The Tuner of Silences (35 page)

Once back in the kitchen, an impulse made me throw myself at my brother. I hugged him at last. And our embrace seemed to last the duration of his absence. It only ended when his arm gently pushed me away. I was no longer a child, and I'd lost the ability to shed a tear. I took the pack of cards in my hands and shook the dust off it, while asking:

—
And what's the news of Kalash?

Zachary Kalash was still hiding behind his soldier's disguise. But he was old, to be sure, much older than our father. One day, a military policeman stopped him to check where he'd got the uniform he was wearing. It was worse than false: it was a colonial uniform. Zachary was arrested.

—
Last week, he was freed.

But he had other news: Marta was going to pay his fare to Portugal. Zachary Kalash was going to visit his wartime godmother, from the old days of military service.

—
It's a bit late now for him to see his godmother, don't you think?

For sure, we fear death. But there's no greater fear than that which we feel at the idea of living life to the full, of living at full tilt. Zachary had lost his fear. And he was going to live. That's what Zachary had answered when my brother questioned him.

When we visited the cemetery, we stopped at Dordalma's grave. Ntunzi closed his eyes and said a prayer and I pretended to accompany him, ashamed that I'd never learnt any prayers. Afterwards, as we sat in the shade, Ntunzi pulled out a cigarette and was lost in his thoughts for a while. Something reminded me of the times when I used to help our old father fabricate silences.

—
So, Ntunzi, are you going to stay with us for a while?

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Yes, for a few days. Why do you ask?

—
I'm worn out from looking after our father all by myself.

It was lucky I didn't know how to pray. Because recently, I'd asked God to take our father up to Heaven. Ntunzi listened to my sad outburst, passed his hand down his leg and patted the top of his military boot. He took off his beret and put it back on his head again. I understood: he was preparing to make some solemn declaration. His soldier's status helped find the courage. He gazed at me lingeringly before he spoke:

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Silvestre is our father, but you are his only son.

—
What are you saying, Ntunzi?

—
I'm Zachary's son.

I pretended not to be surprised. I left the shade and strolled round my mother's tomb. And I mused over the countless secrets her gravestone concealed. So when Dordalma left home in the ill-fated van, it was Zachary she was going to meet. Now, everything made sense: the way Silvestre treated me differently. The guarded protection that Kalash always afforded Ntunzi. The anxiety with which the soldier carried my sick brother down to the river. Everything made sense. Even the new name Silvestre had given my brother. Ntunzi means “shadow.” I was the light of his eyes. Ntunzi denied him the sun, reminding him of Dordalma's eternal sin.

—
Have you spoken to him, Ntunzi?

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To Silvestre? How could I when he shows no sign of life?

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I meant your new father, Zachary?

No, he hadn't. They were both soldiers and there were matters that were not appropriate for conversation. For all misintents and purposes, Silvestre would remain his sole, legitimate father.

—
But look at what Zachary gave me. This is the last bullet, d'you remember?

He showed it to me. It was the bullet lodged in his shoulder, the one he had never explained. It had been fired by my father during their scuffle at the funeral.

—
See? My father almost killed your father?

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There's just one thing I don't understand: why did they go off to Jezoosalem together?

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Guilt, Mwanito. It was the feeling of guilt that bound them . . .

What Ntunzi then went on to tell me left me perplexed: the struggle between Zachary and Silvestre in the church
didn't match what everyone thought. The truth was far removed from Marta's account. What, in fact, happened was this: overwhelmed by remorse, Zachary arrived late at the funeral, completely unaware of what had happened during the last hours of his beloved's existence. As far as he was concerned, Dordalma had committed suicide because of him. And that was why, burdened by the weight of his guilt, the soldier had turned up to express his condolences. In the church, Zachary had hugged my father, and like the good soldier that he was, declared his wish to restore his honour. Suffocated by his grief, he took out his pistol with the intention of putting an end to his own life. Silvestre clasped Kalash to himself in time to deflect the shot. The bullet lodged next to his collar bone. He would have shot himself through the heart if he hadn't been squeezed so hard, Kalash had lamented bitterly.

Later, as the soldier left the hospital where he had been treated, my old man avoided Zachary's attempt to give him a grateful hug:

—
Don't thank me. All I did was pay you back . . .

My brother slept in the living room. That night, I couldn't get to sleep. I pulled up a canvas chair and sat down by the front door. It was misty and the dew made the surroundings hazy. I thought of Noci. And I missed the chasms she had opened beneath my feet. Maybe I would go and see her, if she persisted in staying away.

I half-expected to hear the door open. My brother couldn't sleep either. Holding the cards, he invited me:

—
Fancy a game, Mwanito?

The game was just an excuse, of course. We played without talking, as if the result of the game were all-important. Then Ntunzi spoke:

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On my way to the city, I passed by Jezoosalem.

—
Aproximado said it's completely changed.

It wasn't true. In spite of everything, time hadn't penetrated beyond the entrance to the game reserve. Ntunzi assured me of this as he described in detail all that he had seen of our old home. I stopped him before he began his account:

—
Wait a minute, let's bring father here.

—
But won't he be sleeping?

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Sleeping is his way of living.

We hauled old Silvestre out on our arms, and deposited him so that he was reclining on the last step.

—
Now, you can go on. Tell us what you saw, Ntunzi.

—
But can he hear anything? I think he can, isn't that so, Silvestre Vitalício?

In a loud voice, my brother embellished every detail, and took me through his last visit. My father remained with his eyes closed, unresponsive.

—
I spent a whole day in my past. One day in Jezoosalem.

That's how Ntunzi began the account of his visit. He had ferreted around for signs of our stay in the encampment, looked for the secret notes that I had scribbled over the years and buried in the garden. He visited the ruined buildings, scratched the ground as if scraping his own skin, as if his memories were some lump hidden inside his body. And he rescued the pack of cards from the hiding place where I had buried it. That was the only testimony to our presence there.

He held the little pieces of card, and raised them up to the sky as one does with the newly born. Some of them were faded and illegible. Kings, knaves and queens had been dethroned by the worms of time.

—
And after that, Ntunzi? What did you do, what happened afterwards?

My brother climbed up to look on top of the cupboard in our room and there was the old case where he had hidden his drawings. He shook the dust off them, so that he could see more clearly the dozens of sketches of our mother's face. All of them were different, but they all had the same large eyes of someone who is in the world as if standing at a window: waiting for another life.

Ntunzi interrupted his story, and suddenly knelt down to look into my father's face.

—
What's happened, Ntunzi?
—I asked.

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It's Father . . .he's crying . . .

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No, he's always like that . . .it's tiredness, that's all.

—
It looked to me as if he was crying.

My brother had lost contact with us and no longer knew how to read our old father's face. I gathered up the cards and placed them in Ntunzi's hands.

—
Please, brother, read me the pack, remind me what I wrote.

There followed moments as thick as a river in full flow. My brother pretended to be deciphering tiny letters among the beards of kings and the tunics of queens. I knew he was inventing almost everything, but for years, neither of us had been able to distinguish the frontier between memory and lying. Sitting in his chair on the veranda and swaying his body as my old father used to do, Ntunzi interrupted his reading when he saw that I was completely still.

—
Have you fallen asleep, Mwanito?

—
Do you remember how I was cold and distant yesterday, when we met?

—
I admit that I was taken aback. I'd chosen my smartest uniform . . .

—
The problem is that I suffer from the same illness as our father.

For the first time I confessed that which had been stifling my heart for ages: I had inherited my father's madness. For long periods of time, I was assailed by selective blindness. My inner being was invaded by the desert, which turned our neighbourhood into a community peopled by absences.