A General Theory of Oblivion

THE STRANGE DESTINY OF THE KUBANGO RIVER

Nasser Evangelista was pleased with his new job. He wore a blue uniform, very clean, and spent most of his time sitting at a desk, reading, while he watched the door out the corner of his eye. He had developed his taste for reading during the years he’d spent locked up in the São Paulo prison in Luanda. After his release, he’d worked as a craftsman, carving masks in the Mile-Eleven Market. One afternoon he met Little Chief, with whom he’d shared a cell, who invited him to work as a doorman at the Prédio dos Invejados at Quinaxixe, where the businessman had just moved in.

‘It’s a quiet job,’ he assured him. ‘You’ll be able to read.’

With this, he persuaded him. That morning, Nasser Evangelista was rereading, for the seventh time, the adventures of Robinson Crusoe when he noticed a very ugly boy, his face pitted with acne, lurking around the entrance to the building. Nasser marked his page and put the book away in a drawer. He got up, and walked over to the door:

‘Hey, you! Spotty kid! What do you want with my building?’

The lad approached, intimidated:

‘Do you know if there’s a boy living here?’

‘Several, kid. This building’s a whole city.’

‘A seven-year-old boy, name’s Sabalu.’

‘Ah, yes! Sabalu, I know the one. Eleven-E. Very nice kid. Lives with his grandmother, but I’ve never seen her. She doesn’t leave the house.’

At that moment, two other characters appeared. Nasser was startled to see them walking up the road, both dressed in black, as though they had stepped straight out of an adventure from Corto Maltese. The older of the two wore a Mucubal hat, with red and yellow stripes, necklaces around his neck and big bracelets on his wrists. He was wearing old leather sandals, which revealed huge feet that were cracked and covered in dust. Next to the old man, moving with the elegance of someone showing himself on a catwalk, was a young man, very tall and thin. He, too, had bracelets and necklaces, but on him such accessories seemed as natural as the bowler hat that covered his head. The two men were walking decisively towards Nasser. ‘We’re going up,’ the young man informed him, while with a gesture of annoyance he pushed the doorman aside. Nasser had received very firm instructions that he was not to allow anyone in without first taking a note of the number on their ID card or driver’s licence. He was about to block their way when Baiacu, dodging around him, dashed off up the stairs. The doorman followed him. Jeremias and his son called the elevator, got in, and rode it up. When they got out on the eleventh floor, the old man had a dizzy spell. He couldn’t catch his breath. He leaned against the wall for a moment. He saw Daniel Benchimol, who was greeting Ludo, and he recognised her, even though he had never met her before.

‘I have a letter for you,’ Daniel was saying. ‘Perhaps it would be better if we went inside, so you can sit down and we might talk.’

While this was happening, Magno Moreira Monte was coming into the building. He didn’t find the doorman, so he called the elevator and went up. He heard Nasser’s shouts as he chased Baiacu:

‘Come back. You can’t go up there!’

Little Chief, who was at home shaving, was also alarmed at the doorman’s shouts. He washed his face, put on some trousers, and went to the door to look into the hallway and see what the commotion was about. Baiacu ran past him, pushed the shepherds aside and stopped just a few metres away from Daniel Benchimol. Then at once the elevator door opened and the ex-prisoner was surprised to find himself face to face with the man who, twenty-five years back, had questioned and tortured him.

Baiacu took a switchblade from his trouser pocket, flicked it open and showed it to Sabalu:

‘Thief! I’m going to cut your ears off!’

The boy faced up to him:

‘Come on, then. I’m not scared of you any more!’

Ludo pushed him into the apartment:

‘Go in, child. We were wrong to open the door.’

Nasser Evangelista fell onto Baiacu and disarmed him:

‘Easy, kid, drop that now. We’re going to have a talk.’

Monte was pleased to see Little Chief’s astonishment:

‘Ah, comrade Arnaldo Cruz! Whenever I hear anyone speaking ill of Angola, I always use you as an example. A country in which even the madmen get rich, even the enemies of the regime, does necessarily have to be a pretty generous one!’

António, stunned at the collection of events, whispered into the old man’s ear, in the twisting language of the Kuvale:

‘These people don’t have oxen, father. They know nothing about oxen.’

Daniel Benchimol held Ludo’s arm:

‘Wait a moment, ma’am. Read the letter.’

Little Chief stuck an index finger into Monte’s chest:

‘What are you laughing at, you hyena? The hyenas’ days are over now.’

Ludo handed back the envelope:

‘My eyes are no longer any use for reading.’

Monte pushed Little Chief’s arm away, and as he turned his body he noticed Jeremias. This coincidence seemed to please him even more:

‘Well, now, another familiar face. That meeting of ours out in Namibe didn’t go too well. Not for me, at least. But this time, you people are on my turf.’

Daniel Benchimol shuddered when he heard Monte’s voice. He turned to the detective:

‘I’m just starting to remember you myself, sir. You woke me on the night Simon-Pierre disappeared. The idea was to make me disappear, not him — right?’

At this point, all eyes were on the old agent. Nasser Evangelista let go of Baiacu and advanced on Monte, enraged, the knife in the air:

‘I remember you, too, sir, and they are not happy memories.’

Finding himself surrounded by Jeremias, António, Little Chief, Daniel Benchimol and Nasser Evangelista, Monte began to back towards the staircase:

‘Take it easy, take it easy — what happened, happened. We’re all of us Angolans.’

Nasser Evangelista didn’t hear him. He heard only his own cries, a quarter of a century earlier, in a narrow cell that stank of shit and piss. He heard the cries of a woman he never saw, coming from some other identical darkness. Shouts, and the barking of dogs. Behind him everything was shouting. Everything was barking. He took two steps forward and pressed the blade to Monte’s chest. He was surprised to meet no resistance. He repeated the gesture again and again. The detective staggered, very pale, and brought his hands up to his shirt. He saw no blood. His clothes were intact. Jeremias took Nasser by the shoulders and pulled him towards him. Daniel grabbed the knife from his hand.

‘It’s fake, thank God. It’s a circus knife.’

So it was. The knife had a hollow handle, with a spring, into which the blade slid, disappearing when something pushed against it.

Daniel stabbed himself in the chest and the neck to demonstrate to the others the fakeness of the weapon. Then he leaped onto Jeremias. He stabbed Nasser. He laughed loud, big, hysterical laughter, and the others joined in. Ludo laughed too, holding on to Sabalu, tears running from her eyes.

Only Monte remained serious. He smoothed out his shirt, straightened his back, walked down the stairs. Outside, the air burned. A dry wind shook the trees. The detective struggled to breathe. His chest hurt, not where Nasser had struck those fictional knife-blows, but inside, in some secret place, somewhere he couldn’t name. He wiped his eyes. He took the dark glasses from his trouser pocket and put them on. He recalled, for no apparent reason, the image of a canoe floating in the Okavango Delta.

The Kubango starts being called the Okavango when it crosses the Namibian border. Though it is a large river, it doesn’t fulfill the same destiny as its peers: it doesn’t empty into the sea. It opens its broad arms and dies in the middle of the desert. It is a sublime death, a generous one, which fills the sands of the Kalahari with green and with life. Monte had spent his thirtieth wedding anniversary on the Okavango Delta, in an eco-lodge — a gift from his children. Those had been blessed days, he and Maria Clara catching beetles and butterflies, reading, going on canoe trips.

There are some people who experience a fear of being forgotten. It’s a pathology called athazagoraphobia. The opposite happened to him, he lived in terror that he would never be forgotten. There, on the Okavango Delta, he had felt forgotten. He had been happy.