In the kitchen my wife finishes making lunch, turns off the stove, and Maria is sitting waiting for her husband to call her, and the sound of Marta’s voice, whispered in the living room, comes in like razor blades cutting through the air.
My daughters and my wife haven’t seen Simão since the first weekend Íris spent at home, just after she was born.
Sunday. Sun. My daughters’ husbands almost dropped Marta when they were helping her down off the back of the truck. Maria was watching them from the window, my wife was in the hallway, Hermes in her arms, next to Elisa, and they jumped at the shock. Hermes started to cry. It was Marta herself who comforted him, as they came up the stairs, hand in hand, very slowly. Hermes, ever so small, thin, scrawny, and Marta.
When the two sisters saw one another there was a soft, embarrassed smile on their faces. In each other’s eyes they were girls. In the middle of Maria’s living room it was as though they were in their room at our house and another summer afternoon was drawing to an end and their voices and dreams were mingled together. They were girls, suddenly grown. Marta had her best dress on, a cardigan and a shining pin. Maria was in a nightdress she had bought before going into the maternity ward. And they embraced quickly, amid nervous laughter, bumping their clumsy bodies, when what they wanted was to embrace and stay in that embrace for a long time.
That day my wife smiled, too. Ana ran to Elisa — holding hands. Excited, speaking loudly, she was about to say something about her sister when her mother made a sibilant sound — then they took careful steps to the bedroom door. Maria went ahead and opened the door very gently, avoiding the tiny noises of the hinges and the latch. Behind her, my wife held Elisa’s and Ana’s shoulders. Behind them, Marta occupied the whole doorway. The shadow, which was the colour of the whole room, covered them. Maria stopped at the head of Íris’s crib, and, proud, happy, she waited for them to come closer.
Íris’s body, covered by a pink blanket, was an even, perfect shape. In her sleeping face there were her little lips, her baby’s nose, her serene skin. She had one hand open, abandoned beside her head — the fingers of a doll. She had the serenity that’s only possible in absolute innocence, in absolute purity.
When they came back to the living room they were laughing, wanting to speak loudly but restraining themselves, covering their mouths with their hands. The husbands, sitting with legs crossed, watched them come in. Hermes, on the ground, was moving a piece of paper around, worrying it. My wife, satisfied and silent, went into Maria’s kitchen to make some tea.
They were sitting at the table, talking, drinking tea, eating slices of the cake that Marta had brought, when they heard a knock at the door. Maria made to get up, but her body was worn down, pained. Marta made to get up, but her body was huge, heavy. My wife got up and walked towards the door. She thought it was Francisco. She opened the door. It was Simão.
He had washed his face. He came in, not knowing what to do with his hands. My wife hadn’t seen him since the night when that thing happened that we’ll never forget. What little news she received came from Francisco, or, before that, when Marta still lived in Benfica, she knew about the afternoons when he’d go to visit Elisa. My wife held back in her throat the lightning flash she felt when he said:
‘Mother.’
Simão was wearing a clean shirt with old faded stains. He was wearing worn old trousers. He was wearing boots that took a couple of embarrassed steps. Marta and Maria got up to greet him with a shyness of being his sisters, his actual sisters, and also strangers, almost strangers.
Simão stroked Elisa’s head, but it took her a time to recognise him. Maria, managing to speak normally, gestured him towards Ana, who was looking down at the ground. Simão smiled. Then he bent down and held his hand out to Hermes, but the boy remained fearless, staring at his uncle’s blind eye. Maria said:
‘You know I had a little girl?’
‘Francisco told me.’ Simão’s voice was soft.
Maria offered to go and fetch her.
‘Leave her. I don’t want to be a bother.’
‘It’s no bother. It’s time for her feed.’
And there was silence. My daughters’ husbands had stopped their conversation and looked at him. Marta offered him tea. He said no, and thanked her. My wife wanted to see him. She wanted to make up for whole years of missing him, of loss, of anxiety, of hurt. She wanted, in a single moment, to recover her son. Our son.
Maria came in, with Íris in her arms. Elisa and Ana clustered around her legs. Marta leaned herself on the tabletop, stood up and walked towards her, saying incomplete words, with soft consonants. Maria smiled with her whole face and put the girl in her arms. Marta, looking only at her, continued to speak with the same little voice, tilting her up so that everyone could see her. Marta put the girl into my wife’s arms — her face tender now — and it was my wife, with an exaggerated gesture, who put her into Simão’s arms. She was so small in his arms. He smiled. He looked around him. His sisters were smiling at him. My wife was looking at him tenderly. He lowered his face to kiss Íris’s cheek, but pricked her with his beard. As though shocked, she started to cry, inconsolable. Simão tried to rock her, to calm her, but she cried more and more. Then he passed her into Maria’s arms, who also tried to calm her, but she shouted, cried more and more. Simão, embarrassed, put his hands in his pockets and took them out again. Maria sat down to breastfeed Íris, but she didn’t want it. She only wanted to cry. Her face was round and red, getting ever redder.
‘There now, all gone. .’ Maria said again and again.
Íris, wrapped in a shawl, was a small, compact body, a single solid shape that cried. My wife and Marta tried to calm her, but she cried, shouted as though tearing her voice in the air. Her sister and cousins looked at her, marvelling. Simão began saying his goodbyes. Íris was gathering in strength, as though she didn’t need to breathe.
‘Wait. Don’t go yet,’ said Maria, under Íris’s distressed, shrill cries.
But Simão, embarrassed, hastily saying his goodbyes, as though fleeing, left.
The morning Simão was born, a lad appeared at the workshop, panting, addressing me as sir, with the message that I ought to go home right away. I stopped looking at the half-sawn piece of wood that was held in the lathe, wiped my hands on my trousers and went up to my uncle to give him the workshop keys. He held my arm, sent the lad away, telling him I wouldn’t be long. I looked at him, not understanding, but I didn’t speak because for the first time there was peace in his face, there was calm — his serene face.
The lad’s footsteps moved away across the floor of the carpentry shop, then the dirt of the entrance hall and then the road. The sounds of the birds in the roof-beams returned. The endlessness of the specks of sawdust returned, specks of sawdust that hovered in the air, floated and came to rest on every object, on our skin. My uncle started walking towards the piano cemetery without needing to tell me to follow him.
What stretched out ahead of us was time. At the end of one of the passageways of dust, my uncle stopped in front of an upright piano that was cleaner than all the others. I realised that this piano was shining. My uncle’s voice was soft. He told me that over the past months he had been trying to bring this piano to life. He’d looked for the parts that were missing, replaced the parts that were damaged, rotten. His face showed that it knew sadness. My uncle had tried to repair the piano to give it to the boy who would be born, but he hadn’t been able to finish it in time. There was so little left to do. Then he asked me if I would finish sorting it out myself. He asked me to look for the final parts. I didn’t altogether understand at that moment what it was he was saying to me, which was why I smiled. I smiled. I put my hand on his shoulder and said we’d have to fix the piano together. He made me promise I’d fix the piano, made me promise I’d give it to the boy who would be born. I replied yes, yes of course, and I smiled. I smiled. In the silence that followed those words and that smile, I wanted to give him the workshop keys, but he told me he’d go out, too. I was already thinking about my wife, about my child about to be born. I went out with my uncle, closed the big workshop door, and as I ran I said goodbye with broken words.