Terror at loving you in such a fragile place as the world.
Woe at loving you in this imperfect place
Where everything leaves us broken and silent
Where everything deceives and divides us.
I’m writing you this letter, dear Mwanito, so that we may take our leave of each other without saying goodbye. On the last day we were together, you told me about the dream you had had in which your father saved me from drowning in the river. If we take it that life is a river, then your dream was true. I was saved in Jezoosalem. Silvestre taught me how to find Marcelo alive in everything that is born.
I never tried to find out how Marcelo had died. For me, the explanation that he had died of an illness was enough. On the day I left, when I was already at the airport, Noci told me details of my husband’s final journey. After Aproximado had left him by the gate, Marcelo must have wandered aimlessly for days, until he was shot down in an ambush. We can imagine where he went from the images that remained on his camera. Noci gave me these black and white photos. They were not, as I had supposed, pictures of water birds and landscapes. It was a report on his own end, an illustrated diary of his decline. From what we can glean, we can see that he wanted to escape from himself. At first by being dishevelled and shedding his clothes. Later, by behaving more and more like an animal, drinking water from puddles and eating raw flesh. When Marcelo was shot down, they took him for a wild animal. He wasn’t killed in war. It was hunters. My man, dear Mwanito, chose this particular suicide. When death took him, he had already ceased to be a person. And in this way, perhaps he felt that he would die a lesser death.
It wasn’t a continent that swallowed up Marcelo. He was consumed by his inner demons. Those demons went up in flames shortly before my return to Lisbon, when I burned all the photographs that Noci had given me.
Life only happens when we stop understanding it. Lately, my dear Mwanito, I have been far from understanding it. I never imagined myself travelling to Africa. Now, I don’t know how I’m going to return to Europe. I want to go back to Lisbon, of course, but free from the memory of ever having lived. I don’t want to recognize people or places or even the language that gives us access to others. That’s why I got on so well in Jezoosalem: everything was strange to me, and I didn’t have to account for who I was, or what course of life I should follow. In Jezoosalem, my spirit became light, free of any rigid structure, akin to the herons.
I have your father, Silvestre Vitalício, to thank for all this. I criticized him for having dragged you off to a wilderness. But the truth is that he established his own territory. Ntunzi would answer that Jezoosalem was founded on the deception of a sick man. It was a lie, of course. But if we’ve got to live a lie, let it be our own lie. Besides, old Silvestre didn’t depart so far from the truth in his apocalyptic vision. For he was right: the world ends when we are no longer capable of loving it.
And madness isn’t always an illness. Sometimes, it’s an act of courage. Your father, dear Mwanito, had the courage that we lack. When all was lost, he began again. Even if, for the rest of us, it was meaningless.
That’s the lesson I learnt in Jezoosalem: life wasn’t made to be fleeting and of little consequence. And the world wasn’t made to have boundaries.
When you began to read the labels on the weapons crates, it wasn’t the letters that you learnt most. You were taught something else: words can be the curve that links Death and Life. That’s why I’m writing to you. There is no death in this letter. But there is a farewell, which is a way of dying a little. Do you remember what Zachary used to say? “I’ve had all my deaths, fortunately, all of them were fleeting ones.” My only death was Marcelo’s. And that was certainly the first conclusive outcome. I don’t know whether Marcelo was the love of my life. But it was a whole life’s worth of love. Whoever loves, does so forever. Don’t do anything forever. Except to love.
However, I’m not writing to you to talk about myself, but rather about your mother, Dordalma. I spoke to Aproximado, to Zachary, to Noci, to the neighbours. Every one of them told me bits of her life story. It’s my duty to return this past that was stolen from you. People say that the story of someone’s life is lessened in the account of their death. This is the story of the last days of Dordalma. Of how she lost her life after having been lost to life.
It was a Wednesday. That morning, Dordalma left home as she had never done before in her life: to be stared at and admired. She wore a dress to leave mere mortals groping and a neckline capable of making a blind man see heaven. She was so glorious that few noticed the little case that she was carrying with the same vulnerability as a child on its first day of school.
I’m beginning like this, Mwanito, because you have no idea how beautiful your mother was. It wasn’t her face, or her waist, or her lithe, shapely legs. It was her entire being. At home, Dordalma was never more than gloomy, lifeless, and cold. Years of solitude and rejection had equipped her for nothingness, to be a mere native of silence. But on countless occasions, she would avenge herself in front of the mirror. There at the dressing table, she would garb herself in passing apparitions. She was, so to speak, like an ice cube in a glass. Disputing her place on the surface, reigning over this lofty abode until the time came for her to go back to being water.
So let me now go back to the beginning: on that Wednesday, your mother left home dressed to provoke fantasies. The looks she got from her neighbours were not appreciative of her beauty. There were sighs: of envy from the women; of desire from the men. The males gazed at her, their pupils dilated, their eyes predatory.
Here are the facts in all their bluntness and crudity. That morning, your mother climbed into the minibus and squeezed herself in between the men who filled the vehicle. The van set off amidst fumes, impelled by some strange sense of haste. The van didn’t follow the usual route. The driver didn’t pay attention to where he was going, distracted perhaps by the sight of his beautiful passenger in his rearview mirror. Eventually, the bus stopped in a stretch of dark, secluded wasteland. It pains me to write what happened next.
According to the few witnesses, the truth is that Dordalma was thrown onto the ground amid grunts and salivations, feral appetites and animal frenzy. And she sank further into the sand as if only the ground offered her fragile, trembling body protection. One by one, the men used her, shrieking as if avenging some age-old insult.
Twelve men later, your mother remained, almost lifeless, on the ground. During the hours that followed, she was no more than a corpse, a body at the mercy of ravens and rats, and worse than that, exposed to the mischievous looks of the few passers-by. No one helped her to get up. Countless times, she tried to recompose herself, but her strength failed her and she collapsed again, without a tear, her spirit gone.
Finally, after night had long fallen, your father appeared, creeping furtively like a cat among the rooftops. He looked around, took a deep breath and picked up his wife. With Dordalma in his arms, Silvestre crossed the road slowly, knowing that dozens of eyes were staring at his sinister figure from behind their windows.
He stopped abruptly by the front door, and stood there like a statue. In the pitch darkness it was impossible to see whether he was crying, whether his face was furrowed in resentment of the world and its hidden people.
He shut the door behind him with his foot and from then on, Vitalício’s house was forever darkened. Silvestre placed your mother’s body on the kitchen table and cushioned her head on bags and cloths. Then, he went to your room and kissed your brow and passed his hand over your brother’s head. He turned the key in the lock and declared: