A General Theory of Oblivion (15 page)

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Authors: Jose Eduardo Agualusa

“Don’t torture yourself any more. Our mistakes correct us. Perhaps we need to forget. We should practice forgetting.”

Jeremias shook his head, irritated. He scribbled a few more words in the little notebook. He handed it to his son:

“My father doesn’t want to forget. Forgetting is dying, he says. Forgetting is surrender.”

The old man wrote again:

“My father is asking me to talk about my people. He wants me to tell you about the oxen, the oxen are our wealth, but they’re not goods for buying and selling. We like to hear the cries of the oxen.”

In his isolation among the Mucubals, Jeremias had been reborn not as another person, but as many – as another people. Before then he had been surrounded by others. At best, with his arms around others. In the desert he felt for the first time as though he were a part of it all. Some biologists argue that a single bee, a single ant, are nothing more than the mobile cells of one individual. The true organisms are the beehive and the ants’ nest. A Mucubal, too, can exist only with others.

As António struggled to read his father’s explanations, Ludo recalled some lines from Fernando Pessoa:

I feel sorry for the stars

Which have shined for so long
,

So long, so long …

I feel sorry for the stars
.

Is there not a weariness

Felt by things
,

By all things
,

Such as we feel in our limbs?

A weariness of existing
,

Of being
,

Just of being
,

Whether sad or happy …

Is there not, finally
,

For all things that are
,

Not just death

But some other finality?

Or a higher purpose
,

Some kind of pardon?

António was talking about the new landowners, about the barbed wire that divided up the desert, cutting off the access paths to the pastures. Responding with gunfire led to terrible wars, in which the Mucubals lost their cattle, they lost their souls, their liberty. That’s how it had been in 1940, when the Portuguese killed almost all the people, sending
the survivors as slaves to the São Tomé plantations. The alternative solution, according to Jeremias, would be to buy land, the same land that once belonged to the Kuvale, the Himba, the Muchavicua, and which today belongs to generals and wealthy businessmen, many of whom have no connection to the vast southern sky.

Ludo got up, went to fetch the two diamonds that were left, and handed them over to Jeremias.

The Accident

Often, when I used to look in a mirror, I’d see him behind me. I no longer do. Perhaps because I see so poorly now (a benefit of blindness), perhaps because we’ve replaced the mirrors. As soon as the money for the apartment came in, I bought new mirrors. I got rid of the old ones. My neighbor found this strange:

“The only things in decent condition in your apartment are the mirrors.”

“No!”
I got annoyed
. “The mirrors are haunted!”

“Haunted?”

“That’s right, dear neighbor. They’re full of shadows. They’ve spent too long in a state of solitude.”

I didn’t want to tell him that often, when I looked into the mirrors, I saw looming over me the man who raped me. In those days I still used to leave the house. I led an almost normal life. I’d go to and from school by bicycle. In the summer we’d rent a house, on the Costa Nova. I’d go swimming. I liked swimming. One afternoon, as we arrived home from
the beach, I realized I was missing the book I’d been reading. I went back, alone, to find it. There was a row of little beach huts set up on the sand. It was getting dark now, though, and they were deserted. I headed for the hut we’d been using. I went in. I heard a noise, and as I turned I saw a man standing at the door, smiling at me. I recognized him. I used to see him, in a bar, playing cards with my father. I was going to explain what I was doing there but I didn’t get the chance. As I was about to speak he was already on top of me. He tore my dress, ripped my underpants, and penetrated me. I remember the smell. And his hands, rough, hard, squeezing my breasts. I screamed. He slapped my face, hard, rhythmic blows, not with hatred, not angrily, as though he was enjoying himself. I fell silent. I arrived home sobbing, my dress torn, covered in blood, my face swollen. My father understood everything. He went out of his mind. He slapped me. As he lashed me, with his belt, he screamed at me
, Whore, tramp, wretch!
I can still hear him today
. Whore! Whore!
My mother clinging to him. My sister in tears
.

I never knew for sure what happened to the man who raped me. He was a fisherman. They say he ran off to Spain. He disappeared. I became pregnant. I locked myself away in a bedroom. They locked me away in a bedroom. Outside, I heard people whispering. When it was time, a midwife came to help me. I never even saw my daughter’s face. They took her from me
.

The shame
.

The shame is what stopped me leaving the house. My father died without ever addressing another word to me. I would go into the living room and he’d get up and leave. Years passed, he died. Some months later, my mother followed him. I moved to my sister’s house. Bit by bit I forgot myself. I thought about my child every day. Every day I taught myself not to think about her
.

I was never again able to go out without feeling a profound shame
.

That has passed, now. I go out and I no longer feel ashamed. I no longer feel afraid. I go out and the grocerwomen greet me. They give me a laugh, as though we were family
.

The children play with me, they take my hand. I don’t know if it’s because I’m very old, or because I’m as much a child as they are
.

Last Words

I write feeling my way through the letters. An odd experience, as I cannot read what I have written. Therefore, I am not writing for myself
.

For whom am I writing?

I am writing for the person I used to be. Perhaps the person I once left behind persists, standing there, still and grim, in some attic of time – on a bend, on a crossroads – and in some mysterious way she is able to read the lines I am setting out here, without seeing them
.

Ludo, my dear: I am happy now
.

Blind as I am, I see better than you. I weep for your blindness, for your infinite stupidity. It would have been so easy for you to open the door, so easy for you to go into the street and embrace life. I see you peering out the window, terrified, like a child peeping under the bed expecting to find monsters
.

Monsters, show me the monsters: these people out on the street
.

My people
.

I’m so sorry for everything you’ve missed
.

So sorry
.

But isn’t unhappy humanity just like you?

Dreams Are Where It All Begins

In her dreams, Ludo was a little girl. She was sitting on a beach of white sand. Sabalu, lying on his back, his head in her lap, was looking at the sea. They were talking about the past and the future. They were exchanging recollections. They laughed over the strange way they’d met. The laugh that came from the two of them shook the air, like a dazzle of birds in the sleepy morning. Then, Sabalu got up:

“The day is born, Ludo. Let’s go.”

And they went, the two of them, toward the light, laughing and talking, like two people about to head out to sea.

Lisbon, February 5, 2012

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

On a now distant afternoon back in 2004, the filmmaker Jorge António challenged me to write the screenplay for a feature-length film to be shot in Angola. I told him the story of a Portuguese woman who bricked herself in, in 1975, just days before Independence, terrified by the way events were progressing. Thanks to Jorge’s enthusiasm, I did write the screenplay. Although the film fell by the wayside, it was from that original structure that I came to this novel. In order to write the chapters about the Kuvale, I found some inspiration in the poems of Ruy Duarte de Carvalho, as well as in one of his most brilliant essays: “Aviso à Navegação: A Brief Introductory Look at the Kuvale Shepherds.”

Several people have helped me in the writing of this book. I would like to thank, in particular, my parents, who have always been my first readers, as well as Patrícia Reis and Lara Longle. Finally, I would like to thank the Brazilian poet Christiana Nóvoa, who at my request wrote Ludo’s poems, in the chapters “Haikai” and “Exorcism.”