António Antunes - The Splendor of Portugal

doesn’t it disturb you to use a dead man’s things Eduardo there are times when I look at these things and I feel a sort of chill

“Don’t be silly dear”

honestly some sort of chill it makes me think that that foreigner is going to barge in here any minute and reclaim his things stare at me silently furious with me, demanding that I return all of it to him I felt his presence in the hallway I could hear the damn keys turning in the locks of the door I’m certain I heard his footsteps following me for the love of God before something terrible happens

“Don’t be silly dear you always told me that you wanted a decent set of china”

get these dishes and silverware away from me so I can sleep in peace

the china, the silverware, and the crystal glasses that didn’t match, which the government troops didn’t touch, the Belgian man appeared before them hanging from the roof beam in the barn and they ran off, terrified, the crates surely still intact in the pantry, Damião and Fernando cleaning them all afternoon, setting the tables out on the patio, placing the china on the same tablecloths we used my wedding day, gladiolas, roses, little printed place cards set in front of each place at the table, Carlos, Lena, Clarisse, Rui, Amadeu, my mother, the Christmas tree in the middle, not in just any old pot, in the Sèvres vase from the living room, its branches covered with candles and silver-colored balls, not in a million years that old tree we bought in Malanje when my children were little, which wasn’t really a pine tree, I swore to them it was a pine tree but it wasn’t, it was just a branch from an acacia or a cedar, this time it will be a real pine tree with real pine needles from Norway or Sweden, with clumps of snow still stuck to its branches, a tree that’s seen tiny men, old ones, with chubby cheeks, big bellies, red tunics, and white beards in sleighs pulled by reindeer, popping in and out of chimney tops with a clamor of jingling bells, the first real Christmas that I’ve ever given them, I’ll get my dress out of the attic, my hat

fingers caressing the silk, idly, melancholically lingering on it, bidding me farewell

you’re not going to die Mom I won’t let you

“You look so pretty Isilda”

I’ll starch all the pleats in them, cover up the spots eaten away by moths with a little stitch here and there, a scarf, a kerchief worn around my waist as if it was a belt, I won’t move around too much so I don’t rip the seams and no one will know the difference, it will be harder with the hat which has been nothing more than a snack for the moths for so many years, I’ll rearrange the little plastic fruits on it, trim the veil a little bit, even if it isn’t completely perfect no one will notice at night when even the mirrors themselves don’t show it, the mirror in my bedroom for instance, with a little help from my makeup, almost reflects a young lady, shoulders firmer, the wrinkles on my neck masked by my smile and my necklaces

me never ceasing to smile glaring at them so they soon fell quiet swallowing the scandal

“Where did Isilda dig up this idiot?”

“I’m a virgin”

my children proud of me, Carlos and Rui in their Sunday suits, Lena in one of those gaudy Sevillian outfits that slum-dwellers adore, if I didn’t say anything about her and accepted her it was because I could never really want very much for my son, it was impossible that people wouldn’t notice something in his nostrils and hair, even if he only had a great-great-grandfather with black blood in him the nostrils and hair never lie not to mention a certain nimbleness in his movements, Clarisse just a little too immodest in the way she walks but this year I won’t make a single comment, just a question, feigning disinterest, about when she’s going to find a man and get married, like she should, this year together in Baixa de Cassanje, so many years later, my husband not drinking, the cotton and sunflowers shining, my mother who never experienced this war, we buried her before there were corpses chopped to pieces with machetes and sickles out in the fields

I don’t want to talk about it right now

my mother almost happy in spite of her son-in-law and her grandchildren

a drunk, a mulatto, an invalid, and a slut who’ll end up in a hut out on the island hanging clothes on the line with the other whores while they wait for a client to arrive, it’s a good thing that illness saved you from seeing this, Eduardo

sitting to my right squeezing drops of her blood-pressure medicine into her glass in such a way that it’s impossible not to count along with her, the whole universe focused on the number of drops, after she took her medicine my mother would disappear with her crochet basket into a corner of the living room, superfluous, like a candlestick that’s missing its mate, my mother, with whom we never talked, in whom we never took any interest, about whom we constantly forgot, muttering behind her knitting needles about the dead French woman, suddenly falling silent with her hand cupped to her ear

“Wait”

so she could hear the sea in Moçâmedes, the voices of cousins buried centuries ago which became interwoven with the sound of the corn and helped raise her spirits

“Wait”

the walls in the living room, the trinkets, the paintings, all echoing the rhythmic sound of the trees and the cadence of the waves, like the sound of the cotton during dinner when Fernando brings out the chicken soup, the turkey, the fruitcake, the jelly-filled sonho pastries, the French toast, the champagne, my husband lighting the candles on the Christmas tree, Damião stacking up the presents against the vase

“Only after midnight only after midnight”

the house painted, weeds pulled, broken tiles replaced with marble ones

the government troops and the foreigners in UNITA were never here, the Bailundos never ran off into the jungle, I never left my children on the docks to embark for Lisbon, there wasn’t a single corpse in the streets of Luanda, and my husband, what a silly story, never hid a single bottle in a drawer, I didn’t get married because I was pregnant and my father didn’t scrounge up a fiancée for me and pay him to cover up the shameful mess, I’m a virgin

the tractors in front of the storehouse, the flickering lamplight from the workers’ quarters mixing with the reflection of the rippling water of the river and the edges of the stones where the women washed their clothes in the morning, me telling Fernando to serve the chicken soup and turkey and at the same time I’m not told to get in the pickup truck with the other convicts and they aren’t taking us to the end of the Corimba highway, out past the baobab trees, where they’d dug big ditches, which you could spot from far away because of the birds circling above them, they’d shoot at the dogs to shoo them away but they always came back, snouts low to the ground, whining, limping, the smell of bodies upon bodies covered in flies almost reached Luanda when the wind changed directions, a barefoot soldier with a shotgun across his lap keeping an eye on us, us squatting on the ground, not feeling the mosquitoes biting, cleaning the encrusted dust from our mouths and noses with our batik cloths, if Fernando hurries up I’ll have time, since the machine guns haven’t started firing yet and after the machine guns a few scattered shots here and there and after the scattered shots the quicklime and after the quicklime a layer of dirt, time to have dinner with my children, hand out the presents, ask Carlos to uncork the champagne, tell them not to worry about me, gather up all the china and silver-plated utensils, watch them all leave, help turn off the lights out in the garden, bound up the steps to the attic, stumbling on the runner, feeling the rest of my way up the stairs, taking off the dress and the hat, closing the chest, taking off my scarf, tying these rags around my waist and squatting down on the ground with the other prisoners, breathing the odor of their sweat, their feces, I thought about telling Clarisse and Carlos to take care of Rui but I was scared of being overly sentimental, of getting emotional, that my children would think that these people are going to stand me up in front of a ditch and shoot and after that the quicklime and after that a layer of dirt, scared of ruining their Christmas after spending eighteen years apart, my children who traveled for who knows how many days from Lisbon to Baixa de Cassanje just to have dinner with me