“I get it.” He pretended to believe us. “And you’re goin’ along this side of the construction site? Won’t the Soviets give you a hard time?”
“Today all the Soviets are drunk. They got told off for it.”
“Go ahead then. If you have any problems just say you’re André the commando’s cousin.”
“That’s cool.”
We started running again, and our heartbeats accelerated when we found ourselves already on the other side, close to the wire mesh fence, in near-total darkness, with only a filament from the waning moon to give us limited visibility.
The light was off in the more distant watchtower. We could only see the one that was closer badly, with the watchman seated there, unmoving.
“It’s really silent and the lights are off in the towers.”
“Their generator’s broken, or else they forgot to fuel it.”
“Let’s go.”
“But what’s the plan?”
“Again?”
“Whaddya mean, again? Are you thick? We’ve got to damp down the whole path between the sticks of dynamite, that I know. But there’s only one bottle. How are we going to do it?”
“Ah, you’re right. We’ll have to activate our back-up plan,” 3.14 said.
“Jargon, again. Speak in clear Portuguese.”
“I’m going to douse the whole left side while you cover me by watching to see if anyone comes. If someone appears, Angolan, Soviet or even Cuban, we only came here to play. You whistle to warn me, I hide the bottle and we split.”
“Okay. Now, go.”
“Wait a sec. I just thought of something.” 3.14 was checking the materials, setting down the bottle and the matches.
“What is it now?”
“It’s better if you go first. The left side is really dark. You see better in the dark.”
“You come up with the craziest stuff.”
“Just go. I’ll wait for you here.”
I set off at a run like a hunched-over commando.
I found the first cardinal point, but something was odd. The ground was almost invisible, but the thread of the fuse and the dynamite were there. There was a kind of white sand in the hole and in the small groove that connected it to the next stick of dynamite. I sniffed.
I couldn’t waste time. I doused the hole and started to spill whisky along the tiny groove in the earth. I looked behind me and saw that the damp stain dried up quickly. I wasn’t certain that the whisky would even link up the cardinal points with a well-lighted fire.
At the second cardinal point the dynamite wasn’t even visible. I dug down a little and felt the coolness on my hands. I tested with my finger and it was what I had thought: someone had poured coarse salt in our dynamite holes.
I didn’t have time to think. I soaked the second point and half of the groove that connected to the third hole. I saw a very thin thread of salt that led out of there and into the interior of the Mausoleum by way of a door that we had never seen.
The guard in the tower coughed and got up to stretch his arms. I quickly entered the tiny door to hide because it was possible that he, too, saw well in the darkness, or that he had those glasses from the movies that see in the night in a greenish colour.
Inside it was dark and damp. I closed my eyes hard to get myself used to the darkness, and I saw as far as my eyes could see: the interior of the Mausoleum seemed to be a really dark, web-like pattern made out of that coarse salt. I don’t know how they had done it; maybe it was a Soviet construction technique. The salt was stuck together and climbed the walls like the threads of sand left by a termite when it climbed a tree. The patterns crossed each other and climbed farther than I could see. In some places there was much more salt that also crossed some cardboard boxes that looked like hastily wrapped presents. I felt afraid and I left: it looked like the web of a giant trap.
I “proceeded with the mission,” as Comrade 3.14 would have said, and arrived at the third cardinal point with the path well doused with whisky. From there, looking through narrowed eyes, I could see the sea in a calm, windless darkness. The sea is always so big and beautiful at any hour of the day, becalmed or with waves that drive boats across it, green in the sunlight or burning blue in imitation of the blues in the sky in the daytime.
I had to cut short these thoughts, which could have delayed me even more. When I had puddled the whisky around the fourth cardinal point, which in reality was only half of the eight dynamite-primed holes, I was gripped by the fear of failing in my mission, almost to the point of tears: the whisky had run out.
I started running again, almost without hunching over, and found 3.14 lying on the ground, very calm, with a little matchstick in his mouth that looked like Lucky Luke’s cigarette when he’s about to draw his gun faster than his own shadow. I lay down alongside him so that we could pretend that we were in the combat trenches.
“I’m startin’ to see that it’s even better if you do the other four points. You’re awesome at seein’ in the dark.”
“Lower your voice, Pi,” I interrupted. “We don’t have enough whisky and the watchman in the tower just woke up.”
“The whisky’s finished?” He became serious.
“The whisky was done in no time because those concrete grooves are enormous.”
“How far did it last?”
“Up to the fourth point. We’ve still got to do all of the other side.”
“Only if Charlita provisions us with more fuel.”
“Provisions, provisions…This is a fine time for you to break out your military Portuguese. We don’t have time.”
“You’re right.” He paused in a strange way. “You ready?”
“For what?”
“It has to be now. If we retreat, the whisky evaporates. And we don’t have another hour to come back here. They must already be looking for us for dinner.”
“Now? How?”
“I also brought this little flask of alcohol. It’s our fallback measure. We go as far as the alcohol lasts, then we ignite it.”
“And we take off running…”
“You got it.”
My hands trembled. 3.14’s did, too, as he picked up the flask of alcohol as if sliding a bullet into the chamber of Senhor Tuarles’s AK-47 and placing a dead-eye shot into a huge load of dynamite.
Far out on the beach a tiny light flickered and went out. Maybe it was the Old Fisherman lighting his pipe or starting a bonfire on the seashore. A thought, after all, is like that quick light and does not linger long.
“Let’s get igniting, Comrade.”
We doused the first cardinal point with alcohol and traced a line that passed under the metal fence as far as an enormous tree. There we lay down in the trench of the tree’s roots.
“The watchman in the tower is standing up, Pi.”
“I’m going to light it, then we run. By the time he sees the fire, we’re outa here.”
“Light it!”
The first match produced a flame that illuminated the area around us and I saw the beautiful patterns on the old skin of that tree. Before the flame could light the alcohol, the match went out. 3.14 lit the second match closer and touched it to the alcohol. But nothing caught.
“You see, it’s counterfeit alcohol.”
“That doesn’t exist.”
“It does too exist. They even counterfeit that Monte Rio wine.”
“Just light it quickly before the alcohol evaporates.”
The third match caught fast and strong. It wasn’t necessary to say anything: we took off running. We let everything go and looked like Foam running flat-out, but we tried to follow up with our eyes on the racing twists and turns made by the fire. It burst out of the trench of roots, made a turn, passed beneath the wire mesh, made another turn close to the watchtower, hit a straightaway and accelerated. We accelerated as well and came flying into Dona Libânia’s yard, driven by our fear of the explosion because, in the end, we didn’t know how much dynamite we had put there. We hunched over, waiting for the noise — but the fire burned itself out just past the tower.