The Tuner of Silences (16 page)

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Were you dreaming of Mama as well?

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Do you remember that story of the girl who lost her face when I fell in love with her?

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Yes. But what's that got to do with it?

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In my dream, I saw her face.

The sound of voices outside made us stop talking. We rushed to the window. It was Zachary, speaking to our father. Judging by his gestures, we guessed the soldier was reporting the apparition. So we watched Zachary gesticulating, explaining in an animated fashion what had happened at the haunted
house. My father's expression became more and more grim: we were being visited, the earth and the heavens were shaking in Jezoosalem.

All of a sudden, Silvestre got up and vanished into the darkness. We followed him from afar, keen to discover what was going on in the man's mind as he crossed the yard like a wounded animal. Silvestre went straight to the truck and shook Aproximado, who was snoozing in the front seat. There was no warning, or even a greeting:

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What's this white woman doing here?

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She wasn't the only one to arrive. Why don't you ask me what I'm doing here?

Overcome with emotion, my father signalled to Kalash to come over. Silvestre looked as if he wanted to confide something, but no word came out of his mouth. Suddenly, he started kicking Aproximado, while the soldier tried in vain to shield our Uncle. And so the three of them spun around together, like the broken blades of a windmill. Finally, my father leaned against the front of the vehicle, exhausted, and took a deep breath, as if he were trying to regain entry to his soul. His voice was like that of Christ on the cross, as he asked:

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Why did you betray me, Aproximado? Why?

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I've got no obligations towards you.

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Aren't we family?

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That's what I sometimes ask myself.

He'd said too much. Aproximado had crossed the line. My father stood there speechless, huffing like Jezebel after her trot. And then he watched, stunned, as Aproximado unloaded a whole range of odds and ends from his truck: binoculars, powerful torches capable of drilling through the night, cameras, sun hats and tripods.

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What's all this? An invasion?

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It's not all that much. The lady likes to take photos of herons.

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And you tell me it's “not all that much”? Someone in this world is going round taking photos of herons?

This was just an additional reason for his discomfort. The truth was that the presence of the Portuguese woman in itself was an unbearable intrusion. One person alone — and a woman to boot — was bringing the entire nation of Jezoosalem to its knees. In just a few minutes, Silvestre Vitalício's painstaking fabrication was falling to pieces. There was, after all, a living world out there, and an envoy from that world had installed herself at the very heart of his realm. There was no time to lose: Aproximado was to pack up everything once more and take the intruder back where she had come from.

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You, Brother-in-law, are going to take this broad away!

Aproximado smiled, sly and sardonic, which is what he did when he couldn't think of what to say. He steadied his body inside his overalls, mustering up the courage for an argument:

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My dear Silvestre: we're not the owners.

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We're not what? Well, I'm the owner of all this, and I'm the only current occupant of this whole area.

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Well, I don't know about that . . . Can't you understand that maybe it's us who'll have to leave?

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Why's that?

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The houses we're occupying are the property of the State.

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What State? I don't see any State around here.

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One can never see the State, Brother-in-law.

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It's for that and other reasons that I got out of that world where the State can never be seen, but it always turns up and takes our things away from us.

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You can shout, Silvestre Vitalício, but you're here illegally . . .

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Illegal is the bitch who bore you . . .

He was so enraged that he lost control of his voice, which sounded like a cloth being ripped in half. We'd never seen him
reach such a state. My father set off in the direction of the administrator's house, and started yelling:

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You bitch! You great bitch!

He projected his whole body forward as if the words he was hurling were stones:

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Get out of here, you bitch!

Seeing him duelling with the void like this made me feel sorry for him. My father wanted to shut the world away. But there was no door behind which to lock himself.

It was early in the morning when my old man came to my bedside and shook me. He leaned over my pillow and whispered:

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I've got a mission for you, son.

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A what, Father?
I asked, startled.

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A spying mission
—he added.

My task was an easy one and explained to me in two brief brush strokes: I would go to the big house and rummage through whatever was in the Portuguese woman's room. Silvestre Vitalício wanted to discover clues that might reveal the visitor's secret intentions. Ntunzi would have the job of distracting the woman, keeping her far from the house. And I wasn't to be afraid of shadows or ghosts. The Portuguese woman had already scared any tormented souls away. Local ghosts didn't get on well with foreign ones, he assured me.

Later on, halfway through the morning, the Portuguese woman's effects emerged into the light of day in my trembling hands. For hours, my eyes and fingers ranged over Marta's papers. Each sheet was a wing with which I gained giddiness rather than height.

I
'm a woman, I'm Marta and all I can do is write. Maybe, after all, it's best that you are away from here. For I could never reach you otherwise. I have long ceased to occupy my own voice. If you came to me now, Marcelo, I would be speechless. My voice has emigrated to a body that once was mine. And when I listen to my voice, I don't even recognize myself. When it comes to love, I only know how to write. This isn't recent, it's always been like that, even when you were present.

I write just as birds compose their flight: without paper, without script, with only light and nostalgia. Words that, while mine, have never dwelt in me. I write without having anything to say. Because I don't know what to say to you about what we were. And I have nothing to say to you about what we shall be. For I'm like the inhabitants of Jezoosalem. I feel no yearning, I have no memory: my belly has never borne life, my blood has never opened into another body. This is how I grow old: dispersed within me, a veil abandoned on a church pew.

I loved you, and you alone, Marcelo. My fidelity led me into the most painful of exiles: this love removed me from all possibility of loving. Now, of all the names, all I have left is your name. I can only ask that name what I used to ask of you: to beget me. For I need so much to be born! To be born another, far from me, far from my time. I am exhausted, Marcelo. Exhausted but not empty. To be empty, one must have internal substance. And I have lost my inner being.

Why did you never write? It's not reading you that I miss. It's the sound of the knife slitting the envelope that carries your letter. And once again feeling my soul caressed, as if somewhere an umbilical cord was being cut. But it was just an illusion: there is no knife, there is no letter. Nothing, or nobody, is being delivered into the world.

Do you see how small I become when I write to you? That's why I could never be a poet. A poet grows when faced by absence, as if absence were his altar, and he became greater than the word. That's not the case with me, for absence submerges me, so that I no longer have access to myself.

This is my conflict: when you're here, I don't exist, I'm ignored. When you're not here, I don't know myself, I'm ignorant. I only exist when I'm in your presence. And I am only myself in your absence. Now, I know. I'm no more than a name. A name that only comes to life when uttered by you.

This morning I watched the bushfire in the distance. On the other side of the river, vast stretches were being consumed. It wasn't the earth that was turning to flame: it was the air itself that was burning, the whole sky was being devoured by demons.

Later, when the blaze had died down, a sea of dark ash remained. In the absence of wind, particles fluttered around like black dragonflies over the scorched grassland. It could have been a scene from the end of the world. But for me, it was the opposite: it was the earth being born. I felt like yelling your name:

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Marcelo!

My cry could have been heard far away. For here, in this place, even silence produces an echo. If there is somewhere I can be reborn, it's here, where the briefest moment leaves me sated. I'm like the savannah: I burn to live. And I die, drowned by my own thirst.

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What's that word?

At the last stop before we reached Jezoosalem, Orlando (who I've got to get into the habit of calling Aproximado) asked, pointing at my name on the cover of my diary: