‘Yes, right.’
I wanted him to leave, wanted him to leave me alone. I had never received a letter from my cousin before. I looked at the postman. I replied only with yeses. I squeezed the pack of letters in one hand. And I held my cousin’s letter carefully in the other.
Me, Marta, Elisa, Hermes, Íris, Ana, Maria, Simão, Francisco, Francisco’s wife, the son who would be born, Hermes — the weight of the gypsy’s body, the perspiration, the hot smell of the gypsy’s body — Íris, Maria, Marta, Simão, Elisa, Ana, Maria, Francisco, me, the son who would be born, Francisco’s wife, Francisco, Simão — the touch of the gypsy’s eyes, the fire in the gypsy’s hands, embers, flames — Maria, Marta, Elisa, Ana, Hermes, Íris, the son who would be born, Francisco, me, Marta — the gypsy’s skin slipping, the smooth skin — Maria, Simão, Francisco, me.
On the way from the workshop to Maria’s house, my wife wants to escape from remembering the gypsy and she thinks about us. Our faces and our names mingling with flames. She goes faster. It’s not long until Maria’s lunchtime.
I was left alone. I waited, until after a few quick footsteps, and went into the piano cemetery. And I didn’t breathe. I opened the envelope. I unfolded the sheet of paper. I ran my eyes over the lines that my cousin Elisa had written to me — straight lines. And greetings, and the signature, with broad round shapes — Elisa. Then, slowly, I put the sheet down on a piano and looked at it from a distance. I imagined my cousin sitting there, the corner of the sheet aligned with the squares on the tablecloth, the ballpoint pen the worn colour of objects that are valued but old. I held the sheet of paper again, as though I wanted or needed to confirm what was written there — she passed away last week, peacefully. I put the paper down again and thought about my cousin’s choice of words — passed away, peacefully. I compared the words with the images I recalled from the day I took a train more to learn about my father than to meet them. My aunt, who looked at me, who held photographs out to me, was dead now, passed away, peaceful. And I couldn’t help but imagine how that fat woman, that immense woman, stretched out in a dirty bed, had been washed, dressed in clean clothes, and finally presented with dignity. In just the same way I couldn’t help but imagine my cousin, beside her, standing, all alone, in clothes she had bought to wear for the special occasions she never had. I held the letter again, and read it again. Those written phrases were the only visible part of all the phrases that my cousin hid inside herself. They were the only evidence of her voice. I folded the sheet of paper and put it away in the envelope. As I did it, I discovered that my aunt truly had, in days gone by, been a little girl. My cousin, too, in other days, she had also been a little girl. And that was how I saw them — dead and abandoned little girls. That would be how I’d see them again, later, whenever I remembered them in my thoughts.
In the kitchen, a memory makes Marta smile. Everyone in the world recognises the sun. July. In the living room, Hermes is sitting with his hands resting on his legs. Without any help he is trying to understand mysteries. Elisa is tidying up the toys that Hermes has left disordered in the sewing room. It is Friday. The afternoon is taking its time to end. July — luminous calm.
The dogs bark. The dogs bark. Afternoon. Hermes, Elisa and Marta wait. Someone knocks at the door. Elisa goes into the hallway. She walks, with a thought suspended. She opens the door. A woman with brown eyes, made lighter by the dusk. A woman who is too straightforward. Marta comes into the hallway. She walks towards the door. Hermes comes into the hallway. Marta stops beside Elisa. Hermes walks towards the door. He stops beside his sister and mother.
The three of them look at the woman, who looks only at Marta and asks after her husband. She says his name. The first time I heard that name was in the kitchen of our house. At that time Marta’s husband was her invisible boyfriend and I was thinking about things that have stopped mattering. Marta has her arm resting on her son, but she doesn’t have the weight of the arm on him. Marta has a blue smock on her body. She has slippers on her thick feet with their thick toes. The woman is wearing a skirt and a fine blouse. Her hair is well coiffed. Marta looks at her and is surprised that she never imagined her like this. She is a woman like other women. She has eyes and a voice and dreams. She is concrete. She lives with the same fear. Marta feels a small shudder that she’s sure can’t be seen. Her voice is faint when she says her husband isn’t in.
The woman looks at her with a pity that Marta understands as being for them both — for her, and for the woman herself. Perhaps this pity also includes the children and even the whole world — the yellowing weeds, the cracks that cover the walls of houses, the dry moss on the surface of fences. The moment is brief. The woman looks at her and they are almost speaking to one another in a limpid language that has no words. The woman’s face is preoccupied when she says thank you — the skin — and when she moves away. Hermes comes out from under his mother’s arm and walks down the hallway. Elisa is a shape that moves into the sewing room. Marta remains, watching the woman making the movements that open the big door and heading away along the pavement, without looking back.
Marta closes the door slowly. Her body occupies almost the whole corridor. She walks past the entrance to the sewing room where Elisa is, she walks past the entrance to the living room where Hermes is, and reaches the kitchen. She sits down on a chair. There’s water boiling on the stove. A moment. The clarity is the night as it remembers something that has died.
A moment. Hermes, in the living room, recognises the sound of the engine of the truck. Elisa, in the sewing room, is almost big, she’s almost a young woman, and she knows. The sound of the truck’s engine stopping in the street. Night has fallen over Marta. Are there breezes within the night? Marta waits for the sounds of the door opening, the dogs, the footsteps, the kitchen door. Her husband comes in and is surprised to find her sitting in the gloom, but he says nothing. It is his eyes that ask. They ask Marta. So small inside herself — a speck of dust. His eyes. Marta’s voice bears all the sadness she feels, but she merely says:
‘A woman just left who was here asking for you.’
Her husband doesn’t stop looking at her, but from that single sentence he looks at her differently, because suddenly, too quickly, he understands everything. He doesn’t worry about inventing some excuse, he doesn’t reply, he doesn’t say anything. Perhaps angry with the woman who has come looking for him, he turns on his heel and goes back out.
The kitchen door, the footsteps, the dogs, the street door opening. Outside, the engine of the truck starts to work, it can be heard further and further away and disappears around a bend. In just the same way Marta’s heart disappears within her.
She gets up and turns on the light. She calls Elisa to lay the table. She calls Hermes for dinner. She will go to bed early. She knows her husband won’t come back tonight. She is sure that, at last, she has made a decision.
‘Once there was a little fart, who was called. .’
And he paused.
‘Little pink fart!’ said Elisa and Ana in unison. Simão pretended to be surprised, and went on:
‘One day she was at home when she heard a knock at the door: knock, knock, knock. “Who is it?” asked the little fart. “It’s me, the little green gas,” she heard from the other side of the door.’