The Piano Cemetery

by José Luís Peixoto

  And there was silence. My daughters’ husbands had stopped their conversation and looked at him. Marta offered him tea. He said no, and thanked her. My wife wanted to see him. She wanted to make up for whole years of missing him, of loss, of anxiety, of hurt. She wanted, in a single moment, to recover her son. Our son.

  Maria came in, with Íris in her arms. Elisa and Ana clustered around her legs. Marta leaned herself on the tabletop, stood up and walked towards her, saying incomplete words, with soft consonants. Maria smiled with her whole face and put the girl in her arms. Marta, looking only at her, continued to speak with the same little voice, tilting her up so that everyone could see her. Marta put the girl into my wife’s arms — her face tender now — and it was my wife, with an exaggerated gesture, who put her into Simão’s arms. She was so small in his arms. He smiled. He looked around him. His sisters were smiling at him. My wife was looking at him tenderly. He lowered his face to kiss Íris’s cheek, but pricked her with his beard. As though shocked, she started to cry, inconsolable. Simão tried to rock her, to calm her, but she cried more and more. Then he passed her into Maria’s arms, who also tried to calm her, but she shouted, cried more and more. Simão, embarrassed, put his hands in his pockets and took them out again. Maria sat down to breastfeed Íris, but she didn’t want it. She only wanted to cry. Her face was round and red, getting ever redder.

  ‘There now, all gone. .’ Maria said again and again.

  Íris, wrapped in a shawl, was a small, compact body, a single solid shape that cried. My wife and Marta tried to calm her, but she cried, shouted as though tearing her voice in the air. Her sister and cousins looked at her, marvelling. Simão began saying his goodbyes. Íris was gathering in strength, as though she didn’t need to breathe.

  ‘Wait. Don’t go yet,’ said Maria, under Íris’s distressed, shrill cries.

  But Simão, embarrassed, hastily saying his goodbyes, as though fleeing, left.

  The morning Simão was born, a lad appeared at the workshop, panting, addressing me as sir, with the message that I ought to go home right away. I stopped looking at the half-sawn piece of wood that was held in the lathe, wiped my hands on my trousers and went up to my uncle to give him the workshop keys. He held my arm, sent the lad away, telling him I wouldn’t be long. I looked at him, not understanding, but I didn’t speak because for the first time there was peace in his face, there was calm — his serene face.

  The lad’s footsteps moved away across the floor of the carpentry shop, then the dirt of the entrance hall and then the road. The sounds of the birds in the roof-beams returned. The endlessness of the specks of sawdust returned, specks of sawdust that hovered in the air, floated and came to rest on every object, on our skin. My uncle started walking towards the piano cemetery without needing to tell me to follow him.

  What stretched out ahead of us was time. At the end of one of the passageways of dust, my uncle stopped in front of an upright piano that was cleaner than all the others. I realised that this piano was shining. My uncle’s voice was soft. He told me that over the past months he had been trying to bring this piano to life. He’d looked for the parts that were missing, replaced the parts that were damaged, rotten. His face showed that it knew sadness. My uncle had tried to repair the piano to give it to the boy who would be born, but he hadn’t been able to finish it in time. There was so little left to do. Then he asked me if I would finish sorting it out myself. He asked me to look for the final parts. I didn’t altogether understand at that moment what it was he was saying to me, which was why I smiled. I smiled. I put my hand on his shoulder and said we’d have to fix the piano together. He made me promise I’d fix the piano, made me promise I’d give it to the boy who would be born. I replied yes, yes of course, and I smiled. I smiled. In the silence that followed those words and that smile, I wanted to give him the workshop keys, but he told me he’d go out, too. I was already thinking about my wife, about my child about to be born. I went out with my uncle, closed the big workshop door, and as I ran I said goodbye with broken words.

  When I reached the house, when I went into the bedroom, my wife already had Simão in her arms. Our daughters were round her and I approached the happiness. I held the happiness in my arms.

  The following day my uncle didn’t come to the workshop in the morning, nor did he appear mid-morning. He didn’t come the next week, nor the next month, nor the next year, or ever again. Time passed. For the rest of the whole of my life, for all the days that would pass until that Sunday when I died in that hospital bed, I never saw my uncle again.

  The piano he had started to repair was the part of me that still waited for him. I never repaired it. Dust covered it, making it indistinguishable from all the other pianos beside it that had temporarily died.

  Later I remembered the hours, I remembered the goodness that shaped my uncle’s blind, dirty face, standing watching me or talking, talking — the stories that flowed from his body as though there were no end to the stories to be told. Later, too late.

  In the truck, Marta’s husband is driving, annoyed. He doesn’t speak, he doesn’t hear, he looks straight ahead and he drives. Beside him, Maria and my wife have Íris and Hermes on their laps. On the back, wrapped in the noise of the engine and the wind, Marta travels in her armchair, and Ana and Elisa hold on to the bars of the truck. Up in front, Íris and Hermes are making up words to say when they get to Lisbon. In the back, the wind is making their hair into unusual shapes and doesn’t let them speak, but occasionally Ana brings her lips to Elisa’s ear and says words that no one else hears and that no one remembers.

  Marta tries to see all the streets before they reach the workshop. She turns her head this way and that. They arrive at the workshop. Marta gets up from her chair and remains still, waiting for her husband to go into the taberna and come out with a few men. My grandchildren wait leaning on the wall. Maria and my wife surround the men, as though their stretched-out arms or their anxiety served some purpose. Two men hold Marta under her arms. Slowly. Slowly, the husband and another man receive her and with the care of something heavy and fragile deposit her on the ground.

  Marta’s husband returns to the taberna with the men. My wife chooses the right key and opens the big workshop doors. Going in, the children run on to the dirt floor. My daughters and my wife don’t run, but their faces are rejuvenated, and as they go into the carpentry shop they are children, too. There are squares of wood on the floor, there are pieces of laths — so many possibilities. My work bench is arranged as Francisco left it. The bench which was my uncle’s, which Simão uses when he arrives in the morning asking Francisco for a few days’ work, is covered with scattered tools. My daughters know, as my wife knows, that nothing bad can happen in the workshop. As they walk their voices are simple and free. They are children. Maria opens the big patio door and goes down, followed by Marta and my wife. My grandchildren grab pieces of wood, they make houses and swords. Íris goes out of the carpentry shop on her own, she crosses the entrance hall and makes her way alone into the piano cemetery. Elisa, Ana and Hermes are being kept occupied, they don’t see her and think she’s on the patio with my wife, Maria and Marta. My wife, Maria and Marta notice little things, weeds growing between the pine shavings; they don’t see her and they think she’s in the carpentry shop with Elisa, Ana and Hermes.

  Íris walks through the piano cemetery. She looks all around her. She can make out the edges of the shadows. She lifts lids off keyboards. She presses down on keys that make dry sounds, wood against wood. She sits down on the lid of a piano without legs, on the dust. She is so small. She lifts her face, looks at me and says:

  ‘Who are you talking to?’

  Silence.

  ‘I’m talking to the people who are reading these words in a book.’

  ‘Maybe my mum will read the book, won’t she?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘What are they called, these people who’re reading the book?’

  ‘They have many names. Each of th
em has a different name.’

  ‘Maybe there’s one of them called Íris, isn’t there?’

  ‘Yes, maybe.’

  Silence.

  ‘And you — what’s your name, sir?’

  ‘Me?’

  Silence.

  ‘I’m your grandad.’

  Íris smiles. Her voice:

  ‘Grandad. .’

  I smile.

  ‘What are they like, these people reading the book? Are they Grandma and Auntie?’

  ‘They are, but they are other people, too.’

  ‘Where are they, the other people?’

  ‘Only they know where they are. We’d have to ask them to take a look around them. We’d have to ask them to shut their eyes.’

  Íris shuts her eyes, tightly as she can.

  ‘See? These people are just like that. They close their eyes, and they still exist. They close their eyes, block their ears, and they still exist.’

  Íris opens her eyes. She gets up. She stops looking at me. She approaches the keyboard of one of the pianos. With her bandaged hand, she sticks out her index finger and presses down on a key. She presses down on another key. It is as though a long time has passed, but only a moment has passed. She looks at me again.

  ‘How do you know, Grandad?’

  ‘I’ve been one of those people.’

  ‘But have you already read this book the people are reading?’

  ‘No. It’s not finished yet. The story isn’t over yet. There are still a lot of words before it finishes. On the blank pages there’s space for all those words, only they haven’t been said yet. They haven’t been heard yet.’

  ‘So how come you’ve already been one of those people? Have you already lived the life these people are living?’

  ‘No one can live someone else’s life.’

  ‘That’s not true. You didn’t just live your life. Have you seen Grandma? You wore her down. You made her old before all the other women her age. Say what you like — the light clouded your eyes, you didn’t see, there was some force that carried your movements, you couldn’t feel — say what you like, but the truth will still exist — the truth.’

  ‘You’re not even three yet, you can’t talk like that. No three-year-old talks like that.’

  ‘I can’t? I can’t? You’re sure of that? You’re dead. You should be the last person to talk about what I can and can’t say. What are you afraid of? I don’t believe you’ve forgotten the mornings you went out and left Grandma losing hope of receiving any affection, nor the evenings when you got in late, with the smell of the taberna embedded in your clothes and your skin, nor the week after week when you just went out in the morning and got in at night and nothing else. The conversations during and after dinner getting shorter and shorter, until they were nothing more than the soup sipped from the spoon and the shadows in the kitchen — until they were nothing. And if the soup was too hot, if it was raining outside, if you were annoyed, you might throw the bowl on the floor, you might push Grandma, knock her down, make her cry and pretend not to hear, pretend it didn’t bother you, that her sadness meant nothing. You don’t want to hear, but you have to hear. And my mother? And Aunt Marta? You taught them that their father, their only father, can grab their mother by the arm, look at her with disdain and push her against a wall.’

  ‘I taught them many other things. I always liked my daughters. I always thought about them. I always wanted them to be happy.’

  ‘That’s not enough. You never really listened to them, you never really looked at them. You were afraid. You’re still afraid. The saddest thing isn’t that you’re lying to the people who are reading the book, who don’t know you and won’t ever know you. The sad thing is that you’re lying to yourself. The sad thing is Uncle Francisco getting ready to run in the marathon at the Olympic Games without any memories of you ever, at any time, telling him that you were proud of him. Everything he has achieved has been without you, against you. And Uncle Simão? You can’t have forgotten all the harm you did to him. You didn’t lose him on that night that you’ll never forget. You lost him long before that. And me, too, my sister, Elisa, Hermes. You died, you’re dead, but your mistakes remain alive. Your mistakes remain.’

  ‘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 hurri
es 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