Kilometre nineteen
forgive me, little girl. Please, forgive me. I know how your hands saved me. I can still remember your skin, your whole body, your eyes watching me through the darkness, your eyes shining. I want your voice, little girl, sweet little girl. We can dream together. We can sit together and share a thought. Forgive me. The days will go back to being the size they were when we walked across gardens hand in hand. The sun which illuminated us then must always exist to illuminate us. Forgive me. The same weightlessness continues, like light, like light, that filled us up. I ask you — forgive me. We are everything, again — we still believe. Time hasn’t passed. The days will go back to being the surface on which we dream. The afternoons
alone. We married without witnesses and walked the streets hand in hand. Because I wanted a life that was just ours, I had replaced some things in the house. I’d built a new bed. I’d bought a mattress. I’d made a table and four chairs. I’d bought a stove. My mother and my sisters only learned that we’d got married two days later, when I told them. My mother understood. My sisters didn’t understand, but after ten minutes they’d forgotten their inability to understand. And they wanted to know what she was like. They wanted to meet her. They wanted to imagine our child. They smiled. Five weeks had passed since the night she told me she was pregnant. It was a Sunday afternoon, January. She had a three-month belly, her skin slightly raised. When we were alone I would run the palm of my hand over her belly. My mother was carrying Íris, Maria came holding Ana’s hand, Elisa came holding Hermes’s hand, Marta came alone. They arrived and occupied all the chairs we had. When we began to talk, Ana started playing with Hermes in a corner. My mother was happy at the house’s being brought back to life. My sisters stared at my wife. They tried to talk to her, but it was hard for her to reply. At that time
sun that blinds us. I’ve just crossed a bridge and I pass a runner, stopped at the side of the road, hands resting on his bent knees, who has lost control of his breathing. The air, like a stone, goes in and out of him, the world goes in and out of him. He closes his eyes and his whole face grimaces. A small distance away there are people who don’t get any closer but who watch him, fearful. I don’t give up, I don’t give up. The sun stabs needles into my eyes — needles made from lines of light. But still I go on, still I go on, still
go slowly past. My mother and my sisters said nothing, but were shocked to find the house almost empty. From that afternoon, whenever I went to Maria’s I’d leave with something my mother had hidden to give me. No need to tell your sister. And she’d give me packets of biscuits, or bags of pears, or jars of fruits in syrup. She’d give me all kinds of things she’d hide under the iron couch where she slept, set up every night, dismantled every morning. When she took the train to visit Marta, she’d return laden with bags of spring greens, sprigs of parsley, oranges, salted bacon, chouriço sausages. I’d accept everything, ashamed because I thought they felt sorry for me, they thought I had nothing, I was the little boy who had nothing, unprotected. Because it was easier, I’d accept everything, and quickly leave.
reflected in the stones of the pavement. Lisbon is the sharp clarity that comes through the air. Lisbon is the stained colour of the walls. Lisbon is the new moss being born over the dry moss. Lisbon is the pattern of cracks, like lightning flashes, slipping down the surface of the walls. Lisbon is careful imperfection. Lisbon is the sky reflected
in the stones of the pavement. It was cold, the last week of January was beginning. There was ice on the weeds — blades — that grew between the stones of the pavement. My ears were frozen. My nose was frozen. My hands were in the pockets of my jacket, frozen. When I arrived at the road of the workshop I didn’t expect to see Simão. But I reached the top of road, looked ahead and there, almost leaning on the big doors, was a shape beset by sharp movements. Each step I could make him out more clearly. When he noticed me he stopped still to wait for me. It was my brother — his blind face. I couldn’t understand his smile. I understood the dirty skin of his face. I didn’t understand his eagerness. I understood his hair spiky in stuck, solid, hard locks — dry oil. I was two steps away from him. We didn’t greet one another. Not a good morning, not any word, not any syllable. I took two steps and, standing beside him, opened the door. Together we walked across the entrance hall of the workshop. My brother wanted to talk. There was some news he couldn’t hold back. I was used to his news, his enthusiasms about nothing, which was why when we reached the carpentry shop, when we stopped, I was the one who spoke and told him I’d got married. Simão made an expression as though he were saying the appropriate phrases, he waited for a beat and then, when it seemed to him that he could speak, he said
Kilometre twenty
he’d found a piano for us to repair. And he waited for the reaction I didn’t have. I breathed. Then he told me that one of the men in the taberna had told him about a piano he wanted to sell, that no one had played for years, covered in a sheet. I asked him if he thought we didn’t have enough old pianos, if he thought we didn’t have enough ruined pianos, gathering dust in the piano cemetery. My brother’s face lost the shape of his eagerness. But then he immediately said we could repair it, make it as good as new and then sell it. I smiled at his naivety. I knew that even if we managed to fix this piano — which might be rotten, might be irreparable — we’d never be able to sell it. Because I felt sorry for his childish expression I told him that when could we’d go and see what condition the piano was in. Maybe the following day, maybe the following week, maybe never. I didn’t want to make my promise concrete, but it was enough for my brother to set about sawing, sanding, starting his endless, disconnected, incomplete, incomprehensible stories with enthusiasm. Not listening to him, I had a single thought — it filled my whole morning — all the possibilities of a single thought. There was a long time before lunch and I looked at my watch, looked at my watch, again looked at my watch. The hands moved too slowly. When I stopped being able to bear it, it was the beginning of the end of the morning. I put down my tools, told my brother I wouldn’t be long and went out. The streets. Benfica, they were the birds that came down from the sky to settle in front of me and to take flight as I passed. The people, disorientated. Benfica, they were the puddles of water that reflected me for an instant. January. Benfica, it was the cold wind that moulded me. I knocked on the door. How long did I wait? The lady opened the door to me with the same smile as the other days, but to me, that late morning, it was as if she were another lady with another smile. I followed her down the corridor. The doors to the hall. The details of the shapes — curved, straight, angled — were too sharp, they seemed to be wanting to speak to me, they seemed to be wanting to dissuade me. There were times I closed my eyes, and there were times I forced myself to keep my eyes open. That was how it was when I went into the hall and saw her sitting at the piano. The keys — the strings — the notes all hurling themselves towards me and piercing me. Threads of blood flowing from my wounds like signs, traces that showed my guilt of a crime I had not yet committed, but which was inevitable. I hid my uncertainty behind a firm gaze, a mask of feigned determination. When she finished playing, the lady had disappeared behind me. When she finished playing, seeing me, her face changed because she understood at once. Then, suddenly, the words I had thought of all morning at the workshop, the whole way over, the words I’d woken up with. Suddenly looking at her face, I didn’t know how to say anything but the rough, single, impossible words, words worn away from being so often repeated in my head, endless, like thorns, like spears, made of stone, made of night, made of winter, each syllable as though final, inevitable once spoken, separating flesh from bones, dead, dead, dying, killing, covering the whole world with the absolute darkness of their own death. The last time we’d see one another. I told her it was the last time we’d see one another. Her expression was wounded with the hurt. Silence. After disbelief, tears — liquid, limpid, glassy clarity. She walked to the window, turned her back on me and stood facing the cold white remains of the morning. Her body in her dress slipping across the rug. I walked over to her. I put my hands on her shoulders