year of high school, in the city of Huambo, he had joined an amateur theater group that had staged
The Death and Life of Severino
, a play with words by João Cabral de Melo Neto and music by Chico Buarque. The experience changed how he looked at the world. Heunderstood, as he played the part of a poor peasant from the Brazilian northeast, the contradictions and injustices of the colonial system. In April 1974 he was in Lisbon, studying law, when the streets were filled with red carnations. He bought a ticket and returned to Luanda to start a revolution. So many years had gone by and there he was, humming “Funeral for a Laborer” while he buried, in an unmarked grave, a writer who hadn’t had luck on his side.
He reentered Luanda at four in the morning. He was thinking about what he might do next, how to justify the disappearance of the Frenchman, when, just as he was passing the Quinaxixe market, inspiration struck. He parked the car. He got out. He took the dead man’s hat and made his way round to the back of a building, next-door to a nightclub, the Quizás, Quizás, where Simon-Pierre had been that night. He put the hat down on the damp ground. There was a kid asleep next to a Dumpster. He woke him with a thump:
“Did you see that?!”
The boy leaped up, confused:
“See what, old man?”
“There, where that hat is! There was a tall mulatto, taking a leak, and then all of a sudden the earth swallowed him up. It only left the hat.”
The boy turned his big spotty face to him. He opened his eyes wide:
“Whoa, man! Did you really see it?!”
“I did, clear as day. Earth swallowed him up. First there was a glow of light, then nothing. Just the hat.”
They stood there, the two of them, stunned, contemplating thehat. Their amazement caught the attention of three other kids. They approached, both fearful and defiant:
“What’s happened, Baiacu?”
Baiacu turned to face them, triumphant. In the days that followed, people would listen to him. People would crowd around him to hear what he had to say. A man with a good story is practically a king.
Sabalu and His Dead
On the day Sabalu broke through the wall, Ludo confessed her greatest nightmare to him: she had killed a man and buried him on the terrace. The boy listened to her without surprise:
“That was a long time ago, Grandma. Even he doesn’t remember that now.”
“He who?”
“Your dead man, that Trinitá. My mom used to say that the dead suffer from amnesia. They suffer even more from the poor memories of the living. You remember him every day, and that’s good. You should laugh as you remember him, you should dance. You need to talk to Trinitá the way you talk to Phantom. Talking calms the dead.”
“Did you learn that from your mother too?”
“Yes. My mother died on me when I was a child. I was left abandoned. I talk to her, but I don’t have those hands protecting me now.”
“You’re still a child.”
“I can’t do it, Grandma. How can I be a child if I’m far from my mother’s hands?”
“I’ll give you mine.”
Ludo hadn’t hugged anyone in a long time. She was a bit out of practice. Sabalu had to lift her arms up. It was really him making a nest for himself on the old lady’s lap. Only later did he talk about hismother, a nurse, killed for fighting against the trade in human corpses. In the hospital where she worked, in a city in the north, corpses would sometimes disappear. Some of the employees used to sell the organs to the witchdoctors, thereby increasing their meager salaries fivefold. Filomena, Sabalu’s mother, had begun by rebelling against the corrupt employees, moving on, later, to fight the witchdoctors, too. She started having problems. A car sprung out at her, as she was leaving work, almost running her over. Her house was burgled five times. They left charms nailed to her door, notes with insults and threats. None of this deterred her. On one October morning, in the market, a man approached her and
The Death and Life of Severino
, a play with words by João Cabral de Melo Neto and music by Chico Buarque. The experience changed how he looked at the world. Heunderstood, as he played the part of a poor peasant from the Brazilian northeast, the contradictions and injustices of the colonial system. In April 1974 he was in Lisbon, studying law, when the streets were filled with red carnations. He bought a ticket and returned to Luanda to start a revolution. So many years had gone by and there he was, humming “Funeral for a Laborer” while he buried, in an unmarked grave, a writer who hadn’t had luck on his side.
He reentered Luanda at four in the morning. He was thinking about what he might do next, how to justify the disappearance of the Frenchman, when, just as he was passing the Quinaxixe market, inspiration struck. He parked the car. He got out. He took the dead man’s hat and made his way round to the back of a building, next-door to a nightclub, the Quizás, Quizás, where Simon-Pierre had been that night. He put the hat down on the damp ground. There was a kid asleep next to a Dumpster. He woke him with a thump:
“Did you see that?!”
The boy leaped up, confused:
“See what, old man?”
“There, where that hat is! There was a tall mulatto, taking a leak, and then all of a sudden the earth swallowed him up. It only left the hat.”
The boy turned his big spotty face to him. He opened his eyes wide:
“Whoa, man! Did you really see it?!”
“I did, clear as day. Earth swallowed him up. First there was a glow of light, then nothing. Just the hat.”
They stood there, the two of them, stunned, contemplating thehat. Their amazement caught the attention of three other kids. They approached, both fearful and defiant:
“What’s happened, Baiacu?”
Baiacu turned to face them, triumphant. In the days that followed, people would listen to him. People would crowd around him to hear what he had to say. A man with a good story is practically a king.
Sabalu and His Dead
On the day Sabalu broke through the wall, Ludo confessed her greatest nightmare to him: she had killed a man and buried him on the terrace. The boy listened to her without surprise:
“That was a long time ago, Grandma. Even he doesn’t remember that now.”
“He who?”
“Your dead man, that Trinitá. My mom used to say that the dead suffer from amnesia. They suffer even more from the poor memories of the living. You remember him every day, and that’s good. You should laugh as you remember him, you should dance. You need to talk to Trinitá the way you talk to Phantom. Talking calms the dead.”
“Did you learn that from your mother too?”
“Yes. My mother died on me when I was a child. I was left abandoned. I talk to her, but I don’t have those hands protecting me now.”
“You’re still a child.”
“I can’t do it, Grandma. How can I be a child if I’m far from my mother’s hands?”
“I’ll give you mine.”
Ludo hadn’t hugged anyone in a long time. She was a bit out of practice. Sabalu had to lift her arms up. It was really him making a nest for himself on the old lady’s lap. Only later did he talk about hismother, a nurse, killed for fighting against the trade in human corpses. In the hospital where she worked, in a city in the north, corpses would sometimes disappear. Some of the employees used to sell the organs to the witchdoctors, thereby increasing their meager salaries fivefold. Filomena, Sabalu’s mother, had begun by rebelling against the corrupt employees, moving on, later, to fight the witchdoctors, too. She started having problems. A car sprung out at her, as she was leaving work, almost running her over. Her house was burgled five times. They left charms nailed to her door, notes with insults and threats. None of this deterred her. On one October morning, in the market, a man approached her and
Similar Books
