Catió was the new hope. It was a faraway land, cut off from everywhere else, embraced by the sea on all sides. A land of unknown people, unaware of her past. People who would finally allow her hope to flourish, a hope she’d had long before Obem. Hope for peace, love and happiness, for a new life in which she could be herself and be at ease with others.
Hope still existed in her despite past uncertainties, events that still cast long shadows. Her stepmother had been right, once again she’d been right.
‘One day your sun will burn bright…’
‘You think so?’
‘I know so.’
‘How?’
‘Wait and you’ll see…’
‘I’ve already waited a long time…’
‘Wait a little longer and you’ll see… One day your sun will burn with great force…’
‘When?’
‘When you least expect it, daughter. Don’t lose hope, that’s the main thing.’
Her stepmother had always believed in her and this had given her hope. That hope had been badly shaken by her forced marriage to the Régulo and severely tested by the agony of their wedding night, when the Régulo had approached her with the same gleam in his eye she’d seen in Senhor Leitão. Hope had got her through, she hadn’t screamed or otherwise reacted when the Régulo had forced open her legs, and she hadn’t buckled before the scornful stares and veiled threats that followed. Hope had endured the solitude of the big house, then been revitalised when the Teacher appeared on the doorstep…
Her sun would finally burn. How long would it be until twilight? She didn’t care to know. She refused to think about it. Her sun was burning bright and she would make the most of it, live every moment, fill her husband’s and children’s hearts with joy. She would not worry about what others did or didn’t have, she would look after her own, those who made her sun burn, day in, day out.
One day she asked her stepmother to reveal the secret of her own happiness. Where did her eternal optimism come from? How was she so good natured in spite of everything?
‘There is no secret…’
‘There must be. You’re here against your will. You have no friends, you’ve got nothing…’
‘I don’t think about that.’
‘What do you think about then?’
‘I think of what I do have, not what I don’t have.’
‘Even so… you don’t have anything!’
‘I do. Of course I do…’
‘Show me what you have then.’
‘It isn’t here.’
‘Where is it then?’
‘He’s far away.’
‘Who is he?’
‘My love.’
‘Is that the only thing you have?’
‘Isn’t that enough?’
‘So you think about him…’
‘Always…’
Then her stepmother told her about him. His name was Okante and he was from Pecixe. They met in Bissau, when she was a housegirl to a rich white family and he shined shoes outside a nearby hotel. One day he came and asked for a glass of water and… their eyes met for the first time. He was different to all the others. Later on, he became a kitchen hand in a guesthouse; he worked during the day and studied at night; then he went into nursing… That was when it happened. She said it couldn’t be that day, it would have to wait for another time. He insisted, he said he’d been studying it, that even if there were complications afterwards, he knew people in the hospital who could take care of such things, no problem. She wouldn’t yield, he was all talk, it really couldn’t be that day. He stopped talking and started kissing her, nuzzling her, touching her, sticking his hands everywhere… He was a real devil, very experienced. He was no bush innocent, ignorant in the art of making love, he knew exactly where to touch a woman and he did it very well. She succumbed, she let him do whatever he wanted… There was a complication afterwards, a big one. Her aunt found out and told her people back home. Her father came the next day and took her away. She didn’t even have time to let Okante know. Within a month, she’d been forced into marriage. What happened that night in Okante’s room remained a secret…
‘What did Okante do when he found out?’
‘Nothing. He already had a wife…’
‘And after that?’
‘After that… I go and see him whenever possible. We meet at his cousin’s house. Sometimes we spend several days together, shut away in the bedroom. We go out, but only at night… He tells his wife he’s going to his village, I say I’m off to visit my aunt. I still like him very much…’
‘It must be difficult living like that.’
‘It depends… At first, I cried all the time. Now I don’t… I just think about him. He’s with me in my heart. No, it’s not that difficult… Even when I can’t go and meet him, when I have to stay here, I think of him and he comes to me. When I’m with another man in bed… I imagine it’s him and feel the same thing as if it really were him… It’s up to us how we think of things. I choose to think he still loves me, even though he now has another job and is always sending apologies to say he can’t meet as planned. I know he doesn’t really love me any more, but I don’t think about that. I think about the Okante I knew when he was a shoeshine boy, not the Okante in charge of the nurses. Why? Because that Okante’s mine, he’s the one I liked so much. Whenever I call for that Okante, he comes to me with a smile, he hugs me, tickles me, laughs along with me. If I’m in bed, I call him and he comes, he holds me so that I can sense his warmth and smell, and then… It’s good… I only think about good things, that’s why I’m content…’
Ndani thought about good things too. She thought about her sun and how it would burn forever. She thought about the man she could now accompany in the street without people sneering. She thought about her children, those they’d had and those still to come. She thought about caring for them, making sure their journeys through life were nothing like her own. She thought about her work as a seamstress, bringing in extra money to help her husband fulfil his ambition of building them a house. A house in Catió, on the road that led to the big port, close to the school and with lots of space to plant flowers and for children to play.
The house would have an area set aside in which she and her two assistants could work. Ndani would get another sewing machine and they would produce a lot more than they could now. They’d earn more money and buy yet another machine and take on more assistants. Then they’d need more space and they’d build an annex in the yard, just for them to work in. They’d take on even more assistants and they’d make more clothes, dresses for all the women in Catió to wear on festive occasions. They’d make children’s clothes too, pretty outfits using colourful cloths and dyed fabrics, for boys and girls to look their best at baptisms and tabaski parties; on djambadon days or kanta-pó; or even at festivals when the renowned Bakar djaloh and his djidius played the drums and everyone in Catió danced. And they’d make pretty school uniforms too.
Lots of women working with interest, purpose and pleasure. If everyone worked as hard as Ndani imagined they would, they’d be able to build a crèche where mothers could leave their children while they worked. They’d build a playground, so that anyone who wanted to work could do so without having to worry about their children. Great Women would work at the playground and lavish the children with wisdom and affection. The children would learn to play and smile together, and to each find their own burning sun.
After that they would build a special school for young women, where they could learn to read and write and design and manufacture clothes for all ages. There wouldn’t be a single teacher in the school. Like the playground, it would be run by Great Women who would pass on the lessons that life had taught them, things not found in books, encyclopaedias or testaments, new or old.
Ndani thought all of this through again and gulped with amazement. She thought of the movement she would launch, the happiness it would unleash. She could do it in Catió, that land of hope, and maybe elsewhere besides, help spread happiness to every home in every morança in every tabanca. She got up from her sewing machine and went out into the street. With a huge smile on her lips, she gazed up at the immensity of the sky. It was an intense and brilliant blue. An endless blue, with not a single blemish. And right in the middle… there could be no doubting it.
Her sun was burning!
He didn’t get everything he wanted, but he got the main thing: a transfer to somewhere very far away. He’d spent two days discussing his dilemmas with the Priests at the Mission House, but the Priests had been far from convincing, he’d hoped for a lot more. They’d talked about heavenly matters; he wanted to know about life on earth. They’d talked about the past; his concerns were for the future. They’d talked about miraculous events in remote holy lands; his problems were local and tangible.
He’d gone to Catió with his wife and children. He liked the land and he liked the people. He especially liked the atmosphere: the spirit, the peace, the calm. He liked being seen with his wife in public at long last, walking side by side with her without fear of harassment. He liked the school and his new students. He began to build a new dream.
He wanted to settle in Catió and enjoy the peace and tranquillity that finally seemed possible. He wanted to shower his wife and children with love and affection. He wanted them to be happy, every day and forever. He decided to build a house. A house that would be theirs, where their children could play and grow up happy and healthy. When he told Ndani his plan, she cried. Tears of joy.
He felt immensely happy at home and at school, but increasingly empty outside those two places. A growing sense of disgust and frustration plagued him, although he couldn’t pinpoint the cause. He felt physically and mentally burdened. Why?
Was it because of what he saw in his day to day life? The poverty of the local people, children with aged faces and pimpinhida bellies; the power of the whites, come from afar to impose their limitless authority…
Was it because the Régulo had died before his plan was registered? The Régulo had told him to go early that day… how early had he meant? Had he known he was going to die? Had he taken revenge on the Teacher because of his wife? Or had the Régulo deliberately taken his plan to the grave, preferring to let people kill each other instead? Could he have revealed the plan to someone else?
The Teacher had the testament, but he lacked the plan, which was the more important. The plan would have enabled him to act and save innocent lives. He did not want to live through what he’d seen in his nightmare… He heard radio programmes from other parts of the world and he knew something big was happening across the continent. A new wind was blowing, announcing freedom and progress. There was growing unrest everywhere. The colonised were energised, finding new ways to underline their discontent, new forms of expression. The injustice would not last for ever. God would not allow it…
But the more he thought about it, the more trapped he felt. He could see no immediate solution. His conversations with the Priests at the Mission House had been hugely disappointing. He’d put so much faith in them, in their belief in justice and the brotherhood of mankind! If only he had the Régulo’s plan…
What to do?
It was a question he asked himself every day. He prayed that God would enlighten his thinking. His thinking and his direction. He decided to dedicate more time to his family, to be more of a help to his wife, for she had two children to care for and another in her belly, plus lots of seamstress work besides. He resolved to stop playing football on Sundays and stay at home instead. It was the least his wife and children deserved.
But playing football on Sundays… it was tradition in Catió. It was one of the things he’d liked most when he’d first arrived, although the details left a lot to be desired. The football pitch was like a bantabá where everyone gathered to chat, socialise and have fun, and where the same two teams faced off every week: Married versus Single. He found the two names amusing at first, until he got to know the players better and decided it showed a lack of imagination. Then he got to know them even better and decided it was a form of discrimination, albeit a subtle one.
The Married team comprised all the whites and mixed race, the civil servants and traders, the ‘civilised’ and most of the ‘assimilated’. The Single team featured all the blacks, regardless of their age or how many wives they had, as well as any ‘assimilated’ who wished to play, but didn’t know how. The Teacher had played for the Singles at first. He always scored lots of goals and, maybe because of this, someone decided he should really play for the Marrieds, for he was a teacher. Thus he was decreed to be ‘assimilated’. The Teacher had since stopped playing, but if he ever did return, it would be for the Singles.
He began to spend every Sunday at home with his wife and children. It was more pleasant, relaxing and rewarding. Whenever people stopped him at school or in the praça to ask him why he no longer played football, he invented an excuse and promised to play the following Sunday, a promise he never kept. People eventually got used to his absence and forgot about him.
They forgot about him until a game was arranged to pay homage to the outgoing Administrator and welcome the new Administrator to Catió. Both things at once. There would even be a cup to play for. Several people remembered the Teacher that Sunday.
The first was a merchant who played for the Marrieds. The Teacher politely declined: unfortunately he couldn’t play this week, but next Sunday he’d be back for sure. The Teacher was unmoved by the merchant’s attempts to persuade him: that it was an important match; that it was a chance to make a good impression on the new Administrator…
He decided to go fishing in the little port, but just as he was setting off, more people came to the house. They were from the Singles and they said they really needed him. It was an important match, they had to win; they’d lost last time, it was a chance for revenge; they were short of players, because of the rice harvest. He said no, over and over again. One of the Singles players went to speak to Ndani. He was married to Kidama, one of Ndani’s assistants. He explained the situation and finished by saying it was a one-off: it was an important match and they were short of numbers…
Ndani told her husband he should help them out. He shook his head. He said he’d rather go fishing. Ndani took his fishing rod from his hand and said, in a very firm voice:
‘Have you no shame? Everyone’s asking you… Do you think you’re better than them?’
‘Give me my rod back, please.’
His voice contrasted with Ndani’s, for he spoke very softly. She put the rod back in his hand. Then she said, in a lower voice, as if she didn’t want anyone else to hear:
‘Go on, dear, go and help them out… There’ll be a nice surprise waiting for you when you get home. Go on, go and play…’
She smiled at him the way only she could. Then she calmly took his rod back from him and went inside. She returned a few moments later holding his football boots. She gave him a little pat on the back and said:
‘Play well and win the cup. When you get back, there’ll be a nice surprise waiting for you.’
They set off, but when they got to the football pitch there was a big discussion as both teams laid claim to him. The Teacher took himself to one side and let them argue it out while he warmed up. He was eventually called over and told to choose which team to play for. He chose the Singles.
Nevertheless, the dispute rumbled on until the Administrators arrived with their families. Then the two teams lined up and the Teacher stood with the Singles. The distinguished guests were duly hailed and the Administrators came over to greet the teams.
The Teacher recognised the new Administrator immediately, despite his increasingly bald head. It was Administrator Cabrito, the former Chief of Post of Quinhamel. The Teacher felt a shiver run down his spine and he lost all will to play football. Administrator Cabrito, Administrator Carneiro and the referee were being introduced to the Married team. The Teacher was not prepared to shake that man’s hand. What should he do? Leave? Stay and refuse to shake his hand? Refuse to shake hands with either Administrator or just with Administrator Cabrita? What would happen then? How would his team mates react?
The two Administrators stopped when they got to the end of the Marrieds line. They had no intention of going any further. The Singles went without handshakes from either the new or the old Administrator. They said ‘may the best team win’, then left the pitch. The Teacher breathed a sigh of relief, but his lack of will remained…
He didn’t say anything to anyone. It was best to avoid more talk. But he really didn’t want to be there. He wished he’d gone fishing at the little port…
All the same, as soon as the referee’s whistle blew and the game got under way, the Teacher charged around all over the field. He felt old energies reawaken in him without knowing where they sprung from. It wasn’t long before he’d scored the game’s first goal. He picked the ball up in the centre circle and burst forward as if it were tied to his boot. He feinted past one opponent, dummied around another and then saw a gap open up before him. He raised his left boot and fired off a fierce shot. He did it without breaking stride and he kept on running, as if to chase after the ball. The ball flew into the top right corner of the net. Only then did he stop running. The crowd applauded for a long time and his students began to chant: ‘Teacher, Teacher, Teacher!’.
Ten minutes after the first goal, he scored a second. It was a lovely recoché that took the goalkeeper totally by surprise. Indeed most players and spectators were unaware of what had happened: only those close enough to the goal saw how the Teacher had leaned forward and flicked the ball with the heel of his left boot as it passed behind his back. It all happened in the blink of an eye, but those who saw clapped enthusiastically.
After that, there were moments of danger at both ends, with the crowd cheering in a way that had rarely been seen before.
Half an hour in, the Teacher scored another goal, but the referee disallowed it, claiming an offside that no one else saw. The buoyant crowd hissed in protest, but to no avail.
The Singles only had ten men, but they seemed more numerous. They appeared to be everywhere on the field, in no small part thanks to the clever positional play and dribbling ability of their last-minute recruit. They took the game to the opposition, created more chances and had the ball in the back of the net several times, only for the referee to disallow their goals on the flimsiest of pretexts, usually non-existent offsides.
The Teacher decided to adopt a new approach. He dropped deep to receive the ball in his own half and then made for the touchline, swerving past anyone in his path. He ran down the wing and when he reached the byline he faked to cross, causing the central defenders and goalkeeper to focus their attentions on his team mates in the penalty area. But he chipped the ball instead, arching it high into the top corner at the far post. He repeated the trick a little later, scoring brilliant goals both times.
On the stroke of half-time, a Married player fell over after being tackled by a Singles defender outside the penalty area. The referee signalled for a penalty, prompting much hissing from the crowd, and the Marrieds dispatched the spot-kick, their only goal of the first half.
At half-time, the Marrieds discussed numerous tactics, all of them designed to stop the Teacher.
When the match resumed, the crowd noticed a new face in the Marrieds line up, a young man nobody had seen before. Intrigued, people turned to one another to ask who he was, and they soon found out. The Administrator’s cook recognised him: it was Administrator Cabrita’s eldest son; he lived in Portugal with his mother, the white woman the Administrator had been married to before taking a mixed-race wife.
The young man entered the game with one express mission: to stop the Teacher. He’d assured everyone he knew how, so they’d prised him into the team. But he soon found out it wasn’t as easy as he’d thought. In their first encounter, the Teacher flicked the ball over his head and skipped round him to score. The youngster’s reaction drew more laughter from the crowd than the goal did applause. The young man was given renewed instructions and told to focus solely on the Teacher; to mark him tightly, man to man.
In the next fifteen minutes, the Administrator’s son tripped the Teacher up three times. He had eyes only for the Teacher’s legs and the referee waved play on to every foul. The older spectators sighed with resignation; the younger ones hissed.
The Teacher knew the boy was following him like a shadow and tripping him deliberately. He tried to counter what was happening by no longer dribbling or even holding onto the ball. But it was to no avail. The young man kept on piling into him, even when he didn’t have the ball. It happened twice in a row without the referee intervening. The Teacher complained, only to be shown the yellow card and told he’d be off next time. The referee said he was perfectly aware of the rules of the game, he didn’t need anyone telling him how to do his job, and he would not tolerate player dissent.
So the Teacher decided to teach the boy a lesson. The next time he got the ball, he deliberately let the young man take it off him. Then, just as he was shaping to hoof it clear, the Teacher gave him a well-aimed staka. The Administrator’s son fell to the ground screaming that the dirty black dog had broken his ankle.
The children in the crowd clapped. The referee whistled. Administrator Cabrita came running onto the pitch and made straight for the Teacher. He raised his hand and gave the Teacher a violent slap in the face.
For a few moments, the Teacher didn’t know how to react. It had happened so fast and it had been so surprising, so violent. Only when he saw the man raise his hand for a second time did he come alive to the situation. An identical scene flashed before him, a memory from a long time ago in the tabanca where he was born. A white merchant had slapped his father in the face.
The Teacher saw the white hand swing at his face again and he felt something rise up inside him, fury or a will for revenge. He reacted quickly. He lurched back and watched the Administrator’s hand whistle past his face. A moment later his own hand struck the white man’s cheek. It did so a second and a third time, the last blow a punch that drew blood from the Administrator’s nose and a shriek from his mouth. The Teacher’s anger and contempt grew and he lashed out again, each blow striking the white man’s body more violently than the last. His team mates intervened before he could let rip further, but as they pulled him away, he shouted, loud enough for everyone to hear:
‘I’ll kill the son of a bitch!’
The Singles players who’d gone to get the Teacher that morning now took him home, hurrying him away before the Sepoys came. Administrator Carneiro helped Administrator Cabrita to his feet and said something to him that no one else heard. Then he gnashed his teeth. Together they made their way over to their families.
The game had come to a premature end. The crowd drifted away in silence. The whites gathered around the two Administrators, then headed off together as a group. Everyone wondered what they’d said, what threats of reprisal had been made.
As the crowd departed, the older spectators brought up the rear, a few Great Men among them. They traipsed slowly through the praça with the same look of concern etched on their wrinkled faces. Then they went their separate ways without their usual chatter and drawn-out farewells. They were lost in their own thoughts, imagining what would become of the Teacher, he who was so good at football. They knew that even if the new Administrator didn’t wish to take the matter further, the other whites would insist that he did: physical aggression or public offence by a black towards a white could not go unpunished. They knew the Sepoys would arrest the Teacher the next day, if not that very night, and that he’d be hauled before the Administration. He would be publicly beaten, so that everyone saw what happened to blacks who dared raise their hands to whites. They imagined him tied to the flagpole under a brutal midday sun, his body bleeding all over, his hands tied behind his back, unable to stop the flies from sucking on his blood as it poured from his mouth, his nose, his chin, his whole body.
They had no doubt as to what fate awaited the Teacher. Muslims and Christians went to pray for him; others placed cane offerings in the baloba. They all asked that the Teacher might be saved, that he might be spared the full wrath of a hatred so huge it could only fit in the hearts of whites.
They all hoped that some form of supernatural help might intervene to temper the Administrator’s thirst for revenge. But they had no doubt at all that there would be revenge. Yes, because whites always got revenge…
One way or another.
News of the incident spread fast. Word of mouth moved relentlessly the next day, salt added at every turn. Nobody spoke of anything else in Catió. Even those who hadn’t been at the game knew exactly what had happened. Or not exactly, for there were so many versions of the story that even those who had been at the game were no longer sure whether the Teacher had punched the Administrator or perhaps kicked him too; whether he’d not in fact knocked the Administrator to the ground and then stamped on him shouting ‘you white son of a bitch, you swine, you scum.’ And anyone who heard a child’s account of what happened couldn’t help but think the Teacher must be a former world champion boxer.
But many people were less amused. For the majority of the local population, especially the adult population, it was a day of great tension. They expected to hear a scream pierce the air at any moment, signalling the start of the torture sessions, the onset of revenge…
The Great Men feared the worst. They feared the Teacher would be tortured until he lost consciousness and then tied to the flagpole, whereupon the Administrator would take out his pistol and riddle his body with bullets. The Great Men gathered near the school to await the inevitable, to see the Sepoys take the Teacher away.
They waited a long time, but nobody came. The Teacher was at school with his students. He carried on as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn’t just committed an act so brazen it was beyond the imagination of most people. Only once before in Catió had a black drawn blood from a white, and that had been many years ago…
That black was called Mbunh Lambá and he’d been a very brave n’haye. First, he’d grabbed the Administrator and pulled him to the ground. Violently. Then he’d placed his foot on the white man’s mouth, the mouth that had just insulted him, just called him a shameless thief. Then he’d twisted the white man’s arm and broken it in two places, the arm that had just struck him twice. He’d warned the Administrator that he would not stand by if someone raised a hand to him. He would break that hand. The Administrator had laughed at him and slapped him twice in the face.
Mbunh died full of bullets. His lifeless body spent a further day tied to the flagpole, blood seeping into the ground and soaking into the roots of the mango tree that grew opposite the Administration. Nobody dared to eat the mangos from that tree after that, for it was said that if you bit into them, blood would come out, the blood of Mbunh Lambá. It was also said that Mbunh hadn’t died and that his spirit appeared on Thursday nights whenever there was no moon. His spirit wandered in search of the Administrator. It went back and forth from the Administration building up to the Administrator’s house, forever seeking the Administrator, but never finding him. It didn’t know that the Administrator had left town immediately after killing Mbunh. The spirit would go up to the Administrator’s house and then come back down to the Administration and violently shake the flagpole. Then it would disappear, nobody knew where to.
Many Sepoys swore they’d seen the spirit. It was long, they said, as tall as Mbunh, and it glowed all over; some said fire came out of its body; others that it wasn’t fire, but a white light; others that it was neither fire nor light, but rage, the great rage Mbunh had felt the day he died; a pure rage that had rushed out of his shaking body the moment the Administrator put a gun to Mbunh’s head and blew his brains out. It was this rage that glowed and made the spirit walk so very slowly, one careful step at a time, as if trying not to step in its own blood, which was splashed all over the streets. Every footstep seemed to make the ground shudder and the whole praça quake: trees, cars, everything. But not people, for there were never any people around, they always hid inside. It was also said that Mbunh’s spirit had promised to get hold of better weapons than the pistol that had shot him and that when it did there would be war. War against the whites. War in which Mbunh would kill every last white until there were no more left to be Administrators. And if any black tried to become an Administrator, he’d kill them too.
That was the one story people in Catió told without adding salt. Everyone revered Mbunh’s courage and feared his wandering spirit. Even the whites knew the story and feared what was said. When their children asked about it, they told them it was nonsense, something the natives had invented to scare white children, but they never failed to tell white newcomers about it and to warn them not to go out on Thursday nights unless the moon shone bright. And it was maybe why no Administrator had ordered anyone shot dead since then. Plenty of people had been tied to the flagpole and whipped unconscious, but they’d never been shot dead. They knew the story of Mbunh Lambá and Administrator João Lobão and they were afraid of Mbunh’s spirit. Did Administrator Cabrita know the story?
Mbunh Lambá’s story was familiar to everyone in Catió, with the possible exception of the Teacher. He wasn’t local and he perhaps hadn’t been told. He was from somewhere else, people hadn’t even asked where. They’d simply met him and liked him. He was very polite and had respectfully said mantenha to everyone. He was very different to the Teacher they’d had before. Then they met his wife. She was a lovely person too. They thought that if ever another school for blacks opened in Catió, she would be its teacher. Then they saw that she not only knew how to read, she knew other things besides. She knew how to sew very well and she made clothes for the wives of several white merchants. And whenever a baby was born to a neighbour or acquaintance, she made children’s clothes as a gift.
Good people like the Teacher and his wife did not deserve to be punished, much less suffer the white man’s thirst for revenge.
Time passed and what the Great Men feared would happen had still not come to pass. Many of them remained stationed in the shade of an orange tree opposite the school, observing the Teacher, watching his movements, the gestures he made in front of the blackboard. Others retired to the veranda of a thatched house that was a little set back from the school, but from where they could still monitor any comings and goings at the school gate.
The Great Men spent the whole time keeping vigil, awaiting the arrival of the Sepoys. After several hours of futile waiting, two of them headed over to the Administration to find out what was going on. Such a delay was unprecedented. Tension was at breaking point. The envoys came back to report that everyone at the Administration was awaiting instructions from the Administrator, who’d yet to report for work.
Why would that be? Why had the Administrator not gone in to work? Was he afraid to leave the house? Ashamed to show his face? Was he so badly beaten that his body ached all over and he couldn’t walk? Or was he perhaps resting to recover his strength in order to then… slay the Teacher? There were many unanswered questions.
The Great Men discussed possible scenarios and time frames, but came to no unanimous conclusions. When the sun set without anything having happened, they dispersed, each man going his own way. Some went to pray and others went back to the baloba.
The next day they returned and assembled again, even more exercised than the previous day. When the Teacher got to school he waved to them from the window. He was smiling. He was a tough one, that teacher. He didn’t seem to be afraid of anything. The whole tabanca on tenterhooks and there he was with a big grin on his face. Anyone else would be…
At around ten o’clock, two of the Great Men went to seek word of the Administrator. An hour passed without them returning. This was too much. Two other Great Men set off. It wasn’t right to leave them in suspense like that, to go wandering off with everyone else hanging on. Some people didn’t deserve to be called Great Men.
The four Great Men returned together. When they broke the news, the mood changed immediately. People looked on with disbelief and trepidation. Whenever someone new arrived, the routine repeated itself, as if nobody had yet managed to accept it: Administrator Cabrita was dead. He’d been found in his bathroom, laid out on the floor, a trickle of blood running from his nose. Dead.
Death had not featured in any of the possible scenarios they’d mapped out. Now what? What happened next? Who would seek revenge? The Administrator could not die without there being revenge…
They walked together to the Administrator’s house. Lots of people were gathered outside the house. The news must be true!
Three hours passed and the news still hadn’t sunk in for many people. But when a Land Rover arrived in the early afternoon full of whites they’d never seen before, and when a black coffin was loaded into the Land Rover a few hours later, and when the Administrator’s wife and children were seen crying beside the coffin, they had to accept that the Administrator really was dead.
That realisation gave rise to new concerns: Who would avenge the Administrator’s death? Yes, who would take charge of punishing the Teacher for his insubordination? Who?
That was the most pressing of their concerns. Because the whites always got revenge…
Sooner or later.