The Piano Cemetery

by José Luís Peixoto

  ‘Don’t touch anything.’

  After a moment when she’s listening to her grandmother, Íris’s smile and her eyes — light or shadows on the surface of the sea — and the curls that roll down on to her shoulders and her little body disappear into the piano cemetery. For years my wife has known about the blind passion that children feel for the piano cemetery. Before now it has been Marta, Maria. It has been Simão, Francisco. My wife knows that no harm has ever come to them. Which is why she doesn’t worry, and returns to her thoughts. She returns to her body, ruffled, untidy under her clothes, as though her clothes have stopped being quite right for her, as though her arms are no longer the same length and are longer or shorter than the sleeves, as though her torso has turned around itself and its shape will no longer fit the shape of the blouse. My wife returns to herself, and takes a step into the carpentry shop.

  I don’t know what she’s looking for. Perhaps she needs some empty time.

  Íris hits the keys of an upright piano with both hands — a confused noise; the noise of her hands hitting the keys mingles with the noise of the detached or crooked mechanisms against the old wood, and mingles with a shy note, forced against its will to be heard. And again. Again. And she’s had enough. The walls of the piano cemetery are cool. The light comes in through the dirty little window and is lost. Íris is so small. Her sandals accompany the movement that her body makes as it turns around itself. She finds the lid of the same legless piano where she sat on Sunday. In the dust surface there are still traces of that passing. She sits. She looks at me, and says:

  ‘Are you still talking to the people from the book?’

  ‘I am.’

  Silence.

  ‘Are you tired?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘You really could be by now. Don’t you ever rest, Grandad?’

  ‘I can’t. I have to tell this story to the end.’

  Silence. Íris puts the plastic hairbrush down on the piano lid, puts down the hairpins and mirror. She has her back to me as she leans down to rummage around in a pile of keys. In her hands each key seems too big. She has her back to me. She says:

  ‘When I’m big I can read the book, too, can’t I?’

  I smile.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Silence. She turns her face towards me.

  ‘Grandad, tomorrow I’m going to be big, aren’t I?’

  ‘Yes, Íris, tomorrow you’re going to be big.’

  We smile together.

  ‘When I’m big I might even know how to play the piano, right?’

  ‘Yes, but you’ll have to learn at school.’

  ‘That’s all right. Teacher will teach me and then I’ll play a piano for my mother.’

  ‘Do you think your mother will like it?’

  ‘She will. She’ll even get so happy that she’ll ask me to play another song. One of those songs. . A love song.’

  She turns her face towards me. She covers her mouth, waiting for my reaction.

  ‘But don’t be sad, Grandad. Then I’ll play a song for you, too. Except that I’ll play a grandad song.’

  ‘What’s that like, a grandad song?’

  ‘It’s a song with words from the little girls who are the granddaughters and the mothers singing them.’

  ‘So will your mother sing, then?’

  ‘No, it’s the music that has the words. When I play a piano you can hear the words that are inside the piano.’

  She moves towards an upright piano, and away. She takes little steps, marked in the dust, her gaze fixed as though she were filling up with ideas. She freezes in the middle of a step. Slowly she puts the sole of her sandal down on the floor. She smiles. She says:

  ‘I went with Granny to the market.’

  ‘I know.’

  She sits back down on the piano lid.

  ‘Granny bought me a brush for me to brush my hair.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  She puts the brush and the hairpins in the folds of her skirt, on her lap. She holds up the mirror in front of her face, and in the little reflected circle she sees skin, lips, an eye.

  ‘Then you also know what happened.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘And what are you going to do? Will you hate all gypsies? That would be easy enough to do. Whenever there’s a conversation that relates even vaguely to gypsies, with markets, with fairs, you’ll take advantage of the moment to spread your poison. And underneath everything you say, hidden away, buried away, there will be that feeling you have. That’s something you’re good at. You know how to hate. You know how to impose your opinions and not let anyone contradict you. You know how to bring conversations to an end. If, of course, you weren’t dead, if you could still have conversations.

  ‘But we’re having one, aren’t we?’

  ‘We are?’

  ‘Again you’re talking as though you weren’t a little girl who’s not yet even three.’

  She continues looking at herself in the little mirror that she’s holding in front of her face. She has the hairbrush in her other hand, and she starts brushing. Slowly.

  ‘What is it you’re afraid of, anyway? Are you afraid that I’m going to talk about Uncle Simão? It’s nobody’s fault that you can’t forget the image of a little boy, your son, up against a wall, blind in one eye, terrified, knowing he can’t run away, and you walking towards him, closing your fists, burning inside. Are you afraid that I’m going to talk about Uncle Francisco? It’s three days till he runs in the marathon at the Olympic Games, on his own, always on his own, thinking that you never valued all the things he did just to please you. And, just the same, trying everything he can to win. Even knowing that if you weren’t dead, if he got home and showed you the medal for first place, you’d turn your face away, uninterested.’

  ‘I always did the best I could.’

  She drops the mirror on her lap. She gives up on the brushing, her wrist limp. She looks right at me.

  ‘Maybe the people reading the book will believe you, but you can’t believe yourself. You know. You can still see Granny’s face when you threw her to the floor, after squeezing her arm or striking her in the face with your hand. You can still remember all the times they looked at you with disappointment, with pity. You’re afraid that they’ll take away from you something that was never yours, but which for a moment you believe belongs to you just because you’re you. You’ve disappointed yourself, you feel pity for yourself, and for a moment you believe that other people should be the ones to pay for everything you did wrong and for everything you couldn’t do.’

  She looks at me. Silence. She gets up, still looking at me. Her footsteps on the dust. She skirts around pianos, parts, piles of keys, makes her way down passageways and leaves the piano cemetery. Her child’s steps knowing and not knowing. She meets her grandmother standing at the carpentry bench where I used to work and where Francisco works. Íris approaches and gives her her hand. My wife feels Íris’s little hand between her fingers, holding them.

  Even without any pianos to repair, there were mornings and afternoons when I’d go into the piano cemetery to be alone. There were mornings when, summer or winter, the same light always came through the window, the same shade of dirty brown. The previous night I might have spent hours at the taberna, I might have argued with my wife. Slowly threads of the previous night would pass through my head — mists of alcohol dissolving, words or images of my wife that rose up suddenly. There were afternoons when I’d change my mind, when for a few moments I’d give up, but when, suddenly, straight afterwards, I’d believe with all my strength that I could change everything. And I’d look at the pianos, and I’d think.

  I’d look at the dead pianos, I’d remember how there were parts that could be brought back to life inside other pianos, and believe that all life could be reconstructed in just this way. I was not yet ill, my sons were growing up and turning into the lads that I had been myself not long ago. Time passed. And I was sure that a part of me, like
the parts of the dead pianos, would continue to function inside them. Then I remembered my father — his face in the photograph, the box of medals, his stories told in my aunt’s voice or my uncle’s voice — and I was sure that a part of him was still alive in me, revived each day in my gestures, in my words and in my thoughts. A part of my father revived when I saw myself in the mirror, when I existed and when my hands continued to build all the things that he — secretly, so close and so far away — had started. Then I thought there was a part of my father that would remain in me and which I would hand on to my children so that it should remain in them until one day they begin to hand it on to my grandchildren. The same would happen with what was only mine, with what was only my children’s and what was only my grandchildren’s. We repeated ourselves, and moved away, and we moved closer together. We were perpetual in one another.

  One of those afternoons when I was sitting in the piano cemetery, alone, thinking, I heard the footsteps of the postman on the earth floor of the entrance hall. I came out, as though busy, quite normal, and received the letters in my hand — bills and an envelope with the name of my cousin: Elisa. The postman was talking about the weather, complaining about the cars. I looked at him, I replied only with yeses, I said:

  ‘Yes, right.’

  I wanted him to leave, wanted him to leave me alone. I had never received a letter from my cousin before. I looked at the postman. I replied only with yeses. I squeezed the pack of letters in one hand. And I held my cousin’s letter carefully in the other.

  Me, Marta, Elisa, Hermes, Íris, Ana, Maria, Simão, Francisco, Francisco’s wife, the son who would be born, Hermes — the weight of the gypsy’s body, the perspiration, the hot smell of the gypsy’s body — Íris, Maria, Marta, Simão, Elisa, Ana, Maria, Francisco, me, the son who would be born, Francisco’s wife, Francisco, Simão — the touch of the gypsy’s eyes, the fire in the gypsy’s hands, embers, flames — Maria, Marta, Elisa, Ana, Hermes, Íris, the son who would be born, Francisco, me, Marta — the gypsy’s skin slipping, the smooth skin — Maria, Simão, Francisco, me.

  On the way from the workshop to Maria’s house, my wife wants to escape from remembering the gypsy and she thinks about us. Our faces and our names mingling with flames. She goes faster. It’s not long until Maria’s lunchtime.

  I was left alone. I waited, until after a few quick footsteps, and went into the piano cemetery. And I didn’t breathe. I opened the envelope. I unfolded the sheet of paper. I ran my eyes over the lines that my cousin Elisa had written to me — straight lines. And greetings, and the signature, with broad round shapes — Elisa. Then, slowly, I put the sheet down on a piano and looked at it from a distance. I imagined my cousin sitting there, the corner of the sheet aligned with the squares on the tablecloth, the ballpoint pen the worn colour of objects that are valued but old. I held the sheet of paper again, as though I wanted or needed to confirm what was written there — she passed away last week, peacefully. I put the paper down again and thought about my cousin’s choice of words — passed away, peacefully. I compared the words with the images I recalled from the day I took a train more to learn about my father than to meet them. My aunt, who looked at me, who held photographs out to me, was dead now, passed away, peaceful. And I couldn’t help but imagine how that fat woman, that immense woman, stretched out in a dirty bed, had been washed, dressed in clean clothes, and finally presented with dignity. In just the same way I couldn’t help but imagine my cousin, beside her, standing, all alone, in clothes she had bought to wear for the special occasions she never had. I held the letter again, and read it again. Those written phrases were the only visible part of all the phrases that my cousin hid inside herself. They were the only evidence of her voice. I folded the sheet of paper and put it away in the envelope. As I did it, I discovered that my aunt truly had, in days gone by, been a little girl. My cousin, too, in other days, she had also been a little girl. And that was how I saw them — dead and abandoned little girls. That would be how I’d see them again, later, whenever I remembered them in my thoughts.

  In the kitchen, a memory makes Marta smile. Everyone in the world recognises the sun. July. In the living room, Hermes is sitting with his hands resting on his legs. Without any help he is trying to understand mysteries. Elisa is tidying up the toys that Hermes has left disordered in the sewing room. It is Friday. The afternoon is taking its time to end. July — luminous calm.

  The dogs bark. The dogs bark. Afternoon. Hermes, Elisa and Marta wait. Someone knocks at the door. Elisa goes into the hallway. She walks, with a thought suspended. She opens the door. A woman with brown eyes, made lighter by the dusk. A woman who is too straightforward. Marta comes into the hallway. She walks towards the door. Hermes comes into the hallway. Marta stops beside Elisa. Hermes walks towards the door. He stops beside his sister and mother.

  The three of them look at the woman, who looks only at Marta and asks after her husband. She says his name. The first time I heard that name was in the kitchen of our house. At that time Marta’s husband was her invisible boyfriend and I was thinking about things that have stopped mattering. Marta has her arm resting on her son, but she doesn’t have the weight of the arm on him. Marta has a blue smock on her body. She has slippers on her thick feet with their thick toes. The woman is wearing a skirt and a fine blouse. Her hair is well coiffed. Marta looks at her and is surprised that she never imagined her like this. She is a woman like other women. She has eyes and a voice and dreams. She is concrete. She lives with the same fear. Marta feels a small shudder that she’s sure can’t be seen. Her voice is faint when she says her husband isn’t in.

  The woman looks at her with a pity that Marta understands as being for them both — for her, and for the woman herself. Perhaps this pity also includes the children and even the whole world — the yellowing weeds, the cracks that cover the walls of houses, the dry moss on the surface of fences. The moment is brief. The woman looks at her and they are almost speaking to one another in a limpid language that has no words. The woman’s face is preoccupied when she says thank you — the skin — and when she moves away. Hermes comes out from under his mother’s arm and walks down the hallway. Elisa is a shape that moves into the sewing room. Marta remains, watching the woman making the movements that open the big door and heading away along the pavement, without looking back.

  Marta closes the door slowly. Her body occupies almost the whole corridor. She walks past the entrance to the sewing room where Elisa is, she walks past the entrance to the living room where Hermes is, and reaches the kitchen. She sits down on a chair. There’s water boiling on the stove. A moment. The clarity is the night as it remembers something that has died.

  A moment. Hermes, in the living room, recognises the sound of the engine of the truck. Elisa, in the sewing room, is almost big, she’s almost a young woman, and she knows. The sound of the truck’s engine stopping in the street. Night has fallen over Marta. Are there breezes within the night? Marta waits for the sounds of the door opening, the dogs, the footsteps, the kitchen door. Her husband comes in and is surprised to find her sitting in the gloom, but he says nothing. It is his eyes that ask. They ask Marta. So small inside herself — a speck of dust. His eyes. Marta’s voice bears all the sadness she feels, but she merely says:

  ‘A woman just left who was here asking for you.’

  Her husband doesn’t stop looking at her, but from that single sentence he looks at her differently, because suddenly, too quickly, he understands everything. He doesn’t worry about inventing some excuse, he doesn’t reply, he doesn’t say anything. Perhaps angry with the woman who has come looking for him, he turns on his heel and goes back out.

  The kitchen door, the footsteps, the dogs, the street door opening. Outside, the engine of the truck starts to work, it can be heard further and further away and disappears around a bend. In just the same way Marta’s heart disappears within her.

  She gets up and turns on the light. She calls Elisa to lay the table. She calls Hermes fo
r dinner. She will go to bed early. She knows her husband won’t come back tonight. She is sure that, at last, she has made a decision.

  ‘Once there was a little fart, who was called. .’

  And he paused.

  ‘Little pink fart!’ said Elisa and Ana in unison. Simão pretended to be surprised, and went on:

  ‘One day she was at home when she heard a knock at the door: knock, knock, knock. “Who is it?” asked the little fart. “It’s me, the little green gas,” she heard from the other side of the door.’

  And the story went on. The story could go on for ever. When they were together, at Maria’s house, if Marta had come to Lisbon, Simão would go and put his nieces to bed for their nap and told them stories about the little pink fart. They were stories that always smelled very bad. If the little pink fart fell over, she smelled bad; if she played, if she gave little green gas a kiss, she smelled bad. The little pink fart was beautiful and pink, but she was a fart, which was why she smelled bad. Simão told the stories very seriously and each time the little fart or the little gas did something that smelled bad, Elisa and Ana would laugh with their little girl laughing voices. The mother of the little pink fart was called the yellow fart, her father was called blue gas.

  Sometimes Marta would come into the bedroom and say:

  ‘Don’t tell the children such things.’ But as she said this she would be laughing, too.

  Sunday — Sunday. Sitting on the yard steps, my wife was peeling potatoes that she dropped, raw, into an enamel basin. I was at the top of a stepladder, pruning the vines that grew up the trellises against the wall. Francisco was holding on to the ladder with both hands, and when I told him to he’d move away to collect clumps of branches that had fallen in tangles on the ground. Then he would throw them on to the pile of firewood. The morning passed.