by Ondjaki
and the people showed each other greater kindness
Odonato began to cry softly, Granma Kunjikise withdrew from the kitchen, leaving him alone with Xilisbaba, who slipped in next to him
this man, his wife knew, was hopelessly in love with another time
“Nato,” she said in such a low voice that her husband had to wipe away his tears in order to listen to her, “be brave, comra—... my love!... you’re going to find your son”
“yes, i am,” he closed the window
“we don’t choose those who come into the world through our blood...”
Odonato was on his way out the door when his wife reminded him that he had to take some money because today even information had to be paid for
“you know i don’t have money”
“i know, that’s why i think you should ask João Slowly or Comrade Mute”
“i figure it’s not necessary, there must still be people who know how to talk without money in their hands”
Xilisbaba smiled
and feared for her husband’s quaint innocence.
Odonato wiped his hand across his forehead, shielding his eyes from the implacable sun, and grasped that it had been a long time since he had left his home, he felt a contradictory overlapping of sensations, it was hot but he felt cool, he should have been consumed by apprehension at the thought of seeing his son but he was overcome by a peaceful languor that he wanted to sustain
“time is a place that has come to a halt,” Granma Kunjikise was fond of saying
Odonato didn’t know where to begin but he’d always understood that walking as a way of solving things that still didn’t have a clear solution
he tried to think of the city as a desert that was open yet surrounded by noise, and many buildings, and the idea made sense to him, unambiguous sense
in the end, what is a place full of humans who worry so little about others? what is a place full of cars containing solitary people trying to run down time and mistreat others in order to get home to greet their own solitariness? what is a place full of rumours and celebrations and burials with so much food, if no one can knock on a stranger’s door any more to ask for a glass of water or find a reason to take a break beneath the cool shade of a fig tree
«this city is a desert» he thought as he walked
he pursued the shade that came to meet him, he passed the Mutu Ya Kevela secondary school, he observed the easy smiles of the children in their soiled smocks and their soccer balls bouncing towards the street, he saw the policemen grinning because they had pocketed some cash from the foreigner who had made an illegal turn, and he felt a powerful yearning prick his heart when he arrived at Kinaxixi Square
Odonato’s chest was agitated as he felt an undeniable yearning for a Luanda that was there without being there, perhaps time had doubled back on itself to make him suffer, the birds of an older Kinaxixi with mannerisms from the Makulusu District sang, invisible, in his semi-transparent ear
was it he who was speaking to the city or was it the city of Loanda, Luanda, Luuanda, that was flirting with him?
a car horn brought him back to reality, he hurried forward and reached the square, but the horn persisted and the car stopped
“bro, Odonato, how’s it goin’?”
he ran forward to see who it was
“how’s it goin’? you spaced out or what? standing around lookin’ at nothing in this heat?” the man spoke cheerfully from inside a vintage car, “don’t you remember? it’s me, Superintendent Gadinho”
“oh… Gadinho, great to see you, everything okay?”
“everything’s good, and you?”
other vehicles lost no time in honking their horns to cut the dialogue short
“hop in, let’s keep talking, you can’t really stop here”
they pulled away uphill on Makalusu, following the traffic’s slow pace
“how’s the family?”
“all well,” Odonato began, “i mean, almost all”
“how’s that?”
“there’s still Ciente with his problems, which then become my problems”
“anything serious?”
“this time it looks like yes, the kid was shot, then he was arrested and i don’t even know where he is...”
“geez, what a fucking mess... and those guys in the police are tough now! but how’d he get shot?”
“the problem’s not how, it’s where”
“how’s that?”
“he got shot in the ass”
“holy fuck... in the ass? like right up the ass? in the bum?”
“in the bum, as they say nowadays”
“fuck... but over what?”
“a break-in”
“someone broke into his place? this city’s terrible”
“no, he was the one breaking in”
“no way... geez, that makes it more complicated”
“yeah, it does”
“and now?”
“now i don’t know, i just need to find him, to get a handle on how serious it is, because he was wounded when they took him away”
“aw fuck, for Christ’s sake... hey, we’d better stop someplace and put back some brews, that way we can think about the situation, i’ll top up my cell and call a few buddies to try to locate your little bastard”
“brews, at this time of day?”
“it’s never the wrong time for beer, Odonato, and anyway, with the heat it always goes down good,” Gadinho seemed reinvigorated by the idea.
it was almost nightfall
Seashell Seller insisted to Blind Man that they swing by that building that had cool water in the entrance, it had become an end-of-day ritual, they went in, chatted a bit, cooled their bodies in the lost waters on the first floor of the building where Odonato lived
and Amarelinha
“you want to go there to see the girl...” Blind Man admonished
“but what girl, elder? does only one girl live in that building? you can’t even see and you already saw all that?”
“i guess i don’t see right... hmm!”
the building welcomed whoever it understood must be welcomed, they took the waters as though they were the last inhabitants on earth
the mysteriously unstaunchable waters spilled, now more, now less strongly, over their naked bodies, Blind Man chanted a pretty melody in Umbundu that reached the ears of Granma Kunjikise above
she smiled alone, remembering images from a time so ancient that she began to doubt in her innermost being that they existed: the time of Elder Mimi dancing, for the first time in her life, on the day her husband was buried, dead in the war, and because of the war, not at someone’s hands—because in the end this isn’t what’s at stake when someone dies—but dead at the hands of fate
“pretty music, that,” Seashell Seller ran a hand over his body, with a fleeting gesture, as though he had a real bar of soap
“Umbundu, the pretty language of our south...” Blind Man burst out laughing as loudly as though he wished to shout down the sound of the waters, “i don’t even know whether i’m singing as loud as i can or what”
“whatever you’re doing, it sounds pretty”
“it’s a mourning song... they say an old woman sang it on the day of her husband’s death”
“was that here in Luanda?”
“no... that was in Bailundo, a long time ago...”
the afternoon succumbed to the sea’s shadow, the motorbikes growled beneath the urgency of their drivers, young guys who had arranged to go pick up their girlfriends for their daily rendezvous, people came home hungry in the deafening din of car horns and voices on top of other car horns and other voices
Odonato returned to the building, his feet and neck coated with dust, he felt hot and thirsty, and he moved towards the noises h
e heard on the dark side of the first floor where there had once been an elevator
“you’re here? buck naked?”
“apologies, elder, we came here through the heat and this here water is very uncompromising in the way it doesn’t stop flowing,” Seashell Seller made a move to retrieve his clothes, but failed to do so
“no problem, i’m sweltering, too, i think i’ll take a dip, do i have permission to join you guys?”
“it’s your home, permission belongs to you and yours,” Blind Man concluded
dark glimmerings, sparklings of ember-like colour, an opaque yellow glow and even tiny registers of red played in the reflections on Odonato’s gaunt body, Seashell Seller ran his hand across his face a number of times, and his fright was so obvious that Blind Man sensed, from the thumping of his heart, that he was seeing something important
Odonato’s body mixed human textures with a heightened clarity of vision, it was now possible to make out, in addition to certain veins, the bones right beneath his skin, his fingernails looked sharper because translucence lent his body a different geometry, the small bones of his feet were discernible, the edges of his pelvis stood out on the right and left, and uncertain colours danced in his abdomen
he stopped looking, suffused by a deep fear that, at any moment, he might see not Odonato’s body, but his soul
“don’t be afraid, what’s happening here is completely natural”
“if other people saw it, they’d say it was a curse”
“everything that happens to us is a kind of curse”
Blind Man made a brusque flare of his nostrils, as though by sheer sense of smell he had become aware of Odonato’s transparence.
Crystal-Clear arrived punctually at the Minister’s home in spite of the chaotic traffic and even though his vehicle didn’t have a siren
Pomposa had been warned and had prepared everything in her exaggerated style, she had taken a vast number of whisky bottles, chosen according to the colours of their labels, out of the cupboard, as well as bottles of Portuguese and South African wine, French champagne, and the table was divided between appetizers purchased from European specialty shops and light homemade snacks which she’d ordered her cook to prepare earlier, kitaba, sliced ginger, quitetas in a sauce of lemon spice and African red peppers, a shrimp kizaca, everything that anyone could want
“welcome, Senhor Pistol-Clear”
“the name is Crystal-Clear, my lady”
“my apologies, make yourself at home, the Minister’s on his way, he apologizes for the delay”
“perhaps i arrived too early”
“no... you arrived at the appointed time, sir, the Minister is still in traffic”
“he has a siren, doesn’t he?”
“he does, yes”
“and even so...”
“and even so...! i’ll tell you, i can’t count on the Minister for anything,” Pomposa adjusted her bra as though measuring her own breasts, “not for anything”
“madam, do you always refer to your husband as ‘the Minister’?”
“don’t call me ‘madam’...”
“must i say ‘Senhora Minister’?”
“Pomposa, just Pomposa”
“i understand”
“and what will you have to drink?”
“whisky”
“with lots of ice?”
“no ice”
“my grandfather told me real men drank whisky without ice”
“is there such a thing as a man who isn’t real?”
“of course, there’s faggots”
a cockroach made three circuits of the room before settling on the middle table, a flying cockroach, not at all discreet, with long antennae and an inquisitive gaze, but above all distinguished by its colouration, or, more precisely, its discolouration: it was an albino cockroach, whitened without having been made transparent, flattened without having been lengthened
“oh my god,” Pomposa shuddered, immobilized, “could it be one of those witch-doctor cockroaches?”
Crystal-Clear sipped the rest of his whisky, set down his glass nearby, slowly, with his left foot, pried the shoe off his right foot, without taking his eyes off the insect for a second
“it could, in the end, turn out to be a witch-doctor insect...but those beliefs are mainly unfounded,” he stirred a little to put the cockroach’s attention to the test, “in zoology, Dona Pomposa, that process is known as the moulting of the cuticle, or simply ‘to strip it off’”
he reached down, caressed his shoe, and continued looking alternately at the table and at Pomposa’s bulging eyes
“the process of the moulting of the cuticle is controlled by hormones known as ecdysteroids...”
“but a flying... albino cockroach...!”
“calm down...”
the cockroach moved its antennae in the direction of Crystal-Clear in a gesture that might have been approving, reproving, or simply demonstrating attentiveness
“this ‘stripping off’ can be a simple intermediate stage, one of growth, it’s during this process that the insect appears whitest, after a few days it’ll return to its normal colour, of course, according to witnesses in our nation, there are cockroaches that spend their entire lives that colour...”
“i think it’s going to fly again”
in a rapid movement, Crystal-Clear’s Italian shoe flew over his whisky glass and struck the table before Pomposa could take fright, and the woman was gripped by a kind of awe
the Minister came in with an almost humble look
“apologies for being late, it was the traffic”
“in spite of your sirens...” Crystal-Clear looked at him, “we’ve already started abusing your whisky”
“well! what of it? ...it’s the national drink”
“more for some than others”
“those are the rules of the game”
“those are the rules of our game...”
“is dinner almost ready, Pomposa?”
“here we’re always ready”
“it’s better if we speak now, i can’t stay for dinner,” Crystal-Clear warned
“not at all? what a shame,” Pomposa sighed
“go see if dinner’s ready”
“but what if our friend’s not staying for dinner”
“it’s a figure of speech, baby, we’re going to talk politics”
Pomposa retreated to the kitchen as though she were using her natural composure to withdraw her breasts from the dining room
“it’s a done deal, my good man, a done deal, and the Leader’s already said that he wants this business to move forward”
“seriously? the Leader?”
“yes, i spoke to him after the last cabinet meeting, but there’s still one unresolved question””
“tell me,” Crystal-Clear was curious
“the petroleum extraction will go ahead, of that there’s no doubt, but the Leader is very worried about those scientific fables that are making the rounds”
“those what?”
“Luanda’s subsoil, those strata of i-don’t-know-what...the Leader wants to hear more opinions, i thought of that crazy kid, the scientist, he’s even Angolan”
“you must be joking, Minister... look, we have an American specialist named Ragged Ass who’s here to give our research the okay... so we bring this big shot here, he stays with us, he gets a ton of dough, he certifies, then he goes back to his country, and now you’re telling me we’re going to listen to an Angolan scientist? no way”
“i don’t know, Crystal-Clear... the opposition’s talking, and the President’s worried... it’s a question of national security, the capital city...”
“the capital city and all of us... are going to enjoy progress, yes, that’s exactly what i want to talk to you about
... and you’ll want to talk to the President about it one of these days”
“about what? the public tenders? it’s a done deal”
“no... it’s not done yet, for you and your friends who are bidding to do the hydrocarbon exploration the real security issue has to do to with the drilling and the tubage”
“the tubage?”
“the tubage, the transportation of the petroleum, but also of the water, the sewers and pipes are going to be located, removed, reset... that’s the part that can’t be left in the hands of any old joker who comes along, and i’m ready for the markets of the future”
“the future?” the Minister was drinking more whisky in order to better understand
“the future!”
“how’s that?”
“exactly what i’m saying, once the excavations are done, you guys focus on the petroleum, what i want is the water”
“the Leader won’t allow that”
“the Leader just doesn’t know that he’s going to allow it yet!”
“shhh, man, keep your voice down”
“listen to me—because sometimes a guy gets rich only when he listens”
“tell me, Crystal-Clear”
“i don’t want the water, water is like whisky, it’s a national product”
“what do you want then?”
“i just want to transport the water and get all the pipes and sewers in Luanda privatized cheaply, on my terms”
“ahhh...”
“you see how good it is to listen?” Crystal-Clear served himself another whisky, “listen, Senhor Minister... with so many new pipes to be installed, and so many others to be removed, a labyrinth of petroleum pipelines, gas pipelines and water pipes will be assembled in Luanda’s subsoil... we can’t take the risk of allowing those pipes to belong to the public sector! don’t forget, whoever decides the price of transporting water, decides the price of water...”
Crystal-Clear drank his whisky in a single swallow and sat immobile, impatient, waiting for his logic to echo in the Minister’s head
“i got it!... let’s drink a toast,” proposed the Minister
“with water please!”
when Odonato got home, the daily episode of the Brazilian soap opera had already ended