The Book of Chameleons (9 page)

When José Buchmann appeared tonight he was accompanied by an old man with a long white beard and wild braids, grey and dishevelled, cascading over his shoulders. I recognised him at once as the old tramp the photographer had been pursuing, for weeks on end, showing him – in that extraordinary image – emerging from a sewer. An ancient, vengeful God, wild-haired, with suddenly lit-up eyes.

‘I’d like to introduce you to my friend Edmundo Barata dos Reis, an exagent of the Ministry of State Security.’

‘Not ex-agent, say rather ‘ex-
gent
’! Ex-exemplary citizen. Exponent of the excluded, existential excrement, an exiguous and explosive excrescence. In a word, a professional layabout. Very pleased to meet you.’

Félix Ventura offered his fingertips to the old man. He was perplexed, annoyed. Edmundo Barata dos Reis took his hand firmly in his own hands, and held it, looking at him sidelong, like a bird, attentive, mocking, enjoying the other man’s discomfort. José Buchmann, wearing a lovely honey-coloured corduroy jacket, arms folded across his chest, seemed to be enjoying himself too. His little round eyes glowed in the dark of the room like shards of glass.

‘I thought you’d enjoy meeting him. This man’s life story could almost have been made up by you…’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I’m-All-Ears. That’s what they used to call me. It was my fighting name. I liked it. I liked hearing it. And then – in a flash! – the Berlin wall collapsed on top of us.
Pópilas
, old man! Agent one day, ex-gent – experson – the next.’

Félix Ventura twitched:

‘Did you study with Professor Gaspar?’

Edmundo Barata dos Reis smiled, surprised:

‘Yes, oh yes! You too, comrade?’

With genuine joy the two men embraced. They exchanged recollections. Barata dos Reis, a good couple of years older than Félix Ventura, had been to Professor Gaspar’s classes at a time when you could count the number of black students at the Liceu Salvador Correia on the fingers of one hand. Leaving school he got a job with the meteorological service. Arrested in the early sixties, accused of trying to establish a bomb-making network in Luanda, he spent seven years in the Tarrafal concentration camp in Cape Verde. ‘No better than a chicken coop,’ he said, ‘but the beach was lovely…’ Within a few weeks of independence he was already known to friends and enemies alike (and he’d always had more of the latter than the former) as Mr I’m-All-Ears. Two years in Havana, nine months in Berlin (East Berlin), another six in Moscow; his steel tempered, he returned to the solid trenches of socialism in Africa.

‘A communist! Would you believe it? I’m the very last communist south of the equator…’

That insistence would be what did it for him. Within a few months he would be changed into an ideological nuisance. An awkward sort of fellow. He wasn’t ashamed of shouting ‘I’m a communist!’ at a time when his bosses would only murmur, in hushed tones, ‘I used to be a communist…’ and he’d keep yelling out – ‘Yes, I’m a communist, I’m really very
Marxist-Leninist
!’ even at a time when the official version had begun to deny the country’s socialist past…

‘I’ve seen some things, old man…’

José Buchmann sat down, legs crossed, in the big wicker chair that Félix Ventura’s great-grandfather had brought from Brazil. He put his right hand deep into his inside jacket pocket, took out a silver cigarette case, opened it, slowly separated some tobacco and rolled a cigarette. A wicked smile lit up his face:

‘Now tell him what you told me, Edmundo, the story about the President…’

Edmundo Barata dos Reis looked at him seriously – angrily – violently
tugging at the strands of his beard. For a moment I thought he was about to get up – I was afraid he might leave. José Buchmann shrugged:

‘You can say it, damn it! There’s nothing to worry about. Félix here is a solid chap. He’s one of us. And anyway, weren’t you both students of this famous Professor Gaspar? That’s got to mean something. Félix tells me it’s like belonging to the same tribe or something.’

‘The President has been replaced with a double.’ Edmundo Barata dos Reis said this in a burst, then fell silent. His eyes flitted anxiously around the room. He had begun to look like a sparrow searching for an open window, for a bit of light, a bit of sky he could escape to. He lowered his voice: ‘The old man has been replaced. They’ve put a double in his place, a scarecrow – I’m not sure how to put it – a fucking replica.’

‘Shit!’ Félix burst out laughing. I’d never heard him swear before. I’d never heard him laugh like this either, with such violence. José Buchmann was surprised. Then he joined in, the two of them laughing. The three of us, laughing. One laugh drawing on another. At last Félix settled.

‘So, we have a fantasy president now?’ he said, wiping away his tears with a handkerchief. ‘Yes, I’d suspected as much. We have a fantasy government. A fantasy justice system. We have – in other words – a fantasy country. But do tell me,
who
has replaced the President?’

Edmundo Barata dos Reis shrunk back in his chair. He didn’t remind me of a God any more, he didn’t remind me of a warrior – he was a dog, humiliated. He stank. He stank of urine, of rotting fruit and leaves. He straightened himself up, and instead of replying to Félix’s question he addressed himself to José Buchmann, pointing at him… ‘That laugh – when I hear that laugh, old man, it’s as though I’m face to face with someone else, from long ago. From another time, an old time. Don’t we know each other?’

‘I don’t believe so.’ The photographer tensed.‘I’m from Chibia. Are you from Chibia?’

‘What are you talking about, old man? I’m pure Luandan!’

‘Then obviously not.’

‘It’s true,’ said Félix, ‘Buchmann is from the provinces, from the deep south. He’s a bush-man…’

‘A bushman? The bush here is more like a garden. And your gardens here in Luanda, such as they are – well, they’re really more like bushland.’

‘Take it easy. Down with tribalism. Down with regionalism. Up with people-power. Isn’t that what they used to say? All I wanted was for comrade Edmundo here to answer my question. So who was it that replaced the President with a double?’

Edmundo Barata dos Reis sighed, deeply:

‘The Russians, I think. Maybe the Israelis. The arms mafia, Mossad – I don’t know – maybe both.’

‘Could be – it would make sense. And how did you discover this coup?’

‘I know the double – I hired him! I hired others too. The old man never appeared in public himself – the doubles would always appear in his place. This one – Number Three – was always the best. He was the only one who could speak without arousing suspicions – the others kept quiet, we only used them for ceremonial functions when we just needed a body in the room. But Three was a special case, an extraordinary talent, a real actor. I watched him being trained – it took five months. He learned fast – how to move, how to approach people, the tone of voice, the protocol, the old man’s life story – the whole deal. By the end he was perfect. Or nearly perfect – this guy had one problem – or I should say,
has
one problem – he’s left-handed. It’s like looking at the President in a mirror. That’s how I noticed. Haven’t you spotted that the President has become left-handed all of a sudden? No, no, you haven’t noticed. No one has.’

‘When did you find out?’

‘A year ago, a little over a year ago.’

‘Were you still working for the security services then?’

‘What, me?! No, old man, I’ve been living the life of a tramp for more than seven years now. See this shirt I’m wearing? It’s become like a skin to me. It’s a shirt from the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R. I put it on the day they fired me, and I’ve never taken it off since. I swore I wouldn’t take it off until Russia went back to being communist. And now I wouldn’t be able to take it off even if I wanted to. Like a skin to me – you see? I’ve got a hammer and sickle tattooed on my chest now. That won’t come off.’

 It really wouldn’t come off. Félix Ventura looked at him, dazed. José Buchmann smiled, as if to say ‘Well, isn’t he something?’ Edmundo Barata dos Reis resumed the posture of an old warrior. He shook his tough grey locks, roughly, spreading a revolting smell around him.

‘Soup?’ he asked.‘Don’t you have any soup?’ ‘He’s crazy!’ Félix Ventura said certainly, after Edmundo Barata dos Reis had left. He said it, then said it again, firmly. He had no intention of wasting any more time on the matter. But José Buchmann insisted.

‘I’ve heard stranger things…’

‘Listen, the man’s completely barking. He’s flipped. You’ve been abroad for a long time, you don’t know what’s happened in this damned country. Luanda is full of people who seem completely lucid but suddenly burst out speaking impossible languages, or crying for no apparent reason, or laughing, or cursing. Some do all these things at once. Some are convinced that they’re dead. There are others who really are dead, but no one’s had the guts to tell them. Some think they can fly. Others believe this so strongly that they really can. It’s a fairground of lunatics, this city – out there in those ruined streets, in those clusters of
musseque
houses all around town, there are pathologies that haven’t even been recorded. Don’t take anything they tell you too seriously. Actually, let me give you a piece of advice – don’t take
anybody
seriously.’

‘Maybe he isn’t crazy. Maybe he’s just pretending to be crazy.’

‘I don’t see the difference. Someone who’s chosen to live on the streets, in the sewer, who believes that Russia will go back to communism, and who – on top of all that – wants people to think he’s crazy… That is crazy, in my book.’

‘Maybe. Maybe not.’ José Buchmann seemed disheartened. ‘I’d like to get to know him better.’ 

‘We spent some tough years here.’

Félix sighed. The heat was stifling. Humidity clung to the walls. But he was sitting in the big wicker chair, sitting up straight, in a well-cut dark blue suit which drew attention to the shine of his skin. In front of him, nestling in a silk cushion, with a flower-patterned shirt and short red shorts, sat Ângela Lúcia, listening to him, smiling.

‘There was a time when I used to have to do everything for myself, as I couldn’t afford to pay a servant. I’d clean the house, wash clothes, cook, take care of the plants. And there wasn’t any water either, so I’d have to go and fetch it, with a metal can on my head like a grocer’s wife, from a hole someone had made in the tarmac – at the end of the road, at the bend by the cemetery. I was able to bear it all, for all those years, because I had Ventura. I used to shout,
Ventura, go do the washing up!
and Ventura would go. Or,
Ventura, go fetch more water!
and Ventura would go.’

‘Ventura?!’

‘Ventura – me. He was my double. At some point in our lives we all resort to a double.’

Ângela Lúcia liked Edmundo Barata dos Reis’s theory. She loved the idea of doubles. Together they watched several tapes showing the President. I think I’ve already told you Félix has hundreds of videotapes. They found, to their surprise, that in the older ones the old man signed documents with his right hand. Recently he’d used only his left. Ângela Lúcia also noticed that in some shots he had a small mole beneath his left eye, and not in others.

‘He may have had it removed,’ Félix pointed out. ‘Nowadays people get rid of all sorts of physical signs, as easily as you might wash off an ink-stain.’

Ângela was the one who noticed that the President with the mole appeared in earlier recordings, but also in ones that came later than those with the mole-less President.

‘It has to have been one of the doubles!’

They played that game all afternoon. After five hours, by which time night had closed in, they’d managed to identify at least three doubles – the one with the mole, one with a slight bald patch, and a third who – Ângela swore – had a calm sea-glow in his eyes.

‘I’m not going to argue with you on the subject of light,’ said Félix. That’s when he remembered the business with his double, Ventura: ‘Believe me. We spent some tough times here.’

The woman wanted to know how he’d managed to survive during that time. Félix shrugged. He lived badly, he muttered; at first he used to rent out novels – Eça, Camilo, Jorge Amado – at a time when few people had the money to buy their own. Later on he started sending parcels of books out to Lisbon, and his father would sell them to second-hand book dealers or selected clients. Fausto Bendito Ventura had managed to buy up excellent libraries on the cheap from despairing colonials in the turbulent months leading up to independence. He’d exchange a silver ring for a bound collection of nineteenth-century Angolan newspapers. A medical library in good condition – more than a hundred volumes – cost him no more than a single silk tie, and for six dollars he acquired fifteen cases filled with history books. Years later some of the old colonials would end up buying the books back from him – in packets of ten – at their true price.

‘It ended up being a good business.’

Heat was rising from the floor. It slipped in, a damp breath, through the cracks in the doors, in slow waves, carrying with it the salty smell of the sea and its murmur too, the wonder of the fish, the dim light of the moon. Ângela Lúcia’s skin shone. Her shirt, clinging to her breasts. Félix still had his jacket on – he must have been baking. All I wanted was a cool crack to dive in to. I went to the kitchen – up there, through the highest windowpane, I could see over the wall of the yard to the luminous clamour of the
musseques,
and beyond them a broad black abyss, and the stars. The black abyss was the sea. I spent some time just looking out. I imagined myself sinking into that 
silence, blindly, like I used to, my heart leaping, my hands opening the water, at my feet a pleasant coldness, rising up my legs to my waist. I felt refreshed. When I came back to the living room I saw that Félix had taken off his jacket and was now sitting on the big cushions in front of the television, with his arms around Ângela. The ceiling-fan pushed around the warm air, the blades sweeping it lazily towards the walls. Centuries of dust, mites, old writers’ souls, came away from the books and danced in the air like a mist, like a faint dream, lit by flashes from the television screen. Soundless images in black and white of the President presiding over a meeting. The President raising his fist. The President in a kit playing football. The President greeting other presidents. And then images in colour, of the President opening a park. ‘The Chaves Ex-Heroes Park’, read the plaque. Ângela laughed. Félix laughed. The President cut the ribbon. Félix turned back to Ângela, and kissed her on the lips. I saw her – with some surprise – closing her eyes and accepting his kiss. I heard her moan. The albino tried to undo her shirt, but she stopped him.

‘No. Not that. Don’t do that.’

She raised her legs elegantly, and slipped off her shorts. Through the shirt that clung to her body you could make out the roundness of her breasts, her smooth belly. Then she turned her body, till she was kneeling over Félix. Her broad shoulders – lovely swimmers’ shoulders – made her waist look even slimmer. My friend sighed:

‘You’re so beautiful…’

Ângela took his head in her hands and kissed him. A long kiss.

It took my breath away.

Mother was little older than I, and of course as we both aged – alongside one another – the difference got smaller and smaller. Besides which I actually think she aged more slowly than I did. From a certain moment when we went out together people began to talk to me about her as ‘your wife’. Maybe if she’d lived longer people would have started taking her for my daughter. I think these little mistakes used to make her happy. She insisted on calling me her ‘boy’. Until the day she decided to die – nearly a hundred years old – she held the threads of my life in her hands. 

‘My boy mustn’t come home too late.’

And I – aged eighty-something – would be terrified of coming home after midnight. If I went out with a woman friend, I felt I’d have to phone home every half hour, so Mother wouldn’t torment herself. She’d be up waiting for me, vigilant, with her cat on her lap.

‘My boy mustn’t drink alcohol.’

And I’d sit at bar tables and drink a glass of milk, while my friends teased me affectionately and got themselves drunk on whisky or beer. And Mother went to trouble to keep me away from any women she suspected might one day take me away from Her. And she’d push the ones who were decidedly ugly – and especially the more stupid ones – into my arms, sure that I’d spurn them; and then she’d reprimand me:

‘My boy plays very hard-to-get. He’s going to end up on his own.’

I’m not telling you this to justify myself. It wouldn’t be fair to blame Mother’s zeal or my poor father’s severity for my misogyny. I was who I was because I lacked the courage to be any different. I watch Félix Ventura run his fingers across the trembling body of his love, I watch him whisper sweet words in her ear, I watch him carry her to the bedroom (the woman protests, gesticulates, cries out laughing happily) and lay her down on the bed. And I watch him – at last – fall asleep, exhausted – and I begin to understand how I have come to be here.

Félix sleeps, his right arm across Ângela’s chest, his hand resting on her breast. Her eyes are open. She’s smiling. Carefully she disentangles herself and gets up. She puts on her flowered t-shirt, nothing else. She has long, smooth legs, incredibly thin at her ankles. She crosses the room without a sound. Keeping the darkness away with her fingertips, she opens the bathroom door, switches on the light and goes in. She takes off the t-shirt. She washes her face, her shoulders, her armpits. I notice a group of dark, round scars on her back, which stick out like insults on her golden velvet skin. I think I can see – in the mirror – just the same marks on her breasts and stomach. I go back to the bedroom, Félix is murmuring something. I think I catch the word ‘savannah’. I’d like to talk to him. Perhaps if I were to sleep now I’d find him in his white suit, in coarse linen, and his beautiful
panama hat, sitting under a tall baobab tree, somewhere in that savannah he’s crossing in his dreams.

Ding ding!

The doorbell.
Ding ding!
An urgent ringing. Knocking.
Ding ding!
Félix leaps out of bed, white and naked as a ghost, reaches for the lamp on the bedside table and turns it on. Ângela Lúcia appears beside him, alarmed, a towel around her body:

‘Who was it?’

‘What?! I don’t know, my love. There’s someone knocking at the door. What time is it?’

‘It’s still dark. It’s four-twenty.’ Ângela says this without looking at her watch. Then she glances at her wrist for confirmation – ‘Yes, four-twenty. I’m never wrong. Who could it be?’

‘I’ve no idea!’

Ding ding! Ding ding!
Knocking. A voice calling. Félix opens the cupboard and takes out a white dressing gown. He puts it on. Ângela gets up.

‘Wait.’ Her voice is hoarse, a murmur: ‘Don’t go.’

‘I’m going. You wait here.’

I rush across the ceiling. Félix peers out of the living room window. The veranda is in darkness.
Ding ding!!!
He makes his mind up, and opens the door. Edmundo Barata dos Reis hurtles into his arms, pushes him back, closes the door.

‘Fucking hell, comrade. They’re after me, they’re right here. They’re going to kill me.’

‘Who’s going to kill you, damn it?! Explain yourself!’

‘Them!’

He’s in his underpants. He’s barefoot. His U.S.S.R. Communist Party t-shirt seems to have regained some of its original colour – perhaps from the shock. Or maybe it’s really blood. Edmundo shakes his grey hair, his eyes bulge from their sockets. He runs from one side of the room to the other. He closes the blinds. Félix watches him, impatient.

‘Calm down. Sit down, and calm down. I’ll make you some tea.’

He makes for the kitchen. Edmundo follows. He closes the blinds. He closes the window shutters. He sits on a bench, his hands on the table, as Félix puts some water on to boil.

‘Soup? Don’t you have any soup? I’d rather have some soup…’

Ângela Lúcia appears at the door. She’s wearing a man’s shirt, blue, very large, which comes down almost to her knees. She must have got it from the cupboard. She has Félix’s slippers on her feet, also too big for her. Dressed like that she looks so fragile, almost childlike. Edmundo stumbles:

‘I’m sorry, miss – I didn’t mean to disturb…’

‘What’s going on?’

Félix shrugs:

‘Edmundo here is going to be killed. Let me introduce you. This is Mr Edmundo Barata dos Reis, ex-agent of the State Security. Or as he’d have it, ex-gent. I’ve told you about him.’

‘Who’s going to kill him?!’

‘They’re going to kill him, and the man wants soup! So… that’ll be one soup…’

Ding ding! Ding ding! Ding ding!

Edmundo Barata dos Reis hides his face between his knees. Félix shudders.

‘OK, relax. I’ll go see who it is. You two just stay here, I’ll sort it out. Ângela, don’t let him leave.’

He goes back to the living room. He takes a deep breath, and opens the door. In my other life I used to know people like that – they’re frightened by the sound of wind through the leaves, they can’t bear cockroaches, not to mention policemen, lawyers, even dentists. And yet when the dragon bursts into the clearing, opens its mouth and spits fire, they stand up to them. Calm, cool as an angel.

‘What do you want?’

José Buchmann bursts into the room. There’s a pistol in his right hand. He’s trembling. His voice trembles even more:

‘Where is the son of a bitch?’

‘First of all, give me that gun. I won’t have armed men in my house…’

He says this firmly, without raising his voice, absolutely sure that he will be obeyed. The other man ignores him, though, stepping quickly across the corridor and heading directly for the kitchen. Félix follows him, protesting. I run. I don’t want to miss any of the excitement. Ângela Lúcia is standing in the doorway, her arms out, blocking the way:

‘You’re not coming in!’ She explodes: ‘Poças! Where the hell did you come from?’

I can hear the voice of Edmundo Barata dos Reis, shrill, desperate, but only then do I see him. He’s standing with his back to the wall, arms hanging down by his sides – his t-shirt glows red on his skinny chest. The blade of the sickle, the gold of the hammer, glimmer for a moment. Then fade.

‘Girl, this creature has appeared from hell! From the past! From the place the damned come from…’

José Buchmann is trapped, with Ângela in front of him, and Félix behind him holding his arms. His face is right up against the woman, and he is shouting as though possessed. Suddenly he is like a giant. The veins in his neck fill and pulse, bulge in his forehead:

‘Yes, that’s right – I’ve come from the past! And who am I? Well? Tell them who I am!…’

All of a sudden he throws himself forwards, knocking Ângela over while lunging for Edmundo – he grabs his neck with his left hand and forces him to his knees. He pushes the end of the pistol-barrel into his neck:

‘Tell them who I am!’

‘A ghost. A demon…’

‘Who am I!’

‘A counter-revolutionary. A spy. An agent of imperialism…’

‘What’s my name?’

‘ … Gouveia. Pedro Gouveia. I should have killed you back in
seventy-seven
.’

José Buchmann kicks at him. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. He has heavy black boots on, which make a dark sound as they strike the body. Edmundo doesn’t cry out. He doesn’t even try to avoid the blows. The kicks find his stomach, his chest, his mouth. The boots turn red.

‘Shit! Shit!’

José Buchmann – or Pedro Gouveia, as you prefer – puts the pistol down on the table. He takes a cloth and wipes down his boots. He’s still shouting –
Shit! Shit!
– as though the other man’s blood were burning his feet. Then he sits on a bench, hides his face in his hands, and breaks into a deep, heaving sob, which shakes his whole body. Edmundo Barata dos Reis drags
himself to a corner of the kitchen. He sits up, back against the wall, his legs out in front of him. He smiles: