father’s face covered by a transparent tulle cloth. I looked at him, white, still, and the natural thing would have been for him to open his eyes and say my name, for him to look at me and say, ‘What are you waiting for, lad?’ The cold black echo of the chapel. I looked at him and found it hard to believe his voice would never be heard again.
even faster and I know that that’s why people age more quickly, they die, children are born. There is only one runner ahead of me. Each pace of mine is bigger or faster than two paces from this frightened runner, who still
my father dead, white, still, and I tried to retain the image of this sadness that destroyed me because I knew it wouldn’t be long before I didn’t even have this, didn’t have anything. They would take my father away and I would have to live my whole life without ever seeing him again.
going forwards, and the runner is getting closer and closer. The nearer I get the faster I want to run to overtake him. I keep on
for my sister Maria and my mother. They were together, sitting in chairs. The happy absence of my sister Marta was there, too, still recovering from the birth of Hermes. My brother Simão’s absence was there, too. Ever since the night when it happened, that thing we will never forget, Simão and my father never saw one another again. My father, his arm shaking, pointing at the door shouting: ‘Out!’ Shouting, ‘Out!’ Simão shouting, ‘You’ll never see me again!’ Shouting, ‘I’m never setting foot in this wretched house again!’ Then, years of silence. We didn’t talk about it, but we wanted to believe that on that day Simão would still appear. He was our father. Our only father, who had died. We wanted to believe that he might still appear. He didn’t. And we had no words, only hurt. My mother was next to Maria and had her head in her hands. My sister looked at me with dark eyes. There at the back I saw the face of the piano-tuner. I went towards him. His head tilted towards shadowy corners, towards the surface of the roof or towards empty chairs. He recognised me by the sound of my footsteps. In silence, in my hands, I took the hand he held out to me. The tuner had known my father for many years. His blind face was old and hurt. We looked at one another, as though we were exchanging secrets. And again, the echo of my footsteps — and I approached my father again — my father
I see the runner’s body ahead of me
the tips of my fingers lifting the cloth that covered my father’s face
I launch myself forwards and begin to overtake the runner
I leaned over my father
I overtake the runner now
my lips touched the icy skin of my father’s cheek
time stops. Time has stopped. What exists are our two breathings and a group of people suspended on the side of the road. A cool breeze. Colours smudged. A cool breeze
Kilometre two
as much for my mother, as for Maria, as for me. We’d already left the hospital, we were walking towards the exit — we knew the streets were enormous — when she came running. My sister and my mother didn’t see her. They were walking ahead of me, two frail shapes continuing on their slow way. She took my arm and held my father’s watch out to me. Her face wasn’t a smile, nor was it just serious, it was precisely the face required at that moment — her gaze under a fringe combed to one side, wavy hair. She placed the watch in the palm of my hand, then let the chain slip and fold and settle — a nest — in the palm of my hand. Then it was her voice, going through me, suddenly made of velvet, kindly. As though whispering, she said it would be better for me to take the watch with me, she said that someone might take advantage of my father’s condition to steal it. I thanked her, and I noticed her, but I barely noticed her. It wasn’t till I came back
by time. My mother couldn’t come into our house, the empty corridors weighed down on her. In Maria’s house, Ana was two years old and my mother looked after her with slow steps and few words. Ana was asleep, Maria and her husband were working and my mother was sitting in an armchair. The afternoon was reflected in the windowpanes — my mother’s eyes reflected the relief image of the windowpanes. Nobody could know what she was thinking, but there were whole years inside her, unrepeatable laughs and unrepeatable silences. On those afternoons my mother believed that, in a single instant, everything could be transformed into nothing. She believed in silence
with the gentleman from the undertaker’s, when we arrived at the morgue, that I really noticed her. The whole sky was falling in grey rain on to the city. On the pavements people ran from door to door. Then we were at the morgue — the thick walls. Water streamed from my hair, on to my coat, down my skin. She approached me, and as though we knew one another well she gave me her condolences. It seemed to me then that her voice carried images of some other time. I looked at the walls of the morgue, at my hands, and it was only on the surface of her voice — as on a river — that I was able to relax. Her choosing words and silences to console me. And me managing even to find comfort in that voice, closing my eyes to listen. And me, faced with my dead father, feeling guilty for being able to find comfort in the sweet memory of that voice — fragile grace. In the weeks that followed I would come back just to hear it. She later told me what time she left, and on other days I would return at that time and accompany her to her front door. On the way I heard tales from the hospital. They were told unhurriedly, as though they had no end. Her voice was serene. The nights — the moon, the city, the stars — imitated her. Weeks passed. She began to smile at me. I began to smile at her. And before falling asleep I began to hear her voice inside my head. I fell asleep listening to her. The house was immense. Night filled the house. The walls were undone by this absolute night, and yet the darkness was all made up of many walls, one over another. I tried to live. As I lay down, as I waited to fall asleep, her voice was the calm world in which I forgot everything else. In the mornings and the afternoons, I tried to see only the planks of wood I carried on my shoulders and which I laid out in front of me, on the carpenter’s bench, I tried to see only the tools, only the lines where I imagined cuts, only the points where I imagined nails stuck in, but in spite of myself I still expected, always expected my father’s voice to sound at some indistinguishable moment. Which was why in the morning or the afternoon I’d go into the piano cemetery when I wanted to hear only her voice in my memory, when I wanted to rest. Before going off to train I’d stop by Maria’s house. I told myself that I was going to check that everything was all right, but even before knocking at the door I knew that I’d find my mother with her voice dismayed, Ana running around me holding out her arms for me to pick her up, Maria tired and her husband, on his tiptoes, his face raised towards me, trying to interest me in some subject which didn’t interest me even remotely. And I’d run round the streets at maddening speed — the air leaving me heavily. I’d come back home to wash, and in the mid-evening I’d get to the hospital entrance, combed, when she would smile at me and I’d smile at her. She was the best moments
utterly. My mother’s sadness also got into Maria, but never to the point where it was shared completely, because only my mother knew the time and the secrets of that sadness. Perhaps that was why there were moments when Maria couldn’t understand her or what troubled her. More than a week after the burial of my father, Maria managed to convince my mother that they should go and visit Marta and meet Hermes. On the days that followed the burial of my father Maria wandered round the house and said nothing to her. She’d say to her: ‘Come and eat something.’ She’d say to her: ‘Then why don’t you go and lie down?’ But she said nothing to her because these were the tiniest of words, they were silence. After a few days Maria began to sit down in chairs to talk to her. She said, ‘We’ve got to go and see Marta’s boy.’ She said, ‘Tomorrow we’ll go and see Marta’s boy.’ My mother responded with a nodded yes, but on two occasions as the time to set off approached she was taken ill. It was more than a week after the burial of my father. Maria’s husband didn’t want to go, and at one end of the corridor he held Maria by the arm and, shouting whispers at her, shook her. At the other end of the corridor my mother and Ana waited by the door — hand in hand. They went by train. On her mother’s lap, Ana leaned her whole body up against the glass of the window. Only her gaze — all of it — managed to get through it. On the front seat, my mother’s silence was more invisible beneath the sound of the train on the tracks. It was still morning when they arrived at the land where Marta had gone to live. The sky