by Ondjaki
it was at a red light that Seashell Seller met Blind Man, lowered his bag from his shoulders to the ground, and Blind Man enjoyed the noise of the shells
“you got good hearing?”
“i don’t get it”
“you hear really well?”
“i only have average hearing, you talkin’ about the noise in the bag? they’re seashells”
“i know they’re seashells, my name may be Blind Man but i know how things sound, it’s not that...”
“so what is it?”
“it’s that i can hear the noise of the salt inside the seashells”
Seashell Seller didn’t know what to say, Blind Man didn’t say a thing
the light stayed green but neither of them moved.
Xilisbaba got out of the candongueiro with bags of vegetables, accompanied by her daughter Amarelinha, Seashell Seller’s lips pinched, he didn’t understand Amarelinha’s expression as she sweated and balanced other bags
“what was it then?” asked Blind Man.
“i don’t know,” Seashell Seller hoisted his bag again
the noise of the seashells, or of the salt, caught Amarelinha’s attention
her body passed close to them, but only Blind Man thought about how many aromas that body carried: ripe mangoes, nocturnal tears, black tea, papaya-root tea, dirty money, Omo detergent, old sisal, newspaper, carpet dust, grilled fish with black beans, and palm oil
mother and daughter were walking rapidly towards the building, they went inside skirting the puddles near the empty shell of the elevator, Amarelinha hoisted up her dress a notch and followed her mother, who knew the stairs better than she
on the fourth floor, already panting, they met their neighbour Edú
“how are you, Edú, are you better?”
“i’m not gettin’ any better, i haven’t got worse either, i’m still alive, Dona Xilisbaba”
“that’s good”
“i’d like to help but i don’t have the strength,” he opened his enormous hands in an apologetic gesture
“don’t worry, it’s only two more floors”
“is that water down there under control?”
“yes, like it always is”
Edú lived permanently on the fourth floor, and the farthest he had travelled was from inside his apartment to the corridor, which was open at its ends to the elements, to smoke or breathe in the polluted Luanda air, he walked with difficulty and was being seen by international specialists fascinated by his case
he had a gigantic hernia next to his left testicle, something that was called a mbumbi, whose size fluctuated according to climatic conditions but also obeyed psychosomatic factors, this was why he was visited by a varied gamut of scholars, from the hard sciences to the social sciences, as well as metaphysicians, traditional healers, and even some people who were just inquisitive, so people said, he had not accepted the invitations of Angolans, Swedes, or Cubans to operate because no one had yet offered him a sum big enough to pay down his fear
“aside from that, i’m used to being this way: to each his own...”
Amarelinha looked at the floor, waiting for her mother to catch her breath so they could continue
“your daughter just gets prettier every day,” Edú commented “one of these days she’s going to bring home her boyfriend”
Amarelinha felt trapped, smiled out of courtesy, they climbed the rest of the stairs in silence
on the fifth floor lived Comrade Mute, serviceable and silent, an excellent barbecue cook due to his secret method of preparing the charcoal, especially in cases where there was little charcoal
from his apartment came the sound of muxima music sung by Waldemar Bastos and Xilisbaba remembered her husband again
Comrade Mute was sitting at the door peeling potatoes and onions from two enormous bags and Amarelinha was startled again by the patience with which this man completed his chore
everyone knew that when it came to peeling Comrade Mute was a tireless perfectionist
“hello,” he murmured
“hello,” Xilisbaba answered
the neighbours were in the habit of borrowing his sharpened military knife, the hawker women from the ground floor, who sold hot snacks and blood-sausage sandwiches to passersby in a hurry also called upon his domestic services to prepare their French fries in oil
they had reached the sixth floor
Amarelinha dropped the bags at the door of their apartment and knocked twice, gently
Granma Kunjikise came to open it
an old metal watering can awaited Amarelinha on the gangway and the row of colourful flowerpots were carefully watered, Amarelinha had precise, delicate gestures, as if she were Granma Kunjikise’s blood granddaughter, and the same hands, which in the afternoons were busy threading beads to devise necklaces, rings, and wristbands as girls devised reasons to buy them
“we’re going to do good business, my little darling,” Strong Maria, the resident of the second floor, used to tell her, “you provide the workforce and i’ll make the direct sales to clients”
beneath her husband’s alert gaze, Xilisbaba arranged the things in the kitchen cupboards, Odonato watched people by paying attention to what their hands were doing, he liked to watch Granma Kunjikise cooking slowly, he was pretending to read the newspaper but was admiring the rapidity and precision of his daughter’s bead-threading movements, he himself had been gifted in wood working but his full-time job as a civil servant had eroded that part of his sensibility
“stamping documents...that’s what dulled my sensitive hands”
Odonato was watching the hands and the food: all of it provided by or found among the leftovers from the supermarket where some acquaintance worked
“now we only eat what other people don’t want,” he commented
“it’s a sin to throw out good food”
“it’s a sin not to have food for everybody,” concluded Odonato, leaving the kitchen and heading for the balcony
he looked out over the city, the chaotic bustle of cars, people in a hurry, hawkers, Chinese motorbikes, big jeeps, a mailman, a car that passed by with the alarm on, and a Blind Man shaking hands with a young guy carrying a bag
“worried about something?” Xilisbaba approached him
“there’s no news from Ciente, nobody knows where he is”
Ciente-the-Grand, Odonato’s elder child, spent his adolescence drifting from bar to bar, he had been a partner in a famous discotheque but ended up as a doorman who was always late for work, he stole needles in a pharmacy, becoming a habitual heroin user, and, later on in his young life, after being accepted into a Luanda Rastafarian group, stuck around for the weed and the petty thievery
aimless by vocation, he woke up early in order to have more time in which to do nothing, and nourished an obsession of eventually owning an American Jeep Grand Cherokee, his friends called him “Ciente-of-the-Grand-Cherokee,” and this was rapidly abbreviated to Ciente-the-Grand
“is there anything we can do?”
“just hope that he doesn’t do anything else stupid.”
the Mailman sweated and used a sodden handkerchief to wipe away his sweat, months had passed since he had requested that his boss, a fat mulatto from Benguela, give him a moped for his arduous delivery work
“a moped? don’t make me laugh, you’d be lucky if we gave you a child’s scooter, if you don’t want the job somebody else will, a moped... look at this guy!”
the Mailman thought he might have more luck if he put it in writing
he wrote seventy letters by hand, on blue paper of twenty-five lines, all duly stamped, and delivered them among the upmarket clients of Alvalade, Maianga, and Makulusu, not forgetting to include Members of the National Assembly, influential businessmen and even the Minister of Transportation
he
explained the combination of factors, the kilometrage required by his occupation, the geographical discontinuities and, invoking an improvised international standard for mailmen, he requested, at the very least, an eighteen-speed bicycle with guaranteed maintenance by the competent authorities but
he never got a reply
“your work is to deliver letters, not to write them,” the boss laughed
the Mailman decided to take a break, he opened his leather bag and chose a letter at random, opened it carefully and checked he had a little of the white flour paste that he used to reseal the letters he read
it was written in a pretty yet uncertain hand and, in the margins, there were drawings of birds and clouds, other signs recalled geographical coordinates identical to those he had studied, during the time of the Portuguese, in his native city
“you want a hot snack on a toothpick, Comrade Mailman?” asked Strong Maria, while she made the embers dance
“i’d have it if it was on credit, i’m short on dough”
“i only give credit with a cash advance,” she laughed
“then you’re a swindler! that’s anti-credit, can you even do that?”
“is there anything you can’t do here in Luanda?”
the Mailman swallowed the saliva from his combined hunger and thirst, Strong Maria felt sorry for him, but sorrow didn’t give her an income and the city was too costly to cosset him
“you reading other people’s mail, Comrade Mailman?”
“it’s just a distraction to distract me, i’m like a child: i forget everything right away”
Strong Maria stirred the embers with her fingers, blew on the charcoal with a firm breath and, between threads of smoke, regarded the Mailman
“if only i could learn how to forget...”
the Mailman grimaced, trying to expel a little of the heat, he asked for a glass of water, reread sections of the letter and confirmed that it had been posted from the city of Sumbe
“good news?”
“i don’t know, who lives up there on the fifth floor?”
“Comrade Mute”
“is he gonna give me a good tip if i go up the stairs?”
“i can’t say...”
the Mailman stopped on the first floor to let his eyes adjust to the darkness
water ran down invisible corridors, it wet his feet over the tops of his worn-out sandals
at first he felt vertigo, an upside-down vertigo, it wasn’t his head that swirled, it was his feet that seemed to want to rehearse tiny dance steps
«maybe it’s hunger» he thought
hunger which drove people to the most bizarre sensations and the most improbable actions, hunger which invented new motor skills and psychological illusions, hunger which broke new ground or prompted misfortunes, but no,
he figured out it was the site, because there was an odour there that wouldn’t let him feel it, and a wind that didn’t want to blow, the water, which was detectable though it could not be seen, obeyed an unnatural ebbing, maybe a circular force
“the things you think in the middle of the day... or in the midst of hunger...”
his eyes adjusted to the darkness and made it seem as though he were isolated from the outside world
he listened to the street sounds which reached him as though filtered, barely conveying the essence of conversation or thought
“to make it worse, somebody’s still probably gonna accuse me of smoking weed during business hours”
the light’s colour couldn’t be explained, it invented yellow tones on the dirty white of the wall, dipped into the water to reinvent itself in greys that didn’t know how to be dark; the water reflected tiny blue beams, reddened, concentrated waterfalls, back into the Mailman’s eyes
his thoughts were better ventilated, his hunger softened
“if it’s gonna be like that, it’s better to hang out here for a while”
when he went to lean back on the door of what had previously been an elevator, he sensed an internal heat coming to life in his testicles, he hadn’t felt the sensation so sharply in a long time, he glanced at the entrance, then at the stairs, nobody was around
he passed his hand lightly over his trousers, felt his penis in near unrest in his torn briefs, closed his eyes, absorbed one more time that absurd shamelessness
his testicles remembered
he felt disconcerted, covered the front part of his body, breathed deeply; damp thoughts invaded his mind, sweated inside him as though a childhood fear were gripping him, amused
only later did he go upstairs
wondering at the silence
he didn’t see anyone on the landings, and was surprised by the absence of children
he heard, when he reached the third floor, a voice that sang a lifeless melody from an old 45 turntable
it was jazz
he arranged his heavy bag, shifting it on his shoulder, and felt a pleasant relief
his skin’s usual outlines returned to the spot where the bag had been pressing down, he made circular movements with his fingers, he revelled in the feeling of his skin returning to its place, he caressed his other shoulder as well, which felt misshapen
the postal bag’s long strap was made of a material that imitated a sturdy rope but which had never in all these years fretted at him, his shoulders alone knew the secrets of that texture, a kind of provisional scar, customarily dealt with by changing shoulders and giving himself circular caresses
“at least a bicycle, it doesn’t have to be motorized”
he approached slowly, straightening the antiquated, dusty card that identified him as a National Postal Service worker, took the letter again and, with a quick glance, confirmed he had closed it again, then he pretended to reread the address
fifth floor, Maianga Building, to the bearer, ps: it’s the building with the huge pothole in the ground floor, you can’t miss it
Comrade Mute peeled potatoes without smiling, he occasionally fondled his lavish moustache, left his flip-flops nearby, but it was normal for him to move around barefoot, even in the presence of neighbours
the Mailman coughed
somewhere in Luanda, far from here, a parrot whistled the same melody coming from the turntable, the Mailman looked at Comrade Mute with the sharpened knife in his left hand, the potato dripping a turbid liquid
“excuse my bare feet,” Comrade Mute said at last
“make yourself comfortable, i’m a simple mailman, i’m here to bring a letter to the fifth floor”
“it must be a mistake, nobody ever wrote me a letter”
“no mistake is possible, do you want to see it?”
“my sight is terrible,” Comrade Mute dried the knife on the left leg of his trousers
“just take the letter, my friend! my boss gives me hell if i bring him returned letters”
“okay, leave it on the table”
“what table?”
“the one inside”
Comrade Mute continued peeling potatoes at a feminine rhythm, his gaze so far away that the Mailman no longer doubted the man seated there, with the knife in his hand and a pile of potatoes still to be peeled, didn’t see very well
and now he didn’t see him
should he stay propped up in the door, should he break into a run or a shout, should he enter the apartment or not
“with your permission,” stuttered the Mailman, entering the apartment
half the noise came from the music, the other half, enchantingly cadenced, was the uproar made by the turntable’s old needle
the Mailman dropped his bag in the entrance and advanced to the edge of the little table
two scarlet threads crossed the room like a double-sided clothes rack, making it possible for the speakers to sit on the little windows that gave onto the hall
the sound of a trumpet massaged his shoulder, whistled softly in his sweaty ears, induced him to sit down and seek out another glass of water, he glanced towards the door, glimpsed the resolute, rapt and abrupt gestures of Comrade Mute, saw his knee was moving from side to side with a measured rhythm which was not that of the music
“can i grab that glass of water?”
Comrade Mute’s silence said yes, the record came to the end of side A, the needle persisted in searching for more jazz notes
“put on side B, that trumpeter’s only real good on his B-sides,” Comrade Mute said
the Mailman drank the water and wanted more, but kept his want to himself, on the living-room walls strange figures reclined in photographs and posters written in foreign letters, some were photos of singers, others had close-ups of hands on pianos, saxophones, or thick microphones, he recognized one of the figures on the wall as a face he knew from somewhere, he went closer, wiped away the sweat that was running over his eyebrows and read the name, it was the same as on the record whose B-side was now playing
he heard voices from outside, set down the glass, approached his bulging mailbag, an old woman with white hair approached Comrade Mute, they spoke
“on thursday i’ll bring you the root, there weren’t any today, are you better?”
“if i’m better? i don’t even know, i’m not worse either, that’s what matters to me, but i’ve got aches in my body, inside my bones...”
the old woman bid farewell with a feeble gesture, climbed the stairs, the Mailman took advantage of her departure and left the apartment
“i found a glass of water”
“you did right, my apologies for not even bothering to get up, i’m not feeling very strong”
Comrade Mute turned from the pail, picked up a former barbecue fan, huge and worn-out, he fanned himself three times, the man had a sort of secret pact with sleeping sickness, a sort of fever and discomfort which, in the absence of treatment, clung to him for years, its symptoms disappearing then returning again
“stubborn old sleeping sickness” Comrade Mute gave a slow smile “already diagnosed by doctors... it’s a chronic thing”
