by Ondjaki
“No. It’s in the display cabinet.”
“And the key to the display cabinet?”
“It’s in Granma’s room.”
It was agreed: we would get her salt in exchange for the wire cutters. Later she showed us a huge pair of wire cutters with a plastic grip that would be great for cutting an electric cable. We had already seen this in movies, and everybody knew that to cut an electric cable you had to be wearing shoes, wrap the wire cutters in a piece of cloth and not have wet hands or feet. If the wire cutters had a plastic grip, that was even better. In any event, we flipped a coin to see who would actually go and cut the cable and who would guard the entrances in case some elder, or even Comrade Gudafterov, appeared.
“Good, if something happens, you know what to do, just give me a kick,” 3.14 requested. “If you don’t, we could both get stuck here by the force of the electricity.”
The cable was behind Granma Agnette’s house. We dug down a little and found it. Even though Comrade Gudafterov had buried it so that no one would see it, 3.14 is good at finding those things. We followed the wire for a bit and soon understood that this had to be the one.
“Do I cut it?”
“Affirmative, Comrade.”
At first it was difficult, then we decided that the two of us would have to push down together.
We heard a noise from the side of the Mausoleum construction site and hid behind a really dusty avocado tree that was breaking the houses’ foundations with its roots. It was Comrade Dimitry going into a shed with cages full of brightly coloured birds, more than one of which had parrots inside. Maybe it was the same place where the boxes of dynamite were hidden.
3.14 picked up a rock and threw it in the direction of the cages. I had to grab him and drag him back to our hiding place. Comrade Dimitry dropped a cage containing some parrots, which started shouting, “A single people, a single nation!” and “National Radio, broadcasting from Luanda, capital of the People’s Republic of Angola,” with a voice just like that of the comrade on the radio who said those words on the news every day at one pm and eight pm.
We smothered our laughter so that we wouldn’t be caught.
“Let’s split now.”
We took advantage of Comrade Dimitry’s confusion and fled.
We ran into the yard to return the wire cutters to Madalena before anyone could arrive and make her feel like telling on us.
“Here they are, Madalena. Thanks a lot.”
“What kind of thanks is that? I already said: coarse salt after lunch, because at the end of the day they’re going to bring green mangoes.”
“Sure. We’ll bring it later. Nobody came by?”
“No. They’ve got company.”
“Who is it?”
“The neighbour. Dona Libânia.”
“Then it’s just a visitor.”
“No, because Dona Libânia is talking as if she was three visitors. And she eats more peanuts than the parrots.”
“Madalena...Do you know if the light went out in the house?”
Madalena didn’t reply, and as everybody was sitting in the living room looking at Granma Agnette’s extended leg, we took advantage of the situation to go to the pantry to swipe the coarse salt.
“You go by yourself. It’s only a little salt, your hand’s big enough.”
“You’re afraid of getting caught.”
“It’s not that, it’s just that in my house they already thrash me all the time, and if we get caught here I’m gonna get it again for something that’s not even my business. I already helped you get the wire cutters and showed you where the Soviet’s cable was.”
“Okay, I get it. So cover my back.”
“And if somebody comes?”
“You make the noise of that drunken cat.”
“What cat?”
“The one on the Cambalacho soap opera. Haven’t you seen it?”
“No.”
“Hey, that means we don’t have a communication code in case of an emergency.”
“In the time we’ve stood here talking you could’ve already swiped the salt.”
He watched the living room and it went really fast. A handful of salt would be enough. I ran out into the yard to call Madalena.
“Madalena! Take your salt.”
“Hey, is that how you hand it over? Without wrapping paper or anything?”
“Whoah, are you jokin’? You think this is the people’s store, or what? Here it is, if you want it.”
We were on our way out through the yard, but they heard our footsteps.
“Children!” Granma Agnette called. “Come and say hello to everyone.”
“We can’t, Granma. We’re really sweaty.”
“I said come inside.”
Still holding our breath, we entered the living room. I cleaned my hands in my pockets to avoid showing any sign or smell of salt.
“Take your hands out of your pockets. What kind of bad manners is that?”
“Sorry, Granma.”
“Say good afternoon to Dona Libânia, who came to visit Granma.”
“Good afternoon, Dona Libânia,” I started.
“Who came to visit Granma,” 3.14 concluded, and the elders laughed. I don’t know why.
But it helped. Dona Libânia herself said, “Go play, you little rascals.” Granma Nhé made a sign with her eyes that we could go outside.
“May we be excused, Granma?”
“You can go.”
When we got to the wall of Senhor Tuarles’s house, his daughters weren’t there to come and play with us. At the big gate made out of metal grillwork that barely existed any more, on a tiny, pretty little bench, Granma Maria was sitting selling kitaba.
“Good afternoon, Granma Maria.” We greeted her and left at a run, hitting the sand hard with our feet to raise the dust and imitate the cars when they skidded from driving too fast, and with our mouths we made the noises of acceleration and locked wheels, changes of speed and skidding as well.
“Stop! Good morning, Comrades! Complete vehicle documentation, please, and personal documentation for the respective comrades!” crazy Sea Foam said, very close to us.
“Comrade Agent, these vehicles belong to our bosses, we’re just the drivers.” I joined in his joke; 3.14 was afraid of Sea Foam.
“These vehicles are clapped out, with loud exhaust-pipes?”
“Yes.”
“Accelerate for a moment so that I can test the level.”
“Vrummm! Vrummm!”
“It’s within the limit. Who are your bosses?”
“They’re comrade bigshots, minister types.”
“Then you can go ahead. And careful with the maximum speed and sliding on slippery curves. ¡Buena suerte!”
“Yes, Comrade. Thank you and until tomorrow.”
“Hasta mañana.”
We continued saying “Vrummm” with our mouths; we accelerated like hell and lifted a lot of dust until we stopped, tired out, on the other side of the square to rest our bodies, in search of shade that wasn’t there. The Comrade Gas Jockey looked at us and laughed.
“Run out of gas?”
“Yes.”
“You can come and stock up.”
We walked over really slowly, with the sweat dripping from our soaking chins and armpits. I stopped suddenly.
“Come on,” 3.14 called to me.
“You’ve got to push, buddy. I ran right out of gas. We’re going to have to bleed the gas-line.”
“I caught you in a big fat lie. Bleeding is for gas-oil cars.”
“Hey, that’s right!”
We leaned against the gas pump. The Comrade Gas Jockey had a bottle of water. First he dampened our hands so that we could wash our faces and then he gave each of us a mouthful to drink.
“S
ome day,” he gripped the lever for putting gas into the cars, “you could even drink right from here.”
“Why, Comrade?”
“Because the bottom of this gas pump collects water. All it’s missing is little fish. The pump must have a puncture. Some day I’ll bring a fishing rod to work.”
“That would be really cool.”
“Shush! It’s a secret, the boss can’t know, or the Soviets. The blue ants are real tattletales.”
“That’s right.”
We saw a white Lada coming down the long street of Bishop’s Beach. It was coming from the Blue District.
“You know that car? Somebody’s ill.”
“Who does it belong to?”
“It belongs to the Comrade Cuban Doctor, Rafael KnockKnock.”
“Rafael what?”
“You guys’ll understand.” The Comrade Gas Jockey stood there laughing to himself.
The Lada made a circuit of the square and stopped right in front of us.
“Buenas, Comrades!”
“Buenas tardes.” Maybe the Comrade Gas Jockey spoke Cuban, too.
“Hello, children. ¿Cómo están?”
“Frigging tupariov!” 3.14 didn’t like to be called a child.
“Take it easy, 3.14. Are you being rude to a doctor you don’t even know?”
He calmed down. “Buenas, Comrade Doctor.”
“¿Dónde está Comrade Agnette’s house?”
“She’s my Granma.”
“Muy bien. Can the compañero fill it up, por favor? I’m going to make una visita.”
“No puedo, no.” The Gas Jockey started to laugh. “Because that car of yours runs on gasoline.”
“Sí, of course, hombre.”
“Yes, but of course, I only sell salty water with a few gas fumes.”
“Really?” The doctor was aghast.
“I’m only telling you true truths. Go make your house call, I’ll watch your car.”
“Gracias.” Then he spoke to me. “Will you come with me?”
“Sí. What’s your name?” I tried to improvise in Cuban. 3.14 laughed.
“Me llamo Rafael. But they call me KnockKnock.”
“Comrade Rafael, here in Luanda we don’t like ugly names, and the comrade might become a victim of somebody violently taking the piss out of you. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Even though I don’t understand you well, te lo agradezco.”
“Let’s go. My Granma’s foot is hurting.”
“The left foot?”
“Of course, Comrade. Of course.”
After climbing the three steps where I liked to sit, we reached the door. The Comrade Cuban Doctor looked at me with eyes that gleamed as though he were a child younger than I. He gestured like someone who was about to perform some sort of magic. He bent down a little, switched the case he was carrying to his left hand and with his right hand knocked very slowly on the door, so gently that he seemed to be caressing the old wood of Granma Agnette’s house. He spoke in a low voice.
“Knock-knock. Ha-ha-ha!”
That chuckle ruined the mood and, to tell the truth, I didn’t even understand what it was all about.
“Un ritual, little hombre, only un ritual,” he said, before knocking loudly on the door.
Madalena opened the door, her smile full of teeth.
“Buenas. La señora Agnette, por favor?”
“Come in, Comrade.”
Granma was about to get up, but the doctor said it wasn’t necessary. I looked at the floor to see if there was something blocking her path or if the surface was wet. Nothing.
Before taking another step, the Comrade Cuban Doctor looked with a smile at Granma Agnette, looked around the whole living room, saw the black-and-white television with the blue plastic over the screen, looked at the display cabinet and the chairs in the dining room, saw the photograph of Granpa Mbinha on the wall and in that moment the old clock hanging close to the stairs gave the muted sound of its bells striking the hour. All he didn’t see was Granma Catarina, who was in a corner, dressed in black and regarding us in silence.
“Don’t let poverty bother you, doctor. This is a simple home,” Granma Agnette said.
“May I?”
“Yes, of course. Make yourself at home. Please be seated.”
Granma Catarina went slowly up the stairs but did not utter her usual phrase, “I’m going upstairs to close the windows,” and no one seemed to be looking at her. Madalena went to the kitchen and returned with a tray on which there was a glass of water.
“Would you like some cold water?”
“Sí. Gracias.”
They talked about sore legs and other doctor stuff. Granma explained that the pain was getting worse and that she could barely feel the tip of her left foot.
“Problems of circulación. Age, señora. Age does not forgive.”
Granma smiled that hesitant smile of hers, of somebody who may not understand.
“Your daughter, la doctora Víctoria, asked me to come and see you. May I touch your leg?”
“Yes.”
Granma Catarina did not come downstairs. Since Madalena was keeping Granma Agnette company, I went slowly upstairs as well.
The bathroom window was open and I felt a tiny breeze of the sort that the elders say gives you a cough and that can also be called a “whiff.” I liked that word “whiff” a lot. Later I also learned that a room where the windows had been open for a long time could be said to have been “aired out.”
“Except that you have to be careful, Granma.”
“Why?”
“Because it can also be said to be ‘mosquitoed out.’”
Granma Catarina laughed at the words I invented during our conversations.
I opened the door to her room. Her rocking chair bobbed slowly with the black shawl draped over the armrests.
“It’s time to close the windows.” Her very low voice frightened me.
“You gave me a start, Granma Catarina.”
“Sorry, son.”
“Granma, aren’t you going downstairs to hear the Cuban conversations of Comrade Doctor KnockKnock?”
“I don’t like to appear in front of strangers, my dear.” Granma Catarina’s voice was sad. She closed the windows of the room, which was very dark. “Go downstairs, my dear. They might need you to understand the Cuban language.”
“You’re staying here all by yourself, Granma, without any light?”
“I’m not afraid of the dark any more.”
Many years had passed since the Soviets had ceased to prohibit Sea Foam’s swims on the prohibited beach, and the fishermen who had already been living there so many years before—before the Soviets, even before present-day Angolans and before the Portuguese—were also allowed to enter and leave as they wished without anyone telling them that beach was “closed to the public.”
We, the children of Bishop’s Beach, normally went on undercover missions to spy or to swim.
Madalena, though Granma Agnette never knew about it, also went there from time to time to go swimming with her boyfriends, and stayed in the water for a long time doing I-don’t-know-what, even if the water was cold or the sea was rough.
“When she shows up with a belly, everybody’s going to say it was the sea that did it,” the Old Fisherman used to say.
One day we went there early in the morning.
3.14 came to call me to run and see the sea with him. Thinking our mission was to dive in search of pretty seashells and conches, I started to look for my swimsuit.
“You don’t need it, just come. We’re not going to dive. This is a spying mission.”
At that hour Madalena still would have been in the bread line-up or even, if it were a fishing day, waiting for a shipment that might come in only after
ten o’clock.
“Just come. I’m going to show you something.”
I didn’t hear voices in the house. Granma Agnette must have gone out with someone. I called twice more, but Granma Catarina didn’t answer. Maybe it was too early for her to appear.
The Luanda sun starts to get hot very early, and it usually comes up before six in the morning. Half an hour later, it’s already hot enough to burn skin; the body discreetly begins to sweat, and when the Soviets laugh they turn red like lobsters emerging from boiling salted water. That’s how they prepare lobsters: I’ve seen it at Aunt Rosa’s house. They boil the stupid lobsters, they put in coarse salt and, before serving them, Aunt Rosa makes a sauce of lemon, hot spices and a little more salt; she also puts in olive oil or even, if Uncle Chico asks for it, sugar-cane rum.
“The Soviets are strange people,” Granma Catarina used to say. “They catch the sun but they don’t like to swim.”
The Soviets wear blue uniforms of heavy fabric that’s good for making rags for wiping the floor, so Madalena told me, a fabric that’s absorbent and dries quickly in the sun; it’s true, it makes wiping-up cloths that last a long time or even, if properly cut and stitched, good doormats for the kitchen. The Soviets from the Mausoleum construction site never let go of their AK-47s and only when it’s very hot do they take off their uniform tops. That’s when we see just how strange those blue lobsters are: underneath, they still have that tight green shirt that soldiers like to wear. They patrol the construction site and the beach, but, even when it’s hot, I figure they can’t have authorization to dive in because they stand close to the water, they chat with the fishermen, at times they make fun of Sea Foam and laugh at him, but they don’t go in.
“The place for lobsters is in the sea, compañero,” Foam tells them, but they don’t lift a finger. They break off to speak, spitting Soviet, and they also like to spit on the ground.
“Oye, that smell se llama B.O.!”
We laughed at the Cuban spoken by Sea Foam, his clothes soaked as he came out of the water, with his Rasta dreadlocks full of sand and trapped, glinting seashells.
Foam’s swims took place early in the morning, sun or no sun, whether in spots of rain or a downpour, with thunder or grey clouds, with or without medusas in the water.
“My body’s dirty, but mi alma, my soul, is clean... Not everybody can say that, right, little lobsters?” The Soviets looked away, shielding their eyes from the sun and not allowing the children to see their broiled faces. “The elders say: when one is not bienvenido, one must leave...Hahaha!”
