‘Here comes Lázaro.’
As he ran past them, the people would say:
‘Come on, Lázaro!’
As though he could hear them, he ran across kilometres that were left as marks on his face. Close to the finishing line other runners would arrive, who with their final strength might pull him by his vest, or thump him in the back, who might knock him over, but he always arrived out in front, and perhaps limping, perhaps with the palms of his hands grazed, perhaps with blood trickling down his knees; he was glorious and infinite. When he received his medal, he would lower his head. People applauded him, admired him, and spoke his name. They would never forget his name.
It was on the day that my father ran with the best in the world. He travelled by boat to Stockholm and every little detail was new. The sea was how you’d imagine death to be, or unconditional love. My father had a great deal of hope. On that day he ran along the streets, against the streets, until the moment that he began to lose his place, began to fall back, to run in disarray, muddling his legs and his arms. He fell after thirty kilometres. He was surrounded by people who didn’t know him. He was taken to hospital. And he died. He stopped breathing and thinking. He didn’t stop being my father.
It was on the day that I was born.
My uncle said that, when the news was heard, there were some people who thought he had found death while fleeing from it, and there were some who thought that he had escaped from death while seeking it.
I couldn’t understand why my mother hadn’t told me — all those years, summers and winters, all the times we’d sat at the kitchen table eating cake halves and drinking tea, all the times I sat on the earth floor of the yard while she washed clothes in the tank, sitting by the fire, sitting on the yard steps — I didn’t understand where I’d been born from. This black ignorance spread itself inside all my years, it moved ahead, it ran, till it touched me there, at that moment, standing opposite my uncle and a shoebox filled with medals.
The light, the smell of wood, and my uncle, almost voiceless, almost as if he was breathing, spoke to me of my aunt.
‘She’s the one who can explain it to you better.’
The times my mother spoke to me of my aunts they were light words in her voice, they were like breezes. Along with my uncle, my father had had two sisters. The younger died tragically, so tragically, gravely, in a way that no one dared speak of it, in a way that just to think of it demanded a lowering of the eyes and a conspicuous silence, as though everyone was to blame for her death. The older lived outside Lisbon. When my aunts saw me, I was very small, I’d just been born. After the younger died, the older never came back to Lisbon.
My uncle, as if breathing, spoke to me of my aunt. He told me that she’d kept newspaper cuttings. He told me that she remembered everything.
As of that moment — me measuring laths, my uncle varnishing doors and telling stories that never ended — I could only think that I wanted to go, ought to go, needed to go to my aunt’s house to talk to her and listen to her.
It was Simão who started the game, who invented it. Marta was still living in Benfica. Elisa was small; Simão would open his arms and say to her:
‘Hug me as hard as you like me!’
Elisa smiled with her eyes, she started running and stood, her arms wide, very far from Simão. He pretended to cry, with the pretend crying of a child, pretended to be rubbing his eyes. Once Elisa believed that he had cried enough, she would run into his arms and squeeze him as hard as she could. Simão felt Elisa’s little chest squeezing him. She squeezed him until her throat started making a noise signifying great effort. At that moment she’d stop and Simão would kiss her cheeks noisily.
I knew that Simão visited Maria. I didn’t talk about this, but I knew. Simão played this game with Ana too. Francisco started playing this game with Hermes, and later with Íris. Whenever Francisco comes into Maria’s house, he looks for Íris, opens his arms and says to her:
‘Hug me as hard as you like me!’
In the kitchen, after lunch, Maria remains seated at the table, her gaze lost. Sometimes she gives a jump inside because she thinks the phone is going to ring. She believes her husband is going to call to ask forgiveness, calling for her — please, come home, please. At other times she raises her face, looks all around her, because she thinks the phone has rung. Noticing that her sister remains indifferent, running plates under the tap, realising that her mother hasn’t stopped putting away the food that was left in the oven, Maria goes back to losing her gaze, and returns to her sad thoughts.
In the corridor, the afternoon begins to pass across the objects. There is no one to see them or hear them, and so their silence is not real. Perhaps a speck of dust falls on to the table under the mirror. Perhaps the mirror doesn’t show any reflection at all. Perhaps time has stopped.
In the sewing room, on all fours on the carpet, Íris, with her bandaged hand, is gripping a doll by the waist. Her fingers go round its waist. She tilts the doll one way and the other, one of its little plastic feet touches the floor, and then the other — tap, tap, tap. Wobbling, the doll walks, making its way across the pattern in the carpet.
Sitting at the other end, completely hunched on the floor, Hermes is holding a fire engine.
Íris’s voice, reedy — a child imitating a child — it’s the voice of the dolclass="underline"
‘Hello, neighbour. What are you doing?’
The fire engine, in Hermes’s hand, has the thickest voice he can manage:
‘Hello. I’m having a rest. I was just putting out a fire.’
‘Oh, a fire, that’s very good. Where’s your mummy?’
‘My mummy’s to work. She comes home at ten o’clock.’
‘She’s to work? But. . but she told me she would come home at thirty-two o’clock.’
Hermes opens his eyes wide, opens his mouth in pretend amazement, in pretend shock, and says:
‘At thirty-two o’clock?’
‘Oh, no, I’m sorry, sir. My mummy’s coming home at seventy-forty o’clock.’
As though marvelling, Hermes opens his eyes and his mouth wider still. From deep within this surprise he says:
‘At seventy-forty o’clock?’
For a moment Íris says nothing. She waits. Her narrow shoulders tremble as she laughs. Ana and Elisa know that they’re more grown-up and they’re talking, sitting in little chairs, under the brightness of the window. Hermes gets up, pulls his sister’s arm and says:
‘She says her mother’s coming home at seventy-forty o’clock. .’
Íris laughs to herself. Ana and Elisa look over towards her and smile. Ana says:
‘Oh. .’
Íris, in the middle of a laugh, says:
‘She’s coming home at a thousand o’clock.’
Ana, laughing, looks at Elisa and rotates her index finger against her forehead. My wife, without coming in, calls Íris. She is coming to fetch her to have a siesta. Hermes starts a tantrum. He wants his cousin to keep playing. My wife starts to scold him. He is about to cry, he’s really going to cry, when he picks up the fire engine and throws it on the floor with all his strength.
Íris is nearly three years old. She comes up to him, puts her finger to her lips and very seriously, so that only Hermes can hear her, she says:
‘Don’t cry. I’ll go and sleep my siesta with Granny, but I’ll come back yesterday. All right? I’ll come back at seventy-forty o’clock.’
And she gives him a kiss on the cheek.
My wife was talking about how much the baby had kicked between the fifth and seventh months.