and I love you almost too much
at the foot of the walls. This perpetual sun comes in, lighting up every corner, this breeze reminds me of when I was small and my father took me to the fishmarket and showed me the blocks of ice which the men arranged on the crates of fish. It is as if, in this perpetual sun that’s burning skin and walls, there exist veins that are made of this ice. It was almost eleven o’clock at night and it was still day. These waters freeze over in the winter. It’s Sweden. My teammate wasn’t kidding me, in spite of having laughed when I looked at the dinner cutlery not knowing what to do, and in spite of having laughed as I practised holding tight on to the cutlery, and having laughed again when he said, ‘Good old Lázaro.’
the morning. I was looking at a wooden lath, my hands feeling its shape — the angles, the lines — but I didn’t see it, and I didn’t feel it, really. Time dissolved into the light, but I ignored time and the only true light was that which lit up her face within my memory — her walking beside me, her voice, her standing at the door to her house, her silences — her thin arms reaching out, her hands, her belly under a cardigan, her breasts, her legs below the end of her skirt — the serene certainties of her face — her before a kiss — her lips — voice and silence. I might have been looking at a piece of wood when the lady came in. Her little thin body, dressed in black, appeared at the door to the carpentry shop unannounced. That was the moment I lifted my head to see her approaching me — her face contented and casual, her steps on the sawdust that covered the floor. I walked over to her and before saying anything else apologised for the sawdust, for the dust and for something else I didn’t know what. It was a lady with a gold pin, with polished shoes and who looked at me, contented, almost as though she was smiling. A lady who was
Kilometre five
distinguished. Never, not even when my father was alive, had I seen such a distinguished lady come into the workshop. Without having heard her voice I already thought her face friendly — the wrinkled skin, white hair, hat with a black tulle brim behind it. Her voice was friendly. As though pleasantly making a statement, she asked me if I repaired pianos. I could only reply yes. Then I was already taking the pencil from behind my ear and making a note of her address on a small bit of board I picked up off the floor. I’d go by the following day. The lady’s smile made me smile, too. I stayed there, watching her move away towards the exit. The sounds of the city returned to the open windows. The morning returned. The image of the lady — her friendliness — remained, slowly dissolving and I only thought about her again when, the next day, I went along
am trying to remember the happiest moments, I always end up seeing the vague image in my memory of a Sunday lunch. The diffuse clarity of the light. My mother possibly plucking a chicken. The smell of boiling water poured over the chicken’s body. My mother, in the yard, sitting at a basin, in a shadow. The noise of the feathers being yanked out in fistfuls by my mother. It was always spring. It was always May. Maria might be hiding in her room, inventing fantasies, reading romance novels under the shade of the shutters; or she might be helping my mother; or she might be standing in the yard, absorbed, listening to the long tale my mother was telling in every detail as she plucked a chicken. There were birds that suddenly rose up in flight from the orange trees in the yard and which awoke a rustling of leaves. Simão came up the streets with an empty bottle in his hand, he went into the taberna and didn’t need to say anything. The man reached out his arm over the marble countertop. My brother held the bottle out to him. The marble was colder than the shade. And my brother waited as the man fitted the funnel into the neck of the bottle and as the noise of the wine that flowed from the barrel sounded alone in the empty taberna. He opened the palm of his hand where he held the sweaty coin and walked the path back home. Alongside the wall, his face was serious as he walked. His left eye fixed on a point that didn’t exist, and which was ahead of him. He made his way forwards, drawn by this. On the right side of his face, his eyelid rested over the empty socket. The lid sunk into the smooth hole that linked his cheek to his eyebrow. A black hand squeezes my heart. My breast
because time hurts as it passes. If I could only tell you what you were — what you are still — your face looking at me, not understanding. If only I could tell you everything I was hiding. Me not allowing my fingers to be delicate and pass through the air to touch the lines of your face — the skin of the face that encloses you. I, a criminal. You, kindly, looking at me not understanding. I — you. If only I could tell you all the sorrow I was hiding, and the tenderness, the hurt. If only I could tell you that in everything — in us — time
on Sundays, my father smiled. We were having lunch. My mother had bought fish at the market. My father was complaining about the bones. My mother was turned towards Maria or towards my brother, and she was saying, ‘Don’t eat so quickly.’ I was seven or eight years old and my mother had chosen a piece of fish for me, and with the point of her knife had removed all the bones. Marta was still going out with the guy who is now her husband. It was the third or fourth time he’d had lunch with us. Probably someone was telling a joke, probably someone was telling the story of something that had happened, when Marta choked and started coughing. Her boyfriend got up and began patting her on the back. Marta kept coughing. My mother said to her, ‘Eat a little bit of bread.’ A thread of drool slipped from Marta’s mouth on to her plate. Marta coughed and her face got redder and redder. She stopped coughing, and she remained for a moment with her head lowered. My father asked her if she was better, but she didn’t reply. The boyfriend held her by one arm, his other hand on her shoulder, and he didn’t know what to say. My father said, ‘This fish is useless, it’s nothing but bones.’ My sister started coughing again, and when she managed to spit out the bone her plate was full of spit mixed with blood floating in the oil. As Marta recovered her breathing, my father raised his voice, saying: ‘I did say that this fish was rubbish, it’s money wasted on this complete swindle.’ And he threw the cutlery on to the plate. Shouting, he asked my mother, ‘What went through your head, spending money on this rubbish?’ My mother didn’t reply. My father said, ‘What a swindle, what rubbish.’ My mother continued not to reply. My father grabbed her by the arm, shook her and shouted: ‘Aren’t you listening?’ My mother looked at him, her eyes serious. In a single movement my father took the plate and smashed it on the floor. Shouting, he said, ‘Don’t you look at me like that, you hear me?’ It was that Sunday that my father stopped being ashamed of Marta’s boyfriend. When Marta took him to the door
Kilometre six
to say goodbye, my father’s shouting could be heard from the kitchen and Marta was crying with shame.
the streets I’d written on a bit of board and arrived at her door. I knocked, I waited, I didn’t think of anything. The weight of the toolbox bent my body. The lady’s steps approaching beyond the door — her smile. Going into the corridor I left behind the sun that filled the whole morning, that flooded the streets, that the men and women carried in their faces as they made their way along the pavements, the sun that lit up their certainties and heightened their hope. I slowed down to follow the lady’s slow steps along the hall runner, passing the doorways to rooms full of old pieces of furniture, where whole lives had taken place, and where at that moment there was a tidy silence of coppers, silvers and crystals. We arrived
through Stockholm. Ahead there I can see the beginning of a bridge. The air — this hot air — it’s now completely still. The sun fills up the air. As I approach the bridge, I want to run faster. Behind me, I hear the steps of a runner and I begin to run faster. I look at the bridge down there, I run faster, and when I slow down I can no longer hear anyone pursuing me. The bridge is closer and closer. I manage to make out the people who are at the start of the bridge. I want to get closer to the water because I believe that when I get there the air will be cooler. I put a foot on the bridge — this bridge. I pass by people cheering me on. Voices within cries. Here — the
first bridge in this city that’s broken into pieces and linked together by bridges. Here the air isn’t any cooler than it is in Lisbon. The sun burns my skin, the special grease that covers my skin. Behind me I hear the quick steps of another runner. I hear the same voices of the same people cheering him on. And I run
into a huge hall — tall windows behind curtains that reach down to the floor, rugs spread over the waxed wooden floor, armchairs covered with cloths of cornucopias, a chandelier hanging from the ceiling over a thick mahogany table. The lady pointed me towards a piano in one of the corners of the room. There was no need. It was a grand piano. Imposing and antique. I approached, assessing it, admiring it. It was certainly a piano the lady had first known right there, in just this same spot, when she was born — just like her parents, grandparents, great-grandparents — and which would remain there till the end of her days, and beyond and beyond. The gaze of all the generations it had survived would have been enough to wear it down; it was a solid enough piano, however, solemn, eternal, like an old oak. I put down the toolbox, sat on the stool and with a movement of my fingers lifted the lid from the keyboard, removed the cloth that protected the keys, and then after looking at them, after feeling the perfection of their surface, I touched each one. I didn’t need to look behind me to know that the lady had left me alone. I knew solitude too well. It was a problem with the soft pedal. And I was leaning into the inside of the piano when I felt her approach. Her steps were silent on the rug. Her presence was like a clarity that, delicately, expanded and from afar touched my skin with marks which were at once fragile and certain. I said good morning to her. Her startled look replied to me in a whisper almost impossible to hear. In her body a shiver which if you weren’t looking closely could pass unremarked. Her fingers flexed in and out. Her face, maybe curious, maybe concerned, seemed to want to approach — she tried to look inside the piano, and when I caught her she looked at me shyly. At just that moment I knew the piano was an extension of her body. As if to free herself from suffocation she needed to play. There — shy — she could feel any contact, however small, that I had with the piano. That was why I explained to her what the problem was and what I had to do. Smiling, the lady came in. She got between me and her. Without losing her smile, she said, ‘So I see you’ve met my granddaughter.’ Behind her, her face, serene, shy, continued
as fast as I can, as though I was fleeing from the thing that most scared me, as though it was possible to flee from that thing I have inside my skin and which goes with me everywhere, I run
to see me. Her hair, long and smooth, arranged just so. The lips without a speck to spoil the perfection of their lines. The lady asked me what was wrong with the piano. I stopped listening to myself as I explained all the unnecessary words I was saying, and just watched her over the lady’s shoulder, just imagined the world of peace that existed
as fast as I can, as though I could leave myself behind, as though I could run so fast that in an instant I could come free from myself and leave myself behind me, as though I were moving ahead out of my body, and through my speed was purifying myself, I run
Kilometre seven
as fast as I can, I run
in her eyes. When I leaned back over the piano and pulled the pedal rod, there was a moment of silence during which they both went out. The lady’s voice: ‘We’ll leave him to work.’ For the rest of the morning I couldn’t erase her face from my memory, I didn’t want to understand the reason for her face, single and clear, in my memory. I came to believe that it was out of pity for her wanting so badly to play, needing to play and not being able to. It was getting to lunchtime, and when the lady came into the hall I was already putting away my tools. I explained to her that I had things to do in the workshop that afternoon and said I’d be back the following morning with a few parts I needed. The lady smiled at me. I told her that the piano should be ready the next morning. She continued to smile at me. On the street I looked at all the windows searching for her face behind one of the curtains. I even stopped on the pavement, pretending to look at my watch, but I didn’t see her. I spent the whole afternoon thinking about her. I went into the piano cemetery to look for the parts and I thought about her. After work, when I went out for training, I thought only about her.
during or after dinner. Simão lived on odd jobs, and when he got home he’d go straight to his room. My father followed him with his gaze, as though he was angry with him and waiting for some gesture to fight with him, or at the same time as though he wanted to see if he really could cross the kitchen in silence without looking at anyone. Simão crossed the kitchen in silence, without looking at anyone. When he had gone through and closed the door, my father said, ‘There’s something wrong with that boy.’ I slept in the same room as Simão, and when I went in his eyes were the only points that shone in the darkness. His voice was calm and soft. It was my brother’s voice. He asked me, ‘Is there anything left to eat in the kitchen?’ I didn’t have to answer. I would go back, and if my father had gone to sleep I’d ask my mother for food for Simão. The oil lamp transformed my mother’s movements into shadows. I waited a moment and she put a tray into my hands with a full meal, covered with napkins. If my father was still awake it would just be me discreetly palming a hunk of bread and something to go with it.
not even impossible. Truth — like silence — exists only where I am not. Silence exists behind the words that awake inside me, which fight and destroy themselves and in that struggle gashes of blood open within me. When I think, silence exists outside what I’m thinking. When I stop thinking and focus, for example, on the ruins of a house, there is a wind that unsettles the abandoned stones there, there’s a wind bringing distant sounds and then the silence exists in my thoughts. Untouched and untouchable. When I return to my thoughts, silence returns to that dead house. It is also there — in that absence of me — that truth exists.
hand in hand. For the first time, we walked in silence the whole way. She didn’t tell me tales from the hospital. It was as if that day no one had broken a leg, or died, or gone mad. I didn’t ask her any questions, but I missed her voice on every street. It was as though the streets themselves — the houses, the people passing us — were different without her voice. Only our steps, steps, steps. When we reached the door to her house she looked at me with her eyes covered in shadow. She asked me, ‘Do you still like me?’ I made as if to reply with a kiss, but she moved away and asked me again: ‘Do you still like me?’ I waited, as though I didn’t know what to say because I had nothing to say, and when I brought my lips towards hers she didn’t move away. That was the night we walked across the city hand in hand, arrived at the workshop, went into the piano cemetery and made love for the first time. We didn’t go into her house because of her godmother. We didn’t go into mine, because in spite of the solitude it was still too much my father’s house, my mother’s, my brother’s and sisters’. It always will be. We went into the piano cemetery. Then, wordless, we crossed the city again, the day being born slowly behind us. Lisbon — the streets
was enormous beyond the curtains — the size of the world. When Hermes finished breast-feeding, Marta leaned him over her shoulder and began to pat him gently on the back with the tips of her fingers. Neither my mother, nor Maria, nor Elisa, nor Ana said a word. In this silence of gentle taps on Hermes’s back, it was Marta who asked after Simão.
is six years older than me, but sometimes it’s as though we were the same age. Other times it’s as though I were his older brother. It was two days before I was going to make the trip that would bring me here. I wanted to say goodbye to him. After leaving the workshop I ran to Rossio, and then hung off an electric tram as far as the house where Simão rented a room. I went up the wooden stairs — the sound of my weight on each step. I knocked on the door — broad, uncertain rumblings approaching. The door was opened by a woman with grease stains around her mouth, with dark eyes. I asked her for my brother. She said she didn’t know him. I explained to her that my brother r
ented a room there. She said again that she didn’t know him. Suddenly, without anyone having called her, just her head appearing at the top of the spiral staircase, the upstairs neighbour said that Simão had gone away and no longer lived in that house. Then she answered no to all the questions I asked her. Thinking about my brother, imagining him, fearful, I ran back home. It was night-time when I went up my sister Maria’s street. I looked in the windows — shadows pointing fingers, shapes that were perhaps too close, and perhaps too abrupt. I don’t know if I could make out my sister’s voice or her husband’s voice shouting
The Piano Cemetery Page 9