Ondjaki - Granma Nineteen and the Soviet's Secret

“I’m startin’ to see that it’s even better if you do the other four points. You’re awesome at seein’ in the dark.”

“Lower your voice, Pi,” I interrupted. “We don’t have enough whisky and the watchman in the tower just woke up.”

“The whisky’s finished?” He became serious.

“The whisky was done in no time because those concrete grooves are enormous.”

“How far did it last?”

“Up to the fourth point. We’ve still got to do all of the other side.”

“Only if Charlita provisions us with more fuel.”

“Provisions, provisions…This is a fine time for you to break out your military Portuguese. We don’t have time.”

“You’re right.” He paused in a strange way. “You ready?”

“For what?”

“It has to be now. If we retreat, the whisky evaporates. And we don’t have another hour to come back here. They must already be looking for us for dinner.”

“Now? How?”

“I also brought this little flask of alcohol. It’s our fallback measure. We go as far as the alcohol lasts, then we ignite it.”

“And we take off running…”

“You got it.”

My hands trembled. 3.14’s did, too, as he picked up the flask of alcohol as if sliding a bullet into the chamber of Senhor Tuarles’s AK-47 and placing a dead-eye shot into a huge load of dynamite.

Far out on the beach a tiny light flickered and went out. Maybe it was the Old Fisherman lighting his pipe or starting a bonfire on the seashore. A thought, after all, is like that quick light and does not linger long.

“Let’s get igniting, Comrade.”

We doused the first cardinal point with alcohol and traced a line that passed under the metal fence as far as an enormous tree. There we lay down in the trench of the tree’s roots.

“The watchman in the tower is standing up, Pi.”

“I’m going to light it, then we run. By the time he sees the fire, we’re outa here.”

“Light it!”

The first match produced a flame that illuminated the area around us and I saw the beautiful patterns on the old skin of that tree. Before the flame could light the alcohol, the match went out. 3.14 lit the second match closer and touched it to the alcohol. But nothing caught.

“You see, it’s counterfeit alcohol.”

“That doesn’t exist.”

“It does too exist. They even counterfeit that Monte Rio wine.”

“Just light it quickly before the alcohol evaporates.”

The third match caught fast and strong. It wasn’t necessary to say anything: we took off running. We let everything go and looked like Foam running flat-out, but we tried to follow up with our eyes on the racing twists and turns made by the fire. It burst out of the trench of roots, made a turn, passed beneath the wire mesh, made another turn close to the watchtower, hit a straightaway and accelerated. We accelerated as well and came flying into Dona Libânia’s yard, driven by our fear of the explosion because, in the end, we didn’t know how much dynamite we had put there. We hunched over, waiting for the noise — but the fire burned itself out just past the tower.

Our mouths open in disbelief, feeling like crying again, we saw the fire suddenly fizzle without exploding eight cardinal points and a bottle of Senhor Tuarles’s whisky.

“Son of a whorovsky,” 3.14 said, and I thought he was complaining to the fire. “Couldn’t he have pissed somewhere else?”

The watchman, up above, was pissing a river on the groove of our fire, even a little bit in front of the point where the alcohol was about to meet the whisky. We saw his posture up there with his legs spread, pissing on our explosion plan.

“Soviet tupariov,” I said, just to say something and not feel like crying.

We couldn’t say a word.

The two of us watched the guard return to his post in the tower, sit down and cross his arms to sleep. He hadn’t even seen the fire.

“What’s that?” A woman’s voice filled us with supernatural fear. “Look over there!”

It was Dona Libânia, bent over behind us to point in the opposite direction, at a cardinal point that was after south and before west.

A whitish smoke was pouring out of the storage shed, where we had seen the birds and the dynamite; an enormous light that was not an explosion ignited itself like a big searchlight that hugged the ground as if trying to light up birds that fly at night.

“I don’t know that thing’s name,” I said, looking, “but I’ve seen it in the movies.”

“It’s that light you put on when you’re lost or you want the helicopter to find you.”

Another enormous light, but green this time, came on and started to slide along on its own, at high speed; we saw only the green stain casting shadows in the area around the storage shed as it headed towards the wire mesh fence on the side that faced the sea.

That was where the first concentrated noise of a chain explosion like one hundred grenades in a bag blowing up at the same time took place. The green light accelerated more quickly. Dona Libânia said in a very low voice: “Oh, my God.” I figure she didn’t even have time to say “God.” Another powerful explosion burst forth and shook the earth, the guard in the watchtower must have woken up, and we saw something that made us smile even in the midst of our fear of the warzone noises: with the dark sea behind, the fast-moving stain was a crazy pattern that not even the person who designed the Pink Panther could have made as beautiful, the dark stain of a body with a green light spewing smoke from its hand, one thousand tangled ropes lashed to that body that raced like a one-hundred-metre hurdler, one thousand ropes with imprisoned birds, seven or eight bird-cages tied to its waist, jumping like buoyant balloons, imprisoned birds at his ankles crying out that they didn’t want that forced ride of high-speed hopping and skipping across the water and the white surf of the dark sea; in his other arm more tangled ropes of parrots and I don’t know what-all other birds, even hens, all a pattern of brilliant green light and the bottom of the sea telling us — now no one could doubt it — that the stain running with bird-cages as it rode over the sea as though it were solid earth, that stain was the body of Sea Foam, laughing at having come down the beach so quickly with creatures hanging from his body as he unachieved the take-off of true-flown flight.

A few terrified voices had already begun to be heard in the distance and, far away from the storage shed, almost as he crossed the garbage dump, Foam had started to slow down, leaping higher. Dona Libânia hugged us again because the explosion was very loud, as though in imitation of a cannon. “Cardinal point south!” 3.14 shouted with a nervous laugh, looking at me, then looking straight ahead. Yes, it could only be the south. A strong light invaded the sky, turning as yellow as fire, and the ground shook; we saw blazes break out in the area around the storage shed, heard the noise of exploding bullets like popcorn forgotten in boiling oil. Dona Libânia trembled. A beautiful fire made a perfect circle around the Mausoleum; the guard from the tower dropped his weapon and fled down the alley behind commando André’s house, another very strong outburst that felt like two outbursts hurled cement into the air and made the Mausoleum tremble. “Northwest!” I shouted. The air began to fill with fine dust and the blazes roared higher as though trying to lick the very tip of the rocket; there was fire even on the side where we had not put any whisky, a beautiful symmetrical fire almost drawn with a set of school compasses, and then an even stronger explosion made all of Bishop’s Beach tremble. Even those who didn’t want to had to come out onto their verandas or onto the street to spy out whether this was, in fact, war, or a mere surprise of colours in the sky about which someone had forgotten to warn the population during the news broadcast on National Radio of Angola. The Mausoleum lighted up all at once, with the brilliant sounds of the dynamite that we had codified with our very cardinal points: huge noises on all sides with lights that seemed to accompany them, and now it wasn’t only that yellow fire that can be sparked by bullets or explosives: a mixed light of various colours grew in the middle of the dazzling disorder, with small and large explosions, which did not frighten us as much as before. It was even more beautiful to watch the reflection of the darkness igniting in the sea, which, even though dark, now had on its hide some lights that imitated the strong tones of watercolours, when Sea Foam’s green light went out, leaving him standing in the garbage dump almost still and dragged in all directions by the birds, with him laughing out loud, turned into a scarecrow from the fields which in the end became a clown who was everyone’s friend and didn’t want to frighten anyone.