A General Theory of Oblivion

by Jose Eduardo Agualusa

  Monte knew the journalist. He thought him an honest guy, even idealistic, in a field where many others chose to sell their souls to the devil. The reports he put his name to, which were tempered by just a touch of humor, irritated and troubled the new bourgeoisie. He was descended from Moroccan Jews who’d settled in Benguela from the middle of the nineteenth century, subsequently Christianized and mulattized. His grandfather, Alberto Benchimol, a much loved and well-respected doctor, had belonged to the Kuribeka, the name given to Angola’s freemasons. The word comes from the Ovimbundu, and means to introduce oneself or offer oneself. The Kuribeka was established around 1860, with lodges in Benguela, Catumbela, and Moçâmedes, and seems to have inspired a number of uprisings of a nationalist bent. The young man had inherited his grandfather’s openness and directness, qualities Monte admired. When he received the order to silence him, the detective couldn’t contain his disgust:

  “This country’s turned inside out. The just pay for the sinners.”

  This observation, made out loud, in a confident voice, in front of two generals, did not go down well. One of them straightened up:

  “The world has changed. The party knew how to progress along with the world, to modernize, and that’s why we’re still here. You ought to give some thought, comrade, to the historical process. Study a bit. How many years have you been working with us? Forever, I think. I think it’s too late for you to turn against us now.”

  The second general shrugged:

  “Comrade Monte likes being provocative. He’s always been like that, an agent provocateur. Just his style.”

  Monte got into line. Obeying orders. Giving orders. That, after all, was the summary of a whole life. He had the journalist watched. He discovered that every Saturday he would hire a bungalow in a small lodge in Barra do Quanza, to meet the wife of a well-known politician. He would arrive around four. The lover would arrive an hour later, and she never stayed long. The man, though, allowed himself to linger till morning, have some breakfast, and only then would he return home.

  It’s routines that give the prey away.

  One of Monte’s best friends collected snakes and palm trees. Uli Pollak had disembarked in Luanda just a few months after Independence, on loan to the Angolan revolution from the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit. He married a woman from Benguela, fifteen years his junior, with whom he had two children, and, after the collapse of the GDR, he requested and was granted Angolan citizenship. A discreet man of few words, he had earned his living producing and dealing in porcelain roses. He had built a house next to Stag Hill, with a round veranda, as vast as a plaza, almost all of it overlooking the water. It was there, as the sea swallowed up the darkness, that he received his friend, the two of them sitting outside in comfortable wicker chairs. They were drinking beer. They were discussing the situation in Angola, the invasion of Iraq, the chaotic state of the city. Uli waited till the darkness had overtaken everything:

  “You didn’t come here to discuss the state of the traffic.”

  “You’re right. I need one of your snakes.”

  “I knew the day would come when you’d show up to ask for something of that sort. I like my snakes. They aren’t weapons.”

  “I’m well aware of that. This will be the last favor I ask you. A lot of people mocked you when you decided to restart your life as a florist. It was a good decision.”

  “You could do the same.”

  “With flowers? I don’t know anything about flowers.”

  “Flowers. Bakeries. Nurseries. Funeral services. In this country everything is just starting up. Any business can work out.”

  “Business?” Monte laughed. An embittered laugh. “I have no talent for multiplying money. I can ruin the very best businesses. I’ll never be more than just able to scrape by, I’ve already resigned myself to that. So anyway, give me the snake, and forget the whole thing.”

  The following night, one of his men, a solid guy from Malange, armor-plated, whom they called Kissonde, made his way over to the lodge where Daniel Benchimol used to stay. It was after midnight. It was raining lightly. Kissonde knocked on the door to bungalow number six. A tall, mulatto man, fine-looking, came to open it. He was in a nice-looking pair of silk pajamas, in a metallic blue with white stripes. The agent pointed a pistol at him, while at the same time bringing his left index finger to his lips in an expressive gesture:

  “Sssshhhhh. Not one word. I don’t want you to get hurt.” He pushed the mulatto inside and made him sit on the bed. Then, never averting the threat of the pistol, he drew a tube of pills from his jacket pocket: “You’re going to swallow two. Lie down and you’ll sleep like a baby. Tomorrow you’ll wake up perfectly happy, just a little bit poorer.”

  According to the plan, Daniel Benchimol would swallow the pills, and then, after just a few minutes, he would fall asleep. Kissonde was then to put on a pair of thick leather gloves, take from his rucksack a coral snake, which had come from old Uli, grip it by the head and bring it over to bite the journalist. He would then depart nice and quietly, without anyone seeing him, leaving the snake in the bedroom. The following morning a cleaning woman would come upon the dead body, the snake, the tube of pills, and sound the alarm. A lot of shouting, a lot of weeping. Fine speeches at the funeral. A perfect crime.

  Unfortunately, the mulatto refused to stick to the script. Rather than swallowing the pills and falling asleep, he let out a swear word in French, threw the tube onto the floor, and he was about to get up when Kissonde struck him violently, knocking him down. The man was sprawled across the bed passed out, with split lips, bleeding heavily. Kissonde proceeded with his plan. He forced the pills down his throat, put on the gloves, opened the rucksack, took hold of the snake by the head, and made it bite the mulatto’s neck. It was then that another unexpected occurrence took place. The snake clasped itself furiously onto the agent’s nose. Kissonde grabbed hold of it, pulled at it, but the animal didn’t let go right away. Finally he managed to yank it off. He threw it onto the floor, stamping on it several times. He sat down on the bed, trembling, took his cellphone out of the rucksack, and called Monte:

  “Boss, we’ve got a situation.”

  Monte, who was waiting for him in the car at the entrance to the lodge, raced over to bungalow number six. The door was closed. He knocked lightly. Nobody came to open it. He knocked harder. The door opened and he was met by the sight of – disheveled, in underpants, radiating health – Daniel Benchimol.

  “Sorry, are you all right?”

  The journalist rubbed his eyes, startled:

  “Shouldn’t I be?”

  Monte made up a hasty excuse, another guest had heard a cry, maybe night birds going after their prey, a cat in heat, rogue nightmares, excused himself again, wished the astonished journalist a quiet remainder of his night, and moved away. He called Kissonde:

  “Where the hell have you got to?”

  He heard a moan. A voice crumbling:

  “I’m dying, boss. Come quick.”

  Monte had a brainwave. He ran over to bungalow number nine. He found that the metal number had, indeed, come loose at the top, and swung down to form a number six. The door was just pushed to. He went in. Kissonde was sitting facing the door, his face swollen, his nose even more swollen, eyelids drooping:

  “I’m dying, boss,” he said, holding up his hands in a slow gesture of helplessness. “The snake bit me.”

  Behind him Monte saw another guy, bleeding from his mouth.

  “Fuck, Kissonde! What about that guy? Who’s he?”

  He went straight over to a jacket hanging on the back of a chair, beside the desk. He rifled through the pockets. He found a wallet and a passport:

  “French! Holy shit, Kissonde, you’ve killed a Frenchman!”

  He brought over the jeep. He sat Kissonde at shotgun. He was about to drag out the inanimate body of Simon-Pierre when he was surprised by one of the lodge’s guards.

  “Well now!” sighed Monte. A bit of good luck amid the
bad. The man had worked with him in the hard years. He stood to attention:

  “Commander!”

  He helped Monte put Simon-Pierre in the backseat of the jeep. He brought clean sheets. They made the bed. They cleaned the room. They put the snake (what was left of it) into Kissonde’s rucksack. When he was just about to leave, after handing the guard a hundred dollars to make it easier for him to forget the whole episode, Monte spotted the felt hat the Frenchman had worn as he wandered around Luanda.

  “I’m taking the hat. I’ll take some clothes, too. Nobody goes missing in their pajamas.”

  He dropped Kissonde at the military hospital. He drove an hour to a piece of land he had bought years earlier, having intended to build there, far from the noise of Luanda, a wooden house, painted blue, where he and his wife would face their old age. He parked the jeep beside an enormous baobab. It was a lovely night, lit by a copper moon, round and tight as the skin of a drum. He took a shovel from the trunk, and opened a grave in the soft earth, which was wet from the rain. An old Chico Buarque song came to his mind:

  This grave where you lie

  measured out by hand

  is the smallest expense you ever claimed from the land

  the grave is a good size

  not too deep a foundation

  it’s the part that falls to you of this whole plantation.

  He leaned up against the baobab, humming:

  The grave is very large

  for your corpse off its bier

  but you’ll be a bigger man

  than you ever were here.

  In his junior year of high school, in the city of Huambo, he had joined an amateur theater group that had staged The Death and Life of Severino, a play with words by João Cabral de Melo Neto and music by Chico Buarque. The experience changed how he looked at the world. He understood, as he played the part of a poor peasant from the Brazilian northeast, the contradictions and injustices of the colonial system. In April 1974 he was in Lisbon, studying law, when the streets were filled with red carnations. He bought a ticket and returned to Luanda to start a revolution. So many years had gone by and there he was, humming “Funeral for a Laborer” while he buried, in an unmarked grave, a writer who hadn’t had luck on his side.

  He reentered Luanda at four in the morning. He was thinking about what he might do next, how to justify the disappearance of the Frenchman, when, just as he was passing the Quinaxixe market, inspiration struck. He parked the car. He got out. He took the dead man’s hat and made his way round to the back of a building, next-door to a nightclub, the Quizás, Quizás, where Simon-Pierre had been that night. He put the hat down on the damp ground. There was a kid asleep next to a Dumpster. He woke him with a thump:

  “Did you see that?!”

  The boy leaped up, confused:

  “See what, old man?”

  “There, where that hat is! There was a tall mulatto, taking a leak, and then all of a sudden the earth swallowed him up. It only left the hat.”

  The boy turned his big spotty face to him. He opened his eyes wide:

  “Whoa, man! Did you really see it?!”

  “I did, clear as day. Earth swallowed him up. First there was a glow of light, then nothing. Just the hat.”

  They stood there, the two of them, stunned, contemplating the hat. Their amazement caught the attention of three other kids. They approached, both fearful and defiant:

  “What’s happened, Baiacu?”

  Baiacu turned to face them, triumphant. In the days that followed, people would listen to him. People would crowd around him to hear what he had to say. A man with a good story is practically a king.

  Sabalu and His Dead

  On the day Sabalu broke through the wall, Ludo confessed her greatest nightmare to him: she had killed a man and buried him on the terrace. The boy listened to her without surprise:

  “That was a long time ago, Grandma. Even he doesn’t remember that now.”

  “He who?”

  “Your dead man, that Trinitá. My mom used to say that the dead suffer from amnesia. They suffer even more from the poor memories of the living. You remember him every day, and that’s good. You should laugh as you remember him, you should dance. You need to talk to Trinitá the way you talk to Phantom. Talking calms the dead.”

  “Did you learn that from your mother too?”

  “Yes. My mother died on me when I was a child. I was left abandoned. I talk to her, but I don’t have those hands protecting me now.”

  “You’re still a child.”

  “I can’t do it, Grandma. How can I be a child if I’m far from my mother’s hands?”

  “I’ll give you mine.”

  Ludo hadn’t hugged anyone in a long time. She was a bit out of practice. Sabalu had to lift her arms up. It was really him making a nest for himself on the old lady’s lap. Only later did he talk about his mother, a nurse, killed for fighting against the trade in human corpses. In the hospital where she worked, in a city in the north, corpses would sometimes disappear. Some of the employees used to sell the organs to the witchdoctors, thereby increasing their meager salaries fivefold. Filomena, Sabalu’s mother, had begun by rebelling against the corrupt employees, moving on, later, to fight the witchdoctors, too. She started having problems. A car sprung out at her, as she was leaving work, almost running her over. Her house was burgled five times. They left charms nailed to her door, notes with insults and threats. None of this deterred her. On one October morning, in the market, a man approached her and stabbed her in the stomach. Sabalu saw his mother drop to the ground. He heard her voice, in a hiss:

  “Just run for it, son!”

  Filomena had arrived pregnant from São Tomé, attracted by the bright eyes, the broad shoulders, the easy laugh, and the warm voice of a young officer in the Angolan Armed Forces. The officer had taken her from Luanda to that city in the north, he had lived with her for eight months, been there for Sabalu’s birth, then went off on a mission to the south, which was supposed to last just a few days, but he’d never come back.

  The boy ran across the market, knocking over baskets of fruit, crates of beer, chirping wicker cages. A violent commotion of protest was erupting behind him. Sabalu didn’t stop till he had arrived home. He stood there, at a loss, not knowing what to do. Then the door opened and a crooked man, dressed in black, pounced on him like a bird of prey. The boy dodged him, rolled over on the asphalt, got up, and without looking back, broke into a run again.

  A truck driver agreed to take him to Luanda. Sabalu told him the truth: his mother had died, and his father had disappeared. He hoped that once in the capital he’d be able to track down someone from his family. He knew his father’s name was Marciano Barroso, that he was, or had been, a captain in the armed forces, and how he’d disappeared on a mission somewhere in the south. He knew, too, that his father was a native of Luanda. His paternal grandparents lived on the big Quinaxixe plaza. He remembered hearing his mother mentioning the name. She’d told him that there, on that big plaza, a lagoon had grown, with dark waters, where a mermaid lived.

  The truck driver dropped him at Quinaxixe. He put a wad of banknotes in his pocket:

  “This money should be enough for you to rent a room for a week, and to eat and drink. I hope you find your father in the meantime.”

  The boy roamed around there, distressed, for hours and hours. He first approached an obese policeman positioned outside the door to a bank:

  “Please sir, do you know Captain Barroso?”

  The policeman fired a gaze at him, eyes sparkling with rage:

  “Move on, layabout, move on!”

  A woman selling vegetables took pity on the boy. She stopped a moment to hear him out. She called over some others. One of them remembered an old man, one Adão Barroso, who had lived in the Cuca Building. He’d died years ago.

  It was already getting late when hunger drove Sabalu into a small bar. He sat down, fearful. He ordered a soup and a Coke. When he left, a young man with a swollen
face, his skin in very poor shape, shoved him against the wall:

  “My name’s Baiacu, kid. I’m the King of Quinaxixe.” He pointed at the statue of a woman in the middle of the park. “She’s my queen. Her, Queen Ginga. Me, King Gingão. You got any cash?”

  Sabalu shrank back, crying. Two other boys emerged from the shadows, flanking Baiacu, preventing his flight. They were identical, short and solid, like pit bulls, dull eyes and the same engrossed smile on well-drawn lips. Sabalu brought his hand to his pocket and showed him the money. Baiacu snatched the notes:

  “Ace, pal. Tonight you can crib with us, over there, where the boxes are. We’ll look out for you. Tomorrow you start work. What’s your name?”

  “Sabalu.”

  “A pleasure, Sabalu. This is Diogo!”

  “Which one?”

  “Both. Diogo is both of them.”

  It took Sabalu some time to understand that the two bodies constituted a single person. They moved about in unison, or rather, vibrated in harmony, like synchronized swimmers. They spoke, simultaneously, the same few words. They laughed common laughs. They wept identical tears. Pregnant women fainted when they saw Diogo. Children ran from him. Diogo himself, however, seemed not to have the least vocation for malice. He had the goodness of a Surinam cherry tree, which bears fruit in the sun, albeit discreet and infrequent, more out of negligence than any clear determination of the spirit. Baiacu had earned himself some money by making Diogo sing and dance kuduru outside the big hotels. The foreigners used to be fascinated. They would leave generous tips. One Portuguese journalist wrote a small article about the kudurista, which included a photograph of Diogo, his arms around Baiacu. Baiacu always carried a cutting of the article in his back pocket. He looked proud:

  “I’m a street businessman.”

  Sabalu started out by washing cars. He would hand the money over to Baiacu. The street businessman bought food for everyone. For himself he also bought cigarettes and beer. Sometimes he used to drink too much. He’d become a talker. He would philosophize: