Transparent City

by Ondjaki

  “haven’t you seen the cirollers’ signs? is there anything that isn’t possible here? if the boss has spoken, it’s said and done”

  “and he’s spoken?”

  “more than spoken, Paulo, wake up, it’s all troika’d”

  “what do you mean?”

  “the same troika as always, Angola, the USA, and Russia”

  “and the tugas, poor saps?”

  “they’re stuck with the leftovers, but now that there are some intermarriages and some identity papers, obtained under pressure, the tuga may eat a little better”

  “sons of bitches... and the city? and the consequences?”

  “i can send you the detailed report i did on three talks about this, there’s no way for the city to withstand it, nor is it possible to get the petroleum out that’s under Luanda, it’s simply not feasible”

  “and how are they going to do it?”

  “they’re going to try to do it, it would take something very, very sophisticated, high-risk and expensive—replacing the vacuum they’re going to create with some other type of material—but it’s practically impossible to both extract the petroleum and make this kind of graft at the same time”

  “so?”

  “so you’ve got to prepare yourselves,” Davide smiled

  “who’s we?”

  “those of you who live in apartment buildings, here in Maianga will be one of the first places to feel the consequences”

  “are you serious?” Clara was serving more food

  “sure am, i’ve done some studies on this, the city doesn’t have any real foundation, if you take away the top layer the consequences are unpredictable, but at the very least there’ll be sinkholes”

  “and nobody’s worried about this?” Clara looked scandalized

  “they may be worried,” Paulo speculated

  “yes, maybe,” Davide finished his gin with a loud slurp, “they may be worried in that Angolan way, you know, we’ll see what happens later but first we’re gonna fill our pockets, do you know who i saw today, right here in this city that’s going to be consumed by fire?”

  “who?”

  “that American scientist, i think i already talked to you about him once... Raago, he’s one of the oil industry’s whiz kids, he finds oil where even the cockroaches wouldn’t suspect it, he’s the one who told the Timorese where the precious liquid was to be found”

  “seriously?”

  “yes, and in São Tomé, too, and all the new strata in Brazil were detected using his techniques”

  “and he’s here? in Luanda?”

  “i just saw him! and accompanied by His Excellency the Senhor Advisor to the Ministry... okay, let’s demolish these curried prawns, which don’t have anything to do with the petroleum industry!”

  Paulo opened a bottle of wine

  “alea jacta, petroleum est!” Davide Airosa laughed as he toasted this couple he was happy to call his friends, “this curry is the food of the gods,” he exclaimed, “we have to enjoy it now while your building is still standing”

  the scientist, lulled into happiness by the wine, made these jokes without noticing the worrying effect they were having on the apartment’s owners

  jazz was playing on the record player and a pleasing odour of grilled fish settled over the apartment, it being a common practice among Paulo’s neighbours, seated late into the night in the third-floor corridor, to grill fish and socialize with their families, even going so far as to invite whoever might be passing by to join them in a delicious eleven p.m. mufete and many beers

  “i’m sick of saying that we have to move to another building, i can’t stand the way people from Luanda grill fish in the halls,” Clara complained

  “the only reason you folks down in Benguela don’t do it is because you don’t have buildings with wide hallways,” Paulo laughed, leaving Clara even more irate, “or, what’s worse, because you haven’t thought of it yet... you know that Luandans are always thinking of stuff”

  “nobody can deny that, except you don’t have a clue what you’re thinking of, smart asses!”

  Clara withdrew in irritation

  good whisky kept the men company in the living room, Paulo changed the record and put on Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, one of his favourites

  “i figure that if a guy’s gotta die, it could be to this music... i figure he’d go peacefully, without complaints”

  “i think so, too,” Davide Airosa smiled

  as they listened to the music, the two men took turns nursing their whiskies, the so-called national drink of Angola, and exercising the old habit of letting their words flow out loose and slow, without any clear relationship between them, as happened whenever they got together, Airosa got drunk and melancholy and foolish, his eyes alight, moist

  “one of humanity’s biggest problems,” Davide began, “on the same level as others, obviously... is that people don’t want to concede the imagination its rightful place... these days, in our daily lives, we want money, sure, but even when you have money you’re not going to buy entertainment, knowledge... and letting the imagination flow doesn’t even cost money... you get what i’m saying?”

  “more or less”

  “to imagine, to imagine... making use of that faculty that separates us from other beings, the stone doesn’t imagine—wait—the flower doesn’t imagine, it blossoms, the bird migrates, the whale swims, the horse runs, we imagine before we migrate, we can imagine while we swim, and by imagining we can discover countless new ways of running, or even of taming a horse and making him run with us, we had to imagine it all in advance, and that’s the beauty of the human condition, it’s part of our condition as free beings, prisoners, recluses, the ill, in the final instant of our lives we’re imagining... and that’s what science and humanity need: imagination”

  Paulo poured himself a whisky, he said nothing

  Davide pulled a thick notebook with a nut-brown cover from his pocket, he jotted down some phrases and numbers and poured himself another whisky, in the silence, alone with the weight of the night, the notes of the music and the subtle odours of the burned-out charcoal splattered with thick drops of red pepper, lemon, and fish fat that had dripped from the grill.

  when Davide had left, Paulo slouched at the window, smoking his last cigarette of the night after putting the dishes in the kitchen and quickly tidying up the living room

  the city always seemed different to him at night,

  not just because of the play of light that sprang up between zones with few streetlights and those without any at all, but also because the wind temperature seemed to act differently, and hence also the people, their gazes and how they walked, their dress, their routes, the needs they were fulfilling, their way of relating to the cats and lost dogs, their fear of low-flying bats, or even, later—closer to dawn—how the crazies and the drunks were frightened by the roosters announcing the arrival of daylight

  Paulo watched the night end for the kids who reeked of gasoline, picking themselves up in their makeshift shanties of cardboard and plastic bags, or in abandoned vehicles now decorated with flair and imagination to build potential dens to shelter them against the frost, the mosquitoes, the wind, and the rain, but above all places that mimicked the tenderness of a home

  in a dark corner of the sky, so high up that he would have to strain to grasp the mathematical figure for its distance, a falling star scored Paulo’s night sky with light and

  inside

  he smiled.

  Odonato, annoyed, rubbed his eyes

  for vears he’d nourished the belief that night had been made for sleeping, to allow the body to lie calm and mute, regaining strength, yes, but also giving it, for a few hours, the pleasure of remaining, by way of dreams, in a delicious state of unruffled tranquillity

  awake and worried, Odonato watched his s
on’s bloodied body being dumped on the kitchen floor

  “we found him downstairs next to the pool of water with a bullet up his bum,” Little Daddy explained, sweating and asking for a glass of water

  “the wound doesn’t look serious, Odonato, but he may have lost a lot of blood already,” Comrade Mute assessed

  the first person to touch Ciente’s body was Granma Kunjikise

  her eyes were almost closed, whether from drowsiness or simply from the lateness of the hour or the shadowy darkness of the kitchen

  “did anybody come after him?” Odonato inquired

  “it doesn’t look like it, but i’d already heard two shots, i can’t guarantee that that one was the shot up the bum”

  “that’s enough talk about bums, Little Daddy,” Comrade Mute criticized, disgruntled, while he tried to find a chair, “can it with that soap opera talk, don’t you know how to say ass or fanny?”

  “but then i’d be saying ass in the presence of an elderwoman”

  Granma Kunjikise, who was preparing some leaves, only smiled at him, she opened her eyes a little wider, and made a signal for them to roll over Ciente-the-Grand

  Xilisbaba didn’t say a thing

  she glanced at her mother and was already heating the pot of water to boil the leaves for a balm the old woman would need momentarily, she finished it off by boiling the salves in water, this being more of a stopgap measure than a definitive solution

  “comrades, neighbours, we’re going to disperse! thank you very much for your help,” Odonato said

  outside the apartment stood João Slowly and Edú, who had a pained expression on his face and long white breeches that resembled a gigantic diaper facing the others’ inquiring looks, he felt the necessity of an explanation

  “on nights when there’s a full moon the mbumbi swells up more... it’s better if i sleep with it exposed to the air... how’s it goin’, is the kid okay?”

  “looks like it,” the Mute replied, “it’s better if we all move along, tomorrow morning we’ll come here an’ see if they need help or what”

  “was he actually shot?” João Slowly wanted to know

  “he actually was,” Little Daddy replied excitedly, only to be reprimanded by Comrade Mute’s gaze

  “where?” João Slowly asked curiously

  “can i say, Uncle Mute?” Little Daddy smirked

  “in the ass,” the Mute said

  they all stopped halfway down the stairs and looked at each other

  a shot in the posterior region, if we can call it that, was seen in that neighbourhood as a premonition of something ominous, soldier friends and even the elders of the street, hit intentionally or involuntarily in the ass area, had met unhappy ends a few days later, neighbours hit in the head or even in the chest, after surgery or a certain lapse of time, had lived to tell the story, but among the others, those hit in areas that were less easy to describe, not one had survived

  “that boy ain’t got any sense...” Edú commented

  and each of them went to his own bed.

  in the building next door and well ahead of schedule

  the crowing rooster had decided to try out his voice

  he shook his legs, his claws, he picked at parts of his body and walked the fine thread of a barbed wire, which, with the passage of time and thanks to thieves, had lost its barbs, executed a few swift neck movements, as though warming up his singing muscles, blinked his eyes and observed the skies like someone seeking or announcing a scratch of sunlight, opened his beak and would have been on the verge of letting rip his musical cry had it not been for the sudden arrival of a stone that flew swiftly from the window of the apartment where Little Daddy lived

  a powerful slingshot, made out of tire rubber, had hurled the stone

  the rooster couldn’t believe the pain he felt, a cold paste drained from his eye, dripped onto his left claw and, lacking a mirror, the rooster was unable to see that his eye was no longer in its proper orifice, what he felt wasn’t pain, but rather an icy discomfort spreading through his body

  be this as it may, the sun had already risen when the fowl regained the strength and energy to crow, announcing to all in the building the arrival of the curious tax inspectors This Time and Next Time

  “good morning,” Little Daddy greeted them outside the building as he was hauling water to begin washing the neighbourhood cars

  “yes, good morning”

  “do you know if Comrade João Slowly is at home?”

  “i haven’t met anyone yet today, comrades, but anyhow it’s really early to be waking people up”

  “this is the time when the workday begins, you’re working, aren’t you?”

  “i wake up early to wash cars”

  “good for you!” they headed into the building

  Little Daddy tried to warn them that at this incipient hour of the day the water gushed more strongly on the first floor and that to cross those waters a fine-tuned dexterity was required, the tax inspectors fell and got soaked

  “i tried to warn you, comrades...”

  “are you joking, or what? this is a trap, we in our persons are going to bring accusations against this building”

  “no, that’s just how it is, it’s just that in the morning the water’s more categorical,” Little Daddy hid his laughter

  “i’ll give you a category”

  Edú, on the fourth floor, came to the window

  “what’s all this ruckus so early in the morning?”

  “don’t you see, sir, that this building’s letting comrade tax inspectors fall over right here in the neighbourhood?”

  “the building’s ‘letting them fall’? are you sure that Portuguese is correctly formulated? a building is immobile, by its nature it doesn’t move around”

  “are you joking, comrade? we’re going to come upstairs to identify you, hey, kid,” he said to Little Daddy in a less sympathetic tone, “show us how we can get through the waters”

  Edú hurried to warn Odonato, before the tax inspectors were able to reach him, that they were in the building, for it wouldn’t be good if they found his son with an exposed wound in his ass

  “we’ve got to distract those men,” Odonato said, “what’s the deal with them?”

  “i figure they just came to give us a hard time, or they want some dough, but i’m broke”

  “just distract the men while i think of a way to evacuate Ciente”

  Edú went back downstairs to greet the tax inspectors

  since he didn’t have either food or drink in the house, he sent his partner Nga Nelucha to quickly ask around the building to get the inspectors to settle down at his place for a while

  “but who am i gonna ask?” Nga Nelucha whispered, still sleepy

  “go ask the neighbours, for fuck’s sake, and do it quickly, Odonato doesn’t want them to go upstairs”

  the inspectors were invited to enter Edú’s humble abode and were amazed by the strange arrangement of objects, the table, the furniture, the benches and a series of accessories that helped him to walk, they were misaligned in a way that almost certainly concealed some logic, for their placement suggested something like a track, a route, or even an utterly intentional interior design which, they now understood, provided access to the main paths to the kitchen and bathroom, and also to a kind of seat made out of sisal bags, next to the window, where Edú almost certainly spent a lot of time

  the tax inspectors stopped for a moment to look over his gigantic, diaper-shaped breeches

  “you don’t realize, comrades, that the food is on its way, please have a seat”

  “can i sit down, too?” Little Daddy asked

  “get working, will you, you’re already late, car-washers are this nation’s first civil servants,” he said in a speech-like tone, to the inspectors’ shock, “they’
re among the few people who also work Sundays and holidays, including holiday Sundays that get moved to Mondays... now scat!”

  Little Daddy left

  “pay no mind, comrades, this is a simple home, and as much as i’m chronically ill and nearly bedridden, though i continue to do a bit of exercise,” he gestured towards the room’s strange disorder, “because otherwise my health would be in ruins, i’m already somewhat ruined... but have a seat, comrades”

  the tax inspectors sat down, their eyes adjusting to the apartment’s gloom

  “could you open the windows a bit more?”

  “of course, but could you help me, sir, as i’m already seated,” Edú said, sitting down that instant, “i have motor difficulties”

  while This Time opened the windows wider, Next Time sat down next to him, demonstrating a dyed-in-the-wool curiosity

  “and that special clothing?”

  “i’ve had this for years,” Edú began, then immediately shouted in the direction of the kitchen as though his wife were there, “hey, Nelucha, bring these inspector gentlemen some drinks...” he made himself comfortable in a huge seat and waited for This Time to seat himself also, “it’s a long story”

  “we’ve got time”

  “a chronic mbumbi, of dubious origin, the doctors say”

  “of suspect origin?”

  “there is no explanation, my friends, no explanation, this mbumbi, in addition to being more enormous than the rest of the domestic mbumbis, has no reason for its appearance or disappearance”

  “what do you mean?”

  “it’s called an autonomous mbumbi, it’s been identified and catalogued by Swedish and Cuban doctors, not to mention Angolans, Portuguese and Koreans,” he started lifting his garments and letting the tax inspectors appreciate the spherical swelling

  “yes, sir, it’s a fine specimen,” tax inspector Next Time commented

  “thank you very much”

  “please excuse me, Comrade Edú, but you have to find a way of making money from this thing”

  “i was just thinking the same thing...”

  “thinking is delaying, please don’t be offended, but it’s time for you to act”