Ondjaki: Granma Nineteen and the Soviet's Secret

The work on the Mausoleum was supposed to be almost finished. That tall, ashen part, made out of a cement so hard it would never fall, looked like a rocket and I figure that later they were planning to paint it with the colours of the Angolan flag, though that could have been one of Charlita’s lies.

“My dad has a bar where the workers come in for beer. And he hears the comrade workers talking.”

“But your dad’s bar is always out of beer!” 3.14 teased, and we took off to run through the dust cloud.

The Soviet from the tanker truck honked his horn and spat out his words in the Soviet language, which was really weird and impossible to understand. The Comrade Gas Jockey changed his clothes and his shoes and stood there waiting for the truck to give the whole square a soaking. The workers disappeared and thousands of swallows began to arrive from every corner of the sky. The earth was damp with a beautiful smell that imitated that of real rain when it falls hard to irrigate the world.

The last person to leave the construction site — who wore a different helmet and closed the padlock on the front gate — was the Soviet Comrade Gudafterov, to whom we had given this name because of the way in which he said, almost as though he were speaking Soviet, “Gudafter-noon,” even when it was early in the morning or really late at night. We imitated him, then burst out laughing.

“Gudafter-noon, Comrade Gudafterov!”

“Gudafter-noon,” he replied in a serious voice.

“Comrade Gudafterov, is it true that the work on the Mausoleum’s almost finished?” 3.14 asked.

“ Nyet !” he said, with the face of a bad guy.

On the other side of the square, the wind was drawing pictures on the sea. Charlita arrived, with her thick glasses.

“Do you see the sun the same as we do, Charlita?”

“Of course.”

“And if you take off your glasses?”

“Then I don’t see anything. Just stains.”

“I’d still like to see those stains some days. They must be like watercolours.”

The enormous sun, which seemed so close by, was sinking, as though boiling, into the water of the sea. Maybe that’s why here in Luanda the water on the beaches is so warm. And it even seemed that the sun was giving the wind orders to calm down. The wind stopped whistling and all that remained on Bishop’s Beach was the wet earth and a silence in which almost nothing could be heard.

“Gran Nhéte is here?” Comrade Gudafterov asked.

“ Nyet !” I replied.

“Then pleeze say I come back tomorrow.”

“Kaput yes,” 3.14 invented. “Go ahead, tupariovsky!”

These words came from Senhor Tuarles, who liked saying, “tupariov” for nothing and everything.

Comrade Gudafterov departed, walking with his feet turned in and moving very fast as though he were always late. His car, a Lada Niva of a hideous colour, was on the other side of the street. It took a moment for the engine to catch. Explosions came out of the tailpipe and then he pulled away.

Sea Foam was swirling his whip around. Granma Maria came to tell Charlita to come home. The Comrade Gas Jockey said goodbye and disappeared.

“See you tomorrowov, Comrade!” 3.14 said.

Far away, in the shadowed darkness, the Old Fisherman had just arrived. He got out of his dugout, slowly folded up his net, stowed his two anchors and waved to me.

“Watch out, Elder, the sea is full of salty waters!” Sea Foam shouted. “They’re the tears of those who just died.”

Very early that morning, someone had heard Comrade Gudafterov utter the word dynamite in his own language. For us, dynamite was a word that came from spaghetti westerns that starred Trinità and fat Bud Spencer, beard and all.

“Maybe you didn’t hear right.”

“I totally heard right. Dynamite.”

“Couldn’t you have heard ‘Dimitry’? There’s another comrade on the construction site with that name.”

“I totally heard dynamite. Don’t you know that there are some words that are complete internationalists?”

We took a walk past the gasket for the pipes, in which there was a gully full of construction site garbage. Little kids played there with colourful kites.

As we passed Sea Foam’s house we heard strange sounds and a heavy chain dragging on the ground.

“That must be Foam’s alligator.”

“Let’s split.”

We ran with our arms spread like birds launching into flight. We crossed the garbage dump and went out to the shoreline, hopping between the shattered seashells and clams to avoid cutting our feet.

The Old Fisherman was there sitting next to his dugout, Rainboat. With all the patience in the world, his aged hands undid the nets’ difficult knots.

The sea smelled there, but not with that fresh or open smell that came from the scales of fish. It was more a smell of other days, other years, a mixture of seawater and the tar on the bottom of his dugout.

We arrived breathing hard and stood catching our breath while we waited for him to notice us. We buried our toes in the sand and smelled the sea, at last, as a way of smelling the morning.

“I’m not going out to sea today. There’s no wind,” the Old Fisherman finally said.

“Maybe this afternoon,” Charlita said.

“Maybe.” His hands continued undoing knots.

“Comrade Fisherman,” 3.14 began, “you didn’t hear about some explosions?”

“Explosion? How’s that?”

“This morning somebody said the Soviets were bringing dynamite to the construction site. Isn’t dynamite for making big explosions?”

“I think so.” His face took on a worried look.

“In cowboy movies dynamite is for blowing up trains, houses or even caves, to find gold.”

“I’ve never seen a cowboy movie,” the Old Fisherman said.

The sea was as flat as a mirror made to reflect clouds and birds. The elders said that the sea was a big mirror for people who tried to fly really high.

“Do birds think, Comrade Fisherman?”

“I don’t know if they think, but they feel. They know where they have to go, how to get back, and they never forget the place where they made their nests.”

“And do fish think?”

“You’d have to ask the fish that.”

“Comrade, doesn’t it make you sad to catch so many fish in your net?”

“I catch fish to eat or to sell. The ones I sell give me money for clothes or schoolbooks. I have lots of kids. That’s how life is.”

“And, Comrade, you never heard anybody say they were going to blow up all of Bishop’s Beach?”

The Old Fisherman stopped to look at us with sad eyes. He said nothing. He just breathed: recreating in his chest the coiled sound of the waves. The noise mingled with the flight of birds and the cry of a siren somewhere far off in another neighbourhood.

And the sea awoke, slowly at first, like a newborn swallow, then a little more as it imitated the clouds, until all that we could look at was its dark blue: on the enormous hide of the sea, with Mussulo Island on the other side, a wind came in to push the sun lower to where it sleeps every night.

“Hey, kids, you brought the wind with you.”

“We’re taking off now. The elders will give us a hard time for being out when it’s getting dark so quick.”

The square with the gas station was empty. Leaves were being swept across the ground by the squalls. A hot breeze was blowing and crazy Sea Foam was smiling with satisfaction at the gate of his house.

“Anybody who hasn’t got an umbrella is going to get soaked. La lluvia no perdona a los que se ponen por debajo de ella … Down, dust. Down, evil thoughts! Long live poetry, which can speak of anything!”

Granma Agnette was waiting for me at the gate with her far-seeing gaze. She had seen us run through the garbage dump and had watched us all the way back.