A General Theory of Oblivion Read Online Free PDF Page A

coming apart, from a suffocating marriage, from one of those futures that squeeze your feet like someone else’s shoes? I thought to add a little note of my own – “Kill the Messenger.” Yes, for if she killed the pigeon, she would find a diamond. And so she would read the note, before returning the pigeon to the pigeon house. At six in the morning she would go to meet a man I imagine to be tall, with controlled movements and an attentive heart. He is lit by a vague sadness (this man) as he prepares for their flight. A flight that will make him a traitor to the fatherland. He will wander the world, taking support from the love of a woman, but he will never be able to fall asleep at night without first bringing his hand to his left breast
.
    The woman notices the gesture
.
    Does something hurt?
    The man will shake his head, no. Nothing. It’s nothing. How to explain that what hurts is the childhood he has lost?
    Leaning out the bedroom window, she would see, on the drawn-out Saturday mornings, one of the neighbor women on the veranda of 10-A, pounding corn. Then she would see her mashing up the cassava paste. Preparing and grilling fish or, other times, fat chicken legs. The air would be filled with a thick, scent-heavy smoke that would rouse her appetite. Orlando used to like Angolan food. Ludo, however, had always refused to cook black people’s things. She regretted that very much. In those days what she most fancied was to eat grilled meat. She started to watch the chickens that lived on the veranda, scratching away, as the day broke, at the first grains of sunlight. She waited till one Sunday morning. The city slept. She leaned out the window and lowered a piece of string with a slip noose at the end down to the veranda of 10-A. About fifteen minutes later she managed to loop the neck of a huge black rooster. She gave a sharp tug, and brought it quickly up. To her surprise, the animal was still alive (though only barely) when she set it on the bedroom floor. She drew the knife from her waist, she was going to slit its throat – then a sudden flash of inspiration stopped her. There would be enough corn for the next few months, as well as beans and bananas. With a rooster and a hen she could start breeding. It would be good to eat fresh eggs every week. She lowered the string again and this time she managed to loop one of the hens by a leg. The wretched bird struggled, an appalling uproar, feathers and down and dust flying. A moment later the building was woken by the neighbor’s screams:
    “Thieves! Thieves!”
    Then, having ascertained the impossibility of anyone scaling the smooth walls to get to the veranda and steal the poultry, the woman’s accusations were transformed into a terrified wailing:
    “Witchcraft … Witchcraft …”
    Then straightaway with total certainty:
    “A Kianda … A Kianda …”
    Ludo had heard Orlando talk about a sea goddess called the Kianda. Her brother-in-law had tried to explain to her the difference between Kiandas and mermaids:
    “A Kianda is a being, an energy capable of good or evil. This energy is expressed through the colored lights that come from the water, the waves of the sea, and the raging of the winds. Fishermen pay her tribute. When I was a child and I used to play by the lagoon, the one behind this very building, I was always finding offerings. Sometimes the Kianda would kidnap somebody as they strolled past. People would reappear days later, very far away, beside some other lagoon or river, or on some beach. That used to happen a lot. After a certain point the Kianda began to be represented in the form of a mermaid. It was transformed into a mermaid, but kept its original powers.”
    Thus it was, with a vulgar theft, and a stroke of luck, that Ludo began a small run of poultry breeding on her terrace, while simultaneously contributing to the strengthening of the Luandans’ belief in the presence and powers of the Kianda.

Che Guevara’s Mulemba