Another Day of Life

Telegrams

When I returned to Luanda on Saturday morning it was still dark. We had ridden from Benguela in a tanker truck sent at night to the capital to look for gasoline, because the southern front was immobilized by lack of fuel. Along the way we passed drowsy, half-conscious checkpoints and boys wrapped in tarpaulins, in horse blankets, in bedspreads and sacks, since it was drizzling unpleasantly. As usual, discussions broke out among them over whether or not to let us pass, and they wanted us to give them something to eat or smoke, but we had nothing so they waved their hands in resignation and went back to sleep. You could have driven in at night and taken Luanda without a shot. Women in the African suburbs were lighting fires in front of their houses and preparing to grind manioc. Grinding manioc into a hard, crunchy white dough consumes half the lives of African women. The other half is earmarked for carrying and giving birth to children. In some places there were already lines waiting for water at the wells; in others, for bread. The people in these lines snoozed against walls or slept, covered with sheets, on the ground. Glued to the walls were posters reading YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU with a giant black finger pointing at the eyes of passersby, which at that hour were clotted with sleep. In the European city center there was not a sign of life. Dust and cobwebs had overgrown the houses and streets.

I returned to room 47 in the hotel, drove a herd of cockroaches out of the bed, and lay down to sleep. I never dream, but this time I suddenly found myself in the woods outside Warsaw, where hooligans with knives were ducking in and out from behind the bushes, drawing nearer, as if playing hide-and-seek. I opened my eyes to see Dona Cartagina, the thin and exhausted Oscar (now owner of the hotel), and the doorman Fernando — with a plastic medallion bearing the likeness of Agostinho Neto around his neck — standing over me. They were happy that I had returned and, quite pointlessly, kept asking me if I was alive — with such insistence and incredulity that in the end I couldn’t tell if I was awake, or if this was still a dream in which Cartagina, Oscar, and Fernando were suddenly prowling with knives through a grove of trees outside Warsaw. I don’t know what happened next (I probably went back to sleep), because when I got out of bed the room was empty. There was a musty dampness in the air, and the ceiling fan was out of order. I tried turning the faucet. The faucet snorted violently, then silence: no water. I ran downstairs, where Felix was dozing at the reception desk with his elbows folded on heaps of unneeded paper and a stack of valueless money, his pale face reposing motionless and expressionless in his hands. I shook him: “Give me something to drink, Felix!” He opened his eyes and looked at me. “There’s been no water for three days,” he said. “The last wells are running dry. When there’s nothing to drink, the city will have to give up.” I left him and headed for the kitchen, but when I opened the door such a macabre odor assailed my nostrils that my legs grew heavy and I couldn’t take a step. The stench emanated from a mountain of unwashed dishes and pots, but above all from a fetid pig that the black cook was quartering with a cleaver. “Camarada,” I said, leaning on the table to keep from dropping over, “give me water.” He put down the cleaver and gave me a mug of water from a tin barrel. I felt a softness and a chill inside me: I was coming back to life. “Give me some more,” I said. He consented: “Drink as much as it takes for you to feel good, camarada.”

I locked myself in my room to make a phone call. The telephone worked. The concept of totality exists in theory, but never in life. In even the best-built wall there is always a chink (or we hope there is, and that means something). Even when we have the feeling that nothing works anymore, something works and makes a minimal existence possible. Even if there’s an ocean of evil around us, green and fertile islets will poke above the water. They can be seen, they are on the horizon. Even the worst situation in which we can find ourselves breaks down into elements that include something for us to grab hold of, like the branch of a bush that grows on the bank, to avoid being sucked to the bottom by the whirlpool. That chink, that island, that branch sustain us on the surface of existence.

Thus in our closed city, where thousands of things had ceased functioning, just when it seemed that everything was ruined, the telephone nevertheless worked. From the south, from the border with Namibia, I had brought news that today or perhaps tomorrow the armored columns would roll into Angola. The baker ’s son had reported that the South African army was already in Tsumeb, ready for war. They would need three hours to drive to the border, three days to drive to Benguela, and perhaps another week to drive to Luanda. No one in Luanda knew this, because the capital had no contact with the rest of the country. I wanted to pass along what the baker ’s son and Farrusco had said: that the intervention had been set in motion and that the southern front wouldn’t hold. I started phoning around, but none of the numbers answered. I tried again and again. The signal droned on and nobody anywhere picked up the telephone. I looked at the calendar, because I no longer had a feeling for time, which means that time had lost all sense of division for me, all measurability, it had fallen apart, it had oozed out like a dense tropical exhalation. Concrete time had ceased to signify anything and for a long while now the fact that it was Wednesday or Friday, the tenth or the twentieth, eight in the morning or two in the afternoon, had meant nothing to me. Life had propelled me from event to event in an undefined process directed toward an unseen goal. I knew only that I wanted to be here until the end, regardless of when it came, or how. Everything was a total puzzle that absorbed and fascinated me.

Using the calendar, I calculated that it was October 18, 1975. And, as I now remembered, Saturday. That explained the silence of the telephones. Because on Saturday and Sunday all life died away. Those two days were governed by their own inviolable laws. The guns fell silent and the war was suspended. People put down their weapons and fell asleep. Sentries left their posts and observers put away their binoculars. The roads and the streets emptied. Headquarters and offices were closed. Markets were depopulated. Radio stations went off the air. Buses stopped running. In an incomprehensible but absolute way, this vast country with its war and destruction, its aggression and poverty, came to a halt, went motionless as if someone had cast a spell, as if it were enchanted. Neither the most titanic explosion nor any heavenly apparition nor any human appeal could budge it from its weekend lethargy. Worst of all, I could never establish what happened to the people. The closest friends disappeared like stones in water. They were not at home and not in the streets. Yet they couldn’t have traveled outside the city. Clubs, restaurants, and cafés — they didn’t exist. I don’t know — I can’t explain it.

All the warring sides respected this weekend rest, and the bitterest enemies acknowledged the opponent’s right to two days of relaxation. In this matter there were no divisions; the weekend laxity swept up and united everyone. These people were constructed in such a way that their vital energy lasted from Monday to Friday, after which they passed at midnight into a state of nirvana, into nonexistence, freezing in the positions they were in at that hour. Everything was enveloped in an apathetic silence that had the effect of a sleeping potion. Even nature seemed to go to sleep. The wind died down, the palms stiffened, and the fauna disappeared into the earth.

Oscar came in the evening with a telephone number written on a piece of paper, saying that I was to call it. “Whose number is it?” I asked. He didn’t know. They had phoned the hotel and said to give me that number when I returned to Luanda. Oscar left me alone in the room. I picked up the receiver and dialed the number written on the paper. At the other end of the line, a low masculine voice answered. I said they had given me that number in the hotel and said to call. Was I named such-and-such? asked the low voice. Of course, I said. The first part of the conversation had been in Portuguese, but at that moment the other switched to Spanish and from his way of speaking and his accent I realized that I was speaking to a Cuban. Anyone who has spent some time in Latin America and knows Spanish can immediately distinguish the Cuban accent: It has a specific melody and is a slaphappy fusion of words whose endings are regularly omitted. I asked the other who he was and what he was doing, thinking that he was a reporter from Prensa Latina or someone of that order. Then he said, “Man, don’t ask too much because whoever asks too much gets too much of an answer.” I shut up, since I didn’t know what he was talking about. “We’ll see you in your room,” he said. “We’ll be there in an hour.” And he hung up.

Two of them came, in civilian clothes, and one was black and massive and robust, and the other was white and stocky and short. They sat down and the black one took out a pack of Populares, a brand of Cuban cigarettes that I like. They asked if I had ever been in Cuba.

“Yes, I was there once.”

“But where?”

“I was everywhere, in Oriente, in Camagüey, in Matanzas.”

The black is from Oriente. “It’s beautiful there, right?” he laughs.

“Beautiful,” I say. “They took me up a magnificent mountain. The view was fantastic.”

“Have you been south of here lately?” the white asked.

“Yes, I have.”

“What’s it like down there?”

“What’s it like? First tell me who you are.”

The white said, “We’re from the army. From a group of instructors.”

This was something new to me — I didn’t know there were Cuban instructors in Angola. In Benguela I had seen a few people in Cuban uniforms, but they wear every conceivable kind of uniform here, whatever they get from abroad or on the front, so I thought they were MPLA soldiers. Now I asked, “Were those guys I saw in Benguela yours?”

“Yes,” said the black, “ours. We’ve got a dozen or so people there.”

I said maybe they had come too late, since by my calculations the South African army might already be deep inside Angola. Anyway, what could a dozen or so people do? They were facing a strong regular army. The South Africans had a lot of armor and artillery. They were Afrikaners and Afrikaners know how to fight. And the MPLA had no weapons. I said that Farrusco’s unit had only two mortars and a few old rifles. There were no heavy weapons in Lubango, either. The one armored vehicle that used to be in Benguela had been taken out by the mercenaries. Who could put up any resistance to the armored columns that were coming, or might already have come, from Namibia? Besides, the past weighed heavily on the fate of the war. In this country the black man had lost every war with the white man for five hundred years. You couldn’t change the way people think overnight. The MPLA soldier could whip the FNLA or UNITA soldier, but he would fear the white army coming from the south.

They agreed that the situation was difficult. We fell silent. It was dark from smoke in the room, and humid. We sat there sweating, tormented by thirst. I was fighting against my imagination because the vision of a bottle of beer or chilled juice with ice or some similar madness kept appearing before my eyes. I asked them if more aid was coming. They didn’t know. It might come, but when and how, nobody could say. They had just arrived and were supposed to train this army, but it wasn’t an army in our understanding of the term. There were loose units scattered around the country. Would there be time to make an army out of them? The enemy was twenty kilometers from Luanda. Mobutu was sending more and more battalions. They might march in tomorrow.

I led them downstairs. They said that we would have our next meeting at their place, because it was awkward for them to come to the hotel where various people were hanging around. They would send a car for me when the time came. I asked what I was to call them. I was to call the black one Mauricio and the white one Pablo. But if I telephoned it would be better not to use any names; instead, say in Spanish that a friend wanted to meet them. They would see to the rest. In a dark side street stood a covered jeep, new, with no license plates. The hand of someone sitting inside opened the door. They got in and the jeep drove away.

But there at staff headquarters in Pretoria and later in Windhoek and finally (a small detail) at the front headquarters in Tsumeb, everything was precisely and capably thought out. Maps on the walls: Africa in miniature but still large, from floor to ceiling and from the entrance all along the commander ’s wall, with the uninhabited regions marked in a sandy color. The higher-ranking staff officers at the long tables: experts who know it all inside out.

The name of the operation: Orange.

The goal of the operation: to occupy Luanda by November 10, 1975 (at 1800 hours on that day, in accordance with the Alvor agreement, the last Portuguese units were to leave Angola). The next day, announce the independence of Angola, with power passing into the hands of an FNLA-UNITA coalition government.

Coordination: a strike from the south along the Tsumeb— Pereira d’Eça — Lubango — Benguela — Novo Redondo — Luanda road. A simultaneous strike from the north along the Maquela do Zombo — Carmona — Caxito — Luanda road. A simultaneous strike from the east along the Nova Lisboa— Quibala — Dondo — Luanda road.

Forces, southern flank: motorized units of the South African army (support: units of Portuguese volunteers, FNLA and UNITA units, the Chipenda force). Northern flank: FNLA units (support: units of the Republic of Zaïre army, units of Portuguese volunteers). Eastern flank: same as for the northern flank.

Zero hour —

(Here begins a discussion in English-Afrikaans-Portuguese. Two opinions collide. One faction favors beginning the action earlier, because the enemy might put up resistance; breaking down resistance takes time and could delay the occupation of Luanda. Besides, to the degree that moving into Angola will extend the army’s supply lines for ammunition, fuel, and food, it is necessary to allow additional time. They propose Monday, October 20, for zero hour. Others contend that the operation will not take more than two weeks. In the north we are already in the suburbs of Luanda. All information indicates that the enemy will not be able to mount any resistance in the south. We’ll move quickly in Panhard armored vehicles. It is enough to calculate the driving time of these vehicles from Tsumeb to Luanda and then factor in time for the units to have meals and sleep. They contend that a zero hour of October 27 will be sufficient. The first, more cautious variant finally prevails. Even if it takes three weeks, it will be a blitzkrieg to dazzle the world.)

Zero hour: Sunday, October 19.

On Sundays, as I mentioned, the country is immersed in a state of nonexistence and manifests no signs of life. Today, however, informed by an incomprehensible presentiment, Comandante Farrusco has been hunting his driver Antonio since morning and in the end Antonio has appeared on his own, sleepy and unconscious with exhaustion. Farrusco orders him to get behind the wheel and in the same red Toyota jeep that I returned from Pereira d’Eça in, they drive along the road through the bush. A while later they spot something in the rays of the sun that could almost be a phantom but quickly materializes and assumes the shape of a drawn-out column of armored vehicles above which hovers a bulging, nearly motionless helicopter. Another moment and the nervous rattling of machine guns rings out. Farrusco is badly wounded, shot through the lungs. Antonio is hit in the leg but remains conscious. He backs up and rushes in the opposite direction with his severely wounded commander.

The column moves forward toward Pereira d’Eça. The soldiers ride hidden inside the vehicles, but it must be hot and stuffy for them because — contrary to orders — here and there, in more and more of the armored personnel carriers, the hatch opens and a young, tanned face appears.

And in Luanda? What can you do on Sunday in our abandoned city, upon which — as it turns out — sentence has already been passed? You can sleep until noon.

You can turn on the faucet to check — ha! — just in case there is water.

You can stand before the mirror, thinking: so many gray hairs in my beard already.

You can sit in front of a plate on which lies a piece of disgusting fish and a spoonful of cold rice.

You can walk, sweating from weakness and effort, up the Rua Luis de Camões, toward the airport or down toward the bay.

And yet that’s not all — you can go to the movies, too! That’s right, because we still have a movie theater, only one in fact, but it is panoramic and in the open air and, to top it off, free. The theater lies in the northern part of town, near the front. The owner fled to Lisbon but the projectionist remained behind, and so did a print of the famous porno film Emmanuelle. The projectionist shows it uninterrupted, over and over, gratis, free for everyone, and crowds of kids rush in, and soldiers who have got away from the front, and there’s always a full house, a crush, and an uproar and indescribable bellowing. To enhance the effect, the projectionist stops the action at the hottest moments. The girl is naked— stop. He has her in the airplane — stop. She has her by the river — stop. The old man has her — stop. The boxer has her — stop. If he has her in an absurd position — laughter and bravos from the audience. If he has her in a position of exaggerated sophistication, the audience falls silent and analyzes. There’s so much merriment and hubbub that it is hard to hear the distant, heavy echoes of artillery on the nearby front. And of course there is no way — not because of Emmanuelle, but the great distance — to hear the roaring motors of the armored column moving along the road.

“When the dawn breaks, to Thee, O Lord, the earth sings.” A bad sign — Dona Cartagina is singing the Office of Our Lady. Since morning the whole city has been staggering and trembling, and the windowpanes are rattling because the artillery has opened fire all out: boom, boom, bash, whammerjammer, zoom, zoom, and the horizon is full of martial crashing. Holden Roberto has announced that he will enter Luanda today. He’s asked the populace to remain calm. Yesterday his planes dropped leaflets, pictures of Holden with the caption GOD RULES IN HEAVEN HOLDEN RULES ON EARTH.

They must be attacking in great strength, because the firing has not slackened since dawn and it is almost noon. In the city there is panic and nervous running around and shouting. It is fifteen minutes by car to the front line. They may get in. Dona Cartagina wants to hide me in her apartment. She lives near here: Go three blocks and take a right. I’m supposed to go now, and she will show me the way so I’ll know. I’ll be her son, caring for his elderly, ailing mother. And why do you speak such strange Portuguese? they ask. Because I was born in Timor but I ran away from home and went to live in Burma. I served in the Burmese navy and so I speak that language better.

Show us your documents!

I left my documents on the ship, and you know yourselves that all the ships have sailed away.

Dona Cartagina orders me to burn my papers and pack my suitcase but I tell her no, there’s still time, they might not come today.

I call the Cubans; no answer.

I go downstairs, catch Oscar on the run, and ask him what’s going on. He doesn’t know and he’s running. An army truck goes down the street, then another one. Some women with bundles, on the trot. Finally, a patrol appears, looking for the enemy. What enemy? says Felix, as white as the wall. My skin tingles because at that moment I am sitting in front of the telex trying to make contact with Warsaw, but they might think I’m trying to contact Holden Roberto. I have already managed to ring through to the local central and transmit:

3322 TIVOLI AN

OB INT LUANDA AN

ESTIMADO COLEGA, PODE LIGARME COM

POLONIA NUMERO 814251 OK?

But they suddenly disconnect me and I breathe with relief, because one of the patrol has come up to me and wants to see what I have written, but I haven’t written anything yet, so he says, We have to be alert, camarada, because the enemy is outside Luanda. Yes, camarada, I say, and Felix says, Yes, for sure, that’s clear, and Oscar, suspended in mid-stride, also becomes a yes-man, anything to get them to lower their gun barrels or, better yet, leave.

In the end they moved out and I walked through the empty streets to Diario de Luanda, to Queiroz, who always knew a lot. Three people produced the newspaper. It had sixteen pages, of which Queiroz wrote eight each day. He thought they were shorthanded: It takes five people to put out a newspaper. He showed me the headlines that had been sent to the printer: “Everyone to the front! The hour of truth has arrived! We won’t yield an inch!” He told me that the situation was critical, that all the FNLA forces and five battalions from Zaïre and more mercenaries were attacking, and that the MPLA was sending units from the provinces to the battlefield outside Luanda, but there was no transportation and ammunition was running out.

I went back to the hotel and waited for Warsaw. The reception area was full of people who were afraid to spend the night at home and preferred to sit there and wait for whatever came next. The barrages were coming closer and closer and again there were trucks on the street with no lights.

Suddenly the telex lit up and the machine began:

3322 TIVOLI AN

814251 PAP PL

GOOD EVENING WE CANNOT CONNECT TRY EVERY FEW MINUTES BUT DID NOT MAKE CONTACT AND DO NOT KNOW WHY MACHINE KEEPS PRINTING BUSY SIGNAL PLEASE

YES BI BI THERE IS A WAR HERE AND TERRIBLE MESS YESTERDAY SHELL HIT CABLE AND BROKE LINE BUT FIXED TODAY

BI BI IS DUTY EDITOR THERE?

YES MOM MOM

MORAWSKI HERE

HEY ZDZICH LISTEN STORMING OF LUANDA UNDER WAY WE MAY LOSE CONTACT HEAVY ARTILLERY BOMBARDMENT WILL SEND WHAT I HAVE BUT YOU MUST BE PREPARED FOR LOSS OF CONTACT NOW MATERIAL OK???

YES SIR SEND BUT CANT WE DO SOMETHING RE YOUR SECURITY PERHAPS CAN ARRANGE AIRPLANE TO GET YOU OUT

NO TOO LATE EVERYTHING PERHAPS OVER TOMORROW NOBODY KNOWS WHAT WILL HAPPEN HERE WE ARE VERY WEAK ITS BAD BUT NOW MATERIAL AND CHAT LATER BECAUSE IM HOMESICK OK?

OK OK SEND

MOM MOM

(I sent “MOM MOM,” which means “just a moment,” because just then the voice of the MPLA chief of staff, Comandante Xiyetu, came over the radio to announce a general mobilization. I listened to the end and immediately typed:)

LAST MINUTE LUANDA PAP 2310 IN VIEW OF CRITICAL SITUATION WHICH HAS ARISEN IN ANGOLA GENERAL STAFF OF MPLA PEOPLES ARMY HAS ANNOUNCED GENERAL MOBILIZATION OF ALL MEN BETWEEN 18 AND 45 AS OF THURSDAY PM A MOMENT AGO. STAFF COMMUNIQUE STATES THAT ANGOLA HAS NOW BECOME VICTIM OF ARMED AGGRESSION ON WIDE SCALE. ENEMY HAS CAPTURED A RANGE OF IMPORTANT CITIES TODAY AND HIS OFFENSIVE IS CONTINUING. FIGHTING NOW UNDER WAY IN OUTSKIRTS OF LUANDA. SITUATION IS VERY SERIOUS AND STAFF COMMUNIQUE ORDERS ALL PATRIOTS TO TAKE UP ARMS AND GO TO FRONT TO DEFEND COUNTRY END ITEM

MOM MOM

RYSIEK: TELEVISION REQUESTED WE PASS FOLLOWING NOTE TO YOU: ON NOVEMBER 8 WE ARE BROADCASTING PROGRAM ABOUT INTERNAL SITUATION IN ANGOLA AND WE INVITE YOU TO APPEAR. FILM REPORT WOULD BE BEST BUT IT COULD ALSO BE DONE WITH STILLS AND INFORMATION RECORDED ON AUDIO TAPE OR EVEN A WRITTEN REPORT WHICH WOULD BE READ BY SPECIALLY HIRED ACTOR. WARMEST REGARDS.

LISTEN RYSIU I SENT THAT NOTE REALIZING HOW ABSURD IT ALL IS AT THIS MOMENT

DONT WORRY LISTEN TELL CZARNECKI: MICHAL IT IS GETTING VERY BAD HERE. ASSAULT ON LUANDA COULD COME ANY DAY WITH LOSS OF COMMUNICATIONS. THAT IS WHY I WANT TO SET IT UP LIKE THIS: IF YOU CANNOT GET THROUGH TO ME EVENINGS AT AGREED TIME TRY TO CONNECT MORNING OF NEXT DAY AT 7 GMT AND AGAIN AT 20 GMT AND AGAIN NEXT DAY UNTIL WE CONNECT AND GOD GRANTS WE ARE IN TOUCH OK. ARRANGE TO SUSPEND ANY POSSIBLE TRAVEL TO LUANDA UNLESS SOMEBODY IS PLANNING SUICIDE OK? HUGS RYSIEK

YES OK THANKS KEEPING OUR FINGERS CROSSED

THANKS OLD MAN BEST WISHES FROM LUANDA AND IM WAITING TO HEAR FROM YOU TOMORROW AT 20 GMT OK?

TKS GOODNIGHT

I stood up from the machine drenched in sweat but glad to have sent such fresh news, straight off the radio. After midnight I phoned Queiroz. The attack had been held off, but there were a lot of casualties.

At night I go onto the balcony, point the antenna in the direction of the bay, and search for distant stations with my transistor radio. Yes, normal life exists somewhere, and all you have to do is put your ear to the speaker and listen. One hemisphere is snoring and tossing from side to side while the other one is getting up, boiling the milk, shaving, and powdering. And then the other way around. A person wakes up and doesn’t think that the last day of his life could be beginning. A splendid feeling, but already so normal that nobody there pays any attention to it. Hundreds if not thousands of radio stations are working every second and a sea of words is surging into the air. It’s interesting to hear the way the world argues, agitates, and persuades; how it threatens, how it shams and lies; how everybody is right and doesn’t want to hear the other side. Right now the whole world is worried about Angola and here Paris, there London, Cairo, and Tokyo are talking about it. The world contemplates the great spectacle of combat and death, which is difficult for it to imagine in the end, because the image of war is not communicable — not by the pen, or the voice, or the camera. War is a reality only to those stuck in its bloody, dreadful, filthy insides. To others it is pages in a book, pictures on a screen, nothing more. I manipulate the transistor, which goes quiet because the batteries are running down (I won’t get new ones); I listen to what the distant radio stations are saying. Various voices are scattering ideas and suggestions. What to do with Angola? Call an international conference. Send in United Nations troops and let them separate the brawlers there. But who will pay for that, with the inflation we have? So let an all-black army go and the Arabs can pay for it. The Arabs don’t know what to do with money. The best thing would be to call on the Angolans to come to an agreement. Let them sign a ceasefire, let them divvy up the seats of power, let them make it up. Warn them that if they don’t make it up, they won’t get any more money. Make love, not war. A million-strong Cuban army stands on the border of South Africa. There, in the dry bush, among barefoot tribes fleeing in panic, in that place without roads, without lights, without schools, without cities — there, the fate of contemporary civilization is being decided. Give Vorster help; give him the green light. Endow him with moral support!

Great plans, global strategies.

Overseas they don’t know that it all comes down to two people here.

One of them is Ruiz, a congenial and lively Portuguese, the pilot of an old two-engine DC-3, the only plane that the MPLA has in Luanda. The machine was built in 1943; the motors spit gobs of soot, the wings are patched, the tires are bald, the fuselage is full of holes. Only Ruiz knows how to close the door, and it’s not easy for him. He flies this plane day and night; he is in the air around the clock. Ruiz flies to Brazzaville for ammunition, and then to a besieged city in the Angolan borderlands to drop off cartridge boxes and bags of flour and take the serious casualties back to Luanda. If Ruiz doesn’t arrive on time the cities will have to surrender and the wounded will die. In a sense, the fate of the war rests on his shoulders. Ruiz flies around Angola by memory because there are no air controllers; I don’t even know if his plane’s radio works. Often he himself doesn’t know who holds the airport where he is supposed to land. Yesterday it was still in our hands, but today it could belong to the enemy. That’s why he first flies over the airport without landing. Sometimes he recognizes the silhouettes of his acquaintances, so he descends and lands peacefully. Sometimes, however, they start firing on the plane, in which case he turns back and delivers the bad news to Luanda. In this country without transport or communication, Ruiz knows what’s happening on the fronts and which cities belong to whom. He takes off at dawn, makes several trips a day, and returns at midnight. Starved soldiers in Luso, the dying garrison in Novo Redondo, and the cut-off defenders of Quibala are waiting for his plane. Now Luanda, which can’t hold out without ammunition, is waiting. The best place to find him is at the airport, when he is inspecting the motors early in the morning. Trouble with one of the motors could ground the plane and change the course of the war. There are no spare parts, no mechanics. And the plane is needed constantly. In a moment, Ruiz disappears into the cockpit. The propellers rotate, the plane is lost in thick, impenetrable clouds of black smoke and, thumping, rattling, grinding, the decrepit pile of scrap heaves toward takeoff.

The second person on whom everything depends now is Alberto Ribeiro, a short, heavyset thirty-year-old engineer. The northern front stretches near Luanda, along the Bengo River. On the banks of this river stands the pumping station that supplies water to Luanda. If the station is out of action, there is no water in the city. The enemy knows this and constantly bombards it. Sometimes they hit the pumps and they stop working. Luanda can take five days without water, no more. In the tropics people can stand the thirst no longer, and epidemics break out besides. The only person who can repair the pumps is Alberto. Thanks to him, the city has water from time to time; it can exist and defend itself. If Alberto were killed in an automobile accident on the way to the station or hit by a shell, Luanda would have to surrender after a few days.

General mobilization. Long lines of young men, mostly unemployed. Instead of holding up a wall, it’s better to do your duty — in the army, you get something to eat. They’ll soon be fighting and killing. Work at last, even glory. Packed off by their mothers and wives, a lot of women with big bellies. People will give birth and kill until the end of the world. Those who are now seeing the light of day will be twenty-five in the year 2000. Grand celebrations of the dawn of a new millennium. Meetings between youth and the veterans of the twentieth century. An interview with a spry old dame who lived through World War I. An impressive memory and dauntless coquetry to boot, the old lady mentioning how the army was marching through once and up in the hayloft she and a certain soldier, well, yes sir, I’ve got this straight, I remember it very clearly. Half of humanity will have slant eyes. Half of humanity will not understand what the other half is saying. Time to perfect methods of communicating by signs, time to begin instructions in sign language. The white race will enter the vestigial phase. Barely thirteen percent of the inhabitants of earth will have white skin. Barely two percent will have naturally blond hair. Blondes: a more and more distinctive phenomenon, a rarity of rarities. Which is better — to think or not to think about the future? Future shock: the travails of postindustrial society, luxury. For others, everyday problems: What can we find to eat today? The Bantu language has no future tense; the concept of the future doesn’t exist for the Bantu people, they are not tormented by the thought of what will happen in a month, in a year (see the Reverend Father Placide Tempels, La Philosophie bantoue). The inductees are led in groups straight to the front. So raw and green — why? To create a false crowd, more confusion? The registration center closes at 6 P.M. People drift away and disappear into the labyrinths of the musseques, the poor quarter. The day, quite ordinary, even peaceful, ends.

Meanwhile it turned humid. The guns fell silent at the approaches to Luanda and there was no news from the other fronts. It seemed that time had stopped, that nothing was happening. The sails of our ship went slack and we found ourselves becalmed. Waiting for the storm. I felt that there was nothing to breathe. This was a special kind of oppressiveness, not to be measured in millibars. You felt it psychologically rather than physically. An invisible vise was tightening, intensifying the sense of danger and fear. I thought that it might be my own private condition, my individual depression. I started observing others. They all had the faces of people who find it oppressive. Dull, expressionless faces with smudged expressions, lacking strength, lacking charm. The feeling of closeness was so acute that all you had to do was start talking on any random topic, and soon you would be hearing that it was stifling. People had trouble talking about anything else. At all events these were unclear, foggy disclosures, because the feeling of oppressiveness is a very difficult state to define. Usually you only say that something is hanging in the air, something has to happen, something is awaiting us. There being a war on, your interlocutor states that blood will flow. This is a lesson drawn from history, and history teaches that crucial events cannot occur without bloodshed. Then comes the moment of silence in which you wonder whether it’s going to be your blood. A state of irritation and restlessness accompanies the feeling of closeness. A person unable to grasp the situation and eager to enlighten himself pays heed to the most fantastic rumors. He is afraid, he acts out irrational impulses, the herd instinct in him is easily aroused.

It becomes oppressive when important events, important changes, can’t break through to the surface of life and are continually unable to fulfill themselves. The still invisible and uncrystallized fact that is to be realized in the future is already growing, swelling, beginning to push through into a preexisting reality which, however, doesn’t want to yield. It gets tighter and tighter, and therefore more and more suffocating. The lack of air increases our feeling of helplessness. We watch the gathering of the clouds and wait for a voice to speak from them, reading us the inexorable verdict of fate.

GOOD EVENING

[Warsaw comes through]

COPY PLEASE

UNFORTUNATELY, I STILL HAVE NO INFORMATION. APPARENT CALM PREVAILS AND NOTHING IS HAPPENING, TYPICAL CALM BEFORE THE STORM. WE KNOW THAT THE INVASION IS CONTINUING BUT THERE IS NO NEWS FROM THE FRONT, BAD DAYS ARE COMING BUT THAT IS NOT CONCRETE INFORMATION FOR PRINT. CALL TOMORROW, MAYBE SOMETHING WILL HAPPEN

OK, TILL TOMORROW THEN

TILL TILL TKS

TKS BYE

BYE

Somebody pounded on my door at two in the morning. I snapped out of a deep sleep, and the flesh stood up on the back of my neck because I thought: FNLA!

I trudged on leaden legs to open the door. Three incredibly filthy types tumbled into the room. They threw themselves on me and I threw myself on them and we started hugging and shouting — it was Nelson, Manuel, and Bota! They laid their weapons on the floor and wanted to wash. Then Nelson dived onto the bed and fell asleep in a second, while the others started opening the one can of meat that I’d been saving for my hour of need.

What’s going on at the southern front? I asked.

There is no southern front, Manuel said; they’re already outside Benguela. The second column is headed for Luanda.

Can’t they be stopped?

That’s a tough one. They command enormous firepower. They have a lot of armor, a lot of artillery, they fight well, and they’re determined. We have nothing to fight with. Our men aren’t prepared to stand up to a regular army. We’re withdrawing because the forces are unequal.

What about Farrusco?

We don’t know; he was badly wounded.

Did you see them close up?

Yes. They have Panhard armored personnel carriers, very fast. They’re mobile and they know the terrain well. They split up into groups of five or six vehicles and keep changing positions. They’re everywhere and nowhere, and it’s hard to catch them. We don’t have the resources to organize a defense.

When will they get to Luanda?

In a few days, perhaps.

The pessimistic side of my nature suggested that the moment of annihilation had come and the end was approaching. All they would have to do was take the power plant at Cambamba, close to two hundred kilometers from Luanda. Electricity runs from there to the pumping station; whether the city has water or not depends on that power plant. Without water and light, the surrounded and starved city would have to lay down its arms after a few days.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3 (JUDGMENT DAY)

Morning — nothing.

Noon — Pablo comes for me in the jeep at the assigned point. There are two more Cubans with him. They are wearing green fatigues with no insignia. The only distinguishing mark is the weapons on their shoulders. Nobody asks an armed man what he is doing. As soon as he says “Cubano,” the patrols run out of questions and he can drive on. We pass an industrial park thrown up in the fields. Then the pastures — regular, well-maintained rectangles of succulent grass — begin. Herds of stray cows: tons of meat and milk, with nobody watching them. There is hunger in the city, but nobody bothers the cattle — this is Portuguese property, untouchable. A short way down the road, gentle hills begin, heaps of earth, lines of entrenchments, artillery, tents, crates — the northern front, the soft underbelly of the war because these are the approaches to Luanda. The view from the first line of trenches: the countryside spread out green, a river in a shallow valley, an asphalt road, a blown bridge, the shot-up pumping station, a palm grove. On the other side, in the distance, a sunlit hill, the enemy’s fortifications. Through the lenses of powerful binoculars I can see specks of dust and horizontal and vertical scales; figures are running back and forth, and vehicles are moving along the horizontal scale: preparations for an attack. On the side where we are, there is also a great deal of movement, sandbags are being passed about, outposts camouflaged, artillery shunted. They don’t want to be taken by surprise. Then come night, dawn, and waiting — who will strike first? Someone finally does strike, the other side replies, dust rises from the earth, the dance of fire and death begins. Pablo walks around giving orders and checking supplies like a boy with candles on Christmas Eve. I walk behind him, taking pictures. They all want to be photographed. Me now, me now, camarada, me, meeeeeeeeee! They stand rigidly and some of them salute. To leave a trace, to fix themselves, to remain somehow. I was here, just yesterday I was here, he took a picture, yes, that’s how I looked. That’s the kind of face I had as a live man. I stand before you at attention: Look at me for a moment before you turn to something else.

Afternoon — we were on our way back to the city, when the jeep drove down a side street and stopped in front of a one-story villa where the Cuban advisers had their headquarters. We had barely managed to sit down when a soldier ran in and handed Pablo a sheet of paper torn out of a notebook with a message written on it in pencil.

Pablo read it and went pale.

Without a word, he went out onto the veranda and sat down on a bench. He took out a handkerchief and began wiping his forehead. We waited for him to say something. He read the message again and remained silent, until at last he said quietly, indistinctly, as if his mouth were stiff:

“They captured Benguela today. All the Cubans died in the fighting for the town. Word was sent by a wounded signalman.”

Then he looked at us and added:

“Now they’re on their way to Luanda. It’s six hundred kilometers from Benguela to Luanda, but there are no strongpoints or defensive lines along the way. If those are gutsy boys and they decide to drive night and day, they can be here tomorrow.”

In the next house a woman called out “Mauro! Mauro!” After a moment, a child’s voice answered. It was 6 P.M. The Angelus sounded somewhere far off.

“Get me the radio operator,” Pablo said to the soldier who had brought the message. “And dismiss the men.”

Military matters were beginning, so I withdrew and went to the hotel. I asked someone to drive me to the edge of the city, to Morro da Luz, where the MPLA headquarters was located in the former residence of the French consul. But the staff was meeting and the sentry didn’t want to admit me. I went back in a truck carrying Portuguese soldiers. These were troops in a state of utter dissoluteness. They wore long beards and had neither caps nor belts. They were selling their rations on the black market and breaking into cars. Their orders were to maintain neutrality, not to shoot, not to get involved. They were loading everything onto the ships. The last unit was to leave in a week.

In the evening I spoke with Queiroz. He thinks Luanda will be hard for them to take, because the whole populace will fight and they will have to decide on a mass slaughter that the world might not tolerate. But then he began to have doubts himself: “In the end, how can I know? The world is so far away.”

Ruiz flies the plane to Porto Amboim, carrying a group of sappers and some crates of dynamite. They are to blow all the bridges on the Cuvo River, which will cut the road between Benguela and Luanda. If they make it.

Warsaw calls at midnight.

THE SITUATION IN ANGOLA [I sent] HAS TAKEN A DRAMATIC TURN IN THE LAST TWENTY-FOUR HOURS. THE SOUTH AFRICAN ARMY, SUPPORTED BY UNITS OF MERCENARIES AND THE FNLA AND UNITA, HAS OCCUPIED BENGUELA, THE SECOND LARGEST CITY IN ANGOLA. THESE TROOPS ARE PROCEEDING IN TWO STRONG ARMORED COLUMNS TOWARD THE CAPITAL, WHERE THE DEFENSE OF THE CITY IS BEING ORGANIZED. ACCORDING TO STILL UNCONFIRMED REPORTS JUST RECEIVED HERE, ONE OF THESE COLUMNS HAS OCCUPIED NOVO REDONDO AND IS THREE HUNDRED MILES SOUTH OF LUANDA. IF THESE TROOPS CANNOT BE STOPPED AT THE LINE OF THE CUVO RIVER THEY COULD BE AT THE APPROACHES TO LUANDA WITHIN THE NEXT TWO DAYS. IT IS ANTICIPATED THAT A SIMULTANEOUS ATTACK WOULD THEN BEGIN FROM THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH IN ACCORDANCE WITH PLAN ORANGE, WHICH CALLS FOR THE OCCUPATION OF THE CAPITAL BEFORE NOVEMBER 10. THIS WOULD MEAN THE POLITICAL AND MILITARY LIQUIDATION OF THE MPLA, AT LEAST IN THE SHORT TERM END ITEM.

FRIENDS, CALL ME IN SEVEN HOURS BECAUSE THIS IS THE DECISIVE MOMENT, OK?

YES, OF COURSE, TKS MUCH

TKS BYE BYE

GOOD NIGHT

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4 (NERVES, NERVES)

I got up at three in the morning, to prepare my commentary for PAP in peace. I had barely gone downstairs and got the telex working, however, when in walked five toughs with automatics, heading straight for me: “Sit down and don’t move!” They woke up Felix, who was sleeping like a rock on the couch, and demanded a list of the hotel guests. They were going to conduct a search and take everybody to the police for interrogation. The enemy is inside the city, in this quarter, in this hotel. Fifth column. Infiltration. They brought a dozen or more sleepy, frightened people downstairs. Persuasion was senseless. “No talking!” cried the leader, holding up his pistol like the starter at a track meet. You ought to go blow off some steam on the front, brother, I wanted to tell him. We waited some more, but organization had broken down as usual, and the car that was supposed to take us to the police had not showed up. Almeyda, the MPLA press chief, appeared with the morning. He ordered them to let us go and told them to leave. People walked away dejected and exhausted. Anybody with a pistol could go around terrorizing hotels, doing whatever he wanted.

Quiet reigns on the northern front. They are waiting for the troops from the south to come nearer. Then they will strike from two sides at once — this week, perhaps tomorrow.

Radio communiqués summon the populace to the defense of the city. In this decisive hour. No one can shirk.

The MPLA leadership meets all day.

Help is apparently waiting in Brazzaville and in Cabinda, but it can’t reach Luanda because the airport and the harbor remain in the hands of the Portuguese army until next Monday (November 10). Until next Monday, Angola is formally a Portuguese territory, an overseas province, and also a part of NATO territory. So the MPLA must hold out until next week. And if it is too late? If the Portuguese units suddenly strike Luanda itself, attacking the Angolans? (There are fears that some units, led by rightist officers, will abandon neutrality and begin operating on their own.) Rumors circulate that President Neto has already been arrested. Panic breaks out. It is impossible to get a grip on the situation. A complete lack of information from the southern front. Where is the enemy? Have they halted? Are they coming? Still far away? Already in the suburbs? People are losing their heads. I drop by my room and find that Dona Cartagina has packed my bag herself. And where are the newspaper clippings that I have been collecting for three months, my greatest treasure? Where are the clippings? She threw them into the toilet and flushed them! (It was my misfortune that Ribeiro had fixed the pumps that day and there was water.)

Reports spread that the MPLA will announce independence ahead of time — today or tomorrow — counting on immediate recognition of Angola by friendly countries who will treat the airport and harbor as sovereign territory of the new state. Access to Luanda is the issue. Right now, the decisive thing is to open the city, which is surrounded on land and cannot be reached by water or air.

And if help doesn’t come in time? The storming of Luanda. Despite the heroic efforts of the city’s inhabitants, the overwhelming strength of the enemy, etc. Who will come in first? The ones from the south or the FNLA? The FNLA is a cruel army. They practice cannibalism. A few days ago I didn’t believe that. But last week I went with a group of local journalists to Lucala, four hundred kilometers east of Luanda. One day earlier, Lucala had been recaptured from an FNLA unit that withdrew to Samba Cajú, a town seventy kilometers to the north. We drove with a pursuing unit. The seventy kilometers were a horrible sight. All along the road through this thickly populated region, there was not a single living person or surviving house. All the people had been murdered and all the villages burned. The withdrawing army had destroyed every sign of life along the way. Heads of women had been thrown in the roadside grass. Corpses with hearts and livers cut out. I rode half the way with my eyes closed. At one point, somebody in our car raised his voice. I opened my eyes: In a dead, burned village two monkeys were sitting at a table in front of a burned bar. They looked at us for a moment and then made tracks for the bushes.

To fall into the hands of drunken cannibals — a grim death. Their sweaty faces, their dull gaze, the way they shout, the way they point their guns at their victims, their amusement at the trembling they inspire in them. Better not to think about it.

In the evening Comandante Ju-Ju reads his daily radio communiqué on the situation at the front. Very optimistic. Upsetting, that. Reality looks bad; half the country is in enemy hands, yet from what Ju-Ju reads, the MPLA seems to be on the brink of victory.

Don’t take reality into account

— A principle that is intended to function like a sleeping pill. Don’t panic, don’t lapse into doubt, don’t get hysterical. But how can you talk people into acting now, at the decisive moment, without making them aware of the full gravity of the situation? They won’t move; they’ll lie there and chew the cud of optimism. Since things are so good, why exert yourself? And these disorienting contradictions: Here an appeal to defend the city, and there it appears that everything is as good as can be. The result: a loss of faith. In the hour of decision, they are not going to trust anyone; even their instinct of self-preservation is being blunted.

3322 TIVOLI AN

814251 PAP PL

GOOD EVENING PLS MATERIAL

SORRY I DIDNT SEND ANYTHING MORNING AND DIDNT EVEN CALL BUT THE POLICE LOCKED US UP FOR NO REASON. PEOPLE SIMPLY LOSING HEADS. NO WONDER WHEN THEY THINK THEY MIGHT DIE SOON. CALL ME IN MORNING AT 7 GMT THERE COULD BE SENSATIONAL NEWS AND MAYBE THIS TIME THEY WONT SHUT ME DOWN OK???

YES UNTIL 7 GMT IN MORNING OK

OK BI BI WAITING ANXIOUSLY

VIA ITT 11.4.751407 EDT

Queiroz called during the night and said that the Portuguese army would leave the civilian part of the airport and withdraw from the harbor tomorrow. If true, this is really sensational news. A glimmer of salvation. God, what a relief! I jumped to the ceiling with joy.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5 (LANDING)

This evening I went to the airport with Oscar ’s friend Gilberto, who works in the control tower. Dark, a horrible downpour: we drove as if under a fountain, no visibility, only walls of water through which our Peugeot burrowed and I felt as if I were in a subway moving through the streets of a submerged city. The large glass airport terminal building — monstrously littered and dirty because no one had cleaned up after the half million refugees who had camped here — was empty. I stood on the second floor with Gilberto, looking at the illuminated runway. The tropical deluge had passed, but it was still raining. High up to the left, two spotlights suddenly appeared: A plane was coming in to land. A moment later, it touched down and taxied between two rows of yellow lights. A Cubana Airlines Britannia. Then more and more spotlights up above. Four planes landed. They maneuvered into a row in front of us, the pilots switched off the engines, and it was quiet. The stairs were wheeled into place and Cuban soldiers with packs and weapons began disembarking. They lined up in two rows. They were wearing camouflage, which afforded some protection from the rain. After a few minutes, they walked toward trucks waiting nearby. My shoulder felt sore. I smiled: Through the whole scene, Gilberto had been gripping my shoulder tightly.

Those soldiers went to the front the next day.

The hotel grew crowded and noisy. Neto was supposed to proclaim the independence of Angola late Monday night, and an aircraft had brought umpteen foreign correspondents from Lisbon for the occasion. They were given visas and lodged in our hotel. Oscar was tearing his hair in desperation because there was nothing to give them to eat, but they cheered him up by saying that food wasn’t important. Information was important.

What stories the world press publishes! I read many of the dispatches sent from Luanda in those days. I admired the opulence of human fantasy. But I also understood my colleagues’ predicament. The editor sends a reporter to a country that is fascinating to the entire world. Such a journey costs a lot of money. The world is waiting for a great story, a scoop, a sensational narrative written under a hail of bullets. The special correspondent flies out to Luanda. He is taken to the hotel. He gets a room, shaves, and changes his shirt. He is ready and goes out immediately to look for the fighting.

After several hours he announces that he’s beating his head against a wall—

He can’t do anything.

Angola betrays no interest in his presence. The telephone doesn’t answer, or if it does it answers in Portuguese, a language he doesn’t understand. If he has enough strength and endurance, he can make the journey on foot to Government Palace. There he meets Elvira, a moon-faced typist who will smile but knows nothing and isn’t telling what she does know. He might meet young Costa, who will answer all questions by shaking his head and remaining silent. Make the trip to MPLA headquarters? That’s an all-day journey, and besides, the guard won’t let him through the gate. Go to President Neto! But how? Nobody will say where the President lives. Ride to the front. To what front? You can’t travel outside Luanda; it’s a closed city. A group of Frenchmen acquired a car somewhere and decided, without looking into anything, to drive to the northern front. They were stopped at the first checkpoint and delivered straight to the airport. See a Cuban! But how? They are nowhere to be seen. Is Luso in MPLA hands? Because Savimbi says that UNITA holds it. Who knows? There has been no contact with that city for a long time. It’s essential to find out exactly where the front is. Where the front is? Who could know that? Even at headquarters, nobody is sure.

There are some remaining sources of information: Dona Cartagina, Oscar, and Felix. Dona Cartagina is now busy cleaning and has no time for politics. In any case, she speaks only Portuguese and it’s hard to communicate with her. Oscar invariably repeats MPLA slogans: A vitória é certa! Victory is certain. But that is skimpy and, moreover, not exactly what everyone is looking for. Felix gives the most matter-of-fact and truthful answers. Asked about the situation, he answers tersely: Confusão.

Confusão is a good word, a synthesis word, an everything word. In Angola it has its own specific sense and is literally untranslatable. To simplify things: Confusão means confusion, a mess, a state of anarchy and disorder. Confusão is a situation created by people, but in the course of creating it they lose control and direction, becoming victims of confusão themselves. There is a sort of fatalism in confusão. A person wants to do something, but it all falls to pieces in his hands; he wants to set something in motion, but some power paralyzes him; he wants to create something, but he produces confusão. Everything crosses him; even with the best will in the world, he falls over and over again into confusão. Confusão can overwhelm our thinking, and then others will say that the person has confusão in his head. It can steal into our hearts, and then our girls dump us. It can explode in a crowd and sweep through a mass of people — then there is fighting, death, arson. Sometimes confusão takes a more benign form in which it assumes the character of desultory, chaotic, but bloodless haggling.

Confusão is a state of absolute disorientation. People who have found themselves on the inside of confusão can’t comprehend what is going on around them or in themselves. Nor can they explain specifically what caused this particular case of confusão. There are carriers who spread confusão, and others must beware, though this is difficult because literally any person can at any moment become a perpetrator of confusão, even against his will. By confusão we also understand our own states of perplexity and helplessness. We see confusão raging around us and can’t do anything to stop it. Camaradas, we hear again and again, don’t make confusão! —don’t! But does it depend on us? The most precise report from the front: What’s new with you? confusão! Everyone who understands this word knows the whole story. confusão can reign over an enormous territory and sweep through millions of people. Then there is a war. A state of confusão can’t be broken at one stroke or liquidated in the blinking of an eye. Anyone who tries falls into confusão himself. The best thing is to act slowly and wait. After a while confusão loses energy, weakens, vanishes. We emerge from a state of confusão exhausted, but somehow satisfied that we have managed to survive. We start gathering strength again for the next confusão.

How to explain all this to people who have been in Luanda only a few hours? So once again, as if they hadn’t heard him, they ask Felix:

“What’s the situation?”

And Felix answers:

“Haven’t I told you already? Confusão.”

They go away shaking their heads and shrugging their shoulders. And they are shaking their heads and shrugging their shoulders because Felix has sown confusão among them.

The next four days were drowned in unusual confusão. Every so often someone came into the hotel shouting, “They’re coming! They’re coming!” and announced breathlessly that the armored vehicles of the Afrikaners were already at the city’s edge. According to one, they were painted yellow; according to another, green. Numerous figures were given: Ten of these vehicles had been seen, later fifty or more. There was no way to check: They might really be a few kilometers away, or those might have been mere rumors. Oscar hung a map of Angola behind the reception desk. A crowd of people stood before it, arguing. Everyone wanted to show with his finger where in his opinion the front was, who had what city, to whom this or that road belonged. No two of them had the same picture of the situation. After a few days, the hundreds of fingers sweeping across the map had rubbed out cities, roads, and rivers. The country looked like a fragment of a gray, naked planet without people or nature.

On Monday the Portuguese garrison sailed away. The last platoon climbed the gangplank to the ship that morning. I knew some of the officers there and I went to say good-bye to them. The locals wanted the garrison to leave as quickly as possible. After years of colonial war, there could be neither understanding nor friendship between the two sides. But I saw it differently. I knew that in this final period the Angolans owed a large debt of gratitude to many, though not all, of the Portuguese officers. They had known how to behave loyally. I myself owed them a lot. They had treated me with sympathy and helped me generously. Nor had they ever attacked the Cubans, although the first people from Havana had come here when Angola was still formally a part of Portuguese territory. There exists a kind of interpersonal solidarity that should not be destroyed by dry political calculation.

A truck drove around the city that day and removed the statues of the Portuguese conquerors from their pediments. The governors and the generals, the travelers and the explorers were collected in front of the citadel and arranged in two brown granite rows. The plazas and squares looked even emptier. That afternoon an airplane flew in carrying foreign delegations. Only a few came. Rumors were circulating around the world that a squadron from Zaïre would bomb the airport that day and there would be no return. The cautious majority waited in their own countries for the unfolding of events in our city. It seems that they were right, because — as emerged later — the decision to destroy the airport had been reversed only at the last minute.

Thousands of people gathered at night in one of the squares. There had been requests to avoid large crowds so as to prevent a massacre in case of attack. The night was dark and cloudy, and the scene at the assembly recalled the secret meetings of the Kimbangists.

The cathedral clock struck twelve.

November 11, 1975.

Quiet reigned on the square. From the speakers’ platform, Agostinho Neto read a text proclaiming the People’s Republic of Angola. His voice broke and he had to pause several times. When he finished, there was applause from the invisible crowd, and the people cheered. There were no more speeches. After a moment the lights on the platform went out and everyone departed rather hastily, lost in the darkness. On the northern front the artillery was silent. But suddenly the soldiers in town began shooting wildly into the air in celebration. There was a chaotic uproar and the night came alive.

In the Tivoli, Oscar went to the safe and took out a bottle of champagne and a bottle of whisky that he had saved for the occasion. We were the oldest residents of the hotel, a crowd of veterans. Instead of evoking cheer and joy, the alcohol intensified our tiredness, our exhaustion. Oscar, who had long been at the limits of his strength, now drunk, called out in despair, “If this is what independence is like, I’ll blow my brains out!” After a moment it dawned on him that this was out of place, so he laughed and then grew quiet; in the end, he fell asleep with his head on the table amid the empty glasses.

There was a reception for the foreign delegations at Government Palace in the morning. I sent a dispatch to Warsaw that day:

LUANDA PAP 11.11. THE INDEPENDENCE CELEBRATIONS TAKING PLACE IN LUANDA HAVE BEEN PEACEFUL SO FAR. THE HOLIDAY ATMOSPHERE HAS BEEN SPOILED BY FNLA GUNNERS WHO HAVE AGAIN SHELLED THE PUMPING STATION AT QUIN-PANDONGO AND LEFT LUANDA WITHOUT WATER FOR TWO DAYS. IN THIS CONNECTION, A WILD STRUGGLE TOOK PLACE TODAY FOR INVITATIONS TO THE RECEPTION THAT PRESIDENT NETO GAVE AT GOVERNMENT PALACE BECAUSE OF RUMORS THAT IT WOULD BE POSSIBLE TO DRINK WATER THERE.

A RADIO STATION — NON-ANGOLAN — HAS REPORTED THAT THE FNLA AND UNITA HAVE DECIDED TO FORM THEIR OWN GOVERNMENT WITH A CAPITAL IN HUAMBO. THIS WILL BE ONLY A PRO FORMA CAPITAL SINCE THE ACTUAL HEADQUARTERS OF THESE ORGANIZATIONS IS KINSHASA. THUS ANGOLA HAS BEEN DIVIDED FOR THE MOMENT INTO TWO STATES WITH INCREDIBLY COMPLICATED BORDERS THAT CHANGE ALMOST EVERY DAY ACCORDING TO WHICH SIDE LAUNCHES AN OFFENSIVE TODAY OR TOMORROW AND WHAT PART OF THE TERRITORY IS TAKEN FROM THE ENEMY. NOW MUCH WILL DEPEND ON WHICH COUNTRIES RECOGNIZE THE MPLA GOVERNMENT OR THE FNLA-UNITA GOVERNMENT, AND AT WHAT TEMPO. SO A NEW, DIPLOMATIC WAR FOR ANGOLA HAS BEGUN.

IN THE MEANTIME, THE REAL WAR IS INTENSIFYING. BOTH SIDES ARE GETTING STRONGER. THERE ARE MORE AND MORE MEN, BETTER-TRAINED TROOPS, AND WEAPONS OF GREATER DESTRUCTIVE POWER.

ON MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10, THE ENEMY BEGAN A NEW TWO-FRONT OFFENSIVE. THERE WAS AN ATTEMPT TO CAPTURE LUANDA FROM THE NORTH. ARMORED VEHICLES AND ARTILLERY TOOK PART IN THE ASSAULT ALONG WITH COMPANIES OF ZAIRIAN TROOPS AND PORTUGUESE MERCENARIES. THE SOUTH AFRICAN ARMY, WHICH IS MOVING FROM THE SOUTH IN TWO MOBILE AND POWERFUL ARMORED COLUMNS, IS HEADING FOR PORTO AMBOIM AND, FURTHER ON, LUANDA. MPLA UNITS IN THIS AREA ARE ORGANIZING A DEFENSIVE LINE WITH THE MISSION OF HOLDING PORTO AMBOIM AT ALL COSTS FIN. COULD YOU SEND A LITTLE MONEY AND SOME CIGARETTES???? TKS IN ADVANCE BYE

Ruiz throttled back: The plane descended toward earth. We had passed Porto Amboim, a small fishing port, and flown over the wide, dark Cuvo River; then the plane flew straight for a few more minutes until it banked and we started back. Ruiz motioned for me to look through the windshield. Below, I could see a road that led to the river and seemed to have dropped into the water, because the bridge across the river had been destroyed. Now we flew along a road on which I could see a motionless column of armored vehicles. I counted: There were twenty-one of them and farther on stood trucks pulling artillery and, at the rear, five jeeps. People wandered along both sides of the road. We returned over the far bank of the river, passing zigzags of trenches below and some units on the road. The plane descended to treetop level and landed on the runway at Porto Amboim airport.

Ruiz had been carrying ammunition and flew straight back to Luanda, but I stayed behind. It was less than twelve miles along the riverbank to the front. A soldier with very dark skin took me there in a car. I asked him in Portuguese if he was from Luanda. No, he answered in Spanish, from Havana. It was hard to tell them apart by sight in those days, because the Cubans had clothed many MPLA units in uniforms they had brought over. This also had a psychological significance, because the FNLA and UNITA troops feared the Cubans most of all. They turned and ran at the sight of units in Cuban uniforms attacking, even though there might not have been a single Cuban among them. External differences were further effaced by the fact that both MPLA and Cuban units were multiracial, so skin color told nothing. Later, this all reinforced the legend of an army of a hundred thousand Cubans fighting in Angola. In truth, the whole army defending the republic came to not more than thirty thousand soldiers, of whom about two-thirds were Angolans.

We drove to a place where there were big cotton warehouses. Front headquarters was located here. You walked around in cotton up to your knees like snow. White moss grew on the uniforms and heads of the soldiers. You slept warm and comfortable here. The front line ran along the river. The South African units couldn’t break through because all the bridges had been blown. They hadn’t been prepared for that and were waiting for pontoon bridges. Both sides exchanged sporadic fire but felt too weak to attack. A ship was supposed to arrive the next day with two companies of Cubans and a company from Guinea-Bissau. Two MPLA units were on their way overland.

At dawn we drove along the front. It was pouring rain and piercingly cold. The car skidded in the mud and we had to flounder around on foot. We passed a dispersed unit, a dozen or more soldiers straggling along the road. Each of them was leading a small, barefoot, shivering child by the hand. At night, a few women with children had crossed to this side of the river in primitive African dugouts. The women had stayed at the shore to guard their belongings while the soldiers led the children to the rear, to the kitchen, to feed them.

I returned that same day in Ruiz’s airplane. Several badly wounded soldiers, local and Cuban, lay on the floor. There had been a night battle sixty miles east of Porto Amboim when the South Africans tried to force the river. The wounded made no noise; two of them were unconscious. Some African women sat motionless in the corner. The plane flew through clouds, lurching; rain fell below. We landed at Luanda in a downpour. Two heavy Antonovs stood on a side apron. They had brought mortars.

That evening, to Warsaw:

I RETURNED TODAY FROM THE SOUTHERN FRONT, THE BORDER OF WHICH NOW RUNS ALONG THE CUVO RIVER. I WILL LEAVE THE DETAILED DESCRIPTION FOR LATER: NOW I WANT TO SEND THE BIG NEWS. THE WAR IN ANGOLA HAS CHANGED IN CHARACTER. UNTIL RECENTLY IT WAS PRIMARILY A GUERRILLA WAR, DOMESTIC, FOUGHT WITH LIGHT WEAPONS. THE INTERVENTION OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN ARMY HAS CHANGED THAT. TODAY THIS IS MORE AND MORE A WAR OF REGULAR ARMIES AND HEAVY EQUIPMENT. THE YOUNG REPUBLIC REMAINS IN A DIFFICULT MILITARY PREDICAMENT, BUT IT HAS A CHANCE TO DEFEND ITSELF. THE ANGOLAN ARMY LEADERSHIP IS CONSOLIDATING ITS FORCES TO GO ON THE OFFENSIVE.

SOMETHING ELSE FOR THE FOREIGN DESK.

MICHAL, RYSIEK HERE, LOOK, MY MONEY RAN OUT LONG AGO AND I AM BARELY ALIVE. IT IS MORE OR LESS CLEAR WHAT WILL HAPPEN, WHICH IS THAT THE ANGOLANS WILL WIN, BUT IT IS GOING TO TAKE A WHILE AND I AM ON MY LAST LEGS. SO I ASK YOU TO GIVE ME PERMISSION TO RETURN HOME. A PLANE IS SUPPOSED TO LEAVE FOR LISBON, AND IT COULD TAKE ME OK???

YES, AFFIRMATIVE, IF YOU HAVE HAD ENOUGH YOU CAN COME HOME

GREAT, I’LL START ARRANGING DEPARTURE

OK, STRIKE YOUR SAILS, MIREK WILL BE WAITING FOR YOU IN LISBON

Packing and saying good-bye.

Pablo gave me a box of cigars for the road.

Comandante Ju-Ju gave me Davidson’s book on Angola.

And Dona Cartagina? Dona Cartagina broke down crying. We have lived through the worst together, and now my eyes were wet, too, when I looked at her. Dona Cartagina, I said, I’ll be back. But I didn’t know if what I was saying was true.

I also drove over to say good-bye to President Neto. The President lived in a villa outside town, built on a slope above a small, palm-grown cove. We talked about poetry — I was carrying his latest book of verse, Sagrada Esperança, which had appeared in Lisbon that year.

Às nossas terras

vermelhas do café

brancas de algodão

verdes dos milharais

havemos de voltar

[To our lands

red as coffee berries

white as cotton

green as fields of grain

we will return]

I knew that by heart. Neto complained that he’d had no time to write poetry lately and nodded toward a wall map, toward the little green and yellow flags stuck in it to indicate the positions of the FNLA and UNITA. A wall of books in his cramped office forms a better background for this figure than a public rostrum (though he is an excellent speaker). I have never seen him in uniform and can’t remember him going to the front.

I knew that things were going badly, I wanted to learn the details from him, but at the same time I didn’t feel up to asking him questions that would hurt. So there was silence and then I said good-bye and left.

In the evening I brush off my mildewed suit and put on a tie: I’m returning to Europe.