My wife is sitting in the chair that stands between the rack of coats forgotten since winter and the telephone table. She had come to fetch the blouse of Ana’s that the gypsy had picked up on the street. She had not yet taken two steps towards the kitchen when the telephone began to ring behind her. Before a moment had passed she answered it.
It was Francisco’s wife. It was her shy voice. She was phoning with few words, merely to say that he had arrived well. Francisco had phoned her to say he had arrived well. My wife tried to find out what the city was like where he was. She wanted to know if it was as she imagined it. She tried to learn the exact words he’d said, but when she realised she was not going to be told any more she asked her how she was. Francisco’s wife is pregnant. As soon as her belly began to show she stopped working at the hospital. She was sent home. Her voice is very low — as though dissolving into dust. It was with this voice that she said that she was well. After the silence, they said their goodbyes.
Having hung up the telephone, my wife sat down on the chair. First, she stared into emptiness. Then she held the chrome-plated frame and looked at Francisco’s face in our family photograph. He was six years old. To anyone looking at us there, we will always be the same age. We will always be in that moment. We are always in that moment. Francisco is very serious. I have my hand on his shoulder. Beside me is my wife between our daughters. Next to Francisco is Simão, apart, almost out of shot. It’s Maria who is smiling the most. Marta is still elegant. Simão is in a bad mood. Behind us, the Rossio Fountain. In the photograph there are still many years to go before our first granddaughter — Elisa — will be born, even more till Ana is born, even more till Hermes is born, even more till Íris is born. Marta is not yet thinking about getting married. Maria has not yet met her boyfriend. In that moment, we were happy. Before that there had been gestures that brought us to that moment; afterwards there were gestures that took us away from that moment; but, in that moment, we were happy.
The punishment I chose for myself was to know what happened next.
We went round and round Rossio waiting for the photograph to be developed. Maria and Marta walked together. Francisco walked beside me. My wife and Simão walked on their own, two steps ahead of me, each to their own side. Sometimes I would look to the middle of the square and see the photographer get himself under the cloth, lift an arm and take photographs of couples with babies in their arms. Tired of having passed repeatedly by the same chestnut-sellers and the same flower-sellers, tired of dodging people walking towards us, when the time had elapsed and we received the photograph in an envelope, we all agreed that we hadn’t come out well.
In those days the truck wasn’t all that old, and that was how we got back home. Francisco and Simão travelled on the back. When they lowered down I could see their faces in the rear-view mirror. The wind disfigured their expressions. They clung on more tightly and tumbled when the truck tyres went through some pothole in the road. My wife was next to me, talking to our daughters. I was silent.
The punishment I chose for myself was to know what happened next.
After we’d had dinner, under the kitchen lamp, the curtains moving slightly in the windows, the embers fading in the grate, it was winter, my arm, my thick hand in a single movement, like an impulse, but not even an impulse, like a desire you have for a moment and which becomes concrete in that same moment, another person’s desire within me, a desire which is not thought, but which rises up like a flame, and my arm, my thick hand crossing a straight and invisible distance, me looking at her face and lessening this strength a little, and my hand meets her face and her mouth, the tips of my thick fingers touching her hair and her ear, the coarse sound of flesh against flesh, the expression on her face changing, tense under my hand, and my hand ceasing to exist when she falls flailing, the disordered sound of her body falling to the floor, her back knocking over a wooden stool, me now wanting to pick her up, now wanting to hold her, now wanting to undo what had just happened, but just standing waiting for it to happen, I can’t do anything, I can’t go back, it’s impossible, and her body stopped, I began to feel the burning memory of her face, mouth, hair and ear still on my hand, and all the objects in the kitchen seeming to burn, the scales for weighing grams of flour, the tile with a Lisbon landscape hanging on the wall, the ashtray of shining porcelain, and the children crying, the children crying, but the smallest came running and clung on to my legs, I felt his thin body clinging on to my legs as though he wanted to stop me, as though he was holding on to a mountain that was much stronger than him, and I held him by his arm, opened the door and sent them to their room, my arm pointing to the open door, and them afraid to pass between me and the open door, I shouted words, the eldest was crying, she couldn’t hold back her tears, her face flushed, red, her sister was crying all the tears she had, her nose curving down, the brothers were crying like little men who already didn’t want to cry, who had already begun to want to unlearn how to cry, and they passed me and I closed the door. She got up and sat on a stool, in the light, crying. I rested my closed fists on the table, my breath racing, close to tears.
It was Sunday. I awoke mid-morning with a bitter, gummy taste enveloping the whole of the inside of my mouth. I put on some trousers, and bare-chested opened the yard door and took two steps — the earth under my feet. Slowly I got used to the light that dazzled me, but I couldn’t bear the sun on my head, which was why I stopped beneath the lemon tree.
On Sundays, the birds are freer. They show themselves off looping round in the air because they know people will notice them more. On Sundays, the noise of the streets is different — the voices, unconcerned, settle over the empty space left by the harsh voices of the weekdays. That was one of those Sundays, it was a Sunday Sunday, but I was waking from a world in which there were no Sundays and that day seemed strange to me, just as any other day would have seemed strange to me.
I rinsed my mouth with water. I washed myself under the yard tap. I breathed. Drops of water, settled on my eyelashes, gave a glisten to the corners of the outdoor sink where my mother no longer washed the clothes. I went into the house, wiped myself down, and as I got dressed my bones clicked dryly like vine branches splitting.
I tried to think as I walked down the street. It was Sunday. I passed gentlemen with their watch chains coming out of their pockets, and ladies on their way back from mass. Bit by bit I was getting back to being something closer to myself. Bit by bit it was as though I was regaining the gestures in my hands, regaining the movements in the movements of my legs. It was as though I was returning to my own body.
Knocking on the door with my knuckles, that moment seemed to me the distinct and definitive entry into reality — all the outlines returned to their objects, the colours stopped drifting into stains. As I waited, I focused on the door, immobile, in front of me. Behind it, I could hear a current of steps approaching. And the sound of a lock opening. And the door moving away, opening.
It was her. It was her face, there in front of me, looking at me. It was her lips, suspended, the infinite depth of her eyes, her skin. If I stretched out an arm I could touch her. A blanket of heat enveloped me. The sun stuck to my whole body and transformed itself into hot skin. She wasn’t expecting to see me there either. Her face took on new shapes as she looked at me. Anyone else wouldn’t have been able to make it out. In the corner of her lips arose a very subtle smile.
In that glowing silence, I don’t know how I was able to say the words of the banal phrase that simply asked for the Italian. I don’t know how I was able to understand, in her fragile, incandescent voice, that the Italian had left early that morning. I don’t know how I was able to float in the vastness of her eyes — the horizon — and ask her if the Italian hadn’t left anything for me. I don’t know how I didn’t die — my heart bursting in the middle of my chest — when she, never stopping watching me — purity and beauty — shook her head, so very slowly, to one side and the other — the smooth skin of her neck — the way my
fingers could have slipped, slowly, across the smooth skin of her neck. The Italian had left without paying me and all I could do was look at her and smile.
When we said goodbye, each trapped in the other’s eyes, we kept smiling because there were many things we wanted to say. When she shut the door, I remained where I was. For an immeasurable length of time I kept looking at the closed door, smiling and feeling everything that still remained of her presence.
I arrived at the workshop. I went into the piano cemetery. I leaned on a piano — my body leaving a mark in the dust — and I remembered the image of her face. I talked to the image of her face. I listened to the image of her face. And hours went past. It was only much later that I remembered the Italian. He left early in the morning and didn’t pay me for the work with money, he paid me with something that was worth much more — the pianos and the indelible image of her face.
For a moment, my wife leans over the ledge and casts her gaze over the empty street, as though looking for the figure of the gypsy. In the kitchen, looking at nothing, she freezes — only she knows what she’s thinking — and then, after a shudder, she starts to move again. She is holding Ana’s damp blouse. She cleans off the pavement dirt with her hand and decides to hang it out because she can’t put it in the laundry basket wet.
This blouse used to belong to Elisa when she was smaller. All our grandchildren inherited clothes from one another. Even Hermes, when he was a baby, wore clothes from his sister and from Ana. The few times Marta went out with him, people would be misled by the colours and said:
‘What a delightful little girl.’
When Hermes started to walk, Marta stopped dressing him in his sister’s and cousin’s clothes.
It was a cardboard suitcase, marked by scratches, worn at the corners, old. On the side where the fastener was, under the clasp, it had the tin figure of a running man, his arms and legs stopped mid-movement. All our grandchildren tried to tear the tin man off. None of them could. He was stuck there for ever. It was Marta who packed Elisa’s clothes away in the case and took it over to Maria’s house a few months before Ana was born. Maria packed these clothes back in the case, added to it a few she had bought, and took it fuller than it had been to Marta’s house a few months before Hermes was born. Marta packed these clothes back in the case, added to it a few she had bought, and took it fuller than it had been to Maria’s house a few months before Íris was born.
My wife hangs out the blouse and thinks vaguely about eternity. One day, this blouse that had been bought for Elisa, and which is worn by Ana, will also be worn by Íris. Even after that day, the future will go on.
‘Ah, my little monster!’ I’d say, and Ana would come running to me in the kitchen. It was a weekend, because Maria had come to visit us. Ana was not much more than a year old, but already she would run to me saying:
‘Grampa, Grampa, Grampa.’ And she was almost breathless. I was very ill. I had pains, and I knew I was close to dying. Ana was very like Maria when she was small — the dark hair and very blue shining eyes. When I saw her eyes with the child’s smile I felt sorry, because I thought that when she was big, she wouldn’t remember me. I didn’t remember my grandparents who died when I was her age.
‘Ah, my little monster!’ I’d say. She would come running and jump into my lap. I was sitting on a sofa that had come from Maria’s house when she had bought better sofas. I’d hold her in my lap and we played a game. Maria was making the dinner with her mother. For a moment I forgot all about them. I was playing a game with Ana. Her little hands slapped at my face. I smiled at her, very thin.
After a few weeks, even my uncle noticed.
During the daytimes, without there being any pianos to repair, I would spend hours lost in the piano cemetery. I was always late in, in the mornings, and many times I found my uncle waiting for me by the big door, as yet unshaved, hair uncombed, holding his beret in his hand and looking at me in wonder, his left eye open very wide. At the end of the day I didn’t want to be alone at home and stayed with my uncle in the taberna. But I didn’t want to be in the taberna either. I drank glasses of wine and stayed at one end of the bar, not allowing anyone to talk to me.
All my thoughts were her face repeated.
At lunchtime I’d leave my uncle sitting at a table to eat and I’d go out into the streets. It was the start of summer, and I walked on, over the top of the light. The people who came into the workshop would say:
‘I saw you, yesterday, out in the street, I tried to call you, I waved to you, but you didn’t see me.’
I didn’t see anything. When I got to the corner before the boarding house I would stop with my body obscured by the wall, I would lean my head out and wait. Sometimes she would come to the door — her profile. At other times she would come out — her body drawn on the pavement. On more than one occasion — her voice greeting someone — her voice saying a phrase — her voice brought by a breeze — her voice floating — her voice fragile.
In the piano cemetery, all afternoon for a week, I wrote and tore up, and wrote again, and tore up again, and wrote again the letter where I said a part of what I felt about her. Hours could pass in the time I spent choosing a word. When I wrote it, moments would pass before I tore up the piece of paper where I’d written it. I knew by heart all the words I’d decided to write, and all the alternatives to each of them. That was what I was thinking about when at the end of the afternoon, at the start of the night, I leaned on the taberna counter, not allowing anyone to talk to me.
It was perhaps the hottest day of the whole summer. The sun burned in the streets. I made my way over the sun. In my pocket I had the piece of paper. On the paper I had the words I had managed to assemble, written in my hand, written with a carpenter’s pencil. The paper, like a piece of sun folded in my pocket, also burned me. I had finished writing it three days earlier. The two previous days I’d waited for her at the corner before the boarding house. The previous day, she had appeared at the door for a moment, and then immediately went back inside. That day I waited for her at the corner before the boarding house. When I already believed I was going to be returning to the workshop without being able to see her, she came out of the door and walked away, down the pavement. I stopped thinking. I crossed the road and, taking steps much larger than hers, I walked, looking only at her back getting ever closer, ever closer, till it was just two steps away, till it was just my arm’s length away, till it was beside me. As I passed her I put the piece of paper in the soft, soft and fresh palm of her hand. She shuddered and I felt her fingers closing at the tips of my fingers. I pulled my hand away as though I had never touched her and looked her in the eye. I didn’t stop walking. She looked at me, softened, closed the piece of paper in her hand and didn’t stop walking.
When Maria arrived my wife had already hung out the clothes, had already switched off the wireless and already had a pan on the stove, wreathed in steam. My wife wasn’t startled as she heard the key entering the lock and turning, but she was set in a thought and as she abandoned it she began to move about more quickly, only stopping when Maria came into the kitchen.
Without asking, but understanding the house’s deserted calm, knowing, Maria came in angry with my wife.
‘It’s always the same. How many times have I told you that if she goes down in the morning she doesn’t want to sleep at night?’
My wife didn’t reply. She waited. Maria continued to be angry. She said two or three things that all meant the same. Her voice was all the more severe for existing alone amid the silence of her movements. The other sounds — the whistle of the flame on the stove, the water boiling — were like shadows that surrounded the words she spoke. The moment ended when Maria pulled back a chair and sat down. My wife, feeling herself a girl and a mother and a grandmother, took a breath, approached her and told her what had happened.
Maria listened to her, her eyes wide, resisting in those moments when she almost couldn’t resist interrupting her. And as soon as she stopped being
able just to listen, she leaped up and went along the corridor. Her mother followed her, trying to keep up with her speed. And suddenly there they were, both standing in the door to the living room. A brief moment had passed since our daughter had heard the whole explanation, since she had understood every word, but there, looking into the living room, she seemed not to understand the cupboard fallen on the carpet.
Ignoring her mother — her gaze frozen — she took slow steps towards the cupboard. Following her gaze, her mother followed her. The gloom of the living room was fresh like the silence, like a journey to a time past. Rays of light, straight, symmetrical, came through the gaps in the blinds and stretched into the living room air. Mother and daughter walked towards the rays of light, drawn by the rays of light. Although neither knew what the other was thinking, it was as though they thought the same thing because they bent down at the same time on either side of the cupboard, and slowly, lifting the weight of their own bodies, began to lift it up. Their movements crossed and interrupted and freed the rays of light. Their movements sketched themselves in the straight and parallel distance of the rays of light.
The touch of my hands had no weight and no texture, the people who spoke to me were always very far away, all colours were pale in my eyes, the glasses of wine I drank tasted of nothing and intoxicated some other person, my body walking along the pavement was so light that it didn’t belong to me, because I only thought of her. I could only think thoughts that imagined her. I only existed deep down inside myself thinking of her. A tiny movement inside me — believing for a moment that she might never want to see me again, believing for a moment that she might have laughed at the letter I gave her — any movement inside me was felt with my whole life; but the touch of my own hands was inexact. In the world, I was not I. I was a reflection that someone vaguely remembered. I was a reflection that someone was dreaming without believing.
The Piano Cemetery Page 5