These were not colonies, he declared. They were provinces of Portugal, equal in every way to the lands of Iberia, save the forced labor, the whippings, the poverty, the caste system, and endless war and violence—all in the service of empire, o ultramar maior. Strong-willed men were dispatched to do Salazar’s dirty work. General António Sebastião Ribeiro de Spínola was such a man, o toureiro mais destemido, “the baddest bullfighter of them all,” and in 1968, for his long service to empire, Spínola was made the new governor and commander in chief of Guiné.
Spínola flew in by helicopter and found himself in the interior of the province, in a colonial outpost in the town of Bafatá—and in utter disgust. The forces of flamboyant rebel leader Amílcar Cabral, the PAIGC, the African Party for the Independence of Guiné and Cabo Verde, controlled half the country—malarial mangrove swamps to the west, razor-sharp elephant grass hiding guerrillas in the east, with scorching, soaking heat all over its 36,125 square kilometers, not much bigger than the state of Maryland. But Spínola wasn’t worried; he’d seen worse. In 1938 he had commanded a Portuguese contingent fighting on the side of Franco in the Spanish Civil War. He spat at the Lincoln Brigade, the Commune de Paris Battalion, the Internationals, the communists, all those idealists who had flooded Spain to fight for the Republicans. They knew nothing of the chaos and corruption that lay in the hearts of Iberian men when they lacked proper supervision and authority. The defeat of those pompous pretenders was one of his life’s greatest pleasures. In 1941 he had the good fortune to study German cavalry techniques as the Nazis rolled eastward, unstoppable. He was an observer on the Nazi side as German artillery reduced Leningrad to rubble.
But damn if the Soviets didn’t survive that.
If the Russians could walk out of Leningrad, we Portuguese can stand tall in the ultramar, he thought, as Soviet-made rockets thudded down from the east. It did not occur to him that the Russians had been defending the motherland, a different proposition than a bedraggled imperial army subduing Africans in three different parts of their continent. Nor would it. He, like any good Portuguese officer, was convinced Guiné, Mozambique, and Angola were inseparable from the metrópole. As far as he was concerned, he was defending the motherland.
But by the time Spínola took command in ’68, his forces were sulking and demoralized, harried as much by guinea worms and botflies as they were by the guerrillas slinking through the ten-foot-high grasses or plying the rivers and swamps.
With his monocle in place, his white gloves pressed to his skin, his camouflage fatigues neatly pressed, and his cap tilted jauntily on his head, the new governor looked over the sullen men and aimless officers. The villa stunk of sweat and bat guano. It was not so different from his venture in Angola in ’64, but it was more manageable. That colony was also teetering under assault, but from three different guerrilla armies. Angola was fourteen times the size of Portugal. Guiné he could cross by helicopter in an hour or so. Sure, Amílcar Cabral was wily and organized, his forces united and well supplied, unlike those buffoons in Angola. But now, Spínola was in charge, not some junior officer. He would win this thing.
“Roust your troops and array them in the courtyard,” Spínola told a disheveled little major, Almeida Bruno, who snapped to and followed orders. The men, no more than three dozen, stood at attention in the heat. The air was so saturated with water that sweat flowed without the slightest motion. Thunderheads rolled in from the Atlantic not far to the west, their rumble joining the mortar thuds to the east.
“Gentlemen, sons of Portugal, subjects of Senhor Salazar’s Estado Novo, know this: We will not be the generation to lose empire,” Spínola said, loudly but not angrily or urgently. He projected authority without bullying. Bruno stood by his side. “Our great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren will ply the rivers of Guiné, walk the highlands of Angola, and work the majestic seaports of Mozambique. They will fish from these shores, farm in Nova Lisboa, drag diamonds and coffee onto the ships of Beira because of what we do here today.
“This town, this, this intersection of two dirt roads, this pit, this is Cabral’s birthplace. Bafatá. You will hold it. You will not let the criminal communist see where his mother suckled him at her Mandinga teat.”
He paused for dramatic effect. Who knew when these men had seen a true commanding officer? Who knew what these men believed they were fighting for, if they had given it a thought? António de Spínola allowed his monocle to drop into his white-gloved, outstretched palm. He looked up, surveyed the line of men before him, and straightened to an imposing height. “We will not fail,” he concluded, almost in a hush, then headed to his helicopter. Bruno stood silent, afraid to drop his salute.
In the coming months, General Spínola would traverse the little colony by helicopter, staring down at the mangrove swamps in the northwest, the lush islands of the Bijagós, grasslands in the east, and forests along the Senegalese border, all crawling with the enemy. He studied Cabral’s methods. If the PAIGC broke its combat forces into small, roving teams, so would he. If Cabral ran education camps to teach an otherwise indifferent peasantry to loathe the colonial oppressor, he would wage his own campaign for the hearts of Guineans. He would exploit divisions, between the Muslim Fula of the north and the native religions of the rest of the country, between the educated mestiços from Cabo Verde who led the PAIGC and the pretos, the dark-skinned Africans who took their orders. He needed thirty thousand troops but had only five. The young men of his country were slipping out of the country and into France in ever increasing numbers to avoid conscription. Cowards.
But what he needed above all were doctors. Cabral ran pathetic shanties he called clinics in the “liberated” zones. Spínola would build hospitals, health centers, mobile dispensaries. He would show these selvagens que vivem nas matas—these people who are no more than savages living in the forest—what civilization had to offer.
Elizabeth remained in bed and watched João dress in the clothes he wore the night before, her head propped up on a hand buried in her riot of hair. She enjoyed the show, the way he raised his arms high above his head to slip on his loose shirt without unbuttoning it, the way his slender midsection was exposed, the muscles and cavity of his armpit, the way he gave one little hop as he pulled on his trousers, his still-mussed hair, his smell, mingled with hers. She had fantasized about this moment for years in lonely, furtive breathings at Houndsheath, and like those fantasies, the next act was hazy and beside the point. She might see him again. More than likely, the curtain was falling, but it had been a jolly good show—her first, after all.
“Will I see you tonight?” she asked as casually as she could.
“Of course,” João replied blankly. He kissed her forehead, a filial gesture that left her with a vague sense of loss.
He headed off for a quick stop at his summer bedsit for a change of clothes, then on to the clinic. He was surprised to find that he couldn’t stop thinking about the Englishwoman. As he was leaving O Peixe, he had halfheartedly resolved not to return, at least not while she was there. There were other fish after all. But his resolve was breaking of its own accord. She was interesting. Other Englishwomen he had known were good conversationalists, charming and intelligent, without all the Shakespeare of course, but certainly Elizabeth’s equals, yet better looking, more feminine, more sexual. They were always toying with him, though. Their snobbery, their sense of superiority, that they were more experienced, more urbane, more, well, British, than he, was maddening. But Elizabeth, from all she had said, appeared genuinely to want nothing to do with her privilege. She was enriched by it, but not of it. And the way she was in bed, she hadn’t been snobby, aloof, or “above it” at all. She had wanted it, badly.
“Huh.” João grinned. He did like her. Plus, he could really stick it to his father with this one. Times had changed. He wanted a partner, an equal, not a series of chippies or one exceptionally tolerant doormat who would bear and care for his children, no questions asked. He certainly was not
interested in Portuguese women, with their cloying shallowness. Gustavo Gonçalves would chastise him, would tell him Elizabeth was not beautiful enough, her breasts were all wrong, her jaw too small and ill-defined.
“What the hell are you doing?” he’d say, holding out two hands and shaking them as if he had his son by the throat. The son would ignore the father, leave him with arms outstretched. João smiled at the thought.
A week later, at the hotel bar that had nurtured their quick courtship among the many other fish in the sea, they toasted their daring. On their second night together, Elizabeth had been more nervous than on their first, just twenty-four hours before. She had time to think about approaching lovemaking, to consider what she had done right and the many things she was sure she had done wrong. He had sensed her fear as they ate anchovies drenched in olive oil, nibbled on sweet cherry tomatoes, and drank a bottle of vinho tinto. “Do you want to call it a night? You know, we can,” she heard him say. She blushed, looked down at her hands folded primly in her lap, and shook her head in short, subtle spasms. He touched her chin and lifted her face to his.
João had gone more slowly that night, held her gently for a long time, allowed her to come to him, and she was grateful. It grew easier from there until finally, she sent her cousin home alone to pursue her future in British society.
“But Elizabeth,” Vicki had protested, “what will you be?”
What would she be? She hadn’t thought of it that way. She had thought only of what she would do. She would continue on, the further the better. This lovely Portuguese man was offering her the ride, and she was going to take it. For João, Elizabeth offered help as well, a different kind of ticket, more like an upgrade to a better version of the harsh life to come.
A married doctor, João couldn’t help but think, would have certain privileges, private quarters—maybe a house of his own, a remove from the barracks of the colonial army—a social standing that would go with the rank that would automatically be conferred on him by way of his medical degree.
There, he had said it: married, marriage. Could he really take it there? Yes, he thought, yes, he could. He had never been one for the company of men, and he was going off to war. Africa, “the kingdom of perpetual night,” as Elizabeth had murmured. The thought of it induced panic. He would be lonely and at the same time, with all those men, entirely socially overwhelmed. But a woman in the picture changed his entire vision of the chapter to come. The image of Elizabeth by his side eased his anxiety like an opiate slipping into the bloodstream. Why not get married? He could inject her into his life just as simply.
Elizabeth was only beginning to acquaint herself with men and love and the bewilderment that came with it all. She had not known the painful, quicksilver love of high school. There had been no high school. But she was sure the sympathy that swelled in her chest as João spoke was love. And there was something else: João needed her. All those mornings in the breakfast nook with her mother telling her to sit up straight, to sit still, to chew with her mouth closed, for God’s sake, all those nights glued to her brother’s words and his side, all that longing for her father’s attention—always, always, she was the burden, the hanger-on. Never again, she thought. João Silva Gonçalves needed her. She wanted to touch him, to soothe him. She leaned in close over the rough-hewn table.
“Take me with you, please. I want to see.”
“‘Hasty marriage seldom proveth well,’” João warned with a wry smile, knowing well the words would have the opposite effect of their meaning. “‘For what is wedlock forced but a hell, an age of discord and continual strife?’”
Elizabeth smiled. Marriage, she thought, he said it. What heaven this will be, swapping lines as we sweep across Africa. She pictured herself as Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen, or perhaps some lonely figure in a windswept, arid desert, Lawrence of Arabia as a love story.
“‘In time,’” she quipped, “‘the savage bull doth bear the yoke.’”
“Elizabeth”—he dropped to his knees, her hands in his—“my lovely surprise, will you marry me?”
It was as if a cell door had swung open with a clang, and Elizabeth, without pause, ran for freedom. The tears gushed from her eyes. She squeezed his hands, brought them to her face. She cried on his hands, soaked them in tears, then smothered them with kisses as her head nodded over and over and over again.
“I am in love, truly,” the Bromwells’ daughter wrote to her parents in a letter mailed from the Algarve before she boarded the train for Lisbon. It was more defiant than confessional. “I will bring João to you in due time. He is a doctor, and no doubt, we will settle in London, where he studied medicine. But first, there is adventure to be had. And Mother, remember what you taught me: ‘Such duty as the subject owes the prince, even such a woman oweth to her husband.’” She didn’t mean that part, of course. Even she had absorbed enough of the times to laugh at the notions of The Taming of the Shrew. But her mother would recognize the irony and feel the slight. Elizabeth was turning the anachronism of her education against the parent who had foisted it upon her. And it felt fantastic.
Elizabeth knelt before the priest in the small church in Lisbon, her husband-to-be kneeling beside her. An elopement would have done just fine, but such things were impossible in Salazar’s Portugal. Fascism was not the proper word for what afflicted Portuguese society; it was more repressed than repressive. The PIDE, Salazar’s secret police, was hated. They lurked, fostered paranoia, and could strike at random, landing you in prison for an unpleasant but usually brief stay. The generals—geriatric, pathologically conservative, but wholly ineffective—ruled the body politic. But the church had frozen society in amber. To Elizabeth, who had never been to a Catholic service before, the ritual was remarkably short, quaint, romantic even. She could not understand a word the little man said, but as she knelt before him, staring into his flowing cassock, she could feel the power of supplication.
João’s parents were every bit as furious with their son as Elizabeth’s were with their daughter—more so, perhaps. They had seen the bride. Off an alleyway in the Alfama, one of the seven hills across from Bairro Alto, João had brought Elizabeth home to Dr. Gustavo Gonçalves. He had sent his son abroad, to medical school. In a nation ruled for decades by a professor, Gustavo had raised João to join Lisbon society, to meet an olive-skinned beauty who would bear his grandchildren and care for him in old age. João’s ticket was punched, and what had he done? Fallen in love with an Englishwoman on vacation, a plain one at that.
“Son, may I have a word with you?” Gustavo had asked, mildly, but João knew what was coming. In his darkened study, the elder physician ripped into his son. “You go off to the beach for the summer. You’re supposed to chase girls, fuck a few—many if you want. You don’t marry them. And this one, this one…” The anger had stolen away the words. He fumed, stormed around the room, bounced on the balls of his feet as he silently gesticulated, then blurted out, “You could have at least found one with bigger tits.”
João wasn’t listening. He had grown inured to such drama, to his father’s fits of boorishness. As a child, he would hide behind a closed bedroom door as his mother raged about some new girlfriend of his father’s, discovered by a friend or relative, which only added to the shame. She was leaving, Maria Gonçalves would scream. This time she was serious. She had been pushed too far. No matter how many times he heard those words, João felt them like a stabbing. His mother was to abandon him; she meant it. And where was he to go? His father certainly wouldn’t care for him. At best he would get a governess, some sagging, rotund dona from the church to tug at his earlobes. At worst, he would be taken, put in an orphanage or shipped to a distant relative’s farm in the country.
“Oh, come on, Maria, we’ve been through this before,” Gustavo would say.
“Yes, yes, yes, we’ve been through this before, and never again.”
She might storm out of the house for a day or two—and send João into a paralyzed panic.
She would come back, though. His father would give João a little wink or a playful shrug, nothing to be concerned about. They had played their roles perfectly, he was saying. All’s well that ends well. João would return a shy smile, shaken to the core, but he would never show it.
As he knelt beside his bride, he imagined his father’s eyes burning into the back of his skull. He was marrying for love, he thought with satisfaction. Elizabeth Gonçalves would never abandon him, ever. Tiny Portugal had brought mighty Britannia to its knees in this little church. The screams of his mother, that little wink of his father’s, those were experiences he would never repeat in the long life that stretched before him. He made the decisions now. He commanded the silences.
He and Elizabeth reported the next day to the military Forte de São Bruno at Caxias, in the shadow of the vast prison where the secret police brought their captives. The structure jutted into the sea like a jagged star on the beach, its walls and corners sharp, its rooms without warmth. There would be no real training. By 1970, the Portuguese military understood that the imperative was to get the conscripts to the continent as soon as possible. Better to acclimate them there anyway. The heat, the bugs, the smell of raw sewage, cooking fires, and bat shit were things they could not be prepared for from Portugal. Besides, they couldn’t change their minds once they were there.
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