And the story went on. The story could go on for ever. When they were together, at Maria’s house, if Marta had come to Lisbon, Simão would go and put his nieces to bed for their nap and told them stories about the little pink fart. They were stories that always smelled very bad. If the little pink fart fell over, she smelled bad; if she played, if she gave little green gas a kiss, she smelled bad. The little pink fart was beautiful and pink, but she was a fart, which was why she smelled bad. Simão told the stories very seriously and each time the little fart or the little gas did something that smelled bad, Elisa and Ana would laugh with their little girl laughing voices. The mother of the little pink fart was called the yellow fart, her father was called blue gas.
Sometimes Marta would come into the bedroom and say:
‘Don’t tell the children such things.’ But as she said this she would be laughing, too.
Sunday — Sunday. Sitting on the yard steps, my wife was peeling potatoes that she dropped, raw, into an enamel basin. I was at the top of a stepladder, pruning the vines that grew up the trellises against the wall. Francisco was holding on to the ladder with both hands, and when I told him to he’d move away to collect clumps of branches that had fallen in tangles on the ground. Then he would throw them on to the pile of firewood. The morning passed.
Marta was the first to arrive. My wife was no longer in the yard. She’d gone up the steps with the potato skins in her apron folded up over her belly and she had come back to fetch the basin. She had gone through the ribbons of the door. Marta arrived laughing and talking loudly. Behind her came Elisa, little, saying:
‘Oh, Uncle,’ and she ran to Francisco.
Behind them, slowly, came Marta’s husband.
I came down the ladder to greet them, and because I’d finished I put down the pruning shears. Francisco was playing around with Elisa. Marta’s husband and I talked about nothing. Marta said things we didn’t hear and tried to get into the conversation. The morning passed.
At a certain point Maria arrived with her husband. Marta’s voice faded. Her expression turned heavy. As they approached we could see the husband, and Maria’s face behind him, taller. In greeting we spoke mingled words, diluted words, words that were whispers, grunts, that were not words. When Maria made as if to approach Elisa, Marta rushed over and picked her up in her arms:
‘Go on now, let your uncle rest.’
But Francisco wasn’t tired and he didn’t need to rest.
There was a silence in Maria’s footsteps, that lost their meaning and stopped. Our daughters’ husbands didn’t interrupt their conversation; Francisco made the most of it to fold up the stepladder, but I noticed. I wasn’t sure what, but I had no doubt that I’d noticed something.
My wife appeared through the ribbons, at the door, at the top of the stairs, smiled gently, spoke some childish syllables to Elisa and called our daughters to help her lay the table. Maria went up the steps and into the house. Marta, with Elisa in her arms, kept looking at us, as though my wife hadn’t spoken to her, as though she was ready to continue with the conversation we weren’t having. We stared at her, uncomprehending. She held out for a moment, but ended up putting Elisa down and, thwarted, went into the house.
As we had lunch, I had the flagon of wine at my feet. I’d lift it up to fill my glass. Sometimes Maria’s husband or Marta’s husband would hold out their glasses and I’d fill them, too. Discreetly, head down to my plate, I lifted my gaze to confirm that Marta wasn’t addressing a single word to Maria. I made the most of a moment when everyone was distracted by something funny that Elisa had said — sitting on a chair on two cushions, bib tied round her neck — to touch my wife’s arm with my elbow; I pointed at our daughters with my chin and raised my eyebrows in a question. My wife, as though surprised at my silent question, said in a low voice:
‘Just leave them be.’
And there was a moment of loose phrases, unconnected.
Someone said:
‘Elisa’s already becoming a little rascal.’
Or:
‘We should have set the table out in the yard.’
Or:
‘It’s good, the cod.’
There was a tragic moment. We had already finished eating when my wife sat down. She stuck her arm out to reach the cruet and knocked over my full glass. A lake of wine spread across the tablecloth, over the napkins, between the plates, and ran in red threads over the table’s edge.
Still sitting, I moved myself away, dragging the chair with an abrupt shove of my legs, but I still got stained by the wine. I said:
‘What a damn mess!’
My wife got up, went to fetch an old cloth, rags. My voice became thick and harsh. My voice was used for asking her questions that she didn’t answer. She kept cleaning, as though I wasn’t saying anything, as though I didn’t exist. I got up, stood behind her and shouted into her ears as she twisted the cloth over the sink. Still she was impassive. I grabbed her by the arm. I shook her.
‘Don’t you hear me? Don’t you hear me?’
As I let go of her, she gave up on eating and began to clear the table. The plates piled up in her hands. The top plate had the cutlery and the fish-bones, tipped from the other plates. There was silence. Still she didn’t look at me, as though I didn’t exist. I waited for her to approach the sink, and with a slap knocked the plates from her hands.
Elisa began to cry. Our daughters’ husbands looked at places that didn’t exist. Francisco looked at his mother. Our daughters got closer to one another, sisters again, as though whatever had separated them had lost any significance. In Marta’s face, next to Maria, I could see that she had forgiven whatever secret had hurt her, she hadn’t forgotten, but she had forgiven. And she was looking only at me. My wife, crouched down, was gathering up dirty cutlery and shards of broken plates.
I had only been ill a few months, but already I wasn’t working. At the workshop I’d sit on a pile of planks of wood. Francisco was slowly ceasing to be a lad and starting to be a man. His age was like that diffuse time of day when afternoon begins to mingle with night, it seems like it’s afternoon, it seems like it’s night, and it’s no longer afternoon, and it’s not yet night.
There was one day I left the workshop to make my way slowly homewards to rest. I stopped at the taberna. I drank. Weeks had passed since my last glass of wine, the doctor forbidding me, the doctor looking me in the eye and forbidding me. I drank three glasses, four, and for a moment it was like when I still had a future. I arrived home, avoided my wife, and went into Francisco’s room because I knew no one would come to look for me there. I lay down on his bed. The pillow was too low.
When Francisco arrived, after his run, he found me sleeping. He woke me, and from my breath or my voice, or from what I said to him, he knew right away that I had been drinking. Against my grumbles, he helped me up. And he seemed to be already a man, because he said to me:
‘Are you afraid of dying?’
And he seemed to be still a boy because, when I was up on my feet, he wanted to hug me. I said to him:
‘I don’t really hug.’
We stood there facing each other, still in conflict, with our arms out, impossible to make out which of us was the man and which the boy, almost hugging.
Even Íris, little, concerned with her dolls, knows that a day that moves as this one does towards evening can only be a Friday. She doesn’t know the word ‘Friday’, but she knows what it means. It is the end of the afternoon — the apotheosis. Maria has arrived, with all the strength in her body fading. Standing under my wife’s arms, Ana takes off her smock. Ana has her exercise books on the kitchen table to solve some divisions. On top of the refrigerator, the wireless pours out piano music. It is like an open tap, forgotten, losing a thread of water that isn’t noticed, that can barely be seen. Maria’s husband has arrived, short and angry, enemies watching him from all directions. He has enemies on top of the kitchen cupboards, he has enemies behind the plates drying over the sink, he has transparent enemies that mingle with the tulle curtains and tremble with them, passed through by the breeze that the windows let in — the end of the afternoon.