‘I taught them many other things. I always liked my daughters. I always thought about them. I always wanted them to be happy.’
‘That’s not enough. You never really listened to them, you never really looked at them. You were afraid. You’re still afraid. The saddest thing isn’t that you’re lying to the people who are reading the book, who don’t know you and won’t ever know you. The sad thing is that you’re lying to yourself. The sad thing is Uncle Francisco getting ready to run in the marathon at the Olympic Games without any memories of you ever, at any time, telling him that you were proud of him. Everything he has achieved has been without you, against you. And Uncle Simão? You can’t have forgotten all the harm you did to him. You didn’t lose him on that night that you’ll never forget. You lost him long before that. And me, too, my sister, Elisa, Hermes. You died, you’re dead, but your mistakes remain alive. Your mistakes remain.’
‘Not everything is my fault. Or is it?’
‘I’m the one who’s not yet three years old, or have you already forgotten that? You were the husband, the father, the grandfather.’
‘Yes, but I wasn’t only the husband, father and grandfather, I was other things, too.’
‘You were what you always were, and still are: an egotist.’
She walks towards the piano where she had been sitting. She sits again. There is a moment of silence that brings back the afternoon light, Sunday through the little dirty window. Maria’s voice is heard calling Íris’s name. Hearing her mother call her, she lifts a finger in the air. They have noticed her absence. Now she has to go. She looks at me, smiles, gets up and with clumsy steps she leaves. She is nearly three years old.
The air in the piano cemetery is clear.
Francisco came up to just above my knee. He walked back and forth in the kitchen and in the yard. His little legs, in their little trousers, didn’t stop. Francisco was like a serious, animated doll. I called him. He didn’t come. Marta, or Maria, or Simão called him. He didn’t go. There always had to be someone walking behind him to make sure he didn’t get caught on doors, climb chairs, knock over brimming saucepans. His hair grew and became unruly. His hands were small, holding on to the pieces of crust his mother gave him. His eyes were the size of everything they saw. His mother called him. He ran towards her and held out his arms for her to pick him up.
Everyone, even Íris, can imagine the end of the afternoon. There is a constant breeze. It comes down the road and makes scattered grains of earth shine, like stars. It makes specks in Maria’s eyes shine. My wife and Marta shake sawdust from their clothes. There is a pile of pieces of wood arranged on the back of the truck, next to the armchair. In the winter Marta will pick pieces out and burn them in the fireplace. Birds are becoming calmer in the air, like the branches of the trees, like voices or stones. Time is dull in Maria’s gaze. Her husband hasn’t arrived, doesn’t arrive, hasn’t arrived to ask her forgiveness, come home, no, no he doesn’t say — come home. Hermes runs round the truck. My granddaughters are delicate, they start their goodbyes with little gestures, tender smiles. Marta’s husband comes out of the taberna with the men who’ve come to help him. They come, laughing. They lift Marta up, take two steps back, two steps forwards, and deposit her on the truck.
Maria has to go back home. My wife, Ana and Íris are at her side. The truck moves away. Marta, sitting in the armchair, waves. Hermes leans out of the window. The truck moves away. And disappears. They are alone outside the workshop doors. Maria takes the first step. She has to go home. She walks ahead. Behind her, my wife gives our granddaughters her hands. Every step for Maria is another defeat. The afternoon moves away, beaten. There is a week to go before Francisco runs in the marathon at the Olympic Games. It is still Sunday. As she passes the end of our road, my wife cranes her neck to see the façade of our house, the deserted space in front of it, to imagine it inside. Maria knows that the world’s roads are endless — veins spread across the surface of the world. You could walk down roads your whole life, until you have no more strength in your legs, you fall to your knees and die, transform slowly, with the rain, with the years, into the stones of the pavement, dissolve between the stones, like dust, like water, disappear.
Ana and Íris know other things. They don’t notice the shock that shakes the body of their grandmother, my wife, when she recognises the gypsy who two days earlier knocked on her door and handed her the blouse which she had been hanging out and which she had dropped. He’s leaning on a corner, his knee bent and the sole of his boot against the wall. He watches, though keeping his head down. His eyes between the black hat and the long white beard. His eyes buried in the wrinkled, burned skin. My wife hurries her steps, pulling our granddaughters by the arm. And they continue to make their way down the streets, after Maria. And they arrive, together, at the door to the building. Time is dull. My wife, Maria and my granddaughters, before going in, they think they know everything that is going to happen.
~ ~ ~
Kilometre sixteen
the sun inside a fire. Running between flames, crossing ruins that sag over flames that move as though dancing, happy at the destruction, and finding in the centre of this fire the sun, the sole emperor, immense, serene, witnessing the consummation of his work, the inevitable dissemination of the evil he has created, that he wished to create
in search, search of the wind. Because my will is as big as a law of the land. Because my strength determines the passage of time. I want. I am capable of launching a shout within me that tears up trees by the roots, that bursts veins in every body, that pierces through the world. I am capable of running right through this shout, at its own speed, against everything that hurls itself to stop me, against everything that rises up in my way, against myself. I want. I am capable of expelling the sun from my skin, of defeating it once more and for ever. Because my will regenerates me, gives me birth, rebirth. Because my strength is immortal.
like the night. I didn’t have to say anything to Simão, because, even without having seen each other for months, even without having heard anything — anything — from him for months, I understood his expressions. We walked like that, through deserted streets. There was a certainty that was clear and confused, sharp, limpid and hazy, obvious and unbelievable, evident, sure, and impossible. I was going to have a child. She and I, we were going to have a child. There was so much to say, to ask, but she went into the house and closed the door. She closed the door. I walked through deserted streets, my brother accompanied me, and I thought about what I could have said, what I could have asked. There was nothing to be said, nothing to ask. In the heart of the night, the cold entered me through the sleeves of my jacket, under my sweater, under my shirt, against my skin. We arrived at Benfica. Soon we would be arriving home. Simão stopped, and before saying goodbye asked if he could work with me in the workshop for a few days. Yes, of course. I never knew whether Simão asked for days in the workshop when he really needed the work, needed to make some money, a little, or when he missed being my brother. He explained to me where he was living — the house where he rented a room — and before he moved away, as he was saying see you tomorrow, I wanted to hug him, to tell him I was going to have a child and to cry — not out of sadness or out of happiness but because at that moment I was a child. Instead I continued my walk home, like the night, like the hours