Read Online Another Day of Life by Ryszard Kapuściński - Free Book Online
Authors: Ryszard Kapuściński
Tags: Fiction
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on the hotel door, which is already locked. The owner, a massive old black man, opens up and wants to hug us because we’ve made it back in one piece, he wants to ask us all about it. Then he looks at us carefully, falls silent, and walks away. Each of us takes his key, goes upstairs, and locks himself in his room.
That small point disappearing into the sky is the plane in which Alberto and his crew are flying out. The throbbing of the motors rolls up over the airport, over the town, fainter and fainter but audible all the while as, for a long time after, the small, disappearing point floats away and then becomes invisible. It is as if the echoes of an unseen, distant storm among the stars were reaching us from space. Then it falls silent. The sky becomes immobile and fills with quiet and the morning glare. After a couple of hours, at the other end of the galaxy, a small point appears and begins to grow, to expand, until it assumes the stiff shape of a plane—which will mean that Alberto and his crew are landing in Europe.
And I fly out of Benguela, but in the other direction, to the south, where the African continent begins to come to an end and, after a thousand or more kilometers, beyond Namibia and the Kalahari, plunges into two oceans. When we arrived at the airport that morning, aside from Alberto’s plane there was also a two-engine Friendship whose pilots— two unshaven, deadbeat Portuguese with red, sleepless eyes—said they were flying immediately to Lubango to pick up the last group of refugees there. Lubango, formerly Sá da Bandeira, lies 350 kilometers south of Benguela and is the headquarters of the southern front staff. I didn’t have a pass to go there because no one is admitted to the southern front, the weakest, most neglected, worst organized, and most poorly armed front. But I thought I might get away with it. So I thought, although to tell the truth I wasn’t thinking at all, because if I had really considered matters I might have lost the inclination to go. On the other hand, if I had considered the matter more carefully, I might have wanted to make the trip because, as I see it, it’s wrong to write about people without living through at least a little of what they are living through. In any case, I began asking the pilots if they would take me along. They were so exhausted from unbroken stretches of flying, so indifferent to everything, that they didn’t answer, which was probably a sign that they agreed. I was wearing jeans and a shirt, I had a pass for Benguela and a little money in my pocket, and I carried a camera. Everything else remained behind in the hotel, since there was neither time nor a car to get to town. Without waiting, therefore, I got into the empty plane and hid myself in a corner to avoid asserting my presence, just in case they thought better of it and ordered me to stay at the airport. A quarter of an hour later we took off from Benguela, flying first over the desert and then over the green hills, above a soft, enchanting piedmont landscape, and then over the great rainbow flower garden that is Lubango.
At the airport in Lubango a group of terrified, sweaty, apathetic Portuguese sat on kit bags and suitcases beside their even more terrified wives, and their children asleep in the women’s arms. They rushed for the plane before it had even shut off its motors. I went up to a mulatto who was wandering around the apron and asked him if he could take me to staff headquarters. He said he would take me, but then immediately asked how I planned to get out, since this was the last plane leaving; it seemed to him that, although the town was in the hands of the MPLA, it was surrounded, and that the road to town was either in the hands of the enemy or could be by tomorrow. To this I gave no exact answer, aside from something like: As the Lord will have it.
Everything from that moment on happened as in an incomprehensible, incoherent dream in which unknown persons and unseen
That small point disappearing into the sky is the plane in which Alberto and his crew are flying out. The throbbing of the motors rolls up over the airport, over the town, fainter and fainter but audible all the while as, for a long time after, the small, disappearing point floats away and then becomes invisible. It is as if the echoes of an unseen, distant storm among the stars were reaching us from space. Then it falls silent. The sky becomes immobile and fills with quiet and the morning glare. After a couple of hours, at the other end of the galaxy, a small point appears and begins to grow, to expand, until it assumes the stiff shape of a plane—which will mean that Alberto and his crew are landing in Europe.
And I fly out of Benguela, but in the other direction, to the south, where the African continent begins to come to an end and, after a thousand or more kilometers, beyond Namibia and the Kalahari, plunges into two oceans. When we arrived at the airport that morning, aside from Alberto’s plane there was also a two-engine Friendship whose pilots— two unshaven, deadbeat Portuguese with red, sleepless eyes—said they were flying immediately to Lubango to pick up the last group of refugees there. Lubango, formerly Sá da Bandeira, lies 350 kilometers south of Benguela and is the headquarters of the southern front staff. I didn’t have a pass to go there because no one is admitted to the southern front, the weakest, most neglected, worst organized, and most poorly armed front. But I thought I might get away with it. So I thought, although to tell the truth I wasn’t thinking at all, because if I had really considered matters I might have lost the inclination to go. On the other hand, if I had considered the matter more carefully, I might have wanted to make the trip because, as I see it, it’s wrong to write about people without living through at least a little of what they are living through. In any case, I began asking the pilots if they would take me along. They were so exhausted from unbroken stretches of flying, so indifferent to everything, that they didn’t answer, which was probably a sign that they agreed. I was wearing jeans and a shirt, I had a pass for Benguela and a little money in my pocket, and I carried a camera. Everything else remained behind in the hotel, since there was neither time nor a car to get to town. Without waiting, therefore, I got into the empty plane and hid myself in a corner to avoid asserting my presence, just in case they thought better of it and ordered me to stay at the airport. A quarter of an hour later we took off from Benguela, flying first over the desert and then over the green hills, above a soft, enchanting piedmont landscape, and then over the great rainbow flower garden that is Lubango.
At the airport in Lubango a group of terrified, sweaty, apathetic Portuguese sat on kit bags and suitcases beside their even more terrified wives, and their children asleep in the women’s arms. They rushed for the plane before it had even shut off its motors. I went up to a mulatto who was wandering around the apron and asked him if he could take me to staff headquarters. He said he would take me, but then immediately asked how I planned to get out, since this was the last plane leaving; it seemed to him that, although the town was in the hands of the MPLA, it was surrounded, and that the road to town was either in the hands of the enemy or could be by tomorrow. To this I gave no exact answer, aside from something like: As the Lord will have it.
Everything from that moment on happened as in an incomprehensible, incoherent dream in which unknown persons and unseen
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