I’m not afraid that they’ll kill me I’m not afraid of
it was that there weren’t any birds, vultures, that species of long-legged seagull in Mussulo that flies behind the trawlers or sits on the beach between the coconut palms
the face they’ll make as they kill me wobbly towel racks, doors loose in their frames, shaky shelves, cracked hinges my mother with the lamp turned off abandoning me
“What kind of question is that?”
I wanted to explain to my children and to the government soldiers that even on my tiptoes I can’t see myself in the mirror on the wall, behind which my parents hid my birthday present for months
my children spoke to each other without hearing me, the government soldiers didn’t doff their berets in my presence
what we came in search of in Africa
Carlos Clarisse Rui bidding me farewell on the Corimba highway smiling as they wave good-bye, Rui bigger than his brother and sister, the doctor in Malanje showing me the test results, epilepsy, I was the one who cleaned up his urine, held his arms down during his fits, his face bright red, his knees twisted, a look of manliness in his naked body that terrified me, a mulatto, an invalid, and a whore who’ll end up with the other whores out on the island waiting for their clients to show up, the garden lit up, the back porch lit up, great big blue canopies, orchids, roses, my husband in a rented double-breasted suit, misbuttoned, you could tell that it wasn’t new from the stitches that were coming undone on the breast pocket, even the carnation in his lapel looked withered to me, petals that had wilted over the years, worn-out after dozens of weddings of foremen and managers, poor things, weddings of poor people
my dear lady, Mr. Eduardo, Dona Isilda, bowing solemnly and repeatedly, guests looking out the window of the car as they drove off and there they were, still waving good-bye
the pickup trucks parked next to the ditches, the dogs always returning with snouts low to the ground, whining, limping, the smell reached all the way to Luanda when the wind changed directions, the government troops wearing colored ties, mirror-lensed sunglasses with metal frames as if they were silver
speaking of mirrors how long has it been
flower-print suspenders holding up their military pants, the soldiers inviting me to get out of the pickup
“Ma’am”
the flight of birds overhead, their wings made of felt, screeching, the sea below, Mussulo, the coconut palms, we walked down to the beach, my parents and I, my father in a cream-colored suit and cream-colored Panama hat, my mother in the shade of her pink parasol, me in my straw hat that tied under my chin, we brought lunch in a basket covered with a cloth which we spread out on the sand with the containers of food on top of it, a bottle of juice for my mother and me, a bottle of wine for my father, my mother never took off her gloves or her shoes, sitting on a little stool cooling herself with her fan, my father fanning himself with his newspaper, the birds overhead weren’t the same as the ones circling above the ditches in Corimba, with their dusty woolen wings, but I wasn’t afraid because it was daytime, the soldiers, even the one in the patent-leather ankle boots, weren’t going to rob me or take me with them or do me any harm, there wasn’t a single darkened room in the house in Malanje, they raised their machine guns, lined me up in their sights, disappeared behind their guns, the way their muscles hardened, the way they all shut their mouths, and me running in the sand toward my parents, my straw hat sliding down to the nape of my neck, happy, without needing to ask them if they liked me.
FINIS LAUS DEO
About the Author
ANTÓNIO LOBO ANTUNES is the internationally acclaimed author of Knowledge of Hell, among others. Born in Lisbon in 1942, Antunes was trained as a psychiatrist and served in the Portuguese Army during the Angolan War of Independence. He lives in Portugal where he continues to write.
RHETT MCNEIL has translated work by Machado de Assis, Gonçalo M. Tavares, and A. G. Porta.