Mia Couto - The Tuner of Silences

— Because we’re afraid .

Our greatest fear is loneliness. A woman cannot exist on her own, for she risks stopping being a woman. Either that or, for everyone’s peace of mind, she becomes something else: a mad woman, an old hag, a witch. Or, as Silvestre would say, a whore. Anything but a woman. This is what I told Noci: in this world we are only somebody if we are a spouse. That’s what I am now, even though I’m a widow. I’m a dead man’s spouse.

I’m leaving you the photos we took, of our days in the game reserve. One of them, my favourite, shows the moonlight reflected in the lake. That night, I fear, was the last time I saw the moon. I still have some of its diffuse light left to illuminate the long nights that await me.

I want to thank you for everything that I experienced and learnt in this place of yours. The lesson I learnt is this: death separated me from Marcelo in the same way that we are parted from the birds by night. Just for a season of sadness.

We re-encounter our beloved on the next moonlit night. Even without a lake, even without night, even without the moon. They return to us ever more, within the light, their clothes floating in the river’s flow.

I don’t know whether I am happier than you: I have a house to go back to. I have my parents, I have my social circle in which I can live up to whatever expectations others have of me. Those who love me have accepted that I had to leave. But they insist that I return unchanged, recognizable, as if my journey were just a passing phase. You are a child, Mwanito. There is still a long journey, a lot of childhood, that you can live. No one can ask you to be only a keeper of silences.

You won’t be writing back. I’m not leaving an address, or any sign of me. If you ever feel like finding out about me one day, ask Zachary. He gave me the task of regaining part of his past in Portugal. He wants his godmother back, he wants the magic of those letters to be reborn. One day, I’m sure, I’ll come back to see you again. But there will never be another Jezoosalem.

Five years had passed since Marta, Ntunzi and Zachary had gone. One day, Aproximado called me to the room where Noci was, along with some kids from the neighbourhood. On the table, there was a cake with some candles stuck in the white sugar icing.

— Count the candles — my Uncle ordered.

— What for?

— Count them.

— There are sixteen.

— That’s how old you are — Aproximado said. — Today is your birthday.

Never before had they given me a birthday party. In fact, it had never occurred to me that there had been a day on which I was born. But here, in this austere room in our house, the table was laid with cakes and drinks, decorated with streamers and balloons. On the icing of the cake, my name was written.

They went and got my old man, and sat him down next to me. One by one, the guests gave me their presents, which I piled clumsily on the chair by my side. All of a sudden, they started singing and clapped their hands. I realized that for a brief moment I was the centre of the universe. At Aproximado’s instruction, I blew out the candles at one go. At that moment, my father stirred, and without anyone noticing, he squeezed my arm. It was his way of showing affection.

Hours later, after he had returned to his room, Silvestre retreated as usual into his shell. For five years, I was the one who looked after him, who guided him through the banalities of his daily routine, who helped him to eat and to wash himself. It was Uncle Aproximado who looked after me. He would often sit down in front of Silvestre, as one family member to another, and after holding his gaze for some time, would ask himself out loud:

— Aren’t you pretending to be mad just so as not to pay me what you owe?

One couldn’t detect so much as a hint of a reply on Vitalício’s face. I appealed to Uncle’s reason: how could play-acting be so convincing and long-lasting?

— The thing is that they are old debts, left over from the days at Jezoosalem. Your father hadn’t paid for his supplies for years.

— Not to mention the rest — he added.

Aproximado never explained what this “rest” consisted of. And so his lamentations continued, always in the same tone: his brother-in-law never imagined how difficult it was to reach Jezoosalem by road. Nor how much a truck driver had to pay to avoid an ambush and escape attack. A secret of survival, he suggested, was to lunch with the devil and eat the leftovers with the angels. And he concluded, as if giving his intelligence a bit of spit and polish:

— It serves me right. Business deals among relatives lead to. .

— I can pay, Uncle.

— Pay what?

— What you’re owed. .

— Don’t make me laugh, nephew.

If there were debts, the truth is that Aproximado didn’t take it out on me. On the contrary, he protected me like the son he never had. If it hadn’t been for him, I would never have attended the local school. I’ll never forget my first day in class, the strange feeling at seeing so many children sitting in the same room together. There was something stranger still: it was a book that united us for hours on end, weaving together childhood dreams in an aging world. For years I had taken myself to be the only child in the universe. And during that life, a solitary child was forbidden to look at a book. That was why, from the first lesson onwards, while the times tables and the alphabet flowed around the room, I caressed my notebooks and recalled my pack of cards.

My fascination for learning didn’t go unnoticed by the teacher. He was a thin, wizened man, his eyes deep-set and grown old. He spoke passionately about injustice and against the newly rich. One afternoon, he took the group to visit the place where a journalist who had denounced corruption had been murdered. There was no monument nor any sign of official recognition in the place. There was just a tree, a cashew tree, to recall for posterity the courage of someone who had risked his life to expose dishonesty.

— Let us leave flowers on this sidewalk to clean away the blood; flowers to wash away the shame.

These were the teacher’s words. With our master’s money we bought flowers and we strewed them over the sidewalk. On our way back, the teacher was walking in front of me and I noticed how lacking in weight he was, so much so that I feared he might take off into the sky like some paper kite.

— Is that what he did? — Noci was astonished. — He took you to visit the people’s journalist?

— And we left flowers, all. .