Our Musseque E-Book

Jose Luandino Vieira

• Herausgeber: Dedalus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Our Musseque is a tale of growing up in one of the vibrant shanty towns (musseques) of Luanda during the 1940s and 1950s. Weaving back and forwards through his half-remembered childhood, the narrator draws us into a close-knit world of labourers, shopkeepers, drunks, prostitutes and determined women battling to bring up their families, as Angola hurtles towards the beginning of its armed struggle against Portuguese colonial rule. Meanwhile the children laugh, play, squabble and fight, puzzle at racial taunts and move rapidly through adolescence towards sexual awakening and a greater awareness of political realities around them. Written in prison in 1961-62 but not published until over 40 years later, the novel is shot through with a sense of nostalgia for the lost innocence of childhood and a community swept away by the encroaching city, together with the exhilaration, hopes and fears for what is about to come.

Leseprobe

For Linda

The Author

José Luandino Vieira was born in Portugal in 1935 and grew up in Luanda. He was one of a group of political activists whose trial in 1959 helped spark the Angolan uprising against colonial rule. He spent most of the following fifteen years in prison or under house arrest, until the collapse of the Portuguese dictatorship in 1974.

His first collection of short stories, Luuanda, written in prison, was awarded the Grand Prize for fiction by the Portuguese Writers’ Society in 1965, resulting in the society’s closure by the Salazar regime. Following Angolan independence, he held a number of important literary and cultural roles under the new Angolan government, including secretary-general of the Angolan Writers’ Union. He has published two novels, Nós, os do Makulusu (1974) and Nosso Musseque (2003), two novellas and seven collections of short stories, along with two parts of his De Rios Velhos e Guerrilheiros trilogy. In 2006 he was awarded, but declined for personal reasons, the Camões Prize, the most prestigious international award for literature in the Portuguese language.

He now lives in Portugal.

The Translator

Robin Patterson came late to literary translating, after pursuing other careers in various parts of the world. He has participated in both the Birkbeck and the BCLT literary translation summer schools and was mentored by Margaret Jull Costa in 2013 as part of the BCLT mentorship programme.

His translated extracts from José Luís Peixoto’s Inside the Secret were serialised in 2014 by Ninth Letter, and his translation of Eve’s Mango, an extract from Vanessa da Mata’s debut novel, was featured on the Bookanista website. He also contributed a translation of Congressman Romário: Big Fish in the Aquarium by Clara Becker to The Football Crónicas, a collection of football-related Latin American literature published by Ragpicker Press in June 2014.

Our Musseque by José Luandino Vieira is his first translation for Dedalus.

Contents

Title

Dedication

The Author

The Translator

Zeca Bunéu and Others

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

The Truth about Zito

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Carmindinha and Me

Chapter VIII

Translator’s Note

Copyright

Kilombelombe kejidiê ku dimuka: kama ka-mudimuna

– as Don’Ana used to say, when talking about Carmindinha

Zeca Bunéu and Others

I

When someone has a nickname, there’s usually a reason. I always stuck to that simple fact whenever luck brought Zeca Bunéu, Carmindinha and me together and we remembered Xoxombo. Tunica, too, was gone – life and her passion for rumbas and sambas had carried her away to Europe. A lost soul, said Mrs Domingas sadly. Life’s a big thing and words can’t change it, I said by way of an excuse. Carmindinha said nothing, keeping her opinions to herself, but we knew how much it hurt her to think about her sister.

Sometimes we met in Mrs Domingas’s house, when I was going out with Carmindinha. Zeca Bunéu would stop by a bit later, calling for me with his usual whistle but always ending up by joining in the conversation. And before then, more times than I can remember, we’d sit with Mrs Domingas, already old and white haired, and Bento Abano, still silently reading the newspaper without glasses in his corner. We always talked about Xoxombo, even as the tears rolled down Mrs Domingas’s wrinkled face. Carmindinha always told the same story about the boy’s nickname, and she wouldn’t hear of any other version. But Zeca Bunéu, always the mischievous musseque boy and with his particular knack for telling things just the way he saw them, told the other story, the one all the other kids knew. My opinion on the subject didn’t count. It’s true that I liked watching Zeca tell the story the only way he knew how – hands waving wildly, screeches of laughter and exaggerated winks from those big eyes of his. But it was with tender love that I watched Carmindinha – warm, kind, sometimes angry – as she stuck up for her brother. It was only when Mrs Domingas began to weep at all the memories we’d dredged up and Bento started coughing in his cane chair that I’d interrupt. Not very helpfully, I confess. I only said what everyone was saying: when someone has a nickname there’s usually a reason for it, and if everyone called Xoxombo the same thing, then there’s no point going on and on about where it came from.

Then the conversation would change. The sea, the islands and the winds came rushing in as Captain Bento began to speak. Mrs Domingas would go to the little cupboard and bring out some homemade liquor for everyone (corn beer for Zeca since that was the only thing he liked) and we all drank. Carmindinha sat sewing and I watched the captain and Zeca discussing the sea, only joining in when it came to talking about our newspaper or the ones the captain used to write for back in the old days. Then, beneath the little hum of conversation, Mama Domingas would start to nod off and that was the signal for us to leave.

Carmindinha would come with us to the door, let me touch her small, round breasts underneath her loose robe, and stand there watching the two of us disappear into the night. Whenever we had these conversations about Xoxombo, Zeca Bunéu and I would wander aimlessly around the sleeping city, talking about the boy and our old shanty town, our musseque.

Today, All Souls’ Day, I met Carmindinha at the entrance to the old cemetery. It was our first meeting since our big falling out all those years ago and this time there was no need to talk about Xoxombo – he was everywhere around us, in the black clothes and the lingering scent of lilies. From that moment on, his story just wouldn’t leave me alone. Time had already consumed all the small, insignificant details and shone light on what really mattered. During all these years apart from Carmindinha, I’d shunned her gentle influence, her well-meaning kindness in standing up for her brother. And without Carmindinha there, Zeca Bunéu and I never again spoke of Xoxombo.

Perhaps now, with all the things that life and the passing years have taught me, all the different voices I’ve heard, perhaps now I can tell Xoxombo’s story properly. If I don’t succeed, it isn’t his fault, nor because of all that nonsense about his nickname. The fault’s mine, for putting literature where once there was life, for replacing human warmth with anecdote. But I’ll tell the story anyway.

1

So when was it, then, that all the women came out, laughing and chatting from door to door, to celebrate the return of ship’s master Captain Bento de Jesus Abano and his family, back among all their old friends in our musseque? According to Carmindinha it was all long before I arrived, before I came to live here with my stepmother. Later on, relations cooled with Zeca Bunéu’s dad, the shoemaker, who lived next door. What with all his white friends, there were times when the two men spoke only when necessary, to apologise when the hens went scratching around where they shouldn’t, or when their kid goat Espanhola snapped the rope tying her to the trunk of the big mulemba tree, munched through the fresh green cassava leaves, knocked over the water cans or even made holes in the fence.

Then there was all that fuss when Zeca Bunéu stole a few poems by Silva Xalado, one of the coloured guys who worked for his dad, and made fun of him in front of everyone. His father just laughed at Zeca’s wise-cracking and it was then that Bento Abano’s family began to distance themselves, saying it just wasn’t right letting a youngster make fun of someone like that, poor guy, no mother or father – people deserved more respect than that. So the evenings sitting round the doorstep stopped and, little by little, the other women – even the wife of Mr Augusto, Biquinho’s dad, who lived quite far away – started coming to Mrs Domingas with little neighbourly gifts, asking to borrow this and that, or volunteering their children to take Espanhola to graze on the new grass up beyond the baobab tree. Mrs Domingas, a good soul, was greatly moved by these gestures of friendship, and Bento also liked being back among ‘his people’, as he put it.

Carmindinha was growing up fast – she’d put away her toys, stopped playing with us younger ones and was always cleaning and tidying, mending clothes, and helping her mother in the kitchen. Mrs Domingas eagerly praised her daughter’s quick hands and aptitude for housework.

‘Ah sisters!’ she told all her friends and neighbours, ‘this one’s more like it. As for that Tunica, well I can’t even get her to go and fetch the water. Spends the whole time just drumming on the bottom of the water can and even the walk takes her half an hour. But when it comes to my older girl? Just you see – she’ll go far, I’m telling you, sisters. It’s just a pity that Bento won’t hear of sending her to get proper lessons. Fingers nimble as a bird, sisters, nimble as a bird!’

As these discussions and controversies continued, the rains petered out and the cool season settled in, the grass dried out for the kids’ bonfires and the sun took a breather. But it wasn’t long before it was back, a little stronger each day, hotter and yellower and fiercer, and the winds began once again to blow heavy wet clouds in off the sea. Once again the downpours coursed through the sands of the musseque, green grass sprouted everywhere, cashew nuts ripened and life carried on as normal – boys playing games after school, mothers and daughters talking about their daily chores, about who’d done what, who’d said what and who’d been arguing with whom.

As time passed, the quarrels cleared like smoke from a fire. Mrs Domingas and Bento Abano started speaking to their white neighbours again – in poor neighbourhoods like ours it’s a simple fact that people can’t stay angry for long. And so for many months the musseque settled into an everyday calm, disturbed only from time to time by the noise of the kids’ games, the odd squabble here and there and all the usual carry-on of life.

More and more people were taking notice of Carmindinha. First she sewed shorts for the kids, then little shirts and then, one afternoon, all the women from the neighbouring houses came over to congratulate her on a pretty cotton dress she’d made for Tunica.

‘Oh, she’s not a little girl any more!’

‘That’s what I’ve been telling you, sister. It’s just a pity Bento can’t…’

‘I know, I know. But I’ve heard there’s a school downtown that doesn’t charge anything!’

‘That’s what they say, sister Sessá! Yes, that’s what’s they say! But I don’t believe it. Free? For blacks and coloureds? Sorry, but I just don’t believe it.’

‘But it is, sister Domingas, really it is! It’s run by the League. Matias, God rest his soul, his daughter told me – she goes there. She came round here yesterday afternoon with a message from her aunt, and that’s when she told me.’

‘Tssssk!’ Mrs Domingas sucked her teeth scornfully. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake! If it was coming from someone… But that Joanica, the one whose mother passed away? Sukuama! I don’t believe it! There might be a school, but it’s a school for sluts!’

Carmindinha, who’d been enjoying the praises of the older women, joined in. ‘It’s true, mama. Joanica’s telling the truth. She’s already told me. Mr Gaspar’s daughter Teresa is going there as well. Honestly, mama, you don’t need to pay.’

‘All right, all right! If that’s how it really is, then one of these days I’ll go down to see my friends in Coqueiros and find out for myself.’

The neighbours solemnly nodded their agreement, still praising Carmindinha’s handiwork as they left and promising little jobs for her to do. When they’d all gone, mother and daughter sat together on the big cane chair and carried on talking in low voices. Bento wasn’t there, he’d gone out to fetch young Xoxombo from the Mission School and Tunica had wandered off to play with the other girls up beyond the baobab tree, leaving Espanhola to nibble at weeds growing out of the walls round the backs of the houses.

And so it was one of those hot, dark nights when all the fuss erupted.

Earlier that day, towards evening, Mrs Domingas, swathed in the beautiful cloth that Bento had brought her from Matadi and wearing her patent leather sandals, made her way with young Tunica down the sandy paths into the city, crossing Ingombota on their way to Coqueiros. Later on, well past midnight, we all began to hear noises – the scrape of furniture, loud voices, a few shrieks from Mrs Domingas, and Carmindinha, Tunica and Xoxombo bleating like goats at the door. There was no moon and the musseque was in complete darkness, just a few palm oil or paraffin lamps beginning to flicker from the houses. One by one, the women from the neighbouring houses came over, clutching their robes tightly round them and followed by the men, some still pulling on their trousers. They asked the children what was going on, but their only response was yet more sobbing. Mrs Domingas drew courage from the neighbours now standing round her front door, and you could hear the anger in her voice.

‘It’s God’s own truth! Go ahead and beat me – I won’t complain. Even kill me if you like and I won’t complain! But that girl is going to school to learn to sew. Yes, she is – you mark my words!’

You could hear more sounds of furniture being pushed around and then Bento’s loud voice drowning out all the tears and the sobbing.

‘Over my dead body! I’ve said it once and I won’t say it again. No daughter of mine is going downtown, and that’s final. Coming back up here dressed up like a white woman, wearing lipstick and heels? Never, never, never for as long as there’s a Captain Bento Abano in the house!’

Carmindinha stood in the doorway, her voice choked with angry tears. ‘But I really want to, dad! There’s no harm in it. I just want to learn to sew – how many times have I told you?’

She ran off, scared, and everyone else shrank back as Bento emerged from inside. In the dark all you could make out were his long, white undershorts. Taking advantage of the gathering crowd, Mrs Domingas shrieked: ‘Help! Help me, neighbours! Bento’s going to kill me! Just because I want my daughter to become a seamstress, because I want her to be a proper dressmaker rather than slaving over the washing and ironing every day!’

She was sobbing now. Bento carried on with his speech about the life of perdition down there in the city, immorality sneaking up on people and the setting of bad examples – all in a booming voice that no one would ever have thought the softly spoken captain capable of.

‘I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: I’m the one who gives the orders! Any daughter of mine will be brought up the way her mother was, the way her grandmother was, the way her people were. I’m not going to let her become a lost soul down in the city. A sewing course? Huh! Well I know what that’ll lead to. She’ll no sooner be sewing than she’ll be dropping her knickers in some dark alley and turning up back here with child in her belly. And as for who the father is, well that’ll be anyone’s guess. No, not my girl, never!’

What with all the noise and everyone’s attention focused on the captain’s house and the bawling kids, nobody saw Albertina’s client slip away while she, huffing and puffing, came out of her hut, crossed over, unceremoniously pulled the kids out of her way and went into the captain’s house.

Everyone just stood there, astonished. How on earth could Albertina have the brass neck to go into that hut when the whole musseque knew she barely exchanged so much as a good morning or good afternoon with Mrs Domingas, on account of some old quarrel almost everyone had long since forgotten?

But the white woman had already gone inside. ‘For Christ’s sake!’ she barked in her wine-soaked voice. ‘Let’s have a bit of civilisation around here, shall we? Why don’t you all just shut up and someone light a lamp!’

A hand passed her a lit match, and Albertina felt around for a lamp to light. Caught in the yellow glow that suddenly filled the small room, Mrs Domingas was crouched in a corner in her underclothes, her large bosom heaving as she sobbed. Bento stood embarrassed in the darkest part of the room, his undershorts reaching down to his knees, his hands in front of his belly, trying to conceal his bony, hairy body. Albertina had appeared so quickly that the captain was left frozen, speechless. She immediately took charge of the situation.

‘Sukuama! Can no one get along in this musseque any more? I work all night, I get no sleep all day, and still my own neighbours won’t leave me in peace? As for you miserable lot outside, why don’t you all just bugger off home rather than standing round here like donkeys with those silly grins on your faces? And you, mister-high-and-mighty ship’s captain with your rusty old boat – get some clothes on, pronto! You should be setting an example to these kids. Is this what people mean by ‘family life’? Bloody hell! Don’t you know how to talk things over like decent people? Nothing but a bunch of savages! And hitting the poor, miserable woman like that – is that how a real man behaves?’

Some of the other neighbours had ventured inside and were helping Mrs Domingas to cover herself up and sit down on the chair. Tunica and Xoxombo ran over to their mother; Carmindinha went into the bedroom and came back with her father’s trousers. Once he was dressed the old captain recovered some of his dignity and, speaking more softly now, went round apologising to everyone but saying that an argument between man and wife is for the man and wife to sort out. Then, skilfully as ever, with that calm voice and good manners for which he was famous throughout the musseque, he begged the neighbours not to spoil a good night’s sleep – better to go back to their beds because there was nothing more to see here. The women lingered a while, making sympathetic noises and lacing their farewells with many words of advice, until, finally, Mrs Domingas was left alone with Tunica and Carmindinha. Bento, ashamed, had gone back inside with Xoxombo and the neighbours heard him turn the lock. Albertina, wiggling her generous backside, smirked mischievously from her doorway.

‘It’s a pity you’re so old, sister Domingas! I’d teach you a remedy for that rusty old sea captain of yours. Now just you keep him waiting a couple of days. Or send him over to me and I’ll put some lead in his pencil!’

Mrs Domingas fixed her with a smile and, pulling her two daughters towards her, replied smugly, ‘Well now, look who’s talking! Don’t you worry, Albertina, I’ve no need to spice things up. Anyway, I’ve got what I wanted – that girl of mine’s going to sewing school!’

Silence slowly returned to the musseque night, snuffing out one by one the little groups of gossip and laughter until only the white woman, Albertina, remained sitting on her doorstep, brushing her hair and talking to her mongrel.

So no one was the slightest bit surprised the next morning when, as soon as Bento left the house to take Xoxombo to school at the Mission, Mrs Domingas set off downtown with Carmindinha, her hair neatly brushed and looking so smart in a dress she’d made herself, down the old path towards Ingombota and into the city.

The neighbours’ broad smiles that afternoon, and their knowing glances at Bento as he sat on the doorstep reading his newspaper when Carmindinha, Teresa and Joanica returned with their papers in hand, were confirmation of Mrs Domingas’s victory. When he caught sight of the girls, Captain Abano folded his newspaper and, saying he was off to fetch Xoxombo and Espanhola, headed up the track away from the city.

2

What with Carmindinha going off to her sewing and Xoxombo at school down at the Mission, Tunica was left feeling fed up and angry. She began to grumble about fetching the water day in day out when it was so far away. Mrs Domingas couldn’t do it herself any more, and now on top of everything there was Espanhola to be taken grazing every evening, and the grass nearby had all been nibbled bare. And every time she went off to hang around with the other girls there’d always be the old captain warning her about something or other.