I CAN’T SLEEP. It is cold and gloomy. I pace around. From kitchen to bedroom to living room, back to kitchen. A full circle before I begin again. Bedroom to living room to kitchen.
In my dream, I confessed to Pó. I disposed of the girls in different ways. I let one girl slip into a river, the current dragging her somewhere she could not be recognized. I pulled another victim into the woods to be covered in a shallow grave of loam. Abel watched me hoist the first girl, the one who worked the tobacco fields, the one I wrapped in the Commander’s bloodied sheets, into the back of the jeep. I was being tested. He did not offer help. I drove to the swamp, not far off from the base. I carried her like a groom carries his bride. I sank into the loam and mud and papyrus. She became weightless in the water. I could not go deeper, afraid there would be a drop and I would drown. Her body was set adrift. The sheets unravelled. My feet sank in deeper so that the water was at my chest. I panicked and went under. Regaining firmer footing—a stone or log—I gasped for air. I opened my eyes and saw the bloated head of a corpse float by, its features unrecognizable.
Bedroom to living room. Kitchen…
* * *
I arrived at the foot of Gorongosa in early November. It is now March—a full year since I ran from Dar es Salaam to find this place. With every day the anxiety that comes with remaining on the mountain builds. They will find me.
“Fatima is not well,” I whisper.
“Machinga has prepared medicine.”
“The medicine won’t help her.”
Later, as we sit with Fatima, she tells us it is time to leave.
“Where?” I ask.
“Beira. It has been arranged. You will be married in God’s house.”
“No, Fatima. I will stay with you. Ezequiel is here to help.”
“I want you both to go. You have cared for me. It is more than any daughter would do. But you must begin your life. I have lived mine.”
I dream of setting up a new mission across the border, where things might be safer. There will be goats and chickens and crops. People will come and gather. Many are looking for a better life. “We will go,” I say.
“Love her as God intends,” Fatima says.
* * *
—
I look outside. In the morning, the air of the mountain is cool and moist and the sun is just tipping the rain-forested slopes. We leave in silence and reach the ranch in time to find John Wright loading the cattle onto the bed of his truck.
A week before, Fatima sent Kwazi to arrange things with the cattle rancher. He has agreed to drive us to Beira. He has been paid. He tilts his hat and opens the door to the cab of his truck.
The journey will take twelve hours, he tells us. “That is, if all goes well.”
“Are you selling your cattle?” I ask.
“I’m selling everything I own,” he replies. His tone suggests that any further questions or attempt at conversation will not be welcome. He will talk when he chooses.
We’re an hour in when he tells us he raises Brangus cattle, a breed well-suited to the climate of the mountain. For years he’s taken the cattle to market across the swollen Pungwe River by pontoon, where a dozen or so men, wise in the currents of the river, use bamboo poles to push the pont upstream before catching the current and guiding the craft to the opposite bank. From there it will be over a couple of hundred kilometres of bumpy road to Beira.
Pó is quiet. She saw Beira once. Padre Theuns, the parish priest, drove them to Gorongosa when they’d left Dar es Salaam. It is the only thing she says to me during the long journey. I do not share my fears of what it means to enter Beira, a foothold of the Portuguese army. I try to block the idea from my mind.
There are washed-out roads, crumbling bridges, but we have yet to come across a military checkpoint. Close to midnight, we enter the city and pull up to the church’s gates. The cattle are restless, held tightly for so long on the back of the truck.
“This is where you get off. We leave in two days. Noon,” Wright says, and drives off.
Pó is walking across the church grounds. She collapses near the rectory door, cocoons herself in her shuka and a blood-red capulana—a wedding gift from Fatima. “The church is closed. Can you try to find him?”
“Wait here. I won’t go far.” The first man I stumble upon is derelict, curled up on a sheet of cardboard. “Can you tell me where I can find Padre Theuns?”
The man blinks, raises his open palm, and offers me a wry smile.
A little farther down the road that leads to the beach, another man smoking a cigarette points to the bar. Pó once described him as a white man who didn’t look like a priest. I wasn’t sure what that meant. He was a man in his early forties with a scruffy appearance, unkempt beard, and Pó said if I could hear him speak I’d hear a South African accent.
Padre Theuns is alone, slumped in a chair. He is wearing a faded Jimi Hendrix T-shirt, the neck stretched so wide that part of his shoulder is bare. The tattered sandal on his left foot is held together with twine.
“Padre Theuns. Fatima sent us.”
At first, the priest does not seem to register who I’m referring to.
“She sent me here with Pó. She said you would marry us.” “Ah, the Goan queen has sent you with her beautiful albino. How is she?” he slurs. He mumbles to himself, mixing what I assume is Afrikaans with Portuguese.
“Forgive me, Padre Theuns, but you don’t look like a priest.”
“Didn’t Jesus wear sandals? Buy me a drink and I’ll show you what kind of priest I am.”
* * *
—
It is dark, perhaps two o’clock in the morning, as I help Father Theuns home. The streets are empty, save the few street people who live in cardboard boxes.
“Let me confess something to you.”
“Isn’t it meant to work the other way round?”
We stop in the middle of a road. He claps his hands to the sides of my face and holds me still. “These government officials and military men, they are evil. The derelicts, the impoverished, the thieves and prostitutes, these are true and honest people.”
“I understand.”
“Listen to me,” he says, his sour breath making me sick. “I serve them, not this ugly war or this country that is being swarmed by tsetse-fly politicians. They have turned purple and engorged from sucking our blood.”
“We are almost home,” I say, directing him forward. The church is a block away.
“We have no home,” he says.
* * *
—
Padre Theuns embraces Pó. He fumbles with his keys in the keyhole and hands them to me.
“You will sleep in my bed tonight,” he says. “What use is a bed if you can’t share it with someone.” He winks at me as I lower him to the living room couch. He insists he is more comfortable right here on the couch.
“You need rest after such a long journey. And you need to be ready at dawn, when I will marry you in this church of God, as Fatima wishes.”
I look into the bedroom. Pó is fast asleep. The bottoms of her feet are dirty, dark against her skin and the clean sheets.
* * *
—
Padre Theuns is dressed in his vestments when he enters his room. He sprinkles us and the bed with holy water. It is enough to wake us.
The ceremony is simple. It lasts no more than five minutes. There are only two candles on the altar, a few words, and a bond sealed with a kiss. Pó is wearing the same shuka she has worn this whole journey. She covers her head with a crimson capulana as her veil. It was what Fatima had taught her to do in church. No rings are exchanged, and Padre Theuns assures us it is only a ceremonial formality, unnecessary; we can buy two gold rings whenever we can afford it.
“When will you leave?” Padre Theuns asks.
“Tomorrow at noon,” I say. “A driver will pick us up at the church.”
Pó blows out the candles at the ends of the altar.
“Well then, I must give you both a proper
wedding gift.”
“No, Padre Theuns,” Pó says. “Senhora Fatima asked me to give you this.”
Padre Theuns wedges the envelope open and slips one of the bills into his pocket. The others he gives back to Pó. “That is all I need to say a mass for Fatima and for the two of you. The rest you keep.”
She tries to shove the envelope back in the priest’s hands, but Padre Theuns will have none of it.
“When Fatima and you first came to my church almost two years ago, she gave this church more money than anyone has ever given. It went to fatten the Archbishop and his political friends.”
“Thank you, Father. You are a good man,” I say.
“You must leave before the church ladies come to cook me breakfast and make my bed. They are spies for the Archbishop. Before you go, Pó, rummage through the pile of clothing in the rectory office. They are meant to go to the poor, but you will be safer in the streets of Beira with clothing more suited to the city.”
“How can we ever repay you?” Pó says.
“By being true to each other.”
* * *
—
Padre Theuns gives Fulvio, a young Italian, the task of delivering us to the shuttered Grande Hotel. Senhor João, the overseer, has kept things guarded and in their place in case the war ends and people return to visit Mozambique on safari.
Through the car window Pó looks out onto the streets of Beira. She wears a white skirt that slips up to mid-thigh, a floral shirt, large-framed sunglasses, and a floppy hat. The only thing she doesn’t like are the sandals, which feel flimsy, she says, not heavy and grounded like the combat boots she is used to wearing.
I know Pó’s thoughts are someplace else, up on Mount Gorongosa with Fatima. Even though the old woman asked us not to return, Pó and I, without ever discussing it, know we will climb the mountain once again.
“One more day and we’ll be home,” I say. “Stop!” I cry, tapping the headrest behind Fulvio. He slows at a storefront. The large sign above the caged window reads RELOJOARIA ZURIQUE.
“Why are we stopping?” Pó says.
“I’m going to buy you a wedding ring.”
Fulvio is reluctant to allow us out of the car. He has strict instructions to deliver us safely to Senhor João, but I open the door as the car is moving and Fulvio is forced to stop.
Pó’s eyes are glued to another shop across the road, the lettering on the sign large enough that she can read it: OPTICA ZURIQUE.
“Come,” I say, and lead her across the road.
A diminutive man greets us when we walk in. He stands behind the counter but does not look up. He wears tiny spectacles, their wire arms curling behind his large ears. “Can I help you?” he asks.
“I’d like to buy spectacles for my wife.”
Pó looks bewildered.
The small man who smells of cough syrup comes around the counter to stand in front of her. “I am Osvaldo. Your hat, Madame.”
He conceals his shock very well—her afro-textured hair, shorn close to her head, palest of orange. He is trying to pin down her eyes, which dart side to side.
“Nystagmus. It’s quite common in people like you.” He says it without the slightest judgment. He moves to the shop window and draws the curtains. He locks the shop’s door. “I might be able to do something,” he says.
I draw the curtains to the side and give Fulvio a sign that we are well. Fulvio slaps the steering wheel and taps his wristwatch.
“Sit here, Madame,” the man says. Pó sits in the chair, her hands clenching the sides of her skirt. The man swings a machine that looks like a large mask into place in front of her. “Eyeglasses won’t give you twenty-twenty vision, but in some cases they can help.”
As Senhor Osvaldo snaps lenses of varying magnifications in front of Pó’s eyes, asking her to read the chart over his shoulder, I spot an old record player in the corner. It stands on a table, where underneath, a brass rack holds thirty or so albums. I let my fingers rest on the turntable, sweep them across the arm to caress the crank.
“Do you mind?” I ask, squatting to flip through his collection of albums.
I turn the crank. I place the album on the turntable and locate the exact groove that indicates the song I want to hear. I lower the needle and the speakers crackle. Then it begins…I don’t see the optometrist fitting Pó with a pair of spectacles, their brass frames thin wires. All I hear is music. All I see is Papa Gilberto closing the shutters to his office and locking them. As he reaches over his desk to shoo the moths away and dim the oil lamp, I catch his lips curling into a smile and know he is watching over me. He picks up the oil lamp in one hand and reaches out to me with his free hand. Papa helps me up and I hug his waist; the weight of his arm drops over my shoulder. He smiles down at me and I bury my face in his side. I smell his night smell—the faint trace of soap on his shirt—and feel the hair of his arm brushing against my ear and cheek. I am too big but I step onto his shoes so I can ride his feet out of the room.
“This may seem an odd request, but would you consider selling me this record player?” The minute I ask I feel stupid for doing so. It must mean something to him.
“Your price?” he says.
* * *
—
Crossing the road to Fulvio’s car, I have the record player tucked under my arm. A convoy of military trucks is passing. Pó presses herself against me. The green caterpillar of army trucks and tanks has been given a clear path on the road, cars pulling to the side to let them pass.
I can’t move. I hear Pó tell me to breathe deeply. Can you see Mount Gorongosa, Ezequiel? It’s close, she says. I hoist the record player securely against my hip.
“There’s no escaping them,” I whisper.
“Zeca, listen. We’re going to walk to the car and we are going to be safe,” she says.
Cars are honking, swerving to be clear of us in the middle of the road. A man sticks his head out his window and yells something. I can feel hands on me. Pó is shoving me, trying to get me to move. People have stopped to witness the commotion.
At the end of the convoy a luxury car passes, its driver’s window half-opened. It jolts and stops beside me. I look straight at Abel as he lowers his sunglasses.
Pó
“HE PLACED THE EYEGLASSES on my nose,” I tell Serafim. “For the first time in my life I was able to see clearly—colours and shapes.”
“I can’t imagine what that must have been like,” Serafim says.
“I fought hard not to cry. I didn’t want tears to blur my sight. I could see Ezequiel sitting next to a record player. His head was pressed back against the counter. He wept, I think now, for the memory of a man who was his father. And at that moment all I thought was, This is the way the world looks; this is the way the world was meant to be.”
* * *
Fulvio sat in his car and honked until I thought I would go deaf. Ezequiel’s feet appeared stuck to the tar in the middle of the road. The military trucks sped by us and Ezequiel shook. I had to use my head like a goat to push him into Fulvio’s car.
Senhor João was waiting for us. He helped me drag Ezequiel into the hotel while Fulvio hid his car. The man did not ask questions. Everything had been arranged with Padre Theuns. He had been paid and he understood discretion. “I was here when the Grande opened in 1954, and I was here in 1963 when it closed,” Senhor João said, like a guide. He pretended he did not see the shell-shocked look on Ezequiel’s face. He told us that he had become the hotel’s unofficial watchman, never asking the owners to pay him, even though on the few visits they made to the hotel they recognized his role in keeping the hotel safe from intruders.
Senhor João possessed keys to every room. He understood how to control the water supply and electricity panels. Because of this power, he had influence with people in Beira.
The hotel had the soft angles and clean lines that had taken the place of older colonial buildings in the new city of Beira. The furniture was shrouded with white sheets. Sen
hor João pressed the button for something he called an elevator, but I had already moved towards the wide circular staircase that floated upward, towards the ceiling of glass. Fulvio carried the record player and a bag with a couple of record albums. Ezequiel leaned up against the staircase. He looked pale and his clothing stuck to his sweating body. I kept looking up to the glass dome. With my eyeglasses on, I saw the metal and the light in a very new way. Senhor João took the lead and directed us past the landings of pink-and-white floors. “Turn right. I told Padre Theuns I’d give you the very best room. Here it is,” he said.
The room was furnished with a wrought iron canopy bed, wooden side tables and chairs, a dresser of drawers. Senhor João swung the shutters to the side. He opened glass doors. Still in a daze, Ezequiel sat down on the bed. I walked onto the balcony that spread wide above an empty swimming pool and the hotel grounds.
“Is he well?” Senhor João asked.
“He is tired from the journey,” I replied.
“I will leave you alone, then. All electricity and running water has been turned off. Do not stand on the balcony. Remember to draw the shutters when you light the candle. It’s best no one knows you are here.”
Ezequiel was already asleep. I lay beside him.
* * *
—
I woke to the sound of music. I looked up at my husband, standing by his record player, weeping.
I folded back the shutters and the morning sun spilled into the room. I shielded my eyes with my hand. When my eyes adjusted, I leaned over the balcony and reached out to the sea.
“Get away from there!” Ezequiel came from behind and dragged me back into the room. He nestled his chin on my shoulder and breathed heavily.
“Everything’s fine,” I said.
I had seen the gardens, the dry ground, the tiled swimming pool a silent blue. Fruit bats twanged over the mango trees. The perfume of their blossoms mixed with the ripe smell of fallen fruit fermenting on the ground. I had looked out to where the Buzi and the Pungwe Rivers met, then out over the expanse of the Indian Ocean. Its deepest parts turned indigo. Ezequiel kissed my neck, the back of my head. He pressed his body into mine and held tight as if he would never let go.
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