The Piano Cemetery

by José Luís Peixoto

  ‘Your father, when he talked about or thought about pianos, he had whirligigs of music inside him.’

  During those days my uncle sent me many times to the piano cemetery. At first he’d point out the piece he needed — a damper, a lever spring, a knob — and then would hide his face inside the piano again. The first few times my mother’s voice, repeated by memory, would come back to say those words to me from when I was a child and I spoke to her of that closed door in my workshop. Later, bit by bit, I began to convince myself of my uncle’s words:

  ‘Your father would have been so happy, if he was here.’

  And I began to believe that, whatever my mother’s idea — to protect me, to protect my father’s memory — I would be honouring her because I was giving new life to my father’s dreams, just as I was giving new lives to the dead pieces of those pianos.

  Sometimes I took a little longer than was necessary because I stopped to listen to the calm, or to look at the pianos that surrounded me and imagine the story that each one of them held — wooden stages, dances, instructors teaching, girls with lace cuffs learning. When I returned to the shop my uncle never noticed the delay and smiled at me as I held out the correct piece he had requested.

  Early on Saturday afternoon we looked at one another with a shy satisfaction when we knew the piano was ready. Mid-morning my uncle had gone out to fetch the tuner. He arrived, leading him by the arm. The tuner was blind. He tilted his head upwards or to places where nothing was happening. His head turned independently on his neck. He was older than my uncle. He had smooth hands. He spoke little. We spent hours setting each note right. The tuner tightened the strings with a silver key that he held, tightly and carefully, between his fingers. And the pure sounds — distinct in the silence — drawn in the air, lingering briefly, echoing in the memory and leaving another silence — another silence — another, different silence.

  When there was a word to be heard, at last, it was my uncle asking me to go and tell the Italian. I smiled at him, I nodded, but couldn’t say anything because, inside me, there was an infinite whirligig of infinite music.

  I could sense my wife awake. I might have remembered that there were only a few days left to the date the doctor had given, but I remembered only the nights when the heat had stopped her sleeping. It was the beginning of September. She turned impatiently in bed. Each time she turned the world would be suspended in her movements, because it was all very slow, because it was difficult and, at times, it seemed impossible. Her body was too big. Her arms tried to grasp the sheets. She couldn’t settle into a position. The joints of the bed creaked. I was awake, asleep, awake, asleep. When I fell asleep, I remained half-awake. When I awoke, I was still half-asleep. In my vague thoughts I believed it was the heat that was stopping her from falling asleep completely.

  Half-asleep, I opened my eyes when I felt my legs hot and wet, when she shook my shoulders, shouting and whispering:

  ‘Wake up! My waters have broken.’

  I had trouble getting my feet into my trousers. I tried to get one foot in and hopped around on the other. She locked herself in the bathroom. When I knocked on the door she asked me to go and tell Marta. I went into our daughters’ bedroom in the dark. Marta awoke, startled. I waited for the silence, until all we could hear was the breathing tides of Maria sleeping. Then I said to her:

  ‘Your mother is about to have the child. We’re going to the maternity hospital now. Take care of your brother and sister when they wake up.’

  In the gloom Marta’s eyes listened to me, very serious.

  I left our daughters’ room. Marta was left sitting on the bed. Her eyes were worried and shining. I opened the door to Simão’s room. He was still so small, and he was sleeping. I closed the door gently. I looked for my wife. I walked down the corridor. The truck was less than a year old, and in the final months of my wife’s pregnancy we had kept it parked outside the front door. I helped my wife into the truck. I ran to the driver’s door. I started up in second gear.

  The first times we stopped in traffic I wiped the sleep from my eyes with my index finger. I hadn’t paid much attention when that morning had started. Occasionally my wife’s complaining would get louder. Then I would speed up, jolting on the tram rails, overtaking honking cars and running red lights. Then there were motorcars in front of me and I couldn’t pass. I turned to my wife and asked her if she was all right. I looked at my watch — time was very fast. I asked her again if she was all right. I revved the engine and drew a roar without moving; I looked at my watch, time was very fast. I asked her again if she was all right and, when I was able to get going, accelerated again — jolting on the tram rails, overtaking motorcars, running red lights.

  She said to me, in her suffering:

  ‘Take it easy.’

  I was getting irritated:

  ‘How am I supposed to take it easy?’

  She said to me:

  ‘Easy. .’

  And we arrived at the maternity hospital. I ran to her and we went in with our arms linked together, me pulling her, her weighed down with her pains, and me pulling her. I made for a nurse and before I was able to say a word the nurse said to me:

  ‘Take it easy.’

  And she took her away. My wife turned around to see me on my own, my arms and my eyes abandoned. And I waited. I looked at my watch. The morning. The morning the size of a summer. The whole morning. I looked at my watch. Time was very slow. The nurse passed by me; I followed her and before I was able to say a word she was the one who spoke, saying:

  ‘Take it easy. Go and eat something.’

  And I gave up.

  It was past lunchtime when the nurse came back into the waiting room and said to me:

  ‘So, don’t you want to go see your son?’

  My feet slipped on the tiled floor, my body went through the grey-walled corridors with their lights nearly blown, blinking, flickering. My eyes couldn’t see a thing. And I went into the room. All at once — my wife lying in the bed holding our Francisco in her arms. Smiling at life. I walked dumbly, slowly to the bed. I couldn’t say anything. Later I would say that right then I had understood everything he would be capable of. Later I would say so many things. At that moment, I couldn’t say anything. I touched the boy’s cheek with the tips of my fingers. I touched my wife’s forehead with my lips. Time did not exist.

  Without a moment to waste on questions that have no answers, my wife goes back into the bathroom with Íris in her arms, and when she opens the medicine cabinet she doesn’t want to think about who might be calling her.

  Íris is already heavy. My wife sits on the end of the bidet and puts her down on the floor. In front of her, Íris is standing there, her hand open and stretched out towards her. A grandmother and a granddaughter. On her knees my wife balances cotton wool, tincture of iodine, sticky tape and a roll of bandage. Her voice is gentle because she doesn’t want Íris to cry any more. She tries to smile, and she tries to distract her.

  ‘So, now you’ve come to the hospital to be made all better. So tell me, madam, have you had an accident?’

  Her lips pressed tight and her eyes wide, Íris murmurs injured moans, almost pretend, and holds her hand out further.

  ‘Oh, we’ll make that all better.’ And she pours tincture of iodine on to a ball of cotton wool that she brings towards the wound.

  Íris makes as if to start crying, but my wife manages to distract her. She says to her:

  ‘There, there.’ And she rolls up her little hand in a strip of bandage that she fixes with sticky tape.

  Then she finds a moment to run her fingers through Íris’s hair — tenderly — and slowly brings her lips to her forehead. She smiles at her:

  ‘All gone.’

  Íris is on her tiptoes, holding her chin over the sink while my wife washes her face that’s still a mess from the crying. She feels her face. She feels her face through the towelling fabric, and it is only then, putting a hand on her shoulder, that she asks her how it
was that the piece of furniture came to fall over.

  ‘It was the dolly,’ says Íris.

  My wife understands that our granddaughter wanted to climb on to the cupboard to get the Nazarena doll that Maria kept to decorate one of the cupboard shelves. It’s a plastic doll Maria bought on a trip. It has the seven skirts of the fisherwomen of Nazaré and a black hat over a flowery kerchief. It has painted lashes over its painted eyes. It is barefoot on a round base which says ‘Souvenir of Nazaré’. No matter how many times her grandmother has scolded her, Íris still has an immoderate passion for that doll. As my wife is getting ready to scold her, the doorbell rings.

  Her heart, again. It’s already past the time the postman might ring the doorbell, it’s early for our daughter’s lunchtime and there are not usually other visitors during the day. My wife leaves Íris waiting for her in the bathroom.

  ‘Don’t touch anything,’ she says to her, sharply.

  And she makes her way along the hall runner. As though there were an idea also walking along the hallway, heading towards her, and passing her, she suddenly gets the thought that the person ringing the doorbell might be the same person who phoned minutes earlier. It might be someone who needs to tell her some dreadful piece of news that has already happened, that will floor her — death — that will destroy her — death — that will condemn her once again. She tries to push this black thought away. She presses down on the button that opens the street door down below, and that moment hears the electronic echo of the door opening into the building’s hallway. She waits. She tries to make out the steps that must now be coming into the building, or that must now be coming up the marble stairs, but instead, she hears three knocks on the upstairs door — close to her — three firm knocks on the wood. With a start, alarmed, she asks:

  ‘Who is it?’

  But no one replies.

  She asks again:

  ‘Who is it?’

  But no one replies.

  The Flor de Benfica boarding house wasn’t very far. It was my eagerness to get there which meant that, that day, the way over seemed so long to me. The streets of Benfica, which I had known for ever, appeared new because I couldn’t see them. As I walked, I didn’t see the abandoned scabied dogs leaning up against the walls, fearful, heavy lids over their eyes; nor the ruined houses, windowpanes broken by thrown stones and walls painted grey by time; nor the dirty children, hair shaved because of the lice, who pulled at the sleeves of women’s coats and thrust the palms of their hands out to them. It was Saturday and the early afternoon was bringing activity to the streets. More motorcars were passing than was usual — horns honked and startled the old women under their shawls who jumped and cursed. Groups of barefoot little kids ran after iron hoops, the sound of the wand sliding inside the hoop. Girls carried little errand baskets in the crooks of their arms and averted their blushing faces when they passed the café doors. Apart from all this, I continued on my way, attentive to the images that only existed within me, or which would be the whole world were I to happen to close my eyes — my uncle’s face in the morning, my face when I arrived home in the early evening, and the Italian’s face when I told him that the piano was ready. The two previous mornings, since the piano had arrived at the workshop, when I got to the top of the road, I could already see my uncle leaning on the big door, waiting for me. He had an alert look to him, and even from a distance I could already begin to make out his childish smile. When I approached with the key he’d pat me on the back, and as soon as I opened the door he’d pass in front of me and walk straight over to the piano. At the end of the day, he didn’t stop at the taberna once. Before going up to the front step of my house, I saw him go down the road and away, shut off in his dreams, towards the room where he was living in those days. It was early evening when, in the house where I dined alone, I filled the basin and, having splashed water on to my face with both hands, stopped to look in the little bathroom mirror. In my eyes, I could make out a feeling that I was only then starting to recognise and that made me invent all manner of dreams. That Saturday, as I walked, I was sure I knew what enthusiasm I would find in the Italian’s face when I told him the piano was ready. As soon as I saw the boarding house at the end of the road, I began to hurry. The distance of these final steps was greater.

  I knocked on the door and no one opened. I knocked again and an uninterested lady in glasses appeared, who looked silently at me from head to toe, still holding the door, as if to ask what I wanted there. It was her gaze that undid my smile. I asked after the Italian, and she replied to me at once that the Italian gentleman did not want to be disturbed. I told her I had come with news about the piano he had left for repair; she continued to stare at me in silence; I insisted, and only then did she let me in. With a movement of her chin she gestured me towards a corridor that ended in a door to a room of armchairs and lace doilies. She followed me and waited for me to sit down.

  When she left — her steps stabbing into the waxed wood — her absence remained, controlling every move I made. My hands resting on my knees, I could feel the fine sawdust that covered the fabric of my trousers, and as though the vases of ferns were watching me, as though the curtains were watching me, I remained still, trying not to breathe.

  Her face — the same uninterest — came back in and went out in a moment. She said:

  ‘The Italian gentleman will be down in a moment.’

  The passing of time made me see how ridiculous my enthusiasm was when compared to reality. Reality was that tidy old room. My enthusiasm was an illusion I had constructed on my own from nothing. Sitting there, I watched the shadows growing from the armchair legs.

  It was then that my life changed for ever.

  Preceded by the quick taps that the floorboards made under the lightness of her step, she came into the room and was startled to see me. I would have been merely ashamed had it not been for the white softness of her face. She had her hair tied in a ribbon, she was a girl and, in her face, there was a kind of miracle — purity — that I couldn’t describe. Big eyes — the sky. If I had been close enough, I believe I could have seen birds gliding within her eyes, it would be a month of spring within her eyes — endless. She was a delicate girl and my gaze rested carefully on the skin of her neck, on the shoulders under the flowery dress she wore. She was a delicate, barefoot girl — the start of her legs, the slender ankles, the bare feet that seemed not to touch the ground. Under her gaze I could feel an invisible force drawing my hand towards her hair, slipping it invisibly through my fingers, but I remained seated and still, eyes raised, imagining it all. It was only after the moment had passed and the Italian came in, perfumed and coiffed, that I realised that I was a carpenter with my body covered in sawdust, unshaved, my hands rough. The Italian smiled at her as though rescuing her. He put his hand on her waist and said some words to her in Italian that also made her smile. Then he turned to me, and as though not realising, left his hand resting on her waist. He left his hand resting on her waist. It was my voice telling him the piano was ready, but I didn’t hear his response, I didn’t see his face, because though I looked at him all I could see was the hand he had left resting on her waist. Then he said we should go and fetch the piano, and at the same moment he took his hand from her waist and in came the woman, eyes wide, telling her to go and do something unimportant. She disappeared. Then an empty moment. As I made my way along the corridor runner towards the door I breathed in all the air I could because that air still carried the perfume of her passing by. In silence, sitting on the cart, next to the Italian, I travelled quickly along the streets towards the workshop.

  My wife decides not to be afraid, and suddenly, in an impulse, wraps the strength of her fingers around the knob and opens the door.

  In front of my wife, an arm’s length away, is a gypsy dressed in black. In his burned skin, between the wrinkles that open pathways in his face and transform it into something arable like earth, the serious age of his brown eyes is looking at her. The white beard, kn
otted up like a cloud of spider’s webs, ends at the collar of his faded black shirt. He has a hat, also black, shapeless, wedged on to his head. And an old belt, of worn cobbler’s leather, holds his faded trousers to his thin body, the trousers grey and black, black with grey stains. On the carpet of the entrance hall, his boots covered in dry mud.

  My wife doesn’t speak, watching him. There isn’t any word she could say. Behind him the plants, supported by long sticks, become suddenly distinct in their pots. In just the same way the fresh emptiness of the staircase in the middle of a Friday morning becomes distinct. The clarity awaiting an echo becomes distinct.

  A movement of the gypsy’s arm shows Ana’s little blouse that my wife had dropped while she was hanging out the clothes. Then, that way gypsies speak, a hoarse voice. And the words:

  ‘Did you drop this?’

  Between his fingers — thick gold rings, earth-scratched nails, index finger cigarette-stained — is Ana’s blouse. My wife, her face lowered, but her eyes raised, receives the blouse, and her voice, very faint, says thank you. The gypsy lowers his eyelids as though replying and turns his back, takes two steps and begins to go down the stairs. Leaning on the doorpost, my wife sees the gypsy go down, focused, half his body obscured by the cement handrail. When the image of him disappears, leaving only the dragging sound of his boots on the lower floor, my wife slowly closes the door.

  Behind the door, she holds Ana’s blouse with both hands and thinks of a whole world behind her open eyes. She focuses on listening to the sounds downstairs, but hears a tap running in the bathroom. She leaves the blouse on the little telephone table, next to the chrome-plated frame with the photograph we took together in Rossio, and hurries up the corridor. In the bathroom, Íris has the bidet tap turned on, running on to a mixture of soap and torn-up toilet paper. Suddenly she stops to watch her grandmother coming in.