Sometimes, when she was in the living room, playing the piano, Uncle Inácio would push open the door and come in. And then she wished he simply didn’t exist, that he would disappear or die, go far away and never come back. However, instead of disappearing or dying, he would squat down and keep time by beating on the furniture with a wooden spoon or with a metal spoon on a glass. At best, she managed to persuade him to beat on the glass with the wooden spoon, but that wasn’t loud enough for him and, a moment later, he would grab the metal spoon again and once more keep time with it on the glass. Or else he would stamp his feet and clap his hands or snap his fingers like castanets.
On other days, though, he would come into the room, clumsily trying not to make any noise, sit down cross-legged on the floor and remain as still as he could. Then he was her listener, and she didn’t yearn for him to go away. Could he make out the different voices in Bach? she wondered. Could he hear them, he who never listened to anyone?
Sometimes, when she had finished playing, he would take her hands, turn them palm uppermost, and measure the length of her fingers, comparing them with his, then tap her nails lightly with the spoon and smile.
One day, he himself sat down at the piano, pressed hard on the keys and grimaced at the sound he made. He tried again, over and over, then covered his ears, shaking his head, and returned to his place on the floor, eyes averted, apparently deeply offended. Then, suddenly, he sprang to his feet and strode towards her with such furious intent that she thought he was going to hit her. However, he pulled up short at the last moment and left the room, slamming the door.
The small music room also served as a study and a reception room, on the rare occasions when they received visitors: the smell of wax from the highly polished floor, the photo album covered by her aunt with a floral fabric, the repoussé leather lid of the desk, and above the piano, the pokerwork tray made by her aunt many years ago, before she became Uncle Octávio’s wife, and was still his fiancée.
That tray, showing a peacock with its tail spread, had been the largest and most difficult project Aunt Isaura had ever undertaken and she could still remember every detail of its making: the smell of burning that she had to put up with day after painful day, the sharp point of the cauterizer, which she had to keep red-hot by constantly pressing a rubber bulb with her left hand, while her right hand was poised over the meticulous design, tracing detail after detail, afraid she might burn her fingers, screwing up her eyes against the searing heat and light. And all for the love of Uncle Octávio. She’d also had to put up with the smell of petrol that fuelled the old thermal cauterizer that had once belonged to Dr Lucas.
Sometimes, when she had finished playing, he would take her hands, turn them palm uppermost, and measure the length of her fingers, comparing them with his, then tap her nails lightly with the spoon and smile.
When she was young, in that same room in what was then her parents’ house, Aunt Isaura had occasionally played ‘Prima Carezza’, ‘La Vie en Rose’ and the tango ‘Camiñito’. That was when she was first getting to know Uncle Octávio, who could play czardas and tangos on the violin. This had made them feel that they were fated to be together, just as had happened with a couple they knew, who, on the night they met, had won a complete coffee service in a raffle. She had won the cups and he the coffee pot and sugar bowl. It had to be fate, for who could deny that they completed each other? It was the same when Aunt Isaura and Uncle Octávio played the tango ‘Camiñito’ together. In the days when they seemed to accompany each other.
They played rarely now, well, almost never. But it still did occasionally happen: her aunt, sitting very erect on the piano stool, would pin back her hair and adjust her spectacles to disguise her nervousness, then her uncle, keeping time with toe of his shoe, would give a curt nod as the signal to commence and then come in triumphantly six beats later. He would turn head and shoulders so as to be able to see her and now and then raise his eyebrows; her aunt would blush, feeling ever more anxious, getting the same chords wrong over and over, repeating and stopping and sometimes giving up altogether. Uncle Octávio would get angry then and stamp his foot, while Aunt Isaura, breathing hard, would be almost reduced to tears. Then he would forget all about her and finish the tune alone: he always improvised at the end anyway, furiously scraping the bow in all directions, as if he were trying to polish the strings of the violin. He perhaps imagined that he was a virtuoso, to judge by the smug way in which he bowed low, holding the violin in one hand and the bow in the other, while her aunt applauded, smiling now and recovered from her fright, sitting once again in her armchair, relieved that they had reached the end and she could go back to her knitting, liberated from the anxiety of accompanying him, now that she was old and fat and could dispense with the painful duties of courtship.
By then, Aunt Isaura was already beginning to lose her hair, and patches of shiny scalp were visible here and there. She sat in her armchair, sighing and counting stitches. She used to keep dropping them until she bought some circular needles and then the stitches ran round and round inside that ring over which, every so often, her head would droop and she would fall asleep.
It was on one such occasion, years before, when her aunt and uncle were playing together, that it had all begun, for Júlia, that is: after sitting through their laboured musical display, she had knelt down on the piano stool — because if she sat, she couldn’t reach the keyboard — and picked out the tune of ‘Camiñito’. Her aunt and uncle stared at her as if they had seen a ghost.
This frightened her so much that she scrambled down from the stool and climbed onto the sofa, stuffing her hands into the pockets of her dress, eager to forget about the whole incident.
They, however, were not at all eager to forget. They made her play again and again, and made soft, approving noises or sat in absolute silence, listening and looking first at each other and then at her. Afterwards, her uncle took off his glasses and put them on again, and her aunt blushed and wiped her damp, perspiring face. Only then did the incident end.
