A General Theory of Oblivion (2 page)

Turbulent days passed. Demonstrations, strikes, rallies. Ludo closed the windows to prevent the apartment being filled with the laughter of the people on the streets, bursting into the air like fireworks. Orlando, the son of a trader from Minho who’d settled in Catete in the early years of the century, and a Luandan mestiza who’d died in childbirth, had never nurtured family connections. One of his cousins, Vitorino Gavião, showed up again around that time. He had spent five months living in Paris, occupying himself with drink, women, plotting, and writing poems on paper napkins in the bistros that were frequented by exiles from Portugal and Africa, thereby acquiring the aura of a romantic revolutionary. He entered their house like a tempest, disordering the books in the bookcase, the glasses on
the dresser, and unsettling Phantom. The puppy would chase around after him at a safe distance, barking and growling.

“The comrades want to speak to you, damn it!” shouted Vitorino, leveling a punch at Orlando’s shoulder. “We’re negotiating a provisional government. We need good men.”

“Could be,” admitted Orlando: “Actually we have plenty of good men. What we’re short of is good sense.”

He hesitated. Yes, he murmured, the country could use the experience he had gathered. However, he feared the more extremist currents at the heart of the movement. He understood the necessity for greater social justice, but the communists, who were threatening to nationalize everything, alarmed him. Expropriating private property. Expelling the whites. Knocking out all the petite bourgeoisie’s teeth. He, Orlando, took pride in having a perfect smile, and he had no desire for dentures. His cousin laughed, attributing all their verbal excesses to the euphoria of the moment, then complimented him on the whisky, and poured himself some more. That cousin with a sphere of curly hair like Jimi Hendrix, a flowery shirt open over his sweating chest, alarmed the sisters.

“He talks like a black!” said Odete accusingly. “And besides, he stinks. Whenever he comes over, he infects the whole house.”

Orlando became enraged. He left, slamming the door behind him. He returned in the evening, drier, sharper, a man with a close kinship to a thornbush. He went up to the terrace, Phantom with him, with a pack of cigarettes, a bottle of whisky, and there he stayed. He returned when night was drawing in, bringing the nightfall with him,
and a strong smell of alcohol and tobacco. He stumbled over his own feet, shoving into the furniture, with harsh whispers against this whole fucking life.

The first gunshots signaled the start of the big farewell parties. Young people were dying in the streets, waving flags, and meanwhile the settlers danced. Rita, their neighbor in the next-door apartment, traded Luanda for Rio de Janeiro. On her last night, she invited two hundred friends round for a dinner which lingered on till daybreak.

“Whatever we can’t drink we’ll leave for you,” she said to Orlando, pointing at the pantry stacked high with cases of the finest Portuguese wines. “Drink them. The important thing is that there mustn’t be anything left over for the communists to celebrate with.”

Three months later, the apartment block was almost empty. Ludo, meanwhile, didn’t know where to put so many bottles of wine, crates of beer, tinned food, ham, pieces of salt-cod, kilos of salt, sugar, and flour, not to mention the endless supply of cleaning and hygiene products. Orlando had received from one friend – a collector of sports cars – a Chevrolet Corvette and an Alfa Romeo GTA. Another had given him the keys to his apartment.

“I’ve never been a lucky man,” Orlando complained to the two sisters, and it was not clear whether he was being ironic or speaking in earnest. “Just when I start collecting cars and apartments, the communists show up wanting to take everything away from me.”

Ludo would turn on the radio and the revolution would come into the house:
It’s the power of the people that is the cause of all this chaos
, one of the most popular singers of the moment kept repeating.

Hey, brother
, sang another,

Some of the tunes didn’t really go with the words. It was as though they were stolen from songs from some other age, ballads that were sad like the light of an ancient dusk. Leaning out the window, half hidden behind the curtains, Ludo could see the trucks pass by, loaded up with men. Some of them were flying flags. Others had banners with slogans:

The demands all ended in exclamation marks. The exclamation marks got mixed up with the machetes the protesters were carrying. There were also machetes shining on the flags and the banners. Some of the men were carrying one in each hand. They were holding them up high. They were striking the blades against each other, in a mournful clamor.

One night, Ludo dreamed that beneath the streets of the city, under the respectable mansions in the lower town, there stretched an endless network of tunnels. The roots of the trees would wind their way, unimpeded, down through the vaults. There were thousands of people
living underground, sunk deep in mud and darkness, feeding themselves on whatever the bourgeoisie tossed into the sewers. Ludo was walking amid the throng. The men were waving machetes. They were striking their blades against each other and the noise echoed down the tunnels. One of them approached, brought his dirty face right up close to the Portuguese woman’s face, and smiled. He whispered in her ear, in a voice that was deep and sweet:

“Our sky is your floor.”

Odete insisted that they leave Angola. Her husband responded with muttered, harsh words. The women could go if they wanted. Let the settlers set sail. Nobody wanted them there. A cycle was being completed. A new time was beginning. Come sun or storm, the Portuguese would not be lit by the light of the future, nor lashed by wild hurricanes. The more they whispered, the angrier the engineer got. He could spend hours enumerating the crimes committed against the Africans, the mistakes, the injustices, the disgraces, until his wife gave up and shut herself away in the guest bedroom in tears. It was a huge surprise when he arrived home, two days before Independence, and announced that a week later they would be in Lisbon. Odete opened her eyes wide:

“Why?”

Orlando sat down in one of the living-room armchairs. He pulled off his tie, unbuttoned his shirt, and finally, in a gesture quite unlike him, took off his shoes and put his feet up on the little coffee table.

“Because we can. We can go, now.”

The next night the couple went out for yet another farewell party. Ludo waited for them to come home, reading, knitting, till two in the morning. She went to bed worried, and she slept badly. She got up at seven, put on a dressing gown, called out to her sister. No one answered. She was certain some tragedy must have befallen them. She
waited another hour before looking for their address book. First she called the Nuneses, the couple who had organized the previous night’s party. One of the servants answered. The family had gone off to the airport. Mr. Orlando the engineer and his wife had indeed been at the party, yes, but they hadn’t stayed long. He’d never seen Mr. Orlando in such a good mood. Ludo thanked him and hung up. She opened the address book again. Odete had scratched out in red ink the names of the friends who had left Luanda. Few remained. Only three answered, and none of them knew a thing. One of them, a math teacher at the Salvador Correia high school, promised to phone a policeman friend of his. He would call back as soon as he had any information.

Hours passed. There was gunfire. First some isolated shots and then the intense crackle of dozens of automatic weapons. The telephone rang. A man who still seemed young, with a Lisbon accent, sounding like he came from a good family, asked if he might speak to Miss Odete’s sister.

“What’s happened?”

“Take it easy, ma’am, we just want the stones.”

“The stones?”

“You know perfectly well what I’m talking about. Give us your jewels and I give you my word of honor we’ll leave you in peace. Nothing’s going to happen to you. Not to you or to your sister. The two of you can go back to the big city on the next plane if that’s what you want.”

“What have you done with Odete and my brother-in-law?”

“The old man has been behaving irresponsibly. There are some people who mistake stupidity for courage. I’m an officer in the Portuguese army and I don’t like people trying to trick me.”

“What have you done with her? What have you done with my sister?”

“We don’t have much time. This can end well or it can end badly.”

“I don’t know what you mean, I swear I don’t know …”

“Look, you wanna see your sister again? Keep nice and quiet at home, don’t try to tell anyone. As soon as things have calmed down a bit, we’ll come by your apartment to fetch the stones. You hand over the package and we’ll release Miss Odete.”

He said this and hung up. Night fell. Bullet lines streaked across the sky. Explosions shook the windowpanes. Phantom hid behind one of the sofas. He was whimpering quietly. Ludo felt dizziness, agony. She ran to the bathroom and threw up in the toilet, then sat down on the floor, trembling. As soon as she had recovered her strength, she went straight over to Orlando’s study, which she entered only once every five days to dust and sweep the floor. The engineer was very proud of his desk, a solemn, fragile piece of furniture, which he had bought from a Portuguese antique dealer. Ludo tried to open the first drawer. She couldn’t do it. She went to fetch a hammer and split it open in three furious blows. She found a pornographic magazine. She pushed it aside, disgusted, only to find a wad of hundred dollar bills beneath it, and a pistol. She held the gun with both hands. She felt its weight. She stroked it. This was what men used to kill each other. A dense, dark instrument, almost alive. She turned the apartment upside down. She found nothing. Finally she stretched out on one of the living-room sofas and fell asleep. She awoke with a start. Phantom was tugging at her skirt. He was growling. A sea breeze gently lifted the fine lace curtains. There were stars floating in the void. The silence amplified
the darkness. A wave of voices was coming up the corridor. Ludo got up, and she walked, barefoot, to the front door and looked through the spy-hole. Outside, by the elevators, there were three men arguing in low voices. One of them pointed toward her – toward the door – with a crowbar:

“A dog, I’m sure of it. I heard a dog barking.”

“What are you talking about, Minguito?” he was challenged by a tiny, very thin man dressed in a military dolman that was too wide and too long: “There’s nobody here. The settlers have gone. Go on. Knock that piece of shit down.”

Minguito walked up. Ludo stepped back. She heard the blow and, without stopping to think, she returned it, a violent blow against the wood that left her breathless. Silence. Then a shout:

“Who’s there?”

“Go away.”

Laughter. The same voice:

“There’s one left behind! What’s up, Ma, did they forget you?”

“Please, go away.”

“Open the door, Ma. We only want what belongs to us. You people have been stealing from us for five hundred years. We’ve come to take what is ours.”

“I have a gun. Nobody’s coming in.”

“Lady, just take it easy. You give us your jewels, a bit of money, and we’ll leave. We’ve got mothers too.”

“No. I’m not opening up.”

“OK, Minguito, knock it down.”

Ludo ran to Orlando’s study. She grabbed the pistol, walked over
and pointed it at the front door, and squeezed the trigger. She would remember the moment of the gunshot day after day for the next thirty-five years. The bang, the slight jump of the gun. The quick pain in her wrist.

What would her life have been like without that one moment?

“Argh, I’m bleeding. Ma, you’ve killed me.”

“Trinitá! Pal, are you hurt?”

“Get out of here, move it …”

Gunshots out in the street, very close. Shots attract other shots. Fire a bullet in the air and it will soon be joined by dozens of others. In a country in a state of war any bang is enough. A faulty car exhaust. A rocket. Anything. Ludo went over to the door. She saw the hole made by the bullet. She put her ear to the wood. She heard the muted gasping of the wounded man:

“Water, Ma. Help me …”

“I can’t. I can’t.”

“Please, lady. I’m dying.”

The woman opened the door, shaking badly, never releasing her grip on the pistol. The burglar was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall. Were it not for the thick, black beard, he might have been taken for a child. A childlike little face, covered in sweat, with big eyes that gazed at her without any bitterness:

“Such bad luck, such bad luck, I’m not going to see Independence.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.”

“Water, I’m so terribly thirsty.”

Ludo threw a frightened glance down the corridor.

“Come inside. I can’t leave you here.”

The man dragged himself in, groaning. He moved across the floor, leaving behind a second shadow on the wall. One darkness unsticking itself from another. Ludo stepped in that shadow with her bare feet and slipped.

“Oh, God!”

“I’m sorry, Grandma. I’m making a mess of your house.”

Ludo closed the door. She locked it. She headed for the kitchen, took some cold water from the fridge, filled a glass, and returned to the living room. The man drank greedily.

“What I really need is just a little glass of fresh air.”

“I have to call a doctor.”

“It’s not worth it. They’d kill me anyway. Sing me a song, Grandma?”

“What?”

“Sing. Sing me a song, something soft like cotton wool.”

Ludo thought of her father, humming popular old ditties from Rio de Janeiro to put her to sleep. She put the pistol down on the floorboards, knelt down, took the burglar’s tiny hands in hers, brought her mouth close to his ear, and sang.