Good Morning Comrades

by Ondjaki

  We were kind of bored with the news because it was always the same thing: first, news of the war, which was almost always the same, unless there had been some important battle or UNITA1 had blown up some pylons. That always got a laugh because everyone at the table was saying that the UNITA leader, Savimbi, was the “Robin Hood of the pylons.” Afterwards there was always a government minister, or someone from the political bureau, who said a few more things. Then came the intermission and the publicity for the FAPLAs.2 Oh yeah, that’s right, sometimes they talked about the situation in South Africa, where the African National Congress was. Anyway, these were names that you started to pick up over the years. Also, you could learn a lot because, for example, on the subject of the ANC, my father explained to us who Comrade Nelson Mandela was, and I found out that there was a country named South Africa where black people had to go to their houses when a bell rang at six o’clock in the evening, that they couldn’t ride the bus with other people who weren’t also black, and I was amazed when my father told me that this Comrade Nelson Mandela had been a prisoner for I don’t know how many years. That was how I came to understand that the South Africans were our enemies, and that the fact that we were fighting against the South Africans meant that we were fighting against “some” South Africans because for sure those black people who had a special bus just for them weren’t our enemies. Then, also, I saw that, in a country, the government’s one thing and the people are another.

  After the news, and these conversations, came the sports. But here, too, it was always Petro or D’Agosto who won; well, later Taag improved a little wee bit, they even beat another team 11 to 1 – poor saps! – and the next day Cláudio made fun of Murtala. I think Murtala even cried. At one-twenty, when my parents were drinking their coffee, they turned off the radio. The telephone rang and this time I was certain it was Aunt Dada.

  My father spoke with her first, making note of the flight and her arrival time. Then she spoke with each of us, first with my mother, then with my sister, and I saw that she was asking whether we wanted anything. My father motioned to me not to ask for anything big because I was always asking for too many coloured pencils, or notepads, and, on top of that, for a ton of chocolate. I had time to think and I saw that each person was asking for just one thing.

  “Are you well, my darling? . . .” Her voice was sweet, sweet.

  “Yeah, aunty . . . Look, when are you coming?”

  “I arrive tomorrow, didn’t you know?”

  “No, I didn’t know. . . . That’s great. So you want to ask me what I want, right?”

  “Yes, son, tell me.” She must have been really smiling.

  “Well, since I can only ask for one thing. . . .” I turned around and nobody heard what I asked for.

  After lunch the “lucky devils” – as my mother said – went to take a siesta. She and I had classes in the afternoon, she because she was a teacher and I because I was a pupil. Sometimes she gave me a lift. I sat in the front, put the car in neutral and turned the key in the ignition. Since I couldn’t do anything else, I sat there imagining what it would be like when I was able to drive – wow! I’d rip along like anything. Whenever I thought this I accelerated a little to hear the noise of the engine and to give my imagination a hand. If my mother heard, I’d say: “The car needs to warm up . . .” A pretty useless excuse because at two in the afternoon in Luanda a car’s only cold if it’s got a load of ice on top of it. “Move over,” my mother said, as she sat down in the driver’s seat.

  Later, as we were driving: “Mum?”

  “Yes?”

  “Is Aunt Dada going to bring presents for everyone?” I asked in disbelief.

  “If she can she will . . .”

  “But how many people are there in her family?”

  “Her and the three children. Why?”

  “How’s she going to bring presents for us, when there are five of us, and she also asked what Comrade António wanted? . . . Does her ration card give her the right to that much stuff?”

  But we were already at the corner where I got out, and she did-n’t have time to answer. She gave me a kiss on the cheek and told me to think about what I was going to say on National Radio on May Day because the recording session was tomorrow.

  It was really hot. Some of my classmates stank, which was normal for people who’d come to school on foot. We stood talking outside the classroom, hoping that the teacher wouldn’t show up. It was incredible how we always wanted to believe that we might get a free period every day, because if it depended on us, that was what we wanted. As Teacher Sara said: “It seems that you don’t know that your duty is to study.” Perhaps that was where we got the saying that the pen was a Young Pioneer’s weapon. Or she’d say: “Don’t forget that the school is your second home.” But it was dangerous to say that to Murtala because he might feel so much at home that he’d doze off in the classroom with the excuse that he thought it was his bedroom.

  The talk was good. Bruno said, with that face that only he knew how to make and that everybody believed, that there was a group of muggers who were attacking schools. I’d already heard something like this, but I’d thought it was the schools that were farther away, out by the Golf neighbourhood. But Bruno was always well informed.

  “Hey, it’s the son of my maid who told me. Yesterday he didn’t even go to class, then he came to my house with his mum, and he had these awesome wounds. . . .”

  “And so?” somebody said.

  “Yo, it was for real, man, like there were forty of them . . .”

  “Forty!?” Cláudio figured this was an exaggeration. Even the Zúa Gang didn’t have that many guys with them when they carried out a raid.

  “The Zúa Gang? The Zúas??!” Bruno continued with that face that was serious only once in a while. “The Zúas are a joke stacked up against Empty Crate. . . . Look, these guys come in a truck, all dressed in black. They surround the school and wait for the pupils to come out. The people who come out get grabbed right there . . . And if you get grabbed. . . .”

  “Huh . . . What happens?” Murtala was frightened, his rat-like eyes gleaming.

  “What happens? Everything happens: they steal the backpacks, they cut you, they rape the girls and everything. They’re heavy duty, not even the police go near them, yeah, they’re afraid, too . . .”

  When the class started all the guys were thinking about Empty Crate. Everyone was working out his escape route. For sure Cláudio was going to start to bring his switchblade, Murtala, who was a runner, was going to be in the clear, I was going to be trapped if my glasses fell off when I started running, Bruno too; as for the girls – poor little things! Poor little Romina, as soon as she heard the story, was going to start crying and ask her mother if she could stay home from school for the week; Petra would be afraid too, but she would always worry more about classes. I looked at Bruno: sitting at his desk, he looked restless, sweating and gearing himself up for something. At first I thought he was drawing, but then I smelled the glue. Before the end of class he asked Petra for the felt-tipped pens. It was terrifying: he’d made a black-painted crate with a ghoulish skull and had written in blood-red letters: Empty Crate Was Here!

  In the second hour Teacher Sara explained that the comrade inspector was going to make his surprise visit in the next few days, that they didn’t know exactly when but it would be very soon. She explained everything to us again, how we were supposed to address him, how we weren’t supposed to make noise. She even asked us to come in with our hair combed. Of course this was mainly aimed at Gerson and Bruno, who never combed their hair (Bruno told me he’d combed his hair for the last time when he was seven years old, but I think this was a fib), and hardly ever bathed, which had to be true because they really smelled, to the point where nobody wanted to sit with them.

  Later Teacher Sara bawled out Petra for asking “indiscreet questions.” What happened was that Petra wanted to ask, and even did ask, how it was that the visit of the comrade inspector was going
to be a surprise if we already knew he was coming, in spite of not knowing the day, and we already knew the subjects we were going to be asked about and were completely prepared for this surprise.

  Petra sometimes did things like this, and afterwards she would be sad because nobody supported her and the teacher had bawled her out. It served her right. If she didn’t try to show everyone how clever she was, she might be a little less of a troublemaker.

  “But I buy what I want, provided that I have the money. Nobody tells me that I took home too much fish or too little. . . .”

  “Nobody? . . . Isn’t there even a comrade in the fish market who stamps the cards when you buy fish on Wednesday?”

  I woke up early and I felt great. I had two amazing things to do that day: one was going to the airport to meet Aunt Dada, and the other was going on National Radio to read my message to the workers. I thought it would be good to take advantage of some things I’d written in the composition I’d done on the worker-peasant alliance, which had got five stars on the Portuguese test.

  I went to open the door for Comrade António, and of course he told me it wasn’t necessary because he had keys. I don’t know how it was that he didn’t see that I did it because I had something to tell him.

  “Good morning, Comrade António.” I opened the smaller door.

  “Good morning, son,” he said, reaching for his pocket to see if he was quick enough to open the door with his key before I opened it for him. “You don’t have to, son. I’ve got a key . . .”

  “You know what I’m going to do today, António?” I thought he didn’t know.

  “Sure, son, you’re going to the airport to get your aunt.”

  “And afterwards, where am I going?”

  “Then you’ll come home, son . . .”

  “No, no! I’m going to the National Radio studio!”

  “Really? You’re going to talk on the radio, son?” He was smiling and closing the front door with his key.

  “I’m not sure yet. . . . I’m going and two more kids from other schools. I don’t know if they’ll play all the messages.”

  We went into the kitchen. “Did you have breakfast, son?”

  But I still wanted to talk about that radio business. I was already imagining the comrade radio host announcing my name, and my classmates might hear it too, and what if my comrade Cuban teachers heard it? Would this be part of the revolution? My head was spinning from happiness because it was also a day for receiving presents, and I was finally going to meet my sweet-voiced aunt. I just hoped she wasn’t too tall.

  “Eat slowly, son, that’s bad for you.”

  But how was I supposed to eat slowly when Paula might arrive at any moment and I had to be ready to go to Angolan National Radio?

  I was speechless. When we got to the entrance, a comrade asked my name and made a note on a sheet and gave me a badge I had to clip to my shirt, like I was already the comrade director of the National Radio station. I really liked that kind of badge – wow, just look at the name tag, it was to die for! There was a water fountain in the entrance and there were even two live turtles taking a stroll. I asked Paula how come they stayed there all by themselves without anybody looking after them.

  “Without anybody looking after them? What do you mean?” She didn’t understand.

  “Yes, doesn’t anybody take off with those turtles?”

  Paula laughed, but she laughed because she didn’t know Murtala, who had the trick of taking off with stuff without making a sound, even with animals. Once when we went to the zoo Cláudio bet him that he couldn’t steal anything from the garden and when Murtala saw those tiny little monkeys he decided to grab one. The monkey gave him a scratch on the lip that drew blood. Cláudio started to laugh like crazy, but when we got back to school we found out that was just a trick of Murtala’s, the dude had wanted to rip off the monkey’s snacks. He started to laugh at us on the bus when we were starving and he was scarfing those hard almonds. Poor dumb Murtala, the next day it was our turn to laugh at him, when he had one of those diarrheas that Bruno called “an every-five diarrhea,” by which he meant every five minutes.

  Paula said we had to keep walking. We went down a really clean hallway. I was stunned, wow, were there really spots this pretty in Luanda? That’s the truth, the National Radio station is pretty. I was charmed. There were little interior gardens. I even wanted to ask Paula if I could play there after the recording session, while I waited for my parents. The studio was small and there was a gadget on the wall that looked like a cork in a wine bottle; it was terrific. The other two pioneers and I were lucky because they explained everything to us: how things worked, they even let us joke around and make a few mock recordings. Then the light went out and we waited for a long time for the generator to start up. To entertain us, Paula made a joke that in my opinion was a little dangerous: she said that if we wanted to, we could talk nonsense for five minutes. At first everyone was silent, then she said she meant it, that we could say what we liked. I asked if she was going to tell our parents and she promised not to. But of course the elders never know well what we know and when we started with a barrage of jokes it only lasted for a minute because there were thirty seconds of a triple fusillade and another thirty of her trying to quiet us down. I thought I was well trained. In twenty-two seconds I was able to say all the dirty jokes I knew, even the worst ones, and I took advantage of the other eight seconds to mix and combine those I knew with those I’d just heard, but to tell the truth those other kids were good, too.

  The light returned before the generator could start. Then we hurried to record the messages before the light could go out again. When I took out my piece of paper with the things I’d written, Paula told me it wasn’t necessary because we already had, “the editorial sheet, with a script for each of you.” This made it even easier because it was all typed out and everything.

  When we finished recording, we went out into the yard. For a while we exchanged jokes and made fun of each other. Those kids couldn’t match my funny stories, but they had ways of making fun of you that could reduce you to tears. Unlike the things kids said to make fun of each other at my school, these expressions were very short, very simple, but very powerful. It was with them that I learned insults like: you swallowed a tickle, you belch when you laugh, the first person to wake up in your house is the one who puts on the underpants, you started going because you drank battery fluid, or the very famous, you took two turns with the chamber pot and yelled, “Angola is great!” They also knew tons of mugging stories. I was about to ask about Empty Crate, but Paula came to tell me that my parents were waiting for me.

  “Did you behave properly?” my mother asked.

  “Yes, we all behaved properly. The other kids were really cool.” I opened the car window and stuck my head out. It was hot.

  “How did it go? Did you read your message?”

  “It turned out it wasn’t necessary, Mum.”

  “No?”

  “No, they had a piece of paper there in the station, with an official stamp and everything. They already had a message for each of us. I read one and the others read the other two.”

  There were a lot of people outside the airport. It was always like that when an international flight arrived. Next to the door where the passengers came out there was an uproar. I saw the FAPLAs come running. I thought they were going to shoot. I got up on the hood of the car and peeped over the shoulders of the people in front of me.

  It was very hot, and I remember inhaling once again that all-encompassing stench. That kind of the smell often told me, too, what time of day it was. . . . But that muffled heat mixed with the smell of dry fish meant that for sure a national flight had arrived. I didn’t go to the airport very often, but there were things that everyone knew, or better yet, smelled. I pretended to be wiping the sweat from my brow with the sleeve of my T-shirt and took advantage of the gesture to smell my armpit. Well, it could be worse, I thought.

  I got up on the hood of
the car and peeped over the people’s heads. I smiled: a pretty little monkey was hopping up and down on the shoulder of a foreign lady while a gentleman, probably her husband, took photographs of her. The monkey was going wild, bouncing wickedly on the lady’s head, pretending to pick lice off her. Her husband – I guess it was her husband – was a very white man but now he was very red with laughter. Suddenly a FAPLA came up from behind and gave the monkey a slap. The poor sap jumped, did a couple of somersaults in the air, yelled, fell to the ground and took off running.

  I couldn’t see the monkey any more. A disturbance started. The other FAPLA stepped up next to the lady’s husband and grabbed the camera from his hands. I could more or less hear the conversation. The gentleman was trying to speak Portuguese; the FAPLA was annoyed. He opened the camera with a jerk, pulled out the roll of film and threw it away. I think that was when the lady started to cry. They saw this was serious. What idiots, they should have known that in Luanda you can’t take photographs wherever you like.

  The FAPLA said: “This camera is confiscated for reasons of state security!” Then he explained to them that they couldn’t take photographs at the airport. The man said he was only photographing the monkey and his wife, but the FAPLA got angry and said that the monkey and his wife were at the airport and you never knew where those photographs were going to end up. I got down off the hood. At least there wasn’t any shooting, I thought, because sometimes stray bullets killed people. Comrade António had told me many times that this happened down in the Golf neighbourhood. “Mainly on the weekend, son.” There were people who got drunk, and fired off shots in the air. A neighbour of his had even died because she was sleeping on the mat and a bullet fell on her head. “She never woke up again,” Comrade António told me.