through the July heat, the afternoon
through the December cold, the night
through the July heat, the afternoon — this afternoon — I remember those moments when I’d come running out of the workshop, alone, training for being here, alone, and when I imagined what might happen when I was here, never believing that I’d remember what I imagined I would think, never believing that I was already thinking what I’m thinking now.
and I had taken a decision. There was nothing to decide, I couldn’t change what was set, but just let my arms and legs lose their strength on the bed, just let my body rest, accept the night, when, in the darkness of my room, I convinced myself that I had taken a decision. I was going to have a child, and so I would be another person. I didn’t know, however, that the next day was going to be so long, and in the morning when I arrived at the door of the workshop and saw my brother — the white lid of his right eye, his cracked lips — I was able to smile sincerely. After explaining to him what there was to do, I leaned over my bench to continue the work I’d begun the day before. It had been some weeks since my brother’s voice had sounded in the air of the carpentry shop. It had been some weeks since the specks of sawdust — rising, hovering like a universe — had been touched by my brother’s voice. It happened slowly, it was nearly mid-morning when he spoke a few words. From these loose, spaced-out words — just their syllables, almost — phrases grew. Piled up like a muddled tower, stories grew. Slowly, my brother was the lad who told me endless stories. My brother was still coming back. But I had other stories, divided up into phrases, divided up into words, trembling inside me. Distress. When lunchtime arrived, I told Simão that I wouldn’t be long. There were a lot of people on the streets, too many — solid shapes. I arrived at her house and knocked at the door. The lady — her smile — the corridor — the music from the piano — invisible cornucopias — the pictures on the walls — the door to the hall. Behind me the lady disappeared. I opened the door. She stopped playing and looked at me. Her skin was even lighter, under the brightness of her eyes. Her smooth hair followed the straight line of her back. Her hands. Her white, thin hands taking off my clothes as my hands took off her clothes. My hands running over the surface of her skin. Her hands squeezed against my back. My hands gripping her arms, wrapping around them. The palms of my hands wrapping round her arms. Her hands digging into the nape of my neck. My hands opening, losing all their strength, grabbing at the air. Her hands stretched out over the rug. Our hands’ forgotten time. And her hands, alive. Her hands, animals — cats, birds, wild animals — on the piano keys. And the music stretched over the whole hall, the whole air, the whole world, inside my naked body, inside the ribs arched on the rug — music being breathed. And again, reality — the cold, strange clothes on my body. The streets — my body a stranger to myself. The afternoon passed within my brother’s monotonous voice, his monotonous enthusiasm, within time that repeated itself. I closed the big workshop doors. My brother went into the taberna. I was ready and I started to run. I ran as though I wanted to, as though I was able to overtake the wind, as though my body didn’t exist and it was only my will that ran, that was fast, fast between the houses one after another, the streets, and everything I didn’t want to see. I arrived home. I washed. I walked across the city. At the entrance to the hospital, as I waited for her, my decision became more solid within me. There were night-time noises, the branches of the trees moving over the nocturnal imprecision of the cold, the lit-up windows of the hospital, and me. Ruled by time, utterly, I waited for her and my decision became
Kilometre seventeen
evening falling. Another summer afternoon comes to an end. Marta is already a woman, she’s sixteen years old. Maria imitates all her gestures awkwardly — she is fourteen years old. In the kitchen our mother is doing something simple, superfluous, and another summer afternoon comes to an end. The lightness that comes in through the bedroom window, that touches the folds in the curtains, is yellow and sweet — honey. Beyond the window, the sun comes down on buildings and for a moment turns their edges incandescent. The lightness touches the face of my sister Marta, sitting on her made bed, and touches the face of my sister Maria, sitting on the floor, sitting on her feet, knees bent in front of her, leaning against the wall. Marta has a boyfriend, and no one knows, no one must know, except for Maria. Sometimes at dinner Maria and Marta exchange a look because something has reminded them of their secrets. Maria dreams of the day when she too will have a boyfriend, she dreams about him. For a few moments, like a lightning flash, she believes she can see his face: every detail, the eyes, the lips, the lines that are so real. Marta and Maria’s voices and dreams are mingled together. Marta describes everything she feels, she describes a thousand times all the little encounters she has with her boyfriend, everything she believes, everything she understands. Maria describes the stories she has read in romance novels, she describes how they end, she says, ‘If this hadn’t happened, and if that hadn’t happened, if he hadn’t been jealous, if she hadn’t been proud.’ Maria listens to her sister as though she has finally met a heroine from a romance novel. Marta listens to her sister, imagining herself having the same dilemmas as the heroine from a romance novel. Their voices are feminine, and luminous. The afternoon draws to an end slowly. Simão arrives from work, comes by me and my mother. Time is calm over the objects of the world, and in the motion of the world. My father will arrive later. Until then, the evening falling, like torn paper raining down from the sky.
my decision within me. They were shadows. She approached, coming out of the shadows. When I noticed she was there, she was already very close, she could almost have touched me if she’d reached out an arm. She took three steps, and she could have touched me if she’d reached out an arm. The words I’d chosen, and repeated, and memorised to say to her, were lost. As though I knew no other words, I just looked at her. Her voice, rescuing me. A chasm hadn’t opened up into the centre of the earth, the rivers hadn’t run with blood, night hadn’t frozen over the city. Her voice, in simple words, telling me that everything was all right, the universe was still going, I could breathe. I breathed. And it was there, in front of the hospital where my father had died, on that strangely real night, that I held her hands and said to her liquid eyes, ‘We’re getting married.’
by one another. Groups of runners pass me. I don’t know what wind it is that’s carrying them along. The sun presses me against the ground. The sun bends my back, the ground pulls at my chest, but I am stronger, stronger, bigger than the exhaustion. I’ve long known that moment when the body starts repeating: give up, give up, give up. My legs don’t give up. Give up, give up, give up. But I am still alternating my arms ahead of my body, as though punching the air, as though fighting the air and it was getting ever weaker, ever closer to giving up. And my body is heavier than the ship that brought me out of Lisbon. Give up, give up, give up. I don’t give up. Groups of runners pass me now, the wind carries them along, but I am bigger than the exhaustion. The sun, defeated, will leave me to the silence. On my skin the special grease that covers me will be cool again. I’ll stop hearing the voice that repeats in my head — the sun. I’ll keep hearing the voice that exists in my core — my will. The sun will stop to torture them and I’ll overtake them in triumph, the air will be light again, I will thank the wind that brushes my cheeks to cool me. I haven’t given up. I’m not giving up now. My wife and my son are waiting for me. My son will wait for me before being born. When he is born I’ll have this, this will, to give him. His face, small, unimaginable, will look at me and understand that he has been born out of an energy that is greater, more incandescent, more intense than the sun. Feeling himself protected in my arms — these arms — the same arms that now alternate ahead of my chest and which are like two worlds — day, night. Two lives separated by a moment that doesn’t exist. Two lives that alternate, that repeat and follow one another, endlessly, after everything, endlessly, endlessly