Kilometre nine
were sure and elegant, like birds coming to rest on the lake in the park — her thin, smooth, white, porcelain wrists. And her face — in her eyes — was a sky where new meanings existed — a new life, created by her hand, more than eternal — and it was possible to believe in everything because there were nothing but certainties in the intensity of her eyes and in the music that came through me. In one corner, trying not to touch anything, the tuner had no face. The music from the piano had transformed his wrinkled skin, his worn lips, his blind eyes into a single smudge. The tuner didn’t exist. She and I looked at one another and what we felt filled the hall and could have filled the world. When she turned her face away I felt lost, until the moment I looked over my shoulder and found the smile of the lady who had just come in.
against the doors. After Hermes was born, after the death of my father, my mother only stayed in Maria’s house a few months. When Hermes began to be more work, at the start of summer, my mother moved to Marta’s house, and it was around this time that she began, slowly, to wake up. At times the pitch of her voice rose. There were times when she laughed tenderly at something Hermes had done. Marta wandered through the house — she occupied the whole corridor with her body — and my mother became gradually interested in details — the cutlery arranged in the drawer, the pins stuck in the calendar, the different ways of the land where Marta had gone to live. There were late afternoons when Marta’s husband would arrive home suddenly, demanding dinner. The three of them would sit and talk, in the evenings, perhaps about something that had happened — Marta, sitting on a stool, breathing heavily, anxious from the stifling heat of the August nights; my mother, sitting dressed in black, a black stain that spoke calmly; and Elisa, sitting on a patchwork rug, lit up by the whims of an oil lamp, playing with a rag doll. Over those evenings — like a breeze — was the calm of knowing that Hermes, submerged in the shadows of his room, was asleep, serene, safe, and he was a growing child. On those same nights, in Maria’s house, time
a few days. I stopped outside her house and I didn’t know what to do. When I was in luck, I’d lean against the wall and like a memory I could hear a little of the music she played. I knew that in the hall that music was like a whirlwind. There, it was like a breeze, like a veil carried by a breeze, something that floated and mingled with the voices of the people who passed, with the bells of the horses pulling carts or with the engine of the occasional motorcar. On one of those evenings I decided to knock at the door. I didn’t know what I’d say — I forgot one of my tools, how are you? I forgot to fix a problem with the piano. I thought of nothing as I walked down the pavement, climbed the steps and
was much slower. All the streets of Benfica had fallen still. It was on one of those nights — August — after a dinner of soup — that Maria’s husband broke all the dinner plates for the first time, kicked a chair and pushed Maria against a wall. Maria spent the night in the kitchen, sitting in a chair, falling asleep occasionally, spending the rest of the time awake, crying loudly enough that he could hear her and quietly enough that Ana shouldn’t wake. The next morning he got up and finding her still in the kitchen he embraced her, crying too, asked her forgiveness, asked her forgiveness, grovelled, told her he’d never do it again, told her he loved her, told her he loved her more than life itself. She embraced him back, and believed him.
knocked. It was the lady who opened it. She smiled at me, and as I readied myself to say one of the phrases I’d made up, the lady began to walk ahead of me and I again followed her along the distant corridor. When we reached the hall, she was sitting at the piano, insubstantial. When the lady left I marvelled for a moment, but this moment passed very quickly because I threw myself towards her — her serious, white face, her smooth, long hair — and I embraced her. She embraced me, too. I was certain that she embraced me too. She stood up and I felt her whole body fitting within my arms. Then she walked silently towards the doors and closed them. We made love on the floor, on rugs, lit up by the brightness that hurled itself from the windows as if trying to kill us.
Kilometre ten
in my legs, like flames enveloping my skin. My arms, too. That’s how come there’s a star in the sky shining during the day — a distant, solitary, single star — a world covered in fire. I exist here. And the star, she exists up there, watching me. And accompanying me, wrapping me in fire. I make my way through the streets of Stockholm just as though I were making my way along a tunnel towards the sun.
a ball made of rags. My mother says to him: ‘You’re too old to be out playing in the street.’ Simão was twelve years old. When the stonemason didn’t have any work for him, he’d send him home. It wasn’t common, but it wasn’t unusual. There were times when the stonemason would notify him the night before. On those mornings I’d try not to wake him when I got up to go to school. There were times when the stonemason only told him he didn’t need him when Simão arrived, his boots covered in dried cement, with his work clothes and the pot of lunch our mother had prepared for him. On those mornings he’d come back home and he couldn’t get back to sleep. He’d walk round the kitchen and was always in our sisters’ or our mother’s way. He’d sit in a chair, and when he was told to move he’d discover he was in the way of one of them; then he’d lean on a cupboard which he later discovered was in the way of another, who told him to move; then he’d go somewhere else, in the way of another, who also told him to move. It was then that he’d head down three or four streets to the patch of wasteground, between two vegetable gardens, where the lads got together to play ball. No weeds grew on that wasteground because every day dozens of lads would get together to chase a rag ball across the pitch. They were free lads, who didn’t go to school, or who didn’t have a father or mother. On this ground, of dirt in the summer and of mud in the winter, stones grew. The posts were measured out in barefoot steps and made of little heaps of stones. Almost in the middle of the pitch was an olive tree that survived year after year, mistreated by the lads who tore limbs from it, and who dodged around it as they chased the ball, and occasionally bumped into its trunk and were knocked back. When Simão arrived he took off his work boots because he didn’t want to ruin them with kicking stones. He left them carefully behind one of the posts and went on to the pitch to kick off one of the younger kids and start playing. Turning his head in every direction, always following the ball with his left eye, Simão ran surrounded by a knot of lads who came up to his chest and kicked every which way. It was on one of those days that Simão, coming out of the yard, let the bitch get out between his legs. Usually she was allowed out, she could go wherever she wanted and then, tired, she’d wait; she’d lie on the pavement and wait for someone to go back in. That day was different. In the late afternoon Simão wasn’t surprised to get home, sweating, and not see the bitch. He didn’t give it a thought. No one would have given it a thought if Maria hadn’t soon afterwards come through the gate crying and disappeared through the kitchen door. I was sitting on the edge of the outdoor sink telling Simão stories from school, and when Maria ran past crying the two of us didn’t notice. Maria came back to the yard with our mother. They walked towards us. Maria tried to recover her composure. Our mother approached, angry. Her eyes were angry. Her voice was only angry when it asked Simão, ‘Was it you who let the bitch out?’ She didn’t wait for a reply, and asked again, ‘Was it you who let the bitch out?’ Maria had gone with an errand to the grocer’s and found the bitch on the edge of the pavement, run over by a motorcar — her fur bloody, her tongue dry, her eyes closed and sad. Simão had no time, no words to say. Before taking Maria by the hand and going back into the kitchen, our mother said to him, ‘When your father arrives, then you’ll see.’ Next to me, Simão went pale. Our mother came back through the kitchen door, handed him a burlap sack and told him to go and fetch the bitch. After putting the sack with the bitch’s bulk down on the ground of the yard — the spots of thick blood, the arch of the spine recognisable in the shape of the sack — Simão wandered through the house alone, as though he was inventing solutions, all of them impossible. As night fell, our father came into the kitchen, and as soon as our mother told him he went out into the yard to look for Simão. He didn’t look far. He found him scrunched into a corner of the chicken coop, covering his face but not hiding the terror in his eyes. Our father took off his belt, and against the dirty chicken-coop wall he beat him, letting the blows fall wherever they might.