“It’s not that. He was suspicious. It seems he heard our conversation, and he came to warn me that he didn’t want to hear anything about dynamite or playing jokes on the Soviets.”
“It’s not a joke.”
“That’s what I told him. He bawled me out and told me not to play with you guys any more. He said you were boys and you play dangerous games like putting AK-47 bullets in a bonfire.”
“We only did that once.”
“Three times.” 3.14 corrected me.
“I told him that, too, but he still doesn’t want me to.”
“Does he know about the plan?”
“He had drunk a lot, but he knows we went there and saw the dynamite.”
“Is he gonna tell my granma?”
“I don’t think so. He was weird.”
“Weird, how?”
“It was like a message.”
“A message?”
“For you guys.”
“What do you mean?”
“He said you should be careful because you can’t light dynamite with a normal match.”
“Is that right?”
“Yup. And it has to be buried.”
“Is it possible he wants to participate in our plan, 3.14?”
“I doubt it.”
“Sometimes elders aren’t brave enough to speak up.”
“I’ve gotta go back inside. I can’t stay out here with you guys. He’s already watchin’ me from the window.”
“But why did you tell him, Charlita?”
“He threatened to take away my glasses when the soap opera came on, and if I didn’t tell him he wouldn’t take me to Portugal on a trip to get my sight fixed.”
“All right, go inside. If we need something, can we still ask you?”
“I guess it’s better if I don’t know anything else. Good luck and take care.”
“Charlita.” 3.14 got up to whisper in her ear. “You don’t know anything but it’s going to be tomorrow night.”
“Okay, I don’t know anything.”
Dark as the street was, we were amazed that the mosquitoes weren’t there to sting our legs. We didn’t need to fan ourselves or to watch out; the sea breeze or the smoke from some bonfire must have driven away the mosquitoes to go nail legs in some other neighbourhood.
Some stars began to appear in the sky, but there were only a few of them and they shone with a muted gleam.
“Sea Foam says that if there weren’t any stars shining up there, the sky wouldn’t move at all; it would be a place we looked at without seeing any beauty.”
“I don’t think that’s what he said.”
“More or less. He spouts a lot of nonsense, too, when he’s talking to himself.”
“But he spouts nonsense in Cuban while we only spout nonsense in Angolan.”
We ran our hands over our legs out of habit, in an attempt not to be bitten, because, aside from the fever and vomiting, malaria always left us without the strength or energy to play for almost five days, so we had to avoid it.
“Listen, talking of spouting nonsense…You know what I was thinking last night when I couldn’t sleep?”
“What?”
“When I grow up I’m gonna have a pile of money from a business that I already invented just for me.” 3.14 laughed.
“What’s that?”
“You can’t tell anybody.”
“Okay, just say it.”
“I’m going to be the owner of trucks that settle the dust in the neighbourhoods.”
“A great idea.”
“Have you ever thought about it? There must be a heap of neighbourhoods here in Luanda where it’s dusty in the late afternoon. I’m going to become rich overnight.”
“And what are you going to do with the money?”
“I figure I’m going to give it to my poor old dad. He never has money. They pay him really badly at the Mausoleum construction site.”
“You’re doing the right thing. If I had piles of money I’d buy a really big garden.”
“What for?”
“To plant mango trees, guava trees and avocados.”
“What for?”
“Here we’re always waitin’ for the fruit to ripen on the trees. There, since there’d be lots of them, one of them would always have fruit that was ripe. We’d always have plenty of mangoes and guavas.”
“Good idea.”
“And one more thing…The trees would be full of bats and we’d be able to kill them with my cousin’s pellet gun.”
“And would you invite me along?”
“Of course. I’d buy a ton of trees that would have a ton of bats.”
“It’s a deal. You invite me and give me a brand-spanking new pellet gun. I give you a dust-settling truck.”
“You’ve got a deal. Later, when you’re an elder, it won’t be any use sayin’ that you’ve forgotten this conversation we had here today, long before we became adults.”
“Cool it. I’m not going to forget.”
11
Before I had time to finish my breakfast in peace, Granma Nineteen herself sent me to go and see what was causing all of the screaming out there on the beach.
I set off at a run and saw other children running, too. From far off, I recognized Sea Foam’s dreadlocks, the hunched body of the Old Fisherman, and other Bishop’s Beach elders, Russian soldiers with reddened faces — all arguing at the same time. Suddenly a shot from an AK-47 rang out; two shots, as a matter of fact. But we barely ducked, the elders weren’t scared and, from far away, Senhor Tuarles gestured to Dona Isabel, his wife, to get his AK-47, which he kept under the bed in his room.
The sun, as always, took no prisoners, and people had to squint their eyes or even hold a hand over them, as though it were the brim of a hat, to see the person they were arguing with. That was the remedy that made it possible to see, but by now nobody was hearing anything; they were just griping, which is the manner of a person who just shouts without knowing whether anybody’s getting the message.
Soviet soldiers, known in Luanda as “blue ants,” and later baptized “blue lobsters” on Bishop’s Beach, had new placards forbidding everyone from using the beach and approaching the water, which had pretty white foam and occasionally, in the month of August, a few jellyfish whose burning stings wore off only when the bite was rubbed with hot sand. And nobody wanted to give in.
Comrade Gudafterov looked as if it hurt him to carry out the orders he’d been given. He gesticulated without much conviction and concentrated as though he were listening when the Old Fisherman spoke to him. Many voices spoke at the same time; off in the distance, people stayed on their verandas or at their windows watching that fracas on the sands of the ocean.
Later, a car also arrived full of police, who watched from a distance, as though the fracas was between the blue lobsters and the residents of Bishop’s Beach.
“But us guys are here with just a little scrap of beach made from the white hairs of the sea,” Sea Foam was shouting, “we never went to Russia or the Soviet Union to close or open or inaugurate or invade a Soviet beach…But you, misguided reptiles…”
“You comrades think you’re just closing a beach — but who’s gonna give food to our children tomorrow?” shouted the comrade wife of another fisherman whose whole family’s names I’ve forgotten.
“Comrades, superior orders from Comrade Boss General, we just follow order, not decide put forbid placard.” Gudafterov couldn’t even explain things clearly.
“We know very well what you’re going to do next, but we’re not idiots here and we won’t let you. Get away from this beach, nobody owns it. Kianda herself will punish you in your illegal fishing boats, you fucking tupariovs!” Senhor Tuarles was shouting, but now he was gesturing to Dona Isabel not to bring the AK-47 because the police were there to see who was the biggest troublemaker. Fortunately, everybody was being disorderly together, and no one stood out as the person who should be arrested.