José Peixoto - The Piano Cemetery

The woman looks at her with a pity that Marta understands as being for them both — for her, and for the woman herself. Perhaps this pity also includes the children and even the whole world — the yellowing weeds, the cracks that cover the walls of houses, the dry moss on the surface of fences. The moment is brief. The woman looks at her and they are almost speaking to one another in a limpid language that has no words. The woman’s face is preoccupied when she says thank you — the skin — and when she moves away. Hermes comes out from under his mother’s arm and walks down the hallway. Elisa is a shape that moves into the sewing room. Marta remains, watching the woman making the movements that open the big door and heading away along the pavement, without looking back.

Marta closes the door slowly. Her body occupies almost the whole corridor. She walks past the entrance to the sewing room where Elisa is, she walks past the entrance to the living room where Hermes is, and reaches the kitchen. She sits down on a chair. There’s water boiling on the stove. A moment. The clarity is the night as it remembers something that has died.

A moment. Hermes, in the living room, recognises the sound of the engine of the truck. Elisa, in the sewing room, is almost big, she’s almost a young woman, and she knows. The sound of the truck’s engine stopping in the street. Night has fallen over Marta. Are there breezes within the night? Marta waits for the sounds of the door opening, the dogs, the footsteps, the kitchen door. Her husband comes in and is surprised to find her sitting in the gloom, but he says nothing. It is his eyes that ask. They ask Marta. So small inside herself — a speck of dust. His eyes. Marta’s voice bears all the sadness she feels, but she merely says:

‘A woman just left who was here asking for you.’

Her husband doesn’t stop looking at her, but from that single sentence he looks at her differently, because suddenly, too quickly, he understands everything. He doesn’t worry about inventing some excuse, he doesn’t reply, he doesn’t say anything. Perhaps angry with the woman who has come looking for him, he turns on his heel and goes back out.

The kitchen door, the footsteps, the dogs, the street door opening. Outside, the engine of the truck starts to work, it can be heard further and further away and disappears around a bend. In just the same way Marta’s heart disappears within her.

She gets up and turns on the light. She calls Elisa to lay the table. She calls Hermes for dinner. She will go to bed early. She knows her husband won’t come back tonight. She is sure that, at last, she has made a decision.

‘Once there was a little fart, who was called. .’

And he paused.

‘Little pink fart!’ said Elisa and Ana in unison. Simão pretended to be surprised, and went on:

‘One day she was at home when she heard a knock at the door: knock, knock, knock. “Who is it?” asked the little fart. “It’s me, the little green gas,” she heard from the other side of the door.’

And the story went on. The story could go on for ever. When they were together, at Maria’s house, if Marta had come to Lisbon, Simão would go and put his nieces to bed for their nap and told them stories about the little pink fart. They were stories that always smelled very bad. If the little pink fart fell over, she smelled bad; if she played, if she gave little green gas a kiss, she smelled bad. The little pink fart was beautiful and pink, but she was a fart, which was why she smelled bad. Simão told the stories very seriously and each time the little fart or the little gas did something that smelled bad, Elisa and Ana would laugh with their little girl laughing voices. The mother of the little pink fart was called the yellow fart, her father was called blue gas.

Sometimes Marta would come into the bedroom and say:

‘Don’t tell the children such things.’ But as she said this she would be laughing, too.

Sunday — Sunday. Sitting on the yard steps, my wife was peeling potatoes that she dropped, raw, into an enamel basin. I was at the top of a stepladder, pruning the vines that grew up the trellises against the wall. Francisco was holding on to the ladder with both hands, and when I told him to he’d move away to collect clumps of branches that had fallen in tangles on the ground. Then he would throw them on to the pile of firewood. The morning passed.

Marta was the first to arrive. My wife was no longer in the yard. She’d gone up the steps with the potato skins in her apron folded up over her belly and she had come back to fetch the basin. She had gone through the ribbons of the door. Marta arrived laughing and talking loudly. Behind her came Elisa, little, saying:

‘Oh, Uncle,’ and she ran to Francisco.

Behind them, slowly, came Marta’s husband.

I came down the ladder to greet them, and because I’d finished I put down the pruning shears. Francisco was playing around with Elisa. Marta’s husband and I talked about nothing. Marta said things we didn’t hear and tried to get into the conversation. The morning passed.

At a certain point Maria arrived with her husband. Marta’s voice faded. Her expression turned heavy. As they approached we could see the husband, and Maria’s face behind him, taller. In greeting we spoke mingled words, diluted words, words that were whispers, grunts, that were not words. When Maria made as if to approach Elisa, Marta rushed over and picked her up in her arms:

‘Go on now, let your uncle rest.’

But Francisco wasn’t tired and he didn’t need to rest.

There was a silence in Maria’s footsteps, that lost their meaning and stopped. Our daughters’ husbands didn’t interrupt their conversation; Francisco made the most of it to fold up the stepladder, but I noticed. I wasn’t sure what, but I had no doubt that I’d noticed something.

My wife appeared through the ribbons, at the door, at the top of the stairs, smiled gently, spoke some childish syllables to Elisa and called our daughters to help her lay the table. Maria went up the steps and into the house. Marta, with Elisa in her arms, kept looking at us, as though my wife hadn’t spoken to her, as though she was ready to continue with the conversation we weren’t having. We stared at her, uncomprehending. She held out for a moment, but ended up putting Elisa down and, thwarted, went into the house.

As we had lunch, I had the flagon of wine at my feet. I’d lift it up to fill my glass. Sometimes Maria’s husband or Marta’s husband would hold out their glasses and I’d fill them, too. Discreetly, head down to my plate, I lifted my gaze to confirm that Marta wasn’t addressing a single word to Maria. I made the most of a moment when everyone was distracted by something funny that Elisa had said — sitting on a chair on two cushions, bib tied round her neck — to touch my wife’s arm with my elbow; I pointed at our daughters with my chin and raised my eyebrows in a question. My wife, as though surprised at my silent question, said in a low voice:

‘Just leave them be.’

And there was a moment of loose phrases, unconnected.

Someone said:

‘Elisa’s already becoming a little rascal.’

Or:

‘We should have set the table out in the yard.’

Or:

‘It’s good, the cod.’

There was a tragic moment. We had already finished eating when my wife sat down. She stuck her arm out to reach the cruet and knocked over my full glass. A lake of wine spread across the tablecloth, over the napkins, between the plates, and ran in red threads over the table’s edge.

Still sitting, I moved myself away, dragging the chair with an abrupt shove of my legs, but I still got stained by the wine. I said:

‘What a damn mess!’

My wife got up, went to fetch an old cloth, rags. My voice became thick and harsh. My voice was used for asking her questions that she didn’t answer. She kept cleaning, as though I wasn’t saying anything, as though I didn’t exist. I got up, stood behind her and shouted into her ears as she twisted the cloth over the sink. Still she was impassive. I grabbed her by the arm. I shook her.