street without any aim and walked... and walked, and everyone walked with me... the trees and the people and everything. And they were all talking and accusing me, saying: 'You are a weak man, and your house is a shelter for the people of loose pleasure... for the people of loose pleasure!'

"I boarded an electric tram and got off in the heart of the city, and from there went to one of the quarters... And in a certain window there was a dark woman, one of the mulatas(1), and she beckoned to me, and I went up to her house. She was a loose woman, one of those of grease and fat and paints... I thought of Anita and said within myself:

"A family... children... one wife, the beloved of a lifetime! All this has today become like everything else!

"And from that time, Doctor, sir, I felt that something within my inmost self had passed and was gone! I no longer uttered a word or asked about anything, and people began to look at me as at some strange creature. Often, as I pass along the streets, I hear voices saying:

"'You are a lewd, brazen man!' Then I come back to myself and hear my own voice with my own ears, and look about me — and there are the passers-by, staring at me in astonishment.

"And at the garage I began to feel heavy burdens; I would stop work and sink into a world of thoughts. One day my employer called me to him and asked me what was the matter, and why my condition had changed. I answered him: they are family matters; then I went out violently, taking care that my eye should not meet that assured look — the look of the honorable man."

Then the sick man passed a handkerchief over his brow, wiping away the streaming sweat:

"Doctor, sir, I have reached a state that is hard to explain. I fancy that I suffer from my nerves, for it is not natural for a man sound of body to lose his will and to live in the state of mental torpor in which I live.

"One day I came back from my work and met that woman at the outer door. She looked at me and smiled, then bowed her head in greeting. She was not young; she had two sweet eyes and a face overflowing with softness. In the garden I met the man, and he said, in confusion: Good evening!

"I entered the house and found my wife tidying the rented front room. So I sat in the dark dining room without turning the switches of the light. I pictured Anita smoothing the sheets of the bed and arranging the pillows, and it terrified me that I did not feel that old revolt within myself, and felt no pain.

"In my days gone by I used to put things in their places... on one side was evil, and on the other side was good. The good were, in my eyes, good, and the wicked were wicked. Everything was plain, without doubt and without equivocation. And there passed through my imagination the face of Dona Anita, other than what I used to conceive it: a simple face without paints, a frank face and a steady eye. She goes out of her house and meets her lover like any loose woman, and deceives her husband.

"... And all of this goes on in my own house — mine! And I take a fee in exchange for it!

"And terror took hold of me a second time, at my own coldness before these imaginings... Suddenly I rose; I had pictured my wife's two hands smoothing the bed

of sin. I thought that those two hands had carried our children, and that with them she had bared her breast to nurse them! Some great calamity must come down upon our heads, because I, the master of the house, consented to this shame. And from that time I began to feel a strange fear, a fear I cannot explain, which clings to me and will go on clinging to me until I go mad.

"At first I was ashamed to let my wife see my state, and I fought against myself; but my state grew worse day after day. If I went out of the house I would stop in the middle of the road, cold sweat pouring from my head to my feet. I would look at the sidewalk and not dare to cross over to it, for the trembling of my knees. Sometimes I would wait for a boy to pass and take hold of him, and so manage to reach the sidewalk, because he led me by my hand as a blind man is led."

And the doctor looks with pity and feeling at the yellow face, quivering with a nervous motion that contracts the mouth pitifully, and murmurs between his lips: psicastenia.

"Doctor, sir, I have told you the whole truth. I have stopped going to my work, for I have no strength for labor, because I am a man 'whose affair is finished.' My son has come back from the sanatorium red-cheeked, sound, and the sputum test gave a clean result. Some days ago my wife, by roundabout ways, led me to a doctor, and he prescribed me a medicine for my nerves. I took the prescription to the owner of the workshop where I used to work — he is a man who knows many things — and he sent me to you."

The sick man ceased speaking, bowed his head humbly, and awaited the final verdict.

The darkness had thickened in the clinic of the doctor, who tried to find words with which to lift the spirit of the tormented patient — bracing words, helping words. But Dr. Sergio had seen much misery and pain in his life, and he knew the paltriness of words before the enormity of human wretchedness.

And outside, the darkness closed around the skyscrapers, and wrapped a hundred Anitas and Carloses, and a hundred Dona Mauds, and a hundred elegant gentlemen going about in splendid motorcars... And among these human beings the newspaper sellers raised their voices, crying of distant massacres that seem to people dim and unreal, because they happen over there, far away, beyond the seas.

From the Portuguese
Author: Elena Silveira
Translator: Salma Sayegh