Ondjaki - Granma Nineteen and the Soviet's Secret

“Affirmative. We’ll circle around.”

The circle was enormous and we had to try to hide the bottle because this in itself was suspicious; anyone who saw us running flat-out through the darkness with that whisky bottle would tell on us.

“Where are you going?”

We stopped short in fear, almost ceasing to breathe.

“Foam! Do you always have to show up like a ghost from the other world?” 3.14 even forgot that he was crazy.

“ La vida es como es . Where are you going?”

“We’re just gonna deliver something.”

“Something? A secret?”

“Foam, keep your voice down. We’ll tell you later.”

“Later, later…When later? In ten years? Twenty-five years? Time is always passing…Are you going to the Mausoleum?” How could he know this? “Lots of people want to go to the Mausoleum at this time of night… Yo lo sé because…The birds… The colourful flock…You guys are mixed up in that, eh?” He spoke in a louder voice.

“Shhh, Foam. Just go your own way.”

“My way is the way of us all.”

“Keep your voice down. We’re on a mission here.”

“And I am on a misión here, too.” And he didn’t ask anything more.

We waited a moment. Concealing the bottle, 3.14 looked at me.

“We will do the following, compañeros …You go on that side and I’ll go past Dona Liberia’s place,”—he sometimes called Dona Libânia this—“and we’ll see who gets there first.”

I was about to say something, but Pi didn’t let me.

“Agreed. Now let’s go.”

Foam ran off happily. He disappeared into the darkness, bidding us goodbye and tripped away with his long dreadlocks.

“Isn’t it dangerous for him?”

“No. They’ll stop him at the entrance. Or even on the beach — there must be watchmen there.”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t know either, and I don’t want to know. Everybody has to deal with his own problems.”

We ran with caution through the darkness. Aside from potholes in the sidewalks, open sewers and damaged transformer boxes near which it was dangerous to pee, Bishop’s Beach had many trees with spreading roots in places where a person wouldn’t expect them.

We passed Paulinho’s house and the big house of Carmen Fernández’s father, and cut through the alley of André the commando’s house.

“Whoa, kids, you runnin’ around at this time of night? What happens if the cops pick you up?”

“André, how’s it goin’?” I stepped forward so that Pi could hide the bottle.

“Great, and you guys?”

“Yeah, the usual.”

“And the parrot His Name, he still alive?”

“He’s really good and he eats a ton.”

“Those parrots that were in the war are always starving. Where are you guys goin’?”

“Just out for a walk.”

“A walk in the dark?”

“We’re fed up with walkin’ in the afternoon with the sun on our heads. Now we’re tryin’ out takin’ a spin in the dark, like a reconnaissance mission, you get it?”

“I get it.” He pretended to believe us. “And you’re goin’ along this side of the construction site? Won’t the Soviets give you a hard time?”

“Today all the Soviets are drunk. They got told off for it.”

“Go ahead then. If you have any problems just say you’re André the commando’s cousin.”

“That’s cool.”

We started running again, and our heartbeats accelerated when we found ourselves already on the other side, close to the wire mesh fence, in near-total darkness, with only a filament from the waning moon to give us limited visibility.

The light was off in the more distant watchtower. We could only see the one that was closer badly, with the watchman seated there, unmoving.

“It’s really silent and the lights are off in the towers.”

“Their generator’s broken, or else they forgot to fuel it.”

“Let’s go.”

“But what’s the plan?”

“Again?”

“Whaddya mean, again? Are you thick? We’ve got to damp down the whole path between the sticks of dynamite, that I know. But there’s only one bottle. How are we going to do it?”

“Ah, you’re right. We’ll have to activate our back-up plan,” 3.14 said.

“Jargon, again. Speak in clear Portuguese.”

“I’m going to douse the whole left side while you cover me by watching to see if anyone comes. If someone appears, Angolan, Soviet or even Cuban, we only came here to play. You whistle to warn me, I hide the bottle and we split.”

“Okay. Now, go.”

“Wait a sec. I just thought of something.” 3.14 was checking the materials, setting down the bottle and the matches.

“What is it now?”

“It’s better if you go first. The left side is really dark. You see better in the dark.”

“You come up with the craziest stuff.”

“Just go. I’ll wait for you here.”

I set off at a run like a hunched-over commando.

I found the first cardinal point, but something was odd. The ground was almost invisible, but the thread of the fuse and the dynamite were there. There was a kind of white sand in the hole and in the small groove that connected it to the next stick of dynamite. I sniffed.

I couldn’t waste time. I doused the hole and started to spill whisky along the tiny groove in the earth. I looked behind me and saw that the damp stain dried up quickly. I wasn’t certain that the whisky would even link up the cardinal points with a well-lighted fire.

At the second cardinal point the dynamite wasn’t even visible. I dug down a little and felt the coolness on my hands. I tested with my finger and it was what I had thought: someone had poured coarse salt in our dynamite holes.

I didn’t have time to think. I soaked the second point and half of the groove that connected to the third hole. I saw a very thin thread of salt that led out of there and into the interior of the Mausoleum by way of a door that we had never seen.

The guard in the tower coughed and got up to stretch his arms. I quickly entered the tiny door to hide because it was possible that he, too, saw well in the darkness, or that he had those glasses from the movies that see in the night in a greenish colour.

Inside it was dark and damp. I closed my eyes hard to get myself used to the darkness, and I saw as far as my eyes could see: the interior of the Mausoleum seemed to be a really dark, web-like pattern made out of that coarse salt. I don’t know how they had done it; maybe it was a Soviet construction technique. The salt was stuck together and climbed the walls like the threads of sand left by a termite when it climbed a tree. The patterns crossed each other and climbed farther than I could see. In some places there was much more salt that also crossed some cardboard boxes that looked like hastily wrapped presents. I felt afraid and I left: it looked like the web of a giant trap.

I “proceeded with the mission,” as Comrade 3.14 would have said, and arrived at the third cardinal point with the path well doused with whisky. From there, looking through narrowed eyes, I could see the sea in a calm, windless darkness. The sea is always so big and beautiful at any hour of the day, becalmed or with waves that drive boats across it, green in the sunlight or burning blue in imitation of the blues in the sky in the daytime.

I had to cut short these thoughts, which could have delayed me even more. When I had puddled the whisky around the fourth cardinal point, which in reality was only half of the eight dynamite-primed holes, I was gripped by the fear of failing in my mission, almost to the point of tears: the whisky had run out.

I started running again, almost without hunching over, and found 3.14 lying on the ground, very calm, with a little matchstick in his mouth that looked like Lucky Luke’s cigarette when he’s about to draw his gun faster than his own shadow. I lay down alongside him so that we could pretend that we were in the combat trenches.