Now and at the Hour of Our Death

by Susana Moreira Marques

  I was already sick back then. I’d say to her, I got an ulcer and she’d go, there ain’t nothing wrong with you. I’d say, yeah there is, and I need surgery. Those days, you need an operation, you gotta pay, and we didn’t have no money for that, we would’ve had to sell all we had, and that’s why I left here so fast. But there in Luanda, with that food and that weather, I hurt even more. I was lucky enough, though, ’cause I knew someone there, a lady who was the daughter of a teacher from over here, the one who’d taught me my letters, and she was a teacher, too, and married to an engineer who was in charge of the railways, and he told me to go see his friend, who worked at a clinic. He wrote a little something on a piece of paper for me to show him and they saw me right then and there. They operated and then after the operation they told me: you gotta go on a diet now. But I was never much a nagger, I never asked for nothing. I was staying in this shelter and there was six hundred and some more of us there – there was family men, sick folk, some missing a hand, others who was blind. That was where all us outcasts went. All the poor folk were there and we lived crammed into this barrack made of zinc, it went from over here to about there, to that cherry tree. The outhouse was over a cesspit, there was just a lone plank of wood and no water. There was loads of old folk, some from here, some from Angola, folk who should’ve been in a home, and they were almost always fighting like dogs. When I got there from the hospital, they all gabbed behind my back, saying: that one there, he won’t last. And I heard them, too… I got so down. I was thirty years old, I hadn’t even turned thirty-one yet, I had my operation three days before I turned thirty-one. That was forty-nine years ago.

  When I got a little bit better, I met a couple from here, from Miranda, at the shelter – they’d come up from the south of Angola to spend Christmastime in Luanda. They told me to head on down there, that the land was good and the weather, too, so I packed up all my things and off I went. I left Luanda on the last day of December, 1962, and got to Hoque on the first of January. It was sixty kilometers from Sá da Bandeira – they call it Lubango now. Hoque is a thousand kilometers from Luanda by truck, clunkclunkclunk… I got taken there by a trucker, and he said to me: look here, if you’re not doin’ so good, I’ll be back before too long to pick up some tobacco, you can hitch a ride real easy and meet me in Quilengues and I’ll take you to Luanda – that way you can head on back to Portugal. As soon as I picked up a hoe I didn’t feel so good, and I thought, I gotta get outta here.

  I had five hundred escudos on me, no more than that, but I had asked my sergeant cousin for three contos – speaking in contos. He’d already sent it and I’d set it aside for the trip back. Meanwhile there was this bout of bad weather – even the telephone lines collapsed with all the wind and rain – and all communications got cut. So I stayed.

  HER: Eleven months to the day after he got to Angola, that’s when I arrived with our three kids, one was six years old, the other four, and the last one still a babe in arms. I went from here to Vimioso, and from Vimioso to Duas Igrejas to take the train to Porto, and in Porto we switched trains and then we went to Lisbon to get on a boat. The only downside to the boat trip was it was so short. It only lasted eleven days, and that was the first vacation I ever took in my whole life: I didn’t cook, didn’t wash no dishes, all I did was wash the kids’ clothes. I wasn’t scared, either. The sea was smooth as a blanket. I gave the cabin attendant a fat tip, so we weren’t short of food: cheese sandwiches, milk, fruit for the kids, he’d bring me anything I asked for. The kids said: Mom, Mom, the boat’s gonna sink! And I’d just say to them: no, it won’t, darlings, no, it won’t.

  HIM: Later, a man who died the day I come back here sold me some land for thirty contos, speaking in contos. I had to borrow money, even had to pawn my rifle… I lived through eighteen fierce months… And then there were even folks that said: Senhor João, he’s a good man, sure, but it’d be better if he were a bad man – meaning I should’ve been different – he’s a real good man, but he’s got a chipembe there, a bad bit o’ land where nothing will grow. We had us an irrigation ditch and a shack, but no roof. Had Zé been born yet?

  HER: No, Zé were born later.

  HIM: So I built us a roof. We could plant potatoes there and settle down, our kids and us.

  HER: We daubed the room and got it all cleaned up real nice.

  HIM [laughing]: And then it started raining, but as the cob hadn’t set, it rained inside! We were there for a whole other year. Then I said: I’m gonna build us another shack down there, where it’s proper. And we was there another one, two years before we finally started harvesting crops and making a decent living…

  HER: Then we built ourselves a house, and that was that.

  HIM: We built a real sturdy house. It wasn’t nothing fancy, but it was a real nice little place, in a good spot. The porch was kind of like this one, actually.

  HER: The porch was just like this, yeah.

  HIM: And then they started saying, Senhor João, now that there’s a lucky man. I harvested wheat when folks thought there was no wheat to harvest.

  HER: We still had to dig plenty more ditches…

  HIM: …I ended up irrigating some real good hectares of land. There was one year I harvested one thousand bags of corn weighing around 90 kilos each and fifteen bags of beans weighing 130 kilos each, or maybe even more. We grew potatoes, wheat, corn, and beans. I built myself up a desirable farm there, and bought myself a pick-up, a tractor – I had almost a hundred cattle, and when I was just starting to think of getting a bigger truck…

  HER: …They opened up an airlift when decolonization began.

  HIM: One day one of my kids came up to me and said: look, Pa, our chests aren’t made of bronze and if everyone’s leaving, we’re leaving too… There was lines and lines of cars kilometers and kilometers long and they was laden with stuff – biquátas as we used to call it – just whatever they had, ready to load onto the boat, or take through South Africa.

  HER: There were folks even managed to get tractors and trucks through.

  HIM: A boy from here had a pick-up and a tractor just like mine. He sold his tractor, figured a way of bringing the pick-up back, then managed to start his own business. He did alright for himself, but he’s dead now, too.

  HER: My father used to listen to the radio a lot and he heard what was going on in North Africa and thereabouts…

  HIM: He had sent us a letter saying he didn’t want us to write him back, he just wanted us to go get him in Portugal. That there was the only time I come back to Portugal while I was living in Angola. As luck had it, when I got to Bragança it was snowing – I shook in my boots, and my teeth were all clattering…

  HER: …And because my father listened to the radio so much, he got this idea in his head that they was killing folks by the dozen and he got scared, so he said: if you don’t want to go back to Portugal, I’ll go on my own and figure something out for myself. And I told him: now hold your horses, when we go, we’ll go together, and if we die, we’ll die together, and if they kill us, they’ll kill us all together.

  HIM: One of my men told me: you can’t go, boss. I know a place in Quilengues, and you got flour, so take two or three bags of flour there and a sack of fish and then stay there till this here blows over. Alright, I said, and I told him I just had to take my family to Luanda and I’d be right back – I didn’t want to have my arm twisted… After independence – if things got better – I intended to come back.

  HER: While we were packing our trunks to take on the boat, three blacks came up to the house…

  HIM: …They were part of UNITA, and were fleeing the skirmish in Sá da Bandeira.

  HER: Folk in Hoque were MPLA and those men, they were from the UNITA and they were on their way to meet the rest, who were in Cacula…

  HIM: About thirty kilometers from there…

  HER: …But they weren’t taking the roads, they was sticking to the bush. They’d left their uniforms and hidden their guns and then they came knockin
g at our door. They knocked and I said, what is it? What’s going on out there? Senhora, could you spare us some fubá?

  HIM: They called cornmeal fubá.

  HER: Sure I can, and I did. I gave them some fish, too. They tried paying me, tried giving me twenty-thousand réis. And I told them no, I don’t want nothing, go on, go fill your bellies, go eat in the bush, go, go fill your bellies, ’cause I don’t need nothing, not me. I don’t know how many times they must’ve said, may the Lady protect you, may Our Lord keep you, God in heaven protect these good people. My eyes filled with tears.

  HIM: I couldn’t steal from them, take advantage of them. I didn’t have it in me. It ain’t right of me to say this, but I’ll say what I feel: there was folk out there who – I don’t even know how to say it…

  HER: …Who were thugs.

  HIM: When it was us who was on their land… It was sickening. Them folks went there to set a bad example. And they paid for it with their lives.

  HER: They killed them.

  HIM: …And they deserved no less, and I’m speaking against our race here. I was the first one there to start paying the men every two weeks. A man who’d been there a long time told me: you must be made o’ money to be paying them every two weeks and I said to him: I’ll live my life as I please, and you can do the same. For the folk who’d lent me money first I’d even take along my oxen and men to do the sowing, I had forty to fifty folk working for me at times, but I’d say to my men that the wheat was for me ’cause the men didn’t want to work for them…

  HER: We didn’t have any enemies. In the end, they just kept saying to us: you can’t go, boss.

  HIM: …And they’d tell me: even if we wanted to speak up, we can’t – we go talk to the chief, but the white man walks in and we’re left at the door.

  HER: I never had no trouble while I was on that farm. The black women always came to me to sell their goods for sugar. They’d bring me half a dozen eggs, or fruit they’d picked in the bush for the boys. There was this fourteen-year-old who worked for us, he looked after the pigs and the chickens and I’d tell him, Carlos, you go on and talk to them ’cause I don’t know Umbundu. Ask them how much the eggs cost. Nothing, he’d say, it’s just breakfast for you, Senhora.

  HIM: Then they all killed each other.

  HER: And it still hasn’t been settled, it still ain’t really settled.

  HIM: The young folk in Luanda are rebelling. The south is calm. Our youngest is there and our oldest son is going there again soon.

  HER: They’re starting a business, the two brothers. My youngest son already has his Angolan citizenship. He was there for a month three years ago, and that’s when he got his citizenship.

  HIM: He threw a party there in the quimbo, on our land. He got 150 folk together and spent like a king. And he even made a movie of the party and brought it here to show us. Everyone dancing, the old folk talking about me. They had this nickname for me, Berimbindo – ’cause it’s like bem-vindo, welcome, so they called me Berimbindo. Did Berimbindo uafa? Meaning, did he die? No, my sons said. Berimbindo is here in my heart, they’d say. I cried watching that movie.

  HIM: She even had the smarts to bake a batch of bread before we left. We managed to fill our bellies even then.

  HER: I baked a whole bag of bread.

  HIM: And that was real bread. First-rate flour, made by hand…

  HER: We left the key to our house with our buddy – we were his daughter’s godparents.

  HIM: He was mulatto anyway.

  HER: We left him the cattle, the goats, the tractor – everything!

  HIM: And seeds!

  HER: Yeah, seeds. We said to him: the land here’s sown, so go and harvest some for yourself and then when I come back, all you gotta do is give me the seeds so I can sow too. Everything was just right, we had worked everything out real nice, but then he didn’t write us and we never did write him…

  HIM: The mail was cut off then.

  HER: …They didn’t let mail get in or out and we never heard from him again.

  HIM: Then a black came through and killed him, out of envy. And our goddaughter, she was eleven years old, lightning struck our house and killed her. It wrecked most of our home.

  HER: And then the whole house fell down. Our kids, they took a picture of it for us and then showed it to me – the only thing that survived was the stove chimney.

  HIM: It was October when we got here. Our eldest son stayed behind to load the last of the containers onto the boat. It was real little, almost nothing, really, but still my most valuable one got stolen. I even went down to Lisbon, to the Cais da Rocha… but I couldn’t find it. Folk welcomed us here, in the village. They brought us nine bags of potatoes – and that was just the potatoes. I knew what folk said about us retornados coming back from Africa, most of them.

  HER: And some still say it today.

  HIM: I miss looking out at my land. Sometimes I’d go outside just to look at everything I’d planted.

  HER: We had a big farm. We’d look at treetops out there in the distance, and it was all ours. If I was twenty years younger, I’d be back there, sure I would. The weather was real good where we lived: none too hot, none too cold. And the land is blessed – everything we planted grew. Here, all the work I’ve got… Just today I went and checked on the beans and they’re no good, they’re falling off their stalks. The weather here spoils everything.

  HIM: I don’t want to go see it now. I cared for that land – and the thought of going there and seeing how it is now… But that’s life… When good fortune finally smiles down on you… Here, I at least had a few things to my name, so I said, alright, this is where we’ll stay. Now, my sons, they say to me, we shouldn’t’ve come up here, the ones who stayed in Lisbon, they’re doing better for themselves, but my things were here, my olive trees, my vegetable gardens – I had a place to live here, where else could I have gone?

  HIM: I stopped working a year and a half ago, when this trouble with my bladder started. I used to make my own wine, grow my own potatoes and olive trees. I still got some olive trees, but I don’t look after them no more. It ain’t worth it. Growing things today, no matter what you try to grow, it just don’t pay. I don’t know where this country’s heading. They’re encouraging folk not to work, not to produce…

  HER: Now everyone’s got their 230 or 240 euros…

  HIM: But there’s lots of poor folk, right?

  HER: …I never thought they’d give me the little they do. So long as we keep getting the small pension they give us…

  HIM: We’ve made our nest. It’s the bird that’s dead. Its wings won’t fly.

  HER: He’s always complaining. He’s been complaining for twenty years now! I’m sicker than he is, but you don’t see me kicking up a fuss.

  HIM: No one believes in old sufferings.

  HER [laughing]: You’re an old man now, you can’t get no older than old. It’s a sad life for a couple of folk like us. Our kids come over for the August festival, but then they go back to their own lives. The two of us, we’re stuck here, but at least we can still talk to each other. If there was just one of us left, we’d have nothing to do but stare at the walls.

  HIM: I’m scared she’ll die first. That’s what really haunts me.

  HER: I’m eighty-five already, going on eighty-six. My legs grow heavier each day. They don’t want to walk. I got pain and pain and more pain. But we just gotta keep on.

  HIM: If she goes first, I don’t know what I’ll…

  HER: Oh, you’ll go to an old folks’ home. What else can you do? And if there ain’t a bed for you there, you can just come on here and sleep at home.

  HIM: A man gets used to sleeping in a good bed, to having decent clothes and a decent towel, to sleeping next to his wife…

  HER: What he don’t want is to die.

  HIM: …What’s an old man to do, sick and alone?

  HIM: Lazarus had been dead for four days. And Jesus said: let’s see what we can do. And He said: I am lif
e and I am death, do you believe? And He said: move that rock. And then He said: Lazarus, rise! And Lazarus rose. And so did Jesus, and they say we all rise again. Lazarus and Jesus came back after just two or three days, but we only will after millions of years… What I learned in the cradle I’ll only forget in my grave. My parents gave me this faith, it’s the only one I know. Me, I think there’s something after death. It’s just this feeling I got. They put so much fear in us – why’d they have been fooling us? I don’t know, though. The dead don’t write, they don’t call – there’s just no way of knowing.

  HIM [watching night fall]: The moon’s just the same in Angola.

  HER: And the stars. Sometimes I was there and it was like I was still here, just looking up.

  ‌Elisa and Sara

  Sometimes I imagine Elisa painting. She has long black hair and narrow shoulders; her back is to me and it’s as if she herself were part of the picture, and as though the portrait she is painting, the painting within the painting, were unfinished, still in the process of creating itself.

  The truth is Elisa hasn’t painted in years, though a part of her still creates images – she can’t live otherwise – and maybe that’s why I picture her painting, hoping that perhaps, after her father’s death, she has taken it up again. Those who don’t have faith find comfort in ideas beyond heaven, and Elisa believes fervently in humanity’s capacity to create.