last time will never come
and I didn’t say anything to her. I waited for my hands, just the weight and the touch of my hands, to tell her everything that was true and couldn’t be named. The last time we’d see one another — each gesture, each moment. She turned back towards me and we looked at one another with a strength of believing for a moment that there was no god that could part us. Then straight away, with a certainty that stabbed against us, much greater than a single moment, we knew that we really would be parted. It was the last time we’d see one another. Everything was the last. She fell into my arms. I squeezed her body, crushed it. We rested our heads on each other’s shoulders — our cheeks touching — hot tears. Time passed. We drew away to look at one another. We exchanged glances. I took off her dress. I removed my clothes. Our bodies. And the white light on us. And my body against hers, my body beating, beating, beating against her body, crushing it. And my fingers. Lightly. The points on her skin that my fingers touched. Gentle. And the repeated clash of flesh. And the disfigured faces. And the light, intense, from everywhere, permanent, constant, blind. We lay there on the carpet, side by side — our heads under the piano. We had no words. We had silence. We had our breathings, and what we could see, suddenly real. We had time bringing truth and sadness back to us. She didn’t get up, didn’t walk naked, didn’t sit at the piano. She stayed lying there, without strength, without life — her gaze undone. I got up. I dressed, slowly. My clothes didn’t heal the wounds on my torn body. The last time we’d see one another. I walked over to the door to the hall, leaving her lying on the carpet, without looking back. I reached the hall door and looked back. Her face believed I was going to go back, I was going to take steps back to her arms, to her naked, abandoned body. I didn’t go back. I opened the hall door and ran through the quick impossible maze of the corridor. I opened the door to the street and ran, lost, destroyed, through the Benfica streets.
weight, my legs, my arms alternating. Or perhaps it’s the blood in my body weighing me down, draining me. The vest and shorts stick to the grease. The sweat I’m not sweating is boiling me under my skin. Maybe it’s the sweat weighing me down, draining me. The houses are further and further away. The houses beside me. The people in the windows. I don’t look at the runners passing me. I look at my legs — their perpetual movement. Feet touching the ground, lifting me up, moving me onwards. Legs. I trip over myself. I fall on the palms of my hands
Kilometre twenty-one
and get up. I mustn’t stop. I rub my hands to get the memory of the stones, the loose grains of sand, off my skin. The stones burn — embers. The sight of Stockholm wavers. The façades of the houses contort. Blisters the colour of the houses rise up, holes
because it might have been an afternoon in June. I can’t be sure. It might also have been an afternoon in late May, or even July, but it wasn’t very hot. It was a quiet afternoon. My father didn’t mind me going out on to the patio, didn’t ask me where I was going. Some thoughts were distracting him from me. Perhaps he was thinking about pianos. My steps crunched over pine shavings until I reached the big patio doors. I was still a lad. I was thirteen, fourteen years old. Marta still lived in the house near the workshop. When I went in, Simão was already there. He’d gone to see Elisa who was still so little but already walking, already running, and at that moment she’d just awoken from her nap. Simão was playing around with her. Marta was smiling. Their voices mingled with the pleasant lightness that came in through the half-open windows. I went in, to those smiles and those voices. That afternoon, like many others before and after it, Simão’s presence was always clandestine because we couldn’t tell our father we’d seen him, we couldn’t mention him. There were other times when my mother would hide and ask us about him in a whisper. We’d reply to her, hidden, whispering. Discreetly, so that Elisa wouldn’t notice, Marta told us she was going to the workshop, that she wouldn’t be long, that she was going to fetch a hammer and nails, which she needed for something unimportant — hammer a nail, hang a picture. Marta’s husband had gone out to deal with a few things including borrowing a hammer and nails from the workshop, but hours had gone by and he still hadn’t got back. Perhaps he’d been occupying himself in the taberna, Marta said. Simão and I distracted Elisa so that our sister could go out without the little girl noticing, without her crying, without her insisting on going, too. My brother and I made little kiddie voices, saying words that didn’t exist — and the sound of the front door, almost imperceptible, opening and closing. Marta, surrounded by that afternoon that might have been June, walked down the street — her steps unconcerned — she walked down the earth road of the workshop. There were birds, sparrows, flying overhead. There were the distant sounds of the city, within the distant sounds of nature. Marta walked towards the workshop, and although it was close, because she left home so little it seemed a great distance, an excursion. As she passed the taberna door, she leaned in to see if her husband was inside, having lost track of time. He wasn’t. There were only
the heat — the fire — the heat — the flames — the heat — the embers — the heat — the heat — no escape — I run, run away — no escape from the heat, the fire
two men, asleep. One was standing, his whole weight leaning against the counter; the other was sitting in a crooked chair, his elbows digging into the dirty tabletop, his head on his hands. There was no one behind the bar. Inside the taberna it was a different month and a different time of day. Marta left this suspended image behind her, and went on. She took slow steps, making the most of her freedom. I think she was smiling. Not an open, obvious smile, but a gentle touch to her face. It was a time for breathing deeply, for filling your whole body with clean, new air. Marta went into the workshop, through the big doors, and she still hadn’t got used to the shadows when she noticed the sounds that were coming from the piano cemetery. She thought it might be our father and she took a silent step, about to call out to him. Suddenly she stopped, turned to stone, when in the space between two piled-up pianos, behind a wall of pianos, she made out half the face of her husband. Her husband’s shirtsleeves were rolled up, his arms were around the back of a woman. The eager breathing of the two of them as they kissed. Her husband’s mouth fixing itself to a woman’s neck. Her husband’s mouth seeking out a woman’s mouth. In silence, Marta took two steps back. In the entrance hall of the workshop, her body, covered by a dress in a flowery print. That moment something came down from the sky, came from the centre of the earth, went through her. She touched her face with both hands to make sure she existed. She didn’t have to wait long. Her husband came out of the piano cemetery with an expression of feigned casualness, looking vaguely left and right. He could easily have seen her. Marta was behind a few pieces of pine that leaned upright against a wall. Her heart was beating. A good deal of her body was in view. But he didn’t see her, he walked across the earth, between the stones, and into the carpentry shop. Marta heard her husband’s voice, the other side of a wall, muffled, distant, greeting our father. It was only later, slowly, that she saw the woman who came out of the piano cemetery. It was Maria. As she walked she was adjusting her blouse, wiping the dust from her skirt. Without noticing a thing, she hurried out through the door.