Granma Nineteen and the Soviet's Secret

by Ondjaki

  “Whoa. Wait a minute.” 3.14 looked really frightened. “I don’t see my house here—or even the gas station.”

  “I don’t see the beach with the Old Fisherman’s boat, or my granma’s house, either.”

  “And I don’t see the kennel I have in my yard to keep a certain animal... Hahaha.” Sea Foam said “animal” with a crazy voice and we took off running to get away from him.

  “Didn’t I warn you?” As 3.14 ran, he looked as if he’d seen a soap opera wolfman.

  “Just keep running and don’t look back.”

  “Right now is when we’re gonna get bombarded.”

  Foam loved to frighten children. He had never once touched anybody; maybe one time somebody had fallen over fleeing from him because a person who’s running can slip and hit a knee on a stone, blood can even flow, but it was never on purpose. Except once Senhor Tuarles grabbed Foam and, to be on the safe side, unloaded one hell of a thrashing on him just to calm him down for a while.

  Foam grabbed the sheaf of newspapers again and almost took off flying. He ran without looking at the car that was about to pass, crossed the square, hit the edge of the beach running flat out and, wetting his feet and his clothes, only stopped to talk to the Old Fisherman, way off in the distance.

  “We can stop. His missiles aren’t long-range.” 3.14 was sweating like anything.

  “Could all that stuff be for real?”

  “You think the Jornal de Angola is going to print lies? You retard—everything that comes out in the Jornal de Angola is the truth—the Comrade President authorized them to come out there.”

  “So that’s the new Bishop’s Beach?”

  “Naw...That’s a dream.” 3.14 looked at me with the face of a madman.

  “How so?”

  “Our plan, don’t you remember? That page just had a drawing, as if it were the description of a wish. I mean, since you can’t really write about a wish, they drew a picture.”

  “You’re talking bullshit, Pi.”

  “No, you’re the one who’s not getting it. That’s how come I always say our plan has to go ahead.”

  “We’ll never do it.”

  “Don’t say that, Comrade. The struggle continues.” He laughed.

  “Victory is certain. Yeah, I know.”

  “I’m serious. You saw the dynamite.”

  “Be serious, Pi. We can’t go messing around with that dynamite. If we do we’ll just die without having grown up to be elders.”

  “You’re being thick because dynamite only goes off if you ignite it. First, you gotta set it right, then you’ve gotta connect up the wick. Only then can you light it.”

  “And if they catch us? What if we go to jail at this age? Or if they send us to the front lines to fight South African japies?”

  “First, only people who are over sixteen years old or whatever are sent to the front lines. Second, kids our age aren’t allowed in jails.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Third, nobody here’s going to tell on us. Unless it’s Charlita. But also, who’s even going to believe that the two of us were the ones who dexploded a Mausoleum, that size, guarded by a bunch of lobsters that blue?”

  I knew that when it was time to act, 3.14 lost all fear. I had already gone with him to a bonfire that had been forgotten on the beach. We took real AK-47 bullets with us, from a soldier who wanted cigarettes in exchange, and when it was time to throw the bullets into the bonfire I said that we better not do it.

  “Then keep yours. I’m throwing my bullets into the fire.”

  “What if they shoot back at us?”

  “Don’t be a scaredy-cat. You think with so many directions they’re going to choose to come right at our legs to get us back?”

  Before I could utter a word in reply, he laughed as if he were eating the world’s best baobab ice cream, threw the bullets high into the air towards the middle of the bonfire and took off running. I went after him. We didn’t look back, but it appeared that the bullets had stayed there, heating up in the fire. We ran skidding with all the strength of our legs’ sweat, and when we rounded the trunk of that fat palm tree we heard two high-pitched shot-like reports and the sound of tin being pierced. One bullet had gone who-knows-where, while the other had pierced the can that was next to us.

  “You see! The bullet chose the can because it makes more noise than our legs. Hahaha!” 3.14 looked back at the fire and tried to persuade me to throw my bullets, too, but I wasn’t brave enough.

  “I’m going to hold onto them. If some day there’s a home invasion at my granma’s house, at least I have two bullets.”

  3.14 could have given me a ribbing over that line about keeping bullets without even having an AK-47 in the house to shoot with, but he didn’t say anything. He laid a hand on my shoulder and we stayed there warming our faces in front of the yellow fire that smelled of the dust of cunning bullets that liked to pierce cans rather than the legs of Bishop’s Beach’s children.

  “What you thinkin’ about?”

  “I’m not thinking, I’m remembering.”

  “What are you remembering?”

  “Nothing, leave it.” I pointed at Comrade Rafael KnockKnock’s Lada. “Look who’s coming.”

  “Your granma with nineteen fingers and toes!” he shouted in delight.

  I hadn’t even known you could fit that many people into one of those old Ladas. Doctor Rafael was driving, Granma Nhé was in the front seat; behind them was Aunty Tó, her husband, my mother, a nurse and even Madalena Kamussekele, laughing with her head out the window.

  They went around the square, on the far side of the gas pump. The Comrade Gas Jockey waved goodbye the way that he always did, in spite of the fact that people lived nearby. I don’t know; everybody has the right to use up as many goodbyes as he wants, but I figure that waving goodbye is something you do more for a departure of the long-trip type, like when somebody goes in an airplane to some other international country, or even to another province, as long as they stay there for more than two weeks, or you wave goodbye when you’re so far away that your voice doesn’t reach even if you shout so loudly that your throat hurts, or if it’s like in those movies about big ships that sometimes sink, then it’s worth going down to the port to wave goodbye, with or without a handkerchief, with or without tears. There are even people who like to wave goodbye while laughing and keeping their longing to cry hidden, because the person who’s leaving is already sad to be going so far away, and they don’t need to take the tears from our prolonged goodbye with them; and then, if it’s a person who likes the person who’s leaving a lot, and they’re going away, even if it’s only for a few days, then maybe it’s all right to give them a little goodbye wave, but not so extravagantly that you’re almost imitating the Comrade Traffic Cop like the Comrade Gas Jockey does. On top of that, I should say that you never wave a very big goodbye to a person who’s coming home, but it’s not worth explaining more. A lot of elders don’t understand a thing about waving goodbye.

  The car stopped and we reached it at the same time as the dust that always arrives a little bit late, just like Madalena Kamussekele. It’s useless making any kind of appointment with her, even to watch a soap opera or a movie at the Kinanga Cinema—she’s going to arrive late. It seems that one time my cousin Nitó, who’s also known as Sankara, hit her for this. I mean, everybody was waiting for the afternoon matinée that started at three o’clock, and Madalena, just because she was on course to arrive five minutes early, stopped at the final bend to wait for a moment and ask a passing elder for the time—just to be certain that she arrived late. Nitó boxed her ears a couple of times to make her lose this habit, though she still hasn’t lost it to this day.

  Granma Nhé’s eyes looked tired, and a little swollen, too, and on her arm I saw those little stains from when someone gives blood, the skin all purple and looking like
it hurts like anything.

  “Granma. We were here waiting for Granma.” 3.14 laughed as he spoke and looked into the car to try to find the spot where the toe no longer was.

  “What ‘Granma’ is that?” I gave him a nudge and pulled him out of the way. “Is this the confidence you picked up in the Mausoleum, or what? Is your granma around here?”

  “Cool it. Granmas are loaned out here on Bishop’s Beach.”

  “There’s nothing to loan here. Everybody fixes himself up with his own granma. And anyways, mine’s awesome and she only has nineteen digits.”

  Granma Nhé laughed. At last she seemed to be in a good mood.

  Comrade Rafael KnockKnock went around the front of the car and succeeded in opening Granma Nhé’s door without saying “KnockKnock.” It was a miracle of forgetting.

  “Oh, no, un momentito,” he said, while he shooed us away. “I forgot por completo.”

  He closed the door again, so that we all burst out laughing in disbelief: he regarded Granma Nhé with a clownish face, and said in a loud voice: “KnockKnock. Now, sí, abuela.” Granma was laughing so hard that she almost wasn’t able to stand up.

  “Me gusta seeing you like that, Abuela. What a joyous heart you have, what a marvellous smile!”

  The foot emerged all wrapped up in some gauze that didn’t allow you to see anything from any operation.

  “You okay, Granma?”

  “Yes, my dear. Give me a kiss on the cheek.”

  “How many toes did they cut off?”

  “Only one, compañero.”

  “Mucho bien,” 3.14 said. Nobody expected that; we all laughed again. Granma asked that nobody make any more jokes because shaking with laughter made her foot ache.

  The elders went to the living room to speak with the nurse and Madalena was sent to the kitchen because she had stood there listening to the elders’ conversations.

  3.14 and I pretended to stay on the veranda to play a game, but we were paying attention to what they were saying because Aunty Tó had the Jornal de Angola in her hand, and it looked like they were also going to talk about the drawing that Pi had called a description of a wish.

  “We can’t wait much longer, we have to think about Mother’s future, where we’re going to put—”

  We caught isolated phrases and it was only by pasting them together in our imagination that we understood the worries that they were discussing.

  “Poor Dona Agnette. She’s lived here almost her whole life.”

  “Her and all of these people. It’s going to be a problem.”

  Which meant that nobody was talking about the children. It was all very well that our lives were still so short, but we also liked Bishop’s Beach a lot, and the elders always forget that when there are problems we can help to solve them.

  “It’s just that they never include us when they talk about stuff.”

  “We’re going to solve this, don’t worry.” Once again, 3.14 spoke in that serious way of his that made it sound as if he was at a political rally.

  “But do you know how much dynamite they have there?”

  “They have enough to blow up all the houses on Bishop’s Beach. I figure that amount’s enough for our plan. As long as nobody tells on us.” He glanced at me.

  “You ever seen me tell on anybody?” I asked in a low voice.

  “Have I ever seen you tell?” he laughed. “Every time we eat green mangoes with salt you end up telling your granma.”

  “That’s different. She asks me how come I’ve got diarrhea and I can’t lie to her.”

  “Just be ready.” He got up, tightened his belt, hitched up his trousers; he looked like a cowboy getting ready for the last shoot-out of his life. “This time you’re going to have to lie, even if they say they’re going to give you a beating.”

  3.14 was speaking seriously. He got up on the low wall of the veranda and motioned for me to climb up as well.

  From up there we could see almost all of Bishop’s Beach: on the left-hand side, the construction site of the Mausoleum, a few distant houses, Dona Libânia’s house, the gas pump; off in the distance, the house on the bend before the pretty church, the green houses, Sea Foam’s house, Paulinha’s house, Aunt Adelaide’s house; then right nearby, almost attached, Senhor Tuarles’s enormous house with his five daughters, of whom only Charlita had good glasses, the same house that had the old chicken coop where so many games were played and the smell of Granma Maria’s kitaba, with or without chili pepper, then the house of Gadinho, who wasn’t allowed to play with us, and beyond that, where we could no longer see, other houses: the house of Paulinho, who took judo classes and helped his father, and behind it the house of André, who was a commando and already had killed a ton of South African japies, and only now and then received authorization to come back and visit his family. War must not be anything like it is in the movies because when André comes home he’s hungry and so sad that he can’t speak a word; he cries when the truck comes to pick him up again and take him to some war zone. On the other side of the street was the bakery where, before five am, people go to put their stones in the line-up that everybody respects, and right beside it is the alley where we play in our good clothes on Carnival of Victory Day with the whistle that Granma Catarina lends us; that alley is the muddy street that leads to the Kinanga Cinema, where they show ninja movies, and movies about Godzilla with his enormous mouth, about Trinità, about the Gendarmes and Gendarmettes of Saint-Tropez, and even the most delicious movie in the world, called The Big Brawl, with Jackie Chan and his uncle who fights like anything. After the Kinanga Cinema we could turn the corner and find the back of the church, where one time Senhor Tuarles had to go and beat the shit out of the priest who was being a pervert with the little girls of Bishop’s Beach; Senhor Tuarles sent Dona Isabel to go get his AK-47, but in the end he didn’t use it and just beat up the priest instead of killing him, and we were all up on top of the wall—yes, without that whole life that the elders had already lived but that we knew through the tales that we had seen and invented, as well as those that were told, retold or improved by Sea Foam, with his seashell-strung dreadlocks, stories of Kianda, who is also a mermaid, who the Old Fisherman says he saw but others say he couldn’t have seen, Granma Maria’s tales in Kimbundu, of which we never understood a word, not even today, because at school they never taught us to speak or write Kimbundu, tales told by the Comrade Gas Jockey when he drank and talked too much, tales told by Senhor Tuarles, who spoke little but also had charming tales about the old days, tales of Granma Catarina, who opened and closed windows; and lots of people go around saying that we, the children, are talking hogwash, that she no longer lives in the house of my Granma Nhé, who we now call Granma Nineteen: tales of Bishop’s Beach in the time of the tugas, with less dust than now, and it seems that people talked differently but also, after all, the country was under occupation and lacking any real independence, and, beyond that, so that you won’t say that I forgot about them, all of the tales that Granma Nineteen tells me; so many of them, with so many names, so many people and clothing styles, with dances and pianos and Fado music and trips and love affairs, with chats and thoughts and tenderness, and the silent pauses that are part of the tales that she tells me after lunch—and all that, at times, so often, I don’t know why, makes the elders think that we’re not going to remember everything, one day when we look back and think about our dusty Bishop’s Beach.

  “Be ready.” 3.14 spoke gently, with his eyes nearly moist, and it wasn’t from the dust. “From this time onwards you’re going to have to lie when they ask you if we were the people who dexploded the Mausoleum construction site.”

  The wind made a cute sound as it passed in a flying curve through the trees of Granma Nineteen’s yard: the old fig tree, the guava tree, the mango tree, the cherimoya tree, the bushes, the papaya tree, the red Brazilian cherry tree.

  “I
know, Pi, I know.”

  After lunch Comrade Gudafterov arrived, drenched in sweat and reeking of body odour. He didn’t know it, but Granma Nineteen preferred him to visit at night, after 6pm, when he had taken his bath and washed his armpits, because if there’s one way to know that Comrade Gudafterov is near, that way is called Soviet Body Odour. Or simply “b.o.-dorov,” as Comrade 3.14 used to say.

  “Kildren, you just play? Look at marvellous construction of Mausoleum. Very pretty, like big rocket, very pretty!”

  “You’re gonna see that big rocket take off,” 3.14 said. His teeth were jammed tight together, but I understood him.

  “Gudafterov no understand.”

  “Just wait, Goofofferov, you’re gonna understand.”

  “Kildren, Granma Nhéte come back good?”

  “Yeah, she came back.”

  “Gudafterov want greet her.”

  3.14 jumped off the wall from above the bushes, almost crippling himself. He burst out laughing and I knew he was going to say something.

  “Gudafterov! Go wash your armpitovs! Hahaha!”

  “Granma Nhéte is wake up?”

  “Has she woken up?”

  “Yes, woken up.”

  “I don’t know, Comrade Gudafterov. You’d better go ask the elders.”

  “Gudafteroooov!” 3.14 shouted, making a megaphone of his hands. Sea Foam laughed so hard he rolled around on the sand; the Comrade Gas Jockey was guffawing. “Gudafterooov, we don’t like b.o.-dorov! Go wash your armpitovs!”

  The sun warmed my face and my laughter and the things and the names and the houses, and all the people of Bishop’s Beach refused to leave my imagination. As hard as I tried to stop them, a slew of voices spoke at once: some laughed, others cried, the children made noise as they ran around, Sea Foam took flight holding aloft a sheet of newsprint, the Old Fisherman appeared with Rainboat repainted a bright new shade of blue, and from Granma Nineteen’s house to the sea was a heap of sand that had never known the cement of the Mausoleum construction site.