Ondjaki: Granma Nineteen and the Soviet's Secret

“Dexplode? Nyet. Every booty relocate. New house, pretty. Veranda and all.”

“I’m not asking about the veranda. This house has a veranda, too. When it’s for?”

“Whan? Month of year?”

“Yes, month of year! And day of month. Whan is the blow-up?”

“No have direct information. Boss General decide. Bilhardov only know Mausoleum.”

“But it looks like they already brought the boxes of dynamite, Granma,” I said to Granma Catarina.

“Children remain silent and don’t interrupt adult conversations,” Granma Agnette reprimanded me.

Then, looking as though she were in pain, Granma laid her hand on her leg and rubbed it in the direction of her foot.

“What’s wrong, Sis, have you got that old pain?”

“It’s been there since the morning, but it’s worse now.”

“You should call your daughter to find out what can be done. You’ve been like that for months.”

“Pain in food, Dona Nhéte? In Soviet Union doctor resolve problem. Gud doctor.”

“We’ve got doctors here, too. My niece is a doctor, Comrade Bilhardov.”

“Then I go sleep. Tomorrov vake up early. Gudafter-noon, kildren!”

“Gudafter-noon, Comrade Gudafterov!” We laughed again.

Granma accompanied Comrade Gudafterov to the gate. We peeped out. They always stopped for a moment to talk at the front gate. Dona Libânia always peeped out of the house next door; whatever happened in our house, Dona Libânia always knew about it, to the point where anybody who had doubts about what had happened or when, could ask Dona Libânia. Even with stuff that happened in other houses that she couldn’t see, she always knew.

Afterwards, Granma Agnette came inside, walking with difficulty. She sat down and rubbed her leg again.

“It’s a kind of burning.”

“Either you phone your daughter or you call the Cuban doctor.”

“I’ll call tomorrow. It’s late now. Children, get ready for bed.”

“Anyone who’s hungry can have a serving of the soup that Madalena’s going to warm up,” Granma Catarina said. “Leave it, Sis. Just rest there with your leg stretched out.”

The rain had just stopped. A pretty, slow sound, a sort of smothered whistling, became audible in the corner of the yard where the fig tree stood.

We only ate a bite for supper. Nobody much liked the soup, but Granma Catarina stayed right alongside us, watching us with deliberate care.

“It’s not the mouth that goes to the food,” she taught us. “It’s the food that comes all the way to the mouth.”

We practised this complicated manoeuvre of eating almost without lowering our necks and still we listened to other rules that we already knew by heart.

“No elbows on the table. The stomach does not lean against the table. We may not have much food, but we know how to eat. And one does not talk with a full mouth, that you know already.”

We went upstairs to clean our teeth and pee. Our pyjamas were an old shirt and briefs. It was hot but we had to cover our bodies, even if it was just with a sheet, because of the mosquitoes.

“I don’t know why mosquitoes have this vice of drinking blood.”

“They must be thirsty.”

“Don’t talk nonsense.”

I squinted out the bathroom window. An owl sat in the highest branches of the fig tree, as though the moon were a little box for keeping photographs and the owl were its own photograph in black and white. A photograph that stirred now and then to utter an owl’s cry.

We were still eating breakfast when I heard 3.14 and Charlita shouting outside and calling us by name to go and see what was happening.

It was really early. The sun had already come up, but you could still see that glaring yellow which, in fact, you can’t look at. I like the toasted yellow that appears in the late afternoon a lot better, though not during the last few minutes before the sun dives into the sea. Then it’s more like a yellow running into an almost scarlet-orange. It’s before that. Toasted yellow is a colour that appears very suddenly and disappears too quickly for you to understand that it has passed. But here’s a secret: toasted yellow, at times, also appears in my dreams.

“Finish eating first, then you can go out. And I don’t want any rushing. Is somebody running after you, children?”

“No, Granma.”

“Then eat slowly. You’ve got the whole day to play. Your lives are just playing.”

Adults think our lives are “just playing.” It really isn’t like that. Charlita’s life wasn’t always easy, what with the chore of sharing her glasses when the soap opera came on because her sisters also wanted to use the glasses to see clearly; 3.14 had to help at home and with his grandmother’s sales work, who travelled far away to sell the bread she had bought cheaply in the bakery on our street; Gadinho’s life wasn’t always easy either, with having to endure all he couldn’t do: he couldn’t play, he couldn’t have a birthday party, nor were we allowed to give him gifts, nor could he come to our parties, nor, on account of their being Jehovah’s Witnesses, did his father accept the gift we all got together to give him. And Paulinho’s life, beyond helping at home where he always carted water because most of the time there wasn’t any, and with his father always working with heavy pieces of metal because he was a mechanic, he then still had to go to judo practice and get pounded out, because it seems that in judo that’s part of practising, and in the first year you only learn how to fall and take a pounding without snivelling in front of the master or your classmates.

“Eat slowly, you’ve got the whole day to go and play. Madalena, go see if the bakery’s opened again.”

Madalena Kamussakele would go out and sometimes one of us would accompany her.

That second outing to see if the bakery had already started to sell hot bread was more peaceful. But everyone knew that hours before, maybe even at four-thirty or five in the morning, Madalena had already woken up, and almost without washing her face or cleaning her teeth, with a heap of dreams still in her face and her body, had gone to “put a stone” in the bakery line-up. Since Madalena woke up really early and the bakery was nearby, her stone was almost always at the front of the line.

People did this on Bishop’s Beach, and afterwards they were able to go home because sometimes the Comrade Baker was also still sleeping because of his binge the night before, or some funeral that had offered hot drinks, or even because he lacked some ingredient to finish making the bread, maybe coarse salt, or maybe even that there hadn’t been any gas in the bread oven’s enormous gas canister, and everyone was familiar with the line of stones and respected it. At times the Comrade Baker himself would open the bakery and await the arrival of the owner of the first stone before he started to sell.

“Nobody moves. This stone belongs to Dona Libânia, it’s the greenish stone.”

Or then some other kind of tip-off.

“We’re going to wait for Madalena from Granma Agnette’s house. That tiny little stone is hers.”

Rarely did Granma allow us to go with Madalena when it was time to retrieve the stone and actually buy the bread.

I liked the days when crazy Sea Foam was also in the line, wearing his trademark long slacks and shirt of faded cloth, barefoot or in simple, flat flip-flops. He stayed in the line as long as was necessary, in the sun or in the fine rain, with or without dust, whether he was hungry or thirsty, just to be able to approach the Comrade Baker and tell him: “I come only to affirm that I am not yet in possession of the necessary card to usufruct from the renowned services of this hot bakery.”