To erase love, you need to love. Those were the words of my Uncle Albano, retired but not tired. I was very proud of that relative of mine: the lads in the street would sacrifice everything to go and have a good chinwag with Uncle Albano. The old man only had one subject of conversation: women. And always in the plural. At least, if Uncle Albano was to be believed.
—A woman is a cloud: there’s no way of dropping anchor in one.
And what he knew about women! He’d had hundreds of affairs, he’d lost count. My father smiled condescendingly:
—Your uncle’s a recounter.
But the lads were in no doubt at all. We were embarking on our lives as macho men, and in order to give our mission an epic meaning, we needed a hero, someone who could smother us with stories and adventures. And the deeds of our retiree were enticing to our heart and soul. Sometimes we pretended we didn’t believe him, but it was only to spice up his recollections. We were forcing him to spill out a few more memories.
—Uncle Albano, were there really so many of them that you lost count?
—Well, when it comes to women, we lose count even when there’s only one.
Questions jostled with each other. How was it that some of them went and others came? Albano became serious and responded without even pausing for reflection: The decision to start is made by the man, but it’s the woman who decides to finish things. And he put forward the moral of the story.
—Never let yourself get attached to one. She’ll be like a liana seeking its soil.
But that was at a time when there were no illnesses. People died because they did not give their bodies any pleasure.
—It’s not like with you people nowadays.
Uncle shook his head, incapable of accepting it.
—My patron saint is life, that’s what it is, he always concluded.
His guardian must have become distracted, for one morning, Uncle Albano died. He woke up lifeless, lying in his bed, dressed in his suit and tie. Well-dressed out of respect for his final transaction. A man of my age always goes to bed well-prepared, he would say. And that’s exactly what happened. At his funeral, his fans, the local lads, were present in weight of numbers and range of sadness. Behind our disappointment, however, we harboured hidden expectation. We were hoping that the dead man’s girlfriends would show up in their hundreds at the funeral mass. But there was no woman at all present at the ritual. Only when the graveyard soil began to be shovelled over the coffin did a lone, beautiful, leggy woman appear. She was wearing mourning clothes, and without more ado she reached up over her elegant slim lines and, rather than a flower, she tossed some screwed-up object into the grave.
Everyone left except for this strange mulata, who remained there in prostration. At first, she seemed to be praying. But in fact, what she was doing was singing. She was singing, almost in an undertone,
Cuando calienta el sol …
I withdrew with my father. On our way home, my old man stopped next to the park. There was no longer a garden, nor were there any flower beds. All this had been destroyed. Even the little green lake where geese swam was reduced to a stinking puddle. A swan with a broken wing still lumbered around in the mud. Was the creature dreaming of escape to a more watery lake? We sat down and my old man set off on long, silent ruminations. I didn’t want the hand of sadness to summon him far away. That was why I asked him:
—What was it that lady threw on top of the coffin?
My father gazed at the mutilated swan and smiled. Then he ran his hand through my hair and for a short while seemed to forget his existence. He asked for my patience so that he could tell me a story. My father had never told me a story before. He was the opposite of his late brother, who had any number of tales to tell. And so I devoted all my attention to what he had to say.
The story began at a dance held at the Railwaymen’s Club, sometime in the middle of the century. It was there that whites, mulatos, and one or two assimilated Blacks from the town would mingle. Dance nights were a well-known ritual around here. Many a love affair began at those parties. That particular night, the couples swapped partners and gyrated in a lively rainbow of colours.
Suddenly, an order was given for the dancing to stop.
—Stop the dance! boomed the emphatic command. Everyone paused in a climate of great expectation. Meanwhile, the master of ceremonies climbed onto the stage with a pompous, determined air. His voice rang out as he clung to the lapels of his white tuxedo:
—We ask anyone who finds a lady’s bra on the dance floor to hand it in to the management.
Everyone stood still, dumbfounded, their spirits confused. Until a voice in the crowd cried:
—A lady’s bra? Is there any other type?
There was laughter. At first timid and then noisy, like rain falling on a tin roof. People began to comment: many things were lost in the midst of a knees-up, but no one had ever allowed such an intimate item to escape them. While the raucous laughter spread, Uncle Albano came up to my father. He was horrified, shaking wildly.
They had to do something, for that bra must belong to the great love of his life, Maria Prudência. But the most important revelation—a discovery that came as a shock to my ears—was this: Albano had never had a girlfriend of any description. All he had was this obsessive, unsubstantiated passion, an affair that was doomed never to happen. For the girl was given to adventures, her body receiving more visitors than the Namaacha Falls. She took no notice at all of Uncle Albano because he was timid, better-behaved than a sacristan.
—What if the bra is hers?
If it was indeed hers, it would be the end for the girl, for her father was a bad-tempered brute, capable of pulling out his belt and delivering a beating. The big fellow couldn’t stand such vexation. We had to do something.
—But what’s it got to do with you, brother? Forget it, end of story.
But Albano was no longer there. He walked off, though not to his usual solitary corner. Until, not long afterwards, to everyone’s bewilderment, he was seen climbing onto the stage and asking to speak. He half-squinted at the microphone. The sound of his shaking voice echoed through the room as he asked:
—Is this metrophone switched on?
There was general laughter. What was that skinny little fellow doing there, incapable of producing a shadow, lacking the gift of the gab or any presence whatsoever? The guy couldn’t do anything right, he didn’t dance, and he got all muddled up when he spoke to anyone.
—I climbed onto this stage to announce the following …
There he stopped. Blocked, his valves clogged. Their surprise was such that curiosity began to grow. They were waiting for what was to come: what was this “following”? And they egged him on.
—Speak, lad!
Then, after stuttering blankly, he eventually said:
—It’s mine!
There was general agitation and incomprehension—what was his? And as people were already well and truly tanked up, they started booing, trying to hasten the outcome of his vagueness. The guy should get a move on, he was holding up the party. Albano held up his hands, asking for silence. His talking became a bit clearer. And the lad returned to the fray with this astonishing declaration:
—The bra’s mine!
Not a hoot could be heard, not even the buzz of a fly. So the boy was confessing he was a pansy, camouflaging himself with womanliness? The humiliation was just too much. How could he subject himself to eternal badmouthing, condemning his name to the filth of tongue-wagging?
Only my father knew his brother’s motive. He had sacrificed his honour to save the damsel he secretly loved. This was his secret, which was now being buried in the shape of an item of women’s clothing next to his final wooden resting place.