and I love you almost too much
at the foot of the walls. This perpetual sun comes in, lighting up every corner, this breeze reminds me of when I was small and my father took me to the fishmarket and showed me the blocks of ice which the men arranged on the crates of fish. It is as if, in this perpetual sun that’s burning skin and walls, there exist veins that are made of this ice. It was almost eleven o’clock at night and it was still day. These waters freeze over in the winter. It’s Sweden. My teammate wasn’t kidding me, in spite of having laughed when I looked at the dinner cutlery not knowing what to do, and in spite of having laughed as I practised holding tight on to the cutlery, and having laughed again when he said, ‘Good old Lázaro.’
the morning. I was looking at a wooden lath, my hands feeling its shape — the angles, the lines — but I didn’t see it, and I didn’t feel it, really. Time dissolved into the light, but I ignored time and the only true light was that which lit up her face within my memory — her walking beside me, her voice, her standing at the door to her house, her silences — her thin arms reaching out, her hands, her belly under a cardigan, her breasts, her legs below the end of her skirt — the serene certainties of her face — her before a kiss — her lips — voice and silence. I might have been looking at a piece of wood when the lady came in. Her little thin body, dressed in black, appeared at the door to the carpentry shop unannounced. That was the moment I lifted my head to see her approaching me — her face contented and casual, her steps on the sawdust that covered the floor. I walked over to her and before saying anything else apologised for the sawdust, for the dust and for something else I didn’t know what. It was a lady with a gold pin, with polished shoes and who looked at me, contented, almost as though she was smiling. A lady who was
Kilometre five
distinguished. Never, not even when my father was alive, had I seen such a distinguished lady come into the workshop. Without having heard her voice I already thought her face friendly — the wrinkled skin, white hair, hat with a black tulle brim behind it. Her voice was friendly. As though pleasantly making a statement, she asked me if I repaired pianos. I could only reply yes. Then I was already taking the pencil from behind my ear and making a note of her address on a small bit of board I picked up off the floor. I’d go by the following day. The lady’s smile made me smile, too. I stayed there, watching her move away towards the exit. The sounds of the city returned to the open windows. The morning returned. The image of the lady — her friendliness — remained, slowly dissolving and I only thought about her again when, the next day, I went along
am trying to remember the happiest moments, I always end up seeing the vague image in my memory of a Sunday lunch. The diffuse clarity of the light. My mother possibly plucking a chicken. The smell of boiling water poured over the chicken’s body. My mother, in the yard, sitting at a basin, in a shadow. The noise of the feathers being yanked out in fistfuls by my mother. It was always spring. It was always May. Maria might be hiding in her room, inventing fantasies, reading romance novels under the shade of the shutters; or she might be helping my mother; or she might be standing in the yard, absorbed, listening to the long tale my mother was telling in every detail as she plucked a chicken. There were birds that suddenly rose up in flight from the orange trees in the yard and which awoke a rustling of leaves. Simão came up the streets with an empty bottle in his hand, he went into the taberna and didn’t need to say anything. The man reached out his arm over the marble countertop. My brother held the bottle out to him. The marble was colder than the shade. And my brother waited as the man fitted the funnel into the neck of the bottle and as the noise of the wine that flowed from the barrel sounded alone in the empty taberna. He opened the palm of his hand where he held the sweaty coin and walked the path back home. Alongside the wall, his face was serious as he walked. His left eye fixed on a point that didn’t exist, and which was ahead of him. He made his way forwards, drawn by this. On the right side of his face, his eyelid rested over the empty socket. The lid sunk into the smooth hole that linked his cheek to his eyebrow. A black hand squeezes my heart. My breast
because time hurts as it passes. If I could only tell you what you were — what you are still — your face looking at me, not understanding. If only I could tell you everything I was hiding. Me not allowing my fingers to be delicate and pass through the air to touch the lines of your face — the skin of the face that encloses you. I, a criminal. You, kindly, looking at me not understanding. I — you. If only I could tell you all the sorrow I was hiding, and the tenderness, the hurt. If only I could tell you that in everything — in us — time
on Sundays, my father smiled. We were having lunch. My mother had bought fish at the market. My father was complaining about the bones. My mother was turned towards Maria or towards my brother, and she was saying, ‘Don’t eat so quickly.’ I was seven or eight years old and my mother had chosen a piece of fish for me, and with the point of her knife had removed all the bones. Marta was still going out with the guy who is now her husband. It was the third or fourth time he’d had lunch with us. Probably someone was telling a joke, probably someone was telling the story of something that had happened, when Marta choked and started coughing. Her boyfriend got up and began patting her on the back. Marta kept coughing. My mother said to her, ‘Eat a little bit of bread.’ A thread of drool slipped from Marta’s mouth on to her plate. Marta coughed and her face got redder and redder. She stopped coughing, and she remained for a moment with her head lowered. My father asked her if she was better, but she didn’t reply. The boyfriend held her by one arm, his other hand on her shoulder, and he didn’t know what to say. My father said, ‘This fish is useless, it’s nothing but bones.’ My sister started coughing again, and when she managed to spit out the bone her plate was full of spit mixed with blood floating in the oil. As Marta recovered her breathing, my father raised his voice, saying: ‘I did say that this fish was rubbish, it’s money wasted on this complete swindle.’ And he threw the cutlery on to the plate. Shouting, he asked my mother, ‘What went through your head, spending money on this rubbish?’ My mother didn’t reply. My father said, ‘What a swindle, what rubbish.’ My mother continued not to reply. My father grabbed her by the arm, shook her and shouted: ‘Aren’t you listening?’ My mother looked at him, her eyes serious. In a single movement my father took the plate and smashed it on the floor. Shouting, he said, ‘Don’t you look at me like that, you hear me?’ It was that Sunday that my father stopped being ashamed of Marta’s boyfriend. When Marta took him to the door