by Ted Simon
The Carlton when I found it was just what I wanted, a big old-fashioned hotel with a bustling restaurant in the Latin style downstairs. The handsome double room for ninety escudos seemed like a gift after the previous offer, but it was still a lot of money.
The following day I resumed the search for the friend of my friend, and found him in his shoe shop. He took me for lunch to the Clube de Pesca, and we sat at the bar playing dice, while his fishing cronies told filthy jokes and stories about the war. Everyone was talking about the war. It was obviously coming to a crisis. When I was in Salisbury I had had a first hand account, obviously authentic, of the true position of the Frelimo Independence movement in Mozambique, and it was clear that Frelimo were more advanced than anyone in white Africa believed. It would have to end soon, somehow.
The man next to me at the bar started telling me about it, swearing boastfully in Portuguese Afrikaans English, which is in itself ugly enough not to need emphasis.
‘I was in it bladdy three and a half years. That's a bladdy long time. I tell you, we were losing men all the bladdy time, man. Maybe one man a
day. Well, there's four bladdy lots like our fuckers, so that's four bladdy men a day, so in seven bladdy years, man, we lost a lot of bladdy men.'
There were already rumours of crisis in Lisbon about the losses sustained by the Portuguese in Angola and Mozambique, and the white Portuguese colonists were not happy either. They were milked economically by Portugal and believed that, given their own independence, they could do a deal with Frelimo.
'The bladdy worst was, we couldn't bladdy fight the fuckers. They had bladdy grenades and Kalashnikovs and bazookas and bladdy mortars behind, and they would bladdy kill some of our fuckers and then bladdy run away.
'We were walking forty bladdy miles in a day looking for the fuckers, but when we find them we can't shoot them, we got to bladdy bring them in to question. That's no bladdy good!'
A satisfied grin crossed his face then, as he swallowed his drink.
'Not the Navy men, though. They were bladdy good. They landed and bladdy shot everything. They didn't care if it was us or the bladdy enemy. They kill anybody, you just get out the bladdy way.'
I could see his point. I thought that maybe, after three or four years of being shot at, I might want to kill everything in sight too.
Remarkably enough, the very next day the army in Portugal overthrew the old dictatorship, and Mozambique began its first revolution as though for my benefit. There were passionate meetings in streets, squares and cafes. Veins throbbed and fists clenched as orators screamed about independence, liberty, autonomy, equality and so on. It was noisy but peaceful, a largely white affair of leaflets and polemics, and the colony was given self-governing status, but the war with Frelimo continued.
My sailing date was postponed from day to day, as the Zoë G waited for a loading berth. I spent time with journalists who had flown in from London, but felt remarkably remote from them and, I know, looked like a freak to them. Other times I spent in Rajah's Snack Bar, a splendid Indian establishment where I was received almost as a son, played innumerable games of chess, and consumed unnumbered sambusas, most of them free. Rajah himself felt none of the euphoria of the white population. He foresaw great trouble and could not quite decide whether or not to cut his losses and go. It was the Indians in Mozambique, as elsewhere in Africa, who saw a political reality that few others recognized, but theirs was a sterile understanding, for they never joined in the process either way but stood on the sidelines, self-made outcasts, consoled by their profits.
Another Indian I got to know a little was the shipping clerk in charge of manifests at the agent's office. He took me to the Zoë G the day before she was due to sail. First we walked past the station, with its bulbous baroque cupola, blown up just beyond the limits of decency like an overripe fruit. The whole thing was a piece of pure Lisbon dropped from heaven on the shores of Africa. Facing it stood a heroic stone mother-figure, bearing Portugal's burdens with a sorrowful expression. She might have been welcoming newcomers. More likely, I thought, she was wishing she too could catch a train and get the hell out of there.
Beyond the station were the dock gates, and then the endless sheds, and rolling stock and heaps of everything under the sun, including rubbish and flies. The Zoë G, when I first saw her, dented my morale severely. Evidently she could float, because she was tied up at the quayside and wobbling as they put a thousand tons of copper aboard her, but it seemed unlikely that she would float for long before the rust gave way somewhere to the sea. Not a clear painted surface or a gleam of brass could I discern anywhere.
Under the night-loading lights a great chasm gaped in her deck among the debris. In its depths, black stevedores in khaki shorts chanted and heaved among sleeper-sized bars of metal. There was some magic down there, but in the saloon were only sleazy seamen in attitudes of despair. I dumped my bags and fled.
Next day, Amade the clerk and I returned before dark, and things did not look quite so bad. I was shown a cabin, the 'owner's cabin', which was far better than I expected, and had a small drawing room attached, and a proper bathroom, dilapidated but very acceptable. In its better days this ship, once Danish, would have been entirely suitable to Agatha Christie. It had had accommodation for twelve passengers and a miniature grand staircase sweeping down to a saloon with engraved glass swing doors. If it was now more appropriate to Graham Greene that was, in a sense, all to the good.
I sat later in the Captain's office and talked to Amade as we waited. The Captain, in cream shirt and grey flannels with a zip that wouldn't quite close, was tapping, out letters on a pre-war Standard typewriter and filling in forms. Amade had noted the loading for fuel and water, the draught fore and aft, the anticipated mean draught at Fortaleza and the expected time of arrival.
'Where is Fortaleza?' I asked.
'In the north of Brazil,' he said. 'You will call there first.'
It was the first I had heard of it, and an idea slowly formed that I might get off there instead.
We went on talking about the future for Mozambique.
'There will be trouble,' said Amade. 'You will see. You will hear about it. There will be no arrangement with Frelimo. There will be bloodshed.'
He was a tall Portuguese Indian with a liquid charm and a wry smile suggesting always that behind the apparent reality lay an altogether
different reality which promised little good. He listened politely to my counter-arguments, but they carried no weight and didn't convince me either. The poignancy was overwhelming.
T was four years in the army fighting the war,' he said. T left university to go to the army. When I finished fighting I gave up study, there was no time any more. It was necessary to put my feet on the ground. Now I am married. I have children. Am I going back to the army now? We can fight this war for four, eight, twelve, sixteen years, but we will have to give it away in the end.'
The pilot appeared in the doorway, bearded, in a heavy coat. He was shrouded in darkness and mystery, a portentous figure.
'Are you ready, Captain?'
The ship had been shivering gently for hours, a soft, almost inaudible rustle in the panelling, like the breath of a sleeping child, flowing and ebbing, flowing and ebbing.
Amade uncrossed his legs and smiled encouragingly at me as though it were I and not he who was facing the miserable uncertainties of Africa. We shook hands and he jumped ashore from the rail.
'Go up on the bridge,' he said. 'You will see it better from there.'
The pilot was on the bridge with the Captain. Above them was another open deck where the funnel simmered. I heard the whistle and chatter of ' walkie-talkies and the stern swung clear of the bows of the next ship in line. Amade, on the quayside, gave a last wave and walked away across the sidings, away from the lights, over the coal-black dust, into the night shadow of the yard. I'm going to Rio, I thought, he's going nowhere. An immense sadness reached out to me and faded as he moved out of sight among the
goods wagons.
Over the starboard side a long tugboat was hauling our stern into the harbour. My excitement surged up in a choking flood, as I saw the full line of vessels stretched out in both directions as far as my vision could stretch, all brilliant, glowing under a thousand lanterns, tantalizing, promising joy, like department stores at Christmas time, like a giant fairground. Nothing, I felt, gladdens the heart like lights shining in the darkness. I was so overjoyed that I leapt up and down and shouted, wondering what the Captain below would make of my antics.
The tug let go of the stern and its bulbous, padded nose slid along the shore side of the ship and rammed into the bows, chugging furiously, swinging us round to point to sea. Behind me the funnel belched, and the ship's Burmeister engines took the strain. The tugboat streaked away to port, flaunting her power.
Ahead a trail of blue flashing marker buoys perforated the black water leading out past other floating fairylands at anchor. The prospect of Brazil, the pleasure of seeing massive objects in effortless motion, the
lights which leave so much to the imagination, all this was a benign magic shaping the world for my special pleasure. My first great sea voyage had begun.
I woke feeling fine although the ship was already wallowing in a heavy swell, and sat down with confidence to a breakfast of eggs and bacon at seven. By ten a gale was blowing, the sea was much bigger and I was beginning to feel uneasy. The ship was see-sawing and rolling heavily. With alarming speed I was launched into full-scale sea sickness which I had never experienced before.
There was only one place where I could bear to stand, on the starboard gangway at the pivotal point of the pitch. There at least the possibilities for violent motion were reduced by one. Exhaustion eventually forced me to try lying down, but my stomach went into a floating wobble, something gripped my throat, my mouth flooded with saliva, like a beast of prey at full kill, and there was just time to get to the rail. The croaking, despairing noise that issued with my breakfast was the worst of it.
In the brief moment of peace that followed I took up my station on the gangway again, watching the sea. It was in an unbelievable turmoil. Lumps of black water with white crests rushed about in aimless fury, colliding with each other. The wind whipped up spray, the clouds discharged rain, the two met and the sky and sea merged all around me in a swirling fusion of air and water.
It was impossible not to think of the sea as alive. There was a life force at work in it. The waves were mere cloaks for Neptune's raiders as they tore about below the surface, and the crests were a froth whipped up by their tridents. The Zoë G was some four hundred feet long and weighed about four thousand tons. She rode up on the swell and fell again through at least thirty degrees. When she came down to hammer the sea with her bows, the sea rushed off screaming vengeance and pain, showing vivid bruises of pale blue where the ship's hull had smashed air and water together so hard that they remained entangled in the wake as far as one could see.
Looking down into all this made me grasp the rail very tight. I knew nothing could survive in that cauldron, and I thought my ordeal would never end. It gave me only the slightest satisfaction to know that the ship's engineer was as sick as I was and, with a belly twice the size of mine, was presumably twice as uncomfortable.
The next day was clear and blue, the sea was calmer, but I was unable to eat anything until the evening. Most of all I was afraid of sitting down in
the saloon which was heavily permeated by the smell of diesel oil and cooking.
I picked nervously at a tomato salad. It went down with no trouble at all. Every mouthful made me stronger. There was roast lamb with garlic and greasy roast potatoes but nothing could stop me now. Beer as well. Delicious. Marvellous. It's over!
The great gale (and it was an unusually violent one, they told me) was like purgatory before paradise. The southern ocean was blue and mild, under scattered cloud, as we floated round the coast of South Africa. I was the only passenger and passed my days happily on deck teaching myself Spanish, watching the big sea birds that came to swoop around the ship, and contemplating my journey and its meaning.
On the fourth day, Cape Town, veiled in grey mist, drifted past to starboard. I stared at it as though at a fairyland doomed to vanish under a spell, feeling the most painful regret. Then we floated free into the Atlantic and began the long sweep up to the Equator. The storm had washed the ship clean; now the crew were put to scraping off the rust and repainting the decks and rails.
Those days were among the most precious of the journey. To balance the discipline of learning a new language I was reading Memories, Dreams and Reflections by Jung, given to me by a friend in Cape Town whose perceptiveness I was now beginning to appreciate.
The book met my needs in the most extraordinary way, dealing so freely with thoughts and feelings outside the realms of logic and reason. All through Africa I had felt growing in me the belief that what was going on around me, the weather, the sudden appearances of animals and birds, the way I was received by people along the way, were somehow connected to my own inner life. Here was a man of great experience and erudition not only discussing the subject and describing similar experiences from his own life, but actually providing a word for it which he had himself coined, 'Synchronicity', meaning, for example, 'when an inwardly perceived event is seen to have correspondence in external reality'.
What, all my life, I would have called foolish superstition was being pressed gently home to me by my own experience and interpreted for me by Jung. The book goes much further, of course, into ideas of after-life and a collective unconscious. All of them connected precisely with thoughts that had come spontaneously out of the journey. I was specially startled to read Jung's remarks about mythology and the need of the individual to have some story or myth by which he can explain those things which reason and logic cannot account for. It seemed to me then that I had been close to the truth in thinking of my role as a 'myth maker', and not just for myself perhaps.
The book encouraged me immensely, and I spent a large part of the ten day Atlantic crossing re-examining my past life and writing furiously about my discoveries. At the same time I took ever greater delight in the creatures that appeared around the ship as it moved into warmer waters. A particular albatross that followed us seemed to have become quite familiar with me, and soared close by me again and again, showing me his broad white breast and the immense wings which he (or she) used so brilliantly. Flying fish sprang from the waves, like small bejewelled rockets, dashing over the water for seconds at a time, their wing-like fins whirring with an almost invisible swiftness.
At night the Pleiades appeared clear and bright to remind me of the magic of the Sudan, and my dreams were rich with mysterious symbolism.
One event then crowned that whole series of discoveries and reflections. I had come to a point in my thoughts where one day, on the deck, it seemed to me that I had uncovered a fact about myself and the world, a way of looking at my relationship with others, that promised a great liberation.
If I can just fix this thought,' I told myself, T shall find a wonderful new freedom for myself.'
At that same instant, below me in the sea, a great shoal of flying fish burst out into the sunlight. It was an incredible display that described exactly how I was just then feeling. Up to then I had never seen more than one or two fish at a time, nor did I ever again. It was a dream come true.
AMERICA
Land was nearby and the world was closing in, muffling sounds and thoughts. Thick humid air pressed around the ship and bore it up between ocean and sky. Clouds of silver and lead boiled above, speared like marshmallows on the slanting rays of a mid-morning sun. A soupy green sea slurped softly below. I stood above the bridge waiting for South America to appear.
Perhaps I was expecting the whole continent to come over the skyline in a simultaneous rush of cathedrals, revolutions, llamas and carnivals. Instead I saw the horizon thicken into smudges of dark green and brown. We drifted in. The smudg
es stretched but remained low. A last flying fish swooped over the waves. I caught the movement from the corner of my eye and moved just in time to follow it at the end of its course. That streaking spray of light had become as charged with mystery and hope as a shooting star. I felt a great reluctance to leave the ship and wished I could go on dreaming of a landfall that never came.
A line of buildings appeared at the ocean's edge, and I made out two or three spires pricking the pale sky. I forgot about South America and began to think about Fortaleza, on the north-east coast of Brazil, four degrees south of the Equator, and five hundred miles east of the Amazon. More than a million inhabitants, they had told me, and yet I had never heard of it. I felt that I had slipped off the edge of my customary world.
A red cutter came popping towards us and the Zoë G slowed to let the little boat nudge alongside. The harbour pilot came aboard. He was a disappointment too. He did not even look Latin. We swung to port and headed for another part of the coast where I could already see a grain silo and some cranes. The shoreline embraced us and I saw that we were in a broad bay. The only other craft in motion were narrow rafts, four logs lashed together with a rudder and sail. Most of them carried one or two men; small men, bare-footed, in chain-store nylon shirts and trousers. The shirts were loose, open and torn. The trousers were baggy at the behind, narrow at the legs, short at the ankles, patched and split. They were fishermen, of course, pesqueiros. A raft came by no bigger than the others but crowded with people, shoulder to shoulder. Even as I watched I knew it was impossible, and realized that in this new world there were also new laws.
