Gods and Soldiers

by Rob Spillman

  The woman served herself again. She drank slowly, as suited her.

  • I remember one of my grandmothers in Silva Porto who once had a man come into her house dying of thirst and asking her for water. My grandmother returned to the room with a jug of very cold water and he chugged three glasses without stopping.

  • He did?

  • He did. The man only had time to return the jug to her before he dropped the glass to the floor. He died right there, you know? Ever since, my grandmother lived to tell this story, and my grandfather swore that it was true—the doctor concluded.

  • That doesn’t scare me.

  • Sorry, it wasn’t meant to scare you.

  • And what was it that your grandfather said?

  • Mind you, my grandfather was a man of refined temperament and sensibility. When I was little he confirmed the whole story and at the end he said: That man never thanked your grandmother for the water.

  The woman held the glass and inhaled deeply.

  • Do you know why I asked for water here in your house?

  • No.

  • Because of the music . . . This sweet voice.

  • Adriana.

  • Huh?

  • Adriana Calcanhoto, a Brazilian singer.

  • Is she a poet too?

  • Yes.

  • No . . . Sir . . . Sir, are you a poet?

  • Ah, me! No, I’m a doctor. And you?

  • I’m here on vacation.

  The dragonfly made its way to the ground. At last it moved, walking.

  In the expression of both of them one could see the fear of two children who, with grave open-mouthed attention, watched the sudden graceful movement of a stone. The dragonfly walked toward the object. In a short shake of its wings it jumped and became quiet—a warrior marking its conquered territory. “And the grievance of the stars is for me alone” wafted toward the porch in the afternoon.

  The object was a thick glass dome, certainly expensive, that covered a small ordinary gray stone. The most that could be said of it was that it was a tiny stone, neither charming, nor unusual, nor exotic or attractive. It was a crudely common stone. The glass enclosure, however, raised its value.

  • I think that the value of this stone can’t be measured by its looks. Do you agree?

  • Yes.

  • But this dome is beautifully made . . .

  The doctor, in a confident gesture, shook the dragonfly—a surprise for both the woman and the dragonfly. The insect returned to rest on the letters. The stone and its glass dome were hurled to the floor. The woman didn’t have time to be scared. The object noisily hit the floor twice and, after rolling a while, ended its journey. The doctor caught the object and returned to put it on the table at the foot of the letters, the papers, the dragonfly. The insect, in a short sprinkling of wings, returned to its post.

  • All glass is fragile, my grandfather said. This glass dome is very good at protecting valuable objects.

  The woman started to feel thirsty but she didn’t want to inconvenience him.

  • A gift?

  • Yes, a very special gift, very sincere.

  • Do doctors receive many gifts?

  • Some; it’s a way for people to express thanks and affection. And he fell silent.

  The woman didn’t want to leave, but she thought she was forcing the moment. The doctor stayed quiet for more than five minutes. The woman thought it was time to leave. The music seemed to stop and the voice, the voice was difficult to record in memory’s ear.

  • Adriana, you say?

  • Adriana Calcanhoto. She’s Brazilian.

  • Thank you very much for the water.

  • You’re welcome. You know, always drink slowly.

  • And thanks before I die!

  The doctor sort of smiled. His lips contorted; only an attempt at a smile. Maybe.

  The gate was open. The woman, grabbing the iron grates purposefully, recognized the sensation of that coldness of skin.

  • You know, it was on Sunday—the doctor started.—I was called to the battlefront and no one wanted to operate on the man: he had some kind of explosive lodged in his leg. It was a very delicate operation; I still think about it today. I had to do everything very slowly so that he wouldn’t be in any pain, and both of us had to be patient. Near the end, the soldier said to me: Let me die; I’m already so tired. I answered: I’ll let you die, but first let me save you.

  • So he died?

  • No. The operation went well. In the end, he wanted to offer me a gift. As if nothing had happened, he took off the boot and said: Now I know why the stone kept bothering me for two days. Take it, doctor, just so we don’t forget our conversation today. You keep the stone, I’ll keep the scar.

  The gate closed. The thirst had passed. The woman, walking slowly down the sidewalk, understood that it was the stone that gave value to the enclosure. She heard footsteps. The music started again: “My music wants to transcend taste, it doesn’t want to have a face, it doesn’t want to be culture.”

  Between two sepia pages—in a window of dust—the woman watched the dragonfly stop, undulating. It was a dance. At its feet lay the crudely common stone. Between the memory of the man and the unbreakable dome of glass.

  JOSÉ EDUARDO AGUALUSA

  • Angola •

  from THE BOOK OF CHAMELEONS

  FÉLIX VENTURA STUDIES the newspapers as he has his dinner, leafing through them carefully, and if an article catches his eye he marks it with his pen, in lilac-colored ink. Once he’s done eating he cuts it out and stores it carefully away in a file. On one of the shelves in the library he has dozens of these files. Another is where his hundreds of videocassettes lie. Félix likes to record news bulletins, important political happenings, anything that might one day be useful to him. The tapes are lined up in alphabetical order, by the name of the person or the event they’re about. His dinner consists of a bowl of vegetable broth, a specialty of Old Esperança’s, a cup of mint tea, and a thick slice of papaya, dressed with lemon and a dash of port wine. In his room, before going to bed, he puts on his pajamas with such an air of formality that I’m always half-expecting him to tie a somber-looking tie around his neck. But on this particular night, the shrill ring of the doorbell interrupted him as he ate his soup. This irritated him. He folded up his paper, got up with some effort and went to open the door. I saw a tall man come in, distinguished looking, a hooked nose, prominent cheekbones, and a generous moustache, curved and gleaming, the kind people haven’t had these past hundred years. His eyes were small and bright, and seemed to take possession of everything they saw. He was wearing a blue suit, in an old-fashioned cut but which suited him, and in his left hand he was holding a document case. The room darkened. It was as though night— or something even more grief-stricken than night—had come in with him. He took out a calling card, and read aloud:

  “Félix Ventura. Guarantee your children a better past.” And he laughed. A sad laugh, but not unpleasant. “That would be you, I presume? A friend of mine gave me your card.”

  I couldn’t place his accent. He spoke softly, with a mix of different pronunciations, a faint Slavic roughness, tempered by the honeyed softness of the Portuguese from Brazil. Félix Ventura took a step back:

  “And who are you?”

  The foreigner closed the door. He walked around the room, his hands clasped behind his back, pausing for a long moment in front of the beautiful oil portrait of Frederick Douglass. Then he sat down, at last, in one of the armchairs, and with an elegant gesture invited the albino to do the same. It was as though he were the owner of the house. Certain common friends, he said—his voice becoming even gentler—had given him this address. They’d told him of a man who dealt in memories, a man who sold the past, clandestinely, the way other people deal in cocaine. Félix looked at him with mistrust. Everything about this strange man annoyed him—his manners that were both gentle and authoritative, his ironic way of speaking, the antiquated moustach
e. He sat himself down in a grand wickerwork chair, at the opposite end of the room, as though afraid the other man’s delicacy might be contagious.

  “And might I know who you are?”

  Again his question received no reply. The foreigner asked permission to smoke. He took a silver cigarette case from the pocket of his jacket, opened it, and rolled a cigarette. His eyes skipped one way and another, his attention distracted, like a chicken pecking around in the dust. And then he smiled with unexpected brilliance:

  “But do tell me, my dear man—who are your clients?”

  Félix Ventura gave in. There was a whole class, he explained, a whole new bourgeoisie, who sought him out. They were businessmen, ministers, landowners, diamond smugglers, generals—people, in other words, whose futures are secure. But what these people lack is a good past, a distinguished ancestry, diplomas. In sum, a name that resonates with nobility and culture. He sells them a brand new past. He draws up their family tree. He provides them with photographs of their grandparents and great-grandparents, gentlemen of elegant bearing and old-fashioned ladies. The businessmen, the ministers, would like to have women like that as their aunts, he went on, pointing to the portraits on the walls—old ladies swathed in fabrics, authentic bourgeois bessanganas—they’d like to have a grandfather with the distinguished bearing of a Machado de Assis, of a Cruz e Souza, of an Alexandre Dumas. And he sells them this simple dream.

  “Perfect, perfect.” The foreigner smoothed his moustache. “That’s what they told me. I require your services. But I’m afraid it may be rather a lot of work . . .”

  “Work makes you free . . . ,” Félix muttered. It may be that he was just saying this to try and get a rise out of him, to test out the intruder’s identity, but if that was his intention it failed—the foreigner merely nodded. The albino got up and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen. A moment later he returned with a bottle of good Portuguese wine that he held with both hands. He showed it to the foreigner, and offered him a glass. And he asked:

  “And might I know your name?”

  The foreigner examined the wine by the light of the lamp. He lowered his eyelids and drank slowly, attentively, happily, like someone following the flight of a Bach fugue. He put the glass down on a small table right in front of him, a piece of mahogany furniture with a glass cover; then finally straightened himself up and replied:

  “I’ve had many names, but I mean to forget them all. I’d rather you were the one to baptize me.”

  Félix insisted. He had to know—at the very least—what his clients’ professions were. The foreigner raised his right hand—a broad hand, with long, bony fingers—in a vague gesture of refusal. But then he lowered it again, and sighed:

  “You’re right. I’m a photojournalist. I collect images of wars, of hunger and its ghosts, of natural disasters and terrible misfortunes. You can think of me as a witness.”

  He explained that he was planning to settle in the country. He wanted more than just a decent past, a large family, uncles, aunts and cousins, nephews and nieces, grandfathers and grandmothers, including two or three bessanganas, now dead, of course (or perhaps living in exile somewhere?); he wanted more than just portraits and anecdotes. He needed a new name, authentic official documents that bore out this identity. The albino listened, horrified:

  “No!” he managed to blurt out. “I don’t do things like that. I invent dreams for people, I’m not a forger . . . And besides, if you’ll pardon my bluntness, wouldn’t it be a bit difficult to invent a completely African genealogy for you?”

  “Indeed! And why is that?! . . .”

  “Well—sir—. . . you’re white.”

  “And what of it? You’re whiter than I am . . .”

  “White? Me?!” The albino choked. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. “No, no! I’m black. Pure black. I’m a native. Can’t you tell that I’m black? . . .”

  From my usual post at the window I couldn’t help giving a little chuckle at this point. The foreigner looked upward as though he were sniffing the air. Tense—alert:

  “Did you hear that? Who laughed just then?”

  “Nobody,” the albino replied, and pointed at me. “It was the gecko.”

  The man stood up. He came up closer and I could feel his eyes on me. It was as though he were looking directly into my soul—my old soul. He shook his head slowly, in a baffled silence.

  “Do you know what this is?”

  “What?!”

  “It’s a gecko, yes, but a very rare species. See these stripes? It’s a tiger gecko—a shy creature, we still know very little about them. They were first discovered half a dozen years ago in Namibia. We think they can live for twenty years—even longer, perhaps. They have this amazing laugh—doesn’t it sound like a human laugh?”

  Félix agreed. Yes, to begin with he’d also been disturbed by it. But then having consulted a few books about reptiles—he had them right there in the house, he had books about everything, thousands of them, inherited from his adopted father, a secondhand book dealer who’d exchanged Luanda for Lisbon a few months after independence—he’d discovered that there were certain species of gecko that produce sounds that are strikingly like laughter. They spent some time discussing me, which I found annoying—talking as if I weren’t there!—and yet at the same time it felt as though they were talking not about me but about some alien being, some vague and distant biological anomaly. Men know almost nothing of the little creatures that share their homes. Mice, bats, ants, ticks, fleas, flies, mosquitoes, spiders, worms, silverfish, termites, weevils, snails, beetles. I decided that I might as well simply get on with my life. At that sort of time the albino’s bedroom used to fill up with mosquitoes, and I was beginning to feel hungry. The foreigner stood up again, went over to the chair where he’d put the briefcase, opened it, and took out a thick envelope. He handed it to Félix, said his good-byes, and went to the door. He opened it himself. He nodded, and was gone.

  “A Ship Filled with Voices”

  Five thousand dollars in large-denomination bills.

  Félix Ventura tore open the envelope quickly, nervously, and the notes burst out like green butterflies—fluttered for a moment in the night air, then spread themselves all over the floor, the books, the chairs and sofas. The albino was getting anxious. He even went to open the door, meaning to chase after the foreigner, but out in the vast still night there was no sign of anyone.

  “Have you seen this?!” He was talking to me. “So now what am I supposed to do?”

  He gathered the notes up one by one, counted them and put them back in the envelope—it was only then that he noticed that inside the envelope there was also a note; he read aloud:

  “Dear Sir, I will be giving you another five thousand when I receive the material. I’m leaving you a few passport-style photos of myself for you to use on the documents. I’ll come by again in three weeks.”

  Félix lay down and tried to read a book—it was Nicholas Shakespeare’s biography of Bruce Chatwin, in the Portuguese Quetzal edition. After ten minutes he put it down on the bedside table and got up again. He wandered round and round the house, muttering incoherent phrases, until dawn broke. His little widow’s hands, tender and tiny, fluttered randomly about, independently, as he spoke. The tightly curled hair, trimmed down now, glowed around him with a miraculous aura. If someone had seen him from out on the road, seen him through the window, they would have thought they were looking at a ghost.

  “No, what rubbish! I won’t do it . . .”

  [...]

  “The passport wouldn’t be hard to get, it wouldn’t even be that risky, and it would only take a few days—cheap, too. I could do that—why not? I’ll have to do it one day—it’s the inevitable extension of what I’m doing anyway . . .”

  [...]

  “Take care, my friend, take care with the paths you choose to follow. You’re no forger. Be patient. Invent some sort of excuse, return the money, and tell him it’s not
going to happen.”

  [...]

  “But you don’t just turn down ten thousand dollars. I could spend two or three months in New York. I could visit the secondhand book dealers in Lisbon. I’ll go to Rio, watch the samba dancers, go to the dance halls, to the secondhand bookshops, or I’ll go to Paris to buy records and books. How long has it been since I last went to Paris?”

  [...]

  Félix Ventura’s anxiety disturbed my cynegetic activity. I’m a creature that hunts by night. Once I’ve tracked down my prey I chase them, forcing them up toward the ceiling. Once they’re up there mosquitoes never come back down. I run around them, in ever decreasing circles, corral them into a corner and devour them. The dawn was already beginning to break when the albino—now sprawled on one of the living room sofas—began to tell me his life story.

  “I used to think of this house as being a bit like a ship. An old steamship heaving itself through the heavy river mud. A vast forest, and night all around.” Félix spoke quietly, and pointed vaguely at the outlines of his books. “It’s full of voices, this ship of mine.”

  Out there I could hear the night slipping by. Something barking. Claws scratching at the glass. Looking through the window I could easily make out the river, the stars spinning across its back, skittish birds disappearing into the foliage. The mulatto Fausto Bendito Ventura, secondhand book collector, son and grandson of secondhand book collectors, awoke one Sunday morning to find a box outside his front door. Inside, stretched out on several copies of Eça de Queiroz’s The Relic, was a little naked creature, skinny and shameless, with a glowing fuzz of hair, and a limpid smile of triumph. A widower with no children, the book collector brought the child into his home, raised him and schooled him, absolutely certain that there was some superior purpose that was plotting out this unlikely story. He kept the box, and the books that were in it too. The albino told me of it with pride.