The Piano Cemetery

by José Luís Peixoto

  go slowly past. My mother and my sisters said nothing, but were shocked to find the house almost empty. From that afternoon, whenever I went to Maria’s I’d leave with something my mother had hidden to give me. No need to tell your sister. And she’d give me packets of biscuits, or bags of pears, or jars of fruits in syrup. She’d give me all kinds of things she’d hide under the iron couch where she slept, set up every night, dismantled every morning. When she took the train to visit Marta, she’d return laden with bags of spring greens, sprigs of parsley, oranges, salted bacon, chouriço sausages. I’d accept everything, ashamed because I thought they felt sorry for me, they thought I had nothing, I was the little boy who had nothing, unprotected. Because it was easier, I’d accept everything, and quickly leave.

  reflected in the stones of the pavement. Lisbon is the sharp clarity that comes through the air. Lisbon is the stained colour of the walls. Lisbon is the new moss being born over the dry moss. Lisbon is the pattern of cracks, like lightning flashes, slipping down the surface of the walls. Lisbon is careful imperfection. Lisbon is the sky reflected

  in the stones of the pavement. It was cold, the last week of January was beginning. There was ice on the weeds — blades — that grew between the stones of the pavement. My ears were frozen. My nose was frozen. My hands were in the pockets of my jacket, frozen. When I arrived at the road of the workshop I didn’t expect to see Simão. But I reached the top of road, looked ahead and there, almost leaning on the big doors, was a shape beset by sharp movements. Each step I could make him out more clearly. When he noticed me he stopped still to wait for me. It was my brother — his blind face. I couldn’t understand his smile. I understood the dirty skin of his face. I didn’t understand his eagerness. I understood his hair spiky in stuck, solid, hard locks — dry oil. I was two steps away from him. We didn’t greet one another. Not a good morning, not any word, not any syllable. I took two steps and, standing beside him, opened the door. Together we walked across the entrance hall of the workshop. My brother wanted to talk. There was some news he couldn’t hold back. I was used to his news, his enthusiasms about nothing, which was why when we reached the carpentry shop, when we stopped, I was the one who spoke and told him I’d got married. Simão made an expression as though he were saying the appropriate phrases, he waited for a beat and then, when it seemed to him that he could speak, he said

  Kilometre twenty

  he’d found a piano for us to repair. And he waited for the reaction I didn’t have. I breathed. Then he told me that one of the men in the taberna had told him about a piano he wanted to sell, that no one had played for years, covered in a sheet. I asked him if he thought we didn’t have enough old pianos, if he thought we didn’t have enough ruined pianos, gathering dust in the piano cemetery. My brother’s face lost the shape of his eagerness. But then he immediately said we could repair it, make it as good as new and then sell it. I smiled at his naivety. I knew that even if we managed to fix this piano — which might be rotten, might be irreparable — we’d never be able to sell it. Because I felt sorry for his childish expression I told him that when could we’d go and see what condition the piano was in. Maybe the following day, maybe the following week, maybe never. I didn’t want to make my promise concrete, but it was enough for my brother to set about sawing, sanding, starting his endless, disconnected, incomplete, incomprehensible stories with enthusiasm. Not listening to him, I had a single thought — it filled my whole morning — all the possibilities of a single thought. There was a long time before lunch and I looked at my watch, looked at my watch, again looked at my watch. The hands moved too slowly. When I stopped being able to bear it, it was the beginning of the end of the morning. I put down my tools, told my brother I wouldn’t be long and went out. The streets. Benfica, they were the birds that came down from the sky to settle in front of me and to take flight as I passed. The people, disorientated. Benfica, they were the puddles of water that reflected me for an instant. January. Benfica, it was the cold wind that moulded me. I knocked on the door. How long did I wait? The lady opened the door to me with the same smile as the other days, but to me, that late morning, it was as if she were another lady with another smile. I followed her down the corridor. The doors to the hall. The details of the shapes — curved, straight, angled — were too sharp, they seemed to be wanting to speak to me, they seemed to be wanting to dissuade me. There were times I closed my eyes, and there were times I forced myself to keep my eyes open. That was how it was when I went into the hall and saw her sitting at the piano. The keys — the strings — the notes all hurling themselves towards me and piercing me. Threads of blood flowing from my wounds like signs, traces that showed my guilt of a crime I had not yet committed, but which was inevitable. I hid my uncertainty behind a firm gaze, a mask of feigned determination. When she finished playing, the lady had disappeared behind me. When she finished playing, seeing me, her face changed because she understood at once. Then, suddenly, the words I had thought of all morning at the workshop, the whole way over, the words I’d woken up with. Suddenly looking at her face, I didn’t know how to say anything but the rough, single, impossible words, words worn away from being so often repeated in my head, endless, like thorns, like spears, made of stone, made of night, made of winter, each syllable as though final, inevitable once spoken, separating flesh from bones, dead, dead, dying, killing, covering the whole world with the absolute darkness of their own death. The last time we’d see one another. I told her it was the last time we’d see one another. Her expression was wounded with the hurt. Silence. After disbelief, tears — liquid, limpid, glassy clarity. She walked to the window, turned her back on me and stood facing the cold white remains of the morning. Her body in her dress slipping across the rug. I walked over to her. I put my hands on her shoulders

  last time will never come

  and I didn’t say anything to her. I waited for my hands, just the weight and the touch of my hands, to tell her everything that was true and couldn’t be named. The last time we’d see one another — each gesture, each moment. She turned back towards me and we looked at one another with a strength of believing for a moment that there was no god that could part us. Then straight away, with a certainty that stabbed against us, much greater than a single moment, we knew that we really would be parted. It was the last time we’d see one another. Everything was the last. She fell into my arms. I squeezed her body, crushed it. We rested our heads on each other’s shoulders — our cheeks touching — hot tears. Time passed. We drew away to look at one another. We exchanged glances. I took off her dress. I removed my clothes. Our bodies. And the white light on us. And my body against hers, my body beating, beating, beating against her body, crushing it. And my fingers. Lightly. The points on her skin that my fingers touched. Gentle. And the repeated clash of flesh. And the disfigured faces. And the light, intense, from everywhere, permanent, constant, blind. We lay there on the carpet, side by side — our heads under the piano. We had no words. We had silence. We had our breathings, and what we could see, suddenly real. We had time bringing truth and sadness back to us. She didn’t get up, didn’t walk naked, didn’t sit at the piano. She stayed lying there, without strength, without life — her gaze undone. I got up. I dressed, slowly. My clothes didn’t heal the wounds on my torn body. The last time we’d see one another. I walked over to the door to the hall, leaving her lying on the carpet, without looking back. I reached the hall door and looked back. Her face believed I was going to go back, I was going to take steps back to her arms, to her naked, abandoned body. I didn’t go back. I opened the hall door and ran through the quick impossible maze of the corridor. I opened the door to the street and ran, lost, destroyed, through the Benfica streets.

  weight, my legs, my arms alternating. Or perhaps it’s the blood in my body weighing me down, draining me. The vest and shorts stick to the grease. The sweat I’m not sweating is boiling me under my skin. Maybe it’s the sweat weighing me down, draining me. The houses are further and furthe
r away. The houses beside me. The people in the windows. I don’t look at the runners passing me. I look at my legs — their perpetual movement. Feet touching the ground, lifting me up, moving me onwards. Legs. I trip over myself. I fall on the palms of my hands

  Kilometre twenty-one

  and get up. I mustn’t stop. I rub my hands to get the memory of the stones, the loose grains of sand, off my skin. The stones burn — embers. The sight of Stockholm wavers. The façades of the houses contort. Blisters the colour of the houses rise up, holes

  because it might have been an afternoon in June. I can’t be sure. It might also have been an afternoon in late May, or even July, but it wasn’t very hot. It was a quiet afternoon. My father didn’t mind me going out on to the patio, didn’t ask me where I was going. Some thoughts were distracting him from me. Perhaps he was thinking about pianos. My steps crunched over pine shavings until I reached the big patio doors. I was still a lad. I was thirteen, fourteen years old. Marta still lived in the house near the workshop. When I went in, Simão was already there. He’d gone to see Elisa who was still so little but already walking, already running, and at that moment she’d just awoken from her nap. Simão was playing around with her. Marta was smiling. Their voices mingled with the pleasant lightness that came in through the half-open windows. I went in, to those smiles and those voices. That afternoon, like many others before and after it, Simão’s presence was always clandestine because we couldn’t tell our father we’d seen him, we couldn’t mention him. There were other times when my mother would hide and ask us about him in a whisper. We’d reply to her, hidden, whispering. Discreetly, so that Elisa wouldn’t notice, Marta told us she was going to the workshop, that she wouldn’t be long, that she was going to fetch a hammer and nails, which she needed for something unimportant — hammer a nail, hang a picture. Marta’s husband had gone out to deal with a few things including borrowing a hammer and nails from the workshop, but hours had gone by and he still hadn’t got back. Perhaps he’d been occupying himself in the taberna, Marta said. Simão and I distracted Elisa so that our sister could go out without the little girl noticing, without her crying, without her insisting on going, too. My brother and I made little kiddie voices, saying words that didn’t exist — and the sound of the front door, almost imperceptible, opening and closing. Marta, surrounded by that afternoon that might have been June, walked down the street — her steps unconcerned — she walked down the earth road of the workshop. There were birds, sparrows, flying overhead. There were the distant sounds of the city, within the distant sounds of nature. Marta walked towards the workshop, and although it was close, because she left home so little it seemed a great distance, an excursion. As she passed the taberna door, she leaned in to see if her husband was inside, having lost track of time. He wasn’t. There were only

  the heat — the fire — the heat — the flames — the heat — the embers — the heat — the heat — no escape — I run, run away — no escape from the heat, the fire

  two men, asleep. One was standing, his whole weight leaning against the counter; the other was sitting in a crooked chair, his elbows digging into the dirty tabletop, his head on his hands. There was no one behind the bar. Inside the taberna it was a different month and a different time of day. Marta left this suspended image behind her, and went on. She took slow steps, making the most of her freedom. I think she was smiling. Not an open, obvious smile, but a gentle touch to her face. It was a time for breathing deeply, for filling your whole body with clean, new air. Marta went into the workshop, through the big doors, and she still hadn’t got used to the shadows when she noticed the sounds that were coming from the piano cemetery. She thought it might be our father and she took a silent step, about to call out to him. Suddenly she stopped, turned to stone, when in the space between two piled-up pianos, behind a wall of pianos, she made out half the face of her husband. Her husband’s shirtsleeves were rolled up, his arms were around the back of a woman. The eager breathing of the two of them as they kissed. Her husband’s mouth fixing itself to a woman’s neck. Her husband’s mouth seeking out a woman’s mouth. In silence, Marta took two steps back. In the entrance hall of the workshop, her body, covered by a dress in a flowery print. That moment something came down from the sky, came from the centre of the earth, went through her. She touched her face with both hands to make sure she existed. She didn’t have to wait long. Her husband came out of the piano cemetery with an expression of feigned casualness, looking vaguely left and right. He could easily have seen her. Marta was behind a few pieces of pine that leaned upright against a wall. Her heart was beating. A good deal of her body was in view. But he didn’t see her, he walked across the earth, between the stones, and into the carpentry shop. Marta heard her husband’s voice, the other side of a wall, muffled, distant, greeting our father. It was only later, slowly, that she saw the woman who came out of the piano cemetery. It was Maria. As she walked she was adjusting her blouse, wiping the dust from her skirt. Without noticing a thing, she hurried out through the door.

  Kilometre twenty-two

  on the new table I’d made. As soon as my wife’s belly began to be noticeable, two weeks before we were married, she stopped working at the hospital. She was sent home. That night, when I came in, she was sitting in a chair, she was still, looking at the door. She had nothing to do. The dinner was ready. The house was tidy. But the look in her eyes wasn’t simple, there was hurt in it that I wasn’t able to understand completely, that made me feel guilty. It was as though the look in her eyes, in mine, touched me with guilt. I smiled at her, nervously. She didn’t smile back. Her face, lit up by the oil lamp, remained serious. I said some word to her — ‘So?’ She didn’t reply. As though I was unaware of the hardness of her gaze because there was no reason to justify it, I went towards the washroom. I had my back to my wife when I heard her voice. She asked, ‘Do you still like me?’ I lowered my eyelids over my eyes to feel the weight that dropped within me — lead. I opened my eyes and turned towards her, smiling. I approached, then put my hands — thick, coarse, rough hands — on her shoulders. I bent down to kiss her, but she pulled her face away and asked me again: ‘Do you still like me?’ There was a moment when we looked at one another, and when I bent down again she didn’t move away and we kissed. My wife’s lips were strange, for a moment. And only slowly they went back to being familiar. After that her gaze and her silence were beseeching. As though I didn’t understand, I managed to smile at her again. Trying to reduce the importance of her beseeching, I turned my back on her and walked towards the washroom. However much I tried to avoid it, I carried with me the image of her body, naked, lying on the hall rug. As I took my steps, I could hear her in my head still playing piano. I could make out the smell of her body on my skin. I filled my hands with water

  fill my hands with fire, flames, embers

  because you know the unnameable. And you will go on, with me always, escaping the names that are not you, you’ll go on eliminating the distance of years and time. When dying, you’ll dream you’re still alive. Who could say that, being dead, you’ll dream of still being alive, or still being alive you’ll merely be dreaming that you’ve died? Today, now, you exist in me, you are beautiful in my heart. We are once again

  to throw it over my face, to be reborn. I held the towel with both hands and wiped myself down. We had dinner. The night passed at the speed of the oil lamp on the table, slowly. That day I hadn’t done any training, but I lay down in bed and felt more exhausted than after my Sunday marathons. I was more tired than I am now with the sun trying to kill me. I was tired inside. Covered by a sheet, I rested the palm of my hand on my wife’s belly, on our child. And that was how I woke up the following morning, with courage again, with strength, my own master. In the bedroom, as I dressed, my wife watched me. In the kitchen, as I had my coffee, my wife watched me. In the street — the light. A neighbour said good morning to me through the cold. It was as though his voice

  the sun aims all its streng
th at my eyes, I run against the sun, I enter it

  was coming through a pane of glass. I replied, but didn’t hear my own voice. I didn’t stop. Icy wind came into me through the sleeves of my jacket, my sweater, my shirt, in through the bottoms of my trouser legs. Between my clothes and my skin I had a layer of cold, a second skin. The workshop’s earth road. The taberna was open, but there was no one there. It was a deserted marble counter, a table and two empty chairs. I didn’t stop. The bunch of keys in my pocket. I opened the doors. My everyday steps, my everyday gestures, so different, so unknown, because these moments were present, and solid. They were moments of my solitude. I had learned to touch them, breathe them, to exist completely within them. Like when I ran down the streets and Lisbon was every month of the year. Like when I ran by and all the seasons of the year were the colours of my solitude. Deep and filled with unshareable meanings. I had known my solitude for a long time — all the thoughts I had above the silence, words pursuing an echo they never reached. It was within the difficulty of my solitude — a black path of statues — that I built myself up. That morning was made up of moments that belonged to that time. The sawdust that covered the floor silenced me. I went over to one of the windows to see