by Ondjaki
I “proceeded with the mission,” as Comrade 3.14 would have said, and arrived at the third cardinal point with the path well doused with whisky. From there, looking through narrowed eyes, I could see the sea in a calm, windless darkness. The sea is always so big and beautiful at any hour of the day, becalmed or with waves that drive boats across it, green in the sunlight or burning blue in imitation of the blues in the sky in the daytime.
I had to cut short these thoughts, which could have delayed me even more. When I had puddled the whisky around the fourth cardinal point, which in reality was only half of the eight dynamite-primed holes, I was gripped by the fear of failing in my mission, almost to the point of tears: the whisky had run out.
I started running again, almost without hunching over, and found 3.14 lying on the ground, very calm, with a little matchstick in his mouth that looked like Lucky Luke’s cigarette when he’s about to draw his gun faster than his own shadow. I lay down alongside him so that we could pretend that we were in the combat trenches.
“I’m startin’ to see that it’s even better if you do the other four points. You’re awesome at seein’ in the dark.”
“Lower your voice, Pi,” I interrupted. “We don’t have enough whisky and the watchman in the tower just woke up.”
“The whisky’s finished?” He became serious.
“The whisky was done in no time because those concrete grooves are enormous.”
“How far did it last?”
“Up to the fourth point. We’ve still got to do all of the other side.”
“Only if Charlita provisions us with more fuel.”
“Provisions, provisions...This is a fine time for you to break out your military Portuguese. We don’t have time.”
“You’re right.” He paused in a strange way. “You ready?”
“For what?”
“It has to be now. If we retreat, the whisky evaporates. And we don’t have another hour to come back here. They must already be looking for us for dinner.”
“Now? How?”
“I also brought this little flask of alcohol. It’s our fallback measure. We go as far as the alcohol lasts, then we ignite it.”
“And we take off running...”
“You got it.”
My hands trembled. 3.14’s did, too, as he picked up the flask of alcohol as if sliding a bullet into the chamber of Senhor Tuarles’s AK-47 and placing a dead-eye shot into a huge load of dynamite.
Far out on the beach a tiny light flickered and went out. Maybe it was the Old Fisherman lighting his pipe or starting a bonfire on the seashore. A thought, after all, is like that quick light and does not linger long.
“Let’s get igniting, Comrade.”
We doused the first cardinal point with alcohol and traced a line that passed under the metal fence as far as an enormous tree. There we lay down in the trench of the tree’s roots.
“The watchman in the tower is standing up, Pi.”
“I’m going to light it, then we run. By the time he sees the fire, we’re outa here.”
“Light it!”
The first match produced a flame that illuminated the area around us and I saw the beautiful patterns on the old skin of that tree. Before the flame could light the alcohol, the match went out. 3.14 lit the second match closer and touched it to the alcohol. But nothing caught.
“You see, it’s counterfeit alcohol.”
“That doesn’t exist.”
“It does too exist. They even counterfeit that Monte Rio wine.”
“Just light it quickly before the alcohol evaporates.”
The third match caught fast and strong. It wasn’t necessary to say anything: we took off running. We let everything go and looked like Foam running flat-out, but we tried to follow up with our eyes on the racing twists and turns made by the fire. It burst out of the trench of roots, made a turn, passed beneath the wire mesh, made another turn close to the watchtower, hit a straightaway and accelerated. We accelerated as well and came flying into Dona Libânia’s yard, driven by our fear of the explosion because, in the end, we didn’t know how much dynamite we had put there. We hunched over, waiting for the noise—but the fire burned itself out just past the tower.
Our mouths open in disbelief, feeling like crying again, we saw the fire suddenly fizzle without exploding eight cardinal points and a bottle of Senhor Tuarles’s whisky.
“Son of a whorovsky,” 3.14 said, and I thought he was complaining to the fire. “Couldn’t he have pissed somewhere else?”
The watchman, up above, was pissing a river on the groove of our fire, even a little bit in front of the point where the alcohol was about to meet the whisky. We saw his posture up there with his legs spread, pissing on our explosion plan.
“Soviet tupariov,” I said, just to say something and not feel like crying.
We couldn’t say a word.
The two of us watched the guard return to his post in the tower, sit down and cross his arms to sleep. He hadn’t even seen the fire.
“What’s that?” A woman’s voice filled us with supernatural fear. “Look over there!”
It was Dona Libânia, bent over behind us to point in the opposite direction, at a cardinal point that was after south and before west.
A whitish smoke was pouring out of the storage shed, where we had seen the birds and the dynamite; an enormous light that was not an explosion ignited itself like a big searchlight that hugged the ground as if trying to light up birds that fly at night.
“I don’t know that thing’s name,” I said, looking, “but I’ve seen it in the movies.”
“It’s that light you put on when you’re lost or you want the helicopter to find you.”
Another enormous light, but green this time, came on and started to slide along on its own, at high speed; we saw only the green stain casting shadows in the area around the storage shed as it headed towards the wire mesh fence on the side that faced the sea.
That was where the first concentrated noise of a chain explosion like one hundred grenades in a bag blowing up at the same time took place. The green light accelerated more quickly. Dona Libânia said in a very low voice: “Oh, my God.” I figure she didn’t even have time to say “God.” Another powerful explosion burst forth and shook the earth, the guard in the watchtower must have woken up, and we saw something that made us smile even in the midst of our fear of the warzone noises: with the dark sea behind, the fast-moving stain was a crazy pattern that not even the person who designed the Pink Panther could have made as beautiful, the dark stain of a body with a green light spewing smoke from its hand, one thousand tangled ropes lashed to that body that raced like a one-hundred-metre hurdler, one thousand ropes with imprisoned birds, seven or eight bird-cages tied to its waist, jumping like buoyant balloons, imprisoned birds at his ankles crying out that they didn’t want that forced ride of high-speed hopping and skipping across the water and the white surf of the dark sea; in his other arm more tangled ropes of parrots and I don’t know what-all other birds, even hens, all a pattern of brilliant green light and the bottom of the sea telling us—now no one could doubt it—that the stain running with bird-cages as it rode over the sea as though it were solid earth, that stain was the body of Sea Foam, laughing at having come down the beach so quickly with creatures hanging from his body as he unachieved the take-off of true-flown flight.
A few terrified voices had already begun to be heard in the distance and, far away from the storage shed, almost as he crossed the garbage dump, Foam had started to slow down, leaping higher. Dona Libânia hugged us again because the explosion was very loud, as though in imitation of a cannon. “Cardinal point south!” 3.14 shouted with a nervous laugh, looking at me, then looking straight ahead. Yes, it could only be the south. A strong light invaded the sky, turning as yellow as fire, and the ground shook; we saw blazes break out in the area around
the storage shed, heard the noise of exploding bullets like popcorn forgotten in boiling oil. Dona Libânia trembled. A beautiful fire made a perfect circle around the Mausoleum; the guard from the tower dropped his weapon and fled down the alley behind commando André’s house, another very strong outburst that felt like two outbursts hurled cement into the air and made the Mausoleum tremble. “Northwest!” I shouted. The air began to fill with fine dust and the blazes roared higher as though trying to lick the very tip of the rocket; there was fire even on the side where we had not put any whisky, a beautiful symmetrical fire almost drawn with a set of school compasses, and then an even stronger explosion made all of Bishop’s Beach tremble. Even those who didn’t want to had to come out onto their verandas or onto the street to spy out whether this was, in fact, war, or a mere surprise of colours in the sky about which someone had forgotten to warn the population during the news broadcast on National Radio of Angola. The Mausoleum lighted up all at once, with the brilliant sounds of the dynamite that we had codified with our very cardinal points: huge noises on all sides with lights that seemed to accompany them, and now it wasn’t only that yellow fire that can be sparked by bullets or explosives: a mixed light of various colours grew in the middle of the dazzling disorder, with small and large explosions, which did not frighten us as much as before. It was even more beautiful to watch the reflection of the darkness igniting in the sea, which, even though dark, now had on its hide some lights that imitated the strong tones of watercolours, when Sea Foam’s green light went out, leaving him standing in the garbage dump almost still and dragged in all directions by the birds, with him laughing out loud, turned into a scarecrow from the fields which in the end became a clown who was everyone’s friend and didn’t want to frighten anyone.
3.14 released my sweating hand. We had spent the whole time kneeling, concentrating on simultaneously feeling the fear created by the enormous explosion and all the colours entering our open eyes and mouths. Even today I don’t know how to explain the fact that we didn’t even speak about how our hearts had beaten so fast when we stood up on aching legs, both of us with tears in our moist eyes as we saw, dexploded at night in that way, our beloved Bishop’s Beach covered with an ashen dust from the luminous explosion that had finally occurred.
A big explosion awoke other birds in the trees and the fish in the sea. We saw colours from a carnival of fire: yellows, reds pretending to be the colour of oranges in a green that was bluish without being aquamarine, all shining as they imitated stars that knew how to dance in a sky that was no longer dark from being so brightly lit up with our explosion, so beautiful from lingering in the noises and the pretty colours that our eyes looked upon, never to be forgotten in the passage of time—not for our whole lives.
The sky stayed lit up from other explosions almost without sound, a madness of brilliantly coloured patterns that I had never seen in the movies when the cowboys blew up mountains with more dynamite than we had used.
“Maybe there were other materials in the top of the cabinet.” 3.14 spoke in a very low voice. “It’s possible the other Soviet boxes had other things that shouldn’t be mixed with fire.”
“Shouldn’t be?” I smiled. “Of course they should be. Just look at how beautiful our sea is when it’s all aglow!”
Everyone looked at the lighted sky of Bishop’s Beach, that sky that gazed down at people who were still coming running from other streets to get to the square and have more space and more darkness to watch the ceiling of the city of Luanda.
People who had gone away came back. The Comrade Gas Jockey came running. From far off, he must have thought that the light of the explosion was one of his gas pumps, that someone had set down a lighted cigarette, or even that the Soviet dynamiting had already started. Others, elders, came to see up close, because from a distance they had thought that it was a fireworks show to commemorate some political date that they had forgotten about, or even something related to the Mausoleum itself; still others had said that the explosions could only be by order of the Comrade President, because fireworks shows that big and beautiful had never been seen in Luanda and had to be authorized by the political bureau of the Party.
Many adults arrived; even people from other neighbourhoods began to come down the long street from the Blue District.
During all this time, Granma Nineteen had stayed on her veranda. Then I saw her talking to Doctor Rafael KnockKnock, and her face took on a worried expression. Maybe Madalena had told her that we had gone out a long time ago.
I looked up at all of the windows of Granma Nineteen’s house, even at the window of Granma Catarina’s room: they were all shut to keep the dust out of the house. From five o’clock in the afternoon onwards, we were no longer allowed to open the windows, nor to leave the veranda door wide open. Only after the truck that damped down the dust had gone by, and if no mosquitoes had come in from the bushes, did Granma allow us to open the door a crack so that a cool breeze came in. But I figure Granma Catarina wasn’t there.
All of the children of Bishop’s Beach who had kites to fly began to arrive, as did the children from the Blue District and from Kinanga and from over by those thatched huts that were built right up against the sea. They all understood that the breath of wind was quickly going to increase in velocity, and that it was a beautiful night to set coloured kites flying where there were still reflections of the light of the fire in the sea, so close and so colourful.
In the midst of the chaos, Sea Foam became more excited. A chaos of people left Foam with a troubled look, and he fled away from the mob, just when we wanted to go and speak to him to know what he had seen from the other side of the storage shed, from which he had emerged with the parrots and other birds tied to his body. But he started to run again, disappearing down the other end of the beach, hauling everything, fowl and hens, cages and little birds, dragging, also, the chirping noises of all those beings which, imprisoned in their cages as they were by being attached to his body, must be dreaming of the moment when they would be able to fly home.
“He must be going to release the birds.”
“I never thought there were so many of them.”
“I never thought he’d come, too.” 3.14 looked in a different direction.
“Who?”
“The Boss General.”
He arrived in a different car, alone, coming down the hill very quickly and honking for people to get out of his way, stopped the car near the gas pump, got out with his tunic full of medals that shone almost like the tears in his eyes at his disbelief at the smoke and the ongoing noise of small explosions that greeted him.
“Cannot be...How explode like that?” He glanced at the people, who did not answer him. “Where is Comrade Dimitry, Comrade Bilhardov? What happen to Muzzleum?”
I saw glistening tears fall from his eyes. Maybe another general, more of a general than he, was going to bawl him out the next day or even that very night for not having had advance knowledge of the explosion of the Mausoleum on Bishop’s Beach.
“Kildren, every body can help. Must put out fire of Muzzleum.” Except that no one stirred. They just stood looking at him. “Must get water of sea. Put out fire of Muzzleum. Beautiful verk of Angolan people to remember President.” Now he spoke, now he shouted, as he cried like a child. “Every body get pail, put out fire, save verk of Muzzleum, so much verk of Soviet comrades...”
Many people didn’t even know who he was. They looked at him with pity, perhaps thinking that he was one of the diligent labourers who came early every day and left late, who ate the construction site’s dust and felt the sun’s heat on their heads, because some of them didn’t even have helmets: some, the Angolans, lived far away and left the site in the back of a big truck that possibly gave them a ride part of the way home; others, the Soviets, went to sleep full of sad nostalgia for their homeland in the far-away.
“Kildren.” He looked at us. “General want to ask qu
estion: who know Comrade Bilhardov? Does he hide in dog cage?”
I wasn’t going to reply. No one had spoken with him; but 3.14 couldn’t keep silent.
“Here in the street we only have parrot cages, Comrade Medalov.” 3.14 made the gang laugh.
“Attention, kildren!” The Boss General thought he was talking to his soldiers.
“Get lost, tupariooov, Russkie!”
We shouted in chorus and fled towards the sea, Pi, Charlita and I, in a sprint that imitated the birds. Even with our eyes closed, we still knew the way to the sodden sea.
But we didn’t see, in fact we never saw, what continued to occur there near the square. Each of us knows how to tell the story of every moment of that night, each conversation, because we spent many years putting together our versions of events and discovering things that only time brought to light, and in the end magic summoned the coming together of all of the people who had invented that explosion in Angolan colours at the Soviet construction site. We were still running towards the sea and not looking behind us. We didn’t know whether the Boss General was pursuing us nor whether Granma Nineteen wanted to call out to us because at last she had seen us, nor whether Granma Catarina was hiding behind the wooden shutters laughing at that night. We didn’t count how many parrots flew through the sky without colliding or losing altitude. We didn’t hear the noise of the birds that Foam released one by one, cutting their ropes and reciting verses of Cuban poems to give the birds strength, and frightening them with his loud voice, which at times is a way of telling a bird that fear is being close to humans, that they must fly far away to a home far away from the cities and the wars and the children’s pellet guns and the Soviets’ cages.
