A General Theory of Oblivion

THE MEETING

Maria da Piedade Lourenço was a small, nervous woman, with a neglected head of greyish-brown hair that rose up like a crest on the top of her head. Ludo couldn’t make out the details of her face. She did, however, notice the crest. She looks like a chicken, she thought, then immediately regretted having thought it. She’d been terribly nervous in the days leading up to her daughter’s arrival. But when the woman appeared in front of her, a great calm settled over her. She told her to come in. The living room was painted now and all set up with new flooring, new doors, the whole thing at the expense of her neighbour, Arnaldo Cruz, who had also insisted on giving her furniture. He had bought the apartment from Ludo, granting her lifetime use of it and committing to pay for Sabalu’s studies until the boy was done with university.

The woman came in. She sat down on one of the chairs, tense, clinging to her handbag as if to a buoy. Sabalu went to fetch tea and biscuits.

‘I’m not sure what I’m supposed to call you.’

‘You can call me Ludovica, that’s my name.’

‘One day will I be able to call you mother?’

Ludo held her hands tight against her belly. Through the windows she could see the highest branches of the mulemba. There was no breeze to disturb them.

‘I realise I’ve got no excuse,’ she murmured. ‘I was only very young, and I was scared. That doesn’t justify what I did.’

Maria da Piedade dragged the chair over to her. She put her right hand on her knee.

‘I didn’t come to Luanda to claim any debt. I came to meet you. I want to take you back to our country.’

Ludo took her hand.

‘This is my country, child. I no longer have any other.’ She pointed at the mulemba. ‘I’ve seen that tree grow. It’s seen me get old. We’ve talked a lot.’

‘I presume you must have family in Aveiro?’

‘Family?’

‘Family, friends, whatever.’

Ludo smiled at Sabalu, who was watching it all, very alert, buried in one of the sofas.

‘My family is this boy, that mulemba tree out there, and a phantom dog. My eyesight gets worse every day. An ophthalmologist friend of my neighbour was here in the apartment to look at me. He said I would never lose my eyesight completely. I still have my peripheral vision. I’ll always be able to make out the light, and the light in this country is a riot. In any case, I don’t aspire to any more: the light, Sabalu reading to me, the joy of a pomegranate every day.’