A General Theory of Oblivion

by Jose Eduardo Agualusa

  “The truth is the soleless shoe of a man who doesn’t know how to lie.”

  He became easily irritated. On one occasion, Diogo allowed some other boys to steal a small battery-powered radio that Baiacu had managed to extract from the backseat of a jeep that was stuck in traffic. That night Baiacu lit a fire by the side of the lagoon. He heated up a sheet of iron till it was red-hot. He called Diogo over, grabbed one of his hands, and held it to the metal plate. Both Diogo’s bodies twisted desperately. Both his mouths gave a high-pitched howl. Sabalu threw up, tortured by the smell of burned flesh and Diogo’s desperation.

  “You’re weak,” spat Baiacu. “You’ll never be king.”

  From that day on, to make Sabalu a man, at least a man since he’d never be able to transform him into a king, he started taking him along on short pilfering expeditions. These would happen in the late afternoons, when the bourgeois were heading home in their cars, languishing in traffic jams for hours on end. There was always some poor soul who’d roll down a window, either to let in some air, because the air-conditioning wasn’t working, or to ask someone a question. Then Baiacu would spring out of the shadows, his face spiked with pimples, his wide eyes aflame, and hold a shard of glass to his neck. Sabalu would stick his hands through the window and take a wallet, a watch, any object of value within his reach. Then the two of them would race away into the confusion of cars and people shouting threats and the fury of car horns, occasionally gunshots.

  It had been Baiacu’s idea to climb the scaffolding. He instructed Sabalu:

  “You climb up, see if there’s a window open anywhere, and get in without making noise. I can’t do it. Heights make me really sick. Also the higher I go the shorter I feel.”

  Sabalu climbed up onto the terrace. He saw the dead chickens. He walked down the stairs and discovered an apartment that was stripped to the bone, without furniture, without doors or flooring. The walls, which were covered in inscriptions and strange drawings, scared him. He backed slowly toward the staircase. He told Baiacu there was nothing there. The next night, however, he climbed the scaffolding again. This time he ventured across the few remaining floor tiles. In the bedroom he found the old woman sleeping on a mattress. Clothes in one corner. The kitchen was the only place in the house that looked normal, apart from its walls that had been blackened by smoke. There was a heavy-looking table, marble-topped, an oven and fridge. The boy took out a bread roll that he’d brought in his pocket, he always had a bread roll in his pocket, and put it on the table. In a drawer he found a set of silver cutlery. He put it in his rucksack and left. He handed the cutlery over to Baiacu. The boy was impressed, and whistled:

  “Good work, kid. You didn’t find any dough, any jewels?”

  Sabalu said no. There was more poverty up there than down here on the streets of Luanda. Baiacu didn’t agree.

  “You’re going back tomorrow.”

  Sabalu just nodded. He asked for money to buy some bread. He put the bread, a stick of butter, and a bottle of Coke into his rucksack and scaled the building. When Baiacu saw him coming back empty-handed, he exploded. He threw himself on him, punching and kicking. He knocked him down. He went on kicking his head, his neck, till Diogo held his arms and pulled him off. The following night, Sabalu climbed up to the terrace again. This time he found Ludo sprawled on the floor. He came back down, very alarmed. He asked Baiacu to let him buy medicine. The old woman had fallen over. She looked really bad. The other boy didn’t even listen:

  “I don’t see wings on your back, Sabalu. If you haven’t got wings, you’re not an angel. Let the old woman die.”

  Sabalu fell silent. He accompanied Baiacu and Diogo to Roque Santeiro. They sold the cutlery. They had lunch around there, in a bar that rose up, perched on stilts, over the Babel-like confusion of the market. Sabalu let Baiacu finish his beer. Then he dared to ask whether he might not have some of the money for himself. After all, he’d been the one who’d brought the cutlery. The other boy was enraged:

  “What do you want the dough for? Anything you need I give you. I’m like a father to you.”

  “Let me just see the money. I’ve never seen so much all together.”

  Baiacu handed him the thick wad of banknotes. Sabalu grabbed hold of them. He leaped down from the terrace onto the sand. When he got back to his feet, his knees were bleeding. He ran, slipping through the crowds, while Baiacu, leaning over the ledge, yelled insults and threats:

  “Thief! Son of a bitch. I’m going to kill you.”

  Sabalu bought medicine and food. It was getting late when he returned to Quinaxixe. He saw Baiacu sitting with Diogo beside the scaffolding. He approached another kid and handed him five banknotes:

  “Tell Baiacu I’m waiting for him at the Verde Bar.”

  The boy ran off. He passed on the message. Baiacu leaped to his feet and left, followed by Diogo, in the opposite direction. Sabalu climbed the scaffolding. He didn’t breathe easy till he had reached the terrace.

  Daniel Benchimol Investigates Ludo’s Disappearance

  Daniel Benchimol read through the letter from Maria da Piedade Lourenço twice. He phoned a friend of his father’s, a geologist, who had devoted his entire life to diamond prospecting. Old Vitalino remembered Orlando very well:

  “A good fellow, very ugly. Really stiff, and skinny, always standing very tense, as though he were wearing a shirt with studs in it. They called him Spike. Nobody wanted to have a coffee with him. He didn’t make friends. He disappeared not long before Independence. He took advantage of the chaos, stuck a few stones in his pocket, and ran off to Brazil.”

  Daniel did some research online. He found hundreds of people called Orlando Pereira dos Santos. He wasted hours following any clue, any mention, that might take him from the name to the man he was after. No luck. He found it strange. A man like Orlando, living for twenty-something years in Brazil, or in any country that wasn’t Afghanistan, or Sudan, or Bhutan, would have to leave some trace on the great virtual web. He called Vitalino again:

  “Did this Orlando guy have any family in Angola?”

  “Probably. He was from Catete.”

  “Catete? I thought he was Portuguese!”

  “No, no! Hundred-percent Catete. Real light skin. After April 25 he insisted on reminding us of his origins. He boasted of having lived with Agostinho Neto himself. Would you believe it? A guy who all those years had never once raised his voice against colonialism. I should add, for the sake of the whole truth, that he didn’t do deals with racists, he never did that, he always acted like a decent kind of guy. He acted with just the same arrogance toward both whites and blacks.”

  “And his family?”

  “Well then, his family. I think he was a cousin of Vitorino Gavião.”

  “The poet?”

  “A tramp. Call him what you like.”

  Benchimol knew where to find Vitorino Gavião. He crossed the street and went into Biker. The historic beer hall was almost empty at this time of day. Sitting at one table, toward the back, four men were playing cards. They were arguing loudly. They fell silent when they saw him approach.

  “Careful!” said one of them sharply, in a pretend whisper but wanting the journalist to hear him. “The establishment press has arrived. The owner’s voice. The owner’s ears.”

  Benchimol got annoyed:

  “If I’m the voice of the regime, you’re the excrement.”

  The one who had whispered straightened up:

  “Don’t get annoyed, comrade. Have a beer.”

  Vitorino Gavião let out a bitter laugh:

  “We’re the Greek chorus. The voice of the nation’s conscience. That’s what we are. Here we sit, in the gloom, passing comment on the progress of the tragedy. Giving warnings to which nobody pays heed.”

  A runaway baldness had robbed him of the thick head of hair, Jimi Hendrix–style, with which in the 1960s in Paris he had proclaimed his négritude. The way he was now, his skull smooth and shining, he could pass for a white man e
ven in Sweden. Well, perhaps not in Sweden. He raised his voice, curious:

  “What’s the news?”

  The journalist pulled up a chair. He sat down:

  “Did you know a guy called Orlando Pereira dos Santos, a mining engineer?”

  Gavião hesitated, very pale:

  “My cousin. First cousin. Did he die?”

  “I don’t know. Would you stand to gain anything from his death?”

  “The guy disappeared around Independence. They say he took a package of diamonds with him.”

  “You think he’d still remember you?”

  “We were friends. Spike’s silence in the early years didn’t surprise me. If I’d stolen a package of diamonds, I’d want to be forgotten too. He was forgotten. Everybody forgot him a long time ago. Why are you asking me these questions?”

  The journalist showed him the letter from Maria da Piedade Lourenço. Gavião remembered Ludo. He’d always found her a bit distracted. Now he understood why. He remembered his visits to his cousin’s apartment, in the Prédio dos Invejados. The euphoria of the days before Independence.

  “If I’d known how it was going to end up, I’d have stayed in Paris.”

  “And what were you doing – there, in Paris?”

  “Nothing!” sighed Gavião. “Nothing, like here. But at least I was doing it elegantly. I could be a flâneur.”

  That same afternoon, after leaving the newspaper offices, Daniel walked up to Quinaxixe. The Prédio dos Invejados still looked pretty dilapidated. Nevertheless, the entrance hall was freshly painted, and the air was clean and cheerful. A security guard was posted at the elevator.

  “Does it work?” asked the journalist.

  The man smiled, proudly:

  “Almost always, boss, almost always!”

  He asked Daniel for some identification and only then called the lift. The journalist got in. He went up to the eleventh floor. He got out. He paused a moment, struck by the cleanness of the walls and the shine on the floor tiles. There was only one door that jarred with the others, the door to apartment D. It was scratched and revealed a small hole, halfway up, that looked like a bullet wound. The journalist pressed the doorbell. He didn’t hear a sound. Then he knocked three times, hard. A boy came to the door. Big eyes, a mature expression surprising in someone so young.

  “Hello,” the journalist greeted him. “Do you live here?”

  “Yes, sir, I do. Me and my grandma.”

  “Can I talk to your grandma?”

  “No.”

  “Let be, son, I’ll talk to him.”

  Daniel heard the voice, fragile, cracked, and only then saw a very pale woman appear, dragging one leg, her gray hair parted into two thick braids:

  “I am Ludovica Fernandes, my good man. What do you want?”

  Mutiati Blues (2)

  The old man watched as January rose up and closed in around the Kuvale people like a trap. First the drought. A lot of oxen died. The farther east they traveled, climbing the range of hills, the sweeter the air became, the ground getting cooler and softer. They found some pasture, muddy watering holes, and they walked on, struggling to decipher the faint hints of green. The fence just popped up by surprise, like an insult, offending the luminous rise of the morning. The herd came to a stop. The young men gathered in nervous groups, calling out sharply in surprise and indignation. António, the son, came over. He was sweating. His handsome face, with its straight nose, its prominent chin, was flushed through effort and rage:

  “What do we do?”

  The old man sat down. The fence ran for hundreds of meters. To the right it came out through a harsh tangle of bramble bushes, which were called cat’s-claws there, and to the left plunged into an even thicker, sharper-pointed nightmare of wild bushes, of long cacti in the shape of candelabra, and of mutiati trees. Beyond the barrier was a soft path of white pebbles along which, at that time of year, a small brook was meant to be flowing.

  Jeremias Carrasco selected a twig, smoothed out the sand, and began to write. António crouched beside him.

  That afternoon they knocked down the fence and crossed to the other side. They found a bit of water. Good pastures. The wind began to blow. The wind carried heavy shadows along with it, as though it were carrying night, in shreds, yanked away from some other, even more distant desert. They heard the sound of an engine and saw, appearing through the gloom and the dust, a jeep carrying six armed men. One of them, a skinny mulatto, with the destitute look of a wet cat, leaped from the car and came toward them waving an AK-47 in his right hand.

  He was shouting in Portuguese and Nkumbi. A few phrases, torn to pieces by the wind, reached Jeremias’s ears:

  “This is private land! Get out! Get out now!”

  The old man raised his right hand, trying to hold back the momentum of the young men. Too late. A lanky young lad, who had only just taken a wife, and whom they called Zebra, threw the small assegai spear. The weapon traced an elegant arc in the panicky sky and planted itself, with a dry crunch, just centimeters from the mulatto’s boots.

  There was the briefest moment of silence. The very wind seemed to abate. Then the guard raised his gun and fired.

  In the harsh light of midday it would have been a bloodbath. The six men were armed. Some of the shepherds had been through the military and they, too, were carrying firearms. At that time, however, with the wind whipping through the darkness, only two bullets found their way into flesh. Zebra was lightly wounded in one arm. The mulatto in a leg. Both parties drew back, but in the confusion a lot of cows were left behind.

  The following night, a group of young shepherds, led by Zebra, went back into the ranch. They returned with some of the missing cattle, half a dozen cows that didn’t belong to them, and a fourteen-year-old boy, who, according to Zebra, had chased after them on horseback, shouting like a man possessed.

  Jeremias was alarmed. Stealing cattle is tradition. It happens all the time. In this case, it was a kind of exchange. The kidnapping of the boy, though, that really could cause them some problems. He sent for him. He was an adolescent with very green eyes, untamed hair tied into a ponytail. One of those characters who in Angola are often called lost frontiers, because by daylight they look white, and at twilight they are discovered in fact to be part mulatto – hence the conclusion that sometimes you can understand people better far away from the light. The boy looked at the old man with contempt:

  “My granddad is going to kill you!”

  Jeremias laughed. He wrote in the sand:

  “I’ve died once before. Second time won’t be so bad.”

  The boy stammered something, surprised. He started to cry:

  “I’m André Ruço, Senhor, I’m General Ruço’s grandson. Tell them not to hurt me. Let me go. Keep the cows but let me go.”

  The old man made an effort to persuade the young ones to release André. They demanded their cows back and a guarantee that they could cross the estate in search of better pastures. They’d been at this for three days when Jeremias saw the past crouching down before him. It had aged, which doesn’t always happen, sometimes the past travels centuries without time corrupting it at all. Not this time: this man had withered even more, he had more wrinkles, and what hair he had left was practically colorless now. His voice, though, remained solid and firm. At that moment, when Jeremias found himself faced with Monte, seeing him stand up and get pushed backward, seeing him run off, chased by the young shepherds, he recalled Orlando Pereira dos Santos and his diamonds.

  The Strange Destiny of the Kubango River

  Nasser Evangelista was pleased with his new job. He wore a blue uniform, very clean, and spent most of his time sitting at a desk, reading, while he watched the door out of the corner of his eye. He had developed his taste for reading during the years he’d spent locked up in the São Paulo Prison in Luanda. After his release, he’d worked as a craftsman, carving masks in the Mile-Eleven Market. One afternoon he met Little Chief, with whom he’d shared a cell, and who invited
him to work as a doorman at the Prédio dos Invejados at Quinaxixe, where he’d just moved in.

  “It’s a quiet job,” the businessman assured him. “You’ll be able to read.”

  With this, he persuaded him. That morning, Nasser Evangelista was rereading, for the seventh time, the adventures of Robinson Crusoe when he noticed a very ugly boy, his face pitted with acne, lurking around the entrance to the building. Nasser marked his page. He put the book away in a drawer. He got up and walked over to the door:

  “Hey, you! Spotty kid. What do you want with my building?”

  The young man approached, intimidated:

  “Do you know if there’s a boy living here?”

  “Several, kid. This building’s a whole city.”

  “A seven-year-old boy, name’s Sabalu.”

  “Ah, yes! Sabalu, I know the one. Eleven-E. Very nice kid. Lives with his grandmother, but I’ve never seen her. She doesn’t leave the house.”

  At that moment, two other characters appeared. Nasser was startled to see them walking up the road, both dressed in black, as though they had stepped straight out of an adventure from Corto Maltese. The older of the two was wearing a Mucubal hat on his head, with red and yellow stripes, necklaces round his neck, and big bracelets on his wrists. He was wearing old leather sandals, which revealed huge feet that were cracked and covered in dust. Next to the old man, moving with the elegance of someone showing himself on a catwalk, was a young man, very tall and thin. He, too, had bracelets and necklaces, but on him such accessories seemed as natural as the bowler hat that covered his head. The two men were walking decisively toward Nasser. We’re going up, the young man informed him, while with a gesture of annoyance he pushed the doorman aside. Nasser had received very firm instructions that he was not to allow anyone in without first taking a note of the number of their ID card or driver’s license. He was about to block their way, when Baiacu, dodging around him, dashed off up the stairs. The doorman followed him. Jeremias and his son called the elevator, got in, and rode it up. When they got out on the eleventh floor, the old man had a dizzy spell. He couldn’t catch his breath. He leaned against the wall for a moment. He saw Daniel Benchimol, who was greeting Ludo, and he recognized her, even though he had never met her before.