because I don’t want to look at the runners around me. I know that in their homes there are people who speak other languages and who are waiting for them in the same way that in my home they wait for me. They have names and they have childhoods. Without turning to face them directly, I see their dull figures on the fringes of my gaze. In this mixture of smudges of colour, I can tell they aren’t looking at anyone either. Just as we’re running here in the Stockholm streets, we’re running within ourselves, too. At the finishing line, the distance and the weight of this inner marathon will be as important as the kilometres of these streets and the heat of this sun. As I raise a foot to take a step, the other foot grips the ground. If the world were to stop at the moment when I have one foot raised, moving forwards, and the other foot set on the ground, roots could grow out of this fixed foot that holds me. These roots could penetrate the gaps of earth between the stones of the street. But I don’t let the world stop. After a step, another, another
second time. When she arrived, she gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and said nothing to me. She gave me her hand. We walked in silence the whole way from the hospital to her house. It was a night in mid-December. There was cold, and there was the cold wind that cut through us and awoke the sparkle in the puddles of water. The night was black. My hand wrapped itself around the fingers of her hand, and at certain moments squeezed them. I didn’t find her silence strange, as I carried many words with me. I had words, whole sentences, sliding through me. I turned my face to kiss her and she moved away. I smiled because I thought she was just playing. I turned my face again to kiss her and again she moved away. She kept her eyes down. I held her hands and waited. The night existed. There were no people on the streets. There were no motorcars or carts. There were frozen stars in the sky. She began to lift her face, slowly — her wavy hair, her forehead, her eyes fixing on me from the depth of the night, and her whole face. Her lips — it was then that her lips said, ‘We’re going to have a child.’ And her hands, parting from mine. And she opened the door and went into the house. And she closed the door. Suddenly it was no longer the same night. The world was clearer, and at the same time more imprecise. I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned — the blind, dirty face of my brother.
~ ~ ~
We got married on our own.
Two Saturdays earlier, we walked downtown together. We didn’t hold hands, but our smiles were only for each other. We went into a warehouse of displays with models dressed in the latest fashion. She didn’t take long to point to a roll of fabric — end of season, a leftover bit. While we exchanged smiles, while we believed more, the metres were measured out on the counter.
That was the material, not too sober, not too extravagant, that the seamstress marked with chalk, cut, sewed, and through this skill made a dress that was just as my wife had imagined it. This was the dress she premiered on the Monday morning when we got married.
Everything was taken care of, we had the papers, but we went into the civil registry without realising we were doing it. I was the one who went up to the counter, and when a man walked past carrying a pile of papers to his chest I said good morning to him. He didn’t reply. He remained indifferent, angry at the world and at all the archives. We followed him with our gaze for a few minutes that passed on the hands of the clock hanging from the wall. At some moment of his own choosing, the gentleman from the registry walked towards me, combed his moustache, stopped on the other side of the counter and — bored — as though asking a question, said
‘Now then, if you please. .’
I held out the papers to him, and explained that we’d come to get married.
He took the papers, put on his glasses and took his time reading the form that the other gentleman at that same counter had given me more than a month earlier. Without saying anything, he raised his face slightly and looked at us over the top of his glasses. He opened and closed, opened and closed the other documents. Without saying anything, he raised the board that allowed us through to the other side of the counter. We followed him between empty desks, piles of papers, cupboards full of files, until we reached a white room. He sat at a table, coughed twice, and opened a book that covered the whole surface of the table. We sat in two thick wooden chairs.
Never turning to look at us, the gentleman from the registry read a few lines quickly, not pronouncing the words completely — mixing up words — a buzzing of words. In the brief gaps where he paused, I said yes when I’d heard my name, and soon afterwards she said yes. The man from the registry breathed in deeply and blew out during the time it took me to get the wedding ring out of my pocket and put it on her finger. We were looking at one another, and smiling, as he finished up his lines. He turned the book towards us:
‘Sign here.’
I signed and she signed. It wasn’t until that moment that the gentleman from the registry noticed we didn’t have witnesses.
‘You don’t have witnesses?’
Without waiting for an answer, he got up and crossed the room in short, quick steps. He returned with a thick book with the letter B on the spine. He opened it at a page and chose two witnesses for me, a man and a woman. He opened it at another page and chose two witnesses for her, a man and a woman. He copied the names on to the page of the other book: Bartolomeu, Belarmina, Baltazar, Belmira. With different scripts, he signed under each one.
We left, light-spirited.
That day I didn’t go to work. The next morning, when my uncle arrived at the workshop, he said nothing to me.
The beginning of night-fall. July. The sounds of the town where Marta went to live. Carts passing on the beaten earth road. Men and women, greeting one another. The old olive trees bending under the fresh air. The iron gate to Marta’s yard. Clothes hanging out on a line. Pigeons making their final circuits in the sky. My wife going into Marta’s house through the kitchen door. The beginning of night-fall. Dogs barking in the yard.
‘Look, it’s Gran,’ says Hermes in the sewing room. And he freezes — his mouth stays open for a moment while he waits for confirmation from his sister. His eyes remain alight. Without saying a word, but as though breaking the silences, his sister looks at him — she smiles — as if to say yes.
Hermes starts running through all the open doors to get to the kitchen. Elisa, who is older, and knows more, walks behind him. Elisa has time. It takes her just a moment — time for almost nothing — but when she reaches the kitchen Hermes is already in his gran’s arms.
‘Calm down, you’ll knock your granny over,’ says Marta, mouth full of bread, talking as though she can’t understand Hermes’s enthusiasm, as though she can’t hear her mother describing the train journey, as though she can’t see the dogs who’ve come into the kitchen and, tails wagging, surround my wife.
Elisa greets her grandmother with the manners of a girl who’s grown up. My wife puts Hermes down on the floor, leaves him playing with the dogs. Elisa, calm, puts her hands on her hips and leans against the cutlery drawer.
At another time Marta would have scolded Elisa for not helping, for leaning against the cutlery drawer with her hands on her hips, but night has already fallen, it’s Friday — July — and my wife has just arrived. Marta’s body is enormous. It’s in the small smile she keeps on her face when she isn’t looking at anyone, in the almost agile movements with which she puts the dogs in the yard, in the sweet way she pronounces certain words, that it’s possible to tell how glad Marta is that her mother has arrived.
She spreads the cloth over the table. My mother makes to help but our daughter doesn’t let her, and when my wife tries to go to the plate cupboard Marta’s body blocks her way. Without anyone having to say anything, Elisa begins to arrange the cutlery beside the invisible plates.
My wife hadn’t seen Marta, or Elisa, or Hermes, for more than a month.
Soon after the day Hermes was born, the day I died, my wife went to Marta’s house, went to help her look after her son. Hermes, hugged to his mother’s breast, was a very wide-eye
d baby, wrapped in flesh — skin — he was a little baby wrapped in Marta’s huge arms, his head out, eyes wide. In that time my mother had watched Hermes learn to run across the kitchen, and learn to have tantrums when faced with closed doors. Sometimes Marta lost patience. Being heavy, she couldn’t keep up with her son and she lost patience. Then my wife was a real grandmother — a mother in secret — and she felt alive.
Soon after the day Íris was born, my wife returned to Maria’s house. She only went to Marta’s house intermittently, but Hermes wouldn’t forget his grandmother. When Marta allowed Hermes to speak on the telephone, he’d ask:
‘Come over here, Granny!’
My wife, at Maria’s house, was moved. She’d put down the receiver, and felt sorry that Marta no longer lived in Benfica.
There were months that passed too quickly. There were months that were lost, like lids on ballpoint pens. On the few occasions that Marta came to Lisbon, she’d go up the stairs of her sister’s house very slowly, with her mother’s help, stopping every half-dozen steps to rest. When she finally arrived she would sit in a chair and smile broadly.
My wife would take the train to Marta’s town two or three days before these trips. She’d take advantage of the lift back. In the blue truck that Marta’s husband had bought not long after the move, she’d sit at the window. Hermes and Elisa would sit between her and their father, who drove, bad-tempered. And it was always summer, or it was always spring, or it was always a day when you knew for certain that it wouldn’t rain, because Marta would be sitting in an armchair on the back of the truck. Only once it started raining on the way. They stopped at the side of the road and took her all their jackets. Marta put Hermes’s jacket on her head, tied the sleeves under the skin that hung from her chin, and covered herself as best she could with the other jackets, but when they arrived she was sad and soaked through.
Marta’s husband promised to take her to Lisbon on Sunday. They’ll collect leftover bits of wood from the workshop to burn in the winter, they’ll go and visit Maria. Marta will take her bunches of spring greens from her yard, sprigs of parsley that she planted in a tub and sausages she bought at the grocer’s. Her sister will say she needn’t have troubled herself, and Marta, sitting in a chair, will smile broadly.
When they finish their dinner, my wife is quicker. She gets up and starts piling the dirty plates. Marta complains, but my wife is quicker. Marta’s husband’s plate is still clean, his chair is still empty and pushed up against the table. When my wife makes to take his plate away, Marta says to her:
‘Leave it, he’s probably just arriving.’
And they talk like they did when Hermes was a baby and the evenings were longer. They talk about Francisco. They talk about Francisco’s wife and the child who is going to be born. Marta is sure it’s going to be a girl. They don’t feel the time pass. When Elisa’s eyes start to close and her head drops, my wife looks at the clock on the wall and it’s already late. Hermes is still playing, but my wife gets up and holds her hand out to him.
‘Come, let’s go to sleep.’
Marta says she’ll stay up a little and wait for her husband.
‘He’s probably just arriving.’
My wife leaves with Hermes and Elisa. Marta’s thoughts remain. Her steps remain — swinging from side to side, as though reeling. All over the house — in the walls — there is silence. For a moment Marta fixes a fist on the tabletop, leans part of her weight on to that arm, and looks into the air, remembering Francisco — she smiles. Slowly night comes into the house — fields spotted with crickets, dogs barking in the distance, a moped passing occasionally. Marta’s body, solid, dressed in a blue smock, is a bulk of sheer flesh that crosses the kitchen, that lowers itself to open the cupboard door and take out a biscuit tin.
She is sitting, the tin resting at the end of her belly, on the tips of her knees. Her right arm repeats the movement that takes the biscuits from the tin and brings them to her mouth. Biscuits disappear between her lips. Sometimes she remembers and forgets her husband who has not yet arrived. She thinks of Francisco, she thinks of the child who’s going to be born, she thinks of Francisco when he was little, she thinks of Francisco filled with dreams, she thinks and imagines him in Stockholm, wondering at the world and believing. Her thoughts are surrounded in light. There is a lamp hanging from the ceiling. There is the noise of the biscuits being chewed.
There is the noise, ever slower, of the biscuits being chewed. There are Marta’s eyes, closing. Her head falls slowly back. She opens her eyes, straightens up her head, swallows the remains of the biscuit she has in her mouth, runs her tongue across her teeth and loses her energy again. Her eyes close. Her head falls slowly back.
My daughter’s body, illuminated, stretched out over the corners of the chair, is shapeless. Her torso, covered in crumbs, breathing, is a mass in which it’s impossible to make out where the breasts end and the stomach starts. She has one arm alongside her body — her hand resting on her lap, next to the biscuit tin — and her other arm is stretched out — hand open, frozen in a gesture of giving — the palm of her hand, the thick back of her hand, the thin fingers, thin fingertips. In her head tilting back, as though her neck was broken — her face — her skin, mouth open, and the face that used to be a little girl’s who came running to me, who had a little girl’s voice and who laughed because the world was so simple, so simple. The world was so simple.
Hours pass, over the illuminated body of my daughter, over the plate on the table, over the unmoving cutlery. It’s the heart of night. Far away there are dark, deserted streets, black, empty houses. My daughter’s husband opens the door and his skin carries the smell and the heat of another skin. He is a man suddenly alone. He looks towards my daughter and he is not happy. He feels sorry for her, feels sorry for himself, he feels sorry for everything he knows how to name. He closes the door carefully, turns out the light, walks carefully across the kitchen. The hours remain, stretching out, filled up by the night. Time remains — time which passes without existing.
Day breaks. An almost clear light reaches Marta’s body, covers her breathing. Little sounds settle over the silence. All of a sudden the dogs begin to bark in the yard. Marta opens her eyes. She realises that she’s woken up. She straightens her body in the chair. She moves her shoulders to rearrange the bones in her aching flesh. She turns towards the window and, not understanding, sees the faces of Maria, Íris and Ana on the other side of the glass. She doesn’t understand that they could be there. Not trusting her eyes, she closes the lids forcefully, wakes up a bit more, opens them again, and again sees the faces of her sister and nieces on the other side of the window. It is only then, not knowing what to think, that she gets up quickly and hurries to open the door for them.
Our daughters had gone out and I’d made them take Francisco with them. They’d gone out to see the streets, the parks. They’d gone out to wander about, to be girls. The clarity of Saturday came through the windowpanes and filled the kitchen with cloudy air, that mingled with the words, that you breathed in, and that maddened you. There was a reason, there was a reason, but now, try as I might, I can’t remember.
I grabbed her by her woollen jumper and lifted her out of the chair, her looking at me defiantly, my fingers disappearing into the wool, my fists clenched and the wool of the jumper in and around my hands, her looking at me defiantly, as though she despised me, in silence, as if she were saying I was nothing, I was nothing, I was worth nothing, and I pulled her by the jumper, turned her around, her body taking steps, turning in front of me, and only her defiant look, not a word, not even the beginnings of her voice, and all the contempt, I could feel the air that came in through my nostrils, it was thicker than air, I felt my lips pursed, merged, I felt I could pull her body, push her body with just one arm, but I let go of her, her wool jumper keeping the same shape it had in my hand, she tried to fix her jumper, to give it the shape it used to have, but it was ruined for ever, it had the holes from my fingers and it was
stretched wide, there was nothing that could bring it back to how it was, she sat down and looked away, the contempt, all the contempt, in silence, as if she was saying I was nothing, I was nothing, nothing, I was worth nothing, I held her face with my two hands and forced her to look at me, I felt her neck straining, I saw her eyes not wanting to cry, but the tears, but, but the tears break through her will. I let go.
Simão, a little man, months from losing his sight, had two living eyes and was watching me from the half-open door to the hallway.
It was still day, there was a breeze that came from some cool place and across my dust-covered face, it was peace, conciliation, it was a transparent silence that fell over the last sounds of the afternoon, when I came out of the workshop, left my uncle at the taberna and walked home on my own. The whole city was starting to relax. On that short walk, I knew exactly what I’d find the moment I went up to the front step and opened the door — my wife’s face, flushed, smiling at me — locks of hair falling over her forehead, crossing her gaze, touching her cheeks — my wife’s body standing in the middle of the kitchen — her belly growing bigger every week. I’d approach, we’d embrace sideways on, and I’d place my hand on her belly. I’d mould the round shape of her belly with the palm of my hand.
That afternoon I went up to the front step of my house, opened the door and she was already waiting for me. She wasn’t smiling because she was holding a shoebox with both hands and it seemed to be too serious an object. Before saying a word, she held the box out to me. Only then did she say:
The Piano Cemetery Page 12