António Antunes - The Splendor of Portugal

“I’m worthless Isilda just leave”

the Dutchman turned out the kerosene lantern that continued to hiss in the darkness, the prefab house faded into the night, a group of sleepless topographers argued in the rain, the bell at the administrative building split the silence with its warning clangs, the chemist was snoring, my husband was snoring, a field mouse chirped in despair in a baobab tree, I felt a desire to flee but I couldn’t, I felt a desire for my home, for my parents, for my varnished furniture

“What is life worth here can someone tell me what life is worth here?”

I cuddled my wet body up close to my husband, put my arm around his waist, and submerged myself in that vinegary breath I’ll never forget, trembling at every flash of lightning, every sound, every buzzing insect until the morning light brightened the window with a murky lilac color, I didn’t sleep at all, didn’t even rest, afraid that the sleepless topographers would abduct me and I guess that was my honeymoon, with a Coca-Cola can for a flower vase on a plywood table balanced on top of a barrel where a branch from an orange tree was slowly drying out and rotting. It’s the mirror that has grown old: it was just yesterday that I took the bus from Malanje back to the plantation, the bus losing metal parts over every pothole on the highway, screws, staples, mud flaps, little pieces of the engine, passengers stumbling off the running board, thatched huts, trees, soil the color of red bricks, a cow lying in the road, drowsy and peaceful, the driver whooping at it trying to scare it off, my husband in his wrinkled linen suit hurriedly combing his hair with his fingertips

“What are your parents going to think of me Isilda?”

my mother horrified at the sight of us, dropping the sugar dish she was holding onto the teapot, breaking it, my father with a cigar in his mouth, the ashes falling down the front of his vest, jerking Amadeu around by the lapels, making him jitter and dance with every shove

“Where did you dig up this clown Isilda?”

in the armchair my mother fanned herself with a napkin, Damião on all fours picking up shards of the teapot without losing one bit of his priestly dignity, my husband with his feet in the air warning my father

“Where did you dig up this clown Isilda?”

“Let go of me sir I’m going to vomit”

turning to run out of the room, knocking over end tables, the crystal bear figurine, the lamp imported from China, which my mother adored, with the dragons that blew smoke from their mouths, running into Damião, who was taking the pieces of the broken teapot to the kitchen, and falling into his lap, the two of them forming some sort of Pietá, Our Black Lady of the Golden Buttons, Damião, who could only write his name if you gave him a year to do it, and the dying Christ who had lost a shoe along the way, looking at me from across the room, hoping that I would come to his aid, while Damião was taking him to the trash can along with the shards of china, determined to dump all of it, Amadeu included, into the trash can and be rid of him, rid of the shabby suit and breath that reeked of wine, rid of this pest who was once again warning

(a white man, can you believe it, a white man)

“Let go of me sir I’m going to vomit”

Damião let go of him, the petunias outside were whispering, making the curtains swell, the peacocks that my mother imported from Egypt so that she could keep up with the French woman who loved the chirping of birds, the peacocks fanned out their ruby-colored tails, my husband stretched out on the rug protected himself from my father who poked at him with the tip of his shoe, bemused, making sure that this lump of dirty linen was still alive and breathing

“Where the hell did you dig up this clown Isilda?”

the lump pulling on the drapes in an attempt to stand up, tearing them off their loops, pulling them off the curtain rod, getting hit in the head by the rod and disappearing behind the damask fabric, over in the armchair my mother’s mouth was a tunnel of shock, the draped figure zigzagged his way over to her, the curtain loops jingling, and held out his damp hand, a corolla of well-trimmed fingernails that my mother refused to shake

“Pleased to meet you”

and after the introductions, after the draped figure talked with my father, after my father warned me, pointing with disgust at that motley mess of damp drapes and curtain loops

“Over my dead body young lady”

we married in the church in Malanje, the bishop, the music, the lavender, the hundreds of guests buried in a sea of feathers, English wool, and fur coats, my mother overjoyed in her new outfit, ordering the photographers around, my father showing me the very tip of his thumb

“You’re as good as dead to me you’re not going to get a thing not even this much young lady”

his coworkers from Cotonang, a pack of savages with carnations in their lapels, rounded up all the brandy in the pantry in one second flat and tried to catch the peacocks so they could roast them for dinner, the Dutchman growled pick-up lines at me in a language made up of consonants and thorns, my mother’s only real complaint was that the peacocks had disappeared from the garden, she had no idea how it could have happened, there wasn’t even a single feather left behind on the grass, and since it was as if I were already dead and didn’t even realize it, my husband, finally untangled from all the drapes and the curtain loops that dropped to the ground all around him, much to the disapproval of the Bailundos, who thought he was more handsome that way, my husband began to run the plantation, not from the field but from the second-story balcony, with a glass of whiskey in his hand and other liters of it stashed in every drawer and cupboard, never looking after the rice, the corn, the sunflowers, the cotton, never looking after me and the children, wiggling and dancing around the room in his pajamas the buttons in the wrong buttonholes, trying to escape the spiders

“That one on my stomach Isilda the huge one on my stomach”

especially after Rui became ill and starting having the seizures and the doctor confirmed that it was hereditary, Rui, who maybe can get treatment now that he’s in Europe at least near all those hospitals and has Carlos to help him, I sent a check with the last letter in case it becomes necessary to take him to Germany or London so he can undergo brain surgery and be cured, the most intelligent of all my children, the most sensitive, the most fun, always playing fun little games with everyone with his pellet gun, a tiny pellet in the buttocks, a tiny pellet in the thigh that you could pick out in a split second with a pair of tweezers, my husband instead of laughing and seeing the humor in it grabbed a bottle from the cupboard without saying a word he never said a word to the ungrateful workers who fled the plantation and the African overseers or the regional administrator who brought them back to him in shackles for punishment

“Here they are sir”

Amadeu wouldn’t touch the horsewhip he’d just lower his eyes, worried about the spiders

“Let them go”

indifferent to the planting season, the harvest, the broken-down threshers that were rusting in the fields, the loans, the bills, the deferred payments, the threats from lenders, closing drawers and cupboards, opening the bottle, taking a glass out from under his robe, wiping his lips on his shirttails without a word, ambling over to another room to find more whiskey

“Where the hell did you dig up this rank clown Isilda?”

and it was me, a woman who’d been raised to be a housewife and to have a husband who would look after her business affairs and look after me, it was me who had to talk with the middlemen, haggle with the suppliers, convince the government to help us out, argue with banks to put off paying our debts, it was me, a woman who deserved a life like the neighbors’ wives had, playing cards, going horseback riding, having drinks at the club, me who took Rui to the doctor and brought him back home, God knows how, who forbade Clarisse from dating the entire high school and coming home after midnight, who scolded Carlos for never talking to my husband or to me and despising the both of us as if we hadn’t done our best for him, Carlos who on the rare weekend that he actually came home locked himself up with the cook or went fishing by himself without even a short chat with anybody, so much so that I now wonder if it was a good idea to put the apartment in Ajuda in his name just because he was the oldest of the three, I wonder now whether it will occur to him to do some sort of harm to his siblings taking advantage of Rui’s kindness, Rui who is innocence incarnate, and Clarisse’s foolishness and her obsession with clothes and parties, not treating his siblings with respect, making them feel like guests in their own home, because I can’t believe he would throw them out, that’s just a step too far, me without any news because they cut off my phone line and my children won’t respond to my letters if the letters actually even get to them, so it’s only natural, given the life that I lead, that when I sit down at my dressing table I ask myself if it’s me that has grown old or the mirror in the bedroom, if these wrinkles and blemishes on my skin are the traces of old age or the acid from the tin that’s corroding the mirror, I prefer to think that it’s the mirror, it’s certainly the mirror because just now, just a few minutes ago, if that, we returned from dinner at the Belgians’, the lights were lit from the gate to the front door of our house, illuminating the hydrangeas, the statue in the pond with its elbows upraised in a joyful balletic movement, Amadeu loosened his tie, took off his coat, I saw him lean over the bedside table, sorting through bottles of aspirin and cough syrup, smiling at me just now, just a few minutes ago, if that, I went down to the workers’ huts to count the field workers that they sent me from Huambo for the rice harvest and the supervisor there, an absolute cheat, guaranteed me that they were all healthy, obedient, and eat very little as if there had ever been an African that fit that description, if I were to go down there right now, after the short time that’s passed between then and now