The Piano Cemetery

by José Luís Peixoto

  On those nights, I already knew that the woman who lived in the boarding house wasn’t her mother. The woman who ordered her about, whose face was stone, was her godmother. She had raised her from very young, as though she were her mother, as though she were her daughter. Her real, distant mother was the dull image of a poor woman, with a sad expression, locks of hair falling down her face. The first nights we walked, we ran far, before we embraced. Later we stopped being able to wait. We embraced as though exploding when we met, and only then we walked, we ran. For a week we had a park bench and we had all the shadows that shrouded it. Then, we had my key opening the big workshop door, the darkness and the piano cemetery. Our bodies.

  ‘Marta has asked me to go and spend the weekend at her place,’ my wife says. She repeats.

  Maria remains silent.

  Íris has woken up and got out of bed on her own. She is coming along the hall runner, her face cross with sleep. Her eyes almost closed. Her eyebrows as though she is angry. Her skin warm from the flannel sheets. She comes whimpering a lament which is her way of complaining at having woken up.

  ‘Oh! Come here to Mummy!’ says Maria, reaching her arms out to her.

  Íris rubs her little eyes with her small hands, her fingers closed in her small hands. She whimpers, as though everyone believes and understands that waking up is a bad thing that has happened to her.

  Maria takes her on her lap. She sits her on her knees. She examines her bandaged hand. She tells her she has to behave herself well. She talks to her about the little hurt. And she falls quiet. There is silence.

  Her voice faint, but looking directly at her mother, Maria says:

  ‘Don’t go. .’

  My wife remains silent.

  Íris, sitting on her mother’s lap, has her gaze directed at the window and she continues to wake up, slowly. My wife is turned towards the sink. Her movements are too small to fill the kitchen.

  ‘Don’t go. .’ Maria says. She repeats.

  Maria puts Íris down on the floor. She approaches my wife’s back and touches her arm. My wife pretends not to feel it. Maria says:

  ‘Please.’

  My wife has already decided that she’s going to spend the weekend at Marta’s house, but she remains silent. Without knowing what she wants, Íris pushes a chair across the tiles. Maria shouts:

  ‘Stop that!’

  With that shout, Íris begins to cry. Maria continues talking to her mother:

  ‘Please, I’m afraid that the worst is going to happen today.’

  My wife remains silent.

  The kitchen clock — in a few minutes Maria will have to go out, back to the factory. When she crosses the threshold my wife, ever silent, will have begun to give Íris spoonfuls of soup. Maria will go down the stairs, she will find the street, the light, the size of the buildings, the motorcars, July, the abandoned mangy dogs, and, the whole way, she will feel regret, pity and fear.

  Our bodies. In the piano cemetery the night was black, it was absolute. In this opaque time, our bodies existed. My arms saved themselves, surrounding her. My hands sought peace in the sure surface of her back. Our lips knew how to meet. Our mouths constructed shapes — so many details — shapes that no one in the history of the world could imagine, they were impossible to imagine for living people with the common thoughts of people, unrepeatably concrete shapes. Our lips. Our tongues sensing the taste of our mouths — the warm saliva, the warm blood. And my lips extended. And my lips reached out to the skin of her face. I held her head — my fingers in her hair — and my lips mixed in the skin of her face. The palm of my right hand went down her body, down the line of her body, passed her waist and went down, trying to find the end of the dress, found her legs and moved up. It went up, on the inside of her thighs. And my lips were still there and on her lips too because we breathed the same breath. The tips of my fingers slipped up the warm, smooth inside of her thighs. This way was a long one. She put a hand around my arm. The tips of my fingers slipped and, the moment I touched the cotton of her panties, I felt her hand tighten around my arm and, still, we breathed the same breath. My fingers, squeezed by her legs, felt, slowly, the middle of the cotton panties, soft beyond the cotton, hot beyond the cotton. The palm of my hand, on the panties, felt the hairs under the panties. My fingers — my whole body — my fingers felt, slowly, the cotton, hot, damp. Our bodies drawn black on black. A piece of the dark night sky came in through the window of the piano cemetery. It was this almost no light that showed the shadows and the outlines of her body at the moment when I lifted her dress above her waist and slipped her panties down her legs. And I lay her on a piano — her body — my body — our bodies.

  At the end of the summer, we learned that it was that night that we had made Marta.

  September. As though preparing to cross autumn together, we were less and less able to bear the pain of parting. More and more people came to the workshop asking for jobs that were not ready. Every time I excused myself with my uncle’s disappearance — most expressions changed to understanding — but I knew the real reason was the vital urgency of always meeting her.

  I had closed the workshop door and I had run through the invisible streets of Benfica. When I reached the market, I knew where to find her. I began to walk beside her, or behind her, or in front, far enough that, occasionally, our elbows would touch, that I would feel the smell of her skin, far enough that no one would understand that we were together. She would look one way, and I would feign no interest in looking that way. She asked the cost of the apples, I asked the cost of the pears. Trying not to move our lips, barely looking at one another, we exchanged whispered phrases — simple phrases that tried to say love — like questions, like answers. That morning I spoke furtive phrases to her, and she remained silent and serious. I would say something else to her — a smile expecting a smile — and she remained silent. In an instant she turned towards me, stopped, looked me in the eye — serious — and said that she was pregnant.

  I don’t know where the whole world went.

  After we said goodbye I walked, lost, wordless, in the hubbub of the market, until in silence we met at the corner before the boarding house, at lunchtime. She said:

  ‘I have to tell my godmother.’

  I said nothing. She said:

  ‘I’d rather tell her before she notices.’

  In the street, in front of anyone who might pass by, I hugged her. Inside our closed eyes we hugged. Time passed, I opened my eyes and saw her move away. And her body, alone, ever further from my arms, crossing the street and walking up the pavement, along the wall where I waited every night of this summer. And her body, alone, disappearing through the open boarding-house door.

  As I waited, I didn’t know what to be afraid of. I concentrated on the entrance to the boarding house and tried to believe in the images I imagined for my eyes — her coming out, coming towards me — her smile — her returning to my arms. For a time I waited, a time in which only I got old. The ivy leaves on the wall lifted when a breeze pushed them further over the pavements. And it was sudden — the thunder of the door closing, the shutters of all the boarding-house windows closing. I witnessed this moment without knowing how to exist.

  I felt a hand touch my shoulder.

  I turned.

  The blind, dirty face of my uncle.

  ~ ~ ~

  The start

  I don’t want just to have this name, I want to own it.

  at last. I imagined this day every time I had hope — when I was lying beside my wife, my hand resting on her round belly, pregnant with our son; or when I was a lad, I’d come back from the workshop with my father and see him going into the taberna, hear him sending me home and I’d continue alone along the dirt road, my clothes, face and hair covered in sawdust; or when I was small and I would sit in the piano cemetery, side by side with time. I had hope, I imagined this day and believed that I wouldn’t be afraid; I repeated it a thousand times within myself — I won’t be afraid, I won’t b
e afraid — and I could see distinctly, clearly, this moment, these faces. And I believe that all the moments when I imagined this day, together, added up, are longer than this day, but I also believe that this moment, now, is deeper, is an infinite well, and if I were to dive into this now, it would take my whole life to fall into its size and I would die before I touched the end. At this time in the afternoon

  within the marble. I rest my hand on the white surface of this wall — and it’s as though I were touching the frozen inside of the limestone. I have arrived here. I put my cardboard suitcase down on a worn out bench. It is a new suitcase which my wife bought, with money she’d saved and which she hid from me — the change from the grocer’s. I was angry, happy, angry, happy, just happy, the moment she handed it to me — the case sitting on the kitchen table. Beside the fastener, under the clasp, it has the tin figure of a man running — my wife’s expression smiling when I notice the little man running and lift my head to see her. It was my wife — her hands, her voice, her face that smiles before being kissed — it was my wife — my wife — who bought a tin man and kept it wrapped in paper hidden at the bottom of a box, until the moment when she stuck it on the new suitcase, beside the fastener, under the clasp, where I could always see it. I open the case — the vest ironed and folded, the shorts, the running shoes, my father’s pocket watch and the tin of special grease. I had the idea when

  everything again — we still believe. Time hasn’t passed. The days are once again the surface on which we dream. The afternoons

  also during the thing I want. Time is dislocated within itself, moved by anxiety and by desire. Time has no will, it has instinct. Time is less than a running animal. It doesn’t think where it’s going. When it stops, it is anxiety or desire that obliges it to stop.

  went back to being the size we were when we walked across the gardens, hand in hand. The sun that illuminates us, that illuminated us, must always exist. Forgive me. The same lightness that filled us continues, like light, like light. I’m asking you: forgive me. We are everything again — we still believe. Time hasn’t passed. The days are once again the surface on which we dream. The afternoons

  was laid out there: special grease. It’s a mixture of oil and tallow and grease. Almost asleep, but unable to sleep, I could feel the warmth of my wife beside me. A body breathing. I had my right arm over her and my chest stuck to her back, the bend in my knees fitting in behind the bend in her legs and the inside of my arm going under her arm, following the shape of her ribs, surrounding her, enveloping her, protecting her, and the palm of my hand rested on her belly — our son. My hand on her belly, on our son, was my way of falling asleep telling them my thoughts and my dreams. I thought about our son as though I was speaking to him and I thought about the races and I thought about what it is to go to Sweden, representing your country in the marathon for the best runners in the world: the Olympic Games. I was imagining our son’s face when he’s born. And I thought about the races again. Stockholm, I thought. And it was a word which had no connection to anything I knew. I was almost falling asleep when I was awoken by that idea. If it had been up to me I’d have got up and begun to prepare the grease there and then; but it wasn’t until the next day that I went to buy one part oil, another part tallow, and another part grease. I allowed the mixture to sit for a night. As evening fell on the following day, after work, it was the coolness of June, and I spread this special grease over my whole body. I didn’t have a watch on, but I was sure I ran much faster. I became lighter. My legs slipped more quickly through the air. I didn’t need to drink so much water because I didn’t perspire. I became stronger. This grease I’ve got here was made

  silence made up of the runners dressing themselves, some of them crossing themselves, and by the voices of the stadium, invisible, beyond the walls, as though they didn’t exist and as though they existed more than anything, like fear. Then the silence of the nervous little steps the runners pretend to take, as though doing their exercises. I begin to spread the grease over my body. I immerse my fingers in the tin full of grease, and when I slip them across my legs, arms, shoulders, cheeks, I begin to shine. My body is transformed into muscles that shine. The sleeves of my T-shirt mark the line where the skin turns from brown to white. My hands spread grease over this line, and give it a shine. This is the science that is going to make me win. I feel my own hands touch my body as though they were someone else’s hands. In these seconds, seconds that are marked by running shoes being tied with a bow and a knot, I feel the looks and the hidden astonishment of the other runners. They turn their heads away, but they look at me because they’ve never seen anything like it. I clean the walls of the tin and spread the final remnants of the grease

  a man in a tie gesturing to call us. In a disordered queue, not speaking, the runners all come out. I come out, too. Under the brightness, voices crack. The expectation of a thousand mixed voices is a skin resting over the light. The size of the stadium opens itself up to the sky. The sky could pour down over this stadium now. You’d need the whole sky to fill it up. If I come to a bit of shade, I feel the cool on my oiled skin. Before the trip, a man who met me at the entrance to the workshop explained to me that Sweden is cooler than Lisbon. Either he was trying to fool me or he didn’t know. It’s the same heat we usually get in Lisbon at the height of August. It’s a living light that makes the faces of the people in the stands incandescent — the women with parasols, hats and dresses are shining; the black of the men’s top hats is bright and shining; the children shine who watch us and imagine in us lives we will never know. The runners’ steps bring up the smell of the dry, burned earth. I put the palm of a hand against a barrier and move my feet just to get used to the new running shoes. The others run slowly back and forth. Some do exercises. I don’t want to tire myself out yet. I look at them. I stop looking at them. In the crowd of mixed voices that fill the stadium stands and that surround me I can make out bits of my father’s voice when he called me over to learn something — come have a look — or my mother’s voice saying my name in the middle of a conversation — Francisco — or my brother’s asking me for something, or my sister Marta and my sister Maria, still small, taking care of me and always wanting to play with me. No time has passed. All these moments

  as though a sudden new day were being born inside me, inside my flaming eyes. It feels like it’s not the world that exists burning before my eyes, but that it’s my eyes that create and burn this world before them. A whole world created by the flames that flow from my eyes. Now

  from my heart. Again we are

  because they’re calling all the runners to the starting line. I’m in the front row. Runners behind me come closer. I have my right shoe stuck to the line. There are runners, men of every race. Those next to me touch my arms with their elbows and I feel them slipping on my shining skin. We’re looking ahead, because we can see the future. Each of us has a heart beating in his chest. There’s a man in white trousers, a dark jacket, tie and straw hat who fires a shot into the air. The explosion spreads across the field and disappears, like a release of pigeons, like a useless memory, and it’s the voices of the people in the stands that really explode and fill the air, the sky and everything we can see and think. I take my first quick steps, trying to get away from the arms that are pushing to open a path. I stick out my arms to push open a path, too. Now, each step

  a ray of sun, like a hand that grabs me and squeezes me against its skin, red-hot. It’s fire that each movement of my body passes through. They are flames in my eyes that open a path into which I go and through which I make my way. I am a unique force, incandescent and true. I get further and further away, and I know that forty kilometres from here I will be back. I’m getting further away and closer. There are forty kilometres between me and being here being someone else. And forty kilometres may be my whole life. All time from the moment I was born until the moment I die within a single moment that might be forty kilometres. Time won’t know me. I will be someone else. I won
’t know the distance of time. And I will return to the stadium. I will return here. Myself alone, over metres and time

  a shower of stones on to the track of the stadium. When I realise that one of my legs is going to take a step, it’s already the other leg that’s taking a step that’s even bigger and even faster. My legs — I marvel at their strength. The people who are filling up the stands are like a choir of shots, voices firing from every direction. Sometimes we notice a voice that’s left behind; then we notice another also left behind. We pass by as though we haven’t seen their faces, but we see them without looking at them. We sense them. Breathing doesn’t yet weigh on us. We have our heads to look around us. We don’t look. We complete a lap of the track and the confusion of the opening metres has been left behind us. We run spaced out enough to be strings of men

  you are lovely in my heart.