God is a delicate subject of conversation, we’ve got to pretend he’s an egg: if we squeeze him too hard, he breaks, if we don’t keep a good grip on him, he falls.
One of Grandfather Celestiano’s sayings,
reinvented from an old Makua proverb
I’m only happy out of laziness. Unhappiness is harder to handle than an illness: you need to enter and leave it, sweep aside those who try to console you, accept condolences for a little bit of your soul that hasn’t even got as far as dying.
—Get up, mister lazybones.
That’s what my neighbour, the mulata Dona Luarmina, tells me to do. I reply:
—Lazy? I’m just whitening my palms.
—That’s the talk of a scalawag …
—Do you know something, Dona Luarmina? It was work that darkened the poor Black man’s skin. And apart from that, living is all I’m good at …
She laughs in that listless way of hers. The fat Luarmina smiles only so as to delude her sadness.
—You, Zeca Perpétuo, are like a woman …
—A woman? Me?
—Yes, a woman sits on a mat. You’re the only man I’ve ever seen sitting on a mat.
—What do you expect, dear neighbour? A chair is no good for sleeping.
She waddles away, heavy as a pelican, shaking her head. My neighbour complains there’s no man with as little sense as I have. She says she’s never seen a fisherman let so many tides escape him:
—You, Zeca, you just have no idea how life works.
—Life, Dona Luarmina? Life is so simple that no one understands it. It’s like my grandfather Celestiano used to say when we started thinking about whether God existed or not …
Besides, thinking produces a lot of stones and little by way of a path. So what’s left for me to do, a retiree from the sea? Freed from fishing, I’m freed from thinking. One thing I learned over many years’ fishing: time is carried along on the tide. We have to remain as sprightly as we can so we can always hitch a ride on one of those surges.
—Isn’t that so, Dona Luarmina? You know our folks’ languages. Tell me something, my good lady: what’s the word for future?
Yes, how do you say future? There’s no word for it in the language of this bit of Africa. Yes indeed, because the future, although it exists, never comes. So I’m happy to stick to the present here and now. That’s enough for me.
—All I want is to be a good man, lady.
—A good-for-nothing, that’s what you are.
The fat mulata isn’t for beating around the bush. And she’s right, as she’s been my neighbour for so many years. She arrived in the area after my parents had died and I inherited the old family house.
At that time, I still went out on long fishing trips, weeks away out on the Sofala shoals. I wasn’t even aware of Luarmina’s existence. As for her, no sooner had she stepped ashore than she was sent to the Mission School, on her way to becoming a nun. She was shut away in the duskiness where God is addressed in whispers.
She only left this seclusion after some years. And she went to live in the house destined for her by her parents, right next to my dwelling. Luarmina was a seamstress, that’s how she made her living. At first, she continued to keep herself to herself. Only the women who entered her abode had any dealings with her. As for me, all I got was the whiff of her shadow’s perfume.
One day, Father Nunes told me about Luarmina and her nebulous past. Her father was Greek, one of those fishermen who cast his net along the coasts of Mozambique, on the other side of Saint Vincent’s Bay. He had long ago gone to meet his maker. Her mother had died not long afterwards. Of grief, so folk said, not because she’d been made a widow but because of her daughter’s beauty.
Luarmina, so it seemed, drove the important gentlemen who scavenged around her house crazy. The lady cursed her daughter’s perfection. It was said that one night, in a fit of madness, she tried to strike Luarmina in the face. All in order to make her ugly and drive her suitors away.
After her mother’s death, Luarmina was sent over this way to be set straight at the Mission, given over to prayer and the crucifix. The girl had to be trimmed on the outside and given a good ironing on the inside. And so that’s how she came to devote herself to threads, needles, and thimbles. Until she moved to her present address on the fringes of my existence.
It was only after I gave up my life as a fisherman that I found myself taking a fancy to my neighbour. I began with letters, messages from a distance. Luarmina had already learned how to defend herself in a thousand ways as a result of my constant amorous approaches. She was always able to render my attentions useless by refusing me.
—Leave me alone, Zeca. Can’t you see I don’t crease my bedsheets anymore?
—What a thought, lady?! Who said that was my intention, dear neighbour?
But she was right. My visits have one purpose, which is to catch her off guard, to provoke a little tenderness. My dream is always the same: to wrap myself in her, carried away by the great wave that causes us to lose all self-awareness. She resists me, but I am always drawn back to her abode.
—Dona Luarmina, what’s the matter? It’s as if you’ve really turned into a nun. One day, when love comes to you, you won’t even recognize it …
—Let me be, Zeca. I’m old, all I need is a shoulder.
To confirm this declaration of frigidity, she rubs her knees as if they were the cause of her weakness. Her legs, the way they swell up, make it hard for her blood to circulate. Her feet become icebergs: you touch them and they are frozen blocks. She is always complaining. On one occasion, I took advantage of this to make her an offer.
—Would you like me to warm your feet up?
With an expectant shiver, she got as far as accepting. Even I was left half taken aback, my heart galloping through my chest.
—Will you warm me up, Zeca?
—Yes, I’ll give you some heat … but from the inside.
I was hoping she would drop her guard. But I got turned down. I was like the fellow who went to wash his hands and dirtied the soap. Or the one who wanted to clip his nail and cut off his finger. At my age, I should have known the correct way to proceed, the delicate tactics needed in one’s approach. My late grandfather always said: When we’re young, we only get taught what’s of no use to us. When we’re old we only learn what’s worthless.
But it’s a pity my neighbour and I can’t pair up. For we’re both semi-widowed: we’ve neither of us had a companion, but even so, that partner has disappeared. I’m younger than she, but we’re both on the far slope where life only moves if it’s in a downward direction.
Nowadays, I know how to measure someone’s true age: we grow old when we no longer make new friends. We start dying the moment we stop falling in love.
And even Dona Luarmina, also known as Albertina da Conceição Melistopolous, was once beautiful enough to dazzle the menfolk. I know this because I once witnessed her good looks for myself. It was an occasion when I wasn’t just confined to the veranda. I entered her house and sat in the big living room which looked out over the sea. That was when I saw the photograph. It was of a young girl of striking beauty, a body to bring water to the most tepid of mouths.
—Who’s that?
—It’s me when I was young. Before I came to live here …
I got to my feet and was about to touch the photo. But she abruptly blocked my vision, turning the picture over on the table. And that’s where it remained for the rest of its days, that portrait lying there with its back to the light. I certainly tried to get a peep at the image of her former beauty through the window. But in vain.
I was left with the current vision of Luarmina, the fat, bloated one. The woman, through anguish, had allowed herself to swell, to pile on the kilos. I can understand: a good way of concealing sadness is to cover ourselves with flesh. Suffering is deathbound when it reaches our bones. When it gets there, sadness becomes increasingly skeletal. It is wise to give our body some cover, to insert some lardy borders.
Occasionally, there is some flicker of childhood in her. At such times, she tries to tease me, to spark me with a little jealousy.
—A man once called me dolling.
—Dolling?
—Dolling or darling. It was a stranger from a foreign land.
—What’s this darling business? I’ve got a lot of names that are much better than that. Would you like to hear them, dear neighbour?
—No. I’m sorry, Zeca, but I don’t want to hear them. It’s hard enough for me to have just one name, let alone lots …
I’ve been prowling around the widow for years now. I even risk losing my plumage in my perseverance. But I’m chasing tail to no avail: my feathers brush nothing more than thin air. My strategy is to tell her about all the adventures I’ve had: I invent past deeds from my maritime endeavours. But they are not the type of adventures that bait her dreams. What Dona Luarmina asks of me are precise memories. And that’s what I desire the least. They are scattered too widely throughout my being, even in the finger I lost while fishing. My body has become a cemetery where time is entombed, it’s like one of those sacred woods where we bury our dead.
—Tell me how it happened, I want to know what happened and how. Those things that make us yearn …
As far as I’m concerned, my yearnings are never in a hurry. They take so long that they never get here. Once I start dancing I’m free of time—memories fly off and soar away from me. I should spend the whole time dancing, dancing for her, dancing with her.
—Tell me about your past.
My past is a burden for me: my childhood came to an early end, and I had to carry its effects in later life. When I was six, I took my grandfather’s place on the boat; two years after that, my father lost his mind and left home, unseeing and deranged. Before she died, my mother put me into the care of the church. The Portuguese priest, Jacinto Nunes, educated me according to the doctrine of God and his book. But I wanted to return to the sea, and I soon swapped the book for the net, always unravelling much more than I got back in return. My grandfather Celestiano blamed my father for all this bad luck.
—That son of mine, Agualberto, pig-headed as he is, went and joined the white men’s world and didn’t bother to bless his boat. He forsook his ancestors, and that was his punishment.
I press Dona Luarmina not to ask me for my memories. I want to kill the past, and that woman must let me commit the crime. If not, then the past will end up killing me.
—You, Zeca, are angry at the past, and you’re jealous of the future: are you just going to live in the here and now?
Having retired from fishing, I don’t even have a present to fit into. As long as I was sailing out on the sea, lulled in my boat, I didn’t suffer from time. For as I was rocked by the rhythm of the waves, it was just like dancing. And dancing, as I’ve already said, is the best way to escape time.
—Come and dance, dear Dona …
—Dance? Me? With this body of mine?
She laughs, ashamed. But Luarmina doesn’t know this: those who dance lose their body. The tree is clever, for it doesn’t move while its shadow dances all over the planet.
—Dona Luarmina, don’t you remember Maria Ballerina?
And I recalled the girl who had lived in the area, a hot little number if ever there was one. She danced in a way that drove folk crazy, enough to make men’s brains buzz and their eyes go askew. Her bare feet pummelled the ground like pestles, but they didn’t raise any dust at all; the earth seemed aroused and to enjoy its beating. Maria Ballerina danced on request and for money. They would toss some coins at her and she would immediately set her body ablaze. Even the priest, Jacinto Nunes, would mumble into his cassock:
—Heaven help me, even Archimedes would float!
One night, as the dancer brushed past the open fire, her capulana happened to burst into flames. Maria Ballerina didn’t stop dancing. The bystanders began to yell their warnings at her. The fire in her clothes began to blaze and grow thicker, but she didn’t stop, and what’s more, she allowed no one to get near her. She was in the grip of her own light-headedness, already dancing with death itself. Until she came to a sudden halt while still appearing whole and intact. When the first hand touched her she turned into ashes, a fine powder fluttering away, carried on the breeze.
—Do you remember Maria Ballerina?
Nothing. Luarmina doesn’t reply. Had she even heard what I said? There’s no two ways about it: my lady neighbour is suspicious of other people’s misadventures. All she is interested in are the past times in which I featured. And I, by way of subterfuge, trick her with a few memories, improvise one or two thoughts. Until one day, I asked her:
—Why only my personal memories?
My neighbour didn’t answer. Instead, she shot back:
—Look, if it’s so hard for you, tell me some of your dreams …
But I never recall dreams that come to me while I’m asleep! We operate to a different timetable, me and dreams. So I warn her:
—They’ll be fake dreams …
—That doesn’t matter.
And I stood firm. For, apart from anything else, it brings us bad luck if we recall those who visit us during our sleep. So I was bound to introduce a few flashes of invention into my accounts. When it is not we who invent a dream, it is the dream that invents us.
—It doesn’t matter, Zeca Perpétuo. I would even pay someone to tell me their dreams today.
A flicker of a smile crossed her face. But it was only moistened sadness. After that, I left my neighbour sitting where she was and crept back to my house with heavy steps. Luarmina had shut herself away in her world of fancy, as if she were unstitching some imaginary cloth:
—Sea loves me, sea loves me a lot …
This was Luarmina’s ditty, her endless mumbling and jumbling. In the late afternoon, the mulata would sit down on the steps up to her veranda and forever unpick flowers. After a while, the whole yard would be lined with petals, the ground shimmering with a thousand colours.
We launch the boat, we yearn for the journey: it’s always the sea that travels.
One of my grandfather Celestiano’s sayings
Well, let me tell you something, my good lady. It’s a pity you’re going around tiring your eyes in front of everyone. What you should do, straightaway when you get up in the morning, is to wipe your face with a dream. That’s what hinders time’s advance and stops wrinkles from appearing. Do you know what to do? You lie out nice and flat on the sand, oblong fashion, stretching your mind diagonally. Then you just stay there, all quiet, right next to the ground, until you feel the soil embracing you with its love. I’m telling you, lady: when we keep still and quiet, like a stone, we start to hear the earth’s ways of talking. At one point, lady, you’ll hear a nautical voice coming from the ground, as if there were an ocean under the earth’s skin. Make the most of this restfulness, Dona Luarmina. I take full advantage of these submarine silences. It’s they that lull me to sleep even today. I’m its child, a child of the sea.
—A child, yes, for sure. You’ve long forgotten your age.
—Do you know what I’d really like? It would be for the two of us to get together, do you understand, Dona Luarmina?
—Come to your senses, Zeca.
—Just think of us as verb and subject.
—I know your sort of grammar only too well …
—My dear good lady, you have no idea how much you enrich my eyesight.
Luarmina doesn’t favour me with a reply. And rightly so. Who am I? A hunter of fish who doesn’t even have anyone to tell his adventures to. It’s true, lady, I can’t put lustre on my lies. And are they in fact lies? If I didn’t really witness what I’m recounting but end up believing myself? It’s all the sea’s fault; all boundaries collapse there, everything is possible. At sea, there are no words, nor does anyone ask you to prove the truth. As old Celestiano used to say: where it’s always noon, everything is night.
I turn my attention to the woman, Dona Luarmina. No one has ever been such a close neighbour. For at times when I can’t see her, I dream of her. Always, without fail, that cushiony, flesh-filled woman. Her butt exceeds her buttocks. There was a time when she provoked men’s attentions. But she has faded now. Not for me, as I’m fired up in her presence and ardent in her absence.
Late every afternoon, I walk over to her house. Her little place is funny: all it has is a backside. A bit like its lady owner: you don’t have to beat around the bush in order to walk round it. You get there, and you’re at its rear straightaway. I sit down on an old tree trunk and gaze at the woman unpicking herself:
—Sea loves me …
Then I think to myself: how I’d love to stick my hand inside her endowments! One night, as I lay on my sleeping mat, I even dreamed I walked up to where she was sitting and presented the following request:
—Let me feel your buttocks; it’ll be so quick you won’t even have to put my brazenness out of your mind.
—Which one?
—What do you mean, Dona Luarmina?
—Which buttock?
—Either one, lady, they measure the same. Don’t you remember your school geometry: the sum of the factors is always the same?
While I was speaking, my hand was travelling over her lusty abundances, a crazy little train rolling over the contours of her seating area. My fingers tiptoed along her crevices.
—What’s going on? I haven’t given you permission yet.
—This hand of mine belongs to the informal sector, Dona Luarmina.
—Every bit of you, Zeca Perpétuo, belongs to the informal sector.
—You know the saying, don’t you, lady? Better a bird in the hand …
—You’re an abuser …
—This is all a dream, just a dream. Do you know what I dreamed yesterday, Dona Luarmina? Well, I’ll tell you, and don’t interrupt me. You came with me to the Baixo da Nuvem nightclub and you were dancing with me. You were dancing all dressed in white, all very respectful. I closed my eyes and then, all of a sudden, you whispered in my ear: See: I’m as naked as a fish.
I shivered. I didn’t even have the courage to open my eyes. Her voice was buzz-buzzing next to my ear:
—But take a good look: I’ve got a tattoo here on my belly. Feel it with your hand. Yes, right there. Now pass your finger over my hip, further down, yes there. That’s it. They’re tattoos to stop you slipping.
This was all very pretty and a torrid tale to tell. But I was unable to pursue my memory of the dream any further. Dona Luarmina interrupted me, shaking me with her plump hand.
—Be quiet, Zeca. You’re an old codger. Why are you still having such dreams?
—Old, my foot! You, lady, who love birds so much: do birds’ feathers ever wear out?
—But you, my dear sir, only fly close to the ground.
—Well, so what, Dona Luarmina? It’s all the more fun down below.
Luarmina wasn’t the sort to laugh at jokes. She would allow herself a smile every now and then. For the rest, she shut herself away in sadness for not having had a child. When I called her a flower, she would return to the fray with a bitter retort.
—Don’t call me a flower, because it hurts. A seed is the only footprint a flower leaves behind. And I never left a child in this world.
—That wasn’t your fault. The right insect never learned how to land on you. I wish I’d been there.
—Be quiet, Zeca.
—Listen to me: you’re a flower, that’s for sure.
—All right then, I’m a flower. But one of those that was never good for anything.
—You were good for beauty, Luarmina.
—And what is beauty good for? Good for nothing.
—Look, here’s just one example: what lights up the sky most? Isn’t it a rainbow? So tell me then: what’s a rainbow good for?
—I’ve no idea.
—It’s good for making itself look fancy, for teaching the sky how to dream.
But she withdrew into herself again. She bade me forgive her. She had made up her mind she was a ruin. Here’s what she said:
—I frittered away my time, but time, it didn’t forget me.
That’s what she said as she pointed to her neck and her aging skin. To which I replied, by way of comfort:
—Well, time hasn’t abandoned you, thanks and no thanks to God. Because it’s me and time competing for you, Dona Luarmina. Let me be the winner. Please, Dona …
—Do you really want to taste me?
—Of course I do, lady!
—Well then, spin me one of your memories, a real one …
The dugout was launched into the sea, a speck of dust entered God’s eye.
One of my grandfather Celestiano’s sayings
I don’t know why Dona Luarmina cried when I told her my old father’s story. After all, it was she who asked for it! I had warned her of the sadness of this memory, but she was insistent. This was the only reason why I unlocked my recollections.
My father’s name was Agualberto Perchance. He was a person in every way. Only one feature put his humanity in doubt: my old man had the eyes of a shark. It wasn’t that he was born like this. It happened when he once jumped into the water from his boat in order to save his sweetheart. She was a very young girl he had met in other lands. He always took her with him in his boat, to keep him company on his fishing trips. At the end of the day, before he brought his fish back to the beach, my father would set course for beyond the horizon so as to leave the girl where she came from. Who was this girl, where was she from? This was a mystery that Agualberto kept to himself.
That afternoon, my father was fishing near to our beach. The sea was choppy. I was screwing my eyes trying to catch a glimpse of the girl who was with my father. My mother turned her back on the ocean.
—Have you seen my father out there?
My mother didn’t answer. She was busy with her sticks of firewood and getting dinner ready. I stood there at the edge of the beach, looking at the little craft, now visible, now hidden by the waves. Until, all of a sudden, I noticed a figure falling into the sea. It was the girl. My father panicked and jumped in to rescue her. He plunged into the depths of the sea and stayed underwater for longer than his lungs would allow. Other boats put to sea to save him. We counted the seconds, minutes, the tears and the sighs. Only at the end of the day did my old man reappear on the surface of the water. No one expected him to re-emerge. But to everyone’s astonishment and prayers, my father leaped like a dolphin between the waves, yelling as if the whole firmament had invaded his chest. The onlookers shouted:
—He’s alive! He’s alive!
The fishermen rushed forwards to go and get their re-emerged companion. They rejoiced, dancing and singing while the boats headed back to the beach. The women ululated. My mother advanced and came to a standstill in front of her man. What was going on inside her head? After all, that woman my father had tried to save was another, her rival, lacking legitimacy. Even so, she confronted my old man. Her eyes ascended from the ground until they stared into his face. And this was when she screamed, covering her face with her hands. The others approached my father and a murmur swept through them like an icy cloud.
—His eyes!
Yes indeed, Agualberto’s eyes were no longer the same. No one managed to look my father in the face. For those eyes of his were the same colour as the sea: blue, marine in their transparency. His humanity had been washed away as if he were a fish. He had stayed far too long under the sea. And the rumour began to spread that Agualberto had the eyes of a shark, identical to those colossal, toothsome creatures.
From that day on, my father withdrew ever more deeply into himself, spending his time sitting on the beach contemplating the horizon. People came from afar to catch a distant glimpse of the Black man with eyes the colour of the sea. On one occasion, my mother tugged at my arm and whispered to me in an anguished tone:
—That woman, that other one, can it be that she has really died?
We all knew she had, that she had got lost in the deep, there where the coral blossoms into fish. Everyone knew except old Agualberto, who was bereft of reasoning. Every afternoon he would take baskets of food into the sea, along with supplies of fresh drinking water. He would dive and remain underwater for a long time. Then he would return to the surface at peace with the world, having paid his yearning its dues. However, every time he resurfaced, his eyes looked all the bluer. There would come a day when they would be rinsed of all colour, like those seashells that are bleached white. All this seemed like the fulfillment of some prophecy, a map of his thoughts: he was losing his sight in the same way he had lost his love. And this is what happened: Agualberto was left waxen-eyed, and he never visited the watery depths again.
When the blue left his eyes, my father also left home. Off he went. I was a child, and thought everything could be put right. My old man’s departure introduced me to the belief that for certain things in this life there is no resolution. At the same time, I had to witness my mother’s growing loss of sanity. She never accepted she had been abandoned. For long after my father had left, she would still tell me:
—Wait, Zeca. Let me first ask your father.
If I had been bullied or there were tears, she was always there to console me:
—Don’t worry, I’ll tell your father.
As if his not being present was no more than a delay in getting back from fishing. It is all part of the age-old custom: a child is never told they’re an orphan. And so my mother dressed his absence in the garments of untruth.
—Have you written him a nice little letter this week?
I smiled sadly. But she gave me no time to reply.
—Your father would be so happy to get a little note from you. He’d be so happy, he might even cry.
—But Mother …
—Do you know something? One day, a tear of his fell into the sea. And right there, at the point where the tear hit the wave, the tear turned into a piece of coral and sank to the bottom. Write to your father …
—But Mother, I don’t even know what letters look like.
—That’s why you’re going to go and see the priest and attend the Mission. Your father will send you a bit of money later.
—All right, Mother.
Then she would go back into our little house, looking as if she were walking right through the middle of a fire, surrounded by flames. She reminded me of Maria Ballerina in the way she seemed to regain her youth dancing with the blaze. But when my mother trod on the fire, nothing happened to her. I would remain out on the beach, escaping time, my gaze roaming over the night. My mother would come back some time later and tell me:
—Do you see the stars, Zeca? Do you know what they’re saying?
—No, Mother.
—You know, my son, the night is a letter that God writes in tiny handwriting. When you come back from the city, will you read me that letter?
—Yes, Mother.
If I built a chimney in my house, it wouldn’t be to let out the smoke, but to let in the sky.
Grandfather Celestiano’s words
Day always starts with a lie. That is because the sun only pretends to be born. That morning awoke with heatful intentions and I decided to go for a stroll along the beach. This was when I came across Luarmina plunged in a pool of water. She was dressed, and her clothes clung to her body. I walked up to her and asked her why she was taking a bath. She replied that she wanted to warm up her legs.
—Is the water nice and warm?
—I don’t get heat from the water. What warms me up are the sea snails.
And she explained: there were some snails that licked her legs, grazing on those fat pastures of hers. The little creatures left their trails of sticky saliva on my neighbour and all I could think to myself was that my own mucus had been wasted, with all due respect. Heaven forbid.
—Do you mind if I join you?
—Join me where?
—In the water where you are having your bath, lady.
I got in, and snuggled up alongside my neighbour. I lay back in the water and closed my eyes just like she was doing. My hands pretended to be snails, slimy slugs furrowing their way over Luarmina’s thighs. To my astonishment, the mulata didn’t push me away. My fingers continued, carrying out their duties, fishing between her clothes and her body. I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye: the fat Luarmina was floating, in blissful subjugation, like a ship at anchor in a child’s drawing.
Suddenly, however, she let out a cry. I ceased my capers and hid my hands behind my back.
—What a fright, lady! What’s the matter?
Luarmina pointed at something on the surface of the water. They were dead fish floating.
—Look, Zeca, they’re fish without eyes!
I shuddered. That was a sign. Someone on the world’s other shore was watching me. The dead are obstinate in their determination to be human. And right there, between me and Luarmina, the message of the gods was plain to see. The mulata was more terrified than I was.
—What is it, Zeca?
—We’d better get out of the water. Come, I’ll help you.
Luarmina was trembling. To keep her alarm at bay, I kept talking non-stop. Do you know what fish are? How they first appeared? Well, sit down then and relax. Like that, yes. I’m going to tell you my grandfather Celestiano’s version of the story. In olden times, there were no living creatures in the sea. Only on land and in the air. There were many birds, floating over the continents. The gods were happy enough to watch them flying over the forests, soaring up over the tops of mountains. Then, one day, a bird had the audacity to hover over the waters. And it was surprised by the beauty of its own flight, glimpsed in the water’s reflection. It flew back and told the other birds:
—I now know why we aren’t allowed to fly over the ocean.
And so off they flew in their thousands, flocks of them all anxious to see their image. Never before had there been so many clouds over the sea: all made of feathers, buoyant enough to sustain their weight. At this point, a storm broke out, the punishment of the gods. Lightning ripped through the birds like flashing knives. Thousands of birds fell into the waves and were swept along by the currents, as if they were pursuing their flight in liquid gusts. And so, from their wings, the swell was born, and from their feathers the spume.
—The way I feel at the moment, Zeca, I’m not in the mood for listening to stories.
Luarmina didn’t want any distractions. She was being pulled under by the force of her own anxiety. It would be better if she did the talking.
—So do you remember your family, Luarmina?
But she didn’t answer. Her past was like the future in our languages; it only began when it was over, like the lizard being eaten by its own tail. The rest dissolved in the mists of sadness.
—For as long as I had a finger, I stitched cloth and dressed people.
But she didn’t find her life’s fulfillment as a dressmaker. She wanted something else, she wanted to grow people inside her, to have children, be born again in other lives. But without such a gift, she no longer felt like entering her home, so alone was she. This was why she spent more time on her veranda than within the walls of her house.
—That’s why I like to hear stories about families. Go on, tell me about your home, your family.
—Don’t ask that of me, Luarmina.
—You know something, Zeca: tonight, when the moon is up, I think I’m going to have a bath outside, in my yard …
—Will you be naked? I mean, undressed?
—Who knows, Zeca?
—And will you let me have a look, lady?
—If you tell me a story, I will.
The sea has one flaw: it never dries up. I almost prefer the tiny little lake in my village, which is very prone to drying up and we feel for it in the same way that we feel for a living creature, always in danger of meeting its end.
The words of Grandfather Celestiano
After that incident, my old man was left with a mamba’s moodiness. Any idea that nestled in his mind began to grow a fang. He was gone noiselessly at the crack of dawn, and took up residence there where we couldn’t clap eyes on him, beyond the marshes where the ground brooks neither path nor building.
I only caught a glimpse of him every once in awhile. In such encounters, my heart always shrank. As a young child, I feared him, and fell over myself in my attempts to ingratiate myself in his presence. For the old man made a song and a dance out of everything and everyone: suca, famba,1 be off with you. Agualberto passed us with a stiff, slow gait. At first, we asked ourselves: is he blind? Impossible, the man pushed himself forwards as if he were pulling us towards him. Those vacant eyes of his stared into our soul rather than our face. The whole village was unanimous.
—That fellow’s got more sulphur in him than the devil.
No matter how great our fear, we couldn’t do without him. Why? Because my old man blessed the fish hooks. The fishermen would form a line and he would attend each one in turn. There would be complete silence while he closed his eyes. Agualberto Perchance would await the voices that would flow from his mouth. Somewhere out there, far away, the tide was turning, the ocean frolicked around as the tides raced. Until he received a signal that the tide was on the turn, he remained still and unblinking. He who knows, doesn’t speak, he who is wise, keeps quiet. As my grandfather said: Do you know the difference between a wise white man and a Black? The white answers your questions right away. For us Blacks, the wisest man is the one who takes his time before giving you an answer.
And so my father waited in this state of immobility, while the fishermen who wanted to be blessed also waited. Until Agualberto raised his hand and wriggled his fingers as if he were summoning the invisible. He opened an old packet of cigarettes stuffed with a powder that bore some resemblance to tobacco. They had the appearance of cigarettes that had been chewed by time and sucked with the spittle of oblivion. The powders were sprinkled over the hook and luck stuck to it. Other times, he added various items to the bait: bits of glass, card, shells. All this was cast into the sea and the best possible good fortune invoked.
But how did this man, my father, survive? I asked myself that question from afar. My old man left home every morning, and would eye the walls of the neighbourhood as if he were trying not to look at them. He would make for the quay. There, he would sit himself down on the wall, where he would receive the inevitable messages. Without fail, I would head for where he was, whenever I set off on my own fishing expeditions. Sometimes, he looked sad to me, his chest sticking out from his ribs. Was he shedding a tear on the landscape’s shoulder? Was he being trodden on by his past? Or was he yearning for that extinct girl?
He sat on the edge of the quay, feeling the breeze off the Indian Ocean. The man didn’t even articulate a word: merely loose sounds, little shards of speech. When he spoke, it was as if he were licking his own tongue. His body swayed like a tree in a gale. Was his body pondering different thoughts from his head? As far as I could see, he was praying, lighting the wick of some word, in a never-ending process of not wanting to forget or remember, absorbed in a yearning for other lives.
But he earned his money by blessing the fish hooks, the guarantee of a good catch. And every morning, the fishermen would wait by the wall while he unwrapped the same ancient cigarette packet and opened a bag full of offerings. I joined the hunters of fish. I would wait in the long line while gulls screeched overhead. When my turn came, I would be gripped by fear and slide away from the line. Countless times, I would line up again and wait. But when I came face to face with my old man, I would stumble over myself and leave the place.
Then one morning, my old mother died. She left life just as she had lived it, with neither history nor drama. She just complained:
—The sun’s pulling me too hard, I feel hot.
She walked over to the water tank and dipped her wrists in as if she were looking to get cool. She leaned against the trunk of the tree and let her arms dangle in the tank. Without us knowing, she was dying, her veins diluting in water’s eternity. We carried her away from there as if we were just putting her to bed. In silence, as if she had stolen away long ago. As if we were simply taking Mother for an afternoon stroll, like any other. Did my old mother die instantly? Or isn’t all death instantaneous?
On the day of the funeral, the weather changed. Without any warning, the sky turned wintry. First thing in the morning, the cold filtered in through the cracks: no one would go out fishing in such weather. But in spite of this, I went. My mood matched the world, its winds and overcast skies. Who knows, maybe the quay would chase my clouds away? There I was, lost in my thoughts, holding the line as if my soul were attached to the submerged fish hook.
This was when I heard footsteps. I turned around apprehensively. The figure of Agualberto Perchance emerged from the mists and gave me a fright. There I was, my unblessed line drooping sadly in the grey waters. Had he recognized me, even though I had my back to him?
That would be impossible, because the old man was completely blind. Then he addressed me in his gravelly voice:
—Is that how you’re doing it? The fish won’t bite …
I didn’t turn round. I stayed there hunched over with fear. For at that very moment, a sudden tug on the line indicated the presence of a fish brushing its lips over my hook. I didn’t want to seem to be contradicting the soothsayer, so I pretended nothing was happening. But the quivering of the line then confirmed that I had had a bite from a large fish, endowed with both size and weight. As for me, in my cowardice, I neither moved nor made a sound. I don’t know how, but my father noticed the quivering line.
—Aren’t you going to reel in the fish?
And there was I without knowing what to do or say. I continued to look blankly in front of me, pretending I was dead. Fear was born along with us; it is the same fear that seizes us at the moment of our birth when we shed our first tears.
—Go on, reel in the line!
If he was blind, how did he see the tugging on the line? He seemed to guess my doubts.
—After all these years, I don’t need eyes to tell me when a fish is biting.
He sat down next to me. Even sitting right on the edge of the quay, he swung his legs. I was trembling before his fierce gaze. His voice appropriated my own:
—Where’s your bait?
Unable to reply, I pointed at my tin of worms. The man stuffed his thick fingers into the tin and took out a shiny, wriggling worm, turning it this way and that in the air.
He talked of fish and fishing in his own language. In the language of our area, there is no exact word for “to fish.” We say “to kill the fish.” There is no special word for “boat.” And we call the ocean “the big place.” We are people of the soil, the sea is a recent arrival.
—It’s not the bait I’m blessing.
—So what are you blessing?
—I’m blessing you.
Did my father recognize me? Then he looked at me with that deep, empty gaze that I found impossible to return. And this is what he said:
—I’m going to tell you this, lad: I’m blind when it comes to the living. But I can see death’s shore clearly. And I can see your death …
—My death?
—You’re going to die drowned in a bedsheet, as if the linen had become waves on the sea.
—Do you know who I am, sir?
He nodded. It was because he knew who I was that he was there, sitting beside me. Then he asked me:
—I came to ask you something: Do you know where the China Deep is?
—That deep gully out there in the middle of the sea?
—Yes, I want you to go there, every week. Take food and drinking water with you. Leave it out in the deep. Do it for me. Do you promise?
—Yes, I promise.
Then he explained: this memory was his only reason for living. Down in the deepest depths of the China Deep, the woman he had loved, the woman he had eyes for, had met her end.
—Do you know something? All these fish hooks I bless. It’s all a lie. I only pretend to cast a lucky spell on them so that their bait, all those things I add to the hooks, will sink down into the depths and not come back.
—And what happens to those things you attach to the hook?
—They’re gifts for the dead girl. They’re for her. They’re all for her. They’re my gifts to her.
The snail is like a poet: he washes his tongue on his journey’s path.
The words of my grandfather—
but I don’t believe them
That afternoon, I was relaxing on my veranda, gazing at the ocean. It wasn’t that I was taking in all that azure. It was the sea that was taking my dreams on a trip. And I was blind to memories, like someone eternally reborn. And so, on my veranda’s old step, I wasn’t talking—I was silence itself, lulled by the rhythm of the Indian Ocean.
Suddenly, the screech of a gull made me start. My nerves were as taut as a bow, and my reaction swift as an arrow. The stone left my hand in fury.
—Hey, Perpétuo! You nearly hit me.
It was my neighbour. Dona Luarmina always wanted to know the reason why I was so devoted to killing gulls. Poor things, she would say, they’re birds full of whiteness, they adorn the sky with oceanic dreams. But why, Zeca, why are you so angry? As a man with such a brimming heart, how could I act so malevolently towards innocent creatures?
—I can’t explain.
—Why?
—Because it’s a secret, Dona Luarmina.
—I thought only women hid their secrets.
I smiled. That was a cunning blow designed to make my macho instincts teeter. What is a secret? A secret is an orange with only one segment. We eat that segment and are left with the peel wrapped around emptiness. I already knew that bitter taste of holding a fruit without any inside, while its peel turned to sand between my fingers.
I knew how much my persecution of the birdlife caused her to suffer. Do you know what she did, such was her pity of the gulls? She built a cage and put dozens of them inside. It was pandemonium, day and night. Not for Luarmina, who was a woman of little agitation. But for the children who would capture the birds and bring her kilos of fish for them to peck at.
At night, my sleep never hit bottom. Only bits of me slept; I was never completely asleep. That was because of the racket coming from my neighbour’s birdcage. Until one night, in the midst of my sleeplessness, my darkened thoughts turned to gasoline, rage, and matches. Fire is passion: in an instant, it consumes everything. The imprisoned seagulls looked like white handkerchiefs flapping against the sunset. Their lives were extinguished. Wrapped in flame and light, too bright a light for them to keep flying. Until all that was left were ashes, and I slunk away before anyone saw me.
The next day, I went and paid my neighbour a visit. As I predicted, she was on her veranda. I placed my hand on her shoulder by way of condolence. She didn’t move. She had already wept all she had to weep, and was exhausted. Only a solitary tear remained on the fullness of her cheek. I nearly offered her a handkerchief. But then I remembered something she had said once before when she had cried. I shall never forget Luarmina’s words.
—You may have been comforted by a hand, a pair of lips, or a body, but no manner of caress will return your soul to you as much as a tear being released.
—How do you know that, Luarmina?
—A tear is the sea caressing your soul. That little speck of water is us as we return to the womb we came from.
As I recalled her words, I put my handkerchief away. I let her tear roll down her cheek. And there we remained, without talking. Her silence was complete, more painful than a thousand sobs.
Suddenly, I got an urge to clean up what I had done and return the henhouse to life and the wing. But I was unable to carry out the task: if there was a broom, there was no ground to sweep. I decided to confess everything. And so I told her about Henriquinha.
Let me tell you, lady—I was once married, well and truly married. She was a girl full of body but soft in the head, one might even say mad as a hatter. At first, I didn’t even notice her scattiness. Henriquinha seemed so composed, without any sign of either physical or mental dysfunction.
On Sundays, in the late afternoon, she would set off along the paths that led to the Church of Our Lady of the Souls. She wore her black dress, and made her way with a widow’s step. As I watched that woman from the veranda, a shudder ran through me as if that walk of hers were tearing at the locks of my soul. Then, as I contemplated the way her backside shaped her skirt, I became reconciled to my situation. Such a beautiful and pious wife was a comely gift.
Until one day I was told that she wasn’t in fact going to Mass at all. She was going to the top of the Red Dune, where she would get undressed for all to see, divested of all her clothes. The local folk would gather together to enjoy the sight. Even today, I can’t remember how many times I failed to give in to such vexation. Was the woman playing a game of cat and no mouse? What should I do? I sat there quietly in the shade, pretending to be checking the state of the sea, searching my mind as hard as I could for an idea.
One not so fine day, I had an idea. I should follow her without anyone seeing. This is how I organized it: I played a trick with the calendar. I got hold of one from a previous year, and pinned it up on the kitchen wall. That morning, Henriquinha asked me what day it was.
—I don’t know, woman. Look at the calendar.
She looked at it. Then I heard her voice exclaim in surprise from the bedroom:
—Hey! Is it really Sunday today?!
At first, she insisted there must be some mistake. It couldn’t be Sunday. It is, I answered, all Sundays are like that, the same as weekdays except for the collar and tie. It’s true, Henriquinha, we scarcely notice the week go by, and we’re already in the next one. What a life it is for a fisherman, who doesn’t think of days but of tides! And on I went, talking of this and that. I talked and talked so as to distract her.
—At least you’re lucky, Henriquinha. Your time begins at set hours, you get up and lie down, you go to bed and wake up. Whereas for me, my sun is the sea. Who knows what time that keeps?
Henriquinha didn’t even seem to hear. She went to the wardrobe and took out her formal black dress.
—Are you going out?
—Have you forgotten that on Sundays I always fulfill my obligations to God?
I smiled to myself. She’d fallen for it. For a few seconds, I even felt guilty. For a moment, I thought of dismantling the trap. But my soul was more powerful than sentiment. And off I went behind the woman, following her with utmost care, behind walls, thickets, and bushes. Until we reached the cliff of red earth. Henriquinha stopped on the edge, where the cliff drops into the abyss, right next to where the waves crash onto the shore. I stopped and watched.
At that hour, there was no one around. Maybe because it wasn’t Sunday, and nobody expected a performance on that day. Then Henriquinha began to sway as if dancing to a music only she could hear. With her back to me, she shimmied pleasurably, as if some invisible rain were falling on her. She started pulling her dress halfway up her body, and her waist began to show between her hands and flashes of light. Then she shed her clothes. Every garment that fell to the ground was like a dead leaf alighting upon my astonishment.
Along with anger, I was filled with a fervent desire for her. As if I had never seen or touched her before, as if she were some unattainable woman. I even thought: I’ll go over and ruffle my hair with her, initiate a little romance to cut our flesh to the quick. And I tiptoed over until I was standing behind Henriquinha, until I heard her gasps. The sound of that breathing of hers tricked me into thinking she had grown tired of me, that her body had been set ablaze in the fire of my blood. Suddenly, I felt a need to remove the source of my giddiness.
I pushed her. I didn’t hear her scream or even the thump of a body hitting the rocks below. Only the screech of a gull as it brushed past the cliff. Had Henriquinha fallen? Had she died? Had she been swallowed up by the sea?
On the days that followed, I returned to the Red Dune, I searched every millimetre of cave and sand for any sign of Henriquinha’s body. Nothing. Only absence. For me, this was more painful than a death, like those that involve a ceremony and burial. If I were a man in full control of my better judgment, I would still be torturing myself in an endless farewell to Henriquinha. But no. As far as I was concerned, nothing had happened. It’s like the future: it exists, but there isn’t any. If it had occurred, then at the same instant it had transitioned to another life, another memory that didn’t belong to me.
There’s only one more thing, Dona Luarmina: that seagull’s cry, at the exact moment of Henriquinha’s fall. That razor-sharp shriek rips the scars of a wound I never felt. You ask why I keep persecuting those birds, lady? Do you understand now, Dona Luarmina?
All that time, my neighbour had listened to me without moving, her face sunk in the shadow. When I finished, we remained shrouded in silence until Luarmina asked me:
—Was that your secret?
—Yes, it was.
Then she looked up and confronted me. Her expression wasn’t even one of anger. Her eyes seemed empty, vacant. As if my words had induced in her some incurable blindness.
—Go out to the backyard, and see what you did.
—I’m sorry, Dona Luarmina, I can’t go.
Then she struggled with her own body in an effort to get to her feet. The wood in her chair creaked in complaint. With Dona Luarmina, all chairs were rocking chairs. Without any help, she somehow got up, and then she held out her hand to me:
—Come with me.
I followed her reluctantly. Dispirited, I walked behind her as she made her laboured way to the cage. In front of me, Luarmina’s back shielded me from guilt. Her bulk hid my vision of the world.
—Look.
I stood behind her, like a child awaiting a smack. She was insistent, but I stood with my head bowed, weeding the ground with my shame. Until all of a sudden, I heard the flapping of wings. That sound spattered my soul with memory, as if two worlds were colliding. I gradually raised my eyes, seeing first the chewed planks of wood, then the decaying remains of birds, their ashen feathers, all lying there as peaceful as the desert. The metal mesh remained intact. But out of that ash-grey mixture. I seemed to see a live bird, all white, its lacy wings in sudden flight. How had that seagull survived such a conflagration?
Dona Luarmina slowly withdrew. I was left there alone with the remains of the cage and a vacant memory that had drained away from me and from everything. My hands were shaking when I opened the cage door.
The heart is a beach.
Makua proverb cited by old Celestiano
On the first occasion, I felt moisture on my arm. I was in bed, awaiting sleep. Suddenly, I had a cold feeling on my arm: some sort of liquid that had got in through a crack was running down it. That was when I was gripped by the horror of the vision: water was coming from everywhere, from the floor, the ceiling, water was rushing to fetch me, its blue tongue ready to tear me away from this world. Soon I would be unable to breathe, hemmed in from the inside as well as the outside. I got up, and as I fled the room the floor got wetter. I was hallucinating, for sure. But the puddled mat was there as proof that it was true.
That was just the first time. This vision of drowning assailed me whenever I was on the point of sleep. Sometimes it was the sea that covered me, other times I seemed to be drowning in my own blood. Sea and blood, blood and sea. Where were these signs coming from? I recalled my days of yore, I remembered my old father telling me one day, when I cut my finger out in the boat:
—Suck a bit of that blood.
I obeyed, as I always did. My father studied my movements with an attention he never normally paid me.
—Tell me now: what does blood taste like?
I looked at the sea, without giving him any other answer. So what was my father telling me? That we had oceans circulating within us? That there are journeys we must undertake only within ourselves? I shall never know. The lessons old Agualberto gave me were always like this: vague and ill defined. Blood and sea, their similarities now came back to me like a punishment for some act of disobedience. Only then did I understand the real reason for those nightmares. When he sensed he was dying, my father addressed me with a request.
—Take me to see certain places.
By now, his eyes were completely white, like shells that had been licked by the sun over time.
—What are the places you want to go to, Father?
—Sit down, Zeca. I want to talk.
Agualberto Perchance never called me “son.” On that occasion, he hesitated. But then he went ahead swiftly, and in a solemn tone:
—I’m more or less going to die.
—Don’t say that.
—I know my hour has come. But I don’t want to die in one place alone. I can’t leave my whole self in only one place. I already know the places where I’m going to die, a little bit in each one.
This was what he asked: that I should lead him to those places where he wanted to scatter his little pieces of death. And so we set off, first in the direction of the baobab tree at Ritsene. By that time he was tired, and he leaned against the trunk. There he remained, catching his breath, until he spoke:
—Your grandfather Celestiano was right, son.
—What was it he said?
Grandfather had criticized Agualberto for surrendering to the white man’s ways. The reason for his misfortune had been because he had turned his back against the older world.
—This is our church, my father said, pointing at the tree. Do you hear, Zeca?
—Yes, Father.
—Tell Father Nunes that I came here to our ancestors’ tree. Tell him I came here, that I didn’t go and get down on my knees in his church …
He took a piece of konkuene from his bag. He placed the black coral in a hollow of the tree trunk as an offering to the ancestors.
—I’m the only one with a piece of coral like this; no one else has a piece like it.
After that, we left, clambering along the riverbank. My father walked steadily next to me, as if he were able to make use of my eyes. Could it be that in spite of having lost the roundness in his eyes, he could still see?
—I listen to the light on the water, and the direction it takes …
—So where are we going?
—Now we’re going to the little forest where that boat of mine was born.
I led him into a wood where he had prepared the timber for his first and only boat. The old man walked around the clearing, and felt the trunks of every tree as if he were caressing a woman’s body. And he called every tree by name.
—This one is called Hope, that twisted one over there is called Sunrise.
He stumbled over shrubs, and tumbled to the ground. I made to help him get up. But he preferred to remain seated.
—Let me die a little here. Pull me over there just a tiny bit. Yes, that’s good, there’s a little ray of sunshine here.
He sat there for a time with his eyes closed. Once again, he took a piece of coral out of his bag and placed it on the ground. It was another offering to the gods.
—Now what, Father?
—Now I’m going to the other side of the sea …
—I’ll go and get the boat ready and I’ll go with you.
—No. You stay, I’m going alone.
I put him in the boat along with his old bag. I pushed him out as far as I could while still in my depth. I pointed it in the right direction and told him:
—Keep going straight ahead, don’t turn …
—I’m in the sea, my son, I don’t need anyone to guide me now.
And off he went. It was the only time he ever called me son. It was, I knew it, his farewell. Hearing that word from his mouth could have been my childhood being born. But it was his farewell.
When my grandfather Celestiano sensed death approaching, he called his wife and asked her:
—Let me look at your eyes!
And he lay there enthralled, as if his soul were a boat floating on a sea that was his beloved’s eyes.
—Are you cold? she asked, seeing him shiver.
—No. It’s you who are crying.
—Crying? Me? It’s started raining, that’s what’s happened.
My grandmother’s recollection
of old Celestiano’s final moment
My illness has got worse: I no longer get out of bed. Even more serious: I cannot even sleep. The moment my eyelids close, the folds in the sheet turn into water, and the next moment everything turns red and I flow out into rivers of blood. If I sleep, I drown, if I remain conscious, I go mad. I need to dream, all I want to do is dream.
I can hear the door opening. It must be thieves, but I’m no longer bothered. Let them steal the nothing that I possess, let them take the little life left that I have. They would even do me a favour. But it’s Luarmina peering round the door.
—I’ve come to visit you, Zeca.
—Is that so? I smile, in disbelief.
—You always visited me. Today, I’m the one visiting you.
Luarmina undoes a new sheet. She bids me help her to change the sheets on the bed.
—These ones are soaking; how can someone sweat so much?
I wanted to tell her it wasn’t sweat but the sea itself punishing me. But I didn’t hem and haw, and got straight to the point.
—How good it is that you’ve come, Luarmina. It’s because I’m about to die.
—Don’t talk nonsense, Zeca. You’ll live to throw a few shovelfuls on my grave.
I made the same request as old Celestiano had made in his final moments: I wanted her to sit next to my bed just so that I could find pleasure in her eyes.
—I beg you, dear neighbour: I want to swoon while looking into your eyes.
Luarmina smiled indulgently, as if I had returned to my childhood once and for all.
—If you go on talking like this, I’m going.
—Then do me a favour, lady. Tell me a story.
—A story? Me?
—Yes, neighbour, I’ve already told you so many of mine.
—But I don’t have any stories, I’ve led such a sheltered existence.
—How is that possible?
—My life has been an uneventful one. I’ve lived so little that I haven’t got long before I die.
—Make an effort, Dona Luarmina. It’s shameful for a man, but I want you to lull me until I begin to dream. I need to dream, I need so much to dream!
Luarmina got to her feet, bewildered. She wandered this way and that as if she were not so much seeking an idea but something that had been lost in the clutter of the room. Suddenly, she stopped next to the bed and uttered a strange order:
—Get up, Zeca.
She startled me. I refused, incapable of any movement whatsoever. But she persevered, pulled me, levered me up by my armpits.
—But I can’t stand. Leave me in bed.
—Stop babbling, Zeca, and help me to get you up.
—But what do you want to do with me, lady?
—What do I want to do? I want to dance with you, man.
What an irony of fate! All my life, I had dreamed of dancing with that woman. Now she wanted to, but I couldn’t. Luarmina still dragged me off as if I were a sack full of levity. I tried as hard as I could, but my feet couldn’t keep up with the steps. Until she deposited me on the bed like a lifeless bundle.
—I’m sorry, Dona Luarmina.
—You’re ill. I shouldn’t have forced you.
—It’s not illness. For us, illness is something else, not what you whites …
—I’m a mulata, don’t forget.
—You lady, for all intents and mispurposes, are white. The truth of my illness is this: I’m being punished by my father.
—Punished?
—Because I didn’t carry out what he asked me to do.
—But that’s no reason …
—No? I betrayed the promise I made. Don’t you remember what I told you? I promised to look after that woman of his, I promised I would take her water, food …
—But you did all that.
—No, I didn’t do anything at all.
—Yes, you did.
I was puzzled by her insistence. What did that woman know about my life, what did she know about the lives of Black people? I was getting annoyed at Luarmina’s presumption. Maybe that was why I shouted:
—I never did, lady. I never went back there.
The mulata decided to sit down, bowed her head in her hands, sighed, and said:
—That woman your father took around in his boat, that woman didn’t die.
—What do you mean didn’t die?
—She was carried away, clinging to a piece of wood …
—How do you know?
—Because I’m that woman.
I lay there, gaping, my mind in turmoil. Was Luarmina joking, did she think I no longer had any sense at all? But she continued with a serenity that left me bewildered:
—Yes, I’m that woman. And you comforted me with all your conversation, every time you visited me …
—It’s not true …
—You fulfilled your pledge, Zeca. I’m telling you. You have no reason to feel ill.
I was stunned. Could it be true, a story ending happily with such ease? I looked at Luarmina’s face as if she had been there forever, as if this were merely another night in an entire life. Every time the fat mulata plucked the petals from a flower in that game of “sea loves me, sea loves me not,” was it after all just my love making her do so?
—But now, Luarmina, I have one illness left.
—What illness?
—You. You, Luarmina, are my illness.
—I promise you, Zeca, I’ll come back later and cure your illness once and for all.
—But Luarmina, promise me you really are the woman from the boat!
She kept quiet. Her head bowed, she murmured:
—I’ll leave the door open. Like that, you can listen to the sea …
Listening to the sea, I fell asleep. But it wasn’t all of me that slept. Just as my father had died bit by bit, I now fell asleep a bit of me at a time. First, it was my memory that fell into the abyss and was lost to existence. As if at last the sea were teaching my memories to sleep. As if my life were accepting the supreme invitation and leaving me for its eternal dance with the sea.