I was lying in my room. I wasn’t sleeping, and I wasn’t awake. I was lying in my room — windows closed, darkness. I had the covers over my head, but I didn’t feel them. I was just breathing in the rotten smell of illness. I existed in a world that was made up of nothing but hopeless pain — constant pain, bones bending, bones coming away from the flesh and no hope that I’d go back to walking the streets, unworried, light, unaware. My wife, shadowless, took steps across the kitchen floor and boiled pans of water when she didn’t know what to do.
I held my voice in, within me, I tangled it up with my black pain. It was deceiving my whole body. I held out against the sharp pains like death itself before crying out. I called my wife’s name. It was morning, or it was afternoon. Bits of my voice went through the bedroom door, landed on the floor of the hallway and some of them made it to the kitchen. Maria spent her days with my wife. The two of them came into the room. Hanging in the middle of the ceiling, the lamp lit its yellow light — the glowing filaments, the image of a red-hot heart. In the first months my wife tried to follow the timetable for my medication. Later, in silence, the doctor told her she could give me my medication whenever I asked for it; it would no longer do me any harm.
Maria went back home when Francisco arrived from the workshop. She made her way down the streets, holding on to Ana, her little steps, and a basket with dinner already prepared. Morning and afternoon dissolved along the way, but they never disappeared, they never disappeared. At all times there was the weight of a closed fist squeezing her heart. Even when she thought about other things, when she almost forgot, there was always the weight of a closed fist squeezing her heart.
It was one of those late afternoons. The night was beginning. Maria went into the house and let go of Ana’s arm. Her husband had already arrived, he was leaning on the sink, and when Ana rushed over to him he didn’t bend down to caress her, nor to smile at her, nor to speak to her in that voice people use to speak to children. Maria went into the kitchen, spoke a syllable and he didn’t reply, didn’t look at her, didn’t ask after me. They remained silent. Maria took the pan — the lid tied down with strings — from out of the basket. Her husband was still leaning on the sink, closed in the impossible thoughts he had, which covered his face. Ana put down the doll she was carrying and sat down next to a chair. Time seemed to be just like on every other day.
Cutting through time, Maria’s husband, crossing the kitchen, knocked into her with his elbow.
‘You hurt me. .’
‘It wasn’t on purpose, was it?’ he said rudely.
Maria was going to reply to him in the same manner, when he — shorter than her — stopped right in front of her, chin raised, lips pursed and eyes burning. After a pause, Maria saddened, and said:
‘You don’t love me any more.’
Her husband repeated this phrase until it became ridiculous, even more ridiculous, until it was just those words and no longer that phrase. She kept looking at him, with the same sadness. He raised his voice even further:
‘Don’t look at me like that. I know where you get those ideas. .’
And as though stuttering, nervous, as though giving up halfway through what he was going to say, as though not giving up right after that, he held her wrist, squeezed her wrist and began to talk, as though talking to himself, in phrases he interrupted and resumed and continued and interrupted.
He pulled Maria by the arm. And took her down the corridor. And they went. Into the room. Where they slept every night. And he pointed. At the bookcase. Filled with romance novels. That Maria had kept since. Childhood and which she organised. In alphabetical order and. All the stories. She knew by heart and which she. Could have recounted in every detail and. He pointed at this full bookcase. Clean and dustless. And said:
‘Because of this. This rubbish. It’s because of this. All of it. Because of this rubbish.’
And nervously. Choking on. His words. And as though. Stuttering. He threw an arm against the bookcase and knocked it over. All the romance novels on. The bedspread and as though. He was crazy and as though he was. Crazy. He began to tear them with. Both hands while he repeated.
‘Rubbish. It’s all because. Of this rubbish.’
On the bed a heap of torn pages and torn jackets, titles — dreams of, passion wedding in, spring the heart’s flames stronger, than prejudice triumph, of destiny in love with the man, a certain girl and woman loving for the first, time and unkn, own irresistible flo, wers to, o late be, yond de, sire cru, el smi, le da, wni, ng o, f em, o t, i, on, s.
And at last Maria’s husband stopped his arms. His quick breathing filled and emptied his chest.
And through the tears that hung from Maria’s eyelashes, the heap of torn pages on the bed — torn Sabrinas, torn Biancas, torn Júlias — was a shapeless, dazzling mass.
And leaning on the doorpost, her doll hanging by the end of her arm, Ana was watching. Her eyes were huge.
My uncle was saying every word that came into his head. It was morning. My uncle interrupted a word after the first syllable when my neighbour came running in:
‘Da. .’
I dropped my tools on the bench, gave the workshop keys to my uncle and went out past my neighbour. The way home was quick and it was slow. The front door was ajar. In one corner of the kitchen, Marta was small, sitting in a chair, serious, feet in the air, and there was a woman taking care of her. The other women walked past one another, muddled with one another, tangled with one another. I passed through their shadows — the steps of my boots digging into the floor. The bedroom walls were the opposite of vast, eternal fields, they were the opposite of landscape. My wife with her eyes closed. She opened her eyes when I touched her hair, closed them again when the pains submerged her. I tried to go into that world beneath her eyelids. I had her head in my arms. A time passed that was made up of pains that moved away for moments that were shorter and shorter, and that returned ever stronger. All the women gathered round her. She began to push. All the women encouraged her to push. I held her hand and felt all her strength. Her face turned red, and then purple. Her face was strong, and at the same time it was fragile. The whole universe stretched, all life, and it was about to burst. Like an elastic that stretches, stretches, and when it snaps will hit us in the face. Then the women’s faces were lit up by a miracle. The midwife put two fingers to the roof of the baby’s mouth and pulled it out in one go. It was in her arms, a girl covered in blood, beautiful, attached to an umbilical cord. She passed her into my wife’s arms. Together, inseparable, we looked at her and it was impossible to control the tears that burst on to our faces. Maria had just been born. Something vast had just been born in our hearts.
My wife — waking up one Sunday morning she remembers that it was on a Sunday that I died. The hospital. The telephone ringing in Maria’s house. Earlier, Sunday mornings had been the time we all woke up together, we all got up together. It was sunny every Sunday morning. Our children. Even earlier, Sunday mornings were when her godmother would open all the windows of the boarding house, they were sun.
Marta — on Sunday mornings she’s the first person to get to the kitchen — nightdress, slippers — makes breakfast so that the children feel all is right with the world. Her husband didn’t sleep at home. Earlier, when they still lived in Benfica, Elisa was so small, she’d go into the bedroom, jump on to her parents’ bed, stumble across their bodies, lie down between the two of them and, together, they’d laugh, they’d laugh because it was Sunday. Earlier, Marta was just a girl, she’d help her mother to make lunch and she laughed, too, she laughed because it was Sunday.
Maria — there are Sunday mornings, like this one, when she feels a thin pain inside her, like the cold, when she cannot smile; and there are Sunday mornings when she believes in a solar certainty that fills her up. On those Sundays, all her ages mingle together. She is a child, playing with Simão in the yard, she’s a girl reading romance novels in the piano cemetery, she’s nearly a woman, dreaming of her weddin
g day. Today she thinks only that her husband is going to phone her, that her husband is going to ask her forgiveness, and she feels a thin pain inside her, like the cold.
Elisa — Sunday mornings are already lots of things. When she was small, in the Benfica house, she’d walk barefoot along the hall runner and climb on to her parents’ bed. Her mother told her to keep still, and at the same time she tickled her. Elisa laughed a lot, and under the sheets she’d push out her thin white chest with its many ribs just perfect for tickling. Now grown, she no longer goes to her parents’ bed. She gets up when Hermes starts pulling at her arm. Hermes wants to play. When she gets to the kitchen her mother asks her if she’s done her schoolwork yet.
Ana — Sunday mornings are a matter to which she gives some thought. Ana thinks about what she feels. She thinks, ‘Now.’ And she thinks that now is, mysteriously and concretely, now. Later, time will make her forget what she feels. Later, years later, she’ll find it strange that anyone could consider Sunday mornings a matter to be given some thought, still less a matter worth talking about. She will never talk about this. No one will ever talk to her about this. She will never think about this. Now, this is what she thinks about.
Hermes — he is beginning to discover Sunday mornings, just as he is beginning to discover everything. He doesn’t remember many Sunday mornings. He remembers days when his mother or father doesn’t go out to work. He remembers days when Elisa doesn’t go to school. Hermes knows what it is, this word ‘Sunday’. He knows it’s a word. There are words like it. There is the word ‘anyway’, there is the word ‘seventy’. Sunday, anyway, seventy, are words Elisa and his mother use. Hermes doesn’t really know, he really doesn’t know what they mean. He knows they are words. This is enough for him. On Sunday mornings, Hermes goes to wake Elisa. He asks her to play. Elisa goes to do her schoolwork and Hermes goes to play alone in the yard.
Íris — Íris has happiness. When it’s Sunday morning, Íris wakes up and the house is full. Not just her grandmother trying to persuade her to eat, not just her mother having to go to work and chivvying Ana along. There’s her father, too, and there’s a lot of time. Íris wanders the house in her pyjamas. She chats with her father, her mother, her grandmother. She goes into the living room, approaches Ana and suddenly grabs her and kisses her on the cheek. For a moment Ana smiles, bites her tongue and makes an awkward face. Then she continues to focus on what she was doing. Íris grabs hold of the toy box, lifts it in the air and tips it on to the living-room floor.
It was only much later that I realised something in my uncle’s face had changed. It was only much later that I realised that from a certain moment all his gestures and all his words were fragments of a goodbye.
My daughters were small. There were not many months to go before Simão would be born. When my wife went to the grocer’s or to the market, she’d take Marta by the hand, she’d push a buggy with Maria watching everything, and carry Simão in her steep belly. All the neighbour women who passed her shared their hunches. Many said she would have another girl, many said she would have a boy. Standing in the middle of the carpentry shop, my uncle was very serious — his left eye open, the absence of his right eye covered over by the smooth white lid, fused with the skin of his face — and told me that a boy would be born. He told me he was quite certain a boy would be born. And he followed me with his good eye and his blind eye to be quite sure I had no doubts.
I had no doubts. I had no silence or peace for any secret thoughts. There were two girls waiting for me when I got home, and in a few months there would be another child, too, boy or girl, crying in the night, needing everything I could give. That was what I thought about. I wanted to finish the work that came in every day because I wanted more work. Each hour life began, and there was no limit to what my body could take. I didn’t feel the splinters of wood that stuck into the palms of my hands, just as I didn’t notice how, in the mornings, my uncle would arrive at the workshop before me, how I didn’t get angry when he’d disappear for two hours and then came back smiling. I said nothing to him. Deep down I thought he went to the taberna.
He didn’t go to the taberna. It was only much later that I realised that for those hours my uncle would go to the piano cemetery.
My wife, Marta, Maria, Elisa, Ana, Hermes and Íris all woke at the same time. They remained in bed, each thinking themselves the only one awake. Minutes passed. When Íris got up and sat on the bed, Hermes suddenly got up, too. Ana and Elisa got up, too. When they started playing with the pillows, jumping on the beds, shouting, Marta got up, and in no time at all her slippers were echoing on the hall floor. In the sewing room my wife got up, clutching her back. Right after that, Maria got up.
The morning passed. It is Sunday. There’s a week until Francisco runs in the marathon at the Olympic Games. Marta’s husband has just gone into the kitchen, walked across it in silence, gone into the living room and sat down in silence. Marta follows him, and the moment he sits her body is there standing in front of him — hands on her waist. She whispers that they’re going to go out to Lisbon after lunch. Her husband tells her she can’t go. Marta tries to settle herself, she breathes, and still whispers:
‘But you promised.’
Her husband tells her she can’t go. Marta, irritated, whispering loudly, says that her mother is counting on the lift back, that her sister is also counting on the lift; she says again that he promised, he’ll need the bits of wood to burn in the winter. Her husband tells her they will go to the workshop the following Sunday, he promises her, he says her sister can keep her mother company on the train. Marta asks if he’s already forgotten that next Sunday Francisco runs in the Olympic Games; she gets angrier, whispers ever louder, gets angrier.
In the kitchen my wife finishes making lunch, turns off the stove, and Maria is sitting waiting for her husband to call her, and the sound of Marta’s voice, whispered in the living room, comes in like razor blades cutting through the air.
My daughters and my wife haven’t seen Simão since the first weekend Íris spent at home, just after she was born.
Sunday. Sun. My daughters’ husbands almost dropped Marta when they were helping her down off the back of the truck. Maria was watching them from the window, my wife was in the hallway, Hermes in her arms, next to Elisa, and they jumped at the shock. Hermes started to cry. It was Marta herself who comforted him, as they came up the stairs, hand in hand, very slowly. Hermes, ever so small, thin, scrawny, and Marta.
When the two sisters saw one another there was a soft, embarrassed smile on their faces. In each other’s eyes they were girls. In the middle of Maria’s living room it was as though they were in their room at our house and another summer afternoon was drawing to an end and their voices and dreams were mingled together. They were girls, suddenly grown. Marta had her best dress on, a cardigan and a shining pin. Maria was in a nightdress she had bought before going into the maternity ward. And they embraced quickly, amid nervous laughter, bumping their clumsy bodies, when what they wanted was to embrace and stay in that embrace for a long time.
That day my wife smiled, too. Ana ran to Elisa — holding hands. Excited, speaking loudly, she was about to say something about her sister when her mother made a sibilant sound — then they took careful steps to the bedroom door. Maria went ahead and opened the door very gently, avoiding the tiny noises of the hinges and the latch. Behind her, my wife held Elisa’s and Ana’s shoulders. Behind them, Marta occupied the whole doorway. The shadow, which was the colour of the whole room, covered them. Maria stopped at the head of Íris’s crib, and, proud, happy, she waited for them to come closer.
Íris’s body, covered by a pink blanket, was an even, perfect shape. In her sleeping face there were her little lips, her baby’s nose, her serene skin. She had one hand open, abandoned beside her head — the fingers of a doll. She had the serenity that’s only possible in absolute innocence, in absolute purity.
When they came back to the living room they were laughing, wanting to
speak loudly but restraining themselves, covering their mouths with their hands. The husbands, sitting with legs crossed, watched them come in. Hermes, on the ground, was moving a piece of paper around, worrying it. My wife, satisfied and silent, went into Maria’s kitchen to make some tea.
They were sitting at the table, talking, drinking tea, eating slices of the cake that Marta had brought, when they heard a knock at the door. Maria made to get up, but her body was worn down, pained. Marta made to get up, but her body was huge, heavy. My wife got up and walked towards the door. She thought it was Francisco. She opened the door. It was Simão.
He had washed his face. He came in, not knowing what to do with his hands. My wife hadn’t seen him since the night when that thing happened that we’ll never forget. What little news she received came from Francisco, or, before that, when Marta still lived in Benfica, she knew about the afternoons when he’d go to visit Elisa. My wife held back in her throat the lightning flash she felt when he said:
‘Mother.’
Simão was wearing a clean shirt with old faded stains. He was wearing worn old trousers. He was wearing boots that took a couple of embarrassed steps. Marta and Maria got up to greet him with a shyness of being his sisters, his actual sisters, and also strangers, almost strangers.
Simão stroked Elisa’s head, but it took her a time to recognise him. Maria, managing to speak normally, gestured him towards Ana, who was looking down at the ground. Simão smiled. Then he bent down and held his hand out to Hermes, but the boy remained fearless, staring at his uncle’s blind eye. Maria said:
‘You know I had a little girl?’
‘Francisco told me.’ Simão’s voice was soft.
Maria offered to go and fetch her.
‘Leave her. I don’t want to be a bother.’
‘It’s no bother. It’s time for her feed.’
The Piano Cemetery Page 15