by Ondjaki
Foam was getting closer and closer to us, trying not to make a sound.
“Son, hand in this missive to that granma of yours who has fewer digits than other granmas.”
I thought he was joking or spouting nonsense, but he actually had a letter in his hand, and he was pointing it at me.
“Who, me?”
“The granma is yours and the letter is hers. Here, compañero, we do not make errores.”
Furtively, he handed me the letter, as though it were a secret.
“Are you writing letters to my granma, Foam?”
We were all staring straight ahead, as though we, too, were in formation, and we spoke in very low voices out of fear of being caught by the soldiers with AK-47s.
“I don’t write any more. ¡Yo hablo!” he said in a loud voice. “The letter is from a certain Bilhardov, also known on Bishop’s Beach and the surrounding areas, as Comrade Armpitov. I have spoken!”
The very sweaty soldiers in the formation moved back a short distance, at an almost marching step, and let the Boss General pass. He went to speak with the Old Fisherman. We almost couldn’t hear them.
“Comrades, beach close for temporary, orders of Comrade President: Workers must finish Muzzleum verk. Your collaboration, please.”
“Lots of people work here every day, Comrade General. We need to go out on the sea. Some people still live on the other side of the beach.”
“Comrade President resolve all problem. Today beach close. Reasons of security. Muzzleum almost finish. Need make verk beach zone. Nobody hurt. Comrade President promise. Population must collaborate. Last varning: tomorrow nobody on beach, soldiers close everything fast! Gudafter-noon, Comrades!”
He didn’t go on trying to speak. Gudafterov went to open the main gate and the jeep entered the Mausoleum construction site. The soldiers in the jeep stayed at the gate to guard the entrance, and they ordered everyone to go away without putting up any more resistance.
“Time to come home, children,” Granma Nineteen said from the veranda. “It’s lunchtime and I don’t want you over there around those guns.”
Everybody cleared out. Senhor Tuarles, drenched in sweat, came over to say that the best thing would be for them to drink a few beers to freshen up and think up better ideas. Sea Foam ran into his house, the Comrade Gas Jockey leaned back his chair and set his hat at an angle that allowed his eyes to grow sleepy.
“After lunch you come here and tell the whole conversation,” Dona Libânia said. “You can eat slices of a banana cake that was left over from the party, but don’t tell anybody.”
“Sure, Dona Libânia.” 3.14 had a sweet tooth.
“Listen, Pi, do you think they’re gonna find the dynamite we put there?”
“No way. He’s just going there to bawl people out. He’s gonna find the soldiers drunk, he’s gonna give a couple of them a smack to make an example of them. You think the General’s not hungry? He must want to have lunch, too.”
“Let’s hope.”
“Hey, when you finish eating let’s meet out front here again. There could be more surprises.”
“I hope not.”
“Don’t forget to give the letter to your granma. Then you can tell me what’s in it. Imagine the mistakes in Armpitov’s writing!”
“Sure thing.”
I went to the bathroom to wash my hands, take off my shirt and wash my armpits, and wash my face with that soap that came with little crumbs trapped inside it, I don’t know why. It was very hot and the letter fell out of my waist where I had it hidden. I opened the letter. It was two pages long, written in a handwriting that was difficult to read. It seemed to have been written in haste; it was impossible to understand anything. But it was from him: it even had his signature—Bilhardov—at the end.
I stood still for a moment thinking. Words, the words that one person sometimes says to another person, at times they’re words that a person speaks without thinking, especially when they’re arguing, they just come out like that; at other times they’re words that a person spends a long time preparing, because they mean something to the other person, and can be said only with well-prepared words, and it’s not even always good to prepare words too much; at times talking at random or really fast summons up words that have more truth or force of conviction. That two-page letter, with words written in haste, yet thought out with a view to being read by my Granma Nineteen—what words would those be? Why had Gudafterov written such a long letter to my granma? Maybe he was coming by again with his conversation about the beauty of “snov,” and the forests and hearths of his cold country in the far-away; maybe he had even succeeded in writing a beautiful letter and—I had already seen this in the movies—women of any age like beautiful letters that make them cry.
I crumpled the letter, tore it into little pieces and dropped it in the toilet to flush away Comrade Gudafterov’s words.
“Go write letters to your own darn wife there in the far-away.” I grabbed the water bucket and poured the whole thing into the toilet so that no paper remained.
“What’s the hold-up? Come to the table,” Granma called.
“Sorry, Granma, I was washing my face. It’s really hot.”
“Come and sit down. And I don’t want to see any elbows on the table.”
During lunch I saw the Boss General’s jeep pass by the window really fast, with the soldiers aiming their AK-47s at the sky. It made me nervous, and I wondered if they’d found the dynamite buried at the cardinal points 3.14 invented. Some day I’m going to ask André the commando if they also have that code of cardinal points in war zones, because I figured it was an awesome idea of Pi’s—unless he had seen it in a movie and not told me about it.
“Granma, can I go play?”
“Right after eating, with this sun on your head? Perish the thought. We’re going to take a siesta.”
It was better not to argue. Insisting too much might put Granma in a bad mood, and then she might send me to lie down for the whole afternoon. I needed not to get angry at her in order to be free later in the afternoon, or even at night, whatever turned out to be the time to grab the “hod drink.”
“Can I go to Granma Catarina’s room?”
“No. You’re going to lie down in my bed.”
“All right, Granma.”
“If you fall asleep, I’ll wake you later. Today Doctor Rafael is coming here. You can help me understand what he says.”
“Late in the afternoon, Granma?”
“I think so, I’m not sure.”
“But I’ve already agreed to go play with 3.14 then.”
“You can play later. I’ll let you go out afterwards.”
Granma must have been tired, or sleepy from the pills she was taking for the pain: she soon fell asleep next to me. I heard a few whistles from downstairs but I was unable to open the window, because it might have woken Granma up.
I rolled over very gently and entered Granma Catarina’s room. She was rocking in her chair.
“Granma, just let me open the window a moment.”
“Open it, son. It’s all the same to me.”
Down below, 3.14, drenched in sweat by the midday sun—I don’t even want to imagine the smell of his b.o.-dorov— was calling out to me to come downstairs. In his hand he had a letter identical to the one I had drowned in the bathroom. Annoyed, I went downstairs.
“Where are you going? Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping? I’m going to tell on you,” Madalena said, and started up the stairs.
“Listen carefully, Madalena: if you tell Granma that I went out, I swear I’m going to tell her about all the times I saw you smooching with a Soviet soldier, and also with another Angolan soldier, and I’m also going to tell about the time on Saturday night when I saw you come in at close to two in the morning, when even the clock in the living room was striking the hour, and you wer
e wearing that miniskirt that Granma already forbid you to wear because it’s so short, and I’m going to tell her about the baths you take in the white foam of the sea with that boy, even when the water is cold or full of jellyfish. Do you hear me?”
Madalena’s face was so fearful that it looked as if she was going to faint. She stood still, looking at me, and only later said: “I’m sorry. You can go. I was just joking.”
3.14 was waiting for me, half-concealed, amidst the trees.
“Listen to this: it looks like Gudafterov mined the beach with letters for your granma.” He laughed.
“I don’t find that funny at all.”
“What did the other letter say?”
“I don’t know. It was unreadable. I threw it away.”
“It was your Aunt Adelaide who gave me this one. She said that Gudafterov left it with her to hand in to your granma.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“If you want, I can try to read it.”
“Open it quickly. I escaped from bed. My granma’s sleeping.”
We tore open the envelope and the letter resembled the other one, but the handwriting was more difficult and it was impossible to understand anything. It started with Deer Komrad Frend Dona Nhéte, and after that you could hardly make out anything.
“Look at this. He wrote the word ‘explosion.’”
“Are you sure?”
“Don’t you see it then? It’s written ‘explozhun,’ which must be ‘explosion’ in Russian.”
“But my granma doesn’t understand Russian.”
“You ain’t gettin’ it; it must be a tattletale letter. He must be telling on us about the dynamite.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“If you want, we’ll burn the letter right now. I brought matches.”
“Sure. You burn it. I’m going back to the room.”
“What? And are you coming back?”
“I can only do it late in the afternoon. We’re waiting for Rafael KnockKnock’s visit.”
“Okay.”
Granma Nineteen was sleeping when I returned to the room, and it must have been a deep sleep because she was snoring rather loudly.
I didn’t find Granma Catarina in the room, nor was she in the bathroom, and Madalena Kamussekele hadn’t seen her either. An almost oppressive sadness swamped my chest, and that’s not just blather; it was right in the chest that I got a strange feeling. I went to bed but was unable to fall asleep.
I got up again and went to Granma Catarina’s room. Everything was tidied up, the black shawl folded on the bed next to the pillow, on the bedside table were photos of all of the grandchildren and a thread, black also, was attached to a freshly polished silver crucifix. The mirror, too, was cleaner than on other days, and the window was closed and locked. There was no smell of any sort to indicate that someone had been there a short time before. It seemed like a lie, or a disappearance in the movies.
“Granma Catarina?” The words issued from my lips very gently, but there was no reply.
Never again was there a reply. Never again did Granma Catarina appear. She didn’t say goodbye to me, nor did she warn me that she couldn’t speak with me any longer, not even in secret without my telling anyone. It must be because Granma Catarina really didn’t like farewells. She always used to say: “You see, in the old days people were people who arrived. We didn’t know how to take our farewell.”
I sat down on the bed. I don’t like farewells at all, either, Granma Catarina, I thought, and in the big mirror, I saw myself seated there. I started to dredge up memories of moments or conversations with Granma Catarina in order to see whether at some point she would come into the room—but there was nothing.
“Do you know things about the future, Granma Catarina?” I asked her one day when she sat down next to me at the breakfast table.
“The future is full of difficult things that happen in a different way each time. I prefer to divine the past.”
She didn’t like to speak to a lot of people in those last years and not even Granma Nineteen liked it very much when the children said they had been with Granma Catarina at either breakfast time, or at any other.
“But why? Granma Catarina always talks with us. Why can’t we tell anyone about it? Why?”
“Because you can’t.”
It was a response children heard often. “You can’t go play because”; or, if it was a little later, and darker out, “because I say so.” Going to the beach when the sea was rough, skipping class when you didn’t feel like going to school in the morning, didn’t want to get a vaccination, didn’t want to go to the dentist, playing in the dusty square when the water truck was damping down the earth, standing beneath the rain with mouth and arms open when it rained hard, wearing red blouses if it was thundering, having fun with crazy Sea Foam, asking Dona Libânia why she wasn’t married, asking Senhor Tuarles why his other daughters didn’t wear glasses so that they could see the soap operas properly, eating green mangoes with salt, staying in bed until noon, it was all not allowed “because you can’t.” But there must be a reason for these things and the elders could at least do us the favour of telling us instead of keeping this secret to themselves.
“Hey, ¿hay alguien aquí?”
I heard the voice of the Comrade Doctor Rafael KnockKnock come up the stairs to find me seated in Granma Catarina’s dark, empty room, without Granma Catarina there to talk to me. To tell the truth, it’s not your voice that I wanted to hear, I thought, and I went downstairs.
“¿Cómo estás, compañero? I’m here to see your abuela. How is she?”
“She’s sleeping like a log.”
“Like a log?”
“That’s when a person is sleeping so that it’s really hard to wake them up.”
“Can you call your abuela?”
“It’s still early, Doctor. She likes to sleep for a bit at this time and I can’t disturb the dreams she must be dreaming.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Could you wait a moment?”
“Yes. Why not?”
We went out onto the veranda. At that hour there was already a shadow close to the wall.
“Look, you know all this is going to desaparecer, no?”
“The Mausoleum? Yeah, it looks like it’s going.”
“No, no. Bishop’s Beach—the houses, todo. I’ve seen los planes. The fallout will be very beautiful.”
“Falling out, falling over...”
“¿Cómo?”
“Of course, compañero... Of course.”
“What are you saying?”
“I wanted to ask you one more question.”
“Go ahead.”
“Can somebody do something a little bit bad so that they can do something good later?”
“Bueno... I think so, sí.”
“And if the person were a child, could they still do it?”
“Listen, compañero.” Doctor Rafael laid his hand on my shoulder. I thought he was going to start making his “KnockKnock” jokes, but that wasn’t it. “There are things that one has to do that others will never understand. This happens. They are secretos that only your heart can understand.”
“‘Secretos’ are secrets?”
“Yes.”
“I like the word ‘secrets.’ It’s like something mysterious that lots of things fit inside.”
“Me gusta your way of thinking. Maybe you will become a poeta.”
“I don’t want to, thanks. I heard that poets end up going crazy.”
“No, it’s not true. Los poetas are mad, but it is another type of madness. Do not worry...Do you think it is time to wake up your abuela?”
“Yes, I’m going to call her. Sorry, I even forgot to ask if you want something to drink, comrade?”
“Sí. What do you have?”
; “A good glass of water, not chilled because we don’t have electricity.”
“That would be good, gracias.”
While Madalena brought him the tepid water, I went to wake up Granma Nineteen.
“Granma, Comrade KnockKnock is here.”
“He’s here already? I have to brush my hair. Tell him I’ll be down in a minute.”
While Granma was distracted in the living room, with the doctor examining her lesion, I went outside to see if anything was happening in the square.
The Comrade Gas Jockey, Foam and Comrade Dimitry were arguing with each other with worried faces around the gas pump.
“You don’t even know the rumours that are being spread.” 3.14 came out of the bushes.
“You frightened me.”
“Comrade Gudafterov has disappeared. Everybody’s at the construction site lookin’ for him. I mean, Comrade Dimitry’s lookin’ for him. The soldiers are all drunk and some of them have already gone home.”
“How did he disappear?”
“I don’t know, maybe he drowned.”
“Drowned? What kind of tale’s that?”
“I don’t think the blue lobsters know how to swim. How is it that they stand here every day sweating in that uniform, right next to the sea, looking at the bright blue water, and they never feel like jumping in? It must be that they don’t know how to swim.”
“It can’t be that. You may not know how to swim, but you can still jump into the foam, like Foam does.”
“But they’d be ashamed that we’d give them a hard time for the rest of their lives.”
“No...I figure this tale about Gudafterov has to do with the letters.”
“Hey, you must be right.”
“We’re gonna try to read it again.”
“Read it again? Only if you can read ashes. I burnt the letter.”
“It’s better if we don’t say anything to anybody. There might have been something important in the letter.”
The afternoon didn’t want to end. No sooner did the sun approach the sea so that blackness could come and we could carry out our mission, than I began to feel nervous about it, and about the strange things that were happening on Bishop’s Beach. Granma Catarina wasn’t there any more, Gudafterov had disappeared, and Doctor Rafael had confirmed all of the plans about making the houses of our Bishop’s Beach disappear.
