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so:
    â€œDon’t make her go to work. And if there’s any change, call me at the office. See you later.”
    â€œYes, see you later, Anselmo.”
    Justina greeted her neighbor with a cool smile. Anselmo walked past her on the stairs, solemnly tipped his hat and, in his warm, mellow voice, uttered a ceremonious “Good morning.” There was, however, a great deal of venom in the way the street door slammed shut behind him. Justina called up the stairs:
    â€œGood morning, Dona Rosália.”
    â€œGood morning, Dona Justina.”
    â€œWhat’s wrong with Claudinha? Is she ill?”
    â€œHow did you know?”
    â€œI was just shaking out the doormat here and I thought I heard your husband say . . .”
    â€œOh, she’s putting it on as usual, but she only has to whimper and my Anselmo’s convinced she’s dying. She’s the apple of his eye. She says she has a headache, but what she’s really got is a bad case of lazyitis. Her headache’s so bad she’s gone straight back to sleep!”
    â€œYou can’t be too sure, Dona Rosália. Remember, that’s how I lost my little girl, God rest her soul. It was nothing, they told us, and then meningitis carried her off.” She took out a handkerchief and blew her nose loudly before going on: “Poor little thing. And only eight years old. How could I forget . . . It’s been two years, you know, Dona Rosália.”
    Rosália did know and wiped away a polite tear. Encouraged by her neighbor’s apparent sympathy, Justina was about to recall more all-too-familiar details when a hoarse voice interrupted her:
    â€œJustina!”
    Justina’s pale face turned to stone. She continued talking to Rosália until the hoarse voice grew still louder and more violent:
    â€œJustina!!”
    â€œWhat is it?” she asked.
    â€œCome inside, will you? I don’t want you standing out there on the landing, talking. If you worked as hard as I do, you wouldn’t have the energy to gossip!”
    Justina shrugged indifferently and went on with the conversation, but Rosália, finding the scene embarrassing, said it was time she went in. After Justina had gone back into her apartment, Rosália crept down a few stairs and listened hard. Through the door she heard a few angry exclamations, then silence.
    It was always the same. You would hear the husband tearing into his wife, then the wife would utter some almost inaudible words and he would immediately shut up. Rosália found this very odd. Justina’s husband had a reputation as a bit of a brute, with his big, bloated body and his crude manners. He wasn’t quite forty and yet his flaccid face, puffy eyes and moist, drooping lower lip made him seem older. No one could understand why two such different people had ever married, and it was true that they had never been seen out in the street together. And, again, no one could understand how two such unpretty people (Justina’s eyes were beautiful, not pretty) could have produced a delightful daughter like Matilde. It was as if Nature had made a mistake and, realizing its mistake later on, had corrected it by having the child disappear.
    The fact is that, after he had made just two or three aggressive comments, all it took to silence violent, rude Caetano Cunha—that obese, arrogant, ill-mannered Linotype operator on a daily newspaper—was a murmured comment from his wife, the diabetic Justina, so frail she could be blown away in a high wind.
    It was a mystery Rosália could not unravel. She waited a little longer, but absolute silence continued to reign. She withdrew into her own apartment, carefully closing the door so as not to wake her sleeping daughter, always assuming she was asleep rather than merely pretending.
    Rosália peered around the door. She thought she saw her daughter’s eyelids flutter. She opened the door properly and advanced on the bed.