António Antunes - The Splendor of Portugal

they put a cushion on the chair so I could sit up taller, just as tall as them and their eyebrows turned toward me, in soft silky voices

“How you’ve grown”

no problems here, all the workers who run the machines are still here, none of them ran off, on the contrary, those miserable bastards still show up

(the Jingas are so miserable that, fortunately for them, they aren’t even aware of their misery)

begging for work, sometimes missing an arm, missing legs, write to my children to tell them that with the high demand for work I can easily reduce their wages right down to nothing they’ll stay on for free since they have nowhere to go, tell my children that I’m fine, that I’ll be fine, not to worry, we’ll start planting on Tuesday, we won’t have a late harvest this year, if we don’t sell to Portugal we’ll sell to Japan, chartering a ship isn’t a problem and in terms of transportation all I have to do is make a deal with the Russians or Americans who are drilling on the oil rigs in Cabinda

with the cushion on the chair I was much taller than them, if I need to I’ll ask Maria da Boa Morte to get a pillow for me right now and I’ll sit down on top of the world with the rest of the universe whirring around insignificantly down below

write to my children to reassure them because in spite of the war going on not a single goat, chicken, or ear of corn has been stolen, everything’s the same as usual, absolute peacefulness, reassure them since there’s nothing to fear here in Baixa de Cassanje, Carlos opens the letters, reads them to his brother and sister, you can see why he’d be scared to open the envelope, worried that it would be bad news, the hesitation, his thumb trembling at the edge of the flap, anxiety at first then relief, looking out over the chimneys you can see the bridge, the statue of Christ, the shipyard and the hills of Almada, I bought it when my husband was still alive and my husband the poor thing hated the big city

“When I die bury me in Dondo here in Angola”

my husband signing the document

“But why buy it if we rarely leave Africa?”

he complained that it was too cold, that the change in the position of the stars confused him, that he couldn’t breathe, that he suffocated in Europe

“I suffocate in Europe”

always getting turned around on the streets, longing for the smell of cassava root, the smell of the earth, his pillow

“I can’t get to sleep with this pillow”

so we ended up taking him through the haze brushing spiderwebs from our faces, the tombs and crosses blurry in the dense mist, Damião in a white coat with gold buttons set chrysanthemums down next to an angel lying in front of an open book and maybe now the chrysanthemums are suffocating him, an unobserved bird on the other side of the wall took pity on us, Clarisse grabbed his canes and without a word disappeared into the field, she didn’t have them when she came back at dinnertime and I was thinking that time was as slow as molasses in Dondo yes sir, thinking of how I’d never noticed the slowness of Dondo nor the slowness of the nights in Africa, the rustling of the sunflowers with something that was neither a child, nor swelling, nor a tumor, nor illness, it’s some sort of scream throughout your entire body like the howling of dogs, I grabbed the headboard with all my strength until the wind died down

there’s something terrible in me

the sunflowers fell quiet and the thousand stems of silence continued to undulate inside the mirrors awaiting the dreadful clarity of morning, the calf walked into the town square, a hoof here a hoof there, talking to myself out loud barely believing I was talking out loud

terrible in me something

“I’m dead”

the eyes of the calf completely white, devoid of iris and pupil, two white spheres without eyebrows, its stomach flayed from neck to groin, Damião very serious wearing an old shirt from back when no one visited us, made from a pajama top that he elevated to the dignity of a cloak, he bent over my husband, placed a coin over each eye, he lit all the tapers in the room, the suddenly gigantic shadows spilled onto the ceiling, swaying separating and fusing, we buried my father in Malanje and months later found out that the French woman killed herself in the Congo, a foreigner with scarlet lips shooing away the servants, taking the revolver out of the drawer, raising it to her ear, her eyebrows must have looked really surprised, a curved pencil line instead of her own eyebrow hairs, drawn with a compass, Carlos impassive, not a single tear, Rui

“A hereditary cerebral condition ma’am electrical synapses out of order epilepsy”

what a word epilepsy epilepsy epilepsy

his behavior could change

without any respect for the visitors or for me, starting to laugh, sitting on his dead father’s bed laughing, upon returning to the plantation from Luando, even before writing to my children to reassure them, I didn’t expect a response, didn’t expect a phone call especially with UNITA breaking the telephone poles and tearing down phone lines, often the phone rings, I hold the receiver up to my ear and there’s no sound or just fragments of words, far-off breathing, hisses and pops that stream out of the phone and fade, or am I the only one who notices, because I’m alone and afraid of the night, that the phone rang and didn’t ring, it doesn’t ring for entire weeks, I hold it near me as I rest, shake it, unplug it, plug it in in the other room in vain, they finally took Rui outside and I could hear him giggling in the backyard, beaming, shooting his pellet gun at the washerwomen, the farmers took the town lunatic in Nisa, they took Rui, dragged and shoved him to the threshing floor, started beating him with hoes and sticks and my son didn’t complain, I recall a hunchbacked olive tree in the sunlight, men raising and lowering the harrows, Rui pulled a comb from his pocket to straighten his hair and a second later a stone crushed his chest, when the farmers left I stayed with him for some time until the police showed up, me and the fearless pigeons who were returning to the empty dam, since no one was watching I took the comb with missing teeth

“I bet it’s a piece of a comb show me”

“I’m not going to show you it’s nothing leave me be”

that I kept in a scratched and dented cookie tin with no picture on the lid, me with Rui on my lap holding him, hugging him

“Are you going to comb the baby’s hair with that ghastly comb Isilda?”

“No I’m not leave me alone get out of here”

Rui wasn’t like the others, didn’t talk like them, sat motionless in the middle of a meal with his fork up to his mouth as if he were in some far-off place, Carlos and Clarisse glancing at each other, my husband shrugging his shoulders, me worried

“Rui”

“These pills at mealtime and another appointment in May”

Rui with his siblings in Ajuda knowing that Carlos loathes him like he loathes everybody except Maria da Boa Morte with the lit end of the cigarette inside her mouth, Lena’s a slum-dweller the daughter of one of those destitute workers at the Cuca-beer plant and Clarisse, with that God-given disposition, doesn’t care about him only cares about bars and fancy shops and the cretins who support those tendencies of hers, Rui without me to look after him and take him to the doctor getting himself lost in Ajuda, in Alcântara, sitting among all the retirees in Santo Amaro with his air rifle on his knees waving down at the Tagus River

“You wake up because of the sunflowers but not when the little ones cry”

his hair like the nests made of branches and leaves and mud and scraps of fabric that the storks had built on the edge of the water tower, upon returning to the plantation from Luanda, painfully thirsty, my back hurting from the jarring ride in the jeep, the taste of dust in my mouth, my hands covered in oil, upon returning to the plantation even before writing to my children to let them know that I arrived just fine, that I’m fine, that I’ll be fine, there won’t be any problems with the harvest this year, if we don’t sell to Portugal we’ll sell to Thailand, I’ll strike a deal with the Russians or Americans who are drilling for oil on the rigs in Cabinda, upon returning from Luanda, not even responding to Damião’s obeisance, dusting the china, wearing a gray shirt with the stateliness of a high priest, I went up into the attic, looking in the trunk for the moth-eaten hat, that gauzy skeleton that I took with me when we went to Europe, I visited Paris in it, went sightseeing in it in Barcelona, locked the door to my room, looked at myself in the mirror even with no lipstick and no eye shadow, tomorrow I’ll send it to the seamstress in Malanje to mend it, have its crown fixed, find a way to repair the brim, some small stitches in the gossamer that will barely be noticeable, I wait for the bearded mulatto in Muxima to raise his hand and flay me from neck to groin