A General Theory of Oblivion

THE DEATH OF MONTE

Magno Moreira Monte was killed by a satellite dish. He fell off the roof while he was trying to fix the aerial. Then the thing fell on his head. Some people saw the events as an ironic allegory for recent times. The former state security agent, the final representative of a past that few in Angola wished to recall, was felled by the future. It was the triumph of free communication over obscurantism, silence and censorship; cosmopolitanism had crushed provincialism.

Maria Clara liked watching the Brazilian soaps. Her husband, meanwhile, took little interest in television. The pointlessness of the programmes infuriated him. The news bulletins made him even angrier. He watched football matches, supporting Primeiro de Agosto and Benfica. From time to time he’d sit down, in pyjamas and slippers, to re-watch some old black-and-white movie or other. He preferred books. He had collected many hundreds of titles. He planned to spend his final years rereading Jorge Amado, Machado de Assis, Clarice Lispector, Luandino Vieira, Ruy Duarte de Carvalho, Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez.

When they moved house, leaving the dirty, noisy air of the capital behind them, Monte tried to persuade his wife to do without television. Maria Clara agreed. She’d got into the habit of agreeing with him. For the first weeks, they read together. Everything seemed to be going well. But Maria Clara was getting sad. She’d spend hours on the phone with her friends. Monte then decided to buy and install a satellite dish.

Strictly speaking, he died for love.