by Ondjaki
“yes, commission for the installation”
“well, even i, as a blind man, hear news on the radio, Commission for the Installation is one that goes around installing... and you sit around waiting for it to do the installing”
“and doesn’t it install?”
“it installs, except that you don’t see the installation, it’s a commission for somebody to install himself in a real good spot”
“what do you mean, elder?”
“hey, it’s really complicated right now with this hunger, let’s find something to eat first, i’ll tell you about it later”
“this business is serious, you’re the one who can’t see the sign” Seashell Seller insisted
“you’re the one who can’t see what this Commission’s about... a group of sometime somebodies who are gonna install themselves! you’re still wet behind the ears, boy!”
drawing his shuddering finger across his eyes
Odonato wiped thick, uneven particles of dust, which stung worse for not having round edges, from his eyelids, his discomfort yielding to the ease of improved vision as a tender sadness appeared, causing unease in his eyes and his heart
«tears are what washes away your sadness» he thought
Luanda was boiling with people who sold, who bought to sell, who sold themselves to later go out and buy, and people who sold themselves without being able to buy anything
“i’ll be happy when the tears really come back, i’m fed up with false feelings”
his eyes gleamed, they faltered between the hue of whitecaps rolling onto the beach and a brightness that imitated August skies pretending it was cold
Odonato’s eyes didn’t know how to cry the way they used to
he often dreamed that he was descending the staircase of that same building, coming from the terrace, finding his balance, increasing his speed at each flight of steps, smiling and shouting so that the wind would whistle and the birds would shun the imaginary clouds that knew how to conjure up tears, he descended with buoyant feet and the smile of a man who had tasted magic, even rendering a prophecy there, on the first floor of his dream, where, after the stagnant water, his body slipped in response to affected fear and a shout, his hands toyed with grabbing a non-existent banister and his balance failed, waking him up as his knees led the way and he fell, his clothes were soaked, his left knee raised a flag of blood, speeding towards the finish line, and now his throat orchestrated his crying, oh tender, sodden youth! then his eyes were able to cry
all he carried out of the dream was the sweat beneath his arms, the uncertain breathing of someone who had already foreseen that tears were a privilege of those who could cry both on the inside and on the outside
Odonato brushed his hand over his face, rubbed his eyes, brought his fingertips to his mouth and deepened his sadness:
his eyes hadn’t been able to produce salt for a very long time.
it was a building, maybe a world
to have a world it’s enough to have people and emotions, the emotions, raining down inside people’s bodies, spill into dreams, people may be no more than ambling dreams of melted emotions in the blood contained by the skins of our oh-so-human bodies, we can call that world “life.”
...
we are the continuation of what it suits us to be, the species advances, kills, progresses, disappoints, remains: humanity is ugly—it wears the marks of its long suffering and has a fetid smell, but it endures
because deep down humanity is good
[from the author’s notes]
in the first-floor corridor a family was in the habit of grilling fish in a corner of the hallway then using the rest of the space to three merry lunch parties doused with chilled red wine, leaving a pleasant smell of grilled fish lingering all the way up to the fifth floor
“may i serve you, Comrade Mailman?”
“not yet, thanks very much, maybe when i go downstairs”
the man knew this building well but he hadn’t yet remembered to leave one of his official letters concerning his means of transport with the journalist Paulo Paused
the Mailman brought the journalist a small box of considerable weight, this had never happened before, the normal pattern was for Paulo to receive envelopes with magazines, books, or advertising materials from other countries that he often immediately offered to the Mailman for future reading or sale
he rang the bell twice
“it’s me, Dom Paulo”
“me who?”
“the Mailman, i always ring twice, haven’t you noticed?”
Paulo Paused, sleepy faced, a towel around his waist and his hair wet, invited him in
the Mailman loved to enter that apartment, with its incense fragrances, sometimes even with a blend of them, that was still liable to draw patterns in the morning air like smoky tentacles imitating Oriental dancers
“Dom Paulo, is it just the smell, or do you still have like some international spells?”
“just smells, Dom Mailman, spells are a personal matter”
“what do you mean?”
“a spell depends on the belief of an individual, if you believe that incense casts a spell, then maybe it does”
“just like that? like a kind of invention?”
“yeah, a kind of invention, like life, if you want to see something, it ends up happening”
“oh, but it’s not like that, Dom Paulo, i want to see something, i even want a moped, and it still hasn’t appeared”
“all in good time”
“speaking of which,” he rummaged in his bag, “i wanted to ask you a favour”
“i’m broke, brother”
“it’s not that, i’m going to leave you two of these letters on twenty-five-line paper, official requests, i don’t have a means of transportation, i don’t have any subsidy to take the candongas, or even a clapped-out old bus, if you know who to submit them to, please, see if you can do me a favour, the other day i met a minister but i didn’t have much luck”
“you should talk to your boss”
“here in Luanda everybody’s a boss, and they only want to help afterwards, that’s how come i’m going around handing out letters, to see if one of these many bosses can just give me a hand, or rather, a moped”
“okay, you can leave it over there, did you bring me anything else?”
“no, it’s a package, i don’t even know how it got here, it comes from China, it’s really small but it’s heavy”
“thanks, you can leave it on the table”
“is it an auto part?”
“yes, it is... my girlfriend’s car has engine trouble”
“and parts are cheaper in China?”
“yes”
“i guess they are”
the journalist served him a glass of fresh passion-fruit juice with sugar and ice
“thanks very much, hardly anybody here in Luanda’s as kind as you are, in the houses i go to they don’t even offer me a glass of water anymore, or a little tip, i mean, i know nobody’s obliged to, but the gesture’s appreciated, a person walks forever in that sun, the distances, the dust, to finally bring somebody information that’s important to them, isn’t that right, Dom Paulo?”
“yes, it is”
“some people even refuse to give water to a Mailman who’s sweating with exhaustion, have you ever heard of such a thing? in the time before they used to say it was a sin to refuse water, a person who was walking down the street would stop in any old yard, clap his hands and ask for water, it was normal, today right away they suspect him of being a thief or a beggar”
“times change,” the journalist looked impatient
“in truth, time passed away and didn’t take us with it”
“how’s that?”
“time passed away and some things were lost—respec
t, morality, good manners—anyway, i’m on my way, thanks for the juice, it’s always so tasty”
“you’re welcome, if anything else arrives, let me know”
“sure, no problem, my compliments to the lady of the house”
“thanks”
when Clara came into the living room, after the Mailman had left, her body was half-naked, her slip shrunk to a point that left you wondering whether that piece of fabric could contain such a full waist
“do you think i look fat?” she pointed at her buttocks
“you know i adore a big ass...”
“big is one thing, humungous is another”
“cut it out”
“is there coffee? i thought everything would be ready by now”
“i got delayed, the Mailman came”
“and like always you had to make him a coffee and a bun and a sandwich to keep him going the rest of the day, right?”
“no, not at all, i served a passion-fruit juice to someone who works in the hot sun, without proper working conditions”
Clara saw the two letters on the table, read from a distance
“they’re not for you, those letters”
“they’re not for me, they’re for people i know”
“there’s something queer about that Mailman, that’s what i say”
“it’s not that, he’s trying to get some wheels”
“he wants a BMW to deliver letters?”
“no, Clara,” Paulo started to lose his patience, “he wants a moped to cover the distances demanded by his profession”
“uh-huh,” she went on in an ironic tone, she saw the package, felt its weight, “and what’s that?”
“a part for my mother’s car”
“it comes from... China?”
“yes, you want to eat? you feel like fried eggs, French toast, regular toast... fruit, coffee?”
“hmnm, nice stuff, i feel like eating and making love, or vice-versa, however you want it, Mr. Newsman...”
Paulo looked at the package, went to put it on top of the cabinet, then tidied up the Mailman’s blue letters
“according to the laws of traditional Chinese medicine, it might be good to restore some energy and then move on to that interesting physical activity”
“according to the laws of lust,” Clara’s voice became sensual, “it’s also possible for us to expend our energy right now... for example, on this table, or right here on the sofa, and then restore ourselves with the promised meal...”
Clara pulled off her minuscule black panties, ever so slowly, receiving from Paulo a smile of uncertainty and acceptance, she adored making love like this, with her tight blouse covering the upper half of her body, with no bra, leaving her hot and bothered breasts free to breathe, she herself would thrust her lover’s hand inside, as though it were her own, seeking the pleasure of his rough touch on the tips of her hardened nipples, Paulo’s breathing accelerated, his hands sweated, he felt himself going mad when Clara stuffed two of her fingers into his mouth
“here on the table...”
“here”
“can i roll over?”
“you should’ve done it already”
while she moaned, her hand sought out a short flowerpot that was always falling off the edge of the table
she let her body fall full-length across the table and caught the flowerpot, relaxed her stomach, separated her legs some more, raised her ass and they both knew this was the signal, her moans diminished, her voice bristled like that of a suffocating bird, her eyebrows arched and her moist lips twisted with a dull, latent pleasure
she lost the strength in her right arm, the flowerpot flew out of her hand to the floor
absorbed in her heated sensations, she was barely conscious of the strangeness of not having heard the flowerpot shattering into a thousand tiny pieces
the telephone rang
Paulo’s body shuddered, he had sweat on his chin, his eyebrows, his fingertips
the telephone wasn’t far away but it was as though her body were still reeling him in
“don’t answer,” she pleaded
and then he answered.
the boss called a meeting that it was not advisable to miss, things weren’t going well at work, too many complaints, too much absenteeism, not to mention the different ideological approaches that guided everyone’s work, if at times the boss acted like a liberalizer who wanted to set an example at the heart of the national news network, at other times his commitment to members of the upper echelons of the Party was obvious
innumerable questions had been raised on the Luandan political scene in recent weeks, but the fascinating part concerned matters emerging from reliable sources at the core of government but without the confirmation of any official organ, the rumours multiplied without anyone being certain where they originated
accustomed to constant and even radical water shortages, Luanda had never suffered, in this sort of widespread silence, such dramatic, long-running shortages of the precious liquid, it was no longer a question of there being certain days and neighbourhoods where the hours and days of the week when the water came were well known, some of the supply stations for well-water were also beginning to run dry, and the opposition press, even without providing firm data, was already referring to the evidence as a matter to be clarified by the government and scrutinized by the media
“the hitch is that nobody says a word, i’m not getting anything from the official sources and you guys, who are a pack of dipsticks, aren’t getting anything from the unofficial sources, it makes us look like a bunch of idiots who only know what we read in the newspapers... is that what you want?”
the first ten minutes of the meeting were dominated by the boss’s ritual monologue as he unburdened himself
“as if that weren’t enough, a pile of excavations in the city, with billboards of that entity called CIROL, there’s already graffiti in the streets saying it means ‘Centre for International Rip-Offs of Luanda’ and other jokes”
“excuse the interruption, boss... i heard rumours on BBC”
“what rumours?”
“that they started making these excavations because it’s clear there’s oil in Luanda”
“we always knew that, but i figured there wasn’t much of it and they couldn’t fuck with the city”
“well, boss,” Paulo Paused said, “it looks like somebody now figures they can fuck with it and maybe there is a lot, there are already plenty of holes drilled in the streets, right near my place, i sometimes see people standing next to the holes until dawn with papers and measuring instruments”
“all right, enough talk, i want everyone to research this story properly,” the boss concluded
Paulo Paused took advantage of being at his desk to make a few phone calls
first he rang his friend, a journalist at National Radio, a tech guy who was often assigned to record important meetings or events, even those reserved for the Party’s upper echelons
“hey, Scratch Man, how’s life?”
“cool, brother, what’s up?”
“hey, hear any rumours?”
“there are always rumours... i don’t know what you’re talkin’ about”
“is this line secure?”
“affirmative”
“first, this business with the water... nobody knows what’s going on, the water’s not there, and when they say it’s going to be there, it’s not there, either, and when they say it’ll be there later then later they warn that it can’t be there...”
“that’s almost a poem,” Scratch Man laughed at the other end of the line
“a complicated poem... and the boss wants to know all the verses”
“i get it, it’s a big deal”
“i already had my doubts... a big deal for big cheeses”
“affirmative, you’re lookin’ for a turtle, but this is alligator business, like two big alligators”
“then the water’s just the tip of the iceberg”
“you’re talkin’ poetry again, i neither confirm nor deny, you get my drift?” Scratch Man seemed to have somebody within earshot
“that’s fine, no problem, can you come by my cubicle this evening?”
“is there sponsorship on offer?”
“affirmative”
“i’ll be over, eight or nine o’clock, over and out”
“take care of yourself, man.”
when Scratch Man arrived at Paulo Paused’s apartment, the table was already set
Clara was in a good mood, which was unusual, particularly when she had to entertain her boyfriend’s friends, there were appetizers on the table, Paulo had ordered half a bottle of Chivas Regal from the Jorge Bischoff store since he knew Scratch Man was unable to leave a place without downing to the last drop whatever alcoholic liquids the house might hold
“and the beers?”
“they’re cooling”
“how many of them?”
“twenty-some, that should be enough, right?” Clara asked
“enough, nothing’s ever enough, but if that’s what there is”
Scratch Man was the nickname used by his circle of friends, his real name was Artur Arriscado, a man so blessed with unmistakable good humour that he had never been shaken by even the most destabilizing life circumstances, whether during times of civil war or political tension, or in the fulfillment of his innumerable international missions in the service of National Radio
following independence he had covered a large swathe of Angolan national territory with a team that recorded a vast amount of traditional music, and knew the most remote nooks of the country well, especially those of his native province, Moxico, he was also a man given to tale-spinning and Luandan anecdotes, and the possessor of an extensive history with women
few of his friends and acquaintances, though, knew Artur Arricado’s famous military secret, or where he came from
at the end of a certain year in the far-off days of very strict curfews, Artur was moving around thanks to a safe-conduct of dubious authenticity but which had saved him from countless complicated nocturnal situations, when he met up with the police, or soldiers, at a time when circulating casually wasn’t authorized, he made use of his document, of his profession as a radio journalist, but above all he was a powerful wielder of bluster, better known as big-city lip
