It’s raining. Thick drops of water, blown by the strong winds, throw themselves at the windowpanes. Félix, who’s sitting facing the storm, is savouring a fruit shake in small spoonfuls. For the past few nights this has been his dinner. He makes it himself, taking a papaya, piercing it with a fork, then he gets two passion fruit, a banana, raisins, pine nuts, a soupspoon of muesli (an English brand) and a strand of honey.
‘Have I told you about the locusts?’
He had told me.
‘Whenever it rains like this it reminds me of the locusts. It wasn’t here, I’ve never seen anything like it here in Luanda. My father, old Fausto Bendito, inherited a farm in Gabela from his maternal grandmother. We used to go spend our holidays there. I felt like I was visiting Paradise. I used to play all day long with the workers’ children, and one or other of the local white boys from the area, who knew how to speak quimbundo. We used to play cowboys and Indians, with slingshots and spears we made ourselves, and even with air rifles – I had one, and another boy had one, which we loaded up with maças-da-India. You probably don’t know maças-da-India, they’re a little red fruit, about the size of a bullet. They were perfect as ammunition because when they hit their target they’d disintegrate – pluf! – staining the victim’s clothes with what looked like blood. When I see rain like this it reminds me of Gabela. Of the mango trees on the side of the road, even on the road out of Quibala. The omelettes – I’ve never tasted any like them! – the omelettes that they served for breakfast at the Quibala Hotel. My childhood is full of marvellous flavours. It smelled good too. Yes, I remember the locusts. I remember the afternoons when it rained locusts. The horizons would darken. The locusts would fall, stunned, into the grasses – one here, then another there, and they’d be eaten right off by the birds, and then the darkness would get closer, covering everything, and the next moment transforming itself into a nervous, multiple thing, a furious buzzing, a commotion, and we’d make for the house, running for shelter, as the trees lost their leaves and the grass disappeared, in just a few minutes, consumed by that sort of living fire. The next day everything that had been green was gone. Fausto Bendito told me he’d seen a little green car disappear like that, consumed by locusts. He was probably exaggerating.’
I like listening to him. Félix talks about his childhood as though he’d really lived through it. He closes his eyes. He smiles:
‘When I close my eyes I can see those locusts again, falling from the sky. The red ants, warrior ants – you know what I mean? – red ants would come down at night, they’d come from some doorway in the night that leads to hell, and they’d multiply, to thousands, millions, as fast as we could kill them. I remember waking up coughing, coughing violently, suffocating, my eyes burning, from the smoke of battle. My father Fausto Bendito, in his pyjamas, grey hair completely dishevelled, his bare feet in a basin of water, fighting that sea of ants with a pump full of DDT. Fausto shouting instructions to the servants through the smoke. I laughed with a child’s amazement. I’d fall asleep and dream of the red ants, and when I awoke they’d still be there, in the middle of all that smoke, that bitter smoke, millions of those little grinding machines, with their blind fury and their ancestral hunger. I’d fall asleep, and dream, and they’d make their way into my dreams, I’d see them climbing the walls, I’d see them attacking the chickens in their coop, the doves in the dovecote. The dogs would bite at their paws. They’d run in circles, spinning in rage, they’d run in circles howling, their teeth trying to snatch the red ants that were clinging to their toes, they’d run, they’d howl, they’d bite themselves. They’d bite off the red ants, and their toes with them. The patio would be covered in blood. And the smell of blood maddened the dogs even more. It maddened the red ants. Old Esperança – who wasn’t all that old in those days – would shout, beg, Do something, master! The animals are suffering! and I remember my father loading the hunting rifle, while she dragged me into my room so I wouldn’t watch… Esperança would hold me, my face buried in her breasts, but it was no use. When I close my eyes now, I can still see them. I can hear it all – would you believe it? Even today I cry over the deaths of my dogs. I shouldn’t say this, really – I’m not sure you’ll understand me – but I mourn the death of my dogs more than my poor father. We awoke, shook down our hair, our sheets, and the red ants would drop out dead, or almost dead, but still biting randomly, chewing at the air with their thick iron pincers. It rained, fortunately. The rain came through the illuminated sky and we’d go running – bounding – out to that thick, clean water, drinking in the perfume of the wet earth. And the first rains brought the white ants with them. All night long they’d spin about the lights like a mist, with a sweet humming, until they lost their wings, and in the morning we’d find the path carpeted with them, fine and transparent. I’ve always thought of white ants and butterflies as creatures quite without malice. In olden days stories for children always used to end with the words, and they lived happily ever after, this being after the Prince has married the Princess and they’ve had lots of children. In life there’s never a plot that works out like that, of course. Princesses marry bodyguards, they marry trapeze-artists and life goes on, and they live unhappily until they separate. And years later, just like the rest of us, they die. We’re only happy – truly happy – when it’s for ever-after, but only children live in a world where things can last forever. I was happy ever after in my childhood, there in Gabela, in the long holidays, as I tried to build a fort in the branches of an acacia tree. I was happy ever after on the banks of a brook, a strip of running water so modest that it didn’t even bother with the luxury of a name, but proud enough for us to think it more than a mere brook – it was the River. It ran through plantations of corn and manioc, and that’s where we’d go to catch tadpoles, to sail improvised steamboats, and also, as evening drew in, to spy on the washerwomen while they bathed. I was happy with my dog, Cabiri, the two of us were happy ever after, chasing pigeons and rabbits through the long afternoons, playing hide-and-seek in the tall grasses. I was happy on the deck of Príncipe Perfeito, on an endless journey from Luanda to Lisbon, throwing bottles with innocent messages into the sea. Whoever finds this bottle, please write to me. No one ever wrote to me. In catechism lessons an old priest with a faint voice and a weary gaze tried to explain to me what Eternity was. For me it seemed like just another name for my summer holidays. The priest talked of angels, and I saw chickens. To this day, in fact, of all the things I’ve seen, chickens are still the ones that most closely resemble angels. He talked of heavenly joy, and I saw chickens scrabbling away in the sun, digging up little nests in the sand, turning their little glass eyes in pure mystical bliss. I can’t imagine Paradise without chickens. I can’t even imagine the Great God, reclining lazily on a fluffy bed of clouds, without his being surrounded by a gentle host of chickens. You know something – I’ve never known a bad chicken – have you? Chickens, like white ants, like butterflies, are altogether immune against evil.’
The rain redoubled its strength. Rain like this is unusual in Luanda. Félix Ventura wipes his face with a handkerchief. He still uses cotton handkerchiefs, massive things, with old-style patterns on them, and his name embroidered into one corner. I envy him his childhood. Maybe it’s not real. But I envy him it all the same.