The Tuner of Silences (36 page)

—
I have fits of blindness, Ntunzi. I suffer from Silvestre's sickness.

I went to the drawer in the kitchen and pulled out my school folder, which I opened out before my brother's astonished look.

—
Look at these papers
—I said, holding out a bundle of pages covered in handwriting.

I had written all this during my moments of darkness. Assaulted by fits of blindness, I ceased seeing the world. All I could see were letters, everything else was shadows.

—
You are a shadow now.

—
I've got a name that means shadow.

—
Can you read the handwriting?

—
Of course, this is your handwriting. Careful and neat, like it always was . . . Wait a minute, are you saying you wrote all this without seeing?

—
My blindness lifts only when I write.

Ntunzi chose a page at random and read out loud: “
These are my last utterances, Silvestre Vitalício proclaimed. Pay attention, my sons, because no one will ever listen to my voice again. I myself am taking leave of my voice. I say this to you: you committed a grave mistake in bringing me to the city. I am in the process of dying because of that perfidious journey. The frontier between Jezoosalem and the city wasn't based on distance. Fear and guilt were the only frontier. No government in the world is more oppressive than fear and guilt. Fear made me live, humble and withdrawn. Guilt caused me to flee myself, empty of memories. This is what Jezoosalem was: it wasn't a place but a time of waiting for a God to be born. Only such a God would alleviate the punishment
that I had imposed on myself. Yes, only now do I understand: my sons, my two sons, only they can bring me that sense of forgiveness.”

His voice faltered and he stopped reading. My brother crouched next to Silvestre and read the last sentence again “
. . .my sons, my two sons . . .”

—
Did you say that, Silvestre?

Faced with my father's passivity, Ntunzi turned to me and asked, his voice trembling with emotion:

—
Is this true, brother? Did Father say this?

—
These pages contain all that is our life. And when is living, Ntunzi, for real?

I tidied the sheets and put them away in the folder. And I gave him my book as my final and only belonging.

—
Here is Jezoosalem.

Ntunzi clutched the folder and went back into the house. I watched my brother disappear into the darkness, while the memories returned of a time when we would erase our tracks to protect our solitary refuge. And I recalled the half-light where I had deciphered my first letters. And I remembered the twinkling light of the stars over the river. And striking off the days on the blackened wall of time.

Suddenly, I felt an immense longing for Noci. Maybe I'll go and look for her sooner than I thought. That woman's tenderness was confirmation for me that my father was wrong: the world hadn't died. In fact, the world hadn't even been born. Who knows, I may learn, in the attuned silence of Noci's arms, to find my mother walking across an endless wasteland before reaching the last tree.

MIA COUTO was born in Beira, Mozambique in 1955. He dropped out of medical school to join the struggle against Portuguese colonialism in his country. When Mozambique became independent in 1975, Couto was named Director of Information in the revolutionary government, and served as editor of two newspapers. In the 1980s, he returned to university to study environmental biology while beginning his writing career.

Couto is the author of more than 25 books of fiction, essays and poems. His novels and short story collections have been published in 20 languages. Two of his novels have been made into feature films and his books have been bestsellers in Africa, Europe and South America. In 2002, a committee of African literary critics named his novel
Sleepwalking Land
one of the twelve best African books of the twentieth century. His novels have been awarded major literary prizes in Mozambique, Portugal, Brazil and Italy.

Mia Couto lives with his family in Maputo, Mozambique, where he works as an environmental consultant and a theatre director.

DAVID BROOKSHAW has translated six books by Mia Couto, including
Sleepwalking Land, Under the Frangipani
and
The Last Flight of the Flamingo
. He is Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Fellow in Lusophone literatures at the University of Bristol. His recent books include translations of Portuguese-language fiction from the Azores Islands, Macau and China, and the critical study,
Perceptions of China in Modern Portuguese Literature
.