The Piano Cemetery

by José Luís Peixoto

  ‘Have you seen this?’

  My wife had begun to tidy and clean the house even before we’d been married. She left her godmother’s boarding house with a single suitcase, her eyes filled with hurt, believing that she would never see her again. We spent that day in each other’s arms. We slept that night in each other’s arms. When I woke the next morning, she already had a kerchief on her head and was cleaning dust from the shelves that no one had touched since my mother died. For two months it was like this every day. The mesh-door cupboard in the kitchen, where there were pans covered in spiders’ webs, went back to being the colour of wood and the aluminium pans could once again be distinguished from the enamel pans; the heaps of dust that had blackened the corners of all the rooms disappeared; the china of the plates hanging on the walls gleamed again in the Sunday light; at the back of the wardrobe, my mother’s dresses, covered in hairs from the cats who came in through the yard door, reappeared. In the months that followed, she stretched out in the sun, washed and sewed the sheets that were folded in the trunk of the bedroom or in dresser drawers, where there were ancient mouse nests and dry mouse skeletons; she scraped the kitchen floor with a knife to unstick crusts of bread, mackerel bones, entrecôte bones; she swept the ceilings, unblocked the pipes; put the curtains to soak for three days before washing them in the tank; and scrubbed the walls with a thick brush that she dunked in the almost full bucket of water and soap. When her belly began to get too heavy — pains in her kidneys and her back — all that was left was to clean the attic. We had to put up a ladder and go through a hole in the bedroom ceiling. The first time she went up, sure-footed on the ladder, her arms stretched right out because of her belly, she couldn’t put so much as the tip of a toe in the attic. The entire surface, even the wooden beams, even the tiles, was covered with things in piles, broken, useless, buried by dust. Every day, slowly, bit by bit, my wife went up into the attic, and bent under the slope of the roof, sweating, she pulled out chairs missing a leg, cracked tubs, boxes and all kinds of bits of furniture, which she burned in the middle of the yard or organised into piles which on another day she would carry to the dump. It was in the nearly empty attic that my wife found the shoebox that she held out to me.

  I put the box on the table. My wife’s face was waiting for a reaction. With the tips of my fingers, I lifted the lid. I put my hand in the box and pulled it out full of medals. They were copper medals, attached to faded, soiled, worn-away ribbons — rags losing their colour. They were medals with images of little men running inside circles made of carefully sculpted laurel leaves. On the reverse there were letters engraved, which read: ‘First place, marathon.’ Later we would find some for second or third place. I had no answers. I lifted my eyes to my wife’s face, and without words I showed her that I didn’t know what those medals were either, nor what they were doing in the attic. That evening, over dinner, and after dinner, and as we fell asleep, we tried to invent explanations for that box full of medals — probably, probably, probably. In moments of silence, I tried to remember something my mother had said, something I’d seen and which would help me to understand. But nothing I remembered and nothing we were able to invent seemed to explain that shoebox filled with marathon victories.

  ‘There’s got to be a simple explanation.’

  In the dark, lying in bed, I decided I’d ask my uncle. He had to know something. He’d have stories to tell. There had to be a simple explanation. I fell asleep, relaxed.

  In the morning I walked with the box under my arm. And time passed as I sawed laths on my own, I nailed nails on my own and could think without anyone interrupting me. In the mid-morning my uncle appeared at the entrance to the carpentry shop, and from afar, excited, wanting to speak but saying nothing, he gestured me over. As soon as I’d put down my tools, he disappeared. I hastened after him, and as I came out of the shop I could just see him going into the piano cemetery.

  At the open door, Marta is blocking the entrance with her body. Maria puts Íris down on the floor of the yard. In the morning, in the light, it’s already possible to see the invisible spots where the heat will grow. Ana and Íris squeeze in through a chink between Marta and the doorframe. They run into the kitchen — they’re looking for Elisa and Hermes — they look in the hallway, they look in the sewing room, and when they find only silence they return muted, but slowly, to the kitchen. Maria with her face downcast, hurt, walks towards her sister and the two go into the kitchen.

  My wife appears with her hair in disarray, in her nightdress. She’s surprised to see Maria, but can’t say anything because Ana and Íris surround her, pulling her and giving her little kisses. When they stop, Maria is sitting in a chair, unable to cry, and Marta is beside her, standing, a hand resting on her shoulder. My wife approaches. Maria, her hands on her legs, her sad gaze on her hands, speaks weakly:

  ‘This time it’s over. This time I’m not going back.’

  My wife and Marta have already heard these words many times. Through the window the morning is picking up strength. Marta tries to console her sister, caressing her shoulder. And my wife asks her questions. Maria replies with the same weak voice. In a corner, Ana and Íris, alone, have conversations all to themselves in a place where there is no one else. My wife — concern on her face — listens to Maria and keeps asking her questions: –

  ‘And what about the neighbours?’

  And Maria keeps replying:

  ‘What do I want with the neighbours?. . This time it’s over. Really. This time I’m not going back.’

  The china tureen that ornamented the middle of the kitchen table had been bought by Maria and her mother at the Luz market. It was afternoon, it was Sunday, and it was September. It had been years since my wife had gone to buy items for Maria’s trousseau. Every birthday, every Christmas, Maria had received gifts for her trousseau — sets of bedsheets, sets of towels. Sometimes, on late Saturday mornings, my wife would get back from the market, and from among the thin bags of lettuce, of carrots, among bags that had fish scales stuck together, she would take out saucepans, boiling-pans and aluminium jugs.

  These purchases were made with the money my wife saved. She bought glasses and cutlery, salt and pepper pots, cruets for oil and vinegar, gravy boats, napkin rings.

  That afternoon, Marta was already married and still living in the house close to the workshop. My wife and Maria were walking through the Luz market. It was clear as a September afternoon. They smiled, they analysed objects they wouldn’t think of buying, and they asked:

  ‘How much?’

  They crossed the street with the shoes and clothes to look at the fashions. Maria had a shoulder bag. My wife had a napa bag on her arm. They stopped beside a merry-go-round to buy a fartura, and while they ate, with oil and sugar around their mouths, they watched the children throwing tantrums and listened to the shrill music being distorted by the loudspeakers.

  They passed stalls selling chairs and wicker baskets. My wife held up a wooden spoon and asked:

  ‘How much?’

  And they reached a stall that sold all kinds of chinaware. There were china dogs, painted as Dalmatians, sitting, with gentle eyes. It made them want to stroke the chilly ceramic heads. There was a china fountain with multicoloured lights that worked with a mechanism that meant it never stopped pouring out water. There were decorative plates for hanging on the wall, and there were plates for everyday. There were dishes. There were tureens.

  Maria’s gaze was immediately attracted by that tureen. She lifted the lid to look at the inside and to hold the china ladle whose handle was sculpted with flowers. The grip of the lid was three roses with ceramic petals. The handles of the tureen were also made from roses. At various points on the tureen, and on the dish on which it sat, there were small roses and rosebuds sculpted and painted in tiny detail.

  Maria looked at my mother as though she didn’t dare to ask. My mother looked at her, turned towards the stallholder and asked:

  ‘How much?’

&nbs
p; And she asked if he couldn’t knock the price down, he said he couldn’t, she asked the same question again, he knocked the price down and my wife took her purse out of the bag.

  The man wrapped each piece of the tureen in sheets of newspaper, saying:

  ‘You’ve done very well out of this.’

  The lampposts were already lit, but it wasn’t yet night. Late afternoon was a sky that darkened to its own particular shade of blue. The stallholder was enjoying himself, wrapping the tureen dish in a piece of newspaper and fitting it into a plastic bag. He was enjoying himself repeating lines he’d already said a thousand times. My daughter smiled, and my wife gave clever answers, casually.

  This was the tureen that Maria’s husband picked up with both hands. He held it by the dish, held it up to the height of his chest, and with all his strength threw it to the ground in a moment of absolute silence. The pieces of the tureen were spread, useless, across the kitchen floor; also spread across the floor were the buttons, pins, pencil ends, pieces of toys and all the purposeless objects that were kept inside.

  I went into the piano cemetery. I walked through the dust until I came to my uncle, at the back, his chest leaning over an upright piano, looking at something that was happening over the other side. I approached. Looking at me with his enthusiastic left eye, he pointed me towards where he’d been looking. Inside a piano with no lid, no legs, sitting on the floor, a bitch was lying, with a resigned and tender expression, with four newly born puppies.

  ‘They were born last night,’ my uncle whispered.

  Under the mechanism of the piano — the strings stretched out — there was a torn old tangled jacket covered in dog hairs. On this jacket was the body of the bitch, surrounded by her children. They were small like mice, they had their eyes closed, stuck closed, short ears, and they moved slowly without knowing where they were going. They made a constant noise, made up of many thin squeals. They opened their mouths and stuck out their tiny tongues. They opened their mouths and from time to time hung on their mother’s thick teats. When they moved away — waddling or dragging themselves on their little paws — the bitch grabbed them with her mouth and brought them back, putting them down close to her.

  With a smile, my uncle stared at the bitch and her pups. When something happened, when the bitch chose one and began to lick it, my uncle smiled wider. As we walked together to the carpentry shop, we had no words to say. We had thoughts.

  Leaning over my workbench, I went back to work and only later remembered. I interrupted a story my uncle was telling and that not even he was listening to. I opened the shoebox and called him over. I didn’t have to ask him any questions. Amazed, suddenly sad, he held some of the medals.

  That was the morning I learned that my father died far away from my mother, exhausted, on the same day that I was born.

  After hearing my uncle at last, my father and I were even more strangers. My father revived in words that had the light coming through them, and the smell of wood, and everything I didn’t know about myself.

  After spending all the days making doors and windows, benches and tables, dreaming about pianos, my father would close up the big workshop doors and run through the streets of Lisbon, running and tearing the streets of Lisbon. Then he’d arrive early at the races that were held on Sunday mornings. He took trains at Santa Apolónia, and travelled alone second-class to the suburbs where, at a tranquil pace, he ran to different parts of the city. When there were marathons, my father would arrive and the other runners would look at him from a distance. There might have been fear in these looks, or disdain, but fear is what there was and that was why they feigned disdain. My father ignored them, just lived within his own light. When he ran past them people would call him by his name. Before he arrived people would comment:

  ‘Here comes Lázaro.’

  As he ran past them, the people would say:

  ‘Come on, Lázaro!’

  As though he could hear them, he ran across kilometres that were left as marks on his face. Close to the finishing line other runners would arrive, who with their final strength might pull him by his vest, or thump him in the back, who might knock him over, but he always arrived out in front, and perhaps limping, perhaps with the palms of his hands grazed, perhaps with blood trickling down his knees; he was glorious and infinite. When he received his medal, he would lower his head. People applauded him, admired him, and spoke his name. They would never forget his name.

  It was on the day that my father ran with the best in the world. He travelled by boat to Stockholm and every little detail was new. The sea was how you’d imagine death to be, or unconditional love. My father had a great deal of hope. On that day he ran along the streets, against the streets, until the moment that he began to lose his place, began to fall back, to run in disarray, muddling his legs and his arms. He fell after thirty kilometres. He was surrounded by people who didn’t know him. He was taken to hospital. And he died. He stopped breathing and thinking. He didn’t stop being my father.

  It was on the day that I was born.

  My uncle said that, when the news was heard, there were some people who thought he had found death while fleeing from it, and there were some who thought that he had escaped from death while seeking it.

  I couldn’t understand why my mother hadn’t told me — all those years, summers and winters, all the times we’d sat at the kitchen table eating cake halves and drinking tea, all the times I sat on the earth floor of the yard while she washed clothes in the tank, sitting by the fire, sitting on the yard steps — I didn’t understand where I’d been born from. This black ignorance spread itself inside all my years, it moved ahead, it ran, till it touched me there, at that moment, standing opposite my uncle and a shoebox filled with medals.

  The light, the smell of wood, and my uncle, almost voiceless, almost as if he was breathing, spoke to me of my aunt.

  ‘She’s the one who can explain it to you better.’

  The times my mother spoke to me of my aunts they were light words in her voice, they were like breezes. Along with my uncle, my father had had two sisters. The younger died tragically, so tragically, gravely, in a way that no one dared speak of it, in a way that just to think of it demanded a lowering of the eyes and a conspicuous silence, as though everyone was to blame for her death. The older lived outside Lisbon. When my aunts saw me, I was very small, I’d just been born. After the younger died, the older never came back to Lisbon.

  My uncle, as if breathing, spoke to me of my aunt. He told me that she’d kept newspaper cuttings. He told me that she remembered everything.

  As of that moment — me measuring laths, my uncle varnishing doors and telling stories that never ended — I could only think that I wanted to go, ought to go, needed to go to my aunt’s house to talk to her and listen to her.

  It was Simão who started the game, who invented it. Marta was still living in Benfica. Elisa was small; Simão would open his arms and say to her:

  ‘Hug me as hard as you like me!’

  Elisa smiled with her eyes, she started running and stood, her arms wide, very far from Simão. He pretended to cry, with the pretend crying of a child, pretended to be rubbing his eyes. Once Elisa believed that he had cried enough, she would run into his arms and squeeze him as hard as she could. Simão felt Elisa’s little chest squeezing him. She squeezed him until her throat started making a noise signifying great effort. At that moment she’d stop and Simão would kiss her cheeks noisily.

  I knew that Simão visited Maria. I didn’t talk about this, but I knew. Simão played this game with Ana too. Francisco started playing this game with Hermes, and later with Íris. Whenever Francisco comes into Maria’s house, he looks for Íris, opens his arms and says to her:

  ‘Hug me as hard as you like me!’

  In the kitchen, after lunch, Maria remains seated at the table, her gaze lost. Sometimes she gives a jump inside because she thinks the phone is going to ring. She believes her husband is going to call to ask forgive
ness, calling for her — please, come home, please. At other times she raises her face, looks all around her, because she thinks the phone has rung. Noticing that her sister remains indifferent, running plates under the tap, realising that her mother hasn’t stopped putting away the food that was left in the oven, Maria goes back to losing her gaze, and returns to her sad thoughts.

  In the corridor, the afternoon begins to pass across the objects. There is no one to see them or hear them, and so their silence is not real. Perhaps a speck of dust falls on to the table under the mirror. Perhaps the mirror doesn’t show any reflection at all. Perhaps time has stopped.

  In the sewing room, on all fours on the carpet, Íris, with her bandaged hand, is gripping a doll by the waist. Her fingers go round its waist. She tilts the doll one way and the other, one of its little plastic feet touches the floor, and then the other — tap, tap, tap. Wobbling, the doll walks, making its way across the pattern in the carpet.

  Sitting at the other end, completely hunched on the floor, Hermes is holding a fire engine.

  Íris’s voice, reedy — a child imitating a child — it’s the voice of the doll:

  ‘Hello, neighbour. What are you doing?’

  The fire engine, in Hermes’s hand, has the thickest voice he can manage:

  ‘Hello. I’m having a rest. I was just putting out a fire.’

  ‘Oh, a fire, that’s very good. Where’s your mummy?’

  ‘My mummy’s to work. She comes home at ten o’clock.’

  ‘She’s to work? But. . but she told me she would come home at thirty-two o’clock.’

  Hermes opens his eyes wide, opens his mouth in pretend amazement, in pretend shock, and says:

  ‘At thirty-two o’clock?’

  ‘Oh, no, I’m sorry, sir. My mummy’s coming home at seventy-forty o’clock.’

  As though marvelling, Hermes opens his eyes and his mouth wider still. From deep within this surprise he says: