Granma Nineteen and the Soviet's Secret

by Ondjaki

  “What do you mean? It’s almost lunchtime.”

  “But didn’t we agree that we were going to take care of the marks on the sidewalks? Charlita’s already got some paint thinner.”

  “You figure paint thinner’ll take it out?”

  “Yeah, it takes it out. We already tried with one and it took it out.”

  “Except they must know by heart the houses they want to dexplode.”

  “Even so. This is just the beginning of our plan to slow them down. Afterwards, we have to find a way to do the rest.”

  “The rest?”

  “Just go have your lunch and we’ll meet afterwards. It’s a really risky plan, we can’t tell very many people about it.”

  “But what kind of plan is it?”

  “I figure we’re going to have to do things that the elders are never going to be able to find out about. Are you going to keep this secret?”

  “Yes.”

  “Me, too. Charlita promised, too. Just go eat. We’ll talk later.”

  At the table, Madalena was serving tasty leftovers from the party to some cousins who had slept over. I told them all about the outing to the cemetery and nobody believed me, that beneath Granpa Mbinha’s headstone another person was buried there as if his neighbour, but that they were in the same plot, that I just couldn’t tell them the name because I hadn’t managed to read it. I also told them about Comrade Rafael KnockKnock and his waiting room tango playing and they called me a liar because neither the guards nor the Comrade Director would let music be played near the operating room. On top of that, Senhor Osório hadn’t stayed with us for lunch to confirm the situation.

  “It’s obvious you’re making things up,” Madalena said. “Just shut up and eat so flies don’t get into your mouth.”

  “You shut up. You never saw the military hospital or heard the tango.”

  “You watch out, or I’ll tell about the wire cutters.”

  “You watch out, or I’ll tell about the coarse salt.”

  Madalena turned quiet and went into the kitchen. We ate quickly. I asked about Granma Catarina, but everyone remained silent. Afterwards I saw Madalena in the kitchen putting the rest of the leftovers into plastic bags.

  “What are you doing that for, Madalena?”

  “None of your business.”

  I didn’t know why, if it was a holiday or what, or if there was a workers’ assembly, but the Mausoleum construction site was practically empty. Charlita and 3.14 had offered the guard who was on duty leftover vodka from the toe’s farewell party, which was even mixed with wine. The guard was soon snoring over on the beach, curled up against Rainboat.

  The main gate was open, but 3.14 figured that it was better for us to go in on the other side, where there was already a hole in the metal grating.

  We ran with our hearts beating really fast, and I didn’t even really know what the plan was.

  “The plan is that we find all of the dynamite.”

  “And then?”

  “Then we hide it and they can’t blow up Bishop’s Beach.”

  We entered the storage shed that smelled of mould and heard the noise of hens clucking. We took the lid off one box, then a second one, and the incredibly skinny hens stood watching us as though we were obliged to give them corn.

  “It must not be here.”

  “Wait, there’s a ton of boxes, it could be in the others.”

  “Hey, 3.14, you guys are draggin’ those boxes all over the place. Are you sure they won’t dexplode on their own?”

  “Didn’t you ever see a Trinità movie? Dynamite only dexplodes when you light the fuzz.”

  “The fuse, you retard.”

  We opened more boxes and they contained tiny little cages that hardly left the creatures inside space to budge. We all looked at one another: there were pretty birds of colours a person doesn’t often even have in his crayon set, those purple colours mixed with dark blue or toasted yellow, lots of tiny little birds with colourful beaks and a heap –and I mean a heap—of parrots that said words in really difficult Soviet.

  “Let’s split. It can’t be here.”

  “And the birds?” Charlita stood looking at them.

  “I’m not the birds’ godfather.”

  “But aren’t they going to die here?”

  “Let’s just go.” 3.14 pulled Charlita’s arm. “Birds can last for days without eating.”

  “And without seeing any light?”

  “They can last. Don’t you know that bats don’t even like to see the sun?”

  “Bats are birds?”

  “Come on! Let’s just go. You guys are screwing up the operation.”

  We took off without closing the door. Charlita asked us to leave it like that, “so that at least they can get a breath of air.” We had to hide when we heard a noise nearby, but it was just a blue lobster peeing, and after he was done he left and went over to a huge tent where that assembly must be taking place.

  We discovered that there was another entrance to the storage shed. On one side there were just the tools and clothing for the site, the workers’ monkey suits, demijohns of wine and bottles of vodka, helmets and a few Soviet guards’ uniforms. 3.14 found a pair of garden shears and started to cut up the sleeves of the tunics.

  “What are you doing that for?” Charlita was really nervous.

  “So they can get used to the fact that this is a hot country and not wander around all bundled up like they’re in the snow. Hahaha!”

  We heard the sound of military boots and had just enough time to hide behind the tractor.

  “We’re going to have to beat a retreat.”

  “What are we going to beat it with?” Charlita wanted to know.

  “You see? Your problem is that you don’t watch movies, and then you want to go on missions with boys.”

  “Keep your voice down or they’re going to catch us.”

  “You don’t know military codes, or what a ‘strategic retreat’ is.”

  “Isn’t that just runnin’ away?”

  “Yeah, but you have to say retreat. Beating a retreat.”

  The soldiers were drunk and sat down right in the doorway of the storage shed. We were terrified when one of them leaned against the door and fell over backwards with the door wide open. The other laughed, and gave us time to see some suspicious boxes.

  “The boxes with the dynamite!”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s totally obvious that you don’t watch movies. They’ve got the symbol on the side.”

  “What symbol?”

  “The symbol for dynamite.”

  “Draw it in the sand so I can see it.”

  “It doesn’t work in the sand. We’re gonna have to split as soon as they fall asleep.”

  We went out of the site through the hole in the metal grating. We took a turn on the beach so that nobody would be suspicious.

  “Everything all right, kids?” It was the Old Fisherman.

  “Everything all right, Elder. We just went to visit the blue lobsters.”

  “That’s good. But don’t tell Granma.”

  “Okay.”

  We ran to the old chicken coop at Charlita’s house, where they had hidden the paint thinner. If there weren’t many people in the street there would still be time to complete the mission of blotting out the marks on the sidewalks.

  As we were about to leave with the materials, Senhor Tuarles caught us.

  “Good afternoon, kids. Are you playing here in Granma Maria’s chicken coop?”

  “No, Dad, it’s just that...”

  “Quiet, girl. I’m talking to the boys. Are you playing cowboys?”

  Senhor Tuarles’s eyes were bloodshot, his mouth was mildly swollen. It was obvious that this wasn’t just from the beers that he liked to drin
k, even if it was after lunch; the heat at that time of day made a person’s body feel limp and swollen. We children didn’t feel this because we were always running.

  “No, Senhor Tuarles, we just came for that can.”

  “That can? A can of what?”

  “It’s just a joke, Dad.”

  “Quiet, daughter. Go inside and we’ll talk later. Are you playing in the street at this hour with the sun on your head?”

  “We were just about to go look for hats, Senhor Tuarles,” I tried.

  “You were going to look for hats in Granma Maria’s chicken coop?”

  “No, Senhor Tuarles, we came here to the chicken coop to look for paint thinner.”

  “Ah, so on top of everything else you’re playing with paint thinner after lunch?”

  “Senhor Tuarles.” 3.14 was pretty gutsy at times. “If you prefer, we could only play with the paint thinner in the late afternoon.”

  “Are you getting off on that shit or what?” Senhor Tuarles never had any trouble saying the craziest stuff and everybody knew that he had an AK-47 at home.

  “No, Senhor Tuarles, we were just on a mission, like, eh.”

  “‘Like, eh’? What kind of Portuguese are they teaching you at that school? Huh?”

  “Sorry, Senhor Tuarles.”

  “It looks like what you boys are in need of is a good thrashing...Isn’t that it?” His body stirred very slowly, as though his head were playing that tango from the military hospital. “Gimme that can, I’ll take care of the paint thinner.”

  “But, Senhor Tuarles...”

  “Do you want to be disobedient at this hour, in this heat? Hand me the comrade paint thinner. And not a peep, or I’ll go get my AK-47... Scat, the both of you!”

  We fled. He stood laughing; but you never knew, at that time of day, with his body stumbling in a kind of slow dance and his eyes really red, whether he might not go get the AK-47 just to prove that he was telling the truth.

  Without the paint thinner, we sat down on the sidewalk in front of Senhor Tuarles’s house and looked at the Comrade Gas Jockey, who was about to fall out of his chair from a long bout of failing to stay awake.

  In Granma Nhé’s yard the parrots started to talk nonsense again. “Son of a snorer and a nuzzler”; the other shouted more loudly, “You’re an etcetera”: all in soap opera voices. Then we went into the old chicken coop and peeped out: there was Comrade Gudafterov hurrying out of the kitchen with bags of food in his hands, and the only person who was in the house was Madalena Kamussekele.

  “What’s in those bags?”

  “They look like leftovers.”

  “But do you guys have a stock of leftovers, or what?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Wow—the leftovers at your granma’s house last forever. Even Gudafterov’s taking some.”

  “There must be a tale here. We’re going to ask Madalena.”

  “And if she tells on us?”

  “She’s going to tell on us? We’re the ones who can tell. The leftovers belong to my granma.”

  When Comrade Gudafterov had left, we went around the corner and found Madalena in the kitchen still tidying up the leftovers of the leftovers.

  “Didn’t I tell you?” 3.14 laughed. “Here in your house leftovers are provisions. We should tell FAPLA, hahaha!”

  “What are you guys doin’ here?” Madalena was startled.

  “We’re on a reconnaissance mission.” 3.14 crossed his arms. He looked like a sheriff in the movies.

  “You’re what?”

  “It’s not worth it, Madalena, we caught you. We saw Comrade Gudafterov leaving here with bags of food.”

  “He came to ask. He said he was hungry.”

  “That’s a lie, Comrade Madalena, the Soviets are never hungry. At most, they’re thirsty.”

  “He said he needed food.”

  “What for?”

  “He said it was a ‘secret.’”

  “And what ‘secret’ is that?”

  “He always comes here for food on Thursdays. But I don’t know what it’s for.”

  “Good food?”

  “No, just leftovers.”

  “It must be for the birds in the storage shed,” 3.14 said to me in secret.

  “Just don’t tell on me to Granma, or I’ll get another thrashing.”

  “We’re not going to tell on you, but don’t forget: we never asked you for the wire cutters.”

  We went outside again, which is what we should have done in the first place to follow Gudafterov to see where he was going.

  “Do you figure it’s for those birds?”

  “It must be.”

  “And what are those birds for?”

  “Could be that they eat birds. They say that the Chinese eat dogs, and in Cabinda Province they eat monkeys.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yeah.”

  Lots of trucks had started to roll off the construction site, full of garbage and sand that wasn’t going to be used. The late afternoon dust of Bishop’s Beach got stirred up again. Dona Libânia came to the window with the cloth handkerchief that she put over her nose. The Comrade Gas Jockey also covered his face and blinked his eyes, and if Granma Nhé had been there, with all those dust clouds, she would have ordered me back into the house because of my asthma attacks. And then I remembered her in the operating room.

  “Do you think it sucks having a toe cut off?”

  “To tell you the truth, if it’s done with an anaesthetic, I figure it shouldn’t be too much of a hassle. But if they don’t have any anaesthetics in the military hospital, it must hurt like anything.”

  “I guess Comrade Rafael KnockKnock wouldn’t do that to her. And Aunty Tó wouldn’t let him.”

  “You’re right. It’s not going to hurt at all. It’s just when she wakes up that she might feel some pain.”

  The dust lifted in spirals like the smoke from mountains dynamited in cowboy movies. The trucks passed by, the drivers shouted words in Soviet, Sea Foam bounced around, running with his threads and his dreads dancing in the wind, and the drivers honked their horns to avoid running him over.

  “Hey, listen.” 3.14 was also fanning his face to keep the dust away. “Is it really true that Rafael KnockKnock put on a tango so that your aunt would dance with him?”

  “I swear it’s true. I was there and I saw it.”

  “That guy must be a bit crazy, too. He doesn’t even know how to speak Angolan.”

  “I think he did it so that she’d be happy before the operation. Maybe it helps. I dunno... I started wondering if she isn’t going to miss her toe. My granma’s very conceited.”

  “I doubt it. That’s just the granmas gossiping. Also, she has so many other digits, how’s she going to miss one of them?”

  “Yeah, you’re right.”

  “But listen, that tango music, is it Cuban?”

  “It must be.”

  “And how come he couldn’t just put on a kizomba?”

  “I guess you can’t dance a kizomba with a crippled toe.”

  Often, when I saw Sea Foam come running, I’d start laughing.

  “You goin’ crazy, too?” 3.14 would ask me.

  I laughed a little less hard. Sometimes I kept my feelings secret; other times I didn’t, I spoke the truth.

  “Sea Foam looks like a bird that’s about to take off.”

  And so he did. I dreamed about this once: his feet coming closer and closer to not touching the ground, his threads taking on the shape of a MiG’s wings, his dreads standing out straight to indicate the direction of his flight, his feet peddling in the air, and he himself laughing at me, uttering phrases in the crazed Cuban that he spoke.

  I saw him come running from the bakery, down that alley we used to go to the Kinanga Cinema, and he
accelerated fast. Maybe when he was studying in Cuba he was also one of those athletes: it seems like sports is a duty over there and they wake up early to go swimming or running. I don’t know; that’s what I’ve heard. Foam always wanted to run a race against João Serrador’s 1100 motorcycle, but he didn’t last, the bike went past him faster than a cannon ball. João Serrador only braked when he was already close to the curve, and if he pulled a wheelie—which he did a lot—the stop was even more abrupt and we applauded him, and right there Foam discarded everything he had in his hands to leap up and applaud João Serrador’s manoeuvres.

  That morning I saw Foam running in a silence where the only noise was made by his feet hitting the ground. I remembered again the near take-off he failed to achieve because he was carrying an enormous sheaf of newspapers in his arms. The papers made you think of the Delta wings that used to appear during the breaks on television.

  He was running very fast in our direction.

  “Let’s just split,” 3.14 requested. “Don’t you see he’s coming this way?” He grabbed my hand to pull me.

  “Why should we run? He never did a thing to you.”

  “He’s got a screw loose. Some day he might think I am an American ship and want to bombard me. Didn’t you hear about that idea of his about finding clues to an American invasion and I don’t know what else?”

  “Cool it. He knows you’re Pi, better known in Angola and the far-away Soviet Union as Comrade 3.14. Hahaha!”

  “Are you making fun of me? If he attacks you, don’t wait for me to save you. I’ll even tell him to bombard you with napalm, like in the Vietnam movies.”

  “Cool it, man. He’s not in that kind of mood.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Just look at his face. He wants to talk to somebody.”

  Sea Foam looked just like João Serrador’s bike. He hit the brakes when he got close to us, and even kicked up dust.

  “The plans, compañeros. El futuro is close, a de-fence against el pasado.”

  “A fence?”

  “Closer.” He lowered the newspaper, spreading it over the ground like a big map. “Not a single tiny house will remain!”

  It was a huge page with a half-crumpled drawing of the government’s plan for the whole Mausoleum area, with tiny pictures that were dotted with symbols where they were going to put new parks, swing sets, a new waterfront drive close to the sea, lots of space with lawns where dogs could walk and poop all over, slides, water fountains, mature trees that I don’t know how they were going to grow so fast, and a ton of people lining up to enter the Mausoleum and see the body of the Comrade President, embalmed with Soviet techniques.