Pó
“HE PLACED THE EYEGLASSES on my nose,” I tell Serafim. “For the first time in my life I was able to see clearly—colours and shapes.”
“I can’t imagine what that must have been like,” Serafim says.
“I fought hard not to cry. I didn’t want tears to blur my sight. I could see Ezequiel sitting next to a record player. His head was pressed back against the counter. He wept, I think now, for the memory of a man who was his father. And at that moment all I thought was, This is the way the world looks; this is the way the world was meant to be.”
Fulvio sat in his car and honked until I thought I would go deaf. Ezequiel’s feet appeared stuck to the tar in the middle of the road. The military trucks sped by us and Ezequiel shook. I had to use my head like a goat to push him into Fulvio’s car.
Senhor João was waiting for us. He helped me drag Ezequiel into the hotel while Fulvio hid his car. The man did not ask questions. Everything had been arranged with Padre Theuns. He had been paid and he understood discretion. “I was here when the Grande opened in 1954, and I was here in 1963 when it closed,” Senhor João said, like a guide. He pretended he did not see the shell-shocked look on Ezequiel’s face. He told us that he had become the hotel’s unofficial watchman, never asking the owners to pay him, even though on the few visits they made to the hotel they recognized his role in keeping the hotel safe from intruders.
Senhor João possessed keys to every room. He understood how to control the water supply and electricity panels. Because of this power, he had influence with people in Beira.
The hotel had the soft angles and clean lines that had taken the place of older colonial buildings in the new city of Beira. The furniture was shrouded with white sheets. Senhor João pressed the button for something he called an elevator, but I had already moved towards the wide circular staircase that floated upward, towards the ceiling of glass. Fulvio carried the record player and a bag with a couple of record albums. Ezequiel leaned up against the staircase. He looked pale and his clothing stuck to his sweating body. I kept looking up to the glass dome. With my eyeglasses on, I saw the metal and the light in a very new way. Senhor João took the lead and directed us past the landings of pink-and-white floors. “Turn right. I told Padre Theuns I’d give you the very best room. Here it is,” he said.
The room was furnished with a wrought iron canopy bed, wooden side tables and chairs, a dresser of drawers. Senhor João swung the shutters to the side. He opened glass doors. Still in a daze, Ezequiel sat down on the bed. I walked onto the balcony that spread wide above an empty swimming pool and the hotel grounds.
“Is he well?” Senhor João asked.
“He is tired from the journey,” I replied.
“I will leave you alone, then. All electricity and running water has been turned off. Do not stand on the balcony. Remember to draw the shutters when you light the candle. It’s best no one knows you are here.”
Ezequiel was already asleep. I lay beside him.
I woke to the sound of music. I looked up at my husband, standing by his record player, weeping.
I folded back the shutters and the morning sun spilled into the room. I shielded my eyes with my hand. When my eyes adjusted, I leaned over the balcony and reached out to the sea.
“Get away from there!” Ezequiel came from behind and dragged me back into the room. He nestled his chin on my shoulder and breathed heavily.
“Everything’s fine,” I said.
I had seen the gardens, the dry ground, the tiled swimming pool a silent blue. Fruit bats twanged over the mango trees. The perfume of their blossoms mixed with the ripe smell of fallen fruit fermenting on the ground. I had looked out to where the Buzi and the Pungwe Rivers met, then out over the expanse of the Indian Ocean. Its deepest parts turned indigo. Ezequiel kissed my neck, the back of my head. He pressed his body into mine and held tight as if he would never let go.
Amalia sleeps with me in my bed. I do not want to wake her. I listen to her shallow breaths. Often, when I cannot find sleep, I look at her beside me and let the sounds coming from her slumber, the hisses and soft gurgles, lull me, until I can almost cry. The elephant carving remains caged in her delicate fingers.
Simu taught me it was best to always speak the truth. Amalia knows her real mother was an albino, no more than fifteen when she got pregnant. She was unwed and already shunned in her village. She found her way to the Grande Hotel and stayed with me. I told Amalia that we were born in the same way—to mothers who loved us but could not take care of us.
“Has the sun gone away, Alma?” Amalia asks, batting her eyelashes and stretching her arms above her head. Her fingertips touch the wrought iron headboard. She has grown to look like her mother. Her cheeks are fatter now—the same grin, the same eyes.
“Almost, filha,” I whisper, stroking the soft skin under her chin.
“Has the scribbler left?” she asks.
“His name is Serafim, and he will return again tonight.”
Amalia does not like that I share my stories with others. Four or five scribblers, all men, have come and gone over the years. Serafim is the first one to insist I tell my story from the beginning. It is the only way to capture its meaning, he says. I’ve already revealed more to him than I ever have before. I pull Amalia close to me. She reaches behind and places her hand on my neck. She touches my sores carefully. I do not flinch. I do not want to frighten her.
Later that evening, from my perch on the balcony, I see Serafim outside the hotel grounds, caught in a crowd of people, among bundles of cloth, chickens and goats, bottles of water, smouldering fires and rusted cars that barely roll down the unpaved roads. Children surround him offering their services as porters or begging for money. He breaks through and walks along the edge of the garbage-filled pool. How clear the pool must have been once, when the hotel had just opened and it seemed like all its promise was held in that large rectangle of unnatural blue. Now in the glow of the Coca-Cola machine, the murky water that has collected in the deep end is the colour of blood.
I turn from the ocean. Amalia is tinkering with the record player. It is encased in black leather. The brass handle clips onto the lid, where she enjoys tracing the gold-embossed letters, DECCA, with her fingers. Convinced she will get the disc to spin, her slender fingers pinch the arm, while her other hand grips the crank and turns. She is a determined child, and part of me is certain she will succeed one day. Nothing would give me more joy than to hear music lifting into the air. I can see Ezequiel cranking the machine, right there, in that very spot, I think, as he lowers the arm over the record that circles and crackles until the sound shoots out. A woman’s voice took him away to a place that was safe and familiar. I could only watch and love him because it was all I had; he was never mine.
“I am leaving in a few days.”
It is that time.
He slips his tape recorder from his pocket and presses Record.
Sitting on the edge of my bed, I thumb the frayed edge of my shuka. I reach over to light the lantern atop the stacked crates by my bedside. This is my room and everything in it is all I have: a bed, a makeshift nightstand, the chair Serafim sits in, two cardboard boxes that hold my things, and a broken record player on the floor in the corner.
“Where is Amalia?” Serafim asks.
Ophelia was not around this morning to watch the children. Amalia went to visit all the hotel blocks, hoping to find someone who had seen her.
“She’ll be back soon,” I say, but there is a burning sensation rising in my throat and gut. I want Amalia near me, close by. I wind the loose threads from my shuka around my finger and tug. The hem comes undone, the edge raw.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Serafim says.
“When I had healed, the boy, Kwazi, helped me bring the record player down from the mountain,” I say, wiping my lenses with my sleeve. “I knew how important music was to Ezequiel, and I hoped he’d come back to claim it.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Ezequiel and I went back up the mountain together, but I came down alone.”
Serafim walks over to stand beside me on the balcony. He places his hand on my shoulder. Only now, before he leaves, does he touch me. It feels good to have the weight of his hand on me.