My wife — waking up one Sunday morning she remembers that it was on a Sunday that I died. The hospital. The telephone ringing in Maria’s house. Earlier, Sunday mornings had been the time we all woke up together, we all got up together. It was sunny every Sunday morning. Our children. Even earlier, Sunday mornings were when her godmother would open all the windows of the boarding house, they were sun.
Marta — on Sunday mornings she’s the first person to get to the kitchen — nightdress, slippers — makes breakfast so that the children feel all is right with the world. Her husband didn’t sleep at home. Earlier, when they still lived in Benfica, Elisa was so small, she’d go into the bedroom, jump on to her parents’ bed, stumble across their bodies, lie down between the two of them and, together, they’d laugh, they’d laugh because it was Sunday. Earlier, Marta was just a girl, she’d help her mother to make lunch and she laughed, too, she laughed because it was Sunday.
Maria — there are Sunday mornings, like this one, when she feels a thin pain inside her, like the cold, when she cannot smile; and there are Sunday mornings when she believes in a solar certainty that fills her up. On those Sundays, all her ages mingle together. She is a child, playing with Simão in the yard, she’s a girl reading romance novels in the piano cemetery, she’s nearly a woman, dreaming of her wedding day. Today she thinks only that her husband is going to phone her, that her husband is going to ask her forgiveness, and she feels a thin pain inside her, like the cold.
Elisa — Sunday mornings are already lots of things. When she was small, in the Benfica house, she’d walk barefoot along the hall runner and climb on to her parents’ bed. Her mother told her to keep still, and at the same time she tickled her. Elisa laughed a lot, and under the sheets she’d push out her thin white chest with its many ribs just perfect for tickling. Now grown, she no longer goes to her parents’ bed. She gets up when Hermes starts pulling at her arm. Hermes wants to play. When she gets to the kitchen her mother asks her if she’s done her schoolwork yet.
Ana — Sunday mornings are a matter to which she gives some thought. Ana thinks about what she feels. She thinks, ‘Now.’ And she thinks that now is, mysteriously and concretely, now. Later, time will make her forget what she feels. Later, years later, she’ll find it strange that anyone could consider Sunday mornings a matter to be given some thought, still less a matter worth talking about. She will never talk about this. No one will ever talk to her about this. She will never think about this. Now, this is what she thinks about.
Hermes — he is beginning to discover Sunday mornings, just as he is beginning to discover everything. He doesn’t remember many Sunday mornings. He remembers days when his mother or father doesn’t go out to work. He remembers days when Elisa doesn’t go to school. Hermes knows what it is, this word ‘Sunday’. He knows it’s a word. There are words like it. There is the word ‘anyway’, there is the word ‘seventy’. Sunday, anyway, seventy, are words Elisa and his mother use. Hermes doesn’t really know, he really doesn’t know what they mean. He knows they are words. This is enough for him. On Sunday mornings, Hermes goes to wake Elisa. He asks her to play. Elisa goes to do her schoolwork and Hermes goes to play alone in the yard.
Íris — Íris has happiness. When it’s Sunday morning, Íris wakes up and the house is full. Not just her grandmother trying to persuade her to eat, not just her mother having to go to work and chivvying Ana along. There’s her father, too, and there’s a lot of time. Íris wanders the house in her pyjamas. She chats with her father, her mother, her grandmother. She goes into the living room, approaches Ana and suddenly grabs her and kisses her on the cheek. For a moment Ana smiles, bites her tongue and makes an awkward face. Then she continues to focus on what she was doing. Íris grabs hold of the toy box, lifts it in the air and tips it on to the living-room floor.
It was only much later that I realised something in my uncle’s face had changed. It was only much later that I realised that from a certain moment all his gestures and all his words were fragments of a goodbye.
My daughters were small. There were not many months to go before Simão would be born. When my wife went to the grocer’s or to the market, she’d take Marta by the hand, she’d push a buggy with Maria watching everything, and carry Simão in her steep belly. All the neighbour women who passed her shared their hunches. Many said she would have another girl, many said she would have a boy. Standing in the middle of the carpentry shop, my uncle was very serious — his left eye open, the absence of his right eye covered over by the smooth white lid, fused with the skin of his face — and told me that a boy would be born. He told me he was quite certain a boy would be born. And he followed me with his good eye and his blind eye to be quite sure I had no doubts.
I had no doubts. I had no silence or peace for any secret thoughts. There were two girls waiting for me when I got home, and in a few months there would be another child, too, boy or girl, crying in the night, needing everything I could give. That was what I thought about. I wanted to finish the work that came in every day because I wanted more work. Each hour life began, and there was no limit to what my body could take. I didn’t feel the splinters of wood that stuck into the palms of my hands, just as I didn’t notice how, in the mornings, my uncle would arrive at the workshop before me, how I didn’t get angry when he’d disappear for two hours and then came back smiling. I said nothing to him. Deep down I thought he went to the taberna.
He didn’t go to the taberna. It was only much later that I realised that for those hours my uncle would go to the piano cemetery.
My wife, Marta, Maria, Elisa, Ana, Hermes and Íris all woke at the same time. They remained in bed, each thinking themselves the only one awake. Minutes passed. When Íris got up and sat on the bed, Hermes suddenly got up, too. Ana and Elisa got up, too. When they started playing with the pillows, jumping on the beds, shouting, Marta got up, and in no time at all her slippers were echoing on the hall floor. In the sewing room my wife got up, clutching her back. Right after that, Maria got up.
The morning passed. It is Sunday. There’s a week until Francisco runs in the marathon at the Olympic Games. Marta’s husband has just gone into the kitchen, walked across it in silence, gone into the living room and sat down in silence. Marta follows him, and the moment he sits her body is there standing in front of him — hands on her waist. She whispers that they’re going to go out to Lisbon after lunch. Her husband tells her she can’t go. Marta tries to settle herself, she breathes, and still whispers:
‘But you promised.’
Her husband tells her she can’t go. Marta, irritated, whispering loudly, says that her mother is counting on the lift back, that her sister is also counting on the lift; she says again that he promised, he’ll need the bits of wood to burn in the winter. Her husband tells her they will go to the workshop the following Sunday, he promises her, he says her sister can keep her mother company on the train. Marta asks if he’s already forgotten that next Sunday Francisco runs in the Olympic Games; she gets angrier, whispers ever louder, gets angrier.