With the Italian between us, we crossed the carpentry shop and the entrance hall, walked as far as the street, and there on a cart pulled by a pair of tired mules was a grand piano, reflecting the clouds in its black sheen, held down by the ropes. Before I could say anything, my uncle looked at the Italian and held out his hand, gravely saying:
‘You can count on us to get your piano repaired in time to play at the dance.’
The Italian ignored my uncle’s hand, smiled and, turning towards me, said that the dance would be on Saturday night. We had three days. I turned to my uncle to discuss the decision, but I was halted in the middle of my first word for he had already turned his back and, skirting round the puddles of oil from the moped mechanic who had a workshop a little further up the road, was walking hurriedly towards the taberna. Mutely I looked at the Italian and shrugged my shoulders in a moment of shared incomprehension, but with the same haste my uncle emerged from the taberna, leading a group of men — ragged men, unsteady men, old men, crooked men and cripples.
Under my uncle’s orders, the men began to untie the piano. It was my uncle who opened the big workshop doors completely, and who got up on to the cart and began gently to push the piano, which slid on its little wheels into the arms of the men.
‘Hang on there.’ And he got down to help them.
My uncle counted to three and, with a sound from deep inside his chest, said, ‘Hup. .’ At that moment they lifted the piano higher and took shuffling steps that dragged the sound of the dust on the ground. They carried the piano as though they were carrying the whole world. The men’s bodies, clutching the piano, and their legs, bent under the weight, were a black animal, like a spider. Their voices, stifled by the weight — don’t let go now, push towards your left — surrounded the piano. They crossed the entrance hall to the workshop and headed towards the carpentry shop. There were men who went in backwards and others, going forwards, who raised their heads to direct them.
As they disappeared through the door to the carpentry shop, the Italian handed me a card — the Flor de Benfica boarding house. I was still looking at the card when the Italian held out his hand. I offered him mine and he, quickly, squeezed my wrist and shook my arm. He smiled broadly, wiped the polish of his shoes on the back of his trouser legs, climbed up on to the cart and, with a word of Italian to the mules, set off up the road.
When the men came out, as though they had seen the whole world between the walls of the carpentry shop, they disguised their efforts with a smile and clapped their hands together as though cleaning off the dust, wiped their hands on their stained trouser-legs as though cleaning them. My uncle came with them, leading the thread of their voices. He came out with them through the doorway, and they all skirted past me as though I was invisible, took some steps down the dirt road and went into the taberna. My uncle rested his elbows on the marble counter and bought each of the men a glass of wine.
It was still morning. I was alone, standing in the street, at the open door to the workshop. I held my arms straight down against my body and an abandoned card in one of my hands. Fragments of wind brought the ringing of bells chiming distant hours. I was twenty-two years old, my arms were straight down against my body, I had never repaired a piano and couldn’t imagine myself capable of doing it.
At the living-room door it was as though my wife had stopped, though without actually stopping, because for a single moment an image — complete and clear — was suspended there in front of her: little Íris, sitting, her mouth open in a continuous scream, surrounded by pieces of broken glass, tumbled-over jugs, headless china dolls, sitting beside the corner cupboard, which was tumbled on the rug like an old corpse fallen face-down; and Íris holding up her hand, open, the palm of her hand covered in blood that ran between her fingers. In three steps, with pieces of glass crunching under the soles of her slippers, my wife picks her up under her arms and lifts her into the air. Our granddaughter’s cries tear the landscapes printed in the pictures on the walls; they cut my wife’s face and stop her from breathing.
‘There now, there now,’ she says, as she turns on the bathroom tap over Íris’s hand, but the girl’s cries are reflected in the rust-stained mirror and the white bathroom tiles.
The telephone starts to ring. Over the pine table — the drawer of scrawled papers and ballpoint pens that don’t write — over the lace doily; my wife’s godmother choosing balls of thread at the silk merchant’s — by the chrome-plated frame — the photograph we all took together in Rossio — the telephone screams. Strong as iron, it stretches out with a persistent urgency, which stops to catch its breath, then carries on again with the same panic and the same authority.
The telephone continues to ring. Íris cries and screams. Tears draw hot streaks on her red cheeks. My wife holds her hand under the open tap. The blood is diluted on the cracked washbasin porcelain and disappears. In the palm of Íris’s hand a splinter of glass buried in a wound. In a single movement, my wife pulls it out with the tips of her fingers and feels the inside of her flesh.
‘There now, there now,’ she says, bringing her hand back under the cold water. Íris’s cries make the white light of the bulb hanging from a cable turn strident, they make the little bottles of lotions arranged on a shelf tremble, and as they enter the bathtub they scratch the surface of the enamel with squeals.
The telephone continues to ring. Each ring is a hand that grabs my wife’s body and squeezes it, that grabs her head and squeezes it, that grabs her heart and squeezes it. In her arms, Íris’s voice begins to find some comfort, and, slowly, some peace. My wife turns off the tap, wraps Íris’s hand in a white towel from the bidet and, holding her in her arms, runs out of the bathroom and down the corridor.
The telephone continues to ring. My wife’s steps are quick on the carpet because usually nobody rings during the day. She fears, inside, that it is bad news, she fears it is news that will floor her, that will destroy her, that will condemn her again — death. She squeezes the girl to her breast and moves anxiously across the carpet — as fast as she is able. And the telephone stops ringing. My wife’s steps lose their meaning, they diminish and stop.
In the kitchen, the piano music is still being born from the wireless and is pushed by the wind that comes in through the open window.
I didn’t want to say anything to my uncle, because I wanted to see the result of his enthusiasm. He encircled the piano with words and steps that, all of a sudden, would change direction. At a distance, my arms crossed over my chest, I watched him and I didn’t believe anything he said. In the sawdust that covered the floor an irregular shape had been sketched, which was the track my uncle was following. On impulse he broke off from this flow of marked steps and went to fetch a little stool — covered in splashes of paint and bent nails — which he brushed off and placed in front of the piano. He sat down, lifted the lid that covered the keyboard and ran his gaze over it. Almost moved, he said:
‘Your father would have been so happy, if he was here.’
That was the moment everything made sense for me. My father. Like a finger on a key rousing a hammer from its slumber, I understood.
At the entrance to the workshop, to the right, there was a closed door, covered up by time and by chairs that were missing a leg, by tabletops and other remains that had been accumulating into a disordered heap. That afternoon my uncle and I moved everything away, and since we had no idea about where the key was it was left to me to break down the door with two kicks to the lock.