Read Online A General Theory of Oblivion by José Eduardo Agualusa - Free Book Online
Authors: José Eduardo Agualusa
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hadn’t flown for fourteen months.
Daniel Benchimol collected stories of disappearances in Angola. All kinds of disappearances, though he preferred those of the air. It’s always more interesting being snatched away by the heavens, like Jesus Christ or his mother, than being swallowed up by the earth. Only if we aren’t speaking metaphorically, of course. People or objects who are literally swallowed by the earth, as seems to have happened with the French writer Simon-Pierre Mulamba, are, however, very rare.
The journalist classified the disappearances on a scale from one to ten. The five planes that disappeared from the skies above Angola, for example, were categorized by Benchimol as grade-eight disappearances. The Boeing 727, as a grade-nine disappearance; Simon-Pierre Mulamba, too.
Mulamba disembarked in Luanda on April 20, 2003, at the invitation of the Alliance Française, for a conference on the life and work of Léopold Sédar Senghor. Tall, distinguished-looking, never without his beautiful felt hat, which he wore tilted just slightly to the rightwith studied indifference. Simon-Pierre liked Luanda. It was the first time he’d visited Africa. His father, a teacher of Latin dance, native of Ponta Negra, had told him of the heat, the humidity, warned him about the dangers of the women, but hadn’t prepared him for this excess of life, for the merry-go-round of emotions, the intoxicating tumult of sounds and smells. On the second night, right after his lecture, the writer accepted an invitation from Elizabela Montez, a young architecture student, to have a drink in one of Ilha’s smartest bars. The third night he spent dancing
mornas
and
coladeiras
in a backyard of some Cape Verdeans, in Chicala, in the company of two of Elizabela’s girlfriends. On the fourth night he disappeared. The French cultural attaché, who had arranged to meet him for lunch, went in search of him to the lodge where they had put him up, a really lovely place, close to the Barra do Quanza. Nobody had seen him. There was no answer on his cellphone. In his room, the bedcover had not yet been pulled back, the sheets still stretched tight, a chocolate on the pillow.
Daniel Benchimol learned of the writer’s disappearance before the police. He only needed two telephone calls to discover, with a considerable number of details, where and with whom Simon-Pierre had spent his first nights. Two more calls and he knew that the Frenchman had been seen at five in the morning leaving a disco, in Quinaxixe market, a place frequented by European expats, slutty teenage girls, and poets with rather more interest in pursuing the booze than the muse. That night, he went to the disco himself. Fat, sweaty men were drinking in silence. Others, half hidden in the dark, stroked the bare knees of girls who were very young. He particularly noticed oneof the girls because she was wearing a black felt hat with a thin red ribbon. He was going to approach her when a blond guy with his long hair tied into a ponytail gripped his arm:
“Queenie’s with me.”
Daniel reassured him:
“Don’t worry. I’ve just got a question I want to ask her.”
“We don’t like journalists. Are you a journalist?”
“Sometimes, pal, it depends. I mostly just feel Jewish, though.”
The other man let go of him, confused. Daniel greeted Queenie:
“Good evening. I just wanted to know where you got the hat.”
The girl smiled:
“The French mulatto who was here yesterday, he lost it.”
“He lost the hat?”
“Or the other way round, he’s the one who was lost. The hat found me.”
She explained that the previous night, a group of boys, those ones who live out on the street, had seen the Frenchman leave the club. He had stopped a few meters on, round the back of a building, to urinate, and then the earth swallowed him up. All that was left was his hat.
“The earth swallowed him up?”
“That’s what they’re saying, old man. It could be quicksand, it could be
Daniel Benchimol collected stories of disappearances in Angola. All kinds of disappearances, though he preferred those of the air. It’s always more interesting being snatched away by the heavens, like Jesus Christ or his mother, than being swallowed up by the earth. Only if we aren’t speaking metaphorically, of course. People or objects who are literally swallowed by the earth, as seems to have happened with the French writer Simon-Pierre Mulamba, are, however, very rare.
The journalist classified the disappearances on a scale from one to ten. The five planes that disappeared from the skies above Angola, for example, were categorized by Benchimol as grade-eight disappearances. The Boeing 727, as a grade-nine disappearance; Simon-Pierre Mulamba, too.
Mulamba disembarked in Luanda on April 20, 2003, at the invitation of the Alliance Française, for a conference on the life and work of Léopold Sédar Senghor. Tall, distinguished-looking, never without his beautiful felt hat, which he wore tilted just slightly to the rightwith studied indifference. Simon-Pierre liked Luanda. It was the first time he’d visited Africa. His father, a teacher of Latin dance, native of Ponta Negra, had told him of the heat, the humidity, warned him about the dangers of the women, but hadn’t prepared him for this excess of life, for the merry-go-round of emotions, the intoxicating tumult of sounds and smells. On the second night, right after his lecture, the writer accepted an invitation from Elizabela Montez, a young architecture student, to have a drink in one of Ilha’s smartest bars. The third night he spent dancing
mornas
and
coladeiras
in a backyard of some Cape Verdeans, in Chicala, in the company of two of Elizabela’s girlfriends. On the fourth night he disappeared. The French cultural attaché, who had arranged to meet him for lunch, went in search of him to the lodge where they had put him up, a really lovely place, close to the Barra do Quanza. Nobody had seen him. There was no answer on his cellphone. In his room, the bedcover had not yet been pulled back, the sheets still stretched tight, a chocolate on the pillow.
Daniel Benchimol learned of the writer’s disappearance before the police. He only needed two telephone calls to discover, with a considerable number of details, where and with whom Simon-Pierre had spent his first nights. Two more calls and he knew that the Frenchman had been seen at five in the morning leaving a disco, in Quinaxixe market, a place frequented by European expats, slutty teenage girls, and poets with rather more interest in pursuing the booze than the muse. That night, he went to the disco himself. Fat, sweaty men were drinking in silence. Others, half hidden in the dark, stroked the bare knees of girls who were very young. He particularly noticed oneof the girls because she was wearing a black felt hat with a thin red ribbon. He was going to approach her when a blond guy with his long hair tied into a ponytail gripped his arm:
“Queenie’s with me.”
Daniel reassured him:
“Don’t worry. I’ve just got a question I want to ask her.”
“We don’t like journalists. Are you a journalist?”
“Sometimes, pal, it depends. I mostly just feel Jewish, though.”
The other man let go of him, confused. Daniel greeted Queenie:
“Good evening. I just wanted to know where you got the hat.”
The girl smiled:
“The French mulatto who was here yesterday, he lost it.”
“He lost the hat?”
“Or the other way round, he’s the one who was lost. The hat found me.”
She explained that the previous night, a group of boys, those ones who live out on the street, had seen the Frenchman leave the club. He had stopped a few meters on, round the back of a building, to urinate, and then the earth swallowed him up. All that was left was his hat.
“The earth swallowed him up?”
“That’s what they’re saying, old man. It could be quicksand, it could be
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