It was Sunday. I awoke mid-morning with a bitter, gummy taste enveloping the whole of the inside of my mouth. I put on some trousers, and bare-chested opened the yard door and took two steps — the earth under my feet. Slowly I got used to the light that dazzled me, but I couldn’t bear the sun on my head, which was why I stopped beneath the lemon tree.
On Sundays, the birds are freer. They show themselves off looping round in the air because they know people will notice them more. On Sundays, the noise of the streets is different — the voices, unconcerned, settle over the empty space left by the harsh voices of the weekdays. That was one of those Sundays, it was a Sunday Sunday, but I was waking from a world in which there were no Sundays and that day seemed strange to me, just as any other day would have seemed strange to me.
I rinsed my mouth with water. I washed myself under the yard tap. I breathed. Drops of water, settled on my eyelashes, gave a glisten to the corners of the outdoor sink where my mother no longer washed the clothes. I went into the house, wiped myself down, and as I got dressed my bones clicked dryly like vine branches splitting.
I tried to think as I walked down the street. It was Sunday. I passed gentlemen with their watch chains coming out of their pockets, and ladies on their way back from mass. Bit by bit I was getting back to being something closer to myself. Bit by bit it was as though I was regaining the gestures in my hands, regaining the movements in the movements of my legs. It was as though I was returning to my own body.
Knocking on the door with my knuckles, that moment seemed to me the distinct and definitive entry into reality — all the outlines returned to their objects, the colours stopped drifting into stains. As I waited, I focused on the door, immobile, in front of me. Behind it, I could hear a current of steps approaching. And the sound of a lock opening. And the door moving away, opening.
It was her. It was her face, there in front of me, looking at me. It was her lips, suspended, the infinite depth of her eyes, her skin. If I stretched out an arm I could touch her. A blanket of heat enveloped me. The sun stuck to my whole body and transformed itself into hot skin. She wasn’t expecting to see me there either. Her face took on new shapes as she looked at me. Anyone else wouldn’t have been able to make it out. In the corner of her lips arose a very subtle smile.
In that glowing silence, I don’t know how I was able to say the words of the banal phrase that simply asked for the Italian. I don’t know how I was able to understand, in her fragile, incandescent voice, that the Italian had left early that morning. I don’t know how I was able to float in the vastness of her eyes — the horizon — and ask her if the Italian hadn’t left anything for me. I don’t know how I didn’t die — my heart bursting in the middle of my chest — when she, never stopping watching me — purity and beauty — shook her head, so very slowly, to one side and the other — the smooth skin of her neck — the way my fingers could have slipped, slowly, across the smooth skin of her neck. The Italian had left without paying me and all I could do was look at her and smile.
When we said goodbye, each trapped in the other’s eyes, we kept smiling because there were many things we wanted to say. When she shut the door, I remained where I was. For an immeasurable length of time I kept looking at the closed door, smiling and feeling everything that still remained of her presence.
I arrived at the workshop. I went into the piano cemetery. I leaned on a piano — my body leaving a mark in the dust — and I remembered the image of her face. I talked to the image of her face. I listened to the image of her face. And hours went past. It was only much later that I remembered the Italian. He left early in the morning and didn’t pay me for the work with money, he paid me with something that was worth much more — the pianos and the indelible image of her face.
For a moment, my wife leans over the ledge and casts her gaze over the empty street, as though looking for the figure of the gypsy. In the kitchen, looking at nothing, she freezes — only she knows what she’s thinking — and then, after a shudder, she starts to move again. She is holding Ana’s damp blouse. She cleans off the pavement dirt with her hand and decides to hang it out because she can’t put it in the laundry basket wet.
This blouse used to belong to Elisa when she was smaller. All our grandchildren inherited clothes from one another. Even Hermes, when he was a baby, wore clothes from his sister and from Ana. The few times Marta went out with him, people would be misled by the colours and said:
‘What a delightful little girl.’
When Hermes started to walk, Marta stopped dressing him in his sister’s and cousin’s clothes.
It was a cardboard suitcase, marked by scratches, worn at the corners, old. On the side where the fastener was, under the clasp, it had the tin figure of a running man, his arms and legs stopped mid-movement. All our grandchildren tried to tear the tin man off. None of them could. He was stuck there for ever. It was Marta who packed Elisa’s clothes away in the case and took it over to Maria’s house a few months before Ana was born. Maria packed these clothes back in the case, added to it a few she had bought, and took it fuller than it had been to Marta’s house a few months before Hermes was born. Marta packed these clothes back in the case, added to it a few she had bought, and took it fuller than it had been to Maria’s house a few months before Íris was born.
My wife hangs out the blouse and thinks vaguely about eternity. One day, this blouse that had been bought for Elisa, and which is worn by Ana, will also be worn by Íris. Even after that day, the future will go on.
‘Ah, my little monster!’ I’d say, and Ana would come running to me in the kitchen. It was a weekend, because Maria had come to visit us. Ana was not much more than a year old, but already she would run to me saying:
‘Grampa, Grampa, Grampa.’ And she was almost breathless. I was very ill. I had pains, and I knew I was close to dying. Ana was very like Maria when she was small — the dark hair and very blue shining eyes. When I saw her eyes with the child’s smile I felt sorry, because I thought that when she was big, she wouldn’t remember me. I didn’t remember my grandparents who died when I was her age.
‘Ah, my little monster!’ I’d say. She would come running and jump into my lap. I was sitting on a sofa that had come from Maria’s house when she had bought better sofas. I’d hold her in my lap and we played a game. Maria was making the dinner with her mother. For a moment I forgot all about them. I was playing a game with Ana. Her little hands slapped at my face. I smiled at her, very thin.
After a few weeks, even my uncle noticed.
During the daytimes, without there being any pianos to repair, I would spend hours lost in the piano cemetery. I was always late in, in the mornings, and many times I found my uncle waiting for me by the big door, as yet unshaved, hair uncombed, holding his beret in his hand and looking at me in wonder, his left eye open very wide. At the end of the day I didn’t want to be alone at home and stayed with my uncle in the taberna. But I didn’t want to be in the taberna either. I drank glasses of wine and stayed at one end of the bar, not allowing anyone to talk to me.