by Ondjaki
“You figure they got grenades in here?”
“I don’t know. They say Soviets are crazy about keeping grenades under their pillows.”
“You’re always making stuff up.”
“I’m not making it up; they do that in war zones. That way when they run out of bullets they can still throw a grenade that kills at least five people.”
“Five? I think you’re exaggerating.”
“It doesn’t matter, don’t move. We’re just gonna wait for the birds to quiet down and make sure the watchman in the tower hasn’t heard anything. Don’t you have matches with you?”
“You want me to light matches in a room full of dynamite?”
“Didn’t Senhor Tuarles say dynamite couldn’t be lit with a normal match?”
“Who’s saying my matches are normal? What if they’re abnormal, or ‘unexpected,’ as you say?”
“But do you have some or not?”
“Of course I don’t have any! I don’t walk around every morning with a box of matches in my pocket.”
“You could have got some. You knew the mission was going to take place at any moment.”
“We’d agreed it was going to happen at night.”
“But the world is full of surprises, Comrade, and we have to take advantage of them. So how are we going to see?”
“We’ll just wait a little.”
“What for?”
“We’ll just wait a little. Our eyes are going to get used to it, you’re going to start seeing in the darkness.”
“See in the darkness? I’ve never done that.”
“But you’re going to now. The darkness is like a joke: it’s over quickly.”
And soon it happened. He even gave a laugh of amazement. “You’re right.”
Of course it wasn’t seeing with the beautiful clarity of perceiving the differences between the pretty colours on the crests of those dumb birds that were all crammed in together, tons of them, in pretty cages that seemed to be made of a wicker-like material, perhaps to make them look like fishing baskets in the river that we had studied at school. The poor birds were crammed together, big ones mixed with small ones, the short-billed with the long-billed, some that seemed to fly a lot with others that only liked to fly a little. In the dim light it wasn’t even possible to tell which was which; all we could see with absolute certainty was that, in other cages, there were much bigger, much prettier parrots than Just Parrot and His Name.
The birds were such good friends to us that they all shut up and we stood listening to each other’s breathing and to the tiny noises that their claws made in the papers at the bottom of each cage.
“Poor little things, all alone here in the darkness.”
“The problem is, they can’t fly.”
“Look at the boxes.”
By luck, the dynamite was all on the two lower shelves, where we were able to get at it. If the boxes with their danger signs, with death’s-heads and fire symbols, had been higher up, they would have been more difficult to reach. The words were all in Russian, or even Soviet, I’m not sure which.
“Are you going to open it?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re not afraid?”
“Afraid of what?”
“That it’s booby-trapped?”
“Is a box of dynamite going to be booby-trapped? You’ve watched too many shoot-’em-up movies.”
It was just like in the movies: long, russet-coloured bars, with a little thread at the end where you lighted it.
“How many can you carry?”
“Let me see how much they weigh.”
They weren’t heavy and, in fact, were thinner than they looked.
“Four for each of them?”
“There are going to be eight holes. We can put two in each hole.”
“Okay.”
Each of us stuck four pieces of dynamite into his belt, and took two more in each hand. We peeked out before we left: the ruckus on the beach seemed to be even bigger. The watchman in the tower was asleep with his head resting on his crossed arms.
“What do we do now?”
“I’m going to explain it to you quickly. This is a circle, so you already know I’m going to do the four cardinal points. You do the others, even if you don’t know their names.”
“Okay.”
“Over there where there are those round holes for planting trees later, that’s where we put the dynamite. Dig, bury it, but leave the wick exposed.”
“Are we going to light the wicks now?”
“Now, with a pile of soldiers and police on the beach? Of course not; but be ready.”
“When you’re finished we’ll meet on Dona Libânia’s sidewalk.”
“Okay.”
“And nobody tells on anybody if we’re caught.”
“Agreed. Courage, Comrade!”
We took off running, each of us heading in the direction of the cardinal points of his mission. I rounded a corner, found the first hole. The sand was soft. I dug and saw that I had lingered too long because I was burying the two sticks of dynamite standing up, and that was a waste of time. At the second hole I had already decided to bury the bars lying down, like two people who lie close to each other in the cemetery, but here the sand was harder and digging bruised my fingers.
When I was on my way to the fourth hole—I think it was the point between south and west, maybe you could call it south of the west—in my sweaty-fingered rushing around the dynamite fell out of my hand and went rolling off on its own like a cat running away in fear. I heard voices at the gate. I hid, trying to see where the dynamite had stopped rolling. I heard footsteps on the other side of the wall and I started to shudder with fear. I was going to get caught and they were going to find the dynamite, too.
“Unexpected problems, Comrade?”
3.14’s voice had never hit me so clearly. He laughed as he looked at me, because he could see that I was terrified. He handed me the missing stick of dynamite.
“Are yours already done, Pi?”
“Yeah. The sand was really hard but I had the wire cutters to dig with. Let’s go place your last one.”
“Yeah, let’s go. There’s nobody here?”
“I don’t think so. All quiet. But we have to step on it, we still have to finish the most complicated part of the plan.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute. Hey, I buried mine lying down so I didn’t waste time.”
“Yeah, me too.”
With the wire cutters acting as a spade it went a lot faster, but the sand at the final point was still soft. 3.14 looked up from where we were standing, pressed right up against the central part of the Mausoleum. That peaked mountain of cement looked just like a rocket that was ready for lift-off.
“It’s a lot of cement.” 3.14 looked worried.
“Should we set more dynamite?”
“We don’t have time.”
He moved closer to the wall and looked inside through a window without a pane, which opened on pure darkness. Then he looked at his feet.
“This is what I was looking for. I knew I’d seen this trench.”
“What trench?”
Right around the Mausoleum was a kind of small groove, cut into the cement, as though it were a path made so that the ants wouldn’t have any doubts about where to go, or invent new paths with twists and turns, as they liked to do. It was a flaw in the cement, a sort of narrow mini passageway that had been laid out in an enormous circle that linked up those holes where we had placed the dynamite.
“You see? A great idea of those Soviets—they don’t even know how they’re helping us. It must be for irrigation, to allow the water to circulate.”
“So?”
“So the problem of our fuse is solved.”
“But we don’t have any wire to light dynamite to join up the cardinal points.”
“We don’t need wire. We just need ‘hod drink,’ as Gudafterov says.”
“I get it!”
“That’s all we’re lacking, Comrade. Then we make a fuse with the drink linking up with the hiding-place of our choice. And then we light it.”
“They do it with gasoline in the movies.”
“But ‘hod drink’ will do it, too. I saw a house get set on fire in a movie with half a bottle of whisky.”
“There aren’t any leftovers in granma’s house. Every last drop was drunk at the farewell party.”
“But I know of someone who can help us.”
“Who?”
“Comrade Charlita. It’s time for a change of venue.”
We ran again, slipping out through the hole in the fence, turned into the alley and only stopped when we reached Dona Libânia’s sidewalk.
“Are you playing, children?” Sometimes Dona Libânia was like Granma Catarina: she appeared without making noise.
“Yes, Dona Libânia.”
“Then you’ve already been to see what’s happening out there on the beach?” She was looking for information.
“We’ve just come from there. The Soviets are trying to forbid everybody from entering the beach. They say they have orders from some general to close the beach because of I don’t know what-all about the expansion of the construction site.”
“You heard that over there on the beach?”
“Yes, just now.”
“But the sand you have on your feet doesn’t come from the beach.”
“Goodbye, Dona Libânia. We’ve got to get going.”
We moved along a short distance and took the opportunity to sit down on Senhor Tuarles’s sidewalk to see if it was possible to speak to Charlita.
Dona Isabel sat on the veranda of their house, holding the AK-47 in her lap as though it were a baby. This happened a lot, I don’t know why; Senhor Tuarles never went looking for his AK-47, not even when he was in a rush. One night we were woken up by loud noises in the chicken coop. It seems that Granma Catarina had seen figures moving around in the yard and had phoned Senhor Tuarles to warn him and see if he could come and take a look at what was going on. Granma Nineteen saw everything from the window of her room: Senhor Tuarles came out in his boxer shorts as far as the wall of his house—I figure it must have been about two in the morning—and peered into Granma Nineteen’s yard. Then he whirled around and said in a loud voice that was heard by all: “Isabel, go upstairs and get the AK-47.”
When he went to beat the shit out of the priest, I think the same thing happened: he went on foot as far as the church, he was nervous the whole way there, warning everybody that he was going to kill the priest because he had “done it” with the little girls of Bishop’s Beach. Dona Isabel walked behind him, pleading with him to calm down, but only once they were close to the Kinanga Cinema did he remember to say: “Isabel, go get the AK-47.”
I figure that memories are invisible restless tinglings that stay inside people. When I remember that stuff I start to laugh to myself until 3.14 asks me if I’m crazy to laugh alone like that.
“I’m just remembering stuff.”
“But you’re not an elder yet; you can’t have much to remember.”
“They’ve already told me lots of things about the old days. I’m laughing at old things, Pi.”
“Old things aren’t very funny.”
“It depends, Pi. It depends.”
There was Dona Isabel with the AK-47 in her lap waiting, because at any moment Senhor Tuarles might make a sign for her to bring it to him. These were the things that 3.14 didn’t understand, but that made me laugh: after handing over the AK-47 to Senhor Tuarles, what Dona Isabel had to do, which was what Senhor Tuarles wanted Dona Isabel to do, was to stand there for a long time begging him not to use the AK-47, nor to threaten anyone, nor even to put a bullet in the magazine. And Senhor Tuarles always did the same thing, uttering the same sentence: “It’s all right, Isabel. You can put the AK-47 away.”
As Senhor Tuarles remained far away, getting worked up by the arguments and not making any sign, Dona Isabel went upstairs to put away the AK-47. We heard a feeble whistle coming from the old chicken coop. Charlita was calling us.
“Charlita, we’ve come to talk to you.”
“If my dad catches you...”
“It’s a last favour. The mission’s moving forward.”
“I don’t want to know about it.”
“Please, you don’t need to talk to us anymore. Just get a bottle of hot drink and leave it here on the wall. We’ll grab it from Granma Nineteen’s house.”
“Hot drink?”
“Yes, some drink like whisky or whatever.”
“How am I gonna know?”
“Open it and smell it. The strongest one is the one you want.”
“It can’t be rubbing alcohol?”
“I don’t think so because it’ll disappear before we set it alight.”
“What are you guys gonna set alight?”
“You said you didn’t want to know about it.”
“All right.” Her face grew pensive. “After nine o’clock I’ll leave it on the wall.”
“Okay. Affirmative.”
We heard voices singing really out-of-tune songs in Soviet which, even without understanding the lyrics, gave you a headache just to listen to them. We went to Granma Nineteen’s veranda, climbed up onto the wall and saw the drunken soldiers singing and drinking even more.
“That’s a really good sign. Let them keep on drinking.”
“I’m thinkin’ about something, 3.14.”
“Don’t start with your tales.”
“It’s not that. But we can’t blow everything up with people inside.”
“Listen, Comrade, it sounds like you ain’t understanding this business clearly. Today they’re going to close the beach, tomorrow they may start telling people to pack their bags, and the day after tomorrow, thanks to that dynamite you saw today, you may be imprisoned in that bathroom of your granma’s where you all hide from the lightning during thunderstorms.” 3.14 was speaking in a low voice, very close to my face. “Today those tupariovs are all drunk and nobody’s going to sleep at the construction site, and if somebody does spend the night there, well, too bad.”
“What do you mean, too bad? Are you crazy? If somebody dies we’re going straight to a war zone in a plane that’ll take us away in the middle of the night without waiting for morning.”
“Jeeze, will you stop that! Nobody knows anything and nobody sleeps at the construction site.”
“And what if the body of the Comrade President is there?”
“You really think so? They’re only going to bring the body on the day of the inauguration. They’re not gonna leave an embalmed corpse to sleep in that darkness with all the dust from the construction.”
“And all the birds?”
“The birds—too bad! They may just take off.”
“How? Poor little things.”
“Maybe the cages’ll burst open and they’ll be able to fly away.”
“It’s not worth it, 3.14. You know very well that’s not gonna happen. They’re locked into those tight little cages and they’re gonna die, either in the explosion or from inhaling the fumes of the fire.”
“You’re not gettin’ it, Comrade. This mission’s no joke. If it doesn’t happen today, when they’re all hammered, they’ll find the dynamite that we buried. They’re gonna see that the boxes are open, and they’re gonna put watchmen on the site. It has to be today!”
“And if Charlita doesn’t get the ‘hod drink’?”
“We’re gonna have to light the fuses.”
“There isn’t enough time.”
“Yes, the
re is. I looked at the wicks: they’re short. We’ll just light four of them. I take north and west, you take south and east.”
“There isn’t enough time, 3.14.” I felt really sad and frightened. “We’ll die from being dexploded. They won’t even be able to find our bodies to bury us.”
“Shut your trap. Listen carefully: there’s enough time, we just don’t run away in the direction of the houses. That’s what there’s not time for.”
“So?”
“We light the fuses and we run and dive into the sea. It’s the closest exit, and we stay under the foam so that the flames don’t get us.”
“Sure. Maybe Charlita will get the booze.”
“Let’s hope so.”
Events just kept happening. For me, it was too many things all in the same day.
A very polished jeep arrived at very high speed at the edge of the beach, circled around the square, then braked suddenly. Soldiers jumped out with AK-47s in their hands and did what in the movies is called “covering their positions.” It looked like a war zone.
The Russian soldiers, even in the midst of the chaos, stopped their arguments and they all stood at attention in a line. They looked like they were in the schoolyard and would start singing the national anthem at any moment. I laughed again.
“What you laughin’ about now?”
“I’m thinking what it would be like if somebody ordered those soldiers to sing our national anthem...Just imagine the accent and the lyrics they’d use!”
“Sure, it’d be pretty funny.”
Judging by the difference in his uniform and his walk, this must be the Boss General that Gudafterov was always talking about. The Soviet workers, including Dimitry and Gudafterov, saluted and took up positions at the back of the formation. As for the Angolans, they didn’t move.
“Go take a look, boys,” Dona Libânia shouted. “Otherwise, how are we going to know what’s going on?”
We set off running, trying to get close, but the soldiers with their AK-47s gave us terrifying looks. Sea Foam backed off too, and stood next to us and to the Comrade Gas Jockey.
“The highest rank of el poder has arrived.” Sea Foam saluted with his left hand to tease them.
The Boss General spoke in Russian in short, harshly expelled words that only the soldiers understood. Next he called on Comrade Gudafterov, who came forward with a tombstone face that was painful to see.
