I accompanied my uncle and the men to the taberna, and that afternoon it was me buying everyone a glass of wine. The glasses were filled until a red shining surface was about to spill over. The men stopped what they were saying, raised their glasses, and as though suffocating downed them in a single draught. Then they stuck the thick base of the glass on to the marble countertop and continued talking. We were happy. My uncle paid for another round. Again the conversations stopped for a moment. The taberna owner had spots of red wine on his shirt, and with his arms resting on the bar he watched us with an expression of amazement. All the men spoke to my uncle, who replied at random. Occasionally he would tug at someone’s arm, point at me and say:
‘That’s my nephew.’
The men already knew, but it didn’t matter because none of them was really listening to him. I paid for another round and we left. It was May. There was a kind light over the streets. The brightness was approaching the end of the afternoon and gradually took on its warmer colour. My uncle and I walked together and we were happy. When I arrived at the door to my house, before we parted, we smiled and we didn’t say see you tomorrow as we did every day, because not long afterwards we would be seeing each other again at the dance.
I picked two or three pieces from the pile of firewood to light the stove, filled a pan with water and left it to heat up, and sat on a stool to think about her — to remember her face. In that rapturous moment I wanted to believe in everything. I was twenty-two years old, and I was capable of believing in everything. In that way, time passed. Night had fallen when I got up from my stool and went to pour the pan of water into the basin where I washed. In the dark the water slipped down my body, giving it glistening shapes — over my chest, over my legs, I raised my hands filled with water, poured them over my head, or my shoulders, or my stomach, and they were still wet when I ran the palms of my hands over my body as though moulding it. I cleaned myself — the towel soft from years of use — and struck a match with which I lit the lamp. I put on my best shirt, my best trousers, my best jacket, put my best boots on my feet. Then after combing my hair I took some time in front of the bathroom mirror pretending I was still combing. I opened my shirt buttons to spread a drop of eau de cologne, buttoned them up again and left.
Night over the houses. The door to the hall where the dance was going to begin was surrounded by a crowd of men and children. They were all there together, surrounding the light. You still couldn’t hear any music, you could hear many voices on top of one another. I approached and began to find a bit of space to get past the shoulders and elbows. By the door sitting at a little table was a man with an open cardboard suitcase. When I made to go in he put his arm in front of me:
‘It’s one tostão.’
I told him I knew the pianist, but he kept looking at me with his eyebrows knotted. I looked inside and saw the Italian talking to her. I felt the skin of my face warming up, I felt my blood beat fast in the veins of my temples. I raised my arm and gestured to him, called him, shouted to him, but I was invisible. The people’s voices filled the room. The people’s voices were a compact bulk, like a rock, in the whole room. He was talking to her. She was laughing. I continued to gesture to him, put my fingers to my lips and whistled at him. But I was invisible. I lost all movement, I forgot my own arms, when the Italian moved away from her and began, determinedly, to walk in the direction of the piano — on a platform, at the back of the hall — the piano my uncle and I had repaired. Without taking her eyes off him she took two steps backwards and sat in an empty chair, next to the woman who had opened the boarding-house door for me that afternoon. All the voices were transformed into silence when the Italian sat down, pushing away the tails of his morning suit, and raised his two hands in a suspended moment over the keyboard.
When the first notes sounded, even amid the crowd of people at the door — the children crawling under legs — no other noise could be heard. Normally dances were accompanied by an accordion. Most of the people there had never seen a piano before. The Italian’s melodramatic movements on the stool, now approaching the keyboard, now moving away from it, accompanied the torrent of music that was launched over the room like a tide. Some of the women, submerged, raised embroidered handkerchiefs to their faces to contain their tears. Bringing his hands, fingers open, suddenly down twice on to the keyboard, the Italian finished this first piece. Applause broke out all across the room and the Italian, on his feet, bent over the hand he had placed across his waist. After some time, when the applause was beginning to fade, he sat down again and from his hands came some looser notes; then, lifting his face towards all the people who were watching him, he began to sing in Italian. The women smiled, then immediately concealed their smiles when several men crossed the room and offered them their arm. Two couples, then three, then four began to dance. It was at that moment that I felt a hand take hold of my arm.
I turned to see my uncle, newly shaved, smiling at me under a side parting, the skin of his forehead pale without his beret, his clothes washed and ironed, his shoes polished. I paid two tostões to the man at the table who in exchange gave me two stamped squares of paper, and with my uncle following me I went down the stairs on to the tiles of the hall.
She saw me. I was sure that she saw me come in. I saw her face seeing me, then obscured by a couple who set themselves swaying, dancing in front of her. I stopped behind the wall of men who stood watching the couples dancing, who smoked cigarettes and waited for the right song before they would go up to the one they had chosen and with luck they would dance, too. Surrounding the dancers, in chairs pushed up against the walls of the hall, were the single girls, and beside them, their mothers. In the middle were the circles made up of the dancing couples — spinning together, a few inches between their bodies; the lads held the girls’ waists, the girls would put a hand on their backs and with the other hand they held the hand the boy held up in the air. At the back, on a wooden platform, the Italian played piano and sang, looking frequently at her as she sat there beside the woman I took to be her mother. At the other end of the hall, behind the wall of waiting men, behind me, there were words and there were the faces of the men who spoke them, and who sometimes would go in through a door to where there was a bar. Behind me, tired of looking at nothing that caught his eye, my uncle was one of the men who went into the smoking room. He asked for a glass of wine. With his hands rummaging in his pockets, he opened his left eye wide, smiled and asked for a glass of wine. When I turned back to face forwards, she was watching me. Her fixed stare was crossed by couples dancing past, but it continued fixed and immobile. I could see her now. She wore a velvet choker — her smooth neck, white and pure. Her eyes were asking something of me. I was sure that her eyes were asking something of me. In the corners of her lips arose a very subtle smile. Anyone else wouldn’t have been able to make it out. The song ended, a few women clapped, the couples parted and she continued to look at me. The shape of her eyebrows spoke to me with a word — a request — but I didn’t know how to dance, and that was why I remained with my hands in my pockets, sad, looking at her watching me and understanding that I had disappointed her. When the music returned and the couples resumed their dancing, she turned her face towards the Italian and, her hands empty and resting on her legs, she stopped watching me. I went into the room where the men were leaning on the bar and approached my uncle. He was with a group of men, talking loudly and laughing a lot. In the quick movements he made with his arms my uncle carried a half-full glass. When I rested my elbows on the counter and asked for a glass of wine, I listened to my uncle a moment and could not understand anything that made any sense. When my uncle saw me, he pointed at me, proud, and said: