Another Day of Life Read Online Free PDF Page A

around the city in a desultory mob, looking for a handout. One day they disappeared. I think they followed the human example and left Luanda, since I never came across a dead dog afterward, though hundreds of them had been loitering in front of the general headquarters and frolicking in front of the palace. One could suppose that an energetic leader emerged from the ranks to take the pack out of the dying city. If the dogs went north, they ran into the FNLA. If they went south, they ran into UNITA. On the other hand, if they went east, in the direction of Ndalatando and Saurimo, they might have made it into Zambia, then to Mozambique or even Tanzania.
    Perhaps they’re still roaming, but I don’t know in what direction or in what country.
    After the exodus of the dogs, the city fell into rigor mortis. So I decided to go to the front.

Scenes From the Front
    Comandante Ndozi stands in the shade of a spreading mango tree. He wipes his sweaty face. Winning a battle takes physical exertion, too. It is just like cutting down a forest. He orders a group of soldiers to bury the dead. Friend and foe can be interred together—nothing means anything after death. Besides, as our proverb has it: Enemies on earth, brothers in heaven. He asks if the truck has left for Luanda with the wounded. It hasn’t, because the driver is waiting for a shipment of gasoline. The wounded are lying in the truck, moaning and calling for help. There is no doctor on this front. If the gasoline doesn’t come, half the wounded will bleed to death. Then Ndozi sends an orderly in the direction of some gunfire. He is to see if it is a skirmish with the withdrawing enemy, or if the boys are firing salutes to celebrate the victory. He suspects they are wasting ammunition, which is also running short. The enemy will strike tomorrow and we will give up the town because there won’t be anything to defend it with. He says he has eternal problems with ammunition. Eternal—that’s stretching it. This is the beginning of the war and his unit has been in existence for only a month.
    Ndozi has years of guerrilla warfare behind him, but the troops he is leading are green. A green soldier fears everything. When he is transported to the front, he thinks death is watching him on every side. Every shot is aimed at him. He doesn’t know how to judge the range or direction of fire, so he shoots anywhere, as long as he can shoot a lot without stopping. He is not hurting the enemy, he is killing his own terror. He is stifling the dread that paralyzes a man and prevents him from thinking. Or rather, the dread doesn’t let him think about what is happening around him, about how to win the battle that his unit is engaged in, because at that moment he has a more important battle to win: he must win the war with his own fear. During the attack today, says Ndozi, I ran up to one who was standing there shooting a bazooka straight up in the air. Don’t aim up, I screamed, aim in front of you at those palms, that’s where they are. But I could see that he had a gray face, that finding the enemy hadn’t crossed his mind, that nothing was getting through to him because he was fighting his own enemy, who wasn’t among the palms but inside him, in the boy himself. He was firing because he wanted to stun himself, he wanted to stupefy himself and survive the attack of fear.
    Ndozi continues his account. The supply officers call: Who did you share your ammunition with? I answer that it’s been fired. How many did you kill? Two. A half ton of cartridges and only two dead? But there was no need to kill more; we were to take the town, and we’ve taken it. None of the quartermasters comes to the front to see how green soldiers, who don’t know war, fight. At night, the unit moves up close to where the enemy is. We open fire just before dawn. The inexperienced soldier thinks the main thing is to make a big racket. He fires like a man possessed, blindly, because all he cares about is