Behind the door, she holds Ana’s blouse with both hands and thinks of a whole world behind her open eyes. She focuses on listening to the sounds downstairs, but hears a tap running in the bathroom. She leaves the blouse on the little telephone table, next to the chrome-plated frame with the photograph we took together in Rossio, and hurries up the corridor. In the bathroom, Íris has the bidet tap turned on, running on to a mixture of soap and torn-up toilet paper. Suddenly she stops to watch her grandmother coming in.
‘You’re really just ruining everything,’ says my wife, as she turns off the tap.
She rolls up Íris’s wet sleeves and, holding her hand that is wrapped in a bandage, pulls her down the corridor to the bedroom. She changes her blouse and vest. Then she leaves her sitting on the bed and lowers the blinds. Íris already knows. My wife looks for the white blanket and the two of them lie down. My wife murmurs, to herself:
‘Now we’re going to have a little sleep because you woke up very early.’
Íris doesn’t reply, but after a moment she says:
‘Granny, tell a story.’
Dragging her voice over some whispered words, my wife begins to make up the story of a girl called Íris who ran a race against other girls and won.
‘She was like Uncle Francisco, wasn’t she?’
‘She was.’
‘He also ran a marathon, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Hey, Granny — tell it again.’
‘No. Now we’re going to sleep.’
And there they stayed, the two of them. The sounds from the street — the motorcars, the buses — are distant beyond the window. Íris:
‘Hey, Granny, don’t steal my blanket.’
And there they stayed, the two of them. The air in the room is the colour of shadows. Through the gaps in the blinds come lines of light, in parallel, gently slanted, crossing the gloom and settling on the two bodies lying on the little bed. In the wardrobe mirror there is an identical room, with a grandmother and a granddaughter lying under a shadowy gloom, crossed by parallel lines of light.
In Íris’s skinny little chest, her breathing softens. Her little lips lose the shape of being able to say a word. They surrender to their loss of strength. She sleeps. My wife, when she feels her sleeping, gets up with great care. She tucks the blanket round Íris’s body which, feeling it, breathes more deeply, as though sighing.
It was Sunday because it was sunny, because I had decided I wasn’t going to work, because not many cars could be heard in the city, because the world seemed infinite, because my daughters had dressed with ribbons they tied round their waists and because I had slept until I was woken by the church bells calling the people to mass. My wife was smiling and the morning bore the lightness of her smile. My wife was younger on Sunday mornings when she smiled. Our children were still small. Francisco was not yet born. Marta was already helping her mother.
The previous night, when my wife had told me about the octopus she had bought at the market, I could imagine her coming back home laden with baskets hanging from her arms the whole way, the handles of the baskets marked in red furrows in the palms of her hands.
That morning, when she drew back the strips of ribbon from the door to the yard and called me, I was looking for a bill in my document drawer. I crossed the little kitchen tiles and took the basin as she handed it to me and said:
‘I’ve already cleaned it. Now it’s got to be beaten.’
I chose a plank from the pile of firewood, and on the laundry tank started to beat it. On the ground, the drain was covered with the bloody mess that my wife had taken from inside the octopus.
Simão and Maria were little. They were sitting on the ground, playing, and they were watching me. Marta and her mother were waiting, and they watched me very seriously.
It didn’t take much to realise that the octopus was too tough. I approached the steps at the entrance to the house and began to beat it with all my strength against the cement.
My children were shocked. They only realised they could laugh when their mother started to laugh. To make them laugh more, I exaggerated my actions as I beat the octopus against the steps.
I wanted my wife and my children to laugh and to be happy.
The bitch we had at the time was old, and pregnant, and she took fright. She came running into the kitchen, tail between her legs. After handing the basin with the octopus to my wife, for her to run it under the water, I washed my hands with a worn bar of blue soap that was in the sink, passed a wet cloth over the steps and went back to the kitchen. The bitch was lying on a heap of two or three old sweaters my wife had put in a corner, next to the unlit fire, where she knew she liked to lie. She looked at me hurt and I bent down to stroke her, as though asking her pardon.
I was still looking for the bill in my document drawer when Marta came in to start laying the table. I didn’t stop looking when my wife, coming from the oven we had in the yard, entered holding the clay dish and saying not to come too close, even though there wasn’t anybody near her. I didn’t give up looking when my wife went to the yard door to call Simão and Maria. I gave up when my wife told me, in a sweet voice that told me all was welclass="underline"
‘Go and sit down or it’ll get cold.’
I don’t know what we talked about. The sun was coming through the window and pouring a constant torrent of light that crossed the air, that illuminated the agitated dust and set itself against the tiles. My wife, seasoning the salad, looking for napkins, running with Simão’s plastic plate, was crossing this torrent of light, disordering the movement of the dust and smiling.
Simão was eating all by himself. Sometimes he would raise his fork into the air. Marta and Maria were looking vaguely at their plates. I was watching my wife serving herself. It was at that moment of silence that Simão pointed at the bitch’s place and said:
‘Hey, Ma. . The dog’s dying bleeding.’
At the same time we all looked over to the bitch. One of her puppies was being born. Our daughters began to scream, spitting the half-chewed octopus into their plates, got up thunderously and went out into the corridor. Simão’s body was turned in his chair. He still had his beautiful child’s eyes. It was out of the corner of his right eye that, without understanding what he was seeing, he was looking at the bitch. My wife got up, took him up in her arms, and took him out to the corridor. I got up too and followed.
In the corridor Marta and Maria were recovering their breath and mixing laughs with little screams. Simão started to cry. My wife was trying to comfort him, and at the same time she was laughing at our daughters. It was Marta who said to me:
‘Go and see if all the puppies are born, go and see if the dog’s all right.’
I opened the door slightly and put my head through into the kitchen. Around the bitch there was a puddle of water with traces of blood. Little puppies were still being born, with sticky fur, their eyes closed. I brought my head back into the corridor, muttered some sound, mouth full, and nodded yes with my head. I had my mouth full of octopus I couldn’t swallow.
After loading up the piano — using our whole strength, the whole limit of our strength — after we lifted it till we were able to arrange it on the cart, I closed the workshop door. While the Italian looped and knotted the rope, he’d turn now towards me, now towards my uncle, telling us how well the piano was, better than new; he had seen so many pianos, his fingers had been over the keys of so many pianos, but not one — well, perhaps one — but almost none was as smooth and as well set-up and tuned as that one. And he told us, in Italian words, to come to the dance that night. We didn’t take much convincing, but he insisted. I didn’t take much convincing myself, but he took me aside and whispered that he would pay for the repairs once he had received his payment for the dance, and then speaking to everyone again he raised his voice to insist that we go to the dance. The men my uncle had called from the taberna looked at him with mouths agape, with almost toothless smiles.