Kilometre eleven
against the wind. I was running down the streets, and for this time it was the whole city, it was the houses, the faces, the voices beginning to turn into night. During the days, fooled by the sawdust or by what I had to do, it was easy to lead my thoughts anywhere I wanted. If I started to think and to hurt myself, I’d stop at the part in front of me — perhaps an unfinished window, perhaps the beginning of a table leg — and I knew that at some point, with no effort, another thought would come, a more agreeable thought, which would either entertain me or soothe me. But when I went out to train, I ran along the streets and no one could imagine the world of words I carried with me. To run is to be absolutely alone. I’ve known it since the beginning — in solitude it’s impossible to escape from myself. After the very first few steps black walls rise up around me. The world, harmless, moves away. As I run, I remain still within myself, and I wait. At last I am at my own mercy. At first, I was thirteen years old and I ran in order to find the silence of a peace I thought didn’t belong to me. I didn’t yet know that it was just the reflection of my own peace. Later, as life became more complicated, it was too late to be able to stop. Running was a part of me like my name. It was then I learned how to run against the words that were inside me, just as I learned to run against
when we’re together
the wind. I ran along the streets, and as I got further from the workshop I might complete the remainder of some thought that had been broken by a word that developed into others — a first step, another, another and all the ones that followed it, indistinguishable from each other. It was a word too quick to understand where it had come from, but it was a vital word because it was through that word that I began to remember the nights — her voice and, in the background, the huge façade of the hospital. On a day that was getting ever further away, my father had died in that hospital. And as she spoke, we made our way hand in hand through the inside of her voice. And another sudden word reminding me of the evenings when I’d arrive at her house. The lady opening the door — me following her down, along the hallway — the piano music in everything — her face — her skin. And there was a moment when her voice and her face mingled together — her, and her. Her voice in the darkness of the piano cemetery, and her face, serious, on the hall rugs. My fingers in her wavy hair, or running through her long, straight hair. My hand squeezing hers. My hands holding her waist. I couldn’t resist the thoughts that hurt me most. I never thought of the two of them at the same time, but they mingled together within me. I ran along the streets and no one could have known that there were plates shifting within me.
couldn’t stay still. My mother had gone off to sort something out, she crossed paths with her and said nothing. Maria said nothing to her either, she said nothing to anyone. She went around concerned with strands of hair and specks of dust. Maria wanted everything to be perfect. It was Sunday, and it was the end of winter. Marta was helping her mother. Simão was far away. I was sitting on a bench by the fireside. Maria had on her best dress and a cardigan and a costume necklace. Our father was sitting at the table — his arms resting on the tabletop. He waited in silence — a glass and a bottle. There was a knock at the door. Maria turned suddenly in every direction. It was my mother who said to her, indifferently, ‘Go and open the door, what are you waiting for?’ After a moment of muted sounds — the lock, uncertain steps — and silence — silence — Maria came into the room with her boyfriend. My father had already seen him on the morning he’d turned up at the workshop to ask if he could go out with Maria. He greeted him normally. Maria’s boyfriend, nervous, greeted everyone and leaned against the cupboard. Maria stood beside him. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence. Maria was much taller than her boyfriend, but beside him she shrunk down, bent her back so as to be his height. He pulled himself up to his full height, stuck his chest out and lifted his chin. Maria’s boyfriend, dressed in his best suit, began to talk about the weather and addressed my father by his full name: Senhor Francisco Lázaro. My father replied to him, and added something. Maria’s boyfriend agreed, and added something. My father replied. And on they went. There was a smile on Maria’s face, mixed with serious attentiveness, as though the conversation between her father and her boyfriend was interesting, important, as though everything they said was right.
our bodies. In the gloom of the piano cemetery, in the almost complete darkness, I could make out her body — shape, shadow — lying on a grand piano — legs bare, dress pulled up to where her waist began, hands abandoned to either side of her head, her face — her hair stretched out on the black varnish of the piano and her eyes, open and lit up, watching me. As I undid my belt, as I unbuttoned my trousers, I focused on her face, and in the silence of my movements, in the night, I could recall her voice. Very slowly I lay my body down on top of hers. I rested all my weight on my knees, digging into the surface of the piano, and felt the inside of her legs on my legs. I knew how to find her lips
Kilometre twelve
and how to kiss them. Our heads fled from one another — sought one another. Our mouths tore against one another. My hands closed with all their strength against the palms of her hands. My lips slipped slowly down her neck, when what I wanted was to sink my teeth into her skin. Perhaps that was the moment my hands slid down her shoulders, and over her dress felt again, ever again, the shape of her breasts. I felt her hands on the back of my shirt, pulling me — the strength of her fingers sticking in — talons driven into the earth. I lifted her dress higher and my hands held her waist, as though her skin was fire, as though her skin was fire, as though her skin was fire. Burning. We stopped breathing at the same moment, when in an instant that might have lasted forever, that lasted forever, I entered her. Then the weight of my body itself pressed against her body. I held her within my arms, under me, and I inside her, and her, inside of her, being fire, being fire, being fire. Burning.
might think that it’s for a long time. I let myself go on like this. Unspeaking, without losing sight of them. When I get home I’m going to kiss my wife’s belly, I’m going to embrace her gently, and then, I’m going to tell her — I was all on my own, out in the lead, then on a bridge I let two get past me, just so they’d think they could win, I let them go ahead for half a dozen kilometres, I waited for them to get tired then I pulled back into first place. I’m going to tell everyone. My sisters, my brothers-in-law, my nieces and nephew will all assemble around me and in the silence I’m going to tell them all the same story. Then I’m going to meet up with my brother, he’ll come with me to the workshop and we’ll go to the taberna. When we go in the men will stand up from their chairs or straighten up from leaning against the bar to greet me. Hey, the hero! There will be one or two men who’ll offer us drinks, and then, when everyone has fallen silent, when the men’s gaze follows each of my words, I’m going to tell them how I was on my own, how I let two runners get past me, and then, when no one expected it, how I got past them again. The grimy toothless faces