The Piano Cemetery

by José Luís Peixoto

  our bodies. In the gloom of the piano cemetery, in the almost complete darkness, I could make out her body — shape, shadow — lying on a grand piano — legs bare, dress pulled up to where her waist began, hands abandoned to either side of her head, her face — her hair stretched out on the black varnish of the piano and her eyes, open and lit up, watching me. As I undid my belt, as I unbuttoned my trousers, I focused on her face, and in the silence of my movements, in the night, I could recall her voice. Very slowly I lay my body down on top of hers. I rested all my weight on my knees, digging into the surface of the piano, and felt the inside of her legs on my legs. I knew how to find her lips

  Kilometre twelve

  and how to kiss them. Our heads fled from one another — sought one another. Our mouths tore against one another. My hands closed with all their strength against the palms of her hands. My lips slipped slowly down her neck, when what I wanted was to sink my teeth into her skin. Perhaps that was the moment my hands slid down her shoulders, and over her dress felt again, ever again, the shape of her breasts. I felt her hands on the back of my shirt, pulling me — the strength of her fingers sticking in — talons driven into the earth. I lifted her dress higher and my hands held her waist, as though her skin was fire, as though her skin was fire, as though her skin was fire. Burning. We stopped breathing at the same moment, when in an instant that might have lasted forever, that lasted forever, I entered her. Then the weight of my body itself pressed against her body. I held her within my arms, under me, and I inside her, and her, inside of her, being fire, being fire, being fire. Burning.

  might think that it’s for a long time. I let myself go on like this. Unspeaking, without losing sight of them. When I get home I’m going to kiss my wife’s belly, I’m going to embrace her gently, and then, I’m going to tell her — I was all on my own, out in the lead, then on a bridge I let two get past me, just so they’d think they could win, I let them go ahead for half a dozen kilometres, I waited for them to get tired then I pulled back into first place. I’m going to tell everyone. My sisters, my brothers-in-law, my nieces and nephew will all assemble around me and in the silence I’m going to tell them all the same story. Then I’m going to meet up with my brother, he’ll come with me to the workshop and we’ll go to the taberna. When we go in the men will stand up from their chairs or straighten up from leaning against the bar to greet me. Hey, the hero! There will be one or two men who’ll offer us drinks, and then, when everyone has fallen silent, when the men’s gaze follows each of my words, I’m going to tell them how I was on my own, how I let two runners get past me, and then, when no one expected it, how I got past them again. The grimy toothless faces

  clocks had changed, it was getting dark earlier. Maria wandered the kitchen, flying. In the shadows of the oil lamp, when Maria moved from something she was doing neither space nor time existed between one point and the other. She was too quick. Maria was at the sink. Maria was at the table. Maria was holding Ana under the arms. When her husband came in, Maria’s movements slowed and it was as though a blanket was drawn over the house. When her husband came into the kitchen Maria was waiting with her hands clasped over her belly and smiling. Ana threw herself at her father’s legs. He lifted her in the air, laughed at her and put her back down on the floor. The table was set and he sat at his place. Maria put the tureen in the middle of the table. And she ate, waiting for her husband to eat. After the fruit, at length — an apple peel stretching out and rolling up, thinning to a point — Maria cleared away the dishes and found the moment she’d been waiting for all day. She approached her husband from behind, holding a piece of paper yellowed by the light. Ever smiling, Maria said that at the market she’d bought a leaflet with a poem. Her husband scolded, said she shouldn’t waste money on rubbish, said that she was only interested in rubbish, said it was always the same, and fell silent. And then, still smiling, she sat down, moved closer to the oil lamp, and read:

  when it was time to lay the table, we were five:

  my father, my mother, my sisters

  he took the piece of paper from the hand, and still looking her in the eyes crumpled it up

  and I. then, my older sister

  married. then, my younger sister

  he opened up the piece of paper, looked disdainfully at it and raised his eyes to look even more disdainfully at her

  married. then, my father died. today,

  when it is time to lay the table, we are five,

  rage, he tore the piece of paper into irregular pieces. He tore the pieces into even smaller pieces until he couldn’t tear any more

  except for my older sister who is

  at her house, except for my younger

  looking at Maria as though he could kill her

  sister who is at her house, except for my

  father, except for my widowed mother. each

  threw the pieces into the air, bumped into a chair, threw the chair against the table and fell silent, breathing through his nose and looking at Maria as though he could kill her

  of them is an empty place at this table where

  I eat alone. but they will be here always.

  as though he could kill her

  when it is time to lay the table, we will always be five.

  as long as one of us is alive, we will be

  always five.

  when Maria got up, took Ana in her arms, and went out to put her to bed.

  Kilometre thirteen

  the sound of the wind across my ears, like the roaring of the universe. Maybe like the sound of moving through the inside of time, passing through it with your whole body — arms and legs passing through time, chest passing through time, face carrying all of eternity within it.

  nor out into the street. Marta didn’t like going to the grocer’s because people would stop and look at her. They’d say hello but then they’d stop and look at her. Marta didn’t want to think, but she knew. My mother said nothing. It was evening, as they sat chatting, when my mother looked at her face — excited, discouraged, devoted, nostalgic, irritated, amused in turns — and saw her face when she was little. My mother looked at her face and saw all her ages. It was like that when she saw her in the morning, too, when Marta handed her the basket, the purse, and told her what they needed. My mother always met the same women at the grocer’s. They always had the same conversations. My mother greeted them and replied to them, but understood little of what they said because they were always talking about people she didn’t know. That morning, while she waited, while the lady from the grocer’s did sums on a sheet of brown paper, one of the women started talking to my mother. My mother didn’t understand, didn’t know the person she was talking about. The lady from the grocer’s was doing sums on a sheet of brown paper — the nib of the pen wearing itself down against the paper, the marble counter underneath the paper, the grains of rock salt scattered over the counter. When my mother said she didn’t know who she was talking about, the woman, as though it was quite natural, pronouncing every syllable, said to her, ‘She’s that friend of your son-in-law’s.’ As if it were nothing: ‘She’s that friend of your son-in-law’s.’ That evening as they sat chatting, my mother looked at Marta’s face and saw all her ages. Inside

  through the brighter light. I don’t know what picture the lady can have seen in my face, but whenever she opened the door to me, whether it was still morning or almost the end of the afternoon, she always smiled at me. Then the distant walk down the corridor, and, in the hall, her, seated at the piano. For some time, after we had made love, we would just lie there on the rug. We’d be side by side, further apart for the silence, closer together for knowing the same things. I lowered my eyelids over my eyes, and when I raised them again she was sitting at the piano and she had started to play again. Her hands were just like butterflies dying on the keys. Each note she played was fragile when it alighted on a point on my skin. In this weightless, cloudy time, months passed, and years passed. Nearly two years passed. At night, in anoth
er existence, I would arrive at the hospital. I waited for her, and we took each other’s hand. Sometimes we’d cross the city to the piano cemetery. On other days, in the morning, or in the afternoon, when it took my fancy, I would go to the lady’s house and go into the hall. Some weeks I thought that it was the best of lives, I thought I was lucky, and I didn’t think about what I didn’t want to think about. Other weeks I didn’t feel able to continue like this. I had to decide, I had to decide, but I couldn’t. I hid even from myself the certainty that time would decide. Which was why when it was daytime and I was lying on the hall rug, I didn’t remember the piano cemetery. In just the same way, when I was going in, out of the piano cemetery, I didn’t remember the time I spent lying on the hall rug.

  today and for ever. There’s no difference between what actually happened and what I kept distorting in my imagination, over and over again, across the years. There’s no difference between the dull pictures I remember, and the raw, cruel words I think I remember but which are merely reflections constructed out of guilt. Time — like a wall, a tower, any construction — makes there stop being differences between truth and lie. Time mixes truth and lie together. What happened mixes together with what I want to have happened and with what they told me happened. My memory isn’t my own. My memory is me distorted by time and mixed up with myself — with my fear, with my guilt, with my repentance. When I remember being four years old and playing in the yard, I don’t know where the images end that my four-year-old eyes saw and which remain with me to this day, and where the images begin that I invented whenever I tried to remember that afternoon. It was an afternoon that I was spending among the branches of the peach trees. The light, laid out on the earth, was like shapes in lace, like a lace bedspread with the pattern of peach tree branches and leaves that shivered. Beyond the tangled treetops, there must have been the sky and the birds, because it was a peaceful May afternoon. My mother was in the kitchen. Occasionally I saw her face looking at me through the glass of the window. My sisters were perhaps in their room, or somewhere else I didn’t know. I was four years old and there were many things I didn’t know. I was sitting

  Kilometre fourteen

  on the earth of the yard. I was stacking planks that were leftover wood my father had brought back from the workshop and which I was making into little huts. The bitch went slowly by, her brown eyes lost on the ground. Under an orange tree, half-buried, was a long piece of rusty wire. I think I can remember the moment when my four-year-old body got up to pull the piece of wire two-handed from out of the earth. I can see this moment with the same lack of clarity with which I now look to one side and can make out treetops, leaves mixed together, one after another as I pass. Like an image of liquid colours dissolving into one another. That day I sat back down beside my piled-up planks, which were the little huts I had made. I held the wire and began to find clumsy shapes with it. On my hands I had scratches of earth and rust. I heard the movement of the gate to the street opening. It was my brother, smiling. His clothes were dirty with sawdust because he was our father’s apprentice and he was coming home from work. He said something to me in greeting before noticing that I had the wire in my hand. The flowerbeds my mother had been over with a hoe were blossoming behind him. Simão was a lad of ten years old. Sometimes he’d put his hands in his pocket and laugh. When I remember him in the days that came before that day, the first image that comes to me is him with his hands in his pockets, laughing. That afternoon he had his shirt untucked from his trousers. When he saw me with the wire in my hand, he took three quick steps towards me. From then it was all very fast, but now, as I recall it, it’s all very slow. Simão’s hands were bigger than mine and tried to get the wire off me. I don’t know what words he chose to tell me I shouldn’t play with bits of wire, because before I was able to understand them, perhaps as a reflex, perhaps because at that moment it seemed that that was how it had to be, perhaps because I also knew what ought to be done, perhaps for no reason, for no reason, I didn’t let go of the wire right away. I held on to it with both hands. I felt my brother’s strength on the rusty wire pulling with all his strength against the palms of my hands. And it was very fast, I know it was just a moment, but now it seems like it was every minute of an hour. Every movement split. Everything very slow. The tip of the wire moved towards my brother’s face. As though there was a straight line there to show it the way. The rusty tip of the wire moved forwards. His face. In a single movement the tip of the wire touched the damp white part of his right eye, pressed it lightly and sank, irreversible, into a rip. My brother let go of the wire, stepped back and brought both his hands to his right eye. It was a moment of absolute silence. I was four years old and I knew that something terrible had happened. My brother was gripping his face and making sounds of pain like I’d never heard before. They weren’t cries. They were the sounds of a pain that was destroying him slowly. I was four years old and I was still holding on to the wire. That was the moment our mother saw us through the glass of the kitchen window. The moment ended when our mother came running out through the door, asking, ‘What happened? What happened?’ I couldn’t say anything. My brother was holding his face, and from behind his hands threads of blood were appearing that slipped down his arm and down his cheek and down his neck. They were threads of very living blood that ran down his wrists, over the light, smooth skin of his inner arms, and dripped off the tip of his elbow. Our mother, who had no idea what was going on, approached him, saying, ‘Calm down, calm down.’ With no idea what was going on, trying for a serene, motherly voice, she said to him, ‘Let’s see what’s happened.’ Simão, still wanting to believe there might be a possibility that what had happened hadn’t happened, drew his hands away slowly. Through the blood my mother and I saw how the right side of his face was a bloody hole where there was the empty white skin of the eye, the flattened circular design of the iris, and that slipping down his face mixed with the blood was a thick, viscous substance, like the white of an egg, that had previously been inside his eye. On the left side of Simão’s face, the other eye, hurt and innocent, waited to see my mother’s reaction. I was four years old and I was still holding on to the wire. I let go of it when my mother couldn’t stop the bitter cry that tore through her. My brother went back to covering his face. My sisters came running into the yard from the kitchen door. Neighbours came in from the door to the street. My mother shouted with all the strength she had in her throat. Someone went to fetch my father from the workshop. Someone grabbed me by the waist, picked me up off the earth of the yard and took me in to the kitchen. Between the bodies of the people who were supporting my mother, between my sisters clinging to one another crying, between the people who surrounded my brother with clean towels, soon drenched in blood, I was four years old and I was consumed by a fear like blades. I was silent, still, my eyes open, wide, being consumed by a fear like blades. At a certain moment my father came into the kitchen. No one could stop him. Only his breathing could be heard. He went through between the people, took my brother by the arm, and with the men who were in the kitchen following him they went to the hospital. When they left it was night-time. As the door slammed shut, all that remained was my mother’s and sisters’ anxiety, followed by the drawling voices of the neighbour women trying to console them. It was one of these neighbour women who, amid the shadows of the others, struck a match and lit the oil lamp on the table. From then, as my mother’s and sisters’ crying started to weaken, the neighbour women began to say goodbye and leave. We were left alone in the kitchen — the stones of the kitchen floor, the wooden table and benches. Through the light and the shadows of the oil lamp, my mother and sisters had their eyes open to a picture only they could see. Cold time passed, with shrieks and blades. Late in the evening, my father and Simão arrived in silence. My brother had the right side of his head wrapped in bandages that covered his eye. No one said a thing. We went to sleep. That night was like the nights of many months that followed. There was a heavy weight within us, pul
ling us towards our blackest insides. Months passed. My brother

  Kilometre fifteen

  never went back to working with my father at the workshop. After removing the bandages, for some weeks he wore the leather patch they gave him at the hospital. One day he appeared with his eye clean and uncovered, the lid stretched and white over the empty eye. In the hospital, the doctor told him he could go back to doing everything he did before; but when Simão talked about going back to the workshop as an apprentice, my father talked about a lot of things and, always in other words, showed him that it couldn’t be. He asked him to wait a little longer and he changed the subject. One night, at dinner — he hadn’t yet turned twelve — my brother decided to tell us that he’d fixed up some work as a stonemason’s assistant. That was the first time my father hit him after the day he lost his sight. After that he got angry with him many times, and hit him many times. Over all those years he never got angry with me, and never hit me. It was always clear to me that my father got angry with my brother and hit him because this was his way of dealing with the sadness, with the hurt he felt since that afternoon when my brother had become blind in one eye. This was his way of punishing him. It was always equally clear to me that my father didn’t get angry with me and didn’t hit me for the same reason. That was his way of punishing me.