José Peixoto - The Piano Cemetery

‘Not everything is my fault. Or is it?’

‘I’m the one who’s not yet three years old, or have you already forgotten that? You were the husband, the father, the grandfather.’

‘Yes, but I wasn’t only the husband, father and grandfather, I was other things, too.’

‘You were what you always were, and still are: an egotist.’

She walks towards the piano where she had been sitting. She sits again. There is a moment of silence that brings back the afternoon light, Sunday through the little dirty window. Maria’s voice is heard calling Íris’s name. Hearing her mother call her, she lifts a finger in the air. They have noticed her absence. Now she has to go. She looks at me, smiles, gets up and with clumsy steps she leaves. She is nearly three years old.

The air in the piano cemetery is clear.

Francisco came up to just above my knee. He walked back and forth in the kitchen and in the yard. His little legs, in their little trousers, didn’t stop. Francisco was like a serious, animated doll. I called him. He didn’t come. Marta, or Maria, or Simão called him. He didn’t go. There always had to be someone walking behind him to make sure he didn’t get caught on doors, climb chairs, knock over brimming saucepans. His hair grew and became unruly. His hands were small, holding on to the pieces of crust his mother gave him. His eyes were the size of everything they saw. His mother called him. He ran towards her and held out his arms for her to pick him up.

Everyone, even Íris, can imagine the end of the afternoon. There is a constant breeze. It comes down the road and makes scattered grains of earth shine, like stars. It makes specks in Maria’s eyes shine. My wife and Marta shake sawdust from their clothes. There is a pile of pieces of wood arranged on the back of the truck, next to the armchair. In the winter Marta will pick pieces out and burn them in the fireplace. Birds are becoming calmer in the air, like the branches of the trees, like voices or stones. Time is dull in Maria’s gaze. Her husband hasn’t arrived, doesn’t arrive, hasn’t arrived to ask her forgiveness, come home, no, no he doesn’t say — come home. Hermes runs round the truck. My granddaughters are delicate, they start their goodbyes with little gestures, tender smiles. Marta’s husband comes out of the taberna with the men who’ve come to help him. They come, laughing. They lift Marta up, take two steps back, two steps forwards, and deposit her on the truck.

Maria has to go back home. My wife, Ana and Íris are at her side. The truck moves away. Marta, sitting in the armchair, waves. Hermes leans out of the window. The truck moves away. And disappears. They are alone outside the workshop doors. Maria takes the first step. She has to go home. She walks ahead. Behind her, my wife gives our granddaughters her hands. Every step for Maria is another defeat. The afternoon moves away, beaten. There is a week to go before Francisco runs in the marathon at the Olympic Games. It is still Sunday. As she passes the end of our road, my wife cranes her neck to see the façade of our house, the deserted space in front of it, to imagine it inside. Maria knows that the world’s roads are endless — veins spread across the surface of the world. You could walk down roads your whole life, until you have no more strength in your legs, you fall to your knees and die, transform slowly, with the rain, with the years, into the stones of the pavement, dissolve between the stones, like dust, like water, disappear.

Ana and Íris know other things. They don’t notice the shock that shakes the body of their grandmother, my wife, when she recognises the gypsy who two days earlier knocked on her door and handed her the blouse which she had been hanging out and which she had dropped. He’s leaning on a corner, his knee bent and the sole of his boot against the wall. He watches, though keeping his head down. His eyes between the black hat and the long white beard. His eyes buried in the wrinkled, burned skin. My wife hurries her steps, pulling our granddaughters by the arm. And they continue to make their way down the streets, after Maria. And they arrive, together, at the door to the building. Time is dull. My wife, Maria and my granddaughters, before going in, they think they know everything that is going to happen.

Kilometre sixteen

the sun inside a fire. Running between flames, crossing ruins that sag over flames that move as though dancing, happy at the destruction, and finding in the centre of this fire the sun, the sole emperor, immense, serene, witnessing the consummation of his work, the inevitable dissemination of the evil he has created, that he wished to create

in search, search of the wind. Because my will is as big as a law of the land. Because my strength determines the passage of time. I want. I am capable of launching a shout within me that tears up trees by the roots, that bursts veins in every body, that pierces through the world. I am capable of running right through this shout, at its own speed, against everything that hurls itself to stop me, against everything that rises up in my way, against myself. I want. I am capable of expelling the sun from my skin, of defeating it once more and for ever. Because my will regenerates me, gives me birth, rebirth. Because my strength is immortal.

like the night. I didn’t have to say anything to Simão, because, even without having seen each other for months, even without having heard anything — anything — from him for months, I understood his expressions. We walked like that, through deserted streets. There was a certainty that was clear and confused, sharp, limpid and hazy, obvious and unbelievable, evident, sure, and impossible. I was going to have a child. She and I, we were going to have a child. There was so much to say, to ask, but she went into the house and closed the door. She closed the door. I walked through deserted streets, my brother accompanied me, and I thought about what I could have said, what I could have asked. There was nothing to be said, nothing to ask. In the heart of the night, the cold entered me through the sleeves of my jacket, under my sweater, under my shirt, against my skin. We arrived at Benfica. Soon we would be arriving home. Simão stopped, and before saying goodbye asked if he could work with me in the workshop for a few days. Yes, of course. I never knew whether Simão asked for days in the workshop when he really needed the work, needed to make some money, a little, or when he missed being my brother. He explained to me where he was living — the house where he rented a room — and before he moved away, as he was saying see you tomorrow, I wanted to hug him, to tell him I was going to have a child and to cry — not out of sadness or out of happiness but because at that moment I was a child. Instead I continued my walk home, like the night, like the hours

through the July heat, the afternoon

through the December cold, the night

through the July heat, the afternoon — this afternoon — I remember those moments when I’d come running out of the workshop, alone, training for being here, alone, and when I imagined what might happen when I was here, never believing that I’d remember what I imagined I would think, never believing that I was already thinking what I’m thinking now.

and I had taken a decision. There was nothing to decide, I couldn’t change what was set, but just let my arms and legs lose their strength on the bed, just let my body rest, accept the night, when, in the darkness of my room, I convinced myself that I had taken a decision. I was going to have a child, and so I would be another person. I didn’t know, however, that the next day was going to be so long, and in the morning when I arrived at the door of the workshop and saw my brother — the white lid of his right eye, his cracked lips — I was able to smile sincerely. After explaining to him what there was to do, I leaned over my bench to continue the work I’d begun the day before. It had been some weeks since my brother’s voice had sounded in the air of the carpentry shop. It had been some weeks since the specks of sawdust — rising, hovering like a universe — had been touched by my brother’s voice. It happened slowly, it was nearly mid-morning when he spoke a few words. From these loose, spaced-out words — just their syllables, almost — phrases grew. Piled up like a muddled tower, stories grew. Slowly, my brother was the lad who told me endless stories. My brother was still coming back. But I had other stories, divided up into phrases, divided up into words, trembling inside me. Distress. When lunchtime arrived, I told Simão that I wouldn’t be long. There were a lot of people on the streets, too many — solid shapes. I arrived at her house and knocked at the door. The lady — her smile — the corridor — the music from the piano — invisible cornucopias — the pictures on the walls — the door to the hall. Behind me the lady disappeared. I opened the door. She stopped playing and looked at me. Her skin was even lighter, under the brightness of her eyes. Her smooth hair followed the straight line of her back. Her hands. Her white, thin hands taking off my clothes as my hands took off her clothes. My hands running over the surface of her skin. Her hands squeezed against my back. My hands gripping her arms, wrapping around them. The palms of my hands wrapping round her arms. Her hands digging into the nape of my neck. My hands opening, losing all their strength, grabbing at the air. Her hands stretched out over the rug. Our hands’ forgotten time. And her hands, alive. Her hands, animals — cats, birds, wild animals — on the piano keys. And the music stretched over the whole hall, the whole air, the whole world, inside my naked body, inside the ribs arched on the rug — music being breathed. And again, reality — the cold, strange clothes on my body. The streets — my body a stranger to myself. The afternoon passed within my brother’s monotonous voice, his monotonous enthusiasm, within time that repeated itself. I closed the big workshop doors. My brother went into the taberna . I was ready and I started to run. I ran as though I wanted to, as though I was able to overtake the wind, as though my body didn’t exist and it was only my will that ran, that was fast, fast between the houses one after another, the streets, and everything I didn’t want to see. I arrived home. I washed. I walked across the city. At the entrance to the hospital, as I waited for her, my decision became more solid within me. There were night-time noises, the branches of the trees moving over the nocturnal imprecision of the cold, the lit-up windows of the hospital, and me. Ruled by time, utterly, I waited for her and my decision became