The Piano Cemetery

by José Luís Peixoto

  Kilometre eight

  were longer when I returned home after meeting her. If I had thought about it occasionally, I might have understood right then that it wasn’t just my will that led me to go and meet her, to desire her; it was also my lack of will, my indecision. Even when she was silent, I looked at her face and I could hear her voice. The velvet, appeasing, comfortable, sincere, living sound of her voice found ways of getting into the inside of my time, into my own inside. As it did, the body of that voice found the huge space of a person who was completely empty — a past covered in doubts, a vague present, a future that did not yet exist. And what little there was seemed like nothing to me — kilometres and minutes — legs trying to destroy the world in a way my arms couldn’t. That was why her voice grew within

  the house of the piano-tuner. I was carrying the parts I needed in the toolbox. Each of my steps made the noise of those parts and the tools rattling within the wooden box — a muffled sound which I sometimes imagined being the sound of my heart beating. The morning cleaned the city — even the rubbish abandoned in the crevices of the streets, even the weeds growing at the foot of the walls, even the stones scattered in the earth. When I knocked it was the lady who opened the door for me. Her smile didn’t hide any bad thoughts. I smiled at her, and followed her along the corridor. I looked at each of the rooms as they passed us, because I was looking for her. I would have been satisfied with a piece of her clothing spread out on the back of a chair, the leaf of a plant still moving after her passing, but I found only the empty spaces where at certain moments she might have been, where her face — brought by a miracle — might materialise. We reached the hall. I went to the piano. Alone, I placed my hand on the varnish of the piano and it was as though we were speaking, as though we were the same age and looking at the world from afar. I opened the piano up, and the tools in my hands were as though turning over the mechanism of the morning, as though they understood it and were capable of repairing it. The morning, indifferent, continued to pass, and when the lady came in, leading the tuner by the arm, I almost believed that I wouldn’t ever see her again. I had seen her face the previous day, and I wouldn’t ever see it again. And at the same time as I felt something icy and burning, like hurt, I felt ridiculous because she wouldn’t even be aware of my insignificance, because she existed in a place to which I would never have access, unaware of me, just unaware of me. I said something, because I knew in that way the tuner would be able to follow the sound of my words, would be able to take hold of the thread of my words and come to me. The lady replied, and went out. When we were alone, the tuner, blind since birth — a blind baby — asked me, ‘What’s up with you?’ I replied, ‘Nothing.’ I was only able to deceive him because at that moment she came into the hall. I was the one who said to the tuner: ‘It’s the lady’s granddaughter.’ Turning his head in any old direction, the tuner smiled and was polite. Then he began to touch each of the keys and press on the piano strings. Her chin was right down on her neck, but she raised her eyes to see me. My gaze was fixed inside her eyes. There weren’t three steps separating our bodies. She and I didn’t breathe. At each note the tuner felt the strings vibrate with the tips of his fingers. The whole mechanism — springs, straps, levers — not existing between one extremity and the other — the key and the string — the sound. The notes rose up like pillars across the whole hall. And the fragile moments when the tuner fixed his little silver key and tightened or loosened the strings — the tip of the silver key — broken glass played on by the wind — and the strings stretching — silent groans passing through the air like a thread of breeze. In our linked gaze, another time was passing, another time through which those notes and that silence also passed. The tuner put his silver key away in his jacket pocket, moved away and

  don’t leave me

  said: ‘There it is.’ Independent of her body, her feet made her light and without touching the floor brought her to the piano. At that moment she could see nothing else. She sat on the stool. She pushed her hair off her shoulders so it tumbled down her back. It was a moment of utter silence. She lifted her pale face towards me and her fingers touched the keys. She was smiling. Under her music, the air in the hall was crossed by invisible lines — a construction of light. These notes were her body, too. They were points of her skin that existed just for a moment, that remained in memory, until they came apart and transformed themselves into air, into life lived. Not even when my father closed all the workshop windows and sat down to play the pianos he had just fixed up, not even in my dreams, had I heard music like this. It was as though the invisible shapes of those sounds went into the joints of all the furniture, objects, bodies, it was as though they went into the joints of the whole house and divided each object clearly into each of its elements. It was as though all the air in the world was filled with specks blinking and, for a few moments, showing the air’s secret shapes. She didn’t take her eyes off me. Her thin body swayed on the stool, approaching the keyboard and moving away. The movements of her arms

  Kilometre nine

  were sure and elegant, like birds coming to rest on the lake in the park — her thin, smooth, white, porcelain wrists. And her face — in her eyes — was a sky where new meanings existed — a new life, created by her hand, more than eternal — and it was possible to believe in everything because there were nothing but certainties in the intensity of her eyes and in the music that came through me. In one corner, trying not to touch anything, the tuner had no face. The music from the piano had transformed his wrinkled skin, his worn lips, his blind eyes into a single smudge. The tuner didn’t exist. She and I looked at one another and what we felt filled the hall and could have filled the world. When she turned her face away I felt lost, until the moment I looked over my shoulder and found the smile of the lady who had just come in.

  against the doors. After Hermes was born, after the death of my father, my mother only stayed in Maria’s house a few months. When Hermes began to be more work, at the start of summer, my mother moved to Marta’s house, and it was around this time that she began, slowly, to wake up. At times the pitch of her voice rose. There were times when she laughed tenderly at something Hermes had done. Marta wandered through the house — she occupied the whole corridor with her body — and my mother became gradually interested in details — the cutlery arranged in the drawer, the pins stuck in the calendar, the different ways of the land where Marta had gone to live. There were late afternoons when Marta’s husband would arrive home suddenly, demanding dinner. The three of them would sit and talk, in the evenings, perhaps about something that had happened — Marta, sitting on a stool, breathing heavily, anxious from the stifling heat of the August nights; my mother, sitting dressed in black, a black stain that spoke calmly; and Elisa, sitting on a patchwork rug, lit up by the whims of an oil lamp, playing with a rag doll. Over those evenings — like a breeze — was the calm of knowing that Hermes, submerged in the shadows of his room, was asleep, serene, safe, and he was a growing child. On those same nights, in Maria’s house, time

  a few days. I stopped outside her house and I didn’t know what to do. When I was in luck, I’d lean against the wall and like a memory I could hear a little of the music she played. I knew that in the hall that music was like a whirlwind. There, it was like a breeze, like a veil carried by a breeze, something that floated and mingled with the voices of the people who passed, with the bells of the horses pulling carts or with the engine of the occasional motorcar. On one of those evenings I decided to knock at the door. I didn’t know what I’d say — I forgot one of my tools, how are you? I forgot to fix a problem with the piano. I thought of nothing as I walked down the pavement, climbed the steps and

  was much slower. All the streets of Benfica had fallen still. It was on one of those nights — August — after a dinner of soup — that Maria’s husband broke all the dinner plates for the first time, kicked a chair and pushed Maria against a wall. Maria spent the night in the kitchen, sitting in a chair, falli
ng asleep occasionally, spending the rest of the time awake, crying loudly enough that he could hear her and quietly enough that Ana shouldn’t wake. The next morning he got up and finding her still in the kitchen he embraced her, crying too, asked her forgiveness, asked her forgiveness, grovelled, told her he’d never do it again, told her he loved her, told her he loved her more than life itself. She embraced him back, and believed him.

  knocked. It was the lady who opened it. She smiled at me, and as I readied myself to say one of the phrases I’d made up, the lady began to walk ahead of me and I again followed her along the distant corridor. When we reached the hall, she was sitting at the piano, insubstantial. When the lady left I marvelled for a moment, but this moment passed very quickly because I threw myself towards her — her serious, white face, her smooth, long hair — and I embraced her. She embraced me, too. I was certain that she embraced me too. She stood up and I felt her whole body fitting within my arms. Then she walked silently towards the doors and closed them. We made love on the floor, on rugs, lit up by the brightness that hurled itself from the windows as if trying to kill us.

  Kilometre ten

  in my legs, like flames enveloping my skin. My arms, too. That’s how come there’s a star in the sky shining during the day — a distant, solitary, single star — a world covered in fire. I exist here. And the star, she exists up there, watching me. And accompanying me, wrapping me in fire. I make my way through the streets of Stockholm just as though I were making my way along a tunnel towards the sun.

  a ball made of rags. My mother says to him: ‘You’re too old to be out playing in the street.’ Simão was twelve years old. When the stonemason didn’t have any work for him, he’d send him home. It wasn’t common, but it wasn’t unusual. There were times when the stonemason would notify him the night before. On those mornings I’d try not to wake him when I got up to go to school. There were times when the stonemason only told him he didn’t need him when Simão arrived, his boots covered in dried cement, with his work clothes and the pot of lunch our mother had prepared for him. On those mornings he’d come back home and he couldn’t get back to sleep. He’d walk round the kitchen and was always in our sisters’ or our mother’s way. He’d sit in a chair, and when he was told to move he’d discover he was in the way of one of them; then he’d lean on a cupboard which he later discovered was in the way of another, who told him to move; then he’d go somewhere else, in the way of another, who also told him to move. It was then that he’d head down three or four streets to the patch of wasteground, between two vegetable gardens, where the lads got together to play ball. No weeds grew on that wasteground because every day dozens of lads would get together to chase a rag ball across the pitch. They were free lads, who didn’t go to school, or who didn’t have a father or mother. On this ground, of dirt in the summer and of mud in the winter, stones grew. The posts were measured out in barefoot steps and made of little heaps of stones. Almost in the middle of the pitch was an olive tree that survived year after year, mistreated by the lads who tore limbs from it, and who dodged around it as they chased the ball, and occasionally bumped into its trunk and were knocked back. When Simão arrived he took off his work boots because he didn’t want to ruin them with kicking stones. He left them carefully behind one of the posts and went on to the pitch to kick off one of the younger kids and start playing. Turning his head in every direction, always following the ball with his left eye, Simão ran surrounded by a knot of lads who came up to his chest and kicked every which way. It was on one of those days that Simão, coming out of the yard, let the bitch get out between his legs. Usually she was allowed out, she could go wherever she wanted and then, tired, she’d wait; she’d lie on the pavement and wait for someone to go back in. That day was different. In the late afternoon Simão wasn’t surprised to get home, sweating, and not see the bitch. He didn’t give it a thought. No one would have given it a thought if Maria hadn’t soon afterwards come through the gate crying and disappeared through the kitchen door. I was sitting on the edge of the outdoor sink telling Simão stories from school, and when Maria ran past crying the two of us didn’t notice. Maria came back to the yard with our mother. They walked towards us. Maria tried to recover her composure. Our mother approached, angry. Her eyes were angry. Her voice was only angry when it asked Simão, ‘Was it you who let the bitch out?’ She didn’t wait for a reply, and asked again, ‘Was it you who let the bitch out?’ Maria had gone with an errand to the grocer’s and found the bitch on the edge of the pavement, run over by a motorcar — her fur bloody, her tongue dry, her eyes closed and sad. Simão had no time, no words to say. Before taking Maria by the hand and going back into the kitchen, our mother said to him, ‘When your father arrives, then you’ll see.’ Next to me, Simão went pale. Our mother came back through the kitchen door, handed him a burlap sack and told him to go and fetch the bitch. After putting the sack with the bitch’s bulk down on the ground of the yard — the spots of thick blood, the arch of the spine recognisable in the shape of the sack — Simão wandered through the house alone, as though he was inventing solutions, all of them impossible. As night fell, our father came into the kitchen, and as soon as our mother told him he went out into the yard to look for Simão. He didn’t look far. He found him scrunched into a corner of the chicken coop, covering his face but not hiding the terror in his eyes. Our father took off his belt, and against the dirty chicken-coop wall he beat him, letting the blows fall wherever they might.

  Kilometre eleven

  against the wind. I was running down the streets, and for this time it was the whole city, it was the houses, the faces, the voices beginning to turn into night. During the days, fooled by the sawdust or by what I had to do, it was easy to lead my thoughts anywhere I wanted. If I started to think and to hurt myself, I’d stop at the part in front of me — perhaps an unfinished window, perhaps the beginning of a table leg — and I knew that at some point, with no effort, another thought would come, a more agreeable thought, which would either entertain me or soothe me. But when I went out to train, I ran along the streets and no one could imagine the world of words I carried with me. To run is to be absolutely alone. I’ve known it since the beginning — in solitude it’s impossible to escape from myself. After the very first few steps black walls rise up around me. The world, harmless, moves away. As I run, I remain still within myself, and I wait. At last I am at my own mercy. At first, I was thirteen years old and I ran in order to find the silence of a peace I thought didn’t belong to me. I didn’t yet know that it was just the reflection of my own peace. Later, as life became more complicated, it was too late to be able to stop. Running was a part of me like my name. It was then I learned how to run against the words that were inside me, just as I learned to run against

  when we’re together

  the wind. I ran along the streets, and as I got further from the workshop I might complete the remainder of some thought that had been broken by a word that developed into others — a first step, another, another and all the ones that followed it, indistinguishable from each other. It was a word too quick to understand where it had come from, but it was a vital word because it was through that word that I began to remember the nights — her voice and, in the background, the huge façade of the hospital. On a day that was getting ever further away, my father had died in that hospital. And as she spoke, we made our way hand in hand through the inside of her voice. And another sudden word reminding me of the evenings when I’d arrive at her house. The lady opening the door — me following her down, along the hallway — the piano music in everything — her face — her skin. And there was a moment when her voice and her face mingled together — her, and her. Her voice in the darkness of the piano cemetery, and her face, serious, on the hall rugs. My fingers in her wavy hair, or running through her long, straight hair. My hand squeezing hers. My hands holding her waist. I couldn’t resist the thoughts that hurt me most. I never thought of the two of them at the same time, but they mingled together
within me. I ran along the streets and no one could have known that there were plates shifting within me.

  couldn’t stay still. My mother had gone off to sort something out, she crossed paths with her and said nothing. Maria said nothing to her either, she said nothing to anyone. She went around concerned with strands of hair and specks of dust. Maria wanted everything to be perfect. It was Sunday, and it was the end of winter. Marta was helping her mother. Simão was far away. I was sitting on a bench by the fireside. Maria had on her best dress and a cardigan and a costume necklace. Our father was sitting at the table — his arms resting on the tabletop. He waited in silence — a glass and a bottle. There was a knock at the door. Maria turned suddenly in every direction. It was my mother who said to her, indifferently, ‘Go and open the door, what are you waiting for?’ After a moment of muted sounds — the lock, uncertain steps — and silence — silence — Maria came into the room with her boyfriend. My father had already seen him on the morning he’d turned up at the workshop to ask if he could go out with Maria. He greeted him normally. Maria’s boyfriend, nervous, greeted everyone and leaned against the cupboard. Maria stood beside him. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence. Maria was much taller than her boyfriend, but beside him she shrunk down, bent her back so as to be his height. He pulled himself up to his full height, stuck his chest out and lifted his chin. Maria’s boyfriend, dressed in his best suit, began to talk about the weather and addressed my father by his full name: Senhor Francisco Lázaro. My father replied to him, and added something. Maria’s boyfriend agreed, and added something. My father replied. And on they went. There was a smile on Maria’s face, mixed with serious attentiveness, as though the conversation between her father and her boyfriend was interesting, important, as though everything they said was right.