The Piano Cemetery

by José Luís Peixoto

  through the sun. The ground tilts under my feet. In the distance a whole garden that wavers, trees going up and down. I put one foot down on the road and I feel it escape, I feel it tipping. I put down the other foot and it’s already tipping the other way. At the same time the ochre façades fade into every luminous colour — white, yellow. And they move away, and they move closer. They waver within their outlines, they transform themselves into smudges that burn like poppy petals, oil-lamp flames, they waver

  father

  before being born. The child

  the hall mirror. And Marta, proud of her nearly new house, filled with nearly new things. A plaster doll on a bookcase. Its arm broken on the trip, but I’ll glue it back. And she was smiling. Proud of the copper pans hanging in order of size, of the porcelain penguin, of the large wall clock that lost ten minutes a day, the hall mirror that already wasn’t big enough to reflect all of her, a new pan, washed cutlery. Looking at me. Proud of the discoloured frame where she kept a photograph of our sister. Her holding it, giving it to me, showing it to me. Maria

  with Maria. Just like when they were girls and they locked themselves away in their room. Our mother would forget to call them. Just like when they knew exactly the same secrets. They were girls, sisters. They laughed, just the two of them, at the same jokes. They were the only ones laughing. My father would look at them, straight away giving up trying to understand them. Simão didn’t get close. I was the little boy. I handed her back the frame. I looked at her again. She smiled, and her face wasn’t at that moment, it was at a time that only for her had not been lost, in a past that only she still recognised. She put down the frame when Elisa woke up. Uncle, Uncle. Cheeks flushed. And Marta smiling, showing me the bedroom. Proud of the little bedside tables, the chest of warped drawers. Returning to the kitchen, Elisa snuggled in my arms. And Marta: ‘Do you want to see what we’ve got here? Go and show your uncle.’ And me putting Elisa down on the floor, a little girl. Her walking barefoot towards a photograph of me, resting on the lowest shelf of the cupboard, holding it with both hands, almost dropping it, holding it and giving it to me. The two of them looking at me, smiling, proud. I

  Me: in a photo, immobile, seeing the living reflection of myself, maybe wondering at what I have become, frozen and watching myself closely. I smiled at them as they’d expected, put the photograph down on the same low cupboard shelf, and there, in a time I shall never know, a time that has stopped in that photograph, I remained, still looking in some direction in that room, eternally looking in some direction in that room

  Kilometre twenty-seven

  oh Mother, don’t, don’t cry, purest queen of heaven, help me for ever

  tear of blood from the sun, boiling in the corner of my eye, rolling down my cheek, clouding up my sight of what will always be unknown to me, death

  not yet born

  yet. The music she played as I lay there, naked body on the hall rug, broken-apart, aching body. The music tracing a path in eternity, a road supported by liquid trees, by reflections of trees in the breeze. The slow, lingering music, over everything that was beginning to exist — transparent worlds

  cold. That night I arrived home later. My wife knew. I was sure of it. The oil lamp lit up the curves of her body — her belly. Our child was — is — there, not yet born, maybe mingled with earth, with sky, with sun. Maybe next to my father, maybe watching me through him. My father’s eyes being his, his eyes being my father’s eyes — the same darkness, the same incandescent light. That night, falling asleep, we met. Then, the morning. Close to the mornings of the previous days, and different. I opened the workshop door. In the cold, I was completely awake. It was a clear time of day. Time passed, with me on my own. I resumed old jobs, which had been left since the day the lady came in and showed me the burned piano, the day we went to fetch the upright piano from the home of the man from the taberna and started fixing it up. Later, in a moment within my thoughts, I thought I heard footsteps in the entrance hall. My attention. I wanted Simão to arrive. And silence. I said his name. My brother’s name dissolving into the silence. He didn’t come. He didn’t come in the afternoon. He didn’t come the next day, or the next, or the next, or the next.

  my father calling me

  in my body as it lost the shape of running; in my elbows no longer a right angle, now uncoordinated outlines, each of my arms, on its own, standing out from my body, trying to survive, trying to cling on to some invisible image that supported them; in my legs falling on to the road with each step, digging into the road under my own body’s unbalance

  a weight that never goes away. I was still small, the boys of my age only thought about little games, they hoped it wouldn’t rain, and there was me, always, always carrying this black weight in my chest. For just a moment, Maria saying something funny, our mother happy, me happy, and right afterwards — or at that same moment — I’d remember the black weight — lead — which never left my chest. Perhaps in winter, night-time, the kitchen, Marta talking about something purely good. Our father in a contented silence. And me, almost well except for the weight that never left, that I was sure would never leave my chest. And it never left, that late afternoon never left, under the branches of the peach trees, my brother arriving home — Simão, Simão — and me blinding him for ever. After that day it happened only twice. I was nine years old, he was fifteen. In the bedroom we were fighting, he’d tired of pushing me, he threw me on to the bed and said, ‘You made me blind.’ And there was nothing I could reply with, I couldn’t get up and call him names. I was twelve years old, he was eighteen. In the piano cemetery we got angry for some reason and I accused him of not wanting to work, I said to him, ‘You’re a parasite.’ He stood there looking at me with his firm, iron eye and he said, ‘You made me blind.’ Those words went right through me, words he said to me only twice but every day since that afternoon, when I was still small, when my voice had changed, when our father began to be ill, when he died, when I met my wife, during and before and after each marathon, repairing a piano, at each piano note played by the tuner, when I learned I was going to have a child, falling asleep, waking, now, I never forget, and in remembering always, always I have a black weight

  Kilometre twenty-eight

  that never leaves my chest. The guilt. I’ve thought so often about what it would have been like if I had been the one blinded in one eye and not Simão, I’ve thought so often about how much I’d have wanted me to be the one blinded. Later on, I think about how ridiculous I am, that I don’t really feel that, that I’m an egotist, and, more ridiculous still, I feel sorry for myself for not even being able to feel sorry for myself. Many times I believed I’d got used to this weight, I believed it had become a part of me, like my arms, my legs, but every time I saw my brother turning his whole head to see something that was happening to his right, each time I remembered how he moves his head, I realised that I’d never

  a child

  on the day he died

  in the yard, with my mother’s weeding-hoe. I had a tin full of worms by the end of the afternoon. When I showed them to my father, he said: ‘Tomorrow you wake up early and you’ll come with me.’ We went to the workshop just to fetch a bucket, my father’s fishing-rod and a small rod he’d made for me from a very thin lath. My eyes shone when they saw it — it had a coconut-fibre thread tied to one end of it, and at the end of the line two or three round lead weights and a hook. My father put it in my hands and said, ‘It’s yours.’ He waited, in his contentment, and with a father’s voice said, ‘Be careful with the hook.’ We went out together and it was still early. I carried my rod in one hand, the tin of worms in the other, and I was proud. My father carried his rod in one hand and the empty bucket in the other. There were not many people out on the street yet, but as we walked I’d have liked them to have looked at us. A father, a son. We reached the park and went round behind walls of boxwood, under flowering trees, through the green smell of trimmed bushes, through the sweet smell of flowers. Whe
n we reached the lake, our reflection in the water was my father, big, my father, and me, small, beside him, boastful, happy. Then I looked through the water, fresh and green-tinged and thick with slime over a bed of dust that was liquid, almost liquid, light, and I saw the fishes slipping, bending their red, yellow, orange bodies. I saw the fishes slipping, serious, serene. My father pointed to one of them and whispered, ‘It’s a pompano fish, see?’ I replied in my child’s voice, in my eagerness, but he put his index finger to his nose and said, ‘Shhh.’ He whispered, ‘Don’t startle the fish.’ We were up against a barrier that came up to our knees, between a bush and the little house for the two ducks that slept and floated adrift in the lake. I chose a worm from the tin — it twisted itself between my fingers — and I felt sorry for it. It was my father who chose another and taught me to put it on the hook. Then it was him who taught me to dip the hook in the water and to give it a light tap, a light tap. When a fish came close, my father put his hands over mine and taught me to pull it in. When my father took the hook from its mouth and put it in the bottom of the bucket I watched it until my father caught another and another. He caught two more. In a short time we’d filled up the bucket. It was still early and we were already heading home. It seemed natural to me that it was still early, just as it seemed natural to me that we were returning by the same way we’d come, behind walls of boxwood, under flowering trees. My father had the bucket hanging from one arm. I watched him admiringly. He made his way contentedly, father, my father. He had his work clothes on, his sleeves rolled up, his strong arms. I had a hat wedged on to my head, but it was only then as we returned that the sun

  burns

  was starting to warm up. Our steps were the scraping sound of boots on grass. We were just about to leave when a man came running towards us and held my father by an arm. It was only much later that I learned he was the man who looked after the park. At that moment I just looked at my father, I looked at the man and didn’t understand. I came up to just above my father’s waist. I raised my head and saw him apologise. I saw the man grab him by the arm, without looking at him, as if he couldn’t hear him. And my father asking him to let us go. And the man gesturing to a lad who was passing and telling him to go fetch a policeman. And my father asking him not to do that. And the man not looking at him, not hearing. And my father putting the bucket down on the ground. And time held back by silence. And me, little, my fishing-rod in one hand, the tin of worms in the other and a hat wedged on to my head.

  Kilometre twenty-nine

  the sky comes undone over Stockholm

  child

  the sky comes undone over Stockholm

  not yet born

  arms lighter, because they’ve stopped existing. And I can’t feel my legs. In my body, there’s some other thing that sacrifices itself in place of my body. Maybe it’s what I’m thinking. Like when I close my eyes and I still exist. When I close my eyes, cover my ears and I still exist. Maybe it’s this shapeless matter that’s burning up, this shadow. Hands hurl themselves out to touch it and to pass through it, like passing through flames. Words hurl themselves out to name it, but they don’t stop, they go right through its infiniteness. And there’s peace in the chaos of my movements, my legs, my arms, unbalancing, free, lost, desperate. And there’s silence in the roaring that surrounds me, grave and constant and deafening. There’s silence in the voices, in the applause, that are thrown towards me from one side of the road and the other, that I pass through as though breaking through fine tangled bushes, as though passing through a cloud of birds. I no longer have any doubts. I am strong and serene and immortal. I no longer have any doubts.

  child. I feel you in the palm of my hand, under the skin of your mother. In her eyes, I see yours.

  on the road. My running shoes land crooked on the road. Feet to the side, crooked, unable to recognise the surface of the road.

  wooden steps. Maria opens the door for me. My mother. Ana. Íris. Maria saying to me, ‘My little boy.’ Me looking at each of their faces.

  notes played on the piano, now heaped up inside me, and us, lying on the rug, our bodies

  my mother, mother, my mother, proud of me running in the Olympic Games, but silent, only her face. Ana and Íris around me, happy — happy children. And Maria, my sister, like when she was young, like when our father died, saying to me, ‘My little boy.’

  father

  father

  Kilometre thirty

  fall over myself — stones — my cheek to the road, the world cloudy through my eyes, my breathing inhaling dust, my legs burnt, embers, my arms burnt, my heart, my chest breathing

  time passes in Benfica, silence passes over the piano cemetery

  I must go and meet my father.

  ~ ~ ~

  Piano notes come out of the wireless. Who is there, far away, playing them? The white shining surface of the refrigerator. The white shining surface of the tiles. My wife knows this time of day through her own skin. The afternoon is drawing to its close, as it does every day. It’s Monday, maybe this is why my wife remembers ‘every day’ better. Monday is a day my wife associates with ‘every day’. If someone in a conversation says ‘every day’ my wife thinks of an infinite succession of Mondays. Friday is the eve of the weekend, which is why it’s a different day. Saturdays and Sundays are different days. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are particular days on which things happen that are particular to Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Mondays are regular, anonymous days. They are every day.

  This is why my wife, even if she doesn’t remember, knows, recognises this time of day, without having to look at the clock on the kitchen wall, without having to pay any attention to the sharp whistles that interrupt the piano notes on the wireless. It’s why weeks, months, seasons exist. It’s why my wife knows this time of day by seeing it and feeling it and breathing it every day — an infinite succession of Mondays.

  Perhaps. My wife doesn’t know if Maria will be the first to arrive, holding Ana’s hand, the voices of our grandchildren meeting and shouting, with her work problems and talk, with the life and moods of the six, seven women who work around her, chained to their sewing machines; or whether Maria’s husband will arrive, dispirited, the silence of the house almost unchanged, Íris walking barefoot along the hall runner and meeting him without surprise.

  My wife knows. Leaning on the kitchen sink, she dries her arms with a cloth and thinks. Yesterday they arrived from the workshop. Yesterday: Maria, defeated, coming up the stairs — her feet heavy on the steps — her body hoisted up by her arm on the banister. Yesterday: our granddaughters, vaguely understanding everything. Yesterday: my wife there, but far away. Her body there, her presence if requested, but the words that populated her, the images she shared with no one, very far away.

  And when they opened the door, Maria’s husband was a ghost amid the shadows of the house. He didn’t greet anyone, didn’t speak, didn’t say sorry to Maria. My wife put down the suitcase she had brought and went into the kitchen. Ana and Íris went to play in the living room. Maria walked the corridors and the rooms as though it were a necessary thing to do, as though she were doing something other than trying to give her husband a chance to talk to her.

  At the dinner table he seemed sad. He didn’t look at anyone. His face was a memory of other days. Then between one moment and the next Maria said something to him. She spoke naturally, as though nothing had happened, as though she no longer remembered, as though she’d forgiven him, as though it didn’t matter. Her husband replied with a syllable. She spoke again — a question about his answer. He replied with two syllables, a pause and then another syllable. She spoke again — another question. He replied calmly. And so the evening went on. The children laughed when they found some detail funny. Maria was the same daughter and wife and mother as on other nights. As though nothing had happened. They were already all asleep when my wife, alone, set up the iron couch in the dining room, stretched out the sheets, put the pillowcase on to the pill
ow, lay down on to a groaning of springs and, after some time that she doesn’t remember, fell asleep.

  Íris is in the living room. Leaning on the sink, my wife wipes her hands on a cloth and she knows this time of day through her own skin. The surface of the windowpanes. The surface of the tabletop. My wife hears the sound of the key going into the lock. Piano notes come out of the wireless. Who is there, far away, playing them?

  ‘Grandad is loveliest of the world,’ said Elisa, sitting on a piece of wood on the carpentry shop floor. It must have been summer, because the sun had been very hot and the cooler time of day was slowly beginning. I stopped what I was doing to look at her with a smile. Elisa was three, four years old. My Marta still lived in the house near the workshop and she was out on the patio doing something with a straw hat on her head. It was Saturday.