The Book of Chameleons (6 page)

The following night Félix asked Ângela Lúcia the same question. First, of course, he'd told her that he'd dreamed about me again. I've seen Ângela Lúcia say very serious things laughing, or on the contrary, adopting a sombre expression when joking with her interlocutor. It's not always possible to tell what she's thinking. On this occasion she laughed at the anxiety in my friend's eyes, greatly increasing his disquiet, but then right away turned more serious and asked:

‘And his name? So did the guy tell you who he is?'

No one is a name! I thought, forcefully…

‘No one is a name!' Félix replied.

The reply took Ângela Lúcia by surprise. Félix too. I watched him look at her as though looking into an abyss. She was smiling sweetly. She lay her right hand on the albino's left arm. She whispered something in his ear, and he relaxed.

‘No,' he whispered back. ‘I don't know who he is. But since I'm the one who dreams about him I think I can give him any name I want, can't I? I'm going to call him Eulálio, because he's so well-spoken.'

Eulálio?! That seems fine to me. So Eulálio I shall be.

It’s raining. Thick drops of water, blown by the strong winds, throw themselves at the windowpanes. Félix, who’s sitting facing the storm, is savouring a fruit shake in small spoonfuls. For the past few nights this has been his dinner. He makes it himself, taking a papaya, piercing it with a fork, then he gets two passion fruit, a banana, raisins, pine nuts, a
soupspoon
of muesli (an English brand) and a strand of honey.

‘Have I told you about the locusts?’

He had told me.

‘Whenever it rains like this it reminds me of the locusts. It wasn’t here, I’ve never seen anything like it here in Luanda. My father, old Fausto Bendito, inherited a farm in Gabela from his maternal grandmother. We used to go spend our holidays there. I felt like I was visiting Paradise. I used to play all day long with the workers’ children, and one or other of the local white boys from the area, who knew how to speak
quimbundo
. We used to play cowboys and Indians, with slingshots and spears we made ourselves, and even with air rifles – I had one, and another boy had one, which we loaded up with
maças-da-India
. You probably don’t know
maças-da
-India
, they’re a little red fruit, about the size of a bullet. They were perfect as ammunition because when they hit their target they’d disintegrate –
pluf!
– staining the victim’s clothes with what looked like blood. When I see rain like this it reminds me of Gabela. Of the mango trees on the side of the road, even on the road out of Quibala. The omelettes – I’ve never tasted any like them! – the omelettes that they served for breakfast at the Quibala Hotel. My childhood is full of marvellous flavours. It smelled good too. Yes, I remember the locusts. I remember the afternoons when it rained locusts. The horizons would
darken. The locusts would fall, stunned, into the grasses – one here, then another there, and they’d be eaten right off by the birds, and then the darkness would get closer, covering everything, and the next moment transforming itself into a nervous, multiple thing, a furious buzzing, a commotion, and we’d make for the house, running for shelter, as the trees lost their leaves and the grass disappeared, in just a few minutes, consumed by that sort of living fire. The next day everything that had been green was gone. Fausto Bendito told me he’d seen a little green car disappear like that, consumed by locusts. He was probably exaggerating.’

I like listening to him. Félix talks about his childhood as though he’d really lived through it. He closes his eyes. He smiles:

‘When I close my eyes I can see those locusts again, falling from the sky. The red ants, warrior ants – you know what I mean? – red ants would come down at night, they’d come from some doorway in the night that leads to hell, and they’d multiply, to thousands, millions, as fast as we could kill them. I remember waking up coughing, coughing violently, suffocating, my eyes burning, from the smoke of battle. My father Fausto Bendito, in his pyjamas, grey hair completely dishevelled, his bare feet in a basin of water, fighting that sea of ants with a pump full of DDT. Fausto shouting instructions to the servants through the smoke. I laughed with a child’s amazement. I’d fall asleep and dream of the red ants, and when I awoke they’d still be there, in the middle of all that smoke, that bitter smoke, millions of those little grinding machines, with their blind fury and their ancestral hunger. I’d fall asleep, and dream, and they’d make their way into my dreams, I’d see them climbing the walls, I’d see them attacking the chickens in their coop, the doves in the dovecote. The dogs would bite at their paws. They’d run in circles, spinning in rage, they’d run in circles howling, their teeth trying to snatch the red ants that were clinging to their toes, they’d run, they’d howl, they’d bite themselves. They’d bite off the red ants, and their toes with them. The patio would be covered in blood. And the smell of blood maddened the dogs even more. It maddened the red ants. Old Esperança – who wasn’t all that old in those days – would shout, beg,
Do something, master! The animals are suffering!
and I remember my father loading the hunting rifle, while she dragged me
into my room so I wouldn’t watch… Esperança would hold me, my face buried in her breasts, but it was no use. When I close my eyes now, I can still see them. I can hear it all – would you believe it? Even today I cry over the deaths of my dogs. I shouldn’t say this, really – I’m not sure you’ll understand me – but I mourn the death of my dogs more than my poor father. We awoke, shook down our hair, our sheets, and the red ants would drop out dead, or almost dead, but still biting randomly, chewing at the air with their thick iron pincers. It rained, fortunately. The rain came through the illuminated sky and we’d go running – bounding – out to that thick, clean water, drinking in the perfume of the wet earth. And the first rains brought the white ants with them. All night long they’d spin about the lights like a mist, with a sweet humming, until they lost their wings, and in the morning we’d find the path carpeted with them, fine and transparent. I’ve always thought of white ants and butterflies as creatures quite without malice. In olden days stories for children always used to end with the words,
and they lived happily ever after
, this being after the Prince has married the Princess and they’ve had lots of children. In life there’s never a plot that works out like that, of course. Princesses marry bodyguards, they marry trapeze-artists and life goes on, and they live unhappily until they separate. And years later, just like the rest of us, they die. We’re only happy – truly happy – when it’s for ever-after, but only children live in a world where things can last forever. I was happy ever after in my childhood, there in Gabela, in the long holidays, as I tried to build a fort in the branches of an acacia tree. I was happy ever after on the banks of a brook, a strip of running water so modest that it didn’t even bother with the luxury of a name, but proud enough for us to think it more than a mere brook – it was the River. It ran through plantations of corn and manioc, and that’s where we’d go to catch tadpoles, to sail improvised steamboats, and also, as evening drew in, to spy on the washerwomen while they bathed. I was happy with my dog,
Cabiri
, the two of us were happy ever after, chasing pigeons and rabbits through the long afternoons, playing hide-and-seek in the tall grasses. I was happy on the deck of
Príncipe Perfeito
, on an endless journey from Luanda to Lisbon, throwing bottles with innocent messages into the sea.
Whoever finds this
bottle, please write to me
. No one ever wrote to me. In catechism lessons an old priest with a faint voice and a weary gaze tried to explain to me what Eternity was. For me it seemed like just another name for my summer holidays. The priest talked of angels, and I saw chickens. To this day, in fact, of all the things I’ve seen, chickens are still the ones that most closely resemble angels. He talked of heavenly joy, and I saw chickens scrabbling away in the sun, digging up little nests in the sand, turning their little glass eyes in pure mystical bliss. I can’t imagine Paradise without chickens. I can’t even imagine the Great God, reclining lazily on a fluffy bed of clouds, without his being surrounded by a gentle host of chickens. You know something – I’ve never known a bad chicken – have you? Chickens, like white ants, like butterflies, are altogether immune against evil.’

The rain redoubled its strength. Rain like this is unusual in Luanda. Félix Ventura wipes his face with a handkerchief. He still uses cotton handkerchiefs, massive things, with old-style patterns on them, and his name embroidered into one corner. I envy him his childhood. Maybe it’s not real. But I envy him it all the same.

As a child, before I’d even learned to read, I used to spend long hours in the library of our house, sitting on the floor, leafing through big illustrated encyclopaedias, while my father composed arduous verses that later – very sensibly – he would destroy. Later, when I was at school, I’d hide myself away in libraries to avoid playing the always too rough games with which boys of my own age used to occupy themselves. I was a shy boy, skinny, an easy target for other boys’ mockery. I grew – I grew a bit more than most, actually – my body developed, but I remained withdrawn, shy of adventure. I worked for years as a librarian, and I think I was happy in those days. I’ve been happy since, even now, in this little body to which I’m condemned, as through some mediocre romance or other I follow other people’s happiness from a distance. Happy love affairs are unusual in great literature. And yes, I do still read books. As night falls I scan their spines. At night I entertain myself with the books that Félix has left open, forgotten on his bedside table. For some reason – I’m not sure why – I miss the
Thousand and One Nights
, the English version by Richard Burton. I must have been eight or nine when I read it for the first time, hidden from my father, since in those days it was considered obscene. I can’t go back to the
Thousand and One Nights
, but to compensate I am discovering new writers. I do like the Boer writer Coetzee, for instance, for his harshness and precision, the despair totally free of self-indulgence. I was surprised to discover that the Swedes recognised such good writing.

I remember a narrow yard, a well, a turtle asleep in the mud. A bustle of people were walking on the other side of the fence. I still remember the houses, set low in the fine, sandy light of dusk. My mother was always beside me – a fragile and ferocious woman – teaching me to fear the world and its countless dangers.

‘Reality is painful and imperfect,’ she’d say. ‘That’s just the way it is, that’s how we distinguish it from dreams. When something seems absolutely lovely we think it can only be a dream, and we pinch ourselves just to be sure we’re really not dreaming – if it hurts it’s because we’re not dreaming. Reality can hurt us, even those moments when it may seem to us to be a dream. You can find everything that exists in the world in books – sometimes in truer colours, and without the real pain of everything that really does exist. Given a choice between life and books, my son, you must choose books!’

My mother! From now on I’ll just call her
Mother
.

Imagine a young man racing along on his motorcycle, on a minor road. The wind is beating at his face. The young man closes his eyes, and opens his arms wide, just like they do in films, feeling himself completely alive and in communion with the universe. He doesn’t see the lorry lunging out from the crossing. He dies happy. Happiness is almost always irresponsible. We’re happy for those brief moments when we close our eyes.

José Buchmann laid the photographs out on the big living room table, large A4 copies, black and white on matt paper. Almost all of them showed the same man: an old man, tall, slender, with a mass of white hair that tumbled down to his chest in thick plaits then disappeared into the heavy strands of his beard. As he appeared in the photographs – dressed in a dark shirt, in tatters, on which you could still make out a sickle and hammer on his chest, and with his head held high, his eyes ablaze with fury – he’d remind you of some olden-day prince now fallen into disgrace.

‘I’ve followed him everywhere these past few weeks, morning to night. Want to see? Let me show you the city from the perspective of a wretched dog.’

‘I’ve sold this story to an American magazine. I’m off to New York tomorrow. I’ll be there a week or two. Longer, perhaps. And you know what I’m planning to do there?’

Félix Ventura wasn’t expecting the answer. He shook his head.

‘But that’s crazy! You do realise how ridiculous that is, don’t you?’

José Buchmann laughed. A serene laugh. Maybe he was just joking:

‘A long time ago, when I was in Berlin, I was surprised to receive a telephone call from an old friend of mine, an old schoolmate from my beloved Chibia. He told me that two days earlier he’d left Lubango, he’d travelled by motorcycle to Luanda, and from Luanda flown to Lisbon, and then from Lisbon he’d set off for Germany – he was fleeing from the war. He had a cousin who was meant to be meeting him, but there was no one there, and so he decided to try and find his cousin’s house – he left the airport, and got lost. He was anxious. He didn’t speak a word of English – still less of German – and he’d never been in a big city before. I tried to calm him down.
Where are you calling from?
I asked
. From a phone box, he replied. I found your number in my address book and decided to call.
I agreed:
You did the right thing. Stay where you are. Just tell me what you can see around you, tell me anything you can see that looks unusual, that attracts your attention, so I can get a sense of where you are. Anything strange?
I asked.
Well, on the other side of the road there’s a machine with a light that goes on and off, and changes colour, green, red, green, and in it there’s a picture of a little man walking.’

He told the whole story imitating his friend’s voice, the broad accent, the anxiety of the unfortunate man on the other end of the line. He laughed again – uproariously this time – till he had tears in his eyes. He asked Félix for a glass of water. As he drank he began to calm down:

‘Yes, old man, I know New York is a very big city. But if I was able to find a traffic light in Berlin, and a phone box opposite it, with an acorrentado – a man in chains… that’s what they call people from Chibia, did you know that?… If I was able to find a phone box in Berlin with an acorrentado inside it, waiting for me, I should in New York be able to find a decorator called Eva Miller – my mother! God, my mother! Within the fortnight I’m sure I’ll find her.’

My dear friend,

I do hope this letter finds you in excellent health. I realise that what I’m writing you isn’t really a letter, but an email. No one writes letters any more these days. But to tell you the truth, I do miss those days when people communicated by exchanging letters – real letters, on good paper, to which you might add a drop of perfume, or attach dried flowers, coloured feathers, a lock of hair. I feel a flicker of nostalgia for those days, when the postman used to bring our letters to the house, and we were glad, surprised to see what we’d received, what we opened and read, and at the care we took when we replied, choosing each word, weighing it up, assessing its light, feeling its fragrance, because we knew that every word would later be weighed up, studied, smelled, tasted, and that some might even escape the maelstrom of time, to be re-read many years later. I can’t stand the rude informality of emails. I always feel horror, physical horror, metaphysical and moral horror, when I see that ‘Hi!’ – how can we possibly take seriously anyone who addresses us like that? Those European travellers who spent the nineteenth century travelling across the backwoods of Africa always used to refer jokingly to the elaborate greetings exchanged by the native guides when – during the course of a long journey – they happened to cross paths with a friend or relative in some favourably shady spot. The white man would wait impatiently, until after several long minutes of laughter, interjections and clapping had passed, he finally interrupted the guide:

‘So what did the men say? Have they seen Livingstone or not?’

‘Oh, no, they haven’t said anything about that, boss,’ the guide explained.‘They were just saying hello.’

I expect just that time-span from a letter. Let us pretend that this is a letter, and that the postman has just handed it to you. Perhaps it would smell of the fear that nowadays people sweat and breathe in this vast, rotting apple. The sky here is dark, and low. I keep making wishes that clouds like these might float over to Luanda, a perpetual mist which would suit your sensitive skin; and wishes too that your business carries on, full steam ahead. I’m sure it must do, as we all so need a good past, especially those people who misgovern us in our sad country, as they govern it.

I always think of the lovely Ângela Lúcia (I do think she is beautiful) as I beat my way rather disheartened through the anxious chaos of these streets. Perhaps she’s right, perhaps the important thing is to bear witness not to the darkness (as I’ve always done) but to the light. If you’re with our friend do tell her that she did 
manage at least to sow the seeds of doubt in me, and that in the past few days I’ve lifted my eyes up to the sky more often than ever before in my life. By lifting our gaze we don’t see the mud, we don’t see the little creatures scrabbling in it. So what do you think, Félix – is it more important to bear witness to beauty, or to denounce horror?

Maybe my careless philosophising is beginning to annoy you. If you’ve read this far I imagine you’re beginning to understand what it was like being one of those European travellers I referred to earlier:

‘So what does this guy want? Did he find Livingstone or didn’t he?’

No, I didn’t. By consulting the telephone directories I was able to find six Millers called ‘Eva’, but none had been in Angola. I then decided to put an ad in Portuguese in five popular newspapers. Not one response. But then I did find my way onto the trail… I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Small World Theory, also known as Six Degrees of Separation. In 1967 the American sociologist Stanley Milgram of Harvard University set up an odd challenge for three hundred residents of Kansas and Nebraska. His hope was that these people – using only information obtained from friends and acquaintances by letter (this being in the days when people still exchanged letters) – would be able to make contact with two people in Boston, for whom they knew only their name and profession. Sixty people agreed to take part in the challenge. Three succeeded. When he came to analyse the results, Milgram realised that there were on average just six contacts between the originator and the target. If his theory was correct, I’m now just two people away from my mother. Everywhere I go I bring with me a cutting from the U.S. edition of Vogue, the one you gave me, which reproduced an Eva Miller watercolour. The report was signed by a journalist by the name of Maria Duncan. She left the magazine years ago, but the Editor still remembered her. After a lot of hunting around I was able to track down a telephone number for her in Miami, where Maria lived when she still worked for Vogue. My call was answered by a nephew of hers, who told me his aunt no longer lived there. After the death of her husband she’d gone back to the city of her birth, New York. She gave me the address. And would you believe the irony? – it’s a block from the hotel where I was staying. I went to see her yesterday. Maria Duncan is an elderly lady with scrawny gestures, purple hair, and a strong, certain voice that seems to have been stolen from a much younger woman. I suspect that loneliness weighs heavily on her – it’s an ill that befalls old people, and so common 
in big cities. She welcomed me with some interest, and when she learned of the reason for my visit became even more excited. A son looking for his mother – bound to touch any feminine heart.‘Eva Miller?’ – no, the name didn’t mean anything to her. I showed her the cutting from Vogue and she went off to fetch a box of old photographs, magazines and cassettes, and the two of us spent hours rummaging through it all, like two children in their grandparents’ attic. It paid off. We found a photo of her with my mother. And more importantly, we found a letter that Eva had written to her to thank her for sending the copy of the magazine. The envelope bore an address in Cape Town. I imagine Eva had been based in Cape Town before settling in New York. But I fear that in order to find her here – or wherever she now is – I’ll have to retread her whole tortured path. I fly to Johannesburg tomorrow, on my way back to Luanda; it’s just a step or two from Johannesburg to Cape Town. It may be a most important step for me. Wish me luck, and receive an affectionate greeting from your true friend,

José Buchmann