The Piano Cemetery

by José Luís Peixoto

  ‘You’re really just ruining everything,’ says my wife, as she turns off the tap.

  She rolls up Íris’s wet sleeves and, holding her hand that is wrapped in a bandage, pulls her down the corridor to the bedroom. She changes her blouse and vest. Then she leaves her sitting on the bed and lowers the blinds. Íris already knows. My wife looks for the white blanket and the two of them lie down. My wife murmurs, to herself:

  ‘Now we’re going to have a little sleep because you woke up very early.’

  Íris doesn’t reply, but after a moment she says:

  ‘Granny, tell a story.’

  Dragging her voice over some whispered words, my wife begins to make up the story of a girl called Íris who ran a race against other girls and won.

  ‘She was like Uncle Francisco, wasn’t she?’

  ‘She was.’

  ‘He also ran a marathon, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Hey, Granny — tell it again.’

  ‘No. Now we’re going to sleep.’

  And there they stayed, the two of them. The sounds from the street — the motorcars, the buses — are distant beyond the window. Íris:

  ‘Hey, Granny, don’t steal my blanket.’

  And there they stayed, the two of them. The air in the room is the colour of shadows. Through the gaps in the blinds come lines of light, in parallel, gently slanted, crossing the gloom and settling on the two bodies lying on the little bed. In the wardrobe mirror there is an identical room, with a grandmother and a granddaughter lying under a shadowy gloom, crossed by parallel lines of light.

  In Íris’s skinny little chest, her breathing softens. Her little lips lose the shape of being able to say a word. They surrender to their loss of strength. She sleeps. My wife, when she feels her sleeping, gets up with great care. She tucks the blanket round Íris’s body which, feeling it, breathes more deeply, as though sighing.

  It was Sunday because it was sunny, because I had decided I wasn’t going to work, because not many cars could be heard in the city, because the world seemed infinite, because my daughters had dressed with ribbons they tied round their waists and because I had slept until I was woken by the church bells calling the people to mass. My wife was smiling and the morning bore the lightness of her smile. My wife was younger on Sunday mornings when she smiled. Our children were still small. Francisco was not yet born. Marta was already helping her mother.

  The previous night, when my wife had told me about the octopus she had bought at the market, I could imagine her coming back home laden with baskets hanging from her arms the whole way, the handles of the baskets marked in red furrows in the palms of her hands.

  That morning, when she drew back the strips of ribbon from the door to the yard and called me, I was looking for a bill in my document drawer. I crossed the little kitchen tiles and took the basin as she handed it to me and said:

  ‘I’ve already cleaned it. Now it’s got to be beaten.’

  I chose a plank from the pile of firewood, and on the laundry tank started to beat it. On the ground, the drain was covered with the bloody mess that my wife had taken from inside the octopus.

  Simão and Maria were little. They were sitting on the ground, playing, and they were watching me. Marta and her mother were waiting, and they watched me very seriously.

  It didn’t take much to realise that the octopus was too tough. I approached the steps at the entrance to the house and began to beat it with all my strength against the cement.

  My children were shocked. They only realised they could laugh when their mother started to laugh. To make them laugh more, I exaggerated my actions as I beat the octopus against the steps.

  I wanted my wife and my children to laugh and to be happy.

  The bitch we had at the time was old, and pregnant, and she took fright. She came running into the kitchen, tail between her legs. After handing the basin with the octopus to my wife, for her to run it under the water, I washed my hands with a worn bar of blue soap that was in the sink, passed a wet cloth over the steps and went back to the kitchen. The bitch was lying on a heap of two or three old sweaters my wife had put in a corner, next to the unlit fire, where she knew she liked to lie. She looked at me hurt and I bent down to stroke her, as though asking her pardon.

  I was still looking for the bill in my document drawer when Marta came in to start laying the table. I didn’t stop looking when my wife, coming from the oven we had in the yard, entered holding the clay dish and saying not to come too close, even though there wasn’t anybody near her. I didn’t give up looking when my wife went to the yard door to call Simão and Maria. I gave up when my wife told me, in a sweet voice that told me all was well:

  ‘Go and sit down or it’ll get cold.’

  I don’t know what we talked about. The sun was coming through the window and pouring a constant torrent of light that crossed the air, that illuminated the agitated dust and set itself against the tiles. My wife, seasoning the salad, looking for napkins, running with Simão’s plastic plate, was crossing this torrent of light, disordering the movement of the dust and smiling.

  Simão was eating all by himself. Sometimes he would raise his fork into the air. Marta and Maria were looking vaguely at their plates. I was watching my wife serving herself. It was at that moment of silence that Simão pointed at the bitch’s place and said:

  ‘Hey, Ma. . The dog’s dying bleeding.’

  At the same time we all looked over to the bitch. One of her puppies was being born. Our daughters began to scream, spitting the half-chewed octopus into their plates, got up thunderously and went out into the corridor. Simão’s body was turned in his chair. He still had his beautiful child’s eyes. It was out of the corner of his right eye that, without understanding what he was seeing, he was looking at the bitch. My wife got up, took him up in her arms, and took him out to the corridor. I got up too and followed.

  In the corridor Marta and Maria were recovering their breath and mixing laughs with little screams. Simão started to cry. My wife was trying to comfort him, and at the same time she was laughing at our daughters. It was Marta who said to me:

  ‘Go and see if all the puppies are born, go and see if the dog’s all right.’

  I opened the door slightly and put my head through into the kitchen. Around the bitch there was a puddle of water with traces of blood. Little puppies were still being born, with sticky fur, their eyes closed. I brought my head back into the corridor, muttered some sound, mouth full, and nodded yes with my head. I had my mouth full of octopus I couldn’t swallow.

  After loading up the piano — using our whole strength, the whole limit of our strength — after we lifted it till we were able to arrange it on the cart, I closed the workshop door. While the Italian looped and knotted the rope, he’d turn now towards me, now towards my uncle, telling us how well the piano was, better than new; he had seen so many pianos, his fingers had been over the keys of so many pianos, but not one — well, perhaps one — but almost none was as smooth and as well set-up and tuned as that one. And he told us, in Italian words, to come to the dance that night. We didn’t take much convincing, but he insisted. I didn’t take much convincing myself, but he took me aside and whispered that he would pay for the repairs once he had received his payment for the dance, and then speaking to everyone again he raised his voice to insist that we go to the dance. The men my uncle had called from the taberna looked at him with mouths agape, with almost toothless smiles.

  I accompanied my uncle and the men to the taberna, and that afternoon it was me buying everyone a glass of wine. The glasses were filled until a red shining surface was about to spill over. The men stopped what they were saying, raised their glasses, and as though suffocating downed them in a single draught. Then they stuck the thick base of the glass on to the marble countertop and continued talking. We were happy. My uncle paid for another round. Again the conversations stopped for a moment. The taberna owner had spots of red wine on his shirt, and with his arms
resting on the bar he watched us with an expression of amazement. All the men spoke to my uncle, who replied at random. Occasionally he would tug at someone’s arm, point at me and say:

  ‘That’s my nephew.’

  The men already knew, but it didn’t matter because none of them was really listening to him. I paid for another round and we left. It was May. There was a kind light over the streets. The brightness was approaching the end of the afternoon and gradually took on its warmer colour. My uncle and I walked together and we were happy. When I arrived at the door to my house, before we parted, we smiled and we didn’t say see you tomorrow as we did every day, because not long afterwards we would be seeing each other again at the dance.

  I picked two or three pieces from the pile of firewood to light the stove, filled a pan with water and left it to heat up, and sat on a stool to think about her — to remember her face. In that rapturous moment I wanted to believe in everything. I was twenty-two years old, and I was capable of believing in everything. In that way, time passed. Night had fallen when I got up from my stool and went to pour the pan of water into the basin where I washed. In the dark the water slipped down my body, giving it glistening shapes — over my chest, over my legs, I raised my hands filled with water, poured them over my head, or my shoulders, or my stomach, and they were still wet when I ran the palms of my hands over my body as though moulding it. I cleaned myself — the towel soft from years of use — and struck a match with which I lit the lamp. I put on my best shirt, my best trousers, my best jacket, put my best boots on my feet. Then after combing my hair I took some time in front of the bathroom mirror pretending I was still combing. I opened my shirt buttons to spread a drop of eau de cologne, buttoned them up again and left.

  Night over the houses. The door to the hall where the dance was going to begin was surrounded by a crowd of men and children. They were all there together, surrounding the light. You still couldn’t hear any music, you could hear many voices on top of one another. I approached and began to find a bit of space to get past the shoulders and elbows. By the door sitting at a little table was a man with an open cardboard suitcase. When I made to go in he put his arm in front of me:

  ‘It’s one tostão.’

  I told him I knew the pianist, but he kept looking at me with his eyebrows knotted. I looked inside and saw the Italian talking to her. I felt the skin of my face warming up, I felt my blood beat fast in the veins of my temples. I raised my arm and gestured to him, called him, shouted to him, but I was invisible. The people’s voices filled the room. The people’s voices were a compact bulk, like a rock, in the whole room. He was talking to her. She was laughing. I continued to gesture to him, put my fingers to my lips and whistled at him. But I was invisible. I lost all movement, I forgot my own arms, when the Italian moved away from her and began, determinedly, to walk in the direction of the piano — on a platform, at the back of the hall — the piano my uncle and I had repaired. Without taking her eyes off him she took two steps backwards and sat in an empty chair, next to the woman who had opened the boarding-house door for me that afternoon. All the voices were transformed into silence when the Italian sat down, pushing away the tails of his morning suit, and raised his two hands in a suspended moment over the keyboard.

  When the first notes sounded, even amid the crowd of people at the door — the children crawling under legs — no other noise could be heard. Normally dances were accompanied by an accordion. Most of the people there had never seen a piano before. The Italian’s melodramatic movements on the stool, now approaching the keyboard, now moving away from it, accompanied the torrent of music that was launched over the room like a tide. Some of the women, submerged, raised embroidered handkerchiefs to their faces to contain their tears. Bringing his hands, fingers open, suddenly down twice on to the keyboard, the Italian finished this first piece. Applause broke out all across the room and the Italian, on his feet, bent over the hand he had placed across his waist. After some time, when the applause was beginning to fade, he sat down again and from his hands came some looser notes; then, lifting his face towards all the people who were watching him, he began to sing in Italian. The women smiled, then immediately concealed their smiles when several men crossed the room and offered them their arm. Two couples, then three, then four began to dance. It was at that moment that I felt a hand take hold of my arm.

  I turned to see my uncle, newly shaved, smiling at me under a side parting, the skin of his forehead pale without his beret, his clothes washed and ironed, his shoes polished. I paid two tostões to the man at the table who in exchange gave me two stamped squares of paper, and with my uncle following me I went down the stairs on to the tiles of the hall.

  She saw me. I was sure that she saw me come in. I saw her face seeing me, then obscured by a couple who set themselves swaying, dancing in front of her. I stopped behind the wall of men who stood watching the couples dancing, who smoked cigarettes and waited for the right song before they would go up to the one they had chosen and with luck they would dance, too. Surrounding the dancers, in chairs pushed up against the walls of the hall, were the single girls, and beside them, their mothers. In the middle were the circles made up of the dancing couples — spinning together, a few inches between their bodies; the lads held the girls’ waists, the girls would put a hand on their backs and with the other hand they held the hand the boy held up in the air. At the back, on a wooden platform, the Italian played piano and sang, looking frequently at her as she sat there beside the woman I took to be her mother. At the other end of the hall, behind the wall of waiting men, behind me, there were words and there were the faces of the men who spoke them, and who sometimes would go in through a door to where there was a bar. Behind me, tired of looking at nothing that caught his eye, my uncle was one of the men who went into the smoking room. He asked for a glass of wine. With his hands rummaging in his pockets, he opened his left eye wide, smiled and asked for a glass of wine. When I turned back to face forwards, she was watching me. Her fixed stare was crossed by couples dancing past, but it continued fixed and immobile. I could see her now. She wore a velvet choker — her smooth neck, white and pure. Her eyes were asking something of me. I was sure that her eyes were asking something of me. In the corners of her lips arose a very subtle smile. Anyone else wouldn’t have been able to make it out. The song ended, a few women clapped, the couples parted and she continued to look at me. The shape of her eyebrows spoke to me with a word — a request — but I didn’t know how to dance, and that was why I remained with my hands in my pockets, sad, looking at her watching me and understanding that I had disappointed her. When the music returned and the couples resumed their dancing, she turned her face towards the Italian and, her hands empty and resting on her legs, she stopped watching me. I went into the room where the men were leaning on the bar and approached my uncle. He was with a group of men, talking loudly and laughing a lot. In the quick movements he made with his arms my uncle carried a half-full glass. When I rested my elbows on the counter and asked for a glass of wine, I listened to my uncle a moment and could not understand anything that made any sense. When my uncle saw me, he pointed at me, proud, and said:

  ‘That’s my nephew.’

  And he stood me another glass of wine. And one of the men paid for another. I returned to the hall to see her. She looked at me again, and then immediately turned her face away. I went back in to ask for another glass of wine and my uncle stood me another glass of wine, and one of the men, another one, paid for one more glass of wine. I went back into the hall to see her.

  In an instant I decided that the next dance I was going to hold my hand out to her and she would accept. She would accept. In my thoughts I tried to convince myself that when I had her in my arms, like a miracle I would be able to dance, but there was always something that prevented me from believing it completely. As I thought, I didn’t want the song to come to an end, because at that moment I would have to go through with my decision.

  And the song
ended. A few women clapped, the couples parted and I crossed the wall of men standing there and began to walk towards her. As I walked she turned her face towards me and beneath her gaze my steps were very slow and difficult. And then, face to face, I looked her in the eye and felt her breathing being breathed in my own chest. The woman who was sitting beside her, who had opened the boarding-house door to me, who I took to be her mother, looked at me, too. Then, in a movement I imagined being drawn in the air which I foresaw before each of its moments, I held my hand out to her. And I waited.

  Suddenly her face and the face of the woman beside her and the faces of all the people in the room turned towards the room in the corner, where there was a bar. From inside came shouts muddled together with voices. At the door there was a crowd of men trying to see, who stood on their tiptoes and held the shoulders of those in front of them to see better.

  I started to run, my arms pushing away anyone who stood in front of me. I opened up a path between the ones who were standing at the door, and when I managed to get in saw my uncle lying face-down on the ground. He had the knee of one of the men he had been talking to earlier stuck in the middle of his back. He had one side of his face right against the floor and he was shouting groans under the shouts of the man who was repeating to him:

  ‘You just say that again.’

  Nobody could anticipate what I did. I threw myself at the man and pushed him. When the others made for me they did so without much conviction and I pushed them off, too. I lifted my uncle and a path opened up in front of us to let us out. As we left — my uncle with buttons torn from his shirt, his hair falling all over his forehead — I looked at her and, in the distance, I saw her face watching me.