Another Day of Life (11 page)

Reports spread that the MPLA will announce independence ahead of time—today or tomorrow—counting on immediate recognition of Angola by friendly countries who will treat the airport and harbor as sovereign territory of the new state. Access to Luanda is the issue. Right now, the decisive thing is to open the city, which is surrounded on land and cannot be reached by water or air.

And if help doesn’t come in time? The storming of Luanda. Despite the heroic efforts of the city’s inhabitants, the overwhelming strength of the enemy, etc. Who will come in first? The ones from the south or the FNLA? The FNLA is a cruel army. They practice cannibalism. A few days ago I didn’t believe that. But last week I went with a group of local journalists to Lucala, four hundred kilometers east of Luanda. One day earlier, Lucala had been recaptured from an FNLA unit that withdrew to Samba Cajú, a town seventy kilometers to the north. We drove with a pursuing unit. The seventy kilometers were a horrible sight. All along the road through this thickly populated region, there was not a single living person or surviving house. All the people had been murdered and all the villages burned. The withdrawing army had destroyed every sign of life along the way. Heads of women had been thrown in the roadside grass. Corpses with hearts and livers cut out. I rode half the way with my eyes closed. At one point, somebody in our car raised his voice. I opened my eyes: In a dead, burned village two monkeys were sitting at a table in front of a burned bar. They looked at us for a moment and then made tracks for the bushes.

To fall into the hands of drunken cannibals—a grim death. Their sweaty faces, their dull gaze, the way they shout, the way they point their guns at their victims, their amusement at the trembling they inspire in them. Better not to think about it.

In the evening Comandante Ju-Ju reads his daily radio communiqué on the situation at the front. Very optimistic. Upsetting, that. Reality looks bad; half the country is in enemy hands, yet from what Ju-Ju reads, the MPLA seems to be on the brink of victory.

Don’t take reality into account

—A principle that is intended to function like a sleeping pill. Don’t panic, don’t lapse into doubt, don’t get hysterical. But how can you talk people into acting now, at the decisive moment, without making them aware of the full gravity of the situation? They won’t move; they’ll lie there and chew the cud of optimism. Since things are so good, why exert yourself? And these disorienting contradictions: Here an appeal to defend the city, and there it appears that everything is as good as can be. The result: a loss of faith. In the hour of decision, they are not going to trust anyone; even their instinct of self-preservation is being blunted.

3322 TIVOLI AN
814251 PAP PL

GOOD EVENING PLS MATERIAL

SORRY I DIDNT SEND ANYTHING MORNING AND DIDNT EVEN CALL BUT THE POLICE LOCKED US UP FOR NO REASON. PEOPLE SIMPLY LOSING HEADS. NO WONDER WHEN THEY THINK THEY MIGHT DIE SOON. CALL ME IN MORNING AT 7 GMT THERE COULD BE SENSATIONAL NEWS AND MAYBE THIS TIME THEY WONT SHUT ME DOWN OK???

YES UNTIL 7 GMT IN MORNING OK

OK BI BI WAITING ANXIOUSLY

VIA ITT 11.4.751407 EDT

Queiroz called during the night and said that the Portuguese army would leave the civilian part of the airport and withdraw from the harbor tomorrow. If true, this is really sensational news. A glimmer of salvation. God, what a relief! I jumped to the ceiling with joy.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5 (LANDING)

This evening I went to the airport with Oscar ’s friend Gilberto, who works in the control tower. Dark, a horrible downpour: we drove as if under a fountain, no visibility, only walls of water through which our Peugeot burrowed and I felt as if I were in a subway moving through the streets of a submerged city. The large glass airport terminal building—monstrously littered and dirty because no one had cleaned up after the half million refugees who had camped here—was empty. I stood on the second floor with Gilberto, looking at the illuminated runway. The tropical deluge had passed, but it was still raining. High up to the left, two spotlights suddenly appeared: A plane was coming in to land. A moment later, it touched down and taxied between two rows of yellow lights. A Cubana Airlines Britannia. Then more and more spotlights up above. Four planes landed. They maneuvered into a row in front of us, the pilots switched off the engines, and it was quiet. The stairs were wheeled into place and Cuban soldiers with packs and weapons began disembarking. They lined up in two rows. They were wearing camouflage, which afforded some protection from the rain. After a few minutes, they walked toward trucks waiting nearby. My shoulder felt sore. I smiled: Through the whole scene, Gilberto had been gripping my shoulder tightly.

Those soldiers went to the front the next day.

The hotel grew crowded and noisy. Neto was supposed to proclaim the independence of Angola late Monday night, and an aircraft had brought umpteen foreign correspondents from Lisbon for the occasion. They were given visas and lodged in our hotel. Oscar was tearing his hair in desperation because there was nothing to give them to eat, but they cheered him up by saying that food wasn’t important. Information was important.

What stories the world press publishes! I read many of the dispatches sent from Luanda in those days. I admired the opulence of human fantasy. But I also understood my colleagues’ predicament. The editor sends a reporter to a country that is fascinating to the entire world. Such a journey costs a lot of money. The world is waiting for a great story, a scoop, a sensational narrative written under a hail of bullets. The special correspondent flies out to Luanda. He is taken to the hotel. He gets a room, shaves, and changes his shirt. He is ready and goes out immediately to look for the fighting.

After several hours he announces that he’s beating his head against a wall—

He can’t do anything.

Angola betrays no interest in his presence. The telephone doesn’t answer, or if it does it answers in Portuguese, a language he doesn’t understand. If he has enough strength and endurance, he can make the journey on foot to Government Palace. There he meets Elvira, a moon-faced typist who will smile but knows nothing and isn’t telling what she does know. He might meet young Costa, who will answer all questions by shaking his head and remaining silent. Make the trip to MPLA headquarters? That’s an all-day journey, and besides, the guard won’t let him through the gate. Go to President Neto! But how? Nobody will say where the President lives. Ride to the front. To what front? You can’t travel outside Luanda; it’s a closed city. A group of Frenchmen acquired a car somewhere and decided, without looking into anything, to drive to the northern front. They were stopped at the first checkpoint and delivered straight to the airport. See a Cuban! But how? They are nowhere to be seen. Is Luso in MPLA hands? Because Savimbi says that UNITA holds it. Who knows? There has been no contact with that city for a long time. It’s essential to find out exactly where the front is. Where the front is? Who could know that? Even at headquarters, nobody is sure.

There are some remaining sources of information: Dona Cartagina, Oscar, and Felix. Dona Cartagina is now busy cleaning and has no time for politics. In any case, she speaks only Portuguese and it’s hard to communicate with her. Oscar invariably repeats MPLA slogans:
A vitória é certa!
Victory is certain. But that is skimpy and, moreover, not exactly what everyone is looking for. Felix gives the most matter-of-fact and truthful answers. Asked about the situation, he answers tersely:
Confusão.

Confusão
is a good word, a synthesis word, an everything word. In Angola it has its own specific sense and is literally untranslatable. To simplify things:
Confusão
means confusion, a mess, a state of anarchy and disorder.
Confusão
is a situation created by people, but in the course of creating it they lose control and direction, becoming victims of
confusão
themselves. There is a sort of fatalism in
confusão
. A person wants to do something, but it all falls to pieces in his hands; he wants to set something in motion, but some power paralyzes him; he wants to create something, but he produces
confusão
. Everything crosses him; even with the best will in the world, he falls over and over again into
confusão
.
Confusão
can overwhelm our thinking, and then others will say that the person has
confusão
in his head. It can steal into our hearts, and then our girls dump us. It can explode in a crowd and sweep through a mass of people—then there is fighting, death, arson. Sometimes
confusão
takes a more benign form in which it assumes the character of desultory, chaotic, but bloodless haggling.

Confusão
is a state of absolute disorientation. People who have found themselves on the inside of
confusão
can’t comprehend what is going on around them or in themselves. Nor can they explain specifically what caused this particular case of
confusão
. There are carriers who spread
confusão,
and others must beware, though this is difficult because literally any person can at any moment become a perpetrator of
confusão,
even against his will. By
confusão
we also understand our own states of perplexity and helplessness. We see
confusão
raging around us and can’t do anything to stop it.
Camaradas,
we hear again and again, don’t make
confusão!
—don’t! But does it depend on us? The most precise report from the front: What’s new with you?
confusão!
Everyone who understands this word knows the whole story.
confusão
can reign over an enormous territory and sweep through millions of people. Then there is a war. A state of
confusão
can’t be broken at one stroke or liquidated in the blinking of an eye. Anyone who tries falls into
confusão
himself. The best thing is to act slowly and wait. After a while
confusão
loses energy, weakens, vanishes. We emerge from a state of
confusão
exhausted, but somehow satisfied that we have managed to survive. We start gathering strength again for the next
confusão.

How to explain all this to people who have been in Luanda only a few hours? So once again, as if they hadn’t heard him, they ask Felix:

“What’s the situation?”

And Felix answers:

“Haven’t I told you already?
Confusão.”

They go away shaking their heads and shrugging their shoulders. And they are shaking their heads and shrugging their shoulders because Felix has sown
confusão
among them.

The next four days were drowned in unusual
confusão
. Every so often someone came into the hotel shouting, “They’re coming! They’re coming!” and announced breathlessly that the armored vehicles of the Afrikaners were already at the city’s edge. According to one, they were painted yellow; according to another, green. Numerous figures were given: Ten of these vehicles had been seen, later fifty or more. There was no way to check: They might really be a few kilometers away, or those might have been mere rumors. Oscar hung a map of Angola behind the reception desk. A crowd of people stood before it, arguing. Everyone wanted to show with his finger where in his opinion the front was, who had what city, to whom this or that road belonged. No two of them had the same picture of the situation. After a few days, the hundreds of fingers sweeping across the map had rubbed out cities, roads, and rivers. The country looked like a fragment of a gray, naked planet without people or nature.

On Monday the Portuguese garrison sailed away. The last platoon climbed the gangplank to the ship that morning. I knew some of the officers there and I went to say good-bye to them. The locals wanted the garrison to leave as quickly as possible. After years of colonial war, there could be neither understanding nor friendship between the two sides. But I saw it differently. I knew that in this final period the Angolans owed a large debt of gratitude to many, though not all, of the Portuguese officers. They had known how to behave loyally. I myself owed them a lot. They had treated me with sympathy and helped me generously. Nor had they ever attacked the Cubans, although the first people from Havana had come here when Angola was still formally a part of Portuguese territory. There exists a kind of interpersonal solidarity that should not be destroyed by dry political calculation.

A truck drove around the city that day and removed the statues of the Portuguese conquerors from their pediments. The governors and the generals, the travelers and the explorers were collected in front of the citadel and arranged in two brown granite rows. The plazas and squares looked even emptier. That afternoon an airplane flew in carrying foreign delegations. Only a few came. Rumors were circulating around the world that a squadron from Zaïre would bomb the airport that day and there would be no return. The cautious majority waited in their own countries for the unfolding of events in our city. It seems that they were right, because—as emerged later—the decision to destroy the airport had been reversed only at the last minute.

Thousands of people gathered at night in one of the squares. There had been requests to avoid large crowds so as to prevent a massacre in case of attack. The night was dark and cloudy, and the scene at the assembly recalled the secret meetings of the Kimbangists.

The cathedral clock struck twelve.

November 11, 1975.

Quiet reigned on the square. From the speakers’ platform, Agostinho Neto read a text proclaiming the People’s Republic of Angola. His voice broke and he had to pause several times. When he finished, there was applause from the invisible crowd, and the people cheered. There were no more speeches. After a moment the lights on the platform went out and everyone departed rather hastily, lost in the darkness. On the northern front the artillery was silent. But suddenly the soldiers in town began shooting wildly into the air in celebration. There was a chaotic uproar and the night came alive.