José Peixoto - The Piano Cemetery

I see the runner’s body ahead of me

the tips of my fingers lifting the cloth that covered my father’s face

I launch myself forwards and begin to overtake the runner

I leaned over my father

I overtake the runner now

my lips touched the icy skin of my father’s cheek

time stops. Time has stopped. What exists are our two breathings and a group of people suspended on the side of the road. A cool breeze. Colours smudged. A cool breeze

Kilometre two

as much for my mother, as for Maria, as for me. We’d already left the hospital, we were walking towards the exit — we knew the streets were enormous — when she came running. My sister and my mother didn’t see her. They were walking ahead of me, two frail shapes continuing on their slow way. She took my arm and held my father’s watch out to me. Her face wasn’t a smile, nor was it just serious, it was precisely the face required at that moment — her gaze under a fringe combed to one side, wavy hair. She placed the watch in the palm of my hand, then let the chain slip and fold and settle — a nest — in the palm of my hand. Then it was her voice, going through me, suddenly made of velvet, kindly. As though whispering, she said it would be better for me to take the watch with me, she said that someone might take advantage of my father’s condition to steal it. I thanked her, and I noticed her, but I barely noticed her. It wasn’t till I came back

by time. My mother couldn’t come into our house, the empty corridors weighed down on her. In Maria’s house, Ana was two years old and my mother looked after her with slow steps and few words. Ana was asleep, Maria and her husband were working and my mother was sitting in an armchair. The afternoon was reflected in the windowpanes — my mother’s eyes reflected the relief image of the windowpanes. Nobody could know what she was thinking, but there were whole years inside her, unrepeatable laughs and unrepeatable silences. On those afternoons my mother believed that, in a single instant, everything could be transformed into nothing. She believed in silence

with the gentleman from the undertaker’s, when we arrived at the morgue, that I really noticed her. The whole sky was falling in grey rain on to the city. On the pavements people ran from door to door. Then we were at the morgue — the thick walls. Water streamed from my hair, on to my coat, down my skin. She approached me, and as though we knew one another well she gave me her condolences. It seemed to me then that her voice carried images of some other time. I looked at the walls of the morgue, at my hands, and it was only on the surface of her voice — as on a river — that I was able to relax. Her choosing words and silences to console me. And me managing even to find comfort in that voice, closing my eyes to listen. And me, faced with my dead father, feeling guilty for being able to find comfort in the sweet memory of that voice — fragile grace. In the weeks that followed I would come back just to hear it. She later told me what time she left, and on other days I would return at that time and accompany her to her front door. On the way I heard tales from the hospital. They were told unhurriedly, as though they had no end. Her voice was serene. The nights — the moon, the city, the stars — imitated her. Weeks passed. She began to smile at me. I began to smile at her. And before falling asleep I began to hear her voice inside my head. I fell asleep listening to her. The house was immense. Night filled the house. The walls were undone by this absolute night, and yet the darkness was all made up of many walls, one over another. I tried to live. As I lay down, as I waited to fall asleep, her voice was the calm world in which I forgot everything else. In the mornings and the afternoons, I tried to see only the planks of wood I carried on my shoulders and which I laid out in front of me, on the carpenter’s bench, I tried to see only the tools, only the lines where I imagined cuts, only the points where I imagined nails stuck in, but in spite of myself I still expected, always expected my father’s voice to sound at some indistinguishable moment. Which was why in the morning or the afternoon I’d go into the piano cemetery when I wanted to hear only her voice in my memory, when I wanted to rest. Before going off to train I’d stop by Maria’s house. I told myself that I was going to check that everything was all right, but even before knocking at the door I knew that I’d find my mother with her voice dismayed, Ana running around me holding out her arms for me to pick her up, Maria tired and her husband, on his tiptoes, his face raised towards me, trying to interest me in some subject which didn’t interest me even remotely. And I’d run round the streets at maddening speed — the air leaving me heavily. I’d come back home to wash, and in the mid-evening I’d get to the hospital entrance, combed, when she would smile at me and I’d smile at her. She was the best moments

utterly. My mother’s sadness also got into Maria, but never to the point where it was shared completely, because only my mother knew the time and the secrets of that sadness. Perhaps that was why there were moments when Maria couldn’t understand her or what troubled her. More than a week after the burial of my father, Maria managed to convince my mother that they should go and visit Marta and meet Hermes. On the days that followed the burial of my father Maria wandered round the house and said nothing to her. She’d say to her: ‘Come and eat something.’ She’d say to her: ‘Then why don’t you go and lie down?’ But she said nothing to her because these were the tiniest of words, they were silence. After a few days Maria began to sit down in chairs to talk to her. She said, ‘We’ve got to go and see Marta’s boy.’ She said, ‘Tomorrow we’ll go and see Marta’s boy.’ My mother responded with a nodded yes, but on two occasions as the time to set off approached she was taken ill. It was more than a week after the burial of my father. Maria’s husband didn’t want to go, and at one end of the corridor he held Maria by the arm and, shouting whispers at her, shook her. At the other end of the corridor my mother and Ana waited by the door — hand in hand. They went by train. On her mother’s lap, Ana leaned her whole body up against the glass of the window. Only her gaze — all of it — managed to get through it. On the front seat, my mother’s silence was more invisible beneath the sound of the train on the tracks. It was still morning when they arrived at the land where Marta had gone to live. The sky

Kilometre three

was shining. It had a grey shine that filled the puddles of water with light. On the streets people stood watching my mother, Maria and Ana pass. My mother walked as though she was moving forwards on her own and no world existed. Maria and Ana went hand in hand. Maria pulled her arm and hurried her. Ana raised her head, and with her neck she turned it from side to side. It was still morning. They arrived at the little iron gate

a cool breeze. This breeze is coming from within the stones of the houses. It comes from within memory. It comes from the depths of the waters. When we were at the party on the boat, my fencing teammate told me that in winter these waters freeze over completely. He told me that if you want to you can walk on them. I found it hard to believe. My companions had come to take part in the track races, the Greco-Roman wrestling and the fencing. Their hands are clean and soft. They have white shirts. They have property and education. I call them ‘sir’, they call me ‘Lázaro’. Sometimes, before they laugh at something, they say, ‘Good old Lázaro.’ Next to them I’m a brute. I don’t know things. That’s why my companions like to joke around with me, and that’s why I found it hard to believe. But it might even be true. At least it’s true that at that point we were on a sailing boat I’ve not seen many like in Lisbon, lovely, there was still the lightness of daytime, and we’d already had dinner and it was already nearly eleven o’clock on that night that was still day. I’m sure of that because I saw the time on the watch that was my father’s and which, ever since I’ve had it in my pocket, like for all the years it was in my father’s pockets, never ran a single minute fast. I was sure that time respected the numbers on the watch. I was sure that the numbers on the watch were the secret and the lie that we all use in order to believe in simple things. But this teammate told me that Sweden is a very big country, and that in the north the sun shines at midnight as though it were midday. At first, I thought he was teasing me. I said to him, ‘Hey, come on. .’ He looked at me, his face still, but we had already had dinner and it was almost eleven o’clock on my watch and I ended up believing him. And it was only then that I understood that not even numbers could bring certainty. Time exists between the numbers, it crosses through them, and confuses them. Many numbers can exist between each number. More numbers might exist between one number and another than between that one and the next. It is time that determines the numbers, that stretches them out or shrinks them down, that kills them or allows them to exist. There is nothing numbers can do when faced with time. Here, this breeze on my face makes me think he was being serious. These waters really do freeze over in the winter. At least, this breeze is all of a piece with those January mornings that chill your ears and make the frost grow