Kilometre twenty-six
because I heard the front door open and close, because I could make out the silent footsteps along the hallway runner. And the lady came back into the hall, followed by the tuner. He knew I was there, and said my name — Francisco. His voice disappeared into the air. The tuner, blind, couldn’t see our serious faces, and maybe that was why he smiled. I gave him my hand to lead him. Suddenly it was me, her and the tuner. She had her hands on her stomach and she was beautiful. I remembered the first day I saw her. I tried, struggled to think of other things, but I looked at her and all I could remember was the first day I saw her. And at that moment there was so much I wanted to tell her. I wanted to tell her everything I thought, I had been, I still was, but I remained silent, passed through by each isolated note that the tuner played, by the cry, almost inaudible — but unique, unique — of the piano strings being stretched — the groans of flowers dying. At the sudden moment when I walked out of the hall, the tuner turned his head, not understanding. She — hurt, wounded — didn’t look at me. And I, wounded by myself, continued to walk, to flee, continued along the corridor, along the streets until I was even more lost to everything, until I had lost myself completely.
through the sun. The ground tilts under my feet. In the distance a whole garden that wavers, trees going up and down. I put one foot down on the road and I feel it escape, I feel it tipping. I put down the other foot and it’s already tipping the other way. At the same time the ochre façades fade into every luminous colour — white, yellow. And they move away, and they move closer. They waver within their outlines, they transform themselves into smudges that burn like poppy petals, oil-lamp flames, they waver
father
before being born. The child
the hall mirror. And Marta, proud of her nearly new house, filled with nearly new things. A plaster doll on a bookcase. Its arm broken on the trip, but I’ll glue it back. And she was smiling. Proud of the copper pans hanging in order of size, of the porcelain penguin, of the large wall clock that lost ten minutes a day, the hall mirror that already wasn’t big enough to reflect all of her, a new pan, washed cutlery. Looking at me. Proud of the discoloured frame where she kept a photograph of our sister. Her holding it, giving it to me, showing it to me. Maria
with Maria. Just like when they were girls and they locked themselves away in their room. Our mother would forget to call them. Just like when they knew exactly the same secrets. They were girls, sisters. They laughed, just the two of them, at the same jokes. They were the only ones laughing. My father would look at them, straight away giving up trying to understand them. Simão didn’t get close. I was the little boy. I handed her back the frame. I looked at her again. She smiled, and her face wasn’t at that moment, it was at a time that only for her had not been lost, in a past that only she still recognised. She put down the frame when Elisa woke up. Uncle, Uncle. Cheeks flushed. And Marta smiling, showing me the bedroom. Proud of the little bedside tables, the chest of warped drawers. Returning to the kitchen, Elisa snuggled in my arms. And Marta: ‘Do you want to see what we’ve got here? Go and show your uncle.’ And me putting Elisa down on the floor, a little girl. Her walking barefoot towards a photograph of me, resting on the lowest shelf of the cupboard, holding it with both hands, almost dropping it, holding it and giving it to me. The two of them looking at me, smiling, proud. I
Me: in a photo, immobile, seeing the living reflection of myself, maybe wondering at what I have become, frozen and watching myself closely. I smiled at them as they’d expected, put the photograph down on the same low cupboard shelf, and there, in a time I shall never know, a time that has stopped in that photograph, I remained, still looking in some direction in that room, eternally looking in some direction in that room
Kilometre twenty-seven
oh Mother, don’t, don’t cry, purest queen of heaven, help me for ever
tear of blood from the sun, boiling in the corner of my eye, rolling down my cheek, clouding up my sight of what will always be unknown to me, death
not yet born
yet. The music she played as I lay there, naked body on the hall rug, broken-apart, aching body. The music tracing a path in eternity, a road supported by liquid trees, by reflections of trees in the breeze. The slow, lingering music, over everything that was beginning to exist — transparent worlds
cold. That night I arrived home later. My wife knew. I was sure of it. The oil lamp lit up the curves of her body — her belly. Our child was — is — there, not yet born, maybe mingled with earth, with sky, with sun. Maybe next to my father, maybe watching me through him. My father’s eyes being his, his eyes being my father’s eyes — the same darkness, the same incandescent light. That night, falling asleep, we met. Then, the morning. Close to the mornings of the previous days, and different. I opened the workshop door. In the cold, I was completely awake. It was a clear time of day. Time passed, with me on my own. I resumed old jobs, which had been left since the day the lady came in and showed me the burned piano, the day we went to fetch the upright piano from the home of the man from the taberna and started fixing it up. Later, in a moment within my thoughts, I thought I heard footsteps in the entrance hall. My attention. I wanted Simão to arrive. And silence. I said his name. My brother’s name dissolving into the silence. He didn’t come. He didn’t come in the afternoon. He didn’t come the next day, or the next, or the next, or the next.
my father calling me
in my body as it lost the shape of running; in my elbows no longer a right angle, now uncoordinated outlines, each of my arms, on its own, standing out from my body, trying to survive, trying to cling on to some invisible image that supported them; in my legs falling on to the road with each step, digging into the road under my own body’s unbalance
a weight that never goes away. I was still small, the boys of my age only thought about little games, they hoped it wouldn’t rain, and there was me, always, always carrying this black weight in my chest. For just a moment, Maria saying something funny, our mother happy, me happy, and right afterwards — or at that same moment — I’d remember the black weight — lead — which never left my chest. Perhaps in winter, night-time, the kitchen, Marta talking about something purely good. Our father in a contented silence. And me, almost well except for the weight that never left, that I was sure would never leave my chest. And it never left, that late afternoon never left, under the branches of the peach trees, my brother arriving home — Simão, Simão — and me blinding him for ever. After that day it happened only twice. I was nine years old, he was fifteen. In the bedroom we were fighting, he’d tired of pushing me, he threw me on to the bed and said, ‘You made me blind.’ And there was nothing I could reply with, I couldn’t get up and call him names. I was twelve years old, he was eighteen. In the piano cemetery we got angry for some reason and I accused him of not wanting to work, I said to him, ‘You’re a parasite.’ He stood there looking at me with his firm, iron eye and he said, ‘You made me blind.’ Those words went right through me, words he said to me only twice but every day since that afternoon, when I was still small, when my voice had changed, when our father began to be ill, when he died, when I met my wife, during and before and after each marathon, repairing a piano, at each piano note played by the tuner, when I learned I was going to have a child, falling asleep, waking, now, I never forget, and in remembering always, always I have a black weight