by Mia Couto
Then one morning, my old mother died. She left life just as she had lived it, with neither history nor drama. She just complained:
—The sun’s pulling me too hard, I feel hot.
She walked over to the water tank and dipped her wrists in as if she were looking to get cool. She leaned against the trunk of the tree and let her arms dangle in the tank. Without us knowing, she was dying, her veins diluting in water’s eternity. We carried her away from there as if we were just putting her to bed. In silence, as if she had stolen away long ago. As if we were simply taking Mother for an afternoon stroll, like any other. Did my old mother die instantly? Or isn’t all death instantaneous?
On the day of the funeral, the weather changed. Without any warning, the sky turned wintry. First thing in the morning, the cold filtered in through the cracks: no one would go out fishing in such weather. But in spite of this, I went. My mood matched the world, its winds and overcast skies. Who knows, maybe the quay would chase my clouds away? There I was, lost in my thoughts, holding the line as if my soul were attached to the submerged fish hook.
This was when I heard footsteps. I turned around apprehensively. The figure of Agualberto Perchance emerged from the mists and gave me a fright. There I was, my unblessed line drooping sadly in the grey waters. Had he recognized me, even though I had my back to him?
That would be impossible, because the old man was completely blind. Then he addressed me in his gravelly voice:
—Is that how you’re doing it? The fish won’t bite …
I didn’t turn round. I stayed there hunched over with fear. For at that very moment, a sudden tug on the line indicated the presence of a fish brushing its lips over my hook. I didn’t want to seem to be contradicting the soothsayer, so I pretended nothing was happening. But the quivering of the line then confirmed that I had had a bite from a large fish, endowed with both size and weight. As for me, in my cowardice, I neither moved nor made a sound. I don’t know how, but my father noticed the quivering line.
—Aren’t you going to reel in the fish?
And there was I without knowing what to do or say. I continued to look blankly in front of me, pretending I was dead. Fear was born along with us; it is the same fear that seizes us at the moment of our birth when we shed our first tears.
—Go on, reel in the line!
If he was blind, how did he see the tugging on the line? He seemed to guess my doubts.
—After all these years, I don’t need eyes to tell me when a fish is biting.
He sat down next to me. Even sitting right on the edge of the quay, he swung his legs. I was trembling before his fierce gaze. His voice appropriated my own:
—Where’s your bait?
Unable to reply, I pointed at my tin of worms. The man stuffed his thick fingers into the tin and took out a shiny, wriggling worm, turning it this way and that in the air.
He talked of fish and fishing in his own language. In the language of our area, there is no exact word for “to fish.” We say “to kill the fish.” There is no special word for “boat.” And we call the ocean “the big place.” We are people of the soil, the sea is a recent arrival.
—It’s not the bait I’m blessing.
—So what are you blessing?
—I’m blessing you.
Did my father recognize me? Then he looked at me with that deep, empty gaze that I found impossible to return. And this is what he said:
—I’m going to tell you this, lad: I’m blind when it comes to the living. But I can see death’s shore clearly. And I can see your death …
—My death?
—You’re going to die drowned in a bedsheet, as if the linen had become waves on the sea.
—Do you know who I am, sir?
He nodded. It was because he knew who I was that he was there, sitting beside me. Then he asked me:
—I came to ask you something: Do you know where the China Deep is?
—That deep gully out there in the middle of the sea?
—Yes, I want you to go there, every week. Take food and drinking water with you. Leave it out in the deep. Do it for me. Do you promise?
—Yes, I promise.
Then he explained: this memory was his only reason for living. Down in the deepest depths of the China Deep, the woman he had loved, the woman he had eyes for, had met her end.
—Do you know something? All these fish hooks I bless. It’s all a lie. I only pretend to cast a lucky spell on them so that their bait, all those things I add to the hooks, will sink down into the depths and not come back.
—And what happens to those things you attach to the hook?
—They’re gifts for the dead girl. They’re for her. They’re all for her. They’re my gifts to her.
Sixth Chapter
The snail is like a poet: he washes his tongue on his journey’s path.
The words of my grandfather—
but I don’t believe them
That afternoon, I was relaxing on my veranda, gazing at the ocean. It wasn’t that I was taking in all that azure. It was the sea that was taking my dreams on a trip. And I was blind to memories, like someone eternally reborn. And so, on my veranda’s old step, I wasn’t talking—I was silence itself, lulled by the rhythm of the Indian Ocean.
Suddenly, the screech of a gull made me start. My nerves were as taut as a bow, and my reaction swift as an arrow. The stone left my hand in fury.
—Hey, Perpétuo! You nearly hit me.
It was my neighbour. Dona Luarmina always wanted to know the reason why I was so devoted to killing gulls. Poor things, she would say, they’re birds full of whiteness, they adorn the sky with oceanic dreams. But why, Zeca, why are you so angry? As a man with such a brimming heart, how could I act so malevolently towards innocent creatures?
—I can’t explain.
—Why?
—Because it’s a secret, Dona Luarmina.
—I thought only women hid their secrets.
I smiled. That was a cunning blow designed to make my macho instincts teeter. What is a secret? A secret is an orange with only one segment. We eat that segment and are left with the peel wrapped around emptiness. I already knew that bitter taste of holding a fruit without any inside, while its peel turned to sand between my fingers.
I knew how much my persecution of the birdlife caused her to suffer. Do you know what she did, such was her pity of the gulls? She built a cage and put dozens of them inside. It was pandemonium, day and night. Not for Luarmina, who was a woman of little agitation. But for the children who would capture the birds and bring her kilos of fish for them to peck at.
At night, my sleep never hit bottom. Only bits of me slept; I was never completely asleep. That was because of the racket coming from my neighbour’s birdcage. Until one night, in the midst of my sleeplessness, my darkened thoughts turned to gasoline, rage, and matches. Fire is passion: in an instant, it consumes everything. The imprisoned seagulls looked like white handkerchiefs flapping against the sunset. Their lives were extinguished. Wrapped in flame and light, too bright a light for them to keep flying. Until all that was left were ashes, and I slunk away before anyone saw me.
The next day, I went and paid my neighbour a visit. As I predicted, she was on her veranda. I placed my hand on her shoulder by way of condolence. She didn’t move. She had already wept all she had to weep, and was exhausted. Only a solitary tear remained on the fullness of her cheek. I nearly offered her a handkerchief. But then I remembered something she had said once before when she had cried. I shall never forget Luarmina’s words.
—You may have been comforted by a hand, a pair of lips, or a body, but no manner of caress will return your soul to you as much as a tear being released.
—How do you know that, Luarmina?
—A tear is the sea caressing your soul. That little speck of water is us as we return to the womb we came from.
As I recalled her words, I put my handkerchief away. I let her tear roll down her cheek. And there we rem
ained, without talking. Her silence was complete, more painful than a thousand sobs.
Suddenly, I got an urge to clean up what I had done and return the henhouse to life and the wing. But I was unable to carry out the task: if there was a broom, there was no ground to sweep. I decided to confess everything. And so I told her about Henriquinha.
Let me tell you, lady—I was once married, well and truly married. She was a girl full of body but soft in the head, one might even say mad as a hatter. At first, I didn’t even notice her scattiness. Henriquinha seemed so composed, without any sign of either physical or mental dysfunction.
On Sundays, in the late afternoon, she would set off along the paths that led to the Church of Our Lady of the Souls. She wore her black dress, and made her way with a widow’s step. As I watched that woman from the veranda, a shudder ran through me as if that walk of hers were tearing at the locks of my soul. Then, as I contemplated the way her backside shaped her skirt, I became reconciled to my situation. Such a beautiful and pious wife was a comely gift.
Until one day I was told that she wasn’t in fact going to Mass at all. She was going to the top of the Red Dune, where she would get undressed for all to see, divested of all her clothes. The local folk would gather together to enjoy the sight. Even today, I can’t remember how many times I failed to give in to such vexation. Was the woman playing a game of cat and no mouse? What should I do? I sat there quietly in the shade, pretending to be checking the state of the sea, searching my mind as hard as I could for an idea.
One not so fine day, I had an idea. I should follow her without anyone seeing. This is how I organized it: I played a trick with the calendar. I got hold of one from a previous year, and pinned it up on the kitchen wall. That morning, Henriquinha asked me what day it was.
—I don’t know, woman. Look at the calendar.
She looked at it. Then I heard her voice exclaim in surprise from the bedroom:
—Hey! Is it really Sunday today?!
At first, she insisted there must be some mistake. It couldn’t be Sunday. It is, I answered, all Sundays are like that, the same as weekdays except for the collar and tie. It’s true, Henriquinha, we scarcely notice the week go by, and we’re already in the next one. What a life it is for a fisherman, who doesn’t think of days but of tides! And on I went, talking of this and that. I talked and talked so as to distract her.
—At least you’re lucky, Henriquinha. Your time begins at set hours, you get up and lie down, you go to bed and wake up. Whereas for me, my sun is the sea. Who knows what time that keeps?
Henriquinha didn’t even seem to hear. She went to the wardrobe and took out her formal black dress.
—Are you going out?
—Have you forgotten that on Sundays I always fulfill my obligations to God?
I smiled to myself. She’d fallen for it. For a few seconds, I even felt guilty. For a moment, I thought of dismantling the trap. But my soul was more powerful than sentiment. And off I went behind the woman, following her with utmost care, behind walls, thickets, and bushes. Until we reached the cliff of red earth. Henriquinha stopped on the edge, where the cliff drops into the abyss, right next to where the waves crash onto the shore. I stopped and watched.
At that hour, there was no one around. Maybe because it wasn’t Sunday, and nobody expected a performance on that day. Then Henriquinha began to sway as if dancing to a music only she could hear. With her back to me, she shimmied pleasurably, as if some invisible rain were falling on her. She started pulling her dress halfway up her body, and her waist began to show between her hands and flashes of light. Then she shed her clothes. Every garment that fell to the ground was like a dead leaf alighting upon my astonishment.
Along with anger, I was filled with a fervent desire for her. As if I had never seen or touched her before, as if she were some unattainable woman. I even thought: I’ll go over and ruffle my hair with her, initiate a little romance to cut our flesh to the quick. And I tiptoed over until I was standing behind Henriquinha, until I heard her gasps. The sound of that breathing of hers tricked me into thinking she had grown tired of me, that her body had been set ablaze in the fire of my blood. Suddenly, I felt a need to remove the source of my giddiness.
I pushed her. I didn’t hear her scream or even the thump of a body hitting the rocks below. Only the screech of a gull as it brushed past the cliff. Had Henriquinha fallen? Had she died? Had she been swallowed up by the sea?
On the days that followed, I returned to the Red Dune, I searched every millimetre of cave and sand for any sign of Henriquinha’s body. Nothing. Only absence. For me, this was more painful than a death, like those that involve a ceremony and burial. If I were a man in full control of my better judgment, I would still be torturing myself in an endless farewell to Henriquinha. But no. As far as I was concerned, nothing had happened. It’s like the future: it exists, but there isn’t any. If it had occurred, then at the same instant it had transitioned to another life, another memory that didn’t belong to me.
There’s only one more thing, Dona Luarmina: that seagull’s cry, at the exact moment of Henriquinha’s fall. That razor-sharp shriek rips the scars of a wound I never felt. You ask why I keep persecuting those birds, lady? Do you understand now, Dona Luarmina?
All that time, my neighbour had listened to me without moving, her face sunk in the shadow. When I finished, we remained shrouded in silence until Luarmina asked me:
—Was that your secret?
—Yes, it was.
Then she looked up and confronted me. Her expression wasn’t even one of anger. Her eyes seemed empty, vacant. As if my words had induced in her some incurable blindness.
—Go out to the backyard, and see what you did.
—I’m sorry, Dona Luarmina, I can’t go.
Then she struggled with her own body in an effort to get to her feet. The wood in her chair creaked in complaint. With Dona Luarmina, all chairs were rocking chairs. Without any help, she somehow got up, and then she held out her hand to me:
—Come with me.
I followed her reluctantly. Dispirited, I walked behind her as she made her laboured way to the cage. In front of me, Luarmina’s back shielded me from guilt. Her bulk hid my vision of the world.
—Look.
I stood behind her, like a child awaiting a smack. She was insistent, but I stood with my head bowed, weeding the ground with my shame. Until all of a sudden, I heard the flapping of wings. That sound spattered my soul with memory, as if two worlds were colliding. I gradually raised my eyes, seeing first the chewed planks of wood, then the decaying remains of birds, their ashen feathers, all lying there as peaceful as the desert. The metal mesh remained intact. But out of that ash-grey mixture. I seemed to see a live bird, all white, its lacy wings in sudden flight. How had that seagull survived such a conflagration?
Dona Luarmina slowly withdrew. I was left there alone with the remains of the cage and a vacant memory that had drained away from me and from everything. My hands were shaking when I opened the cage door.
Seventh Chapter
The heart is a beach.
Makua proverb cited by old Celestiano
On the first occasion, I felt moisture on my arm. I was in bed, awaiting sleep. Suddenly, I had a cold feeling on my arm: some sort of liquid that had got in through a crack was running down it. That was when I was gripped by the horror of the vision: water was coming from everywhere, from the floor, the ceiling, water was rushing to fetch me, its blue tongue ready to tear me away from this world. Soon I would be unable to breathe, hemmed in from the inside as well as the outside. I got up, and as I fled the room the floor got wetter. I was hallucinating, for sure. But the puddled mat was there as proof that it was true.
That was just the first time. This vision of drowning assailed me whenever I was on the point of sleep. Sometimes it was the sea that covered me, other times I seemed to be drowning in my own blood. Sea and blood, blood and sea. Where were these signs coming from? I recalled my days
of yore, I remembered my old father telling me one day, when I cut my finger out in the boat:
—Suck a bit of that blood.
I obeyed, as I always did. My father studied my movements with an attention he never normally paid me.
—Tell me now: what does blood taste like?
I looked at the sea, without giving him any other answer. So what was my father telling me? That we had oceans circulating within us? That there are journeys we must undertake only within ourselves? I shall never know. The lessons old Agualberto gave me were always like this: vague and ill defined. Blood and sea, their similarities now came back to me like a punishment for some act of disobedience. Only then did I understand the real reason for those nightmares. When he sensed he was dying, my father addressed me with a request.
—Take me to see certain places.
By now, his eyes were completely white, like shells that had been licked by the sun over time.
—What are the places you want to go to, Father?
—Sit down, Zeca. I want to talk.
Agualberto Perchance never called me “son.” On that occasion, he hesitated. But then he went ahead swiftly, and in a solemn tone:
—I’m more or less going to die.
—Don’t say that.
—I know my hour has come. But I don’t want to die in one place alone. I can’t leave my whole self in only one place. I already know the places where I’m going to die, a little bit in each one.
This was what he asked: that I should lead him to those places where he wanted to scatter his little pieces of death. And so we set off, first in the direction of the baobab tree at Ritsene. By that time he was tired, and he leaned against the trunk. There he remained, catching his breath, until he spoke: