For a long time there was no rain. Ludo watered the flowerbeds with the water that had accumulated in the swimming pool. Finally, there was a rip in the cold curtain of low-hanging clouds, which in Luanda they call cacimbo, and the rain came down again. The corn grew. The bean plants yielded flowers and beans. The pomegranate tree was filled with red fruit. Around that time, the pigeons in the city’s sky became more scarce. One of the last ones to fall into her trap had a ring wrapped around its right leg. Attached to the ring, Ludo found a little plastic cylinder. She opened it and discovered a slip of paper, rolled up like a raffle ticket. She read the line that was written in lilac-coloured ink, in a small firm hand:
Tomorrow. Six o’clock, usual place. Be very careful. I love you.
She rolled the piece of paper back up and replaced it in the cylinder. She hesitated. Hunger gnawed at her stomach. And the pigeon had swallowed one or two of the stones. There were not many left, some of them too big to serve as bait. On the other hand, the note intrigued her. She felt powerful all of a sudden. The fate of a couple was there, in her hands, pulsing in pure terror. She held it firmly, this winged destiny, and threw it back at the big, wide sky. She wrote in her diary:
I’m thinking about the woman waiting for the pigeon. She doesn’t trust the mail — or is there no longer any mail? She doesn’t trust the telephone — or have the phones stopped working now? She doesn’t trust people, that’s for sure. Humanity hasn’t worked out too well. I can see her holding the pigeon, not knowing that before her I’d already held it, trembling, in my own hands. The woman wants to run away. I don’t know what it is she wants to run away from. From this country that is coming apart, from a suffocating marriage, from one of those futures that squeeze your feet like someone else’s shoes? I thought to add a little note of my own: ‘Kill the Messenger’. Yes, for if she killed the pigeon she would find a diamond. Or she would read the note and return the pigeon to the pigeon house. At six in the morning she would go to meet a man I imagine to be tall, with controlled movements and an attentive heart. He is lit by a vague sadness (this man) as he prepares for their flight. A flight that will make him a traitor to the fatherland. He will wander the world, taking support from the love of a woman, but he will never be able to fall asleep at night without first bringing his hand to his left breast.
The woman notices the gesture.
Does something hurt?
The man will shake his head — no. Nothing. It’s nothing.
How to explain that what hurts is the childhood he has lost?
Leaning out of the bedroom window, she would see, on the drawn-out Saturday mornings, one of the neighbour-women on the veranda of 10-D, pounding corn. Then she would see her mashing up the cassava paste. Preparing and grilling fish or, at other times, fat chicken legs. The air would be filled with a thick, scent-heavy smoke that would rouse her appetite. Orlando used to like Angolan food. Ludo, however, had always refused to cook black people’s things. She regretted that very much. These days, what she most fancied was to eat grilled meat. She started to watch the chickens that lived on the veranda, scratching away, as the day broke, at the first grains of sunlight. She waited till one Sunday morning. The city slept. She leaned out of the window and lowered a piece of string, with a slip noose at the end, down to the veranda of 10-D. About fifteen minutes later she managed to loop the neck of a huge black rooster. She gave a sharp tug, and brought it up quickly. To her surprise, the animal was still alive (though only barely) when she set it on the bedroom floor. She drew the knife from her waist, she was going to slit its throat — then a sudden flash of inspiration stopped her. There would be enough corn for the next few months, as well as beans and bananas. With a rooster and a hen she could start breeding. It would be good to eat fresh eggs every week. She lowered the string again and this time she managed to loop one of the hens by a leg. The wretched bird struggled, an appalling uproar, feathers and down and dust flying. A moment later the building was woken by the neighbour’s screams:
‘Thieves! Thieves!’
Then, having ascertained the impossibility of anyone scaling the smooth walls to get to the veranda and steal the poultry, the woman’s accusations were transformed into a terrified wailing:
‘Witchcraft … Witchcraft …’
Then, straight away, with total certainty:
‘A Kianda … A Kianda …’
Ludo had heard Orlando talk about a sea goddess called the Kianda. Her brother-in-law had tried to explain to her the difference between Kiandas and mermaids:
‘A Kianda is a being, an energy capable of good or evil. This energy is expressed through the coloured lights that come from the water, through the waves of the sea and the raging of the winds. Fishermen pay her tribute. When I was a child and I used to play by the lagoon, the one behind this very building, I was always finding offerings. Sometimes the Kianda would kidnap somebody as they strolled past. People would reappear days later, very far away, beside some other lagoon or river, or on some beach. That used to happen a lot. After a certain point, the Kianda began to be represented in the form of a mermaid. She was transformed into a mermaid, but kept her original powers.’
Thus it was, with a vulgar theft and a stroke of luck, that Ludo began a small run of poultry-breeding on her terrace, while simultaneously contributing to strengthening the Luandans’ belief in the presence and powers of the Kianda.
CHE GUEVARA’S MULEMBA TREE
Down in the yard, where the lagoon once rose up, there is an enormous tree. I have discovered, by consulting a book from the library about Angolan flora, that it is a ‘mulemba’ (Ficus thonninglii). In Angola, it is considered the Royal Tree, or Word Tree, because the tribal chiefs and elder women often meet in its shade to discuss the problems of the tribe. The highest branches almost reach the windows of my bedroom.
I sometimes see a monkey wandering the branches, way out there, amidst the birds and the shadows. He must have belonged to someone once. Maybe he ran away, or his owner abandoned him. I feel for him. Like me, he is a foreign body in this city.
A foreign body.
The children throw stones at him, the women drive him off with sticks. They shout at him. Insult him.
I’ve given him a name: Che Guevara, because he has a rather rebellious look about him, a bit of a joker, and he is haughty like a king who has lost his kingdom and his crown.