Pablo read it and went pale.
Without a word, he went out onto the veranda and sat down on a bench. He took out a handkerchief and began wiping his forehead. We waited for him to say something. He read the message again and remained silent, until at last he said quietly, indistinctly, as if his mouth were stiff:
“They captured Benguela today. All the Cubans died in the fighting for the town. Word was sent by a wounded signalman.”
Then he looked at us and added:
“Now they’re on their way to Luanda. It’s six hundred kilometers from Benguela to Luanda, but there are no strongpoints or defensive lines along the way. If those are gutsy boys and they decide to drive night and day, they can be here tomorrow.”
In the next house a woman called out “Mauro! Mauro!” After a moment, a child’s voice answered. It was 6 P.M. The Angelus sounded somewhere far off.
“Get me the radio operator,” Pablo said to the soldier who had brought the message. “And dismiss the men.”
Military matters were beginning, so I withdrew and went to the hotel. I asked someone to drive me to the edge of the city, to Morro da Luz, where the MPLA headquarters was located in the former residence of the French consul. But the staff was meeting and the sentry didn’t want to admit me. I went back in a truck carrying Portuguese soldiers. These were troops in a state of utter dissoluteness. They wore long beards and had neither caps nor belts. They were selling their rations on the black market and breaking into cars. Their orders were to maintain neutrality, not to shoot, not to get involved. They were loading everything onto the ships. The last unit was to leave in a week.
In the evening I spoke with Queiroz. He thinks Luanda will be hard for them to take, because the whole populace will fight and they will have to decide on a mass slaughter that the world might not tolerate. But then he began to have doubts himself: “In the end, how can I know? The world is so far away.”
Ruiz flies the plane to Porto Amboim, carrying a group of sappers and some crates of dynamite. They are to blow all the bridges on the Cuvo River, which will cut the road between Benguela and Luanda. If they make it.
Warsaw calls at midnight.
THE SITUATION IN ANGOLA [I sent] HAS TAKEN A DRAMATIC TURN IN THE LAST TWENTY-FOUR HOURS. THE SOUTH AFRICAN ARMY, SUPPORTED BY UNITS OF MERCENARIES AND THE FNLA AND UNITA, HAS OCCUPIED BENGUELA, THE SECOND LARGEST CITY IN ANGOLA. THESE TROOPS ARE PROCEEDING IN TWO STRONG ARMORED COLUMNS TOWARD THE CAPITAL, WHERE THE DEFENSE OF THE CITY IS BEING ORGANIZED. ACCORDING TO STILL UNCONFIRMED REPORTS JUST RECEIVED HERE, ONE OF THESE COLUMNS HAS OCCUPIED NOVO REDONDO AND IS THREE HUNDRED MILES SOUTH OF LUANDA. IF THESE TROOPS CANNOT BE STOPPED AT THE LINE OF THE CUVO RIVER THEY COULD BE AT THE APPROACHES TO LUANDA WITHIN THE NEXT TWO DAYS. IT IS ANTICIPATED THAT A SIMULTANEOUS ATTACK WOULD THEN BEGIN FROM THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH IN ACCORDANCE WITH PLAN ORANGE, WHICH CALLS FOR THE OCCUPATION OF THE CAPITAL BEFORE NOVEMBER 10. THIS WOULD MEAN THE POLITICAL AND MILITARY LIQUIDATION OF THE MPLA, AT LEAST IN THE SHORT TERM END ITEM.
FRIENDS, CALL ME IN SEVEN HOURS BECAUSE THIS IS THE DECISIVE MOMENT, OK?
YES, OF COURSE, TKS MUCH
TKS BYE BYE
GOOD NIGHT
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4 (NERVES, NERVES)
I got up at three in the morning, to prepare my commentary for PAP in peace. I had barely gone downstairs and got the telex working, however, when in walked five toughs with automatics, heading straight for me: “Sit down and don’t move!” They woke up Felix, who was sleeping like a rock on the couch, and demanded a list of the hotel guests. They were going to conduct a search and take everybody to the police for interrogation. The enemy is inside the city, in this quarter, in this hotel. Fifth column. Infiltration. They brought a dozen or more sleepy, frightened people downstairs. Persuasion was senseless. “No talking!” cried the leader, holding up his pistol like the starter at a track meet. You ought to go blow off some steam on the front, brother, I wanted to tell him. We waited some more, but organization had broken down as usual, and the car that was supposed to take us to the police had not showed up. Almeyda, the MPLA press chief, appeared with the morning. He ordered them to let us go and told them to leave. People walked away dejected and exhausted. Anybody with a pistol could go around terrorizing hotels, doing whatever he wanted.
Quiet reigns on the northern front. They are waiting for the troops from the south to come nearer. Then they will strike from two sides at once — this week, perhaps tomorrow.
Radio communiqués summon the populace to the defense of the city. In this decisive hour. No one can shirk.
The MPLA leadership meets all day.
Help is apparently waiting in Brazzaville and in Cabinda, but it can’t reach Luanda because the airport and the harbor remain in the hands of the Portuguese army until next Monday (November 10). Until next Monday, Angola is formally a Portuguese territory, an overseas province, and also a part of NATO territory. So the MPLA must hold out until next week. And if it is too late? If the Portuguese units suddenly strike Luanda itself, attacking the Angolans? (There are fears that some units, led by rightist officers, will abandon neutrality and begin operating on their own.) Rumors circulate that President Neto has already been arrested. Panic breaks out. It is impossible to get a grip on the situation. A complete lack of information from the southern front. Where is the enemy? Have they halted? Are they coming? Still far away? Already in the suburbs? People are losing their heads. I drop by my room and find that Dona Cartagina has packed my bag herself. And where are the newspaper clippings that I have been collecting for three months, my greatest treasure? Where are the clippings? She threw them into the toilet and flushed them! (It was my misfortune that Ribeiro had fixed the pumps that day and there was water.)
Reports spread that the MPLA will announce independence ahead of time — today or tomorrow — counting on immediate recognition of Angola by friendly countries who will treat the airport and harbor as sovereign territory of the new state. Access to Luanda is the issue. Right now, the decisive thing is to open the city, which is surrounded on land and cannot be reached by water or air.
And if help doesn’t come in time? The storming of Luanda. Despite the heroic efforts of the city’s inhabitants, the overwhelming strength of the enemy, etc. Who will come in first? The ones from the south or the FNLA? The FNLA is a cruel army. They practice cannibalism. A few days ago I didn’t believe that. But last week I went with a group of local journalists to Lucala, four hundred kilometers east of Luanda. One day earlier, Lucala had been recaptured from an FNLA unit that withdrew to Samba Cajú, a town seventy kilometers to the north. We drove with a pursuing unit. The seventy kilometers were a horrible sight. All along the road through this thickly populated region, there was not a single living person or surviving house. All the people had been murdered and all the villages burned. The withdrawing army had destroyed every sign of life along the way. Heads of women had been thrown in the roadside grass. Corpses with hearts and livers cut out. I rode half the way with my eyes closed. At one point, somebody in our car raised his voice. I opened my eyes: In a dead, burned village two monkeys were sitting at a table in front of a burned bar. They looked at us for a moment and then made tracks for the bushes.
To fall into the hands of drunken cannibals — a grim death. Their sweaty faces, their dull gaze, the way they shout, the way they point their guns at their victims, their amusement at the trembling they inspire in them. Better not to think about it.