by Ondjaki
when he went downstairs for breakfast, the American had a message from the Advisor to the Minister telling him that they would come and get him later for the first meeting.
the Minister arrived at the Ministry early and immediately called the Advisor, but he hadn’t arrived yet
“get him on the phone and tell him to come immediately! in the time before, it was grounds for automatic dismissal if an Advisor arrived later than his Minister... those were different times...” the Minister sighed
he lifted the phone and ordered coffee, strong coffee, the strongest coffee that could be found
the telephone rang, the caller hung up
turning to his cellphone, the Minister spoke with a woman
he smiled, he softened his voice, he delicately scratched his testicles and spread his legs, feeling the heat between them
“that’s fine, i’ll be there in an hour... but make sure you show up this time because i’m making this trip just for you,” the Minister smiled
“Senhor Minister,” the secretary entered without knocking, “excuse the interruption,” she averted her eyes while the Minister removed his hands from his testicular area, “the Senhor Advisor has arrived”
“tell him to come in”
“yes, Senhor Minister”
the Advisor entered looking worried, possibly they had already told him that the Minister had asked for him
“i’m sorry i’m late, Senhor Minister, it was because of the construction work”
“i drive through construction zones as well, and i got here before you... how is that possible?”
“as it happens, i live a little farther away, Senhor Minister”
“sit down, man, if you live farther away you wake up earlier and spend less time eating breakfast, you eat too much, you’re fat, haven’t you noticed?
“yes, Senhor Minister”
“well, let’s get started, this is going to be a long day, a day of work, Senhor Prancha”
“yes, Senhor Minister”
“is everything ready for the American?”
“yes”
“excellent, i don’t want mistakes, either in the meetings or in the reports, that American has to leave here knowing this is a world-class country, am i right?”
“yes, Senhor Minister”
“then get to work! i’m going out for an emergency meeting”
“there’s no meeting on your agenda, Senhor Minister”
“don’t interrupt me, sir, emergency meetings aren’t on agendas, otherwise they wouldn’t be emergencies! after that i’ll come back here, pick you up and we’ll go to the hotel to find the American, at the meeting there are going to be people from the Party, and the engineer responsible for the excavations”
“i understand”
“i’m glad you understand,” the Minister got up, put on his jacket, “call my driver and tell him i’m going out.”
in the building, the doctor was escorted from the first to the sixth floor, where Ciente-the-Grand rested on the kitchen table with the sweat of his uncontrollable fever and its associated delirium
he was lying half on his side, trying not to press on his bum in the region where the bullet had lodged
Odonato thanked the doctor for his visit and rushed to explain that they didn’t have any money to pay him
“don’t worry, i’m here to do the family a favour”
with patience, the doctor examined the wrongdoer, touching him where he had to
the white refrigerator framed the painting of Odonato’s gaunt, tortured face
rather than worry about the boy, the doctor discreetly observed Odonato
“do you feel all right?”
“yes, thank you, just a little concerned,” Odonato replied, thinking that the doctor was questioning his mental condition in the wake of his son’s situation
“but, look here, you’re very thin and you don’t have good colour in your eyes”
“thank you, doctor, right now i’m just worried about my son, what are you planning to do?”
“conditions here won’t allow me to extract the bullet, it’s stanched at the moment, but there’s already an infection, i won’t lie to you, the risk is serious,” he paused, “we have to act very quickly, because if the infection spreads... your son could die... sir, do you want me to take him to the Military Hospital?” the doctor averted his gaze in the direction of Odonato’s hands
Xilisbaba hurried to close the window so that the dark clouds in the kitchen thickened
“don’t worry, ma’am, i’m not frightened. i’ve seen lots of bullets in bodies, but people like this... i have to admit, it’s the first time”
Ciente-the-Grand moaned
“the Military Hospital doesn’t strike me as a good idea, doctor, how can i explain the bullet?”
“is it you who has to explain it, sir, or your son? we’re not talking about a fifteen-year-old boy”
“thanks, but it won’t work”
“but, Odonato, maybe,” Xilisbaba started
“it won’t work”
“the doctor says he could die”
“we could all die,” Odonato looked fixedly at the doctor, “every day, with or without bullets in our bodies”
“that’s true,” the doctor agreed, venturing “and what about you, can i have a look?”
“one thing at a time, doctor”
Little Daddy and João Slowly accompanied the doctor to the building’s exit
he was a very observant man, he walked slowly between the floors, observed whether the doors were open or closed, observed the objects left in the halls, the flora cultivated in flowerpots, and that which sprouted through the walls, the delicate, sure-footed way in which the inhabitants crossed the pools of water on the first floor, signalling possible crossing routes to people like him
after passing through the darkness, the doctor smiled on returning to the intense sunlight of the city of Luanda and the sound of the ministerial car’s siren, he set off walking in the direction of Maianga Square
“here comes the Minister, we’d better get out of the way before we get in hot water,” young Little Daddy said
“come with me,” João Slowly said, “let’s got up to the terrace, i’ve got an offer to make you, hey Maria,” he shouted, “can you come with us or are you busy?”
“go with you where?” Strong Maria asked her colleague to keep an eye on her washbasins full of things and her lighted grill
“we’re going to the terrace to talk about business, this city never sleeps!”
they went upstairs in silence, a strange, minimalist procession
only a few minutes later, having reached the terrace, did the group begin to talk
“right here we’ll see the return to the future of the eighth art...” João Slowly said with a strange gleam in his eyes and an incantatory tone ill-suited to the hot sun
“were you out drinking this morning?” Strong Maria sat down on a small box
“that’s it, sit down there, yes, right there! now you’ll be able to imagine the rest, in front of you a late-afternoon scene, look out at those roof tiles, at this city full of dust, full of people who flutter about, from a distance they can’t see us...it’s we who can see them...”
Strong Maria sighed and looked at Little Daddy in the hope that he might know what was behind this mysterious speech, but Little Daddy shrugged his shoulders and sat down next to her on the same old box
“the return to the cinematic art, except that our cinema is the eighth art... because we’re beyond all that, in a conception already based on unparalleled theoretical advancedness, except that...”
this happened at times, late in the afternoon, but especially after drinking, João Slowly went on oral rambles through futile, obscure notions, usually ornamented by a Po
rtuguese which did not approach so-called standard Portuguese, or even, if we may express it this way, standard Angolan Portuguese
“and so the plan sprang up in my head... an open-air cinema, at the top of this building, in the heart of this city, a cinema in which a person brings his stool, his tin can, his seat, like in the time before, and where the hour on the clock dictates the programming, in the afternoon we target the youngsters, at night we can have our soap operas with the support of National Television, and later the sessions for adults”
“pornographic movies? with moaning?”
“films for adults, and our cinema is of an old-fashioned modernity, that’s why i called it the eighth art”
“but what are you talkin’ about?” Strong Maria stood up impatiently and was on her way out
“we’re going to return to the era of silent pictures, where only the crowd’s murmurs or comments hang in the air, this is going to be a fucking great business...”
João Slowly’s hand lifted slowly, and Little Daddy’s and Strong Maria’s eyes were obliged to follow it: his finger extended, pointing out the neighbouring building as though it were a far-off road, there, the sad rooster picked at the dry ground, cracked by the daily heat
“let me introduce you to the Rooster Camões Cinema! may our neighbour and future mascot live without the risks of being too close to us”
Little Daddy, narrowing his eyes, gazed incredulously at the rooster: he saw it was missing its right eye, but he didn’t get the reference to that other name, “Camões”
“so now you’re ready,” João Slowly’s voice changed, now he was talking in a trite tone, less prophetically, “Little Daddy will handle admission and guest seating, and you, Maria, if you wish, can run the food and drink sales, before and after the session, so that we don’t get the cinema dirty, i’m going to speak to the neighbourhood and work out how we divide up divide up the profits, aside from my slice, since it was my idea and i’m the manager, on top of that i gave the cinema a name that will make lots of people jealous: Rooster Camões!”
“o-kay,” Strong Maria finally agreed, “it sounds like a good idea, when are you gonna start?”
“if everything goes well, tomorrow”
after speaking with the most influential neighbours, João Slowly was completely convinced that the idea was a good one, he mobilized Little Daddy and even Seashell Seller and Blind Man to carry some chairs to the roof
“but didn’t Uncle João Slowly say that everybody would bring his own seat?”
“shut up, kid, you don’t have any business experience, you don’t respect the elders. and the wise old men, are they going to be able to climb these stairs carrying a chair? don’t be stupid, this is a cinema with rules from the time before, but also from the future, don’t forget, it’s the eighth art, the Rooster Camões will be respected and talked about the world over, those chairs are for the group of elders, and so let’s get to work because they’re already talking a bunch”
Little Daddy helped to carry chairs and Seashell Seller, who had left his bag with Blind Man in a corner up above, was happy because he had finally been introduced to Odonato and Xilisbaba’s daughter Amarelinha
over the next two hours Seashell Seller moved his hands slowly, trying to find his rhythm, because he suddenly felt his voice failing him, his callused hands growing weak, when the girl came near and smiled at him
Amarelinha, who normally smiled with a hand in front of her mouth, sensed the Seller looking at her and her yellowed teeth with a simple directness
and she and her sure hands trembled too beneath his gaze
seated in the corner to which he’d been assigned, beneath a small, perforated red umbrella, Blind Man smiled at what he’d been told, that he wouldn’t have to pay to get in because at the Rooster Camões Cinema “the unvisualed” had a spot reserved although it wasn’t worth sitting them close to the front, blocking other people’s view
Blind Man had a reserved corner where, the cinema’s manager said, the late afternoon and early evening winds made their refreshing rounds, which would leave Blind Man in a privileged position where he could taste the breeze while listening to the marvellous films that would be exhibited
“but didn’t you say this cinema isn’t going to have sound? i’ll be stuck there as part of the landscape, not seeing anything,” Blind Man complained
“i’m more progressive than that, elder, don’t worry, the Rooster Camões Cinema is the real cinema of the Eighth Art, i’m not kidding, and the eighth artist, you might say, which will turn this cinema into something monumental, not to say monovocal, is the people, the participatory public!”
“what do you mean?”
“we’re not going to have sound, but rather the sounds that people want, it’s the people, individually or together, who are invited to create the film’s sound from their own mouths... can you imagine that? it’s going to be wonderful!”
on her way back to her own business, Strong Maria stopped before crossing the darkness of the first floor
in a humid recess, before she had got used to the darkness, her eyes saw a man’s hands, handsome and cared for, running over a young woman’s body
the woman, her body soaked from sweat and the open waters, moaned at the man’s touch, they kissed ferociously, their tongues seeking each other’s throats and ears, their frenzied hands trying to pull off one another’s clothes or, failing that, finding routes beneath clothes to stroke or squeeze the woman’s hardened nipples or the man’s hard sex
Strong Maria looked over her shoulder, fearing that someone else might come down the stairs and though she was far from the place where the water dripped, she felt damp, the sweat hot on her hands and between her breasts, her skin tightened and the spot’s coolness made her slide down onto the ground: she saw everything better now
his moans, her moans, and Strong Maria’s hand, slipping inside her own clothes and touching her hot sex, made her moan, too, until she quickly closed her mouth to avoid being too loud
Strong Maria’s other hand searched for the cool dampness of the wall and daubed moisture onto her throat
Strong Maria let fall a tear, feeling a pleasure that started in her mouth, flowed down through her breasts, ran over her ribs, raised gooseflesh on her buttocks and arrived, by way of her sex, in her tremulous hand at the exact moment when the man shouted in pleasure and the woman pounded the water on the floor in fury as if the noise or the splash of refreshing liquid could either appease or magnify the spasms of her hips in response to the man’s still hard sex
pulling together her clothing and her composure, Strong Maria got a shock that stifled her pleasure, not because the man and the girl had suddenly glanced in her direction, or in the vicinity where she’d hidden, but because, in the shadows, she had recognized his face
she was certain, it was the Senhor Minister of the yellow handkerchief.
Paulo Paused woke late, his body swathed in a sticky heat, his girlfriend had gone out long ago
the air conditioning wasn’t working, nor the fan, and it took the journalist a few moments to realize that there was no light in the apartment, he decided to take a cold shower, get dressed, and take a drink from the lukewarm water he found in the refrigerator
he realized he was late, he’d finally got an interview with Drybank, the man they called Dom Crystal-Clear for his years involved with aquatic issues, he had worked for many years in the Ministry of Industry, rotating through other positions in the era of now-deceased Scientific Socialism, and was privatizing the places, the factories, and even some of the people who crossed his path
a man with powerful backers, protected by people high up in the Party’s Central Committee, he had grown in stature as a figure and a businessman until the Party suddenly grasped that the power dynamic had been turned on its head, and now many people, from the most varied sectors of Angolan soci
ety, actually depended on his goodwill and on businesses that Dom Crystal-Clear controlled
among the rumours that had been circulating for some time was that part of the recent crisis in the water supply was a plot by very high-ranking people, in a preemptive attempt to privatize the asset which, in the future, would be the most precious of natural resources on the African continent and in the world
in this sense, and in others, Dom Crystal-Clear was far ahead of his time, for years he had engaged in political and judicial manoeuvring, so that he had already succeeded in privatizing mountains with high-quality wellsprings and abundant headwaters, in buying vast tracts of land selected specifically on the basis of the number of rivers and creeks which bathed them, in this way, little by little, without prompting an outcry, he had accumulated so many pockets of land that it was calculated that a significant slice of the country, rich in water resources, was in his name, or in the names of relatives who lived under his nepotistic rule
a group of well-paid lawyers had spent years preparing the battle that Dom Crystal-Clear was about to win: the privatization of water in Angola, the condition being, and this supposition was both unknown and simultaneously unconditional, that the great Leader would have to be his ally
worrying about all of this, Paulo Paused walked towards Crystal-Clear’s business
already irritated, the journalist walked, kicking loose stones and fruit that had fallen overnight down the sidewalk, he ruminated in advance on his frustration, after all, in this long-awaited interview, what questions could he ask? how far would Dom Crystal-Clear’s benevolence extend if he asked honest, uncomfortable questions?
Dom Crystal-Clear was a much more genteel businessman than others Paulo knew, he was even an educated man, which was atypical of many whose luck and strategic social position had offered either raw wealth for the taking or excellent, available scraps that gave them access, in little time, to astronomical quantities of money
on this checkerboard, Drybank, or Dom Crystal-Clear, was an excellent player
“weren’t you notified?” the secretary blurted
“about what?”
“all of today’s interviews were cancelled, Dom Crystal-Clear is very busy”
