chronicles
Afternoon Channel
O BURIAL
He was a white fellow, with a luxury jeep, inside the labyrinth of a peripheral neighborhood. He saw a gathering and it would be there. Came in. The house was modest, but clean, as is typical of houses on the plateau, with the front yard and back yard swept daily. He began by greeting family members, or those who seemed to be familiar to him. Said anything that no one understood - between good afternoon and condolences. He felt the admiration in everyone's eyes. There he was, despite being white, setting an example of healthy camaraderie with the deceased, who was, by the way, an exemplary person. There he was, leaving in the hearts of those people - at least in the family members who were possibly Kwachas - a seed of doubt. The southern man is sensitive to these little attentions.
They looked for a chair to sit on. He sat on the throne, brooding over time, the others on Gentile benches or on the mat.
He could feel the questions in the lowered eyes of the relatives: “This white man, did he know our old man from where? Was our deceased a servant to this fellow? Our deceased was never created out of anything. He only arrived here in the city three years ago. Did you meet in Chingar? So, they met. Or at the Dondi Mission. So yes: the whites who were there were not the same as the white settlers who were here. So, this fellow could be the missionary's son... It must be.” His thoughts calmed down, but his back did not calm down that the chair was especially uncomfortable, until a young man, shall we say, more urbanized approached him to ask:
- Comrade, are you really going to accompany him to the cemetery?
Of course I will. That's why I'm here: to accompany our comrade on his physical passing.
- Thank you very much. Can Comrade give you a ride? There are some old ones that can no longer floor. The fellow would give them a ride, then bring them home.
Of course. The car is there for that. When the time comes, we go.
And they went. The old ones were a five, tidy who knows how. Everything behind. None sat next to the driver. He mastering the impatience of a car in first gear, at the pace of a funeral: stop here, go there, sing and pray - that despite the new times, the elders do not let go of the old beliefs. Priest, pastor or catechist, it wasn't.
Closing prayers and those blessings that are proper to the priest do, for the praise of the deceased. Today, I was sure, in honor of his presence, the words would be in Portuguese. Few would understand what the speaker said, but education is like that.
He followed the cart, a little bewildered because he didn't see anyone from the Party. “These comrades are screwed. If instead of this poor devil who was a stout militant, it was someone else, even Comrade Commissar would be here. This is not done: a wake without anyone from the Party. Let us wait for the next meeting of the Provincial Committee: I will punish them.”
The old woman who was going to the side tripped (either on a stone, or at the age that is a much larger boulder) he supported her. Arm in arm, the old woman walked more animatedly. It clung to him. As he was a rather tall fellow, he all crooked to the right, because the old woman, who was already small by nature, had become even smaller with time. She tried to take a little off her arm, to straighten herself, but the old woman felt fine. - is the leave! He went there steady, like a shipwrecked man clinging to a lifebuoy.
He felt the ridiculousness of his crooked position: “Look if now Party comrades appeared (although late, these guys always arrive) and saw him like this. What fun, my God! By the way, what fun, my Lenine! Now fuck my thoughts. But what's a guy to think who gets out of a chair that ruins him even more?
Fortunately they reached the edge of the grave. The old woman let go and began to cry. It was signal given for everyone to cry. Not him, who naturally didn't have great crying skills. They opened the coffin: stretched out, firm and serene, the dead man was there. "Fuck! (it was the only blunder he allowed himself to say even in thought) that I was wrong at the funeral. Now how do I do? Hold on, my dear. Hold on until the end.”
A man stood on a mound of earth taken from the pit. He stood like a priest in a church pulpit and began to harangue facing him: “Excellent comrade: our family is very grateful to His Excellency our comrade, for coming here to take our eldest to the last abode. His Excellency, our comrade, great engineer of our land, militant of the MPLA, Labor Party, had his things to do, but he came here to cry with our tears...” The guy is a poet on top of that.
And him feeling bad because that wasn't a eulogy, it was a live eulogy that was there and it was him. “... and we asked His Excellency our comrade, a few words for our old man...” After all! He was the one who was going to give the eulogy. He went up to the pulpit. All eyes on him. The old women and most of the women suddenly forgot to cry. attentive. And he firm: “We are all dismayed by the physical passing of our comrade. Good-hearted man. Man of work...” generalities and expensive words that no one would understand ending with “... may his soul rest in peace! And all, Marxist-Leninistically, answering in chorus: “Amen!”. What matters is that no Party comrades were there.
He made his way back to the neighborhood more expeditiously, almost took the old women off his lap. - the old women already had a certain familiar trust with him, there was something intimate that linked them, a certain complicity. He returned to the city and learned two things:
First, the burial of the real deceased was transferred to the land of his birth: Ekunha. Second, there was suspicion that there had been a meeting of Kwachas at the cemetery, with the presence of a foreigner who had been there, purposely to leave instructions.
The worst of all the problems is that it was not known where the foreigner had fled to, because none of the Control Posts at the various entrances and exits of the city noticed a car so it started as a jeep and became a war car that no one quite knew what it would be like.
- Comrade engineer, didn't he notice a strange car, some movement, when he was at the cemetery the other day, at that mistaken burial of his?
Do not. Not by chance. He hadn't noticed.
THE ARCHITECT OF HELL
chronicles
Afternoon Channel
He had always considered himself a good person. if it is Of course, people shouldn't brag that I'm this, that I'm that, there's no one who doesn't think what he is, or how he thinks he is. Was worker. It was charitable. It was sensitive. He was also a believer, not very practicing, but who did not reject the religion he had.
When Independence arrived and before it the passion of the Movements, he would be one of the only Angolans who did not lean towards this or that. They said to him: "A man cannot alienate himself from the life of his country". He replied: "Precisely because of this is that I work. The others who choose, I only know how to work".
Maybe that's why, if he was Head of Department in colonial times, Head of Department he remains until today. Only with one difference: they took him out of an important Department and invented another one in Archives and History that nobody knew much about in a ministry like his. That, until he started dusting off those old papers. Giving value to garbage, as others said. He made presentations that the Minister inaugurated, the President himself appreciated, in short, a success of respect on the Party's own day.
With the passage of time they began to forget that he was a rather special Angolan, especially without political ambitions and began to use him - so to speak - as an adviser. There were times when he was the real National Director, also the Deputy Minister and so on. As he was discreet, he was entrusted with the files, he made the order on those sticky yellow papers and the director had only to copy in his own handwriting and sign underneath.
For years it has seen many people go up and down: ushers have gone from chiefs of staff, clerks to directors, deputy ministers or commissioners. He worked. I didn't think it was good or bad. If the Law allowed, who was he to give an opinion on the cases? I had the condescension to think that people are not just flaws and illiteracy. They have other virtues and knowledge. Look at the sobas: how many of them (not to say all) are creative, knowledgeable and judicious in their governance duties...
One day he woke up and felt that at the age of forty-five he was falling behind in his marriage. The day had come when he had to answer the question: either I marry now, or I decide to remain single for life.
As these decisions always need two people to be made, he began to notice with a another attention in the women he had in the service, the that every day I found on the street when I went home and once in a while, when he was forced to go to a party - wedding, baptism, or what... (it's say that they had never given him a car, fact that was always justified by not having a license.)
That's where the thing started. Let me explain: first, he wasn't looking for a beautiful woman, like a hottie. What he wanted was for a young woman already in her thirties, serene, beyond the age of great passions, of princes charming, to come to him like family. Second: what I'm talking about are the parties that aren't parties, but can last for two or three days of eating and drinking. It's the deaths.
people are at to watch over the dead and, at times, a coffee, dry cakes, a toasted ginguba comes softly and, further on, in squeezing the heat of the night (and the coolness when waking up in the morning) so that no one falls asleep, four or five beers are still available. so respectful and ashamed.
Then there is the accompaniment: cars, lifts and cargo trucks. The family at the front in the hearse (the widow stayed in bed to widow her husband and does not get up from there for seven days) then the body is taken to the cemetery. A respectful Kota commands whoever pushes the cart: " And now the close relatives: brothers, children, nephews and cousins "... " We called the friends and colleagues of the deceased"... "Now the neighbors"... all this up to the grave, where some dirty and gruesome guys they put out the cigarette butts as the procession approaches.
Everything stops. The sun warms up in the dust. The coffin is opened and the last goodbyes are said. A white handkerchief is spread over the face of the loved one so that the earth does not dirty his face. The lid is closed. The owner of the death gives his order. The older gravedigger approaches and, with his pickaxe at his side, gives two or three blows to the lid of the coffin until it breaks. The family sighs: no thief will dig up the coffin to sell to the other dead person, disturbing his eternal rest.
The accompaniment is dispersed on the way back and everyone in their car or on their ride will regroup at the death house. They enter, not without washing their hands first. At the entrance to the door is the basin, the towel and the soap that no one uses. Conversation here, cigarettes there, waiting for hominy, fried fish, mufete, muzongué, the respective beers or wine. Sometimes the family of the deceased eats the food he liked separately. It's like a last tribute. That's how you live! That's how you die! Likewise, you also eat.
It was there, in an unknown death, to which he was pushed by a colleague (friends, it was not, so to speak, that he had): "Come there with me. These things annoy me to go alone"... But I don't know the deceased.. ." That matters, does it? "... there he went, pushed by that weakness of his of not knowing how to say no.
It arrived. Sat down. He stayed in the backyard, which was wide and airy. Site prepared for big parties. The barbecue. A kitchen just for occasions and tables like in a restaurant. Distracted, he looked at that tastefully decorated family "bar". Then he looked carefully at the house - a palace! I would pick up a word or two that the groups said to each other - lots and lots of conversations about the deceased, who happened to be, like all the deceased, a very good person: a sensational type who left three widows and eight children, when suddenly. ..
...hot, overwhelming, a wave that burned her lower abdomen (there where man is more man) and would rise and sink into the void of his stomach and suffocate his heart and turn into a wave of hatred, a storm of envy: "How does this guy have a house like this that I'll never have? poor settler who spent a lifetime building this for this guy to keep Is it over there? ". And he began to scold the dead man, in the immense joy of knowing him there, stretched out, vulnerable, mute as a dumb stone.
" So, my little bastard, you stole what was from others and where is now what is your? Did you think you were eternal? Can you imagine, in a little while, your holy family beating each other up: because if I'm a son, my mother is also a woman and my grandfather is a father-in-law... And how many guys are already ready to jump on top? of your wives' inheritance? "
I was so engrossed in this conversation of insults and mockery when the friend arrived that he fulfilled the obligation of condolences if he wanted to leave:
- We will?
Was. Were. He, his colleague, and the astonishment that still gnawed at him.
Didn't sleep all night. I wanted to find some justification for that sudden, violent and genuine hatred for someone I didn't know. "I can't be that dirty! ... I can consider myself a good person!... I've always been a guy of feelings, of education, of knowing how to be right..."
Either way, he began to experiment with his reactions to the deaths. None were missing. And the story went like this: in a poor man's house he behaved normally; at the death of a rich man, he insulted the dead, laughed at the deceased and, above all, felt an enormous joy in knowing him in the position of those who never get back on their feet.
He began to be worried, because this is not normal for an ordinary man, let alone a Roman Catholic, who did not always go to Mass if he did not forget to receive Holy Communion for the Easter of the Resurrection.
He looked for a priest who seemed to be able to listen with the time and attention that the case required. He reassured him: "Pray. Be reconciled to the injustices of the world: the Lord said: you will have them poor until the end of time. Do not want to be the judge of your brothers. There are thieves and honest people. Have you noticed that there are even people who have never stolen for lack of initiative, or for fear of taking a risk?... the envy of those who don't have or seek to have?
The priest had been talking about him, or just probing the possibility that he was also one of those thieves who don't steal out of fear, who don't risk politics for fear of losing the almost nothing they have and the peace they enjoy. Peace and that amazingly virtuous vice that is working, working, working. Getting up in the morning, broken, blown up and feeling the enormous satisfaction of confessing: "Yesterday I worked like a beast!" All this as if I were a king, champion, a unique figure in the whole world.
It was bothering him now at night. All people fall asleep with tricks: some turn to the left, others read until they drop their book, these think about life because they haven't had time to do so during the day, others examine what they have to do the next day, he ... modernized hell.
This is how it is: as you know, no one believes in devils dressed in red anymore, with a tail that is useless and horns that they never use. Easier than kicking it is to prick it with the fork they are always painted with. That being the case, and if this old image is not sympathized with modern times, the devils these days are friendly and efficient executives, beautiful and insinuating women, because only then, in this hurry we are going through, is it possible to think that it is worth falling into temptation.
Then, as everywhere, there is the problem of space: with so many souls tormented since the beginning of the World (Neros, Caligulas, Messalinas and what else) there is a need to compress the souls of in order to have more ecological suffering and take up less space. In this way (he invented it two nights ago and every night he perfects it, draws his imagination, modifies and falls asleep) the souls leave the compaction apparatus where they are reduced to the size of hamburgers, but without losing any of their individuality and proceed to the electric frying pans and are arranged in drawers of silence. They don't communicate. They don't know each other. They think they are alone and unique. The real torment is loneliness and when one of them tries to resign, and thinks it's better to sleep and forget, the drawer opens and it automatically combusts until it reaches the appropriate levels of unrest and despair.
This he dreamed of every night. In fact, now, during the day, he had begun to retouch the hell he had modernized.
However, he found enough lucidity to ask himself: "After all, am I crazy? A normal person doesn't like to do something like that - playing hell. God's.
I prayed. He went back to the priest, received advice and got no answer. Until one day, in the distress of a neighbor, he went to the hospital where his son was dying. It was, between dry and pushed, to give him comfort. He went to help but was afraid: the neighbor was stupidly rich. He was afraid of fooling around and distressing the boy. In a fit of more crying, the neighbor went out into the hallway. And he, wanting to distract himself from that obsession, began to paint the sky for the boy to hear: "They are angels and God, look how everything sings..."
The boy opened his eyes and called out to him as if he were his father. I had ceased to see. I was on my way.
- Daddy. Daddy.
He squeezed her little hand, already weak, and felt that he could, but he wasn't man enough to ask for a miracle. He had lived and had never been interested in loving: he had allowed the boy to die. Dry and cold, he had lost the ability to cry. He felt that he was no longer human.
He went out into the street. Like the boy, he looked and did not see. Yes, he did: the truck's horn. No longer felt the braking or the impact - now he saw God and the Angels he had described to the boy. They sang. The boy smiled and was there. He stretched out his hands and called out:
- Daddy. daddy
chronicles
Afternoon Channel
CHRISTMAS MIRACLE
The Baby Jesus is evil. I'm going to complain to the Big Jesus that he stole my little blue bird from me.
Doesn't the Baby Jesus steal?
Steal, yes sir. Steals from envy. It was my father who told me that this morning, when I was crying because my heavenly breast had died. He spoke like this:
- Leave it, son. He is now in heaven singing to the Child Jesus.
My father knows everything about heaven. When my mother died, he spoke like this crying when I asked him:
- What about mom, dad?
- The mother went to heaven. God took her.
So: first this God took my mother; now the Baby Jesus steals my little bird... up in heaven it's a house for bandits, you see? When I'm big, I'll take an AKÁ, kill all this banditry and bring my mother and my sky-breast. In heaven, only the Big Jesus and the angels who help him in the bird factory will remain. My father is the one who knows and he is the one who told me: there is a bird factory there that is on top of the clouds. That's where the sky breasts are made. Ugly birds, no. These even hatch from eggs in tree nests. Great Jesus who paints the feathers of angels with the color of the sky - some blue during the day, some dark, blue at night - mix everything with little eyes and beaks and little paws and put it in the machines to work. They work, thunder sparks, and sky-tits begin to fall into the box. When the boxes are full, two angels come, reach the end of the cloud and dump the birds down here.
Here they come, sleeping. With the cold of the wind they wake up. With fright, they open their beaks and begin to sing. Then they spread their wings and fly.
My sky-breast when it landed was in such a bag that it twisted a leg. That's when I picked it up and took it to my father to fix it. My father fixed Zezinho's paw (that's how I baptized him with water right from the church. I took him there with a mug). My dad put in two toothpicks and glued it all together and, two days later, my sky chest could walk.
His paw was a little crooked. It doesn't matter: it's a deficient war bird, like those soldiers and what, who walk on crutches. Disabled yes, but he had a good mind.
He learned everything: he jumped on his shoulder, hobbled, went for a walk in the yard, but he always came home. He was in the room waiting for me. He learned to walk in my head, to sing up there, to pick my hair. Too bad I didn't have lice like the other boys. I asked the father:
- Dad, how do you get lice?
- Because?
And I explained:
- If I had lice, my little bird could eat on my head when it was hungry.
Then the father explained that sky-tits don't eat lice, which is very poorly done. I'm going to pray to my Guardian Angel to tell the Big Jesus that he has to make better birds. Do you think the sky breasts have a guardian angel. I've even thought: what if my Guardian Angel was really my little bird that came to earth in disguise?
That's when I prayed the loudest and the Boy-Jesus-Bandit heard and came down here and was jealous of my little bird and took it with him. If I could find him, I'd headbutt him. So I went to ask my father:
- Dad, how do we go about dying?
And my father replied as usual, asking:
- Because?
- I needed to go to Heaven to beat up Baby Jesus.
And my father explained:
- Nobody does anything to die. Only God knows when we will die.
I myself don't even like God who took me to my mother. I don't want to talk to him. Even when he comes to tell me: “I'll take you”, I answer him: Just try it. I trash you, my...
- Father: the Great Jesus works miracles.
- Because?
- I'm going to ask him to go steal my heavenly breast that is in the home of the Baby Jesus-Band.
- The Big Jesus does not steal.
- But you can go and complain to Our Lady that the bird is not his.
- Who knows if you can. Write him a letter.
- Those Santa Claus ones?
- Of these.
I still don't know how to write for school, but I can draw my little bird and then at night I talk to Big Jesus who is disguised as Santa Claus. So he hears everything very well. Take my drawing with the photograph of the celestial chest and go to Our Lady's house: TUM, TUM, TUM. - " Yea. Who is it?" I'm the Jesus- -Great. “Now live! How are you doing?” Do you know this bird? “I know, yes sir. It's my son's sky chest.” Oh no it's not. This sky chest is from an earth boy. “Oh, the rascal of this boy who only teases me. O Jesus! O Child Jesus, come here.” It's come! The Boy was bazou not to be beaten and the Big Jesus, brought me my heavenly breast in a cage for Christmas. My father warned:
- You have to be careful. You have to teach him everything, everything. He in Heaven forgot what you taught him.
I could! With a kid who doesn't know how to do anything. And I taught, I taught, I taught. One day I opened the cage and the window and said:
- Choose: if you want, leave.
He was all poor: he jumped on the clothesline, flew around the hose. landed. He went there, nosing around from branch to branch, and then he dived into the air and landed on my head: “TUM, TUM, TUM” - Who is it. “I am Zezinho” - What do you want then? “I want to go play with you”.
And off we went. I put Zezinho on my shoulder to envy the Child-Jesus-Band. Everyone who looked at my heavenly chest: so smart, so cute, so flying. It went around and back. There in Heaven, the Bandit-Jesus-Boy was crying. Well done! I even heard his mother scolding him:
- Either you shut up now, or you take a beating you don't even care about...
Our Lady: give it to him. This kid is very abusive with other people's things. Give it, even. With the slipper... Well done! The Baby Jesus was crying. His mother would knock, and my little bird would fly.
MY SALUSTIANO GRANDFATHER
chronicles
Afternoon Channel
My grandfather Salustiano, at the age of ninety, had a family meeting. There would be a total of seventy-two children, three hundred and twenty-six grandchildren, one hundred and two great-grandchildren and a few great-grandchildren, somewhere between forty and fifty. These were not yet based on their pedigree book.
Everything my grandfather did was written in commercial letters. Had passion for writing, for drawing letters, for calligraphy. I spent hours writing. In a fat book by Deve and Haver, there was a sheet for each child. Each one with your name (and your mother's as well) date of birth and so on. Because although there was the Big Mama who, by right, was the mother of all her children, every six or seven of them had a mother of her own who had given birth to them.
Of the old man, of his youth, things were told. No one knew where fantasy began and truth ended. Everything was confused. He himself said that he had come from the woods when he was a boy of twelve or thirteen. He had arrived in the big city and, as incredible as it may seem, what had attracted him the most were the godparents: gentlemen in hats, coats, watch chains across their chests that plunged into the pockets of their vests, thin ties, ankle boots or white shoes ( conforms) to deviate from the muds of the neighborhood.
They went through the streets and here and there a kid came, quickly wiping his mouth and rubbing his hands on his more or less dirty shorts, asking for a blessing:
- God bless you - muttered the godfather, making a vague sign of the cross.
One day he tried. He let a godfather pass and went after him.
- Your Blessing Godfather - and made the gesture of kneeling and kissing the hand.
- God bless you - but as he was distractedly tracing the cross over the boy's head, he was amazed: and who are you anyway?
He didn't have time and ran away, leaving his godfather confused. A self-respecting godfather has dozens of godchildren, but even so, for one we take the other's face away. And this one didn't look like anyone else.
My grandfather Salustiano swore he was going to be quite the godfather. He was godfather to dozens of children and his own children and grandchildren. He stopped at his great-grandchildren, because as the family was already dispersed, it could not be the same, godfather to all, he was none of them. If there was a virtue that he prized very much, it was that of justice.
married early - still a kid of seventeen or eighteen, with Big Mom being about twenty-odd. Stranded and unmarried, she had already been to the city (a lot of money, her father complained) where she had gone unnoticed by male eyes. It looked like a little girl. And not even his father's money (in the bush, and with a reputation for having a lot of buried gold) enticed anyone. Recognized hunger claws, even for the dowry he offered (a pittance!) only a dumb son-in-law would want to support the daughter of a rich father-in-law, hoping to earn his inheritance.
She came back, a thin, tiny, round mulatto woman, embroidering cross stitch for days on end. My grandfather Salustiano, who was a man with a nose, fixed the embroiderer and saw further: there was someone who would make him the godfather he dreamed of.
He faced his future father-in-law with a proposal that the man was not expecting.
- Why not build a house in the city and sell it directly, instead of making a profit to middlemen?
The old man was a very cautious guy, but direct:
- And who do I put in charge of the business?
- Myself.
- Why do you steal from me?
- Affair with your daughter.
The salesman was astonished. He even rehearsed one, “look at the black shit”, but on second thought: with one word you win, with another word you lose. The damn daughter did nothing. Only expenses: threads, embroidery and spools... The other girls in the yard were more used: matumbas but hardworking. He didn't reject his blood, but he didn't make a fool of himself either.
My grandfather Salustiano knew how to catch people in their weak moment of hesitation:
- Even more: with your daughter, I'll bring you all the others you have there.
Now, it looks like we have a deal: what better can I get for a son-in-law? All at once I have no responsibilities: no daughters, no expenses. No one can say that I didn't forward them. Instead of falling into someone else's hands.
The wedding took place anyway (only much later did they go to church) and there followed the bride, her embroideries and the entourage of her sisters, who were seven. So far so good: Big Mom was getting fat, happy with her pregnancy and her two older sisters with her. Avô Salustiano explained:
- Dona Angelina, I don't want to see you sniffling around the corners that my husband sleeps or doesn't sleep with my sisters. I sleep, yes sir. Rather I, who am a person of respect, than another man. I want you to get this in your head: you are not a woman, you are a lady. mistress of this house. Mistress of her sisters too. Of your sisters' children. Keep on your clothes and they take care of the house and you, as if you were a queen.
Miss Angelina, swallowed a more shimmering and rebellious tear, and thought her husband was right. She went inside to see if the table was set and waited for her husband to be seated. It was his moment of glory: of all the women Salustiano had, had and would have - the only one who sat at the table with him was Ms. Angelina Sirim Salustian. He was, as you see, a man of respect and principle.
The children were born: António, Bernardo and Catarino, thus starting an alphabet that would go around several times without repeating itself. Business was going well: his father-in-law (God rest him!) had died almost immediately and he had gained privileged contact with the sobas who continued to send him long business caravans.
Ten years passed and he was already a lord - a godfather with thirty-odd children. A single problem. Or better two:
First: one day he realized that one of these exiles was trying to grab his third sister-in-law. She, leaning against the wall, struggled. He went inside, grabbed a bat and Zás! The guy staggered and fell to the ground. Thanks to the salesman at the front who came running:
- O Lord Salustian, see there do not disgrace yourself.
And he left there with the patrician's son of a bitch, who was barely seated on a bench, his head open, babbling dumbly.
- But who is the black bastard that dared to hit me.
- Look - explained the salesman, as he waited for the hot water he had asked the woman in the backyard, who was in a great frenzy of what it was, how it didn't happen. - be careful that this black man (and he accentuated the word with mocking ways) is a well-placed gentleman even in the Palace. See, don't end up with your back to Caconda, or if one day you wake up the servant of one of those sobas from the end of the world. You know what a white slave is worth, do you? If you want advice, don't come here again...
And the man never appeared again. The second case was a bit like this one, but a little different: he caught the youngest of the sisters-in-law with a figure that had been around for a while. He saw and waited for the occasion. Once confirmed, he took the child from her and put her on the street. For them to see and take note: “Whoever feeds her, goes with her”. There it was, shrunken and poor thing - three days and three nights of crying, all passing by (that what he said was to be fulfilled) until he ended up giving up and going to life. The guy, the boyfriend or what, if you must know, no one else has laid eyes on him: ran away? Was it killed? God only knows. Avô Salustiano cannot say anything either. - I didn't know I'd seen it, but I guessed from what I'd sent.
In children he was fortunate. Life had its ups and downs: the advent of the Republic (1910) was a satisfaction for all the “sons of the land” that turned into small misfortune with the arrival of the High Commissioner who arrived and set up a colonial machine as it should be. Now who was in charge of this, only white people coming from the metropolis. Not the ones from here.
Little by little, grandfather Salustiano, became poor - he sold houses, he sold farms, he sold this and that, but he never became destitute. I already had years to spare and enough money to live without problems. His children were well-groomed, all of them with their craft and their first letters, which was a rare thing at the time. Of all he had, he lacked one thing to die in peace: gather all his people once in his life and take his first portrait with them. Every Salustian would know for a lifetime who he was and where he came from.
He spent three years preparing the party. Writing letters with the help of Big Mama who, being older, was more out of sight. Here, we explain: Big Mom could read and write and had taught herself. It was so:
One day, tired of embroidering, always the same stitch, always the same thing, I shyly told Avô Salustiano that I wanted to learn to write his name. The old man pondered that there is life and death, and she, being a widow, should not sign the cross and the bailiffs, judges and other thieves come to her and take everything from her. Then, one of these days, we have to put an end to this mancebia in black gentile and get married properly. It's not nice for a lady not to know how to sign, even though in the city, few knew how to do it. A person who knows how to sign, even if he doesn't know how to read, always imposes another respect...
Three days later he had a little writing table placed by the window, the kind that you can close and open with your little key (more than anyone else, he knew that writing was an intimate and almost holy thing) four charcoal pencils, an ink pencil, an inkwell and four nib pens, namely: fine nib, medium nib, thick nib and that cut nib that Salustiano used to make the letters with thick loops. He arrived, arranged the furniture, sent the boys away and said, handing them a narrow tablet with something written on it: “This is your name, my lady. It is here: Angelina Sirim-Salustiano”. Now get to work. And she started. Every day at the same time, he would dust the desk, top to bottom as if he were a Baby Jesus, and begin laboriously copying. To perfectly imitate the design of your name. Then she dared to take, with great fear, her man's newspapers. copied. There, the letters I drew were different - he would later learn that some were printed and those bearing his name were handwritten. Avô Salustiano saw it, understood the confusion, and spent an afternoon drawing him a printed alphabet with the manuscript underneath. She excelled in the study. The husband passed by and thought to himself: “A busy woman is a happy woman”. So we went for a year or more. One day, Ms. Angelina Sirim-Salustiano, approached her husband and with tears in her eyes, confessed something that she was not sure if it was a sin or not:
- Sir my husband: ... I seem to know how to read.
- Do you know how to read? How can you know how to read? Who taught you? Now read here.
And he presented him with the newspaper he had brought from outside. She started to be afraid and then went through the lines at a speed that even he was having trouble with. follow. For the first time my grandfather stuttered, without realizing anything, the world was upside down. There had been a miracle in her house. He yelled into the backyard. They brought him a marufo who was cooling off in the waterhole, but he asked for wine. Something like this needs a lot of alcohol. He drank three good glasses in one breath. It got dizzy. He turned to Dona Angelina, his wife, who, with those round and large eyes, was silently and copiously crying her sentence for the crime she had committed, and said:
- Mrs. Angelina - my Lady and Spouse, I kiss your hands. The Lady is the smartest woman in this colony. And the holiest too, because she managed to perform a miracle never seen before: she learned to read by herself. It didn't need a master. I myself, Salustiano, needed a master and a lot of beating. No one knocked the Lady to learn, this is something that is hard to believe. I kiss your hands, my lady.
Kneeled. kissed. And he went to rest the drunkenness and the disagreement for the lounger on the porch. D. Angelina cried: seas and oceans of joy - never in his life had he thought it possible to be happy like this.
From that day, Mamã-Grande opened a family school and no male or female child of Salustiano left for life without their first letters.
But we were counting that at the age of ninety Salustiano gathered all his people. Who spent three years subpoenaing the whole family. Who rented four neighboring backyards to cook the meals. His backyard was just for gathering. People slept on a large plot of land in Bungo that was left over from the caravan days. They came at dawn, they went at night. When they pillaged outside the white city, they sang. It was a huge uproar, disjointed, but content. D. Angelica, almost a hundred years old, still knew everyone by name. A pride for the old man.
Then each son and his family were seated in their corner: the father on a chair, the woman on a gentile bench; if it was a daughter, she would sit on the chair and her son-in-law on the bench. The children and the children of the children who were the grandchildren all around on the same mats.
At the top of Salustiano's backyard and D. Angelica in a back chair (like that of the bishops) and, in normal chairs, the remaining mothers, twelve of whom had already died. The children came, with their people in a line, they asked for the blessing, the real mother, the aunts, then they went up to the Big Mama who whispered to the husband the name of the son in the presence. Thus, after many years, Salustiano without mistake called each of his children, blessed his three hundred and many grandchildren, met almost all of his great-grandchildren and looked for (and found, let us say) similarities in his twenty-four great-grandchildren. He did the math and added up to four hundred and thirty-eight people out of his mind. Then he took the floor and said:
- First, let us pray for our mothers, our children and grandchildren, whom God has already called, but who have been counted, because those who die, even dying, remain a family.
Those who knew how to pray prayed. They pretended they didn't know. That in this Salustian religion he had never been much to worry about. Go to the baptism and that's it.
- Now a warning: my grandchildren and great-grandchildren who don't have their children registered in my book, come tomorrow to write their names. Big Mom will be waiting.
Looked proudly at that little crowd - all yours. All your blood. All your people.
- I mean: I'm already old, I don't last long. (protests) I'm done and I wanted to say goodbye. I don't have money to leave. If I had, I'd throw it away so you wouldn't be hitting each other. (laughs) I'm telling you: family never hits. I curse my son, my grandson, my great-grandson, great-grandson or great-grandson who beats his brother of the same blood as mine. (murmurs of assent) I left your life, with the grace of God. This house and this backyard after my death belongs to Mama-Gande and after her death to the sisters, to the last. When the old people are done, all this and the Bungo land passes to the City Council (I have already signed the papers) and they will build the Sirim Salustiano Garden here for the grandchildren to come for a walk in the backyard of my house.
The ceremony ended with much applause, dust, uproar and Dona Angelina crying, copiously on her husband's knees.
Grandfather Salustiano died peacefully three years later, while D. Angelina (who did not last much longer) recited the names of the family book to him. It lasted until the last great-grandchild and died. Simply and so. The manas were shortly afterwards withdrawn to a good house. The City Council needed to build there, a wide avenue that the people began to call Rua da Mamã-Grande. So for years. Then the old people died, the new ones were forgotten, the Salustians spread across the world (times were also different) and a Mayor placed a tombstone and the street was called -Avenue Dr. Hemengardo Varela Mendonça de Carvalho e Costa Mendes de Castro e Silva.
Who the said gentleman was, no one knew very well. But everyone remembered the angry discussion that had taken place, not only in the Chamber but in the newspapers of the time, because of the commas.
Some, that in front of some names should have, because of the breath, a comma. Thus and in this way: Hemengardo Varela Mendonça (comma) de Carvalho e Costa (comma) Mendes de Castro e Silva (by the logic of commas: full stop).
Other than not: names are names and do not have commas. The third ones came: let's just write the first and last name: Dr. Hemengardo da Silva. Is poor. It says nothing about the personality of the great man he was, said the President, who possibly didn't know who the man was either. And he continued in his beautiful voice tailored for speeches: The name is an inalienable heritage. It is, so to speak, a personal property, to which everyone is entitled, without cuts or alterations (he spoke with pleasure: closed right fist, punctuating word for word, the chiseled verb). It's a centuries-old blood bond. But... what about the kings? They have more than twenty names and are known in history by only one, at most two: D. Manuel, D. João, D. Afonso Henriques...
His Excellency cleared his throat (it could have been a nuisance, but it wasn't) and said serenely: “Kings are not called here. We are in a Republic, gentlemen.” And that's the end of it, which is how to say: it was just like that - the full name, in small letters to fit on the plate.
Soon after the inauguration, with the pomp and circumstance that was due to it, the street became known as Rua da Respiração. The kids at school had invented a game and it was like this: take a breath and see how many names they could say at once.
With two and a half laps, the record was in the lungs of a certain Francisco João Sirim-Salustiano, a great-great-grandson that my grandfather Salustiano had not had time to put down in his family book.
BREAKFAST TABLE
chronicles
Afternoon Channel
My brother-in-law Rui Pereira, who knows the days, nights and dawns of Luanda, always left the warning:
- At four in the morning, leaving a nightclub, any woman is eighteen years old.
However, as you will know, the experience of each one does not give experience to anyone and it is not with the advice of others that the path of the eyes of anyone is opened. Otherwise, it is said, advice was not given – it was sold.
And one day Felisberto disappeared at four in the morning, as usual, to appear to his friends at almost eleven that same day. The man was dizzy with satisfaction. Discovered America. Christopher Columbus had never been so close to the West Indies.
- A night that I can only tell you! A true night of love. And just look...
The word was suspended. It created envy. And he concluded to everyone's admiration:
- In the morning, when I woke up, I had this note on my bedside table...
And the note showed itself: beautiful handwriting, round handwriting, calm and firm handwriting of someone with a washed heart and a weightless conscience.
“Love: Tonight's pleasure was too pure to be sold or bought. Do not disappoint me, you who knew so well how to speak to my heart. Use the apartment at will. I'll leave the breakfast table for you. Enjoy your food! I hope you like it..."
And liked it, if you liked it!...
A steak, with two fried eggs, all well wrapped in silver paper so it doesn't get cold; sliced loaf of bread that he placed in the toaster and spread with butter, in heaps, as he liked; Ham, salami, slices of ham and whatever else... Juices of all kinds (he preferred to go to the glacier to discover a red “Grão Vasco”). Fruit: apple, papaya, avocado and he, already bored, plucked two grapes; Termus bottle coffee – hot; Milk, in another bottle – very hot. He lit a cigarette and boasted until he came out.
- It's her? Who is she anyway?
He, playing dear, keeping a secret behind that satisfied smile.
- I'll tell you later.
And offended friends:
- After when? Don't you trust us?
And he in his:
- It's not a lack of confidence. It's just that I really don't know very well who she is. I know it's beautiful. I know you're a wonder as a woman. And as she also enjoyed being with me, she will show up around, for sure...
And appeared. Undoubtedly her: varicose veins were a map of black, lumpy streaks, thicker than fingers. The breasts, ripped, were just a suggestion not to look like a man. The voice, forcedly sweet, could not disguise the sourness of the soul and the intense smell of tobacco and alcohol...
- Did you like breakfast, love? she asked in a honey kiss.
We get up. He was nailed to the chair – cold, stunned, without an umbrella to stop that deluge of kisses. And Rui Pereira commenting on the side:
- I warned you: at four in the morning, outside a nightclub, all women are twenty years old.
- Sorry, but you said eighteen.
- So it is ! But this one well deserves the two years of exaggeration
FREEDOM OF PRESS
chronicles
Afternoon Channel
Old, many years old, the stairs of the “Jornal” trembled underfoot. The man climbed slowly, leaning against the banister. He went to the counter at the top of the stairs to ask for the information he already knew. Without saying what he was going to, he would be stopped by security: “Where do you want to go?” I go to advertising. “First you need to get information. It’s not just walking around like that.” But I was here yesterday. I know where it is... At the door, another security guard had asked him, as usual: “Go where, do what, who's ad, leave an ID card... The girl at the reception – that one – pointed casually and disinterest as if you were doing me a favor:
- ...that door.
Went to that door. It hit. Came in without waiting for permission (the day before he had been there, politely, hitting and batting for a good half hour) until the girl shouted at him:
- Oh lord, for God's sake - stop knocking and come in.
Well then, now it didn't even knock – it entered. There was no counter separating him from the clerk. You entered and stood in front of the desk where a young man sat. Chair for visitors, clients, or anything like that, there was none. Only papers: piles and mountains of newspapers scattered around: newspaper shelves, newspaper floors, walls leaning against newspapers and, in the midst of it all, in a tiny amount of space, the young man, the clerk, a boy with dull, sleepy eyes. Made on purpose for the place. Thirty years from now he'll be there, his hair a little whiter, but like he's never gotten up from his seat.
-Good Morning. Say please...
He put the newspaper on the desk and said:
- Yesterday I came to place an ad, but it didn't come out.
- Didn't come out how?
- Not going out, pure and simple.
He spoke to him like that, in thick capital letters to show his indignation. The secretary man jumped.
-Hang on! as if there was a light in the dark and closed tunnel of his memories... Wait! You are the one who came here to put this ad...
And he searched through the paperwork until he found it – paper, photography and all...
Delivered with a good smile of one who apologizes, but there's nothing to be done. The customer said, still a little angry:
- Yes sir. I myself came to put this ad. I paid, you received and did not publish...
The employee, friendly and accommodating:
- See: we didn't publish, because we can't publish. That is to say: you cannot publish advertisements of this type.
- This one now! They can't be published - the man marveled. And under which law can they not be published?
The employee gasped. Of laws did not understand. I was there to obey the direction and charge the customers: so many lines is so much, half a page is cheese, a quarter is like this or that...
- Law? I do not know. But we will refund your ad money. The Lord understands...
You don't seem to understand and you're starting to get irritated. It was truly by the hair. This, only in Angola does it happen.
- No. I don't want any money. I want to know the law that prohibits the publication of my ad.
And the voice rose angrily. From below, the security guard peeked in, checking the mood. The girls at the reception were pissed off with apprehension.
- That is... (and he choked and changed his speech) at a time when, anywhere in the world, newspapers even accept advertising from prostitutes: “I'm blonde. I am eighteen years old and etc...” here in Angola an advertisement is refused. It's because? Tell me why... (and he replied) because in Angola, any idiot who is the editor of a newspaper feels he has the right to make his own laws to attack the free expression of the citizen.
And looking at the employee:
- Tell me: I come here to announce that so-and-so has died. Can I or can't I?
And the other, flustered and afraid:
- Yes, sir.
And he, victorious and incisive:
– Do I need to bring the dead?
– No sir, you don't need to.
- Do I need to bring a death certificate?
- No sir. It is not necessary.
And he calmly, like someone who catches a forger in the middle of a lie.
-Then tell me: how do you know, without the dead man, without the death certificate that the man really died?
And the confused boy, idiot at all:
- But which man?
- The guy who came to bring his name to say he died.
- But after all, which person who died are you talking about?
- I speak of all the names of those who died since the beginning of the world and they come here to put their name in the newspaper to say that they died.
- But the Lord did not come to name any.
- Yes sir. It's here (and tapped the papers hard, almost sticking them through the other's eyes) is here: Álvaro Manuel Duarte (which happens to be my name) trader (and for more than forty years. Even in the colonist's time I was a gentleman, he tells his friends, customers and suppliers that has not yet passed away.
The official took a deep breath: now he realized the mistake and could give a reason.
- It seems that the problem is the place where you had the ad placed. The Lord remembers that he had him put in the obituary.
And the other, more peaceful. After all, he had always received an explanation. It was all a matter of misunderstanding and talking is how we understand each other.
- In the obituary, but without the cross.
- Yeah: but in the obituary you can't.
And the admired man:
- And you can't, why?
- Because that's a place to put only the dead.
- And I already told you: how do you know these are dead, if they haven't presented neither the corpse nor the death certificate?
- Well, I guess: if you come here to say he died, it's because he really died.
- If some say they died, I am within my rights to say that I did not. And where is the best place to say I'm alive, if not in the one where, where every day, Will people see the names and photographs of those who have died? Do you, by any chance, have a section for the living in your journal – a viviology? Is the newspaper made for the living or for the dead? Is it the dead who buy the newspaper and pay you your salary? What is the case for this discrimination? Or is it just like this: pedantic censorship?
REJECTION
chronicles
Afternoon Channel
The man fidgeted, disoriented. Full of a reason that filled his eyes and messed up the words.
– It's not just any minister's kid that annoys me. I myself, I don't talk to him anymore. I'll go straight to his father. Father is not a minister's government, but he is still a father. I've known him for over sixty years. Even when we were candengue and walked on the streets, we know each other.
Pausing, with a memory dancing in his eyes, something that had to be said and was important:
– Because, even from his father, he was his oldest. I used to go there in our group, but only like caxico.: go get this, go buy that. If he ate with us, he ate at the end of everyone and it was just leftovers. Even his son, the minister...
And it repeated, like more and more solemn gestures and pauses.
– Yes, the minister. Now it even looks like a person, but how was it in those days? It was full of snots that even today the perfumes are unable to take away the pungent smells of their snots. It was to him that we sent: “Go to Sô Manuel's store and bring this”. If you didn't have money at home, who spoke? Yes, who spoke?...
And he paused, waiting for the answer that no one knew, but everyone guessed.
– What did he say: “ Kid (kid was the minister, you see?) says to send a bottle of wine (and it was a bottle for a helmet, it wasn't just any black wine) and I'll go there tomorrow and pay. did you trust the store? (asked and answered:) ME. Who had the respect? (and beat his chest proudly:) I myself, myself, alone.
And he replied, just like someone speaking at a rally:
– The minister. That dumb kid with wounds on his head. An school cost to learn. Only with a beating did they open his head. Now you are a doctor, how is it then?
And pause. And bloodshot, raging eyes. And our curiosity awakens, satisfied, happy, to hear bad things about grown-ups.
– And then, this guy, this boy I met him right here in the musseques (I myself, at that time, was already a gentleman and lived in the city. It wasn't just any black man like that. He lived in the white people's place. My neighbor was white...
And he asked, as if everyone knew the answer:
– D. Maria Furtado d'Almeida was what? (and replied:) It was white. Dona Fracisquinha da Cunha Pousada, what was it? (and he replied again:) goat as white and teacher...
He realized that he had strayed from the conversation and resumed his course, not before wiping the sweat that ran down his forehead with an impeccably white handkerchief.
– ... that minister I knew him as a kid... so I thought: I have my difficulties, the boy can help me and I sent him a request and such and such that it's me, guy, who remembers I met him with your father and your mother, in the time of grandmother Miquelina, her aunt on her mother's side, both unfortunately already at the age of deceased. I am in my difficulties, for which I thank you for ordering me to distribute an IACE so that I can put a candonga and govern my life. So far, so good.
He blew his nose, thundering the street with the breath of his nostrils. Carefully he folded the handkerchief to continue:
– ... because so far so good. Because a neighbor (and we were almost neighbors – he in the musseque, I in the city) neighbor is more family than brother. Neighbor lives with our misfortunes and our brother is far away. Who took his father out of the administration jail – was it his brother's uncle, or was it me? If I need it now, the one who is going to heal the wounds of my difficulties is that kid. And do you know what he did?
And he clapped his hand on his chest. He was slamming his hand against his chest, his eyes on the verge of tears, red and full of anger.
– ...he sent for me: “The minister, such and such, wants to see you Thursday at eleven o'clock. I got dressed and went. Received with the Minister were two more comrades full of ties and shirts of those old ones with cufflinks and everything. The Minister silently looking at me.
– “Did the Lord make this request?” One of these asked. I replied, with my politeness: “With God's grace, I did it myself. I know how to read. I know how to write. I learned at Késsua's Mission and at José Maria Relvas.” The other one goes and says: “Are you aware of what you asked His Excellency?” And now I'm already replying: “I didn't ask for anything to His Excellency. Yes, I asked, it is very well written, Your Excellency”...
And the other, that fellow, silly and admired:
- " To me?" and I replied: “I don't know if the comrade is also Your Excellency who can help me. On here at my age all help never arrives. If Your Excellency is Your Excellency like Your Excellency the Minister, thank you very much. Can you give me the key to the IACE, I have already brought the driver and the traffic is very bad at this time of noon.”
We were doing very well in this conversation (very polite, because if you treat the man with yourself, with strange people, it's always Excellency. Because if you don't respect your family, who's going to respect you?... then the bastard minister who was silent and very silent, he said: "Let's get this over with: the old man doesn't understand anything." And then he turned to me: “I called him here, with the consideration of meeting him, to say that his application was rejected. If you're having difficulties, I can advance you a little money...” And I didn't really understand, without taking the money he was giving me... “Is it rejected as it is?” And the other, the comrade armed in excellence: “Denied is no.” And I, facing the minister: “And how are you saying no to me, who am your eldest, and saying yes to all the thieving candongueiros who are out there in the cars robbing the people?” And he, more meekly, speaking with his ministerial style: “Take the money from you Alberto. It's not much but it always works...”
I stopped. The money was greeting me – it was a nice little motorcycle, but I, a person of respect that everyone knows me, spoke to him rudely:
– How is it that you, son of your drunk father, who took you twice out of the settler's jail, are telling me that it's no, when the one they call secretary, you gave a car that is not a work IACE, but a brand of do tour service?
Can you believe what the guy did? He called the security officers and ordered me out. I even heard him say, “Don't hurt him. Don't hit the old man.” Fucking bastard that I knew him like that and he made the gesture (arm outstretched horizontally and hand, with the five fingers together facing upwards) showed a complete disagreement, as if the boy had suddenly grown up and, son of whoever he was, was to say that the father was another.
They grabbed me, but even so I shouted:
– Wipe your ass on that dirty money of yours. I'm not poor at begging and you, don't forget, I complain to the President, I complain to your father, I know my rights and I know: at this age I can't be rejected. Not even a minister can reject me.
WOUNDED OF WAR
chronicles
Afternoon Channel
In the city, at the time of one of the other wars, the enormous confusion of an attack arose from time to time. It goes without saying that in the matter of wars there have always been "other" wars. In the old days, we still counted them and we had: the 1st Liberation War, the 2nd Liberation War and, from then on, maybe because we were afraid to count: the Third, and after this the Fourth and Fifth, we started not to call nothing. So this case happened in one of the other wars.
We have then, which fell at dawn, on the city, a tremendous of an attack. Of course it was usual, but this one came almost from the side of the barracks of the Cubans who calmly went into prevention and only fired if they were directly attacked.
The enemy who was not stupid, walked before his eyes dancing from one side to the other and our troops, afraid of bothering "nuestro hermanos" made fire with skill. Have you ever seen a war, where fire is made with skill, with delicacy, we would say: with politeness?
For this was the war.
At Largo Comandante Kussi, when trouble broke out, the old men got up, dressed quickly (it might have been necessary to be prepared to flee) and each one reacted in their own way.
She, on her knees, in the middle of the room, prayed what little she still knew. He (who had an irreproachable upbringing) would open the window and bark a litany of nonsense:
- Motherfuckers.
Same with big, spelled letters. And the woman, on her knees, chasing away the shots as in times gone by, the grandmother chasing away the thunderstorms:
- "Saint Barbara, Blessed that is written in heaven, with sprigs of holy water, see if you deliver us from this storm. Now the roosters crow, now the angels rise, now Our Lord is on the Cross, love Jesus forever."
And he, very straight, as if in a sense, behind the open window:
- O woman, stop praying for the roosters. Do not speak to them by hand.
Her husband was an atheist, but he had his superstitions and his throat to make her always louder:
- Motherfuckers.
And the woman, her head almost hitting the ground (sometimes it is necessary to hit her head, to remember any name, now forgotten: the name of a person, the name of a city or, in this case, words of the prayer that fear said. forget):
- "If I sleep, rock me; if I die, accompany me with the eleven thousand virgins and the Holy Trinity, my body is not sad, my soul lost. Jesus Christ died for her and the son of the Virgin Mary keep us for tonight and tomorrow for the whole day. Ours and Hail Mary."
And one more burst here, and three or four more there on the other side and the continuous grinding of the machine guns and the well-timed shots from Aká: ok, ok, ok, there are three shots; ta-ta, ta-ta, ok, five well-measured shots so as not to waste the magazine and him screaming with relief:
- All that was needed was for one to fall here on the square.
He always said this, as if to ward off danger. Like this: if I say it, it doesn't happen. And shouted:
- Motherfuckers.
And the woman, lost in her head, looking for the right prayers. The last prayer he had prayed was not fit for the occasion. God forgive him, but it was the prayer before going to bed, like this one that came to his mind now:
"In this bed I lay, in the tomb of the living; they lie down alive and rise dead; if I one of these is, I commit my soul to Our Lord. If death comes for me and I cannot speak to it, let the Virgin Mary speak to it. Our Father and Hail Mary".
There should be proper prayers for these thunderstorms of war, for these fears and anxieties. And what are the Cubans doing, that they never decide to enter again?
- Motherfuckers
-"Our Little Father when God was a child: Jesus Christ, my godfather, give me your right hand to make a well-made cross...
And here his memory failed. He jumped over the top and continued on in a hurry, lest Our Lord realize his failure.
-... never God meet with me, neither at night nor at the middle of the night. day. Now the roosters crow, now the angels rise, now Our Lord comes down from the Cross, forever, amen, Jesus.
And the irritated husband, with the repetition of the spiel:
- O woman, I have already said: stop praying to roosters. I didn't need anything else.
And burst into yours:
- Motherfuckers
And she, without listening to him, only with that one in her head: this is already going on for a long time. Even without looking at the clock, he could, without mistake, calculate the time: half an hour. As if fear had made him swallow a watch.
- "Priest Our Biggest: Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, when the Angels go to heaven all in procession, St. Peter takes the keys, St. John takes the pennant, the torments are armed, feet and hands of Our Lord Jesus Christ, with the spear leaning , all the blood that has fallen into that chalice consecrated in this world".
Suddenly and without counting, the howitzer came and hit right in the middle of the square. A tremendous bang. A terrifying affliction. The ears are dizzy, the brain in tremors, the breath is oppressive.
The man fell backwards and felt, vaguely and far away, a shattering of glass. He didn't even look at himself or the woman. Stupidly he thought: "Now it's going to be them. With the cold and no glass in the windows, that's all that was needed." He got up dizzy, feeling the half-tipped woman repeating a prayer:
"Thirteen rays have the sun, thirteen rays have the moon, burst for the devil, that this soul is not yours."
And he repeated, and added, now he seems to be awakened by fright, that prayer to ward off the thunderstorms that he had just missed:
"Saint Anthony got up, put on his shoes, Our Lord asked him: Anthony, where are you going? I'm going to spread the thunderstorm. Spread it well spread, where there is no bread or wine, nor rosemary blossom, nor breath of Christian soul. Already the roosters crow, already the angels rise. Our Lord is already on the cross, forever amen Jesus "
- Shut up with the roosters or go to Jamba.
He was about to finish with his children of what, when he saw a figure running and lying on the smoking edge of the howitzer's hole. Enemy infiltrator? he thought. Then he remembered what his neighbor had assured him some time ago that two shells never fall into the same hole. Possibly, in his eagerness to escape death, he had quickly dressed, put on his pants, shirt and shoes, and had come to seek shelter in the middle of the square, lying on the outskirts of the hole where the shell was smoking.
And the confusion, little by little, ended. Only the occasional shot could be heard in the distance, as well as those saying goodbye until the next time. Suddenly he noticed that the neighbor was limping. From the top of the window, the man hurled the insult:
- Sons of bitches, they screwed up the neighbor. They fucked up the comrade.
The fellow must have realized he was wounded. Caught I don't know where by a shard of I don't know what, he limped markedly. The man limped more and more. It didn't hurt him at all, but he was hurt. Just like when life stopped hurting at the gates of the other world. Must be the column, he thought. Now that he was on his feet, an immense pain was shooting up his right leg. It started in the toes and went up... And to the victim's screams, all the neighbors came to the rescue. There was even the engineer's flashlight, which, with the lack of batteries, was just his, and served the needs of the square.
Searched for: shrapnel is where? And there was no blood. The wise men argued: sometimes it's just a hole. So tiny it doesn't even bleed. And the injured man, with his nerves, kept limping, limping, his right leg hurting as much as it did. It can be said that he cussed on foot with a limp: “I'm going to die. I will die. Oh my wife, I'm going to die..."
And this is how the miracle happened:
… in his haste to leave, decently dressed and shod, he had achieved the impossible: putting his right foot in a woman's high-heeled shoe and his left foot in one of his own. That's why he limped. And the truth of war is this: whoever limps is wounded.
THE WOMAN
chronicles
Afternoon Channel
She really was a strange woman. The neighbors spoke. Still young, the man had abandoned her. He went where, no one else saw him. There were those who said he was in Portugal. All this, and only six months they were married. There was no time to get her pregnant. It happened what, or what did not happen? No one ever knew and she didn't say either.
Of course, we already know: it's just the woman's fault that she didn't know how to hold him, or else, she did something her husband didn't even think about and ran away...
He was a person who didn't give a word for people to talk to, nor did he let anyone guess his life.
It happened one day that they said that her husband had died there in the lands of what. Soon his family appeared (sisters, aunts, nieces, cousins) to claim the tradition of inheritance, because the house is mine, the living room furniture is for the youngest sister, I keep the radio - it was the oldest nephew who spoke - I take the glacier.
But a house like this more naked had never been seen. Did she hide everything in the room? And the eldest sister-in-law would ask, just like someone who doesn't want the thing:
- Is the bed you sleep with in the room?
- Television. You didn't have a television, sis?
And, scolding, for her to see how guilty she was:
- You, my sister-in-law, are not even widowed in your room, nor have you dressed in mourning.
However, the tone of the questions was rising, in this shamelessness of greed. Each one took his inventory and distributed everything he thought existed. The woman didn't seem to understand what they were talking about. There are people who with suffering are like this: they hear, but they don't listen. The sister-in-law decided to wake up the woman with an explanation:
- In our tradition, it's like this: when a person dies, the family of the deceased gets the things. Even this house, you have to leave.
The woman, it seems, was still not listening.
And it was all in this mess when four big guys came in and started pushing us out. The neighbors had joined in: admired, terrified, they had never seen anything like this in their lives. She had gotten up from her chair and started shooing away:
- X and! X and! my man's family I'm actually putting them out on the street.
Muttering and threatening they went even faster, when they saw that his nephew, the big guy who shouted “The radio is mine” swept him a lick and he was immediately spitting blood, humiliation and sand. The woman spoke:
- There is no tradition here. Everything here is really mine. It wasn't that lazy relative of yours who won. If he died, if he didn't, we don't know. You are the ones who are trying to bury him alive. If he shows up, who will he sleep in whose bed, if you took him?
No one had ever heard the woman talk so much. All silent, even the beaten nephew.
- I'm warning you my husband's family, whoever takes even one thing stolen from my house dies. And still dies today.
Then there was a scream: a kid, cousin or something who had slapped a soda started with spasms rolling on the floor and vomiting all over.
- I will die, I will die - Ouch! I will die...
The poor guy was in a crazy state of distress. It made leaps that seemed to want to grab the sky. His own mother, afraid of this spell, or the turmoil of the case, would not approach the boy. She went to him. He took it and said to him affectionately:
- Leave it alone, my nephew, you don't die anymore. Everything's over.
The kid stopped, his eyes still terrified, and he was fine. People were amazed and that's when some began to say that she was a sorceress, others to look for her because she had “holy hands” to heal.
Life's difficulties made many people ask for help from this strange woman. Never denied. If it was money, give it. Everyone paid on time, or when they couldn't give satisfaction. Fear of a plague of hers was too much, though no one could say that she had plagued this one or that one. If it was childbirth, I left everything and went. Children were born, it seems like little birds flying into her hands. Holy Hands of God, that even the whites, when the doctors themselves didn't know what to do, would go get him. She arrived, put her hands on the other's belly and the child even looked like a plane landing in her hands. If it was a disease, she brought the medicines: tea, sticks and other things she knew. What she didn't know is when those girls who were still full of milk came to ask her: if you can do this, it's okay to let her do that... and her heart was frozen in astonishment for months: after all?! if they did this and that and even more?!... She who didn't get along very well with those things in bed,
because a bed is for what it is for making children, I knew now that, even out of bed...
Behind your sales stand: beer, soda, coke, and so on - the lady was in her muteness. Looking at everything, seeing everything, taking care of everything, but seeming not to notice anything. She had never asked herself: why did he go, why didn't he go. Who made him go was fate. I remembered him sometimes and saw him for what he was, beautiful, an elegant body, millimeter by millimeter dreamed and revived. Not with the gluttony of someone who wants to have a man. I liked looking at what was yours. Didn't need to touch.
I watched him when he, sweating his bandits, got up with the sun and came outside for the fresh morning air with a large aluminum mug. He drank his tea, sip here, sip there, while the sun rose and the breeze warmed on the stove of the day. When he didn't have work (he really liked his laziness) he would sit on a gentile bench and knife wood. I did things that if I went today, with all these foreigners, I would earn a fortune in handicrafts.
Life was like this between the two: barely spoke. Even at the time of courtship: they practically didn't say a word - they held hands and spent hours and hours seeing each other. The difference between seeing and looking is this: those who see want to know themselves, they want to know themselves, those who look only want to repair. After being married, the same thing: they woke up silently with a polite good morning in the morning, and fell asleep monosyllabic, with a wordless good night.
Family, the one that existed, were the neighbors - because a neighbor whom you despise in luck, is a brother you lack in misfortune. In these times, the family is not like it used to be. - eats you in life and pushes death to close your eyes. The neighbors don't. They know that when you die, help ends.
If one day he came, he would tell her bitter things about the shame, about the humiliation of a woman that her heart hid under that mute mask on her face. At least get her pregnant. He's been doing what on top of her time and time again that it looked like they'd only married for this thing...
If one day he came back, he wouldn't even say anything. Unaccustomed to speaking, it was so difficult for her to say what, to think about what. Does talking improve fate? Does talking change your life? Talk, what does it do, besides the confusion it makes?
if one day he arrived...
And one day he arrived. Twenty years later. Recognized her voice -rested, deep, deep voice, even man-MAN. First she saw who it was by the voice, only after she was sure, she removed her eyes that she kept down in the grocery store she set up.
- Good afternoon - greeted him, as if he had seen her the day before - Can I stay, even just there in your backyard? Tomorrow, or the day after, I'll find a place.
He was speaking a finely tuned Portuguese. An important Portuguese, in fine white. He replied, naturally, as if he had never left there:
- You may come in. The fourth, you already know.
- Thanks.
The night they slept for the first time in so long, he still attempted a shy approach. An approximation of duty. But the fire no longer lived there. And she said:
- Tomorrow, you will sleep in the other room. Our time has passed. Let's just stay like that.
And, each one in his room, they started life again. She, in the grocery store selling things, and knowing how they criticized her for putting a man in the house...
- 'were you missing so much that you received the man who abandoned you twenty years ago? When we said: “friend with this one, friend with that one, it's not good for a woman to be alone like this, without a child that gives her old age, you said no. My church man, I only have one. Now - it's there now - that the time to have children has passed is that you need a man for what?”
He would hang around there for a few days, waiting for a job that never came, knife in hand, molding wooden figurines. As before, the morning breeze was warming itself on the stove of the sun.
THE CAN OF COOKIES
chronicles
Afternoon Channel
I would have been six years old, a wooden cart and three cans: beautiful, round, each with its own design of flowers and a castle in the middle of the lid. In the white tin, my mother kept Maria cookies. In the blue one, crackers of water and salt, which I didn't like very much. In the third, which was like that between bright red and pink, I filled it with crumbly and good biscuits. that I never got tired of wanting to eat.
Of the three cans that were the greatest treasure of my childhood, the one that died first, when it was old, was the white one, the blue one was next, not long after, the red one, despite all these years, has been around (I can't affirm whether alive or dead) in the memory of my days.
I explain: one day, while the three cans were still alive, healthy and shiny, the red and pink can mysteriously disappeared. My father died convinced that it would have been me who had hidden it and in that affliction of denying the blunder, I had forgotten the place. I explained well. Well cried. Even more, for fifteen days, there were no more tins or cookies.
Then there came another can - it even looks prettier than that one, full of cookies, some with chocolate icing and all. My father lectured me that it's ugly to take things out of order from your elders, and it's interesting to say that I've never touched a cookie since. As adults always have explanations for everything, he soon invented that I had been so sick from eating the whole can that now I didn't even want to see them...
The Biscuit Tin had become a recipe for everyone with children my age: “Let them eat, they end up getting sick from eating so much”. The Cookie Tin had become my father's scientific explanation: “Children often don't lie. They believe in what their imagination has created. Other times, they hide the object that made them do something stupid and forget about it. The object disappears, the guilt disappears. Take for example: my son hid a tin of cookies and never knew where. The human mind, especially the child's, is a fascinating world.” He concluded, pleased with himself.
The Biscuit Tin has been with me all my life: because it wasn't me who stole it, it wasn't me who hid it, it wasn't me who ate the biscuits. It's true that on the day of Lata's disappearance, no one was home but me. No one came into the house, as far as I could see. My mother had gone to visit my aunt who was sick, or maybe she wasn't, because later I found out that she had had a son, in fact a daughter who is my cousin Isabelinha. And, as I learned later: pregnancy is not a disease. My father was at his service at the store, behind the counter, filling customers, checking materials and passing Invoices that turned out to be just Shipping Notes, because the person who issues Invoices is Senhor Mário de Sousa, a bulging-eyed mulatto, magnified by the eyeglasses who is the bookkeeper and, despite his color (as they used to say) he is a person of respect and example.
My father would repeat, whenever he picked up one of those toothpick boxes, that he had the Torre dos Clérigos drawn on it: “Look! - behind here is the school where you will study. THE Raúl Doria. You will be a bookkeeper like Senhor Mario...”
And I would look, stare at that tower, to see if it would let me see what was behind it. As you know, drawings, well or badly made, do not have a background.
And I said yes sir, seeing me already sitting, silent, passing invoices, adding numbers, making cards. Also drawing in a mysterious book that is only written at night. Senhor Mário calling the head of the servants: “Prepare the petromax”. I left early. He came back shortly after they closed the doors. The Servant on standby. He took off his coat (he never took off his coat, except then) he rolled up his sleeves and the petromax climbed up to the ceiling hook. It kept swinging: dim, dlão, dim, dlão that looked like a bell, or one of those pieces of train track, where you hit to call the hired ones.
Senhor Mário prepared the pens (he had a few) sharpened the pencils (also many) and went to wash his hands. I mean hands and arms up to the elbows. He dried himself well on a clean white towel and then sat down. He tried his first pen on a sheet of paper and with the pages of the book protected by a sheet of blotting paper, he began to draw letters.
Every word made (slowly and delightfully done) was blotted dry (carefully and unhurriedly). “He's writing the books”, people would say, trying not to make any noise. It was known: an erasure, a smudge, a small amendment and Finance would refuse the books. A tragedy! having to copy the book from the first sheet.
Well, I was thinking about my school “Roldória” and my job as a bookkeeper and I could already see myself, with those big glasses and my mulatto color that I thought was the color of the bookkeepers, when the theft happened. from the tin. The Mysterious Biscuit Tin Theft.
If I could, I would complain to the Lieutenant of the Police, but I hardly knew him. He rarely went to the store, because when he needed to, he would send a note through a sepoy and it would be delivered right away.
Over time, I began to think that the Cookie Tin had been stolen by an angel. Because if no one entered through the doors and the windows are all netted to keep out mosquitoes, it could only be a thief coming from the sky that pierces everywhere. You know that angels are poor children who don't even have clothes to wear. They're naked, poor people. So, who doesn't have the money to buy shorts, doesn't have the money to buy a tin of cookies. That's when he looked up from above and saw that I was eating my cookie and when I closed the can, afraid of eating so much and so much that my mother would take care of it, wham! came on a chopped flight, just like Fragoso on the plane and stole the can. It didn't land or anything. It was just grabbing, eating and eating and throwing the can away, far away into the sea, in case Our Lady didn't take care of the thievery.
I mean: after having invented this story, I was calm for a while. Years, perhaps. I never liked cookies. My father smiled: “You learned for once”, he would say happy as if he had won the jackpot, which at the time, I didn't know what it was. I don't even know where to buy the cautions anymore. I know that the twentieth prizes (with endings, of course) were bought as valid currency in the metropolis. That way you could send some money to your grandparents.
It was at the time of first communion (I was late for catechesis) that Lata returned. The day before we went to confession to Father Sherring, a man with a long beard. A sin from here, a sin from beyond, there I gained the courage to confess the great sin I had: “I am very angry with a thieving angel and I do not want to forgive him, and because so and so, that Our Lady had already punished him , but even so...” The priest, there behind the railing, was coughing in a great agitation, as if he was laughing, but he wasn't, because this was a serious matter.
- Tell that story there.
And I did. “Did you see the angel steal?” No sir. But it just could. Nobody else entered the house.
And the priest, perhaps, trying to excuse the angel who was there from his church: “It could be a cat. The cats came in through the window, ate all your cookies and you think it was an angel.” And I, victorious and happy: “And the can? How did he carry the can?”
The priest changed his strategy: “Pretend then it was the angel. If Our Lord forgives your sins, how is it that you do not forgive the angel?” But sins are not cookies, sir. Sins hurt and cookies are sweet. And furthermore: is it not a sin to forgive the devil's angels? This one, as he was a thief, must be an angel of Lucifer. I even said Lucifer that it was a more beautiful word that I had learned... Then the priest started for the sacristy clinging to my belly while I waited for him. Inside, in the sacristy, the poor guy had some jerks that sometimes even looked like he was laughing... but he wasn't. - I should have taken a purgative, which is a bad thing I always take to clean my guts so I don't have fevers afterwards. Have you ever taken castor oil purgative? It's horrible! But let us forget about this matter, which is a very serious matter.
When the priest came back, his eyes full of tears (he must have been crying for the cursed angel) he said: "Well, go there and see if you can forgive the angel..." All right, all right, but that one from the cat.
Would a cat be able to take the can in its mouth as I had seen a cat do with her kittens? And I screamed: “Damião (Damião was my servant) the cat is eating the little kittens. And Damião he would laugh: “This is how she carries her children on her lap.” I was amazed and now amazed that in addition to taking their children, cats could also carry empty cans in their mouths.
I walked with the cat and the can, time and time, waiting to be able to forgive the angel. Only much later did I see that it was impossible for the cat to be the thief. Yes Sir: she can take the empty can with her teeth, but the lid? I would have to leave the lid and not even the lid was left. Less tired of the angel, he said to him: “Okay, I forgive you, but I don't want to be your friend”. I guess he must have cried a lot, because he's not sad. I just didn't cry because my dad always says men don't cry.
And now: do you think angels also have a father? The other day I asked the Father if there were black angels there in heaven. He said, “Why?” - Because I wanted to know if blacks and whites were children of the same father... I don't know why he laughed. “All are children of God”. -And what is the color of God? “God has no color.” I thought to myself: if he doesn't have color, he's albino... if he's albino, poor thing, he's always hiding. That's why God doesn't appear, nor does he leave his sanzala in heaven... And does God live in the sanzala? If you are albino, live. If you are white, you have a home. If you are a mulatto, it is conformable, if you live with your father, if you live with your mother...
I am now sixty-six years old. Naturally old. Naturally with children and grandchildren, and although time now runs faster - you enter a new year and soon after you are drinking for the old year - although time flies, I said, I have more time to think. So I decided it was time to review the can problem. Because? And why not?
I know it wasn't me. Putting aside the angel and the cat that would not have been, let's see the case of that day:
It's true, that as soon as my mother left the house (only Damião was left with me, who took advantage of these escapades to go play with the laundress) I climbed onto a chair, from the chair to the sideboard and managed to get the can out. I opened it. The birds sang in the branches of the guava tree and, as was the custom, I crumbled a cookie on the lid of the tin. Why on the lid? Because it sucks to eat on the ground. If it hurts us, as my mother used to say: “Boys, don't play with the earth, you get sick”, worse for the little birds. Then because I wanted to hear the sound of pecking at the can while they ate. I had learned to do this without scaring them off. Or rather: Damião had taught me.
I was there entertained. The birds left with full talk and I swear I put the can in the same place: I climbed into the chair. I went up to the sideboard. And I put the can straight, with the flower design facing this way, because my mother sometimes puts the can upside down like this to see if someone has moved it. Nobody entered. Nobody left. And the can disappeared. A mystery that has been worrying my life for sixty years.
Do you remember when I asked Father if there were black angels in heaven? It's just that I thought like this: if white angels don't steal, because they are white, it could only have been a black angel, if there were any. Because only blacks steal. This, I heard myself say every day... Sometimes my father would vent, when there was a very bad white person: "It's worse than black." And I learned that blacks were always bad, although there were whites even worse than them.
But an idea came to my mind: it could have been my mother. Now think with me: I was greedy like any child. Or maybe not: sweeter than any child. And that's it, my mother comes in, looks at the can (I won't have put it in the right position) investigates the floor (she'll have seen a crumb or two there) and thought to herself: "Wait, I'll get you out of your habit.. .” catches me distracted, hides the can and has an excuse to scold me. Since you know I like the cookies as much as the tin, go buy another one. - it's green - and I, either out of pride or because, refuse to eat. As my father says, I got sick.
But let's think: if it had been my mother, she would have told my father and he would have put an end to his theories of seasickness and lying. Precisely for this reason my father does not enter the list of suspects here. It makes no sense for a man to speak with such conviction of a truth and then come to the conclusion that he invented that very truth.
Continuing to investigate my memories. Was it Damião who took the can, especially since I have to admit (although I don't want to) that he was black, and black is always a thief? Later I came to know two things: pregnant women have strange cravings. - it's the first; Damião made the laundress a son. I know that, because my mother wanted to take money from Damião to give the laundress to pay for her son's expenses and he would complain: “No ma'am! Boy (it was his son) has no expenses (he said dismissal): breastfeed on mother’s breasts, you don’t need my money.” My mother complained to my father about this logic and he only laughed and shrugged his shoulders: “You know how they are. don't think how people." My father didn't say how we do. Said like people. What will people be like who don't think like people?
Now, I learned that even if I didn't think of them as people, the girl must have had cravings for cookies that she saw me eating. Damião went to get the can. There they will have eaten one and the other, and suddenly - the mother arrived. So no more or less. An affliction: where to keep the can so as not to be a thief? The can was hidden in the pile of dirty clothes and the dirty clothes jumped to the corner that came and went with the washerwoman every day from the slave quarters to the house and from the house to the slave quarters. There the can was left without being able to return, because as soon as my mother arrived, she realized she was missing. To make her appear would be to confess to the crime...
Well then: if it wasn't me, it wasn't the angel, if it wasn't the cat, if it wasn't my father, if it wasn't my mother, who else could it have been? Damian. There is no mention of the washerwoman that she was not from home. Let's say: it wasn't family.
Damião could move everything that no one scolded him. Or rather: my mother spent her time scolding him - or because he was playing with me, or because he was not playing with me. He would smile: “Yes sir, boss...” and listen to my mother’s outbursts, as if listening to songs from heaven: “You are always the same.” And he with the same litany: "Yes sir, mistress..."
I never realized until today, if he smiled humbly, if he laughed inside my mother's words. Niggas are really hot, you know, right? They act like pretenders who don't know, who don't understand, and they're having fun...
Well: after solving the Mystery of the Tin of Cookies, I won't invent another after sixty years: The Mystery of Damião's Smile.