When I reached the house, when I went into the bedroom, my wife already had Simão in her arms. Our daughters were round her and I approached the happiness. I held the happiness in my arms.
The following day my uncle didn’t come to the workshop in the morning, nor did he appear mid-morning. He didn’t come the next week, nor the next month, nor the next year, or ever again. Time passed. For the rest of the whole of my life, for all the days that would pass until that Sunday when I died in that hospital bed, I never saw my uncle again.
The piano he had started to repair was the part of me that still waited for him. I never repaired it. Dust covered it, making it indistinguishable from all the other pianos beside it that had temporarily died.
Later I remembered the hours, I remembered the goodness that shaped my uncle’s blind, dirty face, standing watching me or talking, talking — the stories that flowed from his body as though there were no end to the stories to be told. Later, too late.
In the truck, Marta’s husband is driving, annoyed. He doesn’t speak, he doesn’t hear, he looks straight ahead and he drives. Beside him, Maria and my wife have Íris and Hermes on their laps. On the back, wrapped in the noise of the engine and the wind, Marta travels in her armchair, and Ana and Elisa hold on to the bars of the truck. Up in front, Íris and Hermes are making up words to say when they get to Lisbon. In the back, the wind is making their hair into unusual shapes and doesn’t let them speak, but occasionally Ana brings her lips to Elisa’s ear and says words that no one else hears and that no one remembers.
Marta tries to see all the streets before they reach the workshop. She turns her head this way and that. They arrive at the workshop. Marta gets up from her chair and remains still, waiting for her husband to go into the taberna and come out with a few men. My grandchildren wait leaning on the wall. Maria and my wife surround the men, as though their stretched-out arms or their anxiety served some purpose. Two men hold Marta under her arms. Slowly. Slowly, the husband and another man receive her and with the care of something heavy and fragile deposit her on the ground.
Marta’s husband returns to the taberna with the men. My wife chooses the right key and opens the big workshop doors. Going in, the children run on to the dirt floor. My daughters and my wife don’t run, but their faces are rejuvenated, and as they go into the carpentry shop they are children, too. There are squares of wood on the floor, there are pieces of laths — so many possibilities. My work bench is arranged as Francisco left it. The bench which was my uncle’s, which Simão uses when he arrives in the morning asking Francisco for a few days’ work, is covered with scattered tools. My daughters know, as my wife knows, that nothing bad can happen in the workshop. As they walk their voices are simple and free. They are children. Maria opens the big patio door and goes down, followed by Marta and my wife. My grandchildren grab pieces of wood, they make houses and swords. Íris goes out of the carpentry shop on her own, she crosses the entrance hall and makes her way alone into the piano cemetery. Elisa, Ana and Hermes are being kept occupied, they don’t see her and think she’s on the patio with my wife, Maria and Marta. My wife, Maria and Marta notice little things, weeds growing between the pine shavings; they don’t see her and they think she’s in the carpentry shop with Elisa, Ana and Hermes.
Íris walks through the piano cemetery. She looks all around her. She can make out the edges of the shadows. She lifts lids off keyboards. She presses down on keys that make dry sounds, wood against wood. She sits down on the lid of a piano without legs, on the dust. She is so small. She lifts her face, looks at me and says:
‘Who are you talking to?’
Silence.
‘I’m talking to the people who are reading these words in a book.’
‘Maybe my mum will read the book, won’t she?’
‘Maybe.’
‘What are they called, these people who’re reading the book?’
‘They have many names. Each of them has a different name.’
‘Maybe there’s one of them called Íris, isn’t there?’
‘Yes, maybe.’
Silence.
‘And you — what’s your name, sir?’
‘Me?’
Silence.
‘I’m your grandad.’
Íris smiles. Her voice:
‘Grandad. .’
I smile.
‘What are they like, these people reading the book? Are they Grandma and Auntie?’
‘They are, but they are other people, too.’
‘Where are they, the other people?’
‘Only they know where they are. We’d have to ask them to take a look around them. We’d have to ask them to shut their eyes.’
Íris shuts her eyes, tightly as she can.
‘See? These people are just like that. They close their eyes, and they still exist. They close their eyes, block their ears, and they still exist.’
Íris opens her eyes. She gets up. She stops looking at me. She approaches the keyboard of one of the pianos. With her bandaged hand, she sticks out her index finger and presses down on a key. She presses down on another key. It is as though a long time has passed, but only a moment has passed. She looks at me again.
‘How do you know, Grandad?’
‘I’ve been one of those people.’
‘But have you already read this book the people are reading?’
‘No. It’s not finished yet. The story isn’t over yet. There are still a lot of words before it finishes. On the blank pages there’s space for all those words, only they haven’t been said yet. They haven’t been heard yet.’
‘So how come you’ve already been one of those people? Have you already lived the life these people are living?’
‘No one can live someone else’s life.’
‘That’s not true. You didn’t just live your life. Have you seen Grandma? You wore her down. You made her old before all the other women her age. Say what you like — the light clouded your eyes, you didn’t see, there was some force that carried your movements, you couldn’t feel — say what you like, but the truth will still exist — the truth.’
‘You’re not even three yet, you can’t talk like that. No three-year-old talks like that.’
‘I can’t? I can’t? You’re sure of that? You’re dead. You should be the last person to talk about what I can and can’t say. What are you afraid of? I don’t believe you’ve forgotten the mornings you went out and left Grandma losing hope of receiving any affection, nor the evenings when you got in late, with the smell of the taberna embedded in your clothes and your skin, nor the week after week when you just went out in the morning and got in at night and nothing else. The conversations during and after dinner getting shorter and shorter, until they were nothing more than the soup sipped from the spoon and the shadows in the kitchen — until they were nothing. And if the soup was too hot, if it was raining outside, if you were annoyed, you might throw the bowl on the floor, you might push Grandma, knock her down, make her cry and pretend not to hear, pretend it didn’t bother you, that her sadness meant nothing. You don’t want to hear, but you have to hear. And my mother? And Aunt Marta? You taught them that their father, their only father, can grab their mother by the arm, look at her with disdain and push her against a wall.’