A General Theory of Oblivion (3 page)

She sang for a long time.

No sooner had the dawn light woken the house than Ludo summoned all her courage, gathered the dead man in her arms, without too much effort, and carried him out to the terrace. She went to fetch a shovel. She dug a narrow grave in one of the flowerbeds, amid the yellow roses.

Months earlier, Orlando had started to build a small swimming pool on the terrace. The war had stopped the work. The workers
had left bags of cement, sand, bricks, leaning against the walls. The woman dragged down some of the material. She unlocked the front door. She went out. She began to build a wall, in the hallway, cutting off the apartment from the rest of the building. She spent the whole morning doing it. It was not until the wall was ready, once she had smoothed down the cement, that she felt hungry and thirsty. She sat at the kitchen table, heated up some soup and ate slowly. She gave some leftover roast chicken to the dog:

“Now it’s just you and me.”

The animal came over and licked her fingers.

The blood had dried by the front door, forming a dark stain. There were footprints leading from there to the kitchen. Phantom licked them. Ludo pushed him away. She went to fetch a bucket with water, soap, a brush, and she cleaned it all up. Then she took a hot shower. As she was stepping out of the tub the phone rang. She answered:

“Things got complicated. We weren’t able to come by yesterday to collect the goods. We’ll be coming over soon.”

Ludo put down the phone without answering. It rang again. Then it let up for a moment, but as soon as the woman had turned her back it resumed its shrieking, nervously insisting on her attention. Phantom came out of the kitchen. He began to run in circles, barking fiercely at each jingling noise. Suddenly he jumped onto the table, knocking over the handset. The fall was violent. Ludo shook the black box. Something inside had come loose. She smiled:

“Thank you, Phantom. I don’t think this will be bothering us anymore.”

Outside, in the turbulent night, rockets and mortars exploded. Cars were hooting their horns. Looking out the window, the Portuguese woman saw the crowd making its way along the roads, filling the squares with an urgent, desperate euphoria. She shut herself in her room. She stretched out on the bed. She buried her face in the pillow. She tried to imagine herself very far away, in the safety of her old house in Aveiro, watching old movies on television while sipping tea and crunching on pieces of toast. She couldn’t do it.

The two men were struggling to hide their nerves. They had thin beards and long, disheveled hair. They wore brightly colored shirts, bell-bottom trousers, and jackboots. Benjamin, the younger one, was whistling loudly as he drove. Jeremias – Carrasco – was sitting beside him, chewing on a cigar. They passed flatbed trucks transporting soldiers. The young men waved to them, drowsily, making a V for victory sign. The two men responded the same way.

“Cubans!” growled Jeremias. “Damn communists.”

They parked the car outside the Prédio dos Invejados and got out. A beggar was blocking the entrance.

“Morning, comrades.”

“And what the hell do you want?” Jeremias scolded him. “You’ve come to the white men to ask for money? Those days are over. In an independent Angola, in the front line of socialism in Africa, there’s no place for beggars. Beggars get their heads cut off.”

He shoved him aside and went into the building. Benjamin followed him. They called the elevator and rode it up to the eleventh floor. They found themselves, to their surprise, being stopped short by the recently built wall:

“What the hell? This country’s gone mad!”

“Is this really the place? Are you sure?”

“You’re asking me if I’m sure?” Jeremias smiled. He pointed at the door opposite. “Here, in 11-E, this is where Ritinha lived. Best legs in Luanda. Finest ass. You’re lucky you never met Ritinha. Any man who met her could never look at another woman without a vague feeling of disappointment and bitterness. Like the African sky. If they make me leave this place, God, where would I go?”

“I understand, Captain. What should we do?”

“We’ll fetch a pickax and break through the wall.”

They returned to the elevator and went back down. The beggar was waiting for them, accompanied by five armed men.

“Those are the ones, Comrade Monte.”

The man called Monte stepped forward. He addressed Jeremias in a voice that was certain, powerful, that contrasted with the leanness of his body:

“Would you mind rolling up the sleeve of your shirt, comrade? Yes, your right shirtsleeve. I want to see your wrist …”

“And why would I do that?”

“Because I’m asking you nicely, all polite like a perfumer.”

Jeremias laughed. He pulled back his shirtsleeve to reveal a tattoo:
Audaces Fortuna Juvat
.

“You wanted to see this?”

“Just that, Captain. Seems your luck has run out. Also, I do feel that two white men out on the street in these troubled days wearing Portuguese army boots seems a little too bold.”

He turned to two of the armed men and ordered them to fetch some rope to tie up the Portuguese mercenaries. They tied their hands behind their backs and pushed them into a very beat-up Toyota Corolla. One of the men rode shotgun. Monte at the wheel. The
others followed behind in a military jeep. Benjamin dropped his head between his knees, unable to hold back the tears. Jeremias was annoyed, and nudged him with his shoulder:

“Take it easy. You’re a Portuguese soldier.”

Monte butted in:

“Leave the kid alone. You shouldn’t have brought him to our country. As for you, sir, you are no more than a whore in the pay of American imperialism. You ought to be ashamed.”

“And what about the Cubans, aren’t they mercenaries too?”

“Our Cuban companions didn’t come over to Angola for the money. They came because of their convictions.”

“And I stayed in Angola because of my convictions. I’m fighting for western civilization, against Soviet imperialism. I’m fighting for Portugal’s survival.”

“Bullshit. I don’t believe that. You don’t believe that, even your mother wouldn’t believe that. Talking of which, what were you doing in Rita’s building?”

“Wait, you know Rita?”

“Rita Costa Reis? Ritinha? Great legs. Best legs in Luanda.”

They chatted happily about Angolan women. Jeremias did fancy the Luandan ones; however, he added, there wasn’t a woman in the world who could match the mulatta women of Benguela. Then Monte recalled Riquita Bauleth, born into one of the oldest families in Moçâmedes, named Miss Portugal in 1971. Jeremias concurred. Yes, Riquita, he would give his life just to be able to wake up one morning in the light of those dark eyes. The man sitting beside Monte interrupted the conversation.

“This is the place, commander. We’re here.”

They had left the city behind. A high wall marked out a wide, open area. Baobab trees at the far end and then a spotless blue horizon. They got out of the car. Monte untied the two mercenaries. He straightened up:

“Captain Jeremias Carrasco. Carrasco, as in ‘executioner’? Well, I’m assuming that’s got to be a nickname. You are guilty of countless atrocities. You tortured and murdered dozens of Angolan nationalists. Some of our comrades would like to see you in a courtroom. But I don’t think we ought to be wasting our time with trials. The people have found you guilty already.”

Jeremias smiled:

“The people? Bullshit. I don’t believe that. You don’t believe that, even your mother wouldn’t believe that. Let us go free and I’ll give you a fistful of diamonds. Good stones. You can leave this place and make a new life anywhere else. You’ll be able to get any woman you want.”

“Thank you. I have no intention of leaving, and the only woman I want I’ve got at home. Have a good journey and enjoy yourself, that place where you’re going.”

Monte walked back over to the car. The soldiers pushed the Portuguese men up against the wall. They took a few steps back. One of them pulled a pistol from his belt, and in a movement that was almost absentminded, almost annoyed, he pointed it and fired three times. Jeremias Carrasco was lying on his back. He saw the birds flying in the high skies. He noticed an inscription in red ink on the bloodstained, bullet-pocked wall:

The struggle continues
.

After the end, time slowed down. At least that was how it seemed to Ludo. On February 23 she wrote in the first of her diaries:

One morning, she got up, turned on the tap and the water didn’t come out. She was scared. It occurred to her for the first time that she might spend long years shut away in the apartment. She took an inventory of what was in the pantry. She wouldn’t need to worry about the salt. She also found enough flour for several months, as well as bags and
bags of beans, packets of sugar, cases of wine and soft drinks, dozens of tins of sardines, tuna, and sausages.

That night it rained. Ludo opened an umbrella and went up onto the terrace, carrying empty bottles, buckets, and basins. Early in the morning she cut the bougainvillea and the ornamental flowers. She put a handful of lemon seeds in the flowerbed where she had buried the tiny burglar. Four other flowerbeds she used for sowing corn and beans. In another five, she planted her last remaining potatoes. One of the banana trees had borne a huge bunch. She pulled off a few bananas and carried them to the kitchen. She showed them to Phantom.

“See? Orlando planted the banana trees so they would produce memories. They’re going to stop us going hungry. Or rather, they’ll stop me going hungry, I can’t imagine you’re too keen on bananas.”

The next day, the water was back in the taps. From then on it would often fail, as would the electricity, till finally it went for good. In the first few weeks, the blackouts were more of a problem than the interruptions to the water supply. She missed the radio. She used to like listening to the international news bulletins on the BBC and Rádio Difusão Portuguesa. She would listen to the Angolan stations, too, even if the constant speeches against colonialism, neocolonialism, and the reactionary forces annoyed her. The radio was a magnificent piece of equipment, in a wooden casing, art deco style, with ivory buttons. Press one of the buttons and it would light up like a city. Ludo would turn the knobs in search of voices. Fragments of sentences would come to her in French, English, or some obscure African language:

… 
Israeli commandos rescue airliner hostages at Entebbe …

… 
Mao Tse-tung est mort …

… Combatants de l’indépendance aujourd’hui victorieux …

… Nzambe azali bolingo mpe atonda na boboto …

Besides this, there was the record player. Orlando collected LPs of French chansons. Jacques Brel, Charles Aznavour, Serge Reggiani, Georges Brassens, Léo Ferré. The Portuguese woman would listen to Brel as the sea swallowed up the light. The city asleep, and her struggling to remember names. A patch of sun still burning. And the night, bit by bit, and time stretching out aimlessly. Body weary, and the night turning from blue to blue. Tiredness pressing on her kidneys. Her seeing herself as a queen, believing that someone, someplace, could be waiting for her just as one awaits a queen. But there was no one, not anywhere in the world, waiting for her. The city falling asleep and the birds like waves, and the waves like birds, and the women like women, and her not at all sure that women are the future of Man.

One afternoon, she was woken by a resounding clamor of voices. In a panic she got up, imagining that the house was about to be invaded. The living room was adjacent to Rita Costa Reis’s apartment. She pressed her ear to the wall. Two women, one man, several children. The man’s voice was big, silky, lovely to listen to. They were talking to one another in one of those enigmatic, melodic languages that she would sometimes hear on the radio. The odd word would come loose from the pack and leap about, like a colored ball bouncing back and forth inside her brain:

Bolingô. Bisô. Matindi
.

The Prédio dos Invejados started to liven up as new residents began to arrive. People coming from the slum housing on the outskirts of Luanda, countryfolk who had just arrived in the city, Angolans lately returned from neighboring Zaire and real Zaireans, too. None of them used to living in apartment blocks. One morning, really early, Ludo looked out the bedroom window to find a woman urinating on the balcony of 10-A. On the balcony of 10-D, five chickens were watching the sunrise. The back of the building overlooked a large courtyard, which only months before was still being used as a car park. Tall blocks, to the side and in front, hemmed the space in. The flora had run wild and launched itself over the entire area. There was water rising from some chasm, in the center, and flowing freely, then finally petering out amid the heaps of rubbish and mud by the walls of the buildings. That was the place where once a lagoon had spread itself out. Orlando liked to remember the thirties, when he, then just a boy, would come to play with his friends in the tall grass. They’d find the skeletal remains of crocodiles and hippos. Lion skulls.