Another Day of Life Page 9

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.