Nkokolani, June 9, 1895
Your Excellency Counselor José d’Almeida
This week, offended by my having lied to her, Imani turned against me and humiliated me in an elaborate fashion. I shall spare you the details of the scene she caused at the military post. It was fortunate that the place was shielded from the rabble’s curiosity and prying eyes.
But there is something I must confess: When Imani mistreated me, I felt as if I were being crucified on the floor of the house. As I bore the brunt of her fury, I realized how she was my only reason for living. Now that I have squandered the chance to conquer her, what is left for me in this world?
I do not know, sir, how I shall be able to continue my mission. In truth, I have forgotten what that mission was, if indeed it ever existed. I recall having read a letter from King Affonso of the Congo, addressed to the king of Portugal. I cite here, without any claim to precision, the words of this black monarch: “In our disputes with other nations, we take captives and we can kill. But nothing will work as efficiently as our seductive women.” King Affonso was right. In the end, I too fell victim to this power of seduction. I am one of the vanquished. I was defeated in a battle that never was.
I do not know how to get through the days, and I am terrified of the nights. You cannot imagine the bad dreams that assail me.
One nightmare is more repetitive than moths circling a lamp. In this nightmare, I see thousands of kaffirs dressed in our uniforms, seated in a circle. And we, the Portuguese, dance around a fire dressed in the animal skins and loincloths worn by natives. Everything inverted, upside-down.
Gungunhane appears, riding a white horse, in order to review his troops. Then, with an emperor’s vanity, he dismounts and takes his place on a throne. On closer inspection, one can see that the kaffir has a small mustache, clipped in the fashion of our officials. He orders us to stop our dancing, which he finds too noisy and lewd. Then he tells us to sit down and open our mouths, and keep them open until he has finished speaking. In impeccable Portuguese, the Negro declares: You wanted our land? Well, it’s all yours.
And, with brute force, he pours sand down our gullets. Soon, when we are stuffed full, the chief summons one of his queens, who comes over bearing a huge ivory tusk.
Were you dreaming of ivory? Well, here you have it.
Using the ivory as a pestle, the queen grinds the soil that has accumulated inside our mouths until we are completely asphyxiated. And so we die, sitting with our faces turned to the sun, rivulets of sand flowing over our chins. This is the nightmare that makes me wake up with a start and grab the first bottle I find on my bedside table. I drink eagerly, and as I put the bottle down, I read the old label on it: “Black Man’s Wine.”
Forgive this discourse on intimate matters. You may attribute my audacity in this to the abandonment in which I find myself, far from everything and everyone. I have been feeling so depressed over the last few days that I have resorted to frequenting the village’s dilapidated church. If it had a priest, I wouldn’t set foot inside it. But, perhaps because it is in such an abandoned state, I let myself linger there in silent, wordless prayer. And do you know whom I pray for in this way? Well, I ask God to protect these poor natives. And I beg him to spare them the ravages of the Vátuas.
Every time, I ask for more, but with less faith. Once, in the peace of that ruined church, I ended up falling asleep. And when I awoke, I sensed that the building was swaying, as if rocked by the waters of a river. The church was a boat, and in it traveled an uncle of mine, Maurício, who had become a priest. This uncle appeared to me now with his head attached to his body by one strip of flesh. And he was entreating me, in a voice that was as ruptured as his throat: Write me down and put me in a letter, nephew. Send me back to my country inside an envelope.
Maurício had abandoned the church, disillusioned with the priesthood. He married and became the father of an adorable child. However, he remained an austere, taciturn man. Wishing to put an end to his own life, he killed his wife first, and then his son. He wanted to paint the walls with his victims’ blood. But the walls rejected his paint. The house was alive. It escaped from its foundations. The man found himself out in the open air, with only the night for a roof. The following morning, he awoke without knowing where he was. Then he saw his wife and child floating above him, each of them holding a knife. His body was never found, and whatever blood there was had left no stain or sign of coagulation. Once Maurício departed, no one remembered he had ever had a body. He who had abandoned God found no direction to give his soul.
After this terrifying vision, I never visited the church again, for fear that the ghost of Uncle Maurício dwelt there. But I followed the advice of my freakish relative. The endless letters I have written (most of them without an address or addressee) have been a means for me to bring order to the frenzied visions that forever assail me, and send them on their way.
I have written so many letters that I fear I have fulfilled my old mother’s prophecy. She said she had known a man who had done nothing except write ever since he was a child. His right hand had become deformed, and his eyes had narrowed. And he wouldn’t stop writing. All his infinite scribbling was, in the end, no more than one sole tract: it was a letter to the Messiah. In this missive, the man enunciated the world’s evils. He could not omit any of humanity’s failings under pain of missing the final act of redemption.
He spent years writing; there wasn’t a single day when he didn’t fill page after page. The Messiah died before he had finished his lengthy dispatch. Even so, the man continued to compose, in the belief that his document would be ready for the successor to the Savior of the World. He grew old surrounded by piles of paper, heaped up until they reached the ceiling. There came a day when the man no longer knew where the door and windows were. His was now but an inner world. At this time, he decided he should end his long epistle. He signed his name at the end of the last paragraph and lay down with the sheet of paper on his chest. It was then that he realized his infinite letter had been addressed to himself. He was the Messiah. And he was dead.