The Book of Chameleons (11 page)

This morning I found Eulálio dead. Poor Eulálio. He'd fallen at the foot of my bed, with an enormous scorpion, a horrible creature, also dead, clamped between his teeth. He died in combat, like a hero – Eulálio, who'd never thought of himself as courageous. I buried him in the yard, shrouded in a silk handkerchief, one of my best handkerchiefs, beside the trunk of the avocado tree. I chose the side of the tree facing the setting sun, damp and covered in moss, because it's always shady there. Like me, Eulálio never liked the sun. I'll miss him. I decided to start keeping this diary today, to maintain the illusion that there's someone listening to me. I'll never have another listener like him, though. He was my best friend, I think. I suppose I'll stop meeting him in my dreams now. And indeed with every passing day, every passing hour, my memory of him becomes more and more like a figure made of sand. The memory of a dream. Maybe I dreamed it all: him, José Buchmann, Edmundo Barata dos Reis. I dare not dig up the yard, there beside the bougainvillea, in case I find nothing there – the possibility terrifies me. As for Ângela Lúcia, if I did dream her, I dreamed her very well. The postcards she still sends me, one every three or four days, are almost real. I bought an immense map of the world, bought it online from Altair. Altair in Barcelona is my favourite bookshop. Whenever I go to Barcelona I set aside two or three days to lose myself in Altair, consulting books and maps and photo albums and planning journeys I will take one day; and above all planning all those journeys I never will take. I've hung the map on the living room wall, fixed to a corkboard, next to Ângela Lúcia's Polaroids. Each of her postcards bears a note mentioning where the picture was taken, so it's easy for me to track her progress (I've pierced each place with a green-headed pin). I can see that Ângela went down the
Amazon as far as Belém do Pará. By my reckoning she then rented a car – or took a bus, more likely – heading southward. From São Luís do Maranhão she sent me the flaming silhouette of a little square-sailed boat:
Anil River, February 9
^th
. Four days later I received the image of a child's hand throwing a paper aeroplane. There's a river slipping past in the background, fat and grey under the slow sun:
Ilhas Canárias, Parnaíba Delta, February 13
^th
. It's not hard for me to imagine where she'll go in the coming days. Yesterday I bought a ticket for Rio de Janeiro. The day after tomorrow I fly from Santos Dumont airport to Fortaleza. I don't think it will be hard for me to find her. If José Buchmann was able to find a fellow countryman, an
accorentado,
inside a phone box in Berlin, with no point of reference but a traffic light, it'll be even quicker for me to find a woman who loves to photograph clouds. I don't know what I'll do when I find her. I hope that you, my good Eulálio, will help me to make the right decision. I'm an animist. I've always been an animist, though I've only lately realised it. The same thing happens to the soul as happens to water – it flows. Today it's a river. Tomorrow, it will be the sea. Water takes the shape of whatever receives it. Inside a bottle it's like a bottle. But it isn't a bottle. Eulálio will always be Eulálio, whether flesh (incarnate) or fish. I'm reminded of that black and white picture of Martin Luther King speaking to the crowd:
I have a dream
… He really should have said ‘I
made
a dream'. If you think about it there's a difference between having a dream and
making
a dream.

Yes, I've made a dream.

Lisbon, February 13
^th
, 2004.

Jose Eduardo Agualusa was born in Huambo in 1960 and is one of the leading young literary voices from Angola, and from the Portuguese language today. His first book,
The Conspiracy
, a historical novel set in Sao Paulo de Luanda between 1880 and 1911, paints a fascinating portrait of a society marked by opposites, in which those who can adapt have any chance of success. Creole, which has evoked comparisons with Bruce Chatwin’s
The Viceroy of Ouidah
, was awarded the Portuguese Grand Prize for Literature, while
The Book of Chameleons
won the
Independent
Foreign Fiction Prize 2007 (‘Not since Gregor Samsa’s metamorphosis have we had such a convincing non-human narrator’
Independent
). Arcadia will publish
The Rainy Season
, which depicts the devastating history of an Angola tormented by 30 years of civil war, in 2008. Agualusa divides his time between Angola, Brazil and Portugal.

Daniel Hahn is the translator of Agualusa’s award-winning novels
Creole
and
The Book of Chameleons
, as well as the autobiography of Brazilian footballer Pele. He is the author of a work of narrative history,
The Tower Menagerie
, and the editor of several reference books including a series of reading guides for children,
The Ultimate Book Guides
.