by Ondjaki
I opened my eyes.
For the first time, I thought about 3.14’s plan without my heart accelerating with fear at having to lie about things which, after all, we just had to get done.
Comrade Gudafterov came out with a disconsolate expression on his face and made no jokes in his Soviet-accented Angolan Portuguese. He said goodbye to me just as he was about to go out the front gate and ran his hands through the flowers at the entrance as though bidding them farewell. On top of everything else, Granma Nineteen didn’t like people messing around with her flowers as if they were patting a dog. But Granma didn’t see him; she only came downstairs later.
On the top floor, after looking out at us, Granma Catarina closed the windows for the last time that day.
“Are you thinking about life, son?” Granma Nineteen liked to say that she didn’t sleep at night in order to concentrate on “thinking about life.”
“I’m just lookin’ at our Bishop’s Beach. Did Gudafterov bring bad news, Granma? It was even in the Jornal de Angola.”
“The comrade’s name is Bilhardov.”
“Bilhardov, Gudafterov, Armpitov. He’s been given so many names here, Granma, that when he returns to his country he won’t know what he’s called.”
Granma Nineteen moaned with pain from her bandaged foot, but she still laughed.
“Do you want me to get you a chair?”
“No, it’s good to walk. It just hurts.”
“Do you miss your toe, Granma?”
“No. Everything’s fine, son.” She also looked at our Bishop’s Beach, with the sea behind it showing off the shade of blue that they call navy. “Everything’s fine.”
“Granma, they’re going to dexplode all the houses, eh?”
“It’s ‘explode,’ son. Don’t talk like that; people will think you don’t know how to speak Portuguese.”
“I like ‘dexplode’ better. It’s a word that sounds like it’s bursting open; explode seems like it should be for a slow flame.”
“All right, but only say those invented words of yours in the house.”
“Bilhardov came to tell you, eh?”
“Yes, he came. Tomorrow they’re going to close the beach. Orders from one of those generals who commands the construction site.”
“So it’s already starting.”
“Yes, it’s already starting.”
Granma asked me to go and see if there was water in the faucet.
She knew very well that there was no water at that hour, but to please her I turned on the faucet to see, turned it off again, re-arranged the hose that had already been arranged, just to do something, to allow her time to see if she wanted to tell me about their conversation. But she didn’t say a word.
“If I were feeling better, I’d water the plants just like that.”
“With make-believe water, Granma? I think you should only do that in the house, otherwise people are going to think you’ve lost your mind.”
“Watering does the plants good, but it also does good to the person who waters. Even with make-believe water, as you say.”
Granma went back inside without saying anything more. She didn’t even tell me what time dinner was, or that I couldn’t go and play with the other kids in the square.
The sun had gone away, the Comrade Gas Jockey wasn’t there anymore and 3.14 had already whistled twice.
We sat down on Senhor Tuarles’s sidewalk to wait for Charlita. We thought she might have been punished, but she showed up.
“Charlita, you never showed up again. Are you sick, or what?”
“My dad keeps telling me not to go out into the street because any minute now they’re going to start dynamiting the houses.”
“That’s not how it works. They have to warn people first. They’re going to close the beach and order everybody out. Each person can only take one chair and a bag with their underwear. Not even toothbrushes are allowed, that’s what I heard.”
“You’re full of it.” 3.14 knew this was a lie.
“I’m just kiddin’, but it’s true, they’re going to close the beach.”
“How do you close a beach? With a padlock?”
“You just put men with guns there.”
“They’ve had them on the beach forever.”
“But they never actually stopped you from going there. They already know us. Now they’re not going to let us play there anymore.”
“And Foam? And the Old Fisherman? Are they gonna take his dugout to his new house?”
“What do I know?”
“Charlita?”
“What is it?”
“It’s just that you’re so quiet. Our plan’s really advanced.”
“I don’t want to hear any more about that crazy plan. My dad was already set to give me a thrashing because of it.” Charlita scratched at the ground with a stone, making some very ugly drawings.
“Your dad? Don’t tell me you already tattled on us.”
“It’s not that. He was suspicious. It seems he heard our conversation, and he came to warn me that he didn’t want to hear anything about dynamite or playing jokes on the Soviets.”
“It’s not a joke.”
“That’s what I told him. He bawled me out and told me not to play with you guys any more. He said you were boys and you play dangerous games like putting AK-47 bullets in a bonfire.”
“We only did that once.”
“Three times.” 3.14 corrected me.
“I told him that, too, but he still doesn’t want me to.”
“Does he know about the plan?”
“He had drunk a lot, but he knows we went there and saw the dynamite.”
“Is he gonna tell my granma?”
“I don’t think so. He was weird.”
“Weird, how?”
“It was like a message.”
“A message?”
“For you guys.”
“What do you mean?”
“He said you should be careful because you can’t light dynamite with a normal match.”
“Is that right?”
“Yup. And it has to be buried.”
“Is it possible he wants to participate in our plan, 3.14?”
“I doubt it.”
“Sometimes elders aren’t brave enough to speak up.”
“I’ve gotta go back inside. I can’t stay out here with you guys. He’s already watchin’ me from the window.”
“But why did you tell him, Charlita?”
“He threatened to take away my glasses when the soap opera came on, and if I didn’t tell him he wouldn’t take me to Portugal on a trip to get my sight fixed.”
“All right, go inside. If we need something, can we still ask you?”
“I guess it’s better if I don’t know anything else. Good luck and take care.”
“Charlita.” 3.14 got up to whisper in her ear. “You don’t know anything but it’s going to be tomorrow night.”
“Okay, I don’t know anything.”
Dark as the street was, we were amazed that the mosquitoes weren’t there to sting our legs. We didn’t need to fan ourselves or to watch out; the sea breeze or the smoke from some bonfire must have driven away the mosquitoes to go nail legs in some other neighbourhood.
Some stars began to appear in the sky, but there were only a few of them and they shone with a muted gleam.
“Sea Foam says that if there weren’t any stars shining up there, the sky wouldn’t move at all; it would be a place we looked at without seeing any beauty.”
“I don’t think that’s what he said.”
“More or less. He spouts a lot of nonsense, too, when he’s talking to himself.”
“But he spouts nonsense in Cuban while we only spout nonsense in Angolan.”
We ran our hands ove
r our legs out of habit, in an attempt not to be bitten, because, aside from the fever and vomiting, malaria always left us without the strength or energy to play for almost five days, so we had to avoid it.
“Listen, talking of spouting nonsense...You know what I was thinking last night when I couldn’t sleep?”
“What?”
“When I grow up I’m gonna have a pile of money from a business that I already invented just for me.” 3.14 laughed.
“What’s that?”
“You can’t tell anybody.”
“Okay, just say it.”
“I’m going to be the owner of trucks that settle the dust in the neighbourhoods.”
“A great idea.”
“Have you ever thought about it? There must be a heap of neighbourhoods here in Luanda where it’s dusty in the late afternoon. I’m going to become rich overnight.”
“And what are you going to do with the money?”
“I figure I’m going to give it to my poor old dad. He never has money. They pay him really badly at the Mausoleum construction site.”
“You’re doing the right thing. If I had piles of money I’d buy a really big garden.”
“What for?”
“To plant mango trees, guava trees and avocados.”
“What for?”
“Here we’re always waitin’ for the fruit to ripen on the trees. There, since there’d be lots of them, one of them would always have fruit that was ripe. We’d always have plenty of mangoes and guavas.”
“Good idea.”
“And one more thing...The trees would be full of bats and we’d be able to kill them with my cousin’s pellet gun.”
“And would you invite me along?”
“Of course. I’d buy a ton of trees that would have a ton of bats.”
“It’s a deal. You invite me and give me a brand-spanking new pellet gun. I give you a dust-settling truck.”
“You’ve got a deal. Later, when you’re an elder, it won’t be any use sayin’ that you’ve forgotten this conversation we had here today, long before we became adults.”
“Cool it. I’m not going to forget.”
Before I had time to finish my breakfast in peace, Granma Nineteen herself sent me to go and see what was causing all of the screaming out there on the beach.
I set off at a run and saw other children running, too. From far off, I recognized Sea Foam’s dreadlocks, the hunched body of the Old Fisherman, and other Bishop’s Beach elders, Russian soldiers with reddened faces—all arguing at the same time. Suddenly a shot from an AK-47 rang out; two shots, as a matter of fact. But we barely ducked, the elders weren’t scared and, from far away, Senhor Tuarles gestured to Dona Isabel, his wife, to get his AK-47, which he kept under the bed in his room.
The sun, as always, took no prisoners, and people had to squint their eyes or even hold a hand over them, as though it were the brim of a hat, to see the person they were arguing with. That was the remedy that made it possible to see, but by now nobody was hearing anything; they were just griping, which is the manner of a person who just shouts without knowing whether anybody’s getting the message.
Soviet soldiers, known in Luanda as “blue ants,” and later baptized “blue lobsters” on Bishop’s Beach, had new placards forbidding everyone from using the beach and approaching the water, which had pretty white foam and occasionally, in the month of August, a few jellyfish whose burning stings wore off only when the bite was rubbed with hot sand. And nobody wanted to give in.
Comrade Gudafterov looked as if it hurt him to carry out the orders he’d been given. He gesticulated without much conviction and concentrated as though he were listening when the Old Fisherman spoke to him. Many voices spoke at the same time; off in the distance, people stayed on their verandas or at their windows watching that fracas on the sands of the ocean.
Later, a car also arrived full of police, who watched from a distance, as though the fracas was between the blue lobsters and the residents of Bishop’s Beach.
“But us guys are here with just a little scrap of beach made from the white hairs of the sea,” Sea Foam was shouting, “we never went to Russia or the Soviet Union to close or open or inaugurate or invade a Soviet beach...But you, misguided reptiles...”
“You comrades think you’re just closing a beach—but who’s gonna give food to our children tomorrow?” shouted the comrade wife of another fisherman whose whole family’s names I’ve forgotten.
“Comrades, superior orders from Comrade Boss General, we just follow order, not decide put forbid placard.” Gudafterov couldn’t even explain things clearly.
“We know very well what you’re going to do next, but we’re not idiots here and we won’t let you. Get away from this beach, nobody owns it. Kianda herself will punish you in your illegal fishing boats, you fucking tupariovs!” Senhor Tuarles was shouting, but now he was gesturing to Dona Isabel not to bring the AK-47 because the police were there to see who was the biggest troublemaker. Fortunately, everybody was being disorderly together, and no one stood out as the person who should be arrested.
I saw that instead of looking in the direction of the ruckus, 3.14 was observing the rest of Bishop’s Beach. I even thought he was searching for someone, but later he looked for a long time at the edges of the fence where there was the hole that we used to get in whenever we wanted to. He came to talk to me.
“We’re going to take a chance now because this uproar is going to last for a long time. I’m seein’ more fishermen comin’ and in a moment the police are gonna start firing.”
“What are you talkin’ about?”
“Distraction manoeuvres. Don’t you remember?”
“Weren’t they diversion manoeuvres?”
“But where’s the diversion if this business is serious? The important thing is that we’ve got to take advantage of this opportunity. Come on.”
“Should I call Charlita?”
“No. Her dad will just come and wreck everything. We’re going to leave unexpectedly.”
“Leave how?”
“Leave unexpectedly.”
“I don’t get it. What’s going on?”
“You’re so slow. It’s leaving without anybody seeing us, unexpectedly, when nobody expected we were going to leave, retreat-style.”
“And where do we go?”
“Into enemy territory.”
“Now?”
“Let’s just go. They’re all here, I already checked. Look, over there on the left-hand side, arguing with the lady-elder, that’s Dimitry, which means that nobody’s guarding the storage shed.”
“Won’t it be locked up?”
“Of course not. At this time of day, Gudafterov-Armpitov will have already opened it so that they can take out the materials.”
We lowered our heads a little, hoping no one was going to see us. Sea Foam winked and grabbed Comrade Gudafterov’s shoulder when he was about to turn in our direction. We pretended that we were heading towards the houses and had barely reached Dona Libânia’s wall when we entered the alley that led to the back of the Mausoleum construction site.
3.14 was right: everything was empty, open, the machinery abandoned, shovels and picks lying on the ground, even an open toolbox where we went to rip off a brand-new pair of wire cutters.
“You never know when you might need them,” 3.14 said in a serious voice.
“You figure we got time?”
“At least to start. You ready?”
“For what?”
“We’re gonna place the dynamite.”
“Place it where?”
“In the spots we judge to be the best.”
“And how are we gonna know that?”
“Are you touched? How long have we known our way around this construction site?”
“Since we were born.”
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“Then it’s just a question of choosing. Remember that this is a big circle and everything depends on the quantity of dynamite. All we have to do is set it right, spread it around, and that’s all it takes for the old cowboy to go west, as they say in the movies.”
“I don’t know if the dynamite is powerful enough to break up all this cement, Pi.”
“Don’t start making things up. If cowboys can dynamite mountains, how can a Mausoleum built by drunken Soviets not go flying? Just remember the cardinal points we studied in school.”
“What for?”
“I already thought about it. I already divided everything up: your granma’s house there is the north.”
“So what?”
“We’re going to divide everything into eight sections. I get the north, the south, the east and the west.”
“How come I get the others?”
“Because I don’t remember the other points’ names.”
“I figure it was... Northeast... Northwest... Souteast...”
“Souteast or southeast?”
“Maybe southeast. And then another one I don’t remember...”
“It doesn’t matter. Wherever there’s a gap, you put one. Now let’s go.”
There was a watchtower, I mean there were two of them, but only one oversaw the storage shed and had a Soviet guard, who was always very seated and asleep.
“You figure he’s asleep?”
“Let’s just go. If they catch us, we say that we came to give back these wire cutters.”
We ran towards the storage shed, which wasn’t actually as small as it had seemed. It had closets with many shelves and smelled strongly of food and birdshit. When we entered we had to close the door; we stood in a darkness that was almost frightening because the birds started to make noise, and that scared us a little.
“Jeeze! I can’t see anything,” 3.14 said in a frightened voice. “I’m probably gonna slip on some grenade.”