by Mia Couto
—Stop interfering, husband!
—I need you to stay there, on the other side. I have no one left living to go on caring for me.
But once Faulhinha had got over her fright, she went on saying her prayers, commending the little that remained of her soul. She was pondering with her whole body focused on the universe: how the world would be better if all the dead had been buried smiling. Folk would even hear the dead laughing out loud from under the earth when the moon was shining up above, nice and round. As things stood, the dead left unwillingly and were jealous of Life, now that they lacked substance.
Tired of having to listen, the dead man spoke more sternly. He was no longer making requests. He was returning to the ways he had when he was alive. He blustered and threatened. His wife, impassive, sighed:
—Be quiet, Ananias. If you don’t shut up, I won’t be able to hear God’s voice.
—Forget it … God isn’t going to speak to you.
His wife ignored him. Then she returned to her prayers. Ananias listened, his fury simmering. At one point, he even laughed. Once again, his laughter was aimed at belittling his wife. But then he became the boss once more, severe and controlling.
—I’ve only got a moment, woman, listen to me. I’ve got some tasks for you to do over there.
—You can talk as much as you like. I listened to you too much when you were alive.
—In our race, who doesn’t respect the dead?
—I don’t.
—Are you pretending to be a white?! Let me ask you then: what God are you talking to? Our old ones, or the one that’s all the rage now?
—Listen, Ananias. Haven’t you died?
—Of course I’ve died.
—So get on with being dead.
He should be quiet. Better still: he should no longer have a voice, no longer even leave memories behind him. For he had long ago caused her self-effacement. She who had been born with such hopes. When she had been born, she had thought it would be forever. One could never have guessed that Faulinha had once ruled her domains. It didn’t seem so now, but she had been happy as a young girl, in the abundance of her childhood. This is what had been her salvation: to find strength in memories of a time that only exists outside Time. She had married in order to be two, but had ended up being no one. An abandoned wing, her soul had already forgotten the savour of flight. And it was his fault, Ananias’s. So for that reason he should let her leave life, as she herself wanted.
The dead man listened to his wife’s words in alarm. He never knew Faulhinha could speak so prettily. Before, she had stifled herself in silence. Now, as he listened to her elaborate prayer, he didn’t recognize her. For example, these words of hers:
—I want to enter the ground before the earth is all used up.
Then, once again, Faulhinha directed her petitions to divine ears. That she should be buried, her face upwards to the ground. Her eyes gazing at the sky. It wasn’t enough for her to love flowers: she needed to be a stem and petals, to blossom out there and finally justify her name.
All of a sudden, the dead man tried to accost his wife. He took advantage of her being on her knees, and grabbed her neck. But the woman reacted with fury and with brute force returned her late husband to his final resting place. When she spoke, leaning over the astonished Ananias, Faulhinha was spitting rancour:
—Don’t you understand, you son of a bitch? Don’t you understand that I don’t want to be your widow?
Worse than being his wife would be the obligation to mourn him. She’d rather be any man’s widow but his, saturated as she was by shadow, absence, and eternal waiting. The dead man, surprised, still had something to say:
—But only a little while ago, you were asking God to let you look after me, here in the world beyond …
—Well, I was lying.
The late Ananias climbed back onto his bed. He remained still, now categorically dead. The last syllable froze in his eyes. He closed his eyelids with his own hands. And he re-expired. Unresuscitated.
Without getting to her feet, merely dragging herself along on her knees, the woman pulled the cage towards her. She opened the door. The parrot didn’t leave its enclosure straightaway. It waited for the woman’s body to fall back onto the floor. Faulhinha collapsed, in the ground’s embrace. The bird still waited a bit longer. Patiently, as if it were waiting for the ground to turn to soil. Or as if it were only concerned with its own problems. Then it flapped its wings while taking a last look at the woman. If Faulhinha were still there, she would have been puzzled as she recognized those eyes. Only then did the bird fly off deep into its first sky.
The Dead Man’s Revelations
They say he made the most astonishing revelations on his deathbed. Only the nurse, Flávio Rescaldinho, was by his side. Flávio was the only person to hear the dead man’s final confessions. After the inevitable outcome, the nurse positioned himself at the door of the room where the body was growing cold. On the wall hung a simple poster, on which the following could be read: HERE LIES THE RECENTLY DEPARTED SALOMÃO GARGALO IN HIS FIRST RESTING PLACE.
The weeping visitors were expected. First came his widow, who was still young, a tearful slip of a girl. Her name was Lisete Dwarves, a name that derived from a certain book she had read about a white girl who was made of snow and who had died because of an apple. Ever since the time of Adam, whites had miserable luck because of this fruit.
—Flávio, tell me: what did he say?
—He talked a lot about love.
—About me?
—Well, I mean he talked about love.
But weren’t they synonymous, she and love? No, that was unlikely in this particular case, the nurse advised. The dying man had philosophized about passion and the universe. Love had always eluded him out of fear. Yes, feelings dreaded him. Only once, on one occasion alone, had he truly felt love in his heart.
—Was I that once, me?
Flávio stayed mum and dumb. In the clouds, goodness knows where, completely silent. But any cricket worth its salt is allergic to silence. And so Flávio Rescaldinho coughed and spluttered. And in his state of wheeziness, he mumbled into his handkerchief:
—The dead man even wrote it down.
—Show me.
He remained stiff and stone-faced. The widow rubbed her index finger and thumb together, suggesting payment. The nurse coughed again and reluctantly offered her a dog-eared piece of paper.
—Here it is.
The widow unfolded the message there and then. She read it to the end, and then returned to the beginning. She read and reread.
—Is this all?
The nurse nodded, denying any responsibility for it. He had not been present when the dying man had written it.
—He wrote with a sinful pen, all you gave him as a nurse was the extreme punctuation.
They needed a priest to resolve the poison of the dead man’s speech, so as to give his soul a destination. What was Salomão Gargalo thinking while he was sighing? Where could he be found now in order to seek clarification? Only in Heaven, crammed into a star, all by himself. Or, more likely, frying in hell just like an egg.
And the widow withdrew, muttering curses and oaths. As for the nurse, he glanced sideways to appreciate her gait, her swaying rear end.
Next came the dead man’s brother, all done up in his Sunday best: everything matching from his tie to his shoes. All in borrowed black and mourning. He spoke as if his voice was also located behind his dark glasses. He asked:
—Did my bro talk about my situation?
—Bro?
—My irmão, my brother, my bro: it’s an up-to-date term. Did he talk about me or not?
The nurse, the guardian of the pharaoh’s tomb, returned his English in kind: No! And he even translated it with a modulated, sarcastic não. Courteously curt in ceremony and protocol. Nothing, zilch, nix. All the departed had left by way of booty was a little piece of paper.
—This piece here.
The brother unf
olded the paper eagerly. He read it quickly at one go. He seemed to be expecting more words, paragraphs, chapters.
—Not so much as a crumb of an inheritance, nothing here for Quintonico?
He waited for an answer in vain. And he set off down the hall feeling sorry for himself. Then came the mistress, bee-like, hunched over her stealthy feet. She came up to the nurse, rubbed up against him nice and snug. With a voice like the icing on a cake, she asked:
—Out with it, Flávio: did he mention our relationship?
Flávio swallowed his Adam’s apple. The dead son of a bitch! Had Salomão taken advantage of this dame as well? That would explain the roguish smile on the dying man’s final face. The nurse pretended not to understand. And he asked her to repeat the question. The girl stuck to him more tightly than a fiscal stamp and whispered the question right into his ear. Flávio was reduced to one simple gesture: he just handed her the piece of paper without uttering a sound. The lover opened the message like someone uncorking a bottle of perfume. She glanced over it and then stuffed the paper into the abyss of her bra. She was about to leave when a voice halted her in her tracks:
—Now, now!
It was Flávio, denying her intentions, his index finger swishing this way and that like a windshield wiper. The paper didn’t belong there in those fleshy apertures, it should be returned to the safekeeping of his fingers. The dead man’s mistress now forsook all her flirtiness. She screwed up the paper and threw it on the floor.
At that precise moment, the mayor and his retinue arrived. Only he approached Flávio. The others, their cell phones in their belts like pistols, held back. The head of the local authority growled:
—Did he talk of the money belonging to the municipality?
The nurse failed to understand. You hear people talk about rain, not wetness. The leader of the council was pale: he seemed to belong more to the antechamber of death than to the council chamber. Yes, or rather no, there was just one simple question: had the dead man revealed any private dealings, the transfer of public funds to private wealth?
Flávio, with the utmost respect, made it known that he had heard nothing, knew nothing, suspected nothing.
—If you will excuse me, and pardon the inconvenience, your most esteemed Excellency: all he left was that piece of paper, that one there on the floor.
And he bent down to pick it up. With all due decorum, the nurse blew any intrusive bacteria away and then surrendered the document. The council leader took to rummaging through the pockets of his Italian coat for his glasses. But no sooner had he found them and put them on than he took them off again. The same fury caused him to screw the paper up again and roll it along the ground. The leader grabbed the nurse by the collar and whispered threats:
—D’you know what a one-armed man has? One arm too many.
And the retinue stood, looking straight ahead, awaiting his order. But the leader turned on his heels, his footsteps echoing down the corridor. The nurse looked at the screwed-up little piece of paper on the ground. One or two letters were legible. Flávio peered and made out the odd word: … you sons of …
Finally, when all the visits were done, Flávio Rescaldinho returned to the dead man’s room. And when a solemn silence might have been expected, muffled laughter could be heard. Folk said it came from two breasts, two souls enjoying vengeance to the full. Thus confirming the adage: vengeance isn’t self-serving. It just serves a purpose.
Ezequiela, Humanity
A certain young boy fell in love with a girl, whose name was Ezequiela. The boy was called Jerónimo. It was love that led to a ring and the altar steps. Before you could bat an eyelid, two destinies were joined, his and hers, both together.
Until one morning, Jerónimo woke up and saw another woman lying next to him in bed. She was white, with long blond hair. He pondered in alarm: who’s this woman? Where’s my wife? And he called:
—Ezequiela!
The white girl woke up, startled by the shout, and answered:
—What’s happened, honey?
And he: honey honey, not for my money! Who the hell was she and how could she explain why she was there, in the middle of someone else’s bed?
—But I’m Ezequiela. I’m your wife, Jerónimo.
He just laughed, flabbergasted.
—How can you be if you’re as white as can be and my wife is Black? How can you be if your hair …
—Calm down, Jerónimo, let me explain.
And she explained. That’s just the way she was, she changed her body every so often. Sometimes in size, other times in colour. Now beautiful, now ugly. At the moment she was white and later she’d be Black. She was very vice-versatile in the way she could change.
—Do you love me like this, the way I am?
—The way you are, how?
And that was the crux of the problem, her identity, the truly genuine Ezequiela. Saddened, he shook his head:
—I can’t. You’re not the one I married.
So Ezequiela suggested quite simply that they should just get on with life as a married couple, living under one roof, and then see what the future brought. And that’s what they did. So it happened that one night, Jerónimo knitted his fingers through her silky hair. Then his fingers gradually ran over other parts of her body, until they dared to feel more hidden areas. And so they made love again, and their relationship was renewed.
He had already grown used to her lack of colour and the smoothness of her hair, when one night Ezequiela woke up as an Inuit, with yellowish skin, and eyes slanted at an angle. And on another occasion, she turned into an Indian woman, with coppery skin and jet-black hair.
But the strangest thing was that she never stopped being Ezequiela. And Jerónimo accepted her thus, ever in transit but untransmutable. At first, he found it hard to adjust and readjust. But later, he even began to enjoy this game of reincorporation. And he loved her in all her shapes, voluminous, slinky, large, and small. He even found it handy: he was the most monogamous of polygamous men in the universe.
Until one day he woke up next to a bearded, muscular man. Jerónimo shook himself as if ridding himself of some contamination: had he slept with that man? What else had he shared with the intruder?
—Don’t worry, darling. It’s me, Ezequiela. I’m still me.
But the fact is that Jerónimo had ungendered himself. His wife: a man? She had already turned into a white and a Black, short and tall, all of that, fine. But she had always been a woman. Ezequiela tried to calm him down, but he was on his guard. He even peeped at his wife in the bathroom. Could it be that she was a he in every way? And to his horror: she was. They started to sleep in separate beds, just in case he surrendered. After an afternoon of absolute silence, Jerónimo came to the point.
—I’m sorry, but this has gone too far. For as long as you remain Ezequiel, I’m off …
And he left, without taking any luggage with him at all. He slept goodness knows where, and ate whenever he could. One night, however, he felt ill, burning hotter than fire. At the height of his fever, he returned home, and found his wife still in her male phase. She supported him with her strong arms and brought him inside. He resisted, tense and as distant as convenience dictated. She placed him on the bed and brought him a cool towel and a welcome glass of water. Little by little, the husband became more subdued. And when he felt Ezequiela’s lips kiss his brow, he even felt pleasantly sleepy. At that point he let himself go, even when he found it strange to feel the rasp of a beard brushing his neck.
The next day, Jerónimo awoke feeling revived and looked at himself in the mirror. He was puzzled by the asymmetry between his movements and their reflection. In fact, it wasn’t a mirror: on the other side of the frame, it was someone else dressed in his own body. The person standing there, naked, in front of him, was himself. Trembling, Jerónimo asked hesitantly:
—Ezequiela?
And the voice emanating from the other side, shocked, shot back another question:
—What do yo
u mean, Ezequiela?! Don’t you recognize your husband, Ezequiela?
The Captain’s Lover
I’m going to tell you about something that happened long ago in the very place where we live today. Once upon a time a boat loaded with Portuguese sailors arrived at our village. The ship wasn’t suited to the beach. It remained away from the shore, hidden in the distance, there where the mists are born. The visitors stayed out there, shut away, doing goodness knows what.
Until, after some days had gone by, a little dinghy left the big boat, heading for the shore. In it were three fully clothed, bearded Portuguese. With them was a Black man like us. He wasn’t one of our folk, but he spoke our language. This dark fellow jumped out of the boat and called to us, waving:
—I want to speak to the human folk here, he said.
And he gave us this message: the ship’s captain needed a man urgently and right away. What service was this man required for? The service of love, replied the Black man who was accompanying the whites.
—Of love?
Yes, carnal love, a job requiring cloth-tearing, body-squeezing, sigh-stifling. The people tried to get the matter straight in their minds: that this captain of theirs needed a woman, one of the comely ones, full of pulp and juiciness.
—No, what he needs is a man.
—A man?
—Yes, a man. Preferably one with a smattering of Portuguese.
—But, sorry again, a man?
By this time, though, the delegation was already heading back towards the boat. They were left in doubt: could it be an error of translation? Were they to provide a masculine or a feminine person? The matter gave rise to serious disagreement. It didn’t make much difference either way: either it was a mistake by the translator and they sent a masculine man, which would result in the Portuguese punishing them, or if the interpreter had been right and they were to send a comely woman, they would still be as angry. They didn’t want to offend the whites. So the elders had a meeting in order to match the word with the intention. In the end, they reached a consensus: the request contained the right sex.