‘That’s my nephew.’
And he stood me another glass of wine. And one of the men paid for another. I returned to the hall to see her. She looked at me again, and then immediately turned her face away. I went back in to ask for another glass of wine and my uncle stood me another glass of wine, and one of the men, another one, paid for one more glass of wine. I went back into the hall to see her.
In an instant I decided that the next dance I was going to hold my hand out to her and she would accept. She would accept. In my thoughts I tried to convince myself that when I had her in my arms, like a miracle I would be able to dance, but there was always something that prevented me from believing it completely. As I thought, I didn’t want the song to come to an end, because at that moment I would have to go through with my decision.
And the song ended. A few women clapped, the couples parted and I crossed the wall of men standing there and began to walk towards her. As I walked she turned her face towards me and beneath her gaze my steps were very slow and difficult. And then, face to face, I looked her in the eye and felt her breathing being breathed in my own chest. The woman who was sitting beside her, who had opened the boarding-house door to me, who I took to be her mother, looked at me, too. Then, in a movement I imagined being drawn in the air which I foresaw before each of its moments, I held my hand out to her. And I waited.
Suddenly her face and the face of the woman beside her and the faces of all the people in the room turned towards the room in the corner, where there was a bar. From inside came shouts muddled together with voices. At the door there was a crowd of men trying to see, who stood on their tiptoes and held the shoulders of those in front of them to see better.
I started to run, my arms pushing away anyone who stood in front of me. I opened up a path between the ones who were standing at the door, and when I managed to get in saw my uncle lying face-down on the ground. He had the knee of one of the men he had been talking to earlier stuck in the middle of his back. He had one side of his face right against the floor and he was shouting groans under the shouts of the man who was repeating to him:
‘You just say that again.’
Nobody could anticipate what I did. I threw myself at the man and pushed him. When the others made for me they did so without much conviction and I pushed them off, too. I lifted my uncle and a path opened up in front of us to let us out. As we left — my uncle with buttons torn from his shirt, his hair falling all over his forehead — I looked at her and, in the distance, I saw her face watching me.
My wife is sitting in the chair that stands between the rack of coats forgotten since winter and the telephone table. She had come to fetch the blouse of Ana’s that the gypsy had picked up on the street. She had not yet taken two steps towards the kitchen when the telephone began to ring behind her. Before a moment had passed she answered it.
It was Francisco’s wife. It was her shy voice. She was phoning with few words, merely to say that he had arrived well. Francisco had phoned her to say he had arrived well. My wife tried to find out what the city was like where he was. She wanted to know if it was as she imagined it. She tried to learn the exact words he’d said, but when she realised she was not going to be told any more she asked her how she was. Francisco’s wife is pregnant. As soon as her belly began to show she stopped working at the hospital. She was sent home. Her voice is very low — as though dissolving into dust. It was with this voice that she said that she was well. After the silence, they said their goodbyes.
Having hung up the telephone, my wife sat down on the chair. First, she stared into emptiness. Then she held the chrome-plated frame and looked at Francisco’s face in our family photograph. He was six years old. To anyone looking at us there, we will always be the same age. We will always be in that moment. We are always in that moment. Francisco is very serious. I have my hand on his shoulder. Beside me is my wife between our daughters. Next to Francisco is Simão, apart, almost out of shot. It’s Maria who is smiling the most. Marta is still elegant. Simão is in a bad mood. Behind us, the Rossio Fountain. In the photograph there are still many years to go before our first granddaughter — Elisa — will be born, even more till Ana is born, even more till Hermes is born, even more till Íris is born. Marta is not yet thinking about getting married. Maria has not yet met her boyfriend. In that moment, we were happy. Before that there had been gestures that brought us to that moment; afterwards there were gestures that took us away from that moment; but, in that moment, we were happy.
The punishment I chose for myself was to know what happened next.
We went round and round Rossio waiting for the photograph to be developed. Maria and Marta walked together. Francisco walked beside me. My wife and Simão walked on their own, two steps ahead of me, each to their own side. Sometimes I would look to the middle of the square and see the photographer get himself under the cloth, lift an arm and take photographs of couples with babies in their arms. Tired of having passed repeatedly by the same chestnut-sellers and the same flower-sellers, tired of dodging people walking towards us, when the time had elapsed and we received the photograph in an envelope, we all agreed that we hadn’t come out well.
In those days the truck wasn’t all that old, and that was how we got back home. Francisco and Simão travelled on the back. When they lowered down I could see their faces in the rear-view mirror. The wind disfigured their expressions. They clung on more tightly and tumbled when the truck tyres went through some pothole in the road. My wife was next to me, talking to our daughters. I was silent.
The punishment I chose for myself was to know what happened next.
After we’d had dinner, under the kitchen lamp, the curtains moving slightly in the windows, the embers fading in the grate, it was winter, my arm, my thick hand in a single movement, like an impulse, but not even an impulse, like a desire you have for a moment and which becomes concrete in that same moment, another person’s desire within me, a desire which is not thought, but which rises up like a flame, and my arm, my thick hand crossing a straight and invisible distance, me looking at her face and lessening this strength a little, and my hand meets her face and her mouth, the tips of my thick fingers touching her hair and her ear, the coarse sound of flesh against flesh, the expression on her face changing, tense under my hand, and my hand ceasing to exist when she falls flailing, the disordered sound of her body falling to the floor, her back knocking over a wooden stool, me now wanting to pick her up, now wanting to hold her, now wanting to undo what had just happened, but just standing waiting for it to happen, I can’t do anything, I can’t go back, it’s impossible, and her body stopped, I began to feel the burning memory of her face, mouth, hair and ear still on my hand, and all the objects in the kitchen seeming to burn, the scales for weighing grams of flour, the tile with a Lisbon landscape hanging on the wall, the ashtray of shining porcelain, and the children crying, the children crying, but the smallest came running and clung on to my legs, I felt his thin body clinging on to my legs as though he wanted to stop me, as though he was holding on to a mountain that was much stronger than him, and I held him by his arm, opened the door and sent them to their room, my arm pointing to the open door, and them afraid to pass between me and the open door, I shouted words, the eldest was crying, she couldn’t hold back her tears, her face flushed, red, her sister was crying all the tears she had, her nose curving down, the brothers were crying like little men who already didn’t want to cry, who had already begun to want to unlearn how to cry, and they passed me and I closed the door. She got up and sat on a stool, in the light, crying. I rested my closed fists on the table, my breath racing, close to tears.