The Tuner of Silences

  —Without this— she said, pointing at the phone, —I feel lost. My God, how I need to talk to someone . . .

  A deep sadness clouded her eyes. She looked as if she was going to burst into tears. But she controlled herself, her hands stroking her cheeks. And then she became distant for a while. She seemed to be muttering Marcelo’s name. But it was so slow and quiet that it sounded more like a prayer for the dead. She slowly put everything away in her bag, and eventually asked:

  —Where do herons usually gather round here?

  —There are lots in the lake—I said.

  —When it’s less hot, will you take me to this lake?

  I nodded. I didn’t tell her about the crocodile that lived on the banks of the pond. I was afraid she might have second thoughts. At that moment, she began to rub creams into her body. Intrigued, I surprised her with a question:

  —Do you want me to go and get a bucket of water?

  —Water? What for?

  —Aren’t you washing yourself?

  Her sadness was suddenly shattered: the Portuguese woman laughed out loud, and almost offended me. Wash? What she was doing was applying creams to herself as protection against the sun. Maybe she’s got some illness, I thought. But no. The woman said that nowadays, sunlight was poisoned.

  —Not here, lady, not here in Jezoosalem.

  The Portuguese woman leaned on a wooden beam, closed her eyes and began to sing. Once again, the world escaped me. Never before had I heard a melody like that, flowing from human lips. I’d heard birds, the breezes and rivers, but nothing resembling her tones. Maybe in order to save myself from this lullaby, I asked:

  —Pardon me, but are you a whore?

  —What?

  —A whore—I said slowly and deliberately.

  At first astonished, and then amused, the woman lowered her head as if deep in thought, and in the end, she answered with a sigh:

  —Maybe, who knows?

  —My father says all women are whores . . .

  She seemed to smile. Then she got up and, giving me an intense look, her eyes half-closed, exclaimed:

  —You’re like your mother.

  A kind of flood rushed over my inner self as her gentle voice spread out and covered my entire soul. Some time was needed before I could ask myself: did this foreign woman know Dordalma? How and when had the two women met?

  —Begging your pardon, but do you . . .

  —Call me Marta.

  —Yes, lady.

  —I know your family’s story, but I never met Dordalma. And you, did you ever know your mother?

  I shook my head, as slowly as my sadness allowed me to control my own body.

  —Do you remember her?

  —I don’t know. Everyone says I don’t.

  I wanted to ask her to sing once more. For there was something I was now sure of. Marta wasn’t a visitor: she was an emissary. Zachary Kalash had predicted her arrival. As for me, I had a suspicion: Marta was my second mother. She had come to take me home. And Dordalma, my first mother, was that home.

  The shadows were already lengthening when I accompanied Marta to the lake where the herons could be found. I helped her carry her photographic equipment and chose the paths down the slope that were less steep. Every so often, she would pause in the middle of the path, and with both hands, gather her hair together at the nape of her neck as if she wanted to avoid its obscuring her field of vision. Then, she would once again survey the firmament. I remembered Aproximado’s words: “He who seeks eternity should look at the sky, he who seeks the moment, should look at the cloud.” The visitor wanted everything, sky and cloud, birds and infinities.

  —What magnificent light—she repeated, ecstatic.

  —Aren’t you scared it might be poisoned?

  —You can’t imagine how much I need this light at this precise moment . . .

  She spoke as if in prayer. For me, the magnificent light was that which emanated from her movements. Nor had I ever seen such smooth, abundant hair. But she was talking of something that had always been there, and that I had never noticed: the light that radiates not from the sun but from places themselves.

  —Back there our sun doesn’t speak.

  —Where’s “there,” Miss Marta?

  —Back there, in Europe. Here, it’s different. Here the sun moans, whispers, shouts.

  —Surely—I commented delicately,—the sun is always the same.

  —You’re wrong. There, the sun is a stone. Here, it’s a fruit.

  Her words were foreign even though they were spoken in the same language. Marta’s idiom was of another race, another sex, another type of smoothness. The mere act of listening to her was, for me, a way of emigrating from Jezoosalem.

  At one point, the Portuguese woman asked me to turn away: she took off her blouse and let her skirt fall to the ground. Then, she went for a swim in her underwear. With my back to the river, I noticed Ntunzi, hiding in the undergrowth. His signal suggested that I should pretend I hadn’t seen him. From his hiding place, my brother’s eyes bulged with desire as he indulged his fire. For the first time, I saw Ntunzi’s face go up in flames.

  My father guessed right away that we hadn’t carried out his instructions. To our astonishment, he didn’t get angry. Was it that he understood our plausible excuses, did he condone our reticence, the clouds that blocked out the sun? He went and got changed into his best clothes, put on the same red tie he sported on his visits to Jezebel, the same dark shoes, the same felt hat. He took each of us by the hand, and dragged us along with him to the haunted house. He knocked on the door, and the moment the Portuguese woman answered it, he blurted out:

  —My sons have disobeyed me for the first time . . .

  The woman contemplated him serenely and waited for him to continue. Silvestre lowered his voice, softening his initial harsh tone:

  —I’m asking you a favour. On behalf of myself and my two legitimate offspring.

  —Come in. I’m afraid I don’t have any chairs.

  —We’re not going to stay long, lady.

  —My name’s Marta.

  —I don’t call a woman by her name.

  —What do you call her by, then?

  —I won’t have time to call you anything. Because you’re leaving here right now.

  —My name, Mister Mateus Ventura, is like yours: a kind of illness inherited from birth . . .

  On hearing his former name, my father was struck by an invisible whiplash. His fingers squeezed my hand, as tense as a crossbow’s arc.

  —I don’t know what you’ve been told, but you’re mistaken, my dear lady. There’s no one by the name of Ventura here.

  —I shall leave, don’t worry. What brought me to Africa is now almost over.

  —And may I know what brought you here?

  —I came looking for my husband.

  —Let me ask you something, lady: you came so far just to look for your husband?

  —Yes, do you think I should be doing more?

  —A woman doesn’t go looking for her husband. A woman stays and waits for him.

  —Well in that case, maybe I’m not a woman.

  I looked at Ntunzi in despair. The stranger was stating that she wasn’t a woman! Was she telling the truth, and therefore contradicting the maternal feelings that she had inspired?

  —Before setting out on my journey, I heard your story—Marta declared.

  —There is no story, I’m here enjoying a short holiday in this exclusive retreat . . .

  —I know your story . . .

  —The only story, my dear lady, is the story of your departure, back to where you came from.

  —You don’t know me, a woman isn’t only motivated by a husband. In life, there are other loves . . .

  This time, my father was decisive in stopping her, by raising his arm. If he was allergic to anything, it was to conversations about love. Love is a territory where orders can’t be issued. And he had created a little hideaway which was governed by obedience.

/>   —This conversation has been dragging on for too long. And I’m an old man, lady. Every second I waste, I lose a whole Life.

  —So you’ve finished saying what you came to say?

  —That’s all. You said you came looking for someone. Well, you can be on your way, because there’s no one here . . .

  —My dear Ventura, there’s one thing I can tell you: you weren’t the only one to leave the world . . .

  —I don’t understand . . .

  —What if I were to tell you that we are both here for the same reason?

  It was painful to watch. She, a woman, a white woman, and she was defying my old man’s authority, showing up his weakness as a father and as a man in front of his sons.

  Silvestre Vitalício excused himself and withdrew. Later, he explained that his anger was already overflowing, the magma in the crater of a volcano, when he brought the conversation to an end:

  —Women are like wars: they turn men into animals.

  After his confrontation with the visitor, my father couldn’t get a good night’s sleep. He tossed around in a minefield of nightmares and we listened to him, amid incomprehensible exclamations, calling, at one moment, for our mother, and at another for the donkey:

  —My little Alma! Jezebel, my sweet!

  The following morning, he was burning with fever. Ntunzi and I stood round his bed. Silvestre didn’t even recognize us.

  —Jezebel?

  —Father, it’s us, your sons . . .

  He looked at us with a pained expression and lay there, his smile frozen on his face, his eyes expressionless, as if he’d never seen us before. After a while, he placed his hand on his chest as if to lend support to his voice, and arraigned us:

  —That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?

  —We don’t understand—Ntunzi said.

  —Did you want to take charge of me? Is that what you wanted, to see me struck down, to be able to bury me in my moment of weakness? Well I’m not going to give you that joy . . .

  —But Father, we only want to help . . .

  —Get out of my room, and don’t come back here, not even to get my corpse . . .

  For days, my father lay sick in his bed. His faithful servant, Zachary Kalash, was always by his side. Those days were propitious for us to develop our friendship with Marta. I increasingly regarded her as a mother. Ntunzi increasingly dreamed of her as a woman. My brother became more and more taken by lust: he dreamed of her naked, he would undress her with the urgency of a male, and the Portuguese woman’s most intimate items of clothing would fall to the floor of his slumber. What I liked about Marta was her gentleness. She would write, every day, she would be bowed over her papers, writing orderly lines of letters. Just like me, Marta was a foreigner in the world. She wrote memories, I tuned silences.

  At night, my brother would boast of the advances he had made on her heart. He was like a general giving details of territories that had been conquered. He claimed he had got a glimpse of her breasts, had caught her at her most intimate moments, had seen her bathing naked. Soon, he would satisfy his hunger in her body. Galvanized by the proximity of that golden moment, my brother would get up in bed and proclaim:

  —Either God exists, or He’s about to be born now!

  Such episodes were like a hunter’s tale: their telling could only gain the seal of authenticity through a lie. Every one of his stories, however, left me unsettled, hurt, and betrayed. Even though I knew that they were more the product of his fantasies than of facts, Ntunzi’s tales filled me with rage. For the first time, there was a woman in my life. And that woman had been sent by the dead Dordalma to watch over what remained of my childhood. Little by little, this foreigner was turning into my mother, in a kind of second round of existence.

  The erotic accounts of my brother may have been the product of his delirium, but three afternoons later I saw Ntunzi lying down with his head on her lap. Such intimacy made me unsure: could the rest of my little brother’s romance with the foreign woman be true?

  —I’m tired—Ntunzi confessed, drooling over Marta.

  The Portuguese woman stroked my brother’s forehead and said:

  —It’s not tiredness. It’s sadness. You miss someone. Your illness is called yearning.

  It had been so long since our mother had been alive, but she’d never died within my brother’s mind. Sometimes, he wanted to cry out in pain, but he didn’t have enough life in him for it. The Portuguese woman gave him advice at that point: Ntunzi should go into mourning in order to blunt the vicious spike of nostalgia.

  —You’ve got all these wonderful surroundings to weep in . . .

  —What’s the use of weeping if I don’t have anyone to listen?

  —Weep, my darling, and I’ll give you my shoulder.

  Jealous feelings made me move away, leaving the sad spectacle of Ntunzi lying on top of the intruder with his legs spread. For the first time, I hated my brother. Back in my room, I cried because I felt betrayed by Ntunzi and by Marta.

  To make matters worse, my father recovered. A week after taking to his bed, he stepped out of his room. He sat in his chair on the veranda to catch his breath, as if his illness were no more than a bout of tiredness.

  —Do you feel well?—I asked.

  —Today, I’ve woken up alive—he answered.

  He ordered Ntunzi to come to him. He wanted to inspect our eyes to see how we were sleeping. Our faces paraded before his fanatical examination.

  —You, Ntunzi, woke up late. You didn’t even greet the sun.

  —I didn’t sleep well.

  —I know what’s depriving you of your sleep.

  I closed my eyes, and awaited the expected. I sensed a storm brewing. Either that, or I no longer knew Silvestre Vitalício.

  —I’m warning you: if I see you flirting with that Portuguese woman . . .

  —But Father, I’m not doing anything . . .

  —These things are never being done: they just end up done. Don’t come to me afterwards and say I didn’t warn you.

  I helped the old man back to his resting place. Then, I went to the yard where the Portuguese woman was waiting for me. She wanted me to help her climb a tree. I hesitated. I thought the girl maybe wanted to remember her childhood. But no. She just wanted to check to see whether her cellphone could catch a signal from a higher position. My brother stepped forward and helped her pull herself up through the branches. I realized he was peeping at the white woman’s legs. I left, unable to watch this degrading scene.

  Later on, as we sat in silence round the table where we had had dinner, old Silvestre suddenly exclaimed:

  —Today, everything went backwards for the worse.

  —Are you ill again?

  —And it’s the fault of the pair of you. So now you let that broad climb a tree!?

  —What’s wrong, Father?

  —What’s wrong? Have you forgotten that I . . . that I am a tree?

  —You can’t be serious, Father . . .

  —That woman was climbing over me, she was stamping on me with her feet, I had to bear her whole weight on my shoulders . . .

  And he fell silent, such was the insult he felt. Only his hands danced around emptily in despair. He got to his feet with difficulty. When I tried to help him, he raised his index finger right in front of our noses.

  —Tomorrow, this is going to end.

  —What’s going to end?

  —Tomorrow’s the deadline for that floozy to get out of here. Tomorrow’s her last day.

  The biggest flash came in the darkness of night: Ntunzi announced that he was going to run away with the foreign woman. He said everything had been arranged. Planned right down to the tiniest detail.

  —Marta’s taking me to Europe. There are countries there you can enter and leave as well.

  That’s what makes a place: entering and leaving. That’s why we didn’t live anywhere at all. I was frozen to the spot at the very thought of my being left alone in the immensity of Jezoosalem.

/>   —I’ll go with you—I declared with a whine.

  —No, you can’t.

  —Why can’t I?

  —They don’t allow children your age into Europe.

  Then he told me what Uncle said. In those countries, one didn’t have to work: wealth was there for everyone, and all you had to do was to fill in the appropriate form.

  —I’m going to travel round Europe, arm in arm with the white woman.

  —I don’t believe you, brother. That girl has gone to your head. Do you remember telling me about your first love? Well, you’ve gone blind again.

  It wasn’t the possibility that Ntunzi might end up leaving. It was the fact that he was leaving with Marta: that’s what hurt me most. I couldn’t sleep because of it. I peered out at the big house and saw that there was still a lamp shining. I went over to Marta and came straight to the point:

  —I’m very angry with you!

  —With me?

  —Why did you choose Ntunzi?

  —What are you talking about?

  —I know everything, you’re going to run away with my brother. You’re going to leave me here.

  Marta put her head back and smiled. She asked me to come over to her. I refused.

  —I’m leaving tomorrow. Don’t you want to go for a walk with me?

  —I want to go away with you once and for all . . . together with Ntunzi.

  —Ntunzi won’t be coming with me. You can be sure of that. Tomorrow, Aproximado arrives with fuel and we’ll leave together, just the two of us. Me and your Uncle, no one else.

  —Do you promise?

  —I promise.

  The Portuguese woman took my hand and led me to the window. She stood there, looking out at the night as if, for her, all that sky was just one star.

  —Do you see those stars? Do you know what they’re called?

  —The stars don’t have names.

  —They have names, it’s just that we don’t know them.

  —My father says that in the city, people gave the stars names. And they did so because they were afraid . . .

  —Afraid?

  —Afraid because they felt the sky might not belong to them. But I don’t believe that. Besides, I know who made the stars.