The Piano Cemetery

by José Luís Peixoto

  The last days of May were dull sun — on the streets of Benfica, lost from myself at lunchtime; in the piano cemetery, my gaze locked on the little window that tried to illuminate the impossible and was giving up, resigned. Each moment felt like the tiring repetition of identical successive moments from previous days. In the morning, arriving at the workshop, I would think it was again morning and I was again arriving at the workshop. I recognised the temperature and the sounds and the smells of the day being born. I knew every detail before it happened — the people who arrived at the workshop, my uncle telling stories attached to stories attached to stories — currents of words snaked in the air of the shop. I watched each gesture unfold without interest. And at lunchtime I felt myself suffocating. I walked the streets towards the boarding house — I again walked the streets again towards the boarding house. Every day, at the corner before the boarding house, with my body hidden by the wall, I stuck my head out and waited again, again, again. She didn’t appear, and I always made the same plans — to jump over the walls of the neighbouring yards; to look through the windows and see her through the curtains; to knock at the door, wish that she should be the one to open it or ask some question of the woman I took to be her mother, some question I didn’t yet know but which was reasonable and allowed me to see her. I believed that if I saw her I would instantly know what she was thinking. But the time came when I had to return to the workshop, and I never, not on any of those successive days, I never dared to get any closer than the edge of the corner where I waited. Returning to the workshop, without any news, floating without any strength over the pavements, I always thought I was again returning to the workshop, without news again, floating again without any strength over the pavements.

  The piano cemetery was enormous. The afternoons were as vast as linked generations. I would choose a piano, open it and stay there, looking at its suspended mechanism. Every time I could not help thinking that my life, diminished by those afternoons, was exactly like the suspended mechanism of a piano — the fragile silence of the aligned strings, the perfect geometry of its almost death, able to be resuscitated at any moment that never came, a simple moment like so many others would be enough, a moment which could arrive, but which never arrived.

  And it was in a moment that my uncle came into the piano cemetery. I raised my eyes towards him. He approached me. He stopped and stood a pace away from me. In that concrete distance which separated us, in silence, it was as though I was passing on to him a part of all the hurt that I was capable of imagining. Then I lowered my face, as though I really was able to cry. I’d already stopped trying to hide what I could not hide. My uncle looked at me, with his left eye saddened, with the blind space of his right eye, ever sad, and in the concrete distance which separated us, in silence, it was as though he almost nearly hugged me and was able to speak to me with words of courage. We returned together to the carpentry shop, and as soon as we resumed our work my uncle resumed the telling of the stories I didn’t hear.

  As night fell, the taberna. Then home, alone.

  It was the morning when more than two weeks had passed since the moment when I’d handed her the piece of paper, the letter in which I had written the word you and that word was her, the letter in which I had written the word me and that word was me. I reached the big workshop door and my uncle wasn’t waiting for me. I didn’t pay too much notice to this absence as I believed I’d known it even before it had happened. And I spent the morning in the solitary hours of my thoughts, between the hours in the carpentry shop and the hours in the piano cemetery. It was June, and for me, there were no birds singing, there was no freedom of the people on the streets. At lunchtime I walked slowly along the pavements that each day took me to the boarding house. I stopped on the corner where I stopped every day. I waited. I waited. And when I thought that this was a moment just like any other, her body appeared at the door. She looked towards me and went back inside.

  Returning to the workshop, my feet walked along the pavements, my movements avoided people who stopped in front of me or came towards me, but inside me there was a shadow that avoided even more obstacles, that walked even faster. I didn’t understand whether she had come out to see me, or whether she had gone back inside because she had seen me. From a distance there were no answers to be found in her face. And my feet walked along the pavement. And by avoiding fear, I was avoiding hope.

  I crossed the entrance hall of the workshop. The high walls were the limits of the world. My steps on the earth, against the silence, were the only sign of life. I went into the shop. I crossed it. I opened the window and, arms open, holding the shutters, it was as though I was trying to grasp the whole afternoon and pull it into my chest. In the immense time that began in that early afternoon, not much time passed. I heard steps in the entrance hall and I didn’t turn to see who it was, because I believed I knew in advance what was going to happen, nothing could surprise me; I believed it was my uncle. Sensing that, strangely, the steps had stopped at the door to the shop; sensing someone’s breathing beginning to calm, sensing the silence, I turned. It was a boy, in shorts, arms folded across his waist, dirty cheeks, looking at me fearfully. Without my saying a word to him, he reached out his arm, holding a folded piece of paper. I took it from his hand, gave him a coin, and in the time it took me to lift my gaze I saw him running out. I opened the piece of paper before I was able to breathe. It just said — I like you a lot, too.

  Light, light — the sun can cover every object with its brightness after all. The sun slipped across the surface of pine shavings on the patio floor, came into the carpentry shop, wrapped up my skin and came inside, too. Within me, I was infinite. June was born within me again. The sun expelled all the shadows and brought only brightness. Smiling, a child in this world, I ran round the workshop, looking for my uncle. I wanted to tell him of my happiness and I wanted to see him smile with me. I went into the piano cemetery, I looked out on the patio, I almost called out his name, but I couldn’t find him anywhere.

  I stopped looking for my uncle when I anchored myself to the carpenter’s bench. Resting my gaze on a point where I could see her — she was clear, she was beautiful — I kept smiling and, like a child, so I remained. It was only after the night had passed without seeing my uncle at the taberna, after he didn’t show up for work the next day, after asking the men at the taberna if they knew anything of him and them saying no, after I had been to the house where he rented a room and asked if they knew anything of him and them saying no, it was only after spending another night without seeing him at the taberna, it was only after he didn’t show up for work again, that I understood that my uncle had disappeared.

  My wife says she wants to telephone Marta. Maria doesn’t reply. Maria is still cross. If my wife just stopped to think, just to look for an answer, she would end up concluding that Maria is cross over some problem at the factory.

  Maria spends her day at the factory sewing items of women’s underwear — bras, knickers. Around her are six or seven women who do the same job. They have already become used to talking above the noise of the sewing machines. The factory is a warehouse filled with women sitting at sewing machines. The factory is always lit by the same light — white lamps sticking out from the ceiling when it’s daytime, when it’s night-time, when’s it’s raining, when it’s the height of summer. Normally my wife knows the stories, the conflicts and friendships of the six or seven women who surround our daughter at the factory. Normally, at lunchtime, sitting on a kitchen chair, my wife hears Maria talk to her about these women — their ambitions, their sacrifices, their scares, their fears, their secrets.

  My wife doesn’t stop to look for an answer, and so she, too, becomes angry. Being angry is being haughty, speaking with superiority. It is a statement that expects no reply, when she says:

  ‘I’m going to phone Marta.’

  Maria, angry, doesn’t reply. My wife lifts the receiver.

  On the day Marta’s husband came back from his mother’s
funeral, he chose a hurt expression and announced that he no longer wanted to live at the house by the workshop. On that same day, respecting a son’s mourning, Marta started to pack things away in cardboard boxes and packing cases she asked for at the grocer’s.

  Hermes hadn’t yet been born and Elisa wandered round the house, contented, dodging table lamps spread around the floor.

  Marta’s husband borrowed a truck. For several days he did one trip after another between the two houses, between Benfica and the plantation land where he was born. Each time he arrived, Marta had everything organised in piles and told him what to take.

  On the final trip — the house completely empty, the walls, the house suddenly bigger — the final thing to be taken was the living-room armchair. Marta’s husband asked two friends to help, who also used all their strength to get Marta up and on to the back of the truck — her husband pushed her rump, one man held her under the arms and another by the waist.

  When Marta managed to install herself on the truck, when the men had recovered their breath and her husband had thanked them, Marta stood herself up, took a few embarrassed steps and sat down in the armchair. As the truck made its way along the streets, each time it stopped at the traffic lights people would stop on the pavements and look at her, pointing in her direction because they had never seen anyone like her before — squeezing her legs together, setting her elbows on the arms of the armchair, her head held up on her neck, Marta’s body spilled over in waves of flesh and skin that covered the armchair; the existence of the armchair could be inferred simply because Marta’s body was in the position of sitting on something.

  With the speed of the truck a breeze passed Marta’s face which ruffled her hair, but her cheeks were coloured a vivid red. Her lips were pressed together in a line.

  When my wife comes back into the kitchen, the muscles of her face tense. She says:

  ‘Marta has asked me to go and spend the weekend at her place.’

  Maria keeps eating, leaning over her plate, in silence. A spinach leaf slips from her spoon but she moves her head, swallows the spinach leaf and then the spoon of broth and continues eating, leaning over her plate, in silence.

  I wasn’t surprised when I went into the piano cemetery to look for some part and, lifting the lid of one of the pianos, found piles of Maria’s romance novels. I knew very well that Maria would escape from her mother and spend hours sitting in a corner of the piano cemetery, leaning over a book which rested on her knees. When this habit began, my wife worried a great deal and said to me:

  ‘I don’t know what Maria was up to all this afternoon. I asked her and she didn’t want to tell me.’

  As soon as I realised what was going on I calmed her down. She only spoke of it again when she was angry:

  ‘So you have no trouble hiding yourself away to read your romance novels, but when it comes to helping out. . Or did you think I didn’t know?’

  My wife would say this because she knew it hurt her. The romance novels were the secret everyone knew but which everyone respected as a secret.

  If any of my children had continued with their studies, Maria would have been the one who would have got furthest. She was always the most dedicated.

  Those were evenings when I would be doing something silent behind my bits of wood. I would hear her steps on the pine shavings that covered the patio floor, raise my head slightly and see her with her books hidden under the dress altering the shape of her body, squaring her belly or her rump or her shoulders.

  Later, when I lifted the lid of one of the pianos, I would find piles of romance novels. The books were written in Brazilian Portuguese. They made up collections with women’s names — Sabrina, Bianca, Júlia. Reading the authors’ names my daughter would imagine women in love, who knew life — Rosemary Carter, Violet Winspear, Anne Mather, Vanessa James, Lynsey Stevens, Elizabeth Pretty, Ann Cooper, Penny Jordan, Casey Douglas, Rebecca Stratton, Flora Kidd, Jane Donnelly, Linda Harrel, Rachel Lindsay, Essie Summers, Katrina Britt, Amanda Carpenter, Anne Hampson, Janet Dailey, Marjorie Lewty, Carole Mortimer. Before she started reading my daughter would select a solemn voice and in the silence of the piano cemetery would whisper the title of the book she was holding: Lost in Love, A Time for Love, Only a Woman, The Perilous Rival, No Way Back, The Seduction Game, It All Happened in Paris, Love without Marriage, The Man of Steel, Afraid to Love, The Stranger from Next Door, Slave to Pride, Sublime Obsession, Stolen Heart. And she would enter a world of envy and love, of pride and love, of fear and love, of jealousy and love, of betrayal and love, with strong, sensitive women she would never forget, and who were called Cherry, Vic, Laura, Helen, Jane, Polly, Kate, Casey, Sarah, Raine, Luenda, Rose, Sally, Lee, Sophy, Jensa, Brooke, Viviane, Magda, Robyne, Madeline; with handsome coiffed men who smiled in the enamoured photos on the jackets and who were called Max, Gwill, Mark, Rick, Brandon, Flint, Marcus, Adam, Jeremy, Leon, Karl, Magnus, Ric, Nick, Cole, Dean, Kley, Robert. And hours would go by like that, afternoons would go by like that. In the final pages, after all the frights, bad omens, obstacles, when it seemed impossible, Maria would give a long sigh because she once again believed what she had never stopped believing — that pure, true love always triumphs.

  Through all the nights of that summer, the stars were liquid in the sky. When I looked at them, they were shining liquid points in the sky.

  The first time, we met during the day — I smiled at her, she smiled at me. We said two or three words and held ourselves back within our bodies. Her eyes, for a moment, were an abyss where I was surrounded by a luminous lightness, where I fell as though floating — falling through the sky within a dream.

  That night I waited for her, leaning against the wall, a few metres before the entrance to the boarding house. The people passing were happy. I was thinking about something that made me feel bigger inside, like the night. The ivy leaves that covered the top of the wall, and which hung over the pavement, were a single nocturnal shape, made only of shadows. First I felt the ivy leaves being moved; then, I saw her arms grasp the wall; then, her face still against the bright night-time sky. And my heart missed a beat. The world stopped. Shadows rested, transparent, on the skin of her face. The fresh air, cooled, moulded the skin of her face, and the world continued. I helped her down. We ran along the pavement hand in hand. My hand enveloping her slender hand, the strength of her fingers in mine. At night, our bodies running side by side. When we stopped — our breathing, our faces wondering at one another — we looked at one another as though seeing one another for ever. When my lips slowly approached her lips and we kissed, there were shining reflections, like dust thrown into the air, falling through the night that covered us.

  Later, there were interminable days which I spent alone at the workshop. In July, for the first time, I repaired a piano without any help — the upright piano of a lady with children and grandchildren.

  ‘It’s not for me any more. It’ll be for my grandchildren,’ she said.

  Later, there were the men from the taberna never asking me about my uncle, and me remembering less and less to ask them about him. There were whole days, and whole nights.

  As soon as I awoke, I pushed away the sheet and remained sitting on the bed, watching the first light coming through a slit in the window, and I knew that during that summer the days had neither a beginning nor an end. Time was a permanent succession which didn’t stop with the night. I would get up slowly, drawing shapes with my movements and beaming at the clothes I put on. When I went out into the street the city was misty shapes that were reborn and perhaps, perhaps, happiness was within its reach. I would arrive at the big workshop door, and as I went in, even before going in, I would begin to count the time that separated me from her. However, I was comfortable in the workshop. In front of me I had wood, and I had the peace of knowing the shape I wanted to give it, and of knowing just how to give it that shape. In front of me I had the piano of a lady with children and grandchildren, there was a keyboard and my finger resting on a k
ey, and inside a note I would never know — a single note — the whole space of everything I wanted to imagine — her face — her face — her face. It was morning, and for some moments I saw only the image of her face, I could hear her voice, and it was still morning, I saw her again with the same face, and it was still morning, I saw her again, and heard her, and it was lunchtime. In the afternoons, too, I lived between dreams. With just a few differences it was like when I was five or six and my mother sweetly let me sleep on Saturday mornings — there was sun beyond the window and I would go on waking and sleeping, thinking dreams and dreaming ideas.

  I would go into the taberna when, after the afternoon, before the night, the dark blue colour would fall over everything — the workshop’s earthen path. The sounds of the city, distant, came through the dark blue. I would drink three or four, or five, glasses of wine because it was still too early to arrive home to get myself ready. That was the time each day that I just allowed to pass. I didn’t worry about existing. The marble countertop wasn’t important, nor the men’s toothless smiles, nor the men’s limping conversations. I witnessed everything, unconcerned, light, I smiled easily. I existed during that time that I allowed to pass, that I barely felt, but I existed far away. I returned to my body when I left the taberna; it was too early when I arrived home and, without eating, began to get myself ready. Hours passed, dimly lit. In the bathroom mirror, my face.

  Then there was a moment when I would put my right foot down by the front step of the house, on the pavement stones. And I would walk against the streets. I would get closer. And the streets would walk against me. When I reached the boarding house I knew for sure that inside was her. Her her her. This simple certainty was filled with miracles and I was almost surprised not to find the walls of the boarding house engulfed in flames, or filled with what seemed like a flood of magnificent voices. My waiting then was serene. I knew there was nothing that time could do against our inevitable, insatiable, indomitable will. There were breezes that came from black corners of the night and that touched my face. There was that nocturnal summer. I waited, and in a single moment: her steps on the other side of the wall, my heart lost inside me, her movements drawn in the silence, and me lost inside myself. And, in a single moment: her, at last, the weight of her body being much more than just weight, her, the shape of her body being much more than just a shape, at last, me feeling almost ready to cry, and her, at last, her body being much more than just her body, at last, in my arms. Her head resting on my shoulder. Her hair touching my cheek.