Daria

  Disillusioned with the application of this latest method on Francisco, Arsénio tried his last weapon. He brought Ana to the chamber in her naked and sorrowful condition. When Francisco first saw her, he was horrified and very surprised because he had no idea that she too had been brought to Tarrafal. He had thought a lot about her since he’d been caught by the PIDE agents on that dramatic night. He had imagined how worried and sad and scared she would be, not knowing where he was and what he was going through. But he had never imagined that the secret police would have also sequestered her and taken her to that deadly land on the West African coast, where the sun is so mortal that it takes away any drop of moisture that your skin, in its plea to survive and keep your body protected, manages to nourish. He became very unsettled, and for a moment he felt he could no longer go on with this, could not allow Ana to suffer at the hands of those dirty animals with no souls, beings whose eyes were no deeper than the snake’s, lowlife dirty rats, creatures always roaming the low lands, unable to fly above and unite the universe—stare at the perfect marriage between land and sky. As Francisco looked at Ana and her bruised body, his facial muscles tensed up and he almost lost that mask that he had learned to carry to preserve his secret inside him. When Arsénio saw that glimpse of reality on Francisco’s face, he smiled and thought, This is my chance. This is the day when my beloved cousin António will finally reward me and understand my true greatness. This is the day when the country and its empire will be saved, and we powerful Lusitanian citizens will live forever in honour and greatness. So excited was he with the prospect of revelation dancing in Francisco’s face that he decided to go all the way with this method, to enact a particular punishment that he had only ever considered before. Something had always stopped him—perhaps the thought of his mother being exploited by soulless Romani pimps or being passed endlessly from soldier to soldier while he watched immobile and did nothing. He called two of his guards into the chamber and asked them to tie Francisco against an iron pole that had been placed in the middle of the chamber, standing tall and strong, erected like a pistol or a cross where many victims were to be crucified. He then ordered them to grab Ana and bring her to him. Then he forced her to do what he had forced on her before. He unzipped his pants, excited and frantic, and pulled her head down; she had no choice but to take his member fully in her mouth. He pulled her head by the hair, up and down, and to the sides, so that she could give him the pleasure he wanted. He grunted like a satisfied bull, looking directly into Francisco’s eyes. Francisco started to scream violently, trying to untie himself from the pole. To calm him down, Ana kept telling him, as much as she could, that she was alright, that her insides were as clean and sturdy and resolved as the great Limpopo River, that magnificent mass of water that runs from southern central Africa like a crescent moon, in a weaving purposeful dance that wants to feel the many curves of the land to taste its soil, first going to the north, then to the northeast, then to the east and to the southeast—finally arriving at its destination on the Indian Ocean, where its dirt is dissolved into that immense body of water making the world clean again. Francisco would calm down momentarily, but then when the affair became uglier and Arsénio ordered the two guards to do with Ana what men who are depraved or dead or simply afraid do to women, Francisco started howling like a very sick animal, the kind that knows that life is not worth living. He howled and howled for hours on end and tried to hurt himself, like many other prisoners had done before in that dark chamber of slow death so that they could be liberated from the ugly conditions that this world had imposed on them. He was in this sorrowful state long after the whole thing finished and he had been put back into isolation inside his dark cement cell that burned his body by day and froze it by night. Because he would not quiet down, and the entire prison could hear him, feel the piercing agony of his sorrow and the plea of his soul, the chief ordered the compound doctor to pay him a visit. A dose of Haldol would make it all go away.

  Carlos Montealva, being predisposed, as he had been since he was a child, to have deep intuitions that often turned into ugly and unsightly visions, sensed that the next day would be a big day—a good day, a day to remember—and that Francisco needed a good night’s sleep to be ready for the new dawn. He entered Francisco’s dark cement cell, let in by the two guards, to administer the calming drug on the suffering man. He opened his briefcase, took out the Haldol injection, then gently cleansed Francisco’s right thigh and injected the miraculous liquid that was supposed to make the mind quiet down. He also applied some remedies to Francisco’s many injuries. In so doing, he managed to slip a piece of paper into Francisco’s hands without the guards noticing. He closed Francisco’s hand tightly around the paper, hiding it from the eyes of those who cannot know beautiful secrets. Francisco fell into a heavy, sweet melancholia and stopped howling and hurting himself. Then he was left behind in that dark room. Carlos left the cell with a smile on his face, which was unusual for him, a man of sombre demeanour who often left these situations with the usual fatalistic murmurs: “I am not here to cure the sick. I am here only to sign death certificates.” But the cure was coming, and it was coming soon; the announcement had come from far away in the metropolis of the empire and had been transmitted through radio waves, or merely through the common dreams of the people killing and being killed. Carlos was then led into Ana’s cell by the same guards, and though Ana seemed to be mentally in good health—as good as it can be expected under such conditions—her body needed care. Carlos asked the guards to take her to the showers and leave her alone there for some time. She needed to wash herself and regain some dignity. The guards would have hesitated if it had been someone else asking, but Carlos was a doctor—he was Carlos Cabral Abreu Abrantes Antunes Montealva, a man of stature and soft ways—and they felt they ought to obey him. They were young boys who came from poverty and submission, and they had only learned how to say yes: yes to their abusive fathers, yes to the priest, yes to their commander-in-chief Arsénio. When Ana was brought back enveloped in a light white robe, her long dark hair falling down her back and shoulders, Carlos treated her body as gently as he could, as gently as he had treated Francisco, and asked if she needed a mild sedative. She nodded her head, and he gave her a low dose of Valium. He respected the young couple immensely. He almost felt jealous of their adventures, of their passion for life, for justice, for a sound healthy world where race and class and gender were secondary to love and life. And he hated Arsénio as much as he hated his own father. As he had with Francisco, before he left Ana’s cell, he discreetly gave her a piece of paper and closed her hand tightly around it. He felt as if he were sealing a miracle that was about to burst into life, guarding it inside the fortress. He did not want it to be destroyed or contaminated by the impure air of the cell, that stifling current that made Ana’s lungs work very hard to keep her body breathing.

  HORSES, SEA, AND FLOWERS. This was the night of nights, the queen of queens, for both Ana and Francisco. The cards on the table were finally showing the aces; the game was becoming one to win, not one to lose. Whether it was because of the drugs that the doctor had given them or because of something else—something that had been brewing quietly and silently sometimes or fiercely and loudly at other times—the young couple, each in their individual cells, entered the most redeeming and hopeful dream. It was a dream that was hard to wake up from, unless one sensed while in it that the real world, the one that pulsated in front of us, was somehow going to hold on to that dream, that the world of the inside and the outside would no longer live as separate oblivious entities but rather as two sides of the same rich coin: two arms of the same wise person, communicating deeply and continuously to make manifest the idea. In this dream, Francisco saw himself in an open hay field, wide and serene. At first, he sensed no life in this field at all. There was only silence, gentle light, and a weightlessness dancing around him and making his body wave up and down, up and down like a feather or flower pollen dancing gently in the air. He
could barely perceive his own breathing and his own life. His being, his body felt complete even though he could not grasp what was happening to him and where he was. Then he perceived other life roaming around in the vast field. He looked straight ahead and noticed that there were several horses grazing in the field—or perhaps they were tahki, the ancestors of the horse, that splendid wild animal that has some zebra-like qualities like the ones depicted in the prehistoric Lascaux caves in southern France. The species is nearly extinct today, with only a few hundred still running wild in the desert of Mongolia because some wise humans thought it a good idea to preserve it. At first, Francisco just stared at these animals as if he were trying to see if he could trust them and sense if they trust him. The animals seemed oblivious to his presence, just grazing here and there, or sometimes running together on that wide open endless plain that seemed to have no end and no beginning. Some were short like ponies, others were stocky, and still others were tall and elegant, with very elongated bodies. They seemed capable of walking or flying great distances. There were white and black and grey and brown animals, many colours and shapes in that field that had space for everything and everyone. Francisco opened his arms wide and stretched his body to feel the vastness and the emptiness of the space, as if he were trying to measure it and detect whether there were obstacles. But everything seemed unimpeded and open, ready for him to enter it, to take flight, to taste its freedom. He stretched his body inch by inch, elongating it as much as he could, feeling its totality and its life. He then lay down on the ground with his back to the earth to smell the grass and hear the wisdom of the ground. He looked at the sky: it was clear, azure, vacuous. He felt its immensity and was almost engulfed by it, experiencing, yet again, that splendid distention of the ego which some Buddhists may call sunyata or nirvana but which many other people know and experience and may call something else. He knew that time was on his side. He knew that life, and the being or beings commanding it, were screaming at him, telling him that he must take charge again. He must run to the other side of the world, to meet Ana, to encounter the idea, to really be and become. He must run away from a place where he had been staying for quite a long time now, a place that wanted to pollute his mind and hinder his body, a place that wanted his force, his pearl, to smash it mercilessly with thunderous military boots. He was certain now that he was no longer inside the cement cell in Tarrafal. He was free. He could fly or he could sing and howl to that nothingness and no one would bother him, no one would close his mouth or assault his body. He sensed though that there was something missing in him, something missing from him. He pondered, but it was difficult to come to an awareness of that thing that he was missing, that thing that he was lacking. Then he watched the animals, hoping that they could remind him of what he was lacking. He stared at two of them, one brown and the other grey, both magnificent in their beauty and agility, and then he felt a painful knot in his chest. This knot then accelerated and travelled up and down his body. He touched himself all over to see if he could get rid of that knot, if he could find in his own body the source of his pain. He was desperate to understand what it was that he was missing, what it was that was causing him such pain. He touched his chest, his legs, his arms, his head, his feet, his hands, feeling each part of himself, and then, as he was about to stop and just when he was searching in his crotch for the secret that was paining him, he remembered what it was that he was missing, what it was that he was lacking: it was Ana, in body and soul. It was not just her body and her sex that he was missing; he was missing her entirety, and her entirety included her body and the pleasure that it gave him, but it also included her mind, her soul, her pristine spirit, and the beautiful idea that she carried in the entirety of her being. He recalled when he first met her at that event between comrades. He recalled how much he had liked her, how much he was struck by her: he liked her smile and shiny black eyes, her long dark hair, her slim body, her chest where two brief breasts stood, erected with the resolution of a volcano, which he would later tease and tease. He recalled how much bigger they became when she was pregnant with the twins, Otu and Quintana. He recalled tasting her milk when the babies were born, and how that too gave him so much pleasure in body and mind, in body and soul. He recalled her long arms and legs, the way she pronounced his name and then followed it by that sweet Portuguese expression that he liked so much: o meu amor és tu—you are my love. After this realization, he knew why he was there and what he must do. He approached the animals, trying to coax them into allowing him to mount them. They were not very open to that—not yet. He knew he had to search deep within himself to try to find the language that they would understand, that would make them trust him. He searched and searched, and he tried different dances and games with them. He spoke to them in their language, which he managed to rescue from some part within himself, and then, after a while, after having conversed extensively with them, one of them finally allowed him to mount it. The acquiescing animal was majestic, imposing, covered with a shining grey mantle, possessing the manner and the rich dress of a king of a past grand age. He was a being carrying all the wisdom of time and space within himself, a creature who had become the friend of man. He saw in Francisco an ally who would protect him, or perhaps he sensed that Francisco was the one who needed protection and help to travel great distances. Francisco was now on top of the superb animal, and he was not quite sure what his next move must be. They both stood still in the middle of the magnificent plain in silence, and Francisco could feel the breathing of the stallion underneath his own body. He could feel the animal’s warmth and the strength of his muscles, the silkiness of his grey skin. He could feel the animal’s assuredness and readiness and yet also some faint trembling, possibly a sign that there was danger to come or merely an indication of excitement, an intimation that the time was right and ready—as right and ready as it could ever be. Mounted on the horse, Francisco could see the expanse of the field much more clearly. He could see that there was a great distance to travel, which made him somewhat apprehensive, but he could also see, far away, the top of the hill. In seeing it, he felt drawn to it. It was as if he knew the hill was the place he must reach. He knew that, from the hill, he would be able to see much more clearly where he was and where he must go. He felt he must ride ahead, but he had no saddle. He considered how he could manage to ride such a long distance at a high velocity without saddle. As if reading Francisco’s mind, the horse raised his front legs, causing Francisco to instinctively grasp the neck of the animal in order not to fall off. And then, sensing that Francisco was securely attached to him, the horse started to cavalcade through the plains with the velocity and assertiveness of a bird. Francisco had no time to think much or to feel afraid. He only knew that he must keep his hands firm on the horse’s neck and that he wanted the horse to take him to the hilltop or perhaps even farther, way beyond the world that the hill allowed him to see. They galloped like that for a long time as if running for their lives. The other horses of the plain let them pass, staring at the moving man and horse in awe as if they were curious to know where they were going—or how it was that they had become friends and were now part of one single entity. At some point, the horse neighed that neigh that could either signify contentment or affliction, and Francisco was not sure what was happening, where he was going, or what the final outcome might be. When they reached the hilltop, the horse stopped for a moment as if to catch his breath and Francisco noticed that down there, below the hill, there was the vast sea extending in never-ending dimension. His eyes could see nothing but water upon water upon water, a world of silvery and bluish colours where many secrets may lie. The horse then quickly took off, his pace increasing to an unprecedented speed. When he reached the water, he did not stop and his galloping became even more impressive. He flew through the sea water, above the waves, avoiding being engulfed by it. Francisco felt a mortal fear invade his being, but he also knew he did not want the horse to stop; he wanted it to continue through that immense and da
ngerous body of water until they reached land again. And the horse did not disappoint; he kept flying through the waves like an incandescent being, a mythic figure that was both material and immaterial, both human and divine. At one point in the voyage, Francisco noticed that the water was covered by deep velvety red roses and the sea no longer looked silvery, like it usually did, but had rather become an extension of redness. Sometimes it seemed that the roses were no longer roses but rather liquid blood or floating bodies, and sometimes the roses became carnations and their sweet scent invaded both his nostrils and the nostrils of the horse, making both of them feel drunk. Yet it was a drunkenness that did not make them irrational but rather awakened them to another reality, giving them clarity—a much more complete, much more beautiful clarity. And in that reality, in that clarity, in that beauty and ugliness, they witnessed another transformation: the lifeless and bloody bodies floating on the ocean—which they had seen before amidst the flowers, and which had come from the dark belly of this vast mass of water—all took the shape of roses or carnations. They stood erect and walked through the waves, fearless, unimpeded, freed butterflies rising to the glitters of the moon. They walked as if the water were the solid floor of the house they had left behind or the house they sensed they had waiting for them on the other side of the ocean.