— I’ll walk the twenty kilometres to the entrance gate. After that, I’ll find someone to help me on the road.
— In that case, you have immediate authorization.
— The problem is the track within the reserve. It’s not safe. I would ask your Minister for the Army to arrange for an escort as far as the gate.
— I don’t know, I’ll think about it. To be honest, I wouldn’t want to leave you alone with Zachary.
— Why?
— I no longer trust him.
After a pause, he added:
— I don’t trust anyone.
The Portuguese woman approached him, almost maternally. It looked as if her hand was going to touch our old man’s shoulder, but then the visitor thought better.
— Dearest Silvestre, you know only too well what is needed here.
— Nothing is needed here. Nor anyone for that matter.
— What’s missing here is a farewell.
— Yes, your farewell.
— You never bade farewell to your late wife. That’s what is tormenting you, that lack of proper mourning doesn’t bring you any peace.
— I do not authorize you to talk about such matters, I am the President of Jezoosalem, and I don’t need advice coming from Europe.
— But I learnt this here, with you, in Africa. Dordalma needs to die in peace, to die definitively.
— Leave the Presidential Palace before my fury prevents me from being responsible for my actions.
I took the Portuguese woman by the hand and hurried her from the room, I knew my father’s limits, even when he was in his normal state. In these circumstances, his madness was making him still more unpredictable. Before we left, Marta took a step back and once again confronted the irate Silvestre.
— Just tell me one thing. She was leaving, wasn’t she?
— What do you mean?
— On the bus, Dordalma. She was running away from home. .
— Who told you?
— I know, I’m a woman.
— You can prime your rifle, my dear Zachary.
— But, Silvestre, is it to kill someone?
— To kill, and to kill stone dead.
Zachary should feel happy to receive such a major responsibility. Killing wild animals wasn’t a task worthy of a career soldier. It was when God created Man that he earned his certificate. Wild animals aren’t yet proper living creatures. It’s Man who can be patented. Only by tearing out the last page of God’s book can he defy divine power.
One couldn’t say what the soldier’s feelings were when he was given the mission to kill the Portuguese woman. To me, he looked impassive. And that’s how Zachary left, rifle over his shoulder, his expression impenetrable, his step silent, before my stupefied state. I looked at my father sitting there like a king on his new throne. There was no point in my throwing myself at his feet to appeal for clemency. It was irreversible: Marta, my recent mother, was going to be killed without my being able to do anything about it. Where could Ntunzi be? I ran across the room, the kitchen, the hall. There was no sign of my brother. And Uncle Aproximado hadn’t yet arrived from the other side of the world. I threw myself to the ground, empty and defeated, awaiting the inevitable shot. Would I know how to be an orphan all over again?
But nothing happened. The soldier couldn’t have gone far, for a few minutes later he was back, his shadow filling the doorway of our house.
— What’s happened? — my old man asked.
— I couldn’t.
— Nonsense. Go back there and do what I told you to do.
— I can’t.
— Have you stopped being a soldier?
— I’ve stopped being Zachary Kalash.
— Nonsense — insisted my father. — The order I gave you. .
— Don’t get angry, Silvestre, but not even God could give me that order.
— Get out of here, Zachary Kalash. Go out the back, and you two as well, you’re no longer my sons.
The only creature that merited his affection was Jezebel. And he, Silvestre Vitalício, was going to send us to the corral. In exchange, his sweetheart would come and live inside the house. His decision was final and irrevocable.
I accompanied Zachary to the ammunition store, while Ntunzi went to look for the foreign woman. While we were walking along, the soldier bemoaned his situation the whole way. He declared his regrets, as if he were asking us for absolution:
— I helped to kill your childhood.
And he repeated:
— Half of what I did was wrong; and the rest was a lie.
The only thing he had left of any value and integrity was his marksmanship. The sure way he saved the animals he hunted from being killed.
When we were sitting in his doorway, we asked him to forget his rancour. The man made no reply. He pulled up his trousers and showed us his legs:
— See? They can no longer contain the bullets.
And a bullet fell to the ground just like that.
— They’re talking to me.
— Who?
— The bullets. They’re telling me the war’s over and not coming back.
— Wasn’t it you who said that wars never end?
— Who knows? Maybe what went on in our country wasn’t even a war—Zachary said, as if he were lamenting the fact.
— How could I know? I’ve always lived here, far from everything. .
— That’s what I wanted too, to live far from everything, far from wars. But now, I’m leaving.
With Peace declared Over There, what was holding him back here? Even though I understood, I found it hard to accept his reasons.
— Why did you never leave before?
— Because of Silvestre.
— You always obeyed him like a son.
— It was even worse—he said.
— I’m going to tell you a story, something that really happened to me. .
It happened in the Colonial War, while on a patrol up in the North, near the frontier. The Portuguese military column with which Zachary was travelling was late getting back to its base, and had to spend the night by the river. They were taking with them women and children who had been captured in a village. In the middle of the night, a child began to cry. The officer commanding the platoon summoned Scrap and told him:
— You’re going to have to take care of that baby.
— Don’t tell me to do that, please.
— The kid won’t keep quiet.
— It must be sick.
— We can’t take any risks.
— I beg of you, don’t tell me to do it.
— Don’t you know what an order is? Or do you want me to speak to you in that lousy useless language of yours?