Kilometre twenty-two
on the new table I’d made. As soon as my wife’s belly began to be noticeable, two weeks before we were married, she stopped working at the hospital. She was sent home. That night, when I came in, she was sitting in a chair, she was still, looking at the door. She had nothing to do. The dinner was ready. The house was tidy. But the look in her eyes wasn’t simple, there was hurt in it that I wasn’t able to understand completely, that made me feel guilty. It was as though the look in her eyes, in mine, touched me with guilt. I smiled at her, nervously. She didn’t smile back. Her face, lit up by the oil lamp, remained serious. I said some word to her — ‘So?’ She didn’t reply. As though I was unaware of the hardness of her gaze because there was no reason to justify it, I went towards the washroom. I had my back to my wife when I heard her voice. She asked, ‘Do you still like me?’ I lowered my eyelids over my eyes to feel the weight that dropped within me — lead. I opened my eyes and turned towards her, smiling. I approached, then put my hands — thick, coarse, rough hands — on her shoulders. I bent down to kiss her, but she pulled her face away and asked me again: ‘Do you still like me?’ There was a moment when we looked at one another, and when I bent down again she didn’t move away and we kissed. My wife’s lips were strange, for a moment. And only slowly they went back to being familiar. After that her gaze and her silence were beseeching. As though I didn’t understand, I managed to smile at her again. Trying to reduce the importance of her beseeching, I turned my back on her and walked towards the washroom. However much I tried to avoid it, I carried with me the image of her body, naked, lying on the hall rug. As I took my steps, I could hear her in my head still playing piano. I could make out the smell of her body on my skin. I filled my hands with water
fill my hands with fire, flames, embers
because you know the unnameable. And you will go on, with me always, escaping the names that are not you, you’ll go on eliminating the distance of years and time. When dying, you’ll dream you’re still alive. Who could say that, being dead, you’ll dream of still being alive, or still being alive you’ll merely be dreaming that you’ve died? Today, now, you exist in me, you are beautiful in my heart. We are once again
to throw it over my face, to be reborn. I held the towel with both hands and wiped myself down. We had dinner. The night passed at the speed of the oil lamp on the table, slowly. That day I hadn’t done any training, but I lay down in bed and felt more exhausted than after my Sunday marathons. I was more tired than I am now with the sun trying to kill me. I was tired inside. Covered by a sheet, I rested the palm of my hand on my wife’s belly, on our child. And that was how I woke up the following morning, with courage again, with strength, my own master. In the bedroom, as I dressed, my wife watched me. In the kitchen, as I had my coffee, my wife watched me. In the street — the light. A neighbour said good morning to me through the cold. It was as though his voice
the sun aims all its strength at my eyes, I run against the sun, I enter it
was coming through a pane of glass. I replied, but didn’t hear my own voice. I didn’t stop. Icy wind came into me through the sleeves of my jacket, my sweater, my shirt, in through the bottoms of my trouser legs. Between my clothes and my skin I had a layer of cold, a second skin. The workshop’s earth road. The taberna was open, but there was no one there. It was a deserted marble counter, a table and two empty chairs. I didn’t stop. The bunch of keys in my pocket. I opened the doors. My everyday steps, my everyday gestures, so different, so unknown, because these moments were present, and solid. They were moments of my solitude. I had learned to touch them, breathe them, to exist completely within them. Like when I ran down the streets and Lisbon was every month of the year. Like when I ran by and all the seasons of the year were the colours of my solitude. Deep and filled with unshareable meanings. I had known my solitude for a long time — all the thoughts I had above the silence, words pursuing an echo they never reached. It was within the difficulty of my solitude — a black path of statues — that I built myself up. That morning was made up of moments that belonged to that time. The sawdust that covered the floor silenced me. I went over to one of the windows to see
come
winter on the patio, the sky clean and cold. I entered that endless picture. I disappeared. I came out of that endless picture. I walked over to my carpentry bench. The smell of the inside of the wood. I was holding the plane with both hands when the lady came in. Her face
Kilometre twenty-three
wasn’t smiling. Frightened, hurt, concerned, she was a different person. A gold pin on the collar of her black jacket, and she was a different person. Small, thin, a different person. She asked me to go and look at the piano. When she noticed my surprise, or my discomfort, or my shyness, she begged me to go and look at the piano. I looked at her, not understanding. I had seen the piano the day before. I had been lying down, naked, underneath it. I couldn’t understand how after just one night the piano could have caused such distress. I invented a thousand possibilities — perhaps it was a desperate subterfuge to make me come back, perhaps she needed me, or, more likely, perhaps there really was some problem with the piano, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. All these ideas were accompanied and overlaid by the memory of her look when I told her it was the last time we’d be seeing one another, when she remained lying there for ever, naked; they were accompanied by the weight that sank my heart in my chest, in a well that I had inside my chest. I couldn’t understand how something could have happened to the piano, but I told her I’d go. I didn’t ask her what had happened, but I told her I’d go. I told her I had to wait for my brother, and that as soon as he arrived I’d go and take a look at the piano. Satisfied, but still frightened, still hurt, she went out. My head was filled
came into the carpentry shop without a word, extinguishing an uninteresting conversation. Her husband, who had been in the piano cemetery with Maria, looked at her and became annoyed. Our father looked at her without curiosity. Her husband asked her, ‘What are you doing here?’ Marta’s voice was the voice of a clear, almost invisible shadow, and she said in a voice that was very worn, ‘I’ve come to fetch a hammer.’ And she was interrupted. ‘Didn’t I say I was coming? What’s the hurry?’ And with the same aggressiveness, the same disdain, he asked, ‘And you left the girl on her own?’ Marta made herself look him in the eye. Her voice, pale — ‘She’s stayed with Francisco.’ Simão’s name couldn’t be spoken. Set apart from it all, it was only then that, without fretting, without saying anything, my father noticed my absence. In such a brief moment of silence, less than the space between words, Marta felt herself tremble inside. Her husband, severe, said to her, ‘I’ll get the hammer, I’ll be right home.’ Marta made herself look him in the eye. She wanted to see his cruelty. Mute, silent, she walked home. The world, within her and without, was a construction of blades she couldn’t touch. At home she didn’t see my face, or Simão’s face. We talked about something or other, and we didn’t really see her. Elisa got excited at her arrival — Mummy, Mummy, Mummy. Marta picked her up, and with her in her arms gave her a hug, her eyes closed, that lasted a long time. I said, ‘I’ve got to go.’ Simão came out with me. At the door to Marta’s house, I went back to the workshop, Simão went off in the opposite direction. The afternoon was fragile over the city, over the distant vegetable gardens, over the streets and over the workshop road. The afternoon aimed its brightness at things. The afternoon came in through the windows of Marta’s house and hurled itself in a torrent on to the floor. Elisa’s short legs went round and round the kitchen table, her little hands looking for something they didn’t know. Though no one knew it, without thinking about it herself, that was the day that Marta began to get fat. With slow movements she opened the door to a cupboard, took out a tin of lard cakes, hard and dry and covered in cinnamon and sugar, and sat down to eat them. Her gaze misted up in the empty air. She couldn’t think about Maria. It was unbearable to her. Still chewing the last lard cake, she took two steps to the bench under the window and picked up an enamel plate filled with cold roast bacon. She took a knife from the cutlery drawer, got the bread basket and sat down to eat. When she started feeling full, she struck her closed fist against her chest.