The Splendor of Portugal

António Lobo Antunes, Rhett McNeil

• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9781564784230
• eBook ISBN:
  9781564786937
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

The Splendor of Portugal's four narrators are members of a once well-to-do family whose plantation was lost in the Angolan War of Independence; the matriarch of this unhappiest of clans and her three adult children speak in a nightmarish, remorseless gush to give us the details of their grotesque family life. Like a character out of Faulkner's decayed south, the mother clings to the hope that her children will come back, save her from destitution, and restore the family's imagined former glory. The children, for their part, haven't seen each other in years, and in their isolation are tormented by feverish memories of Angola. The vitriol and self-hatred of the characters know no bounds, for they are at once victims and culprits, guilty of atrocities committed in the name of colonialism as well as the cruel humiliations and betrayals of their own kin. Antunes again proves that he is the foremost stylist of his generation, a fearless investigator into the worst excesses of the human animal.

1

24 December 1995

When I said that I had invited my siblings to spend Christmas Eve with us

(we were eating lunch in the kitchen and you could see the cranes and the boats back behind the last rooftops of Ajuda)

Lena filled my plate with smoke, disappeared in the smoke, and as she disappeared her voice tarnished the glass of the window before it too vanished

“You haven’t seen your siblings in fifteen years”

(as her voice enveloped the window frame it took with it the hills of Almada, the bridge, the statue of Christ alone beating its helpless wings above the mist)

until the smoke dissipated, Lena reappeared little by little with her fingers outstretched toward the breadbasket

“You haven’t seen your siblings in fifteen years”

so that all of a sudden I was aware of the time that had passed since we arrived here from Africa, of the letters from my mother, first from the plantation and later from Marimba, four little huts on a hillside of mango trees

(I remember the regional administrator’s house, the store, the ruins of the barracks shipwrecked and sinking in the tall grass)

the envelopes that I kept in a drawer without showing anyone, without opening them, without reading them, dozens and dozens of dirty envelopes, covered with stamps and seals, telling me about things I didn’t want to hear, the plantation, Angola, her life, the mailman delivered them to me on the landing of the stairway and an expanse of sunflowers murmuring in the fields outside, sunflowers, cotton, rice, tobacco, I don’t care about Angola, a bunch of blacks in the barracks, in the government palace, and in the huts on the island laying out in the sun as if they were us, I closed the door with the letter held between two fingers like someone holding an animal by its tail

letters just like putrid dead animals

Luanda Bay, ignored by its own palm trees, amounted to nothing more than a tiny room in need of a paint job, outfitted with a coatrack and a chest of drawers, Lena filling my plate with smoke and blotting out the world

“You put them out on the street and now, fifteen years later, you want your siblings back”

sitting in front of me waving her hand to waft away the smoke

“If I were you I wouldn’t wait up for visitors, Carlos”

she’s gotten fat, dyes her hair, complains about some heart condition or another, gets examined at the doctor’s office and takes pills, Lena interfering with me and my family, the daughter of a Cuca-beer plant worker living with a bunch of cousins a hundred meters from the Marçal neighborhood, out of shame I never told any of my schoolmates that I was dating her, if it happened that she came up to me, laughing after class

(skinny, hair braided, before she started to go to the doctor or take pills for her heart condition)

I would whisper frantically

“Get lost”

only later, on the bus, after verifying that not even the Jingas were watching us, would I signal to her with my index finger, a house three streetlights down with an awning covered with mosquitoes, mossy vines, her father in boxer shorts reading the paper, mulatto neighbors in clapboard shacks, Lena with her braids undone tugging on my lapel in the café, the city at a standstill, my schoolmates intrigued, beers suspended half-swig, me hoping that they couldn’t hear me

“Get lost”

pretending to be as impolite as them, as scandalized as those who mocked your house and your mulatto neighbors, knocked your notebooks to the ground, pulled up your skirt and laughed, yelled at you from afar

“Slum-dweller”

you in tears gathering up your notebooks and your father who didn’t have a car like us, he rode an ancient moped, threatening us with a rolled-up newspaper, harmless, tiny, unstable on his little pockmarked legs

“My daughter’s better than you bastards”

Lena tugging on my lapel in the café

“I need to talk to you be patient”

tomorrow everyone in Luanda will know about us, the manager throws me out with an irritated gesture

“Get out”

my schoolmates turn their backs on me and plug their noses

“You smell like Sambizanga you stink Carlos”

selfish Lena not caring if they turn their backs on me, at the shore dragging me along the arcade where the birds are perched and waiting for dusk when the trawlers go out to fish, so they can fly around screeching, pecking at splotches of diesel fuel

“Don’t telephone me don’t call me at all”

lights that shone between the cabanas and palm trees of the island, the city streetlights lit, the sign of the hotel orange and blue missing a few letters, people and cars pay no attention to me due to the darkness, my schoolmates called their friends Guess what the big news is, have you heard, brace yourself, don’t faint, guess who Carlos, no, the other one, the jerk from Malanje, is dating, me hating Lena who couldn’t even bear me a child getting up from the table in Ajuda to wash off the tablecloth with a sponge, to put on rubber gloves and wash the plates

“You put them out on the street and now you want your siblings back if I were you I wouldn’t wait up for visitors Carlos”

she didn’t rest until I married her and freed her from Marçal, from her relatives who shivered with malaria in grimy rooms, dressed in black as if they still lived in Minho, tripping over clay pots and little saints with oil lamps at their feet, on Sundays her uncles, sweating beneath their overcoats, cleared five feet of land behind the house in hopes of growing cabbages

you’re going out with the slum-dweller Carlos admit that you’re going out with the slum-dweller she’s not a slum-dweller you’re crazy her family’s apartment is under construction

fat and with her hair dyed, Lena just finished drying the plates, piled them in the cupboard, took off her gloves and headed for the room where the Christmas tree stood, still with no stand, no silvery star, no decorative balls, no snowflakes

“You haven’t seen your siblings in fifteen years”

I was left alone in the kitchen listening to the humming of the refrigerator and looking at the hills of Almada, looking at the plantation from the window of the jeep as we drove away over the potholes of the dirt road that divided the two fields of withered sunflowers until it reached the pavement, the company store where the Bailundos bought cigarettes, dried fish, and warm beer on Sundays appeared around a curve and hid itself among the trees, along with the lime plaster-covered shanties in the field where a setter was barking, withered sunflowers, withered rice, withered cotton, a tractor with no wheels in a ditch, at the spot where the dirt road met the pavement a UNITA patrol car pulled out in front of us and they waved their rifles at us, telling us to pull over, barefoot soldiers with their uniforms in tatters rummaging through our luggage looking for coins or food, anything they could steal, the unbearable damp smell of cassava, filthy fingernails searching between the seats, toothless mouths

“Get out, get out”

my sister to my mother, twisting in fear to escape their reach

“Mother”

“You put them out on the street and now you want your siblings back if I were you I wouldn’t wait up for them tonight Carlos”

a sergeant in a Panama hat, oblivious of the other soldiers, grilled a snake at the end of the handle of a cannon brush and didn’t bother us, a dust devil made the fallen leaves dance in the convent courtyard in between broken columns, salamanders and geckos crawling on the remains of arches, where my father, walking slowly with his canes, often came to watch the gledes fly about, my father in his bed, a rosary hanging on the headboard, looking at us with the alarmed expression of a blind man

“Give your father a kiss”

his nostrils enormous, his neck ringed with blotches and straining with the enormous task of trying to breathe

(you could tell that his ribs hurt him)

I tripped over one of his canes and it crashed to the ground with the loudest bang I ever heard, to this day, my brother screamed when the thunder struck and submerged himself beneath the furniture on all fours, holding tight to the chair, a glob of chocolate stained his bib

“I won’t give him a kiss”

the raspy deterioration of my father’s voice, on that day we had lunch in the dining room to the sound of the rain on the roof, the servants made sandwiches, grilled croquettes on wooden skewers, brought them to us on platters held high, cars from the other farms parked in the yard, my sister to my mother, trying to escape from the soldiers in tattered uniforms

“Get out get out”

“Mother”

opening our suitcases, ripping our bags, leaving me speechless, the sergeant with the snake, rotating the brush handle, turned on a battery-operated radio as if this were some kind of holiday and he was at the bar with his buddies, all at once the music blared and crackled from the ditch at the side of the road and deafened us, my mother pushed one of the soldiers with her purse

“Give them your earrings so they’ll leave us alone Clarisse give them whatever they want”

it was then that I noticed a body lying near the snake, a soldier missing half his head and covered in blowflies, I pinched Lena’s arm, whispered softly to Lena

“Keep quiet”

a soldier hit her in the belly with the butt of his rifle

the belly that never bore a child have you heard the news brace yourself don’t faint guess who Carlos is going out with

they tore off her necklace, the beads flew everywhere at the very moment that the sergeant began to cut the snake with his knife, my sister gave up her earrings, her hairpin, her ring, the pavement of the Malanje highway, cracked by all the mortars, vibrated in the heat and in the midst of all this the sound of an airplane, the soldiers hiding in the tall grass, the sergeant cutting the snake into pieces, putting them in a sack, and heading off without any hurry, my mother climbing behind the steering wheel and putting the jeep in gear

“Hurry”

while we shoved clothes into the open suitcases, grabbed shirts, socks, pants, Lena’s bag of makeup and perfume and the smashed vials, my mother scanning the tall grass

“Hurry”

Lena couldn’t walk because of the blow she’d received, and Rui and I carried her

“You haven’t seen your siblings in fifteen years”

“Hurry hurry”

my sister kept gathering up nightgowns, sandals, a round mirror, the beads from the necklace that danced in the sunlight, the sound of the airplane faded away to the north, up past the Pecagranja jungle or Chiquita

I remember the mango trees and the Jinga who was lynched by the head of police, I reme...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Other Works
• Title
• Copyright
• Epigraph
• 1
• 2
• 3
• About the Author