A shudder shows us how alike are a fever and cold. And it’s with a shudder that I recall the Goan, Jesuzinho da Graça, born but unraised in Goa, still in Portuguese times. He came with his family to Mozambique, still in mid-boyhood. Just as happened to other Goans, he was branded a caneco.1 As for him, he termed himself Indo-Portuguese. A practising son of Lusitania, he worked as head of funeral services at the town hall up until Independence. His was a gloomy office: life spared itself the trouble of paying it a visit. Was the Goan the antechamberlain of Death? He only allowed himself one moment of light-heartedness. As he left the office, the functionary would turn to his colleagues and invariably repeat the words:
—Ram-ram!
—All this ram-rammery’ll kill him, his colleagues commented. And they shook their heads in disapproval: the caneco can’t make up his mind what he wants to say. Jesuzinho Graça laughed at their incomprehension. “Ram-ram” was goodbye in Konkani, the language of his Indian ancestors.
He lived in this constant state of self-effacement, as discreet as a creeper’s embrace. For him, merely existing was an act of overbearing unseemliness. The caneco moistened his finger in time and turned the pages methodically and noiselessly. The nail on his little finger had grown so long that his finger was now a mere accessory.
—The nail? That’s for turning the papers, was his answer.
That nail was the mouse of our present-day computers. The said appendage was a cause for conjugal irritation. His wife would warn him:
—With that claw, don’t even think of giving me a cuddle!
Jesuzinho da Graça resisted all these protests:
—If it weren’t for its nail, a lizard would die!
In all other things, he was as plain and brown as a fiscal stamp. Stolidly unsociable and solidly unemotional, too shy even to say excuse me, Jesuzinho witnessed the turbulence of history with a shrunken heart. Independence hove into view, the nation’s flag was hoisted to the joy of many and to the caneco’s fears. Terrified, he sat in the workers’ rallies where they proclaimed the operation to “dismantle the State.” He asked himself—does justice lie in the hands of the unjust? Unruffled and aloof, Jesuzinho attended to his demotion, his change of office. Yet his serenity was only superficial. Inside, he was alarmed by the sudden statements, understatements and overstatements issued by the Revolution.
From the silence of his office he could hear the world’s crockery being smashed. He got home, and the same upheavals pursued him. He still managed the flicker of a smile when the speeches proclaimed Victory is certain! He would tap his wife on the shoulder and say:
—See the extent of your certainty, my dear Victoria?
If Jesuzinho was a shadow, his spouse, Victoria, was that shadow’s dusk. On the third anniversary of Independence, at the precise moment when they were declaiming their revolutionary jargon, Victoria became certain forever. The light in the Goan lady’s eyes extinguished. By the wall where the crucifix hung, he covered her with a sheet and smothered her with prayers. His one and only family had come to an end right there, Jesuzinho da Graça’s only world.
In the months that followed, the widower’s behaviour remained steady. Was Jesuzinho like the ant that never strays from its path? There was only one difference: he took longer to get from here to there. And as his solitude lingered, he began to give in to drink. His young house boy asked him apprehensively:
—Do you not have any relatives?
Jesuzinho pointed to the bottle of liquor. That was his relative from his father’s side. Then he remembered and pointed to the crucifix on the wall:
—That one there, on the wall, is on my mother’s side.
Life is as improbable as a drop dripping upwards. Little by little, the Goan began to show signs of disorganization: the hours escaped him. From being the most zealous of functionaries, ever observant of the regulations, he stopped padding his inky scripts with his blotter. Maybe he yearned for a time when the world was a gentler place, authenticated on a sheet of white paper?
But even in his discomposure he stuck to some routine. Tuesdays were when he got drunk, the only date he kept with time. He would go to the bar, and gradually drown his sorrows in the froth of his glass. He would arrive back home late, dishevelled but always taking great care with his white suit. He would sit on his settee and light a cigarette—what would his dear departed wife say?—and pull the tall ashtray towards him, his hands lingering on its smooth round ebony. Was he plaiting Victoria’s hair? Then he would snap his fingers and call:
—Piccaninny: come and loosen my tie, if you please.
The house boy rushed forwards to relieve his throat. He unbuttoned his shirt and sprinkled some talc around the top of his singlet. With his knot undone, he was already in the mood for sleep. The boy’s job was to supervise his boss’s repose.
His slumber was punctuated with fits. After only a few minutes, the caneco was shouting for his late wife. His hand shaking, he would grab the phone and call the heavens. This was when Piccaninny’s noblest function would come into play: he would play her part, imitate the dead woman’s voice and sighs.
—You must be paying for the call if you please, my dear Victoria. Up there in the sky, evereet’ing is being cheaper.
His young employee tried to make his voice sound shrill, copying Victoria’s screeching. When the conversation was over, he copied the old lady’s ways, applying brilliantine to his boss’s hair and making sure his parting was diagonal, just as it should be.
However, as time went by, the boy became terrified. He would ask himself: should I imitate the dead? Playing around with the spirits could only bring punishment. He went and consulted his father for advice. The old man agreed: leave the man, run away from all that. And he elaborated on his wise thoughts: how many sides has the earth got for a chameleon? As for the dead, do we know who they’ve got their eyes on? The other world is infinitesimally infinite: there isn’t a dead person who isn’t a member of our family.
So the lad returned, determined never again to get mixed up with apparitions. Come Tuesday, and the boss didn’t go out bar crawling that night. He looked depressed, unwell. He lay on the sofa in the living room, gazing into nothingness. He called the lad and asked him to dress up as Victoria. The boy didn’t answer. Surprised, Jesuzinho started to mutter to himself. A few moments passed, until the young servant noticed that the boss was weeping. He leaned over him and saw that he was whining the same name he always did:
—My sweet little Victoria!
The servant didn’t budge an inch. The boss could beg as much as he wanted, he wasn’t moving. The caneco, after all, was drunk. His breath left no room for doubt. But how come, if he hadn’t seen him drinking? Whether he’d been at the bottle or not, he was certainly overflowing with sighs and spittle. It was in the middle of his ranting and raving that he murmured the strangest words: he wanted to go and meet his wife with his nails duly clipped. Laying his arm across his servant’s lap, he implored him:
—Cut my nail, if you please, Piccaninny!
The following day, they found the servant, motionless, next to the boss’s seat. No one could believe what the boy said. It was like this: hardly had he begun to clip his nail than the boss vanished, like incense smoke.
—So where’s the nail, lad?
The boy bent down over the floor and lifted what looked like a faded petal. He smiled as he recalled his boss. And he showed them the very last trace of his boss’s human existence.