The Book of Chameleons

by Jose Eduardo Agualusa

  ‘I’m going to tell you an improbable story. I’m going to tell you because I know you won’t believe me. I’d like to trade this improbable story, the story of my life, for another story – one that’s simple, and solid. The story of an ordinary man. I’ll give you an impossible truth, and you give me a vulgar and believable lie – OK?’

  He’d started well. Interested, Félix sat down.

  ‘You see this face?’The man pointed to his face with both hands.‘Well, it’s not mine.’

  A long pause. He hesitated. Then at last he began:

  ‘They stole my face. Oh… how can I explain this to you? They stole me from myself. I woke up one day to discover that they’d done plastic surgery on me, and left me in a clinic with an envelope full of dollars and a postcard: We thank you for the services rendered – consider your job done. That’s what it said on the postcard. They could have killed me. I don’t know why they didn’t kill me. Maybe they thought that this way I’m even deader… Or rather, that’s what I thought at first, that they wanted me to suffer. And I did, those first days I really did suffer. I considered reporting what had happened. I sought out my friends. Some of them didn’t believe me. Others did believe me, in spite of the mask I now wear, because after all I know certain things – but they pretended not to believe me. I thought it would be dangerous to insist. And then one evening, an evening like this one, sitting alone at a table outside a bar at the end of the Island, I began to enjoy an amazing sensation – I wasn’t sure what to call it; but I do know now, it was Freedom! I’d been transformed into a free man. I had funds, I had access to accounts abroad that would see me out for the rest of my life. And I had the weight of no responsibilities – no critics, no remorse, no envy, no hatred, no rancour, no court intrigue, still less any fear that one day someone would betray me…’

  Félix Ventura shakes his head, troubled:

  ‘I used to know someone – he was crazy, one of those unfortunates you find wandering around the city, getting in the way of the traffic, and he had a very strange theory. He believed that the President had been replaced by a double. Your story reminds me of that…’

  The man looked at him, curious. His voice became more gentle, almost dream-like:

  ‘All stories are connected. In the end everything is connected.’ A sigh. ‘But only a few lunatics – very few of them, and they do have to be very crazy indeed – are able to understand this. Anyway. What I’m after is for you to arrange for me exactly the opposite of what you usually do for people – I want you to give me a modest past. A name with no lustre to it whatsoever. A genealogy that is obscure, and irrefutable. There must be men who are rich but who have no family and no glory, surely? I want to be like that…’

  Dream No. 6

  A very tall cage rose up in front of us, broad and deep, out of which from time to time, in faint gusts, burst the happy chirping of birds. Parakeets, waxbills, Long-tailed Tyrants, peitos-celestes, touracos, turtledoves, bee-eaters. We were sitting on well-worn plastic chairs, in the fragrant shade of a leafy mango tree. To our left ran a low brick wall, painted white. Hugely tall papaya trees laden with fruit swayed beside the wall, languid as a mulatto woman. Looking over to the right, towards the house, were ranks of orange trees, lime trees, guava trees. Further still was a massive baobab which dominated the orchard. It looked as though it had been put there just to remind me that this was no more than a dream. Pure fiction. Chickens pecked away at the red earth, and in the very green grass, dragging their broods of chicks behind them. José Buchmann gave me a clear smile of victory.

  ‘Welcome to my humble domain.’

  He clapped his hands and a slender, shy girl in a short little dress and plastic sandals appeared from the gloom. Buchmann asked her to bring a cold beer for him, a pitanga juice for me. Without a word the girl lowered her head, and vanished. Not long afterwards she returned balancing a bottle of beer, two glasses and a jug with the juice, on a tray. Mistrustfully I tasted the juice. It was good, bitter and sweet all at once, very fresh, with a fragrance that could light up even the gloomiest soul.

  ‘We’re in Chibia – but you know that already, don’t you? However much I thank our dear common friend Félix for having invented this land for me, I can never thank him enough.’

  ‘Excuse my curiosity. Is there really a plot, in a cemetery near here somewhere, with the name Mateus Buchmann on it?’

  ‘There is. A lot of the plots had been destroyed, among them – and why not? – my father’s. I had the stone made myself. You saw it. You did see the photograph, didn’t you?’

  ‘I understand. And Eva Miller’s watercolours?’

  ‘I really did find those at an antique-dealer’s, in Cape Town – a fabulous shop that sold a bit of everything, jewels and photo albums, right through to old cameras. Eva Miller is a common enough name. There must be several dozen watercolourists in the world with that name. The brief notice of her death that appeared in the Johannesburg Século, yes, I did make that one up – with the help of an old Portuguese typesetter friend of mine. I needed Félix himself to believe in my life story. If he believed it, who wouldn’t? And today, I honestly believe it myself. I look back now, back into my past, and I see two lives. In one, I was Pedro Gouveia, in another José Buchmann. Pedro Gouveia died. José Buchmann returned to Chibia.’

  ‘And did you know that ngela was your daughter?’

  ‘Yes, I knew. I left prison in nineteen-eighty. I was destroyed, totally destroyed – physically, morally, psychologically. Edmundo took me to the airport, put me on a plane and sent me to Portugal. There was no one waiting for me there. I didn’t have family there any more, or at least none that I knew of, I had nothing left, no connection at all. My mother – poor woman – had died in Luanda while I was in prison. My father had been living in Rio de Janeiro for years with another woman. I’d never had much contact with him. Yes, I had been born in Lisbon, but I’d gone to Luanda when I was tiny, even before I’d learned to talk. Portugal was my country, they told me, they told me so in prison – the other prisoners, the informers – but I never felt Portuguese. I stayed in Lisbon for two or three years, working as a copy-editor on a weekly paper. It was then, through my contact with the photographers working on the paper, that I began to get interested in photography. I did a quick course, and set off for Paris. From there, I went to Berlin. I began working as a photo-journalist, and spent years – decades – crossing the world from war to war, trying to forget myself. I earned a lot of money – a lot, really – but didn’t know what to do with it all. Nothing appealed to me. My whole life was an attempt to escape. Then one evening I found myself in Lisbon – one of those in-between places on the map. In a restaurant in Restauradores, where I’d gone in attracted by the smell of chicken giblets like my mother used to make, I came across an old comrade of mine. He was the first person to tell me about ngela. That son of a bitch – Edmundo – had derived great pleasure telling me every time he interrogated me of how he’d killed my wife. He told me they’d murdered the baby too. But it turned out they hadn’t killed her. They’d handed her over to Marina, Marta’s sister, and she had brought her up. She’d brought her up as though she were her own daughter. I was disturbed when I heard this. Years had passed, and I’d grown old. I wanted to know my daughter, to spend time with her, but I didn’t have the courage to tell her the truth. I became obsessed. I was overcome by hatred, by a savage bitterness towards those people, towards Edmundo. I wanted to kill him. I thought that if I killed him I’d be able to look my daughter in the eye. Perhaps if I killed him, I would be reborn. I returned to Luanda, with no clear idea of what I was going to do. I was afraid of being recognised. On a table in the bar of my hotel I found a business card for our friend Félix Ventura. Give your children a better past. Excellent paper. Very well printed. That was when I had the idea of contracting his services – with another identity it would be easier for me to move around the city without arousing suspicion. I could kill Edmundo, and disappear. But I wante
d him to know why he was going to die, I wanted to confront him with his crimes – deep down, yes, I know that I wanted revenge. It was hard to find him, and when I did track him down I discovered that he’d gone mad. Or at least, he seemed that way. I went with him to Félix’s house because I wanted to hear someone else’s opinion of the matter – and Félix thought that – yes – Edmundo was mad. At that point I almost gave up. I couldn’t kill a madman. Then one evening I waited for him to leave the sewer where he used to hide out, and I slipped down into it. And there, in that filthy hole, I found a mattress, dirty clothes, magazines, Marxist literature and – would you believe it? – a set of archives containing the State Security reports for dozens of people. My case was one of the first. And that’s where I was, with a torch in one hand and the file in the other – thrilled, confused – when all of a sudden Edmundo appeared, like a soul condemned. He jumped in from the gutter, landing two paces from me. He had a knife in his hand. He was laughing. My God, that laugh! He said: The two of us, face to face again, comrade Pedro Gouveia – but this time I’m going to finish you off… – and he lunged at me. I kicked him away, drew a gun from my belt – I’d bought the gun just days earlier at Roque Santeiro, believe it or not – and fired. The bullet hit his chest, just grazed it; I dropped the torch, dropped everything, in a panic, and he scrabbled up the hole. I grabbed his legs, held fast, but he shook, wriggled, freed himself, leaving me holding his trousers. I chased after him. The rest you know. You were there. You witnessed everything that happened after that.’

  ‘And what about ngela – did she know you were her father?’

  ‘Yes, she swears she did. She told me that Marina had kept our tragedy hidden from her for years. Until one day – it was bound to happen – someone or other – a classmate, I think, someone from her university – dropped a hint. ngela reacted very badly. She was furious with Marina and her husband – her parents, her real parents, after all – both wonderful people. She was furious with them, and left Angola. She went to London. She went to New York. She’d learned that I was a photographer, and this led to her becoming interested in photography. She became a photographer, like me; and, like me, she became a nomad. And a few months ago you noticed the coincidence that we were both photographers and both returned to the country at about the same time – and you didn’t believe it was a coincidence. Well, as you see it wasn’t entirely coincidence. ngela swears that the moment she saw me, that night – you remember, that night in your house? – the moment she saw me, the moment she set eyes on me, she guessed who I was. I don’t know. When I think about that moment, all I remember is the shock of it. It was such a strange meeting for me. I did know who she was. Neither of us said a word. We just sat in silence. Months went by, until that evening when I shot at Edmundo, and he ran for refuge with the only person who could take him in – Félix Ventura, former student of Professor Gaspar, one of his tribe…’

  José Buchmann was quiet. He drank down what was left of his beer in a long draught, and then sat, absorbed, his eyes lost in the dense foliage of the mango tree. The big orchard suited him. The shade fell across us like a burst of fresh water. For a moment the rough passion of cicadas added to the singing of the birds. A drowsiness came over me, I wanted to shut my eyes and sleep, but I resisted it, sure that if I fell asleep moments later I would awake transformed into a gecko.

  ‘Have you had news from ngela?’

  ‘Yes, I hear from her. At this moment she should be going down the Amazon on a big, lazy, slow-boat, one of those boats that at night-time they cover with hammocks. There’s a lot of sky there. A lot of light in the water. I hope she’s happy.’

  ‘And what about you – are you happy?’

  ‘I’m at peace, at last. I fear nothing, I yearn for nothing. I suppose you could call that happiness. Do you know what Aldous Huxley used to say? Happiness is never grand.’

  ‘And what will become of you now?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve no idea. I’ll probably be a grandfather.’

  Félix Ventura Begins to Keep a Diary

  This morning I found Eulálio dead. Poor Eulálio. He’d fallen at the foot of my bed, with an enormous scorpion, a horrible creature, also dead, clamped between his teeth. He died in combat, like a hero – Eulálio, who’d never thought of himself as courageous. I buried him in the yard, shrouded in a silk handkerchief, one of my best handkerchiefs, beside the trunk of the avocado tree. I chose the side of the tree facing the setting sun, damp and covered in moss, because it’s always shady there. Like me, Eulálio never liked the sun. I’ll miss him. I decided to start keeping this diary today, to maintain the illusion that there’s someone listening to me. I’ll never have another listener like him, though. He was my best friend, I think. I suppose I’ll stop meeting him in my dreams now. And indeed with every passing day, every passing hour, my memory of him becomes more and more like a figure made of sand. The memory of a dream. Maybe I dreamed it all: him, José Buchmann, Edmundo Barata dos Reis. I dare not dig up the yard, there beside the bougainvillea, in case I find nothing there – the possibility terrifies me. As for ngela Lúcia, if I did dream her, I dreamed her very well. The postcards she still sends me, one every three or four days, are almost real. I bought an immense map of the world, bought it online from Altair. Altair in Barcelona is my favourite bookshop. Whenever I go to Barcelona I set aside two or three days to lose myself in Altair, consulting books and maps and photo albums and planning journeys I will take one day; and above all planning all those journeys I never will take. I’ve hung the map on the living room wall, fixed to a corkboard, next to ngela Lúcia’s Polaroids. Each of her postcards bears a note mentioning where the picture was taken, so it’s easy for me to track her progress (I’ve pierced each place with a green-headed pin). I can see that ngela went down the Amazon as far as Belém do Pará. By my reckoning she then rented a car – or took a bus, more likely – heading southward. From São Luís do Maranhão she sent me the flaming silhouette of a little square-sailed boat: Anil River, February 9th. Four days later I received the image of a child’s hand throwing a paper aeroplane. There’s a river slipping past in the background, fat and grey under the slow sun: Ilhas Canárias, Parnaíba Delta, February 13th. It’s not hard for me to imagine where she’ll go in the coming days. Yesterday I bought a ticket for Rio de Janeiro. The day after tomorrow I fly from Santos Dumont airport to Fortaleza. I don’t think it will be hard for me to find her. If José Buchmann was able to find a fellow countryman, an accorentado, inside a phone box in Berlin, with no point of reference but a traffic light, it’ll be even quicker for me to find a woman who loves to photograph clouds. I don’t know what I’ll do when I find her. I hope that you, my good Eulálio, will help me to make the right decision. I’m an animist. I’ve always been an animist, though I’ve only lately realised it. The same thing happens to the soul as happens to water – it flows. Today it’s a river. Tomorrow, it will be the sea. Water takes the shape of whatever receives it. Inside a bottle it’s like a bottle. But it isn’t a bottle. Eulálio will always be Eulálio, whether flesh (incarnate) or fish. I’m reminded of that black and white picture of Martin Luther King speaking to the crowd: I have a dream… He really should have said ‘I made a dream’. If you think about it there’s a difference between having a dream and making a dream.

  Yes, I’ve made a dream.

  Lisbon, February 13th, 2004.

  About the Author

  Jose Eduardo Agualusa was born in Huambo in 1960 and is one of the leading young literary voices from Angola, and from the Portuguese language today. His first book, The Conspiracy, a historical novel set in Sao Paulo de Luanda between 1880 and 1911, paints a fascinating portrait of a society marked by opposites, in which those who can adapt have any chance of success. Creole, which has evoked comparisons with Bruce Chatwin’s The Viceroy of Ouidah, was awarded the Portuguese Grand Prize for Literature, while The Book of Chameleons won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2007 (‘Not since Gregor Samsa’s metamorphosis
have we had such a convincing non-human narrator’ Independent). Arcadia will publish The Rainy Season, which depicts the devastating history of an Angola tormented by 30 years of civil war, in 2008. Agualusa divides his time between Angola, Brazil and Portugal.

  Daniel Hahn is the translator of Agualusa’s award-winning novels Creole and The Book of Chameleons, as well as the autobiography of Brazilian footballer Pele. He is the author of a work of narrative history, The Tower Menagerie, and the editor of several reference books including a series of reading guides for children, The Ultimate Book Guides.

  Copyright

  First published in 2006

  by Arcadia Books Books, 15-16 Nassau Street, London, W1W 7AB

  This ebook edition first published in 2011

  All rights reserved

  Originally published by Publicações Dom Quixote, Lisbon, as O vendedor de passados

  Copyright © José Eduardo Agualusa and Publicações Dom Quixote, 2006

  By arrangement with Dr Ray-Güde Mertin, Literarische Agentur, Bad Homburg, Germany

  Translation from Portuguese © Daniel Hahn, 2006

  The right of José Eduardo Agualusa to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly