Death of a captain (II)
Paulo Faria
Translated by Patricia Anne Odber de Baubeta
Revised by Peter Josyph
He was one of the first veterans with whom I spoke when I arrived at the restaurant. After he—a white man—saw the photographs of Artur and his mother, Cristina, a prostitute in Chicôco, taken by Sergeant Gamito so many years ago, he told me:
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“No, I don’t recognise either the mother or the son. But look, you have to take into account the different treatment of the Cristinas by the blokes who went over from the Mainland and the guys who were from there, like us. The blokes who went from here had come out of a darkened room. Portugal, at that time, was a darkened room whether you like it or not. When they got there they felt that surge of freedom and were amazed. When they talked about the Cristinas they said they were their girlfriends. For us it was whoring pure and simple. And they looked at the Black kids and found them terribly cute, they ordered miniature uniforms for them—like that one there in the photos. For us it was the most normal thing in the world. From childhood on we were used to seeing little Black kids. For us a Black kid like that one was just one more, same as all the others.”
Later, other veterans from the company who overheard this conversation apologised for their comrade’s words. They think talking that way makes a poor impression. They’re afraid I’ll retain a bad image of them all. Still, more pleasant and less thorny, the indecent stories in all their filthy detail come pouring out. A man called Tomás tells me:
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“I believe that since the 25th of April, after the army left, the local population suffered a lot. They were displaced people who had been moved close to the barracks. That’s how it was in Chicôco and in Necoleze. There was practically no agriculture. Some people had a little plot of land beside their huts but in reality it was the army that fed them. The men earned money doing odd jobs. Take me, for example. I was a rifleman and when I went out on an operation, I would just carry my G-3. I’d take a lad of eighteen or nineteen with me, a Black youth from the village, to carry my rucksack, and the company would pay him twenty escudos. The women made their living through prostitution. A bloke would go there, hand over ten or twenty escudos, and sleep with a Black woman. If he paid fifty or a hundred he could have her all to himself for a whole month. That’s how those folk earned money to cover their needs.”
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They look closely at the photos of little Artur, of Cristina, but no light of recognition dawns in their faces. They seem sad that they can’t help me. It’s not worth my telephoning Sergeant Gamito—I have no news of Artur to give him.
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At the end of the captain’s speech the men observe a minute’s silence in memory of the company members who have died. They talk to me about the dead men, always. They talk to me about living with death, the times that death beckoned to them, but they didn’t answer the call. Aurélio tells me:
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“One of the dates that has stayed in my memory is the 30th of April 1973. Three of us were travelling in a Berliet army truck in a column from Necoleze to the north, to Muítica. Mateus was there, he was Black, there was me and another sergeant, Ferraz. Mateus was sitting down, driving, and the two of us were standing up. The seats would be removed, just leaving the driver’s, that one could not be taken away, and we hung on to the windscreen, standing on top of sacks of sand, in case we drove over a mine. The trail descended, there was a bridge down below, then the trail went up again on the other side. It was a terrible road to drive along. Our Berliet was at the head of the column, we stopped at the top of the slope, descended on foot, and went to see what the bridge looked like. It was going to be very difficult to get across. More experienced blokes came. Each one put in his two cents’ worth. That’s how it was. “Hey what’s-your-name—cut down that tree!” And the bridge was reinforced. When it was ready we went back to the Berliet. Mateus climbed in. Ferraz climbed in. I didn’t.
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“I’m not religious, but I sometimes think that God is watching over us. I don’t know why, don’t ask me, but I didn’t get into the Berliet. I stayed on the trail to watch the truck go over to the other side. Lots of people stayed to see how it would work out, and I stayed too. I thought that afterwards I’d go back and climb in—that was my plan. I even left the G-3 in the vehicle.
“The Berliet crossed the bridge and when it began to climb up the other side, just as it was coming out of the bridge—boom! a mine exploded. Ferraz had a cut to his head and a broken arm. Mateus was wedged behind the steering wheel, but when you looked at him the only thing you could see was his right foot, the one on the accelerator, cut, with a gash. The accelerator pedal had cut his foot. But there was no blood coming out, just the cut. The foot almost cut in two, underneath. He must’ve died of internal injuries caused by the explosion. But he didn’t die straightaway, he lasted a good few hours. It was already late, around five o’clock, there were no evacuations after it got dark, so the helicopter wouldn’t arrive in time. We camped fifty metres from the trail because it was a good place for an evacuation and we didn’t know if he would last till morning. There was a huge clearing before the bridge, we had good line of sight. It wouldn’t be easy to ambush us there, for which reason, possibly, they didn’t do it. After a mine exploded there was usually an ambush, but there wasn’t one there. The two medics in our platoon ministered to Mateus, but they couldn’t save him. He died beside us in the clearing, during the night.”
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All deaths in war are stupid and cruel, but some wars are more stupid and cruel than others. Eduardo Lourenço wrote that “The most wretched thing about colonialism is that it colonizes the colonizers.” Our Colonial War made our fathers, who fought in it, involuntary accomplices of colonialism. That’s how colonialism colonized them. But at the end of the day they were just men, men like us, naked and defenceless, taking banal decisions that dictated whether they lived or died in the next minute. That’s what I’m looking for in the stories of war: stories of death. Naked men without colonialism. Because death decolonizes everything, it decolonizes us all. Vassili Grossman wrote: “Condemn the sin and pardon the sinner.” That’s so difficult. Dostoevsky went further, perhaps: “Love a man, even in his sin.” That is even more difficult.
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The men pretended not to understand, they rejected the dizziness of death. Death is a serious matter, thinking about it too much is unbearable for someone who is alive. Thinking too much about death is to die ahead of your time. Again, Aurélio:
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“Do you think that after that day I began to take any special precautions when we went through that place, when I was crossing the bridge? Not at all. I always accelerated to get to the barracks as quickly as possible. There was a lot of irresponsible behaviour and irreverence. I’m speaking for myself. It was only after I left the army that I found out that a Berliet set off a phosphorus mine on the same route Necoleze-Muítica.”
Jorge intervenes, as calm as ever.
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“I was in Necoleze at that time. When those mines explode they burn everything for twenty metres around. A Berliet carrying seven men set off one of those. All but one of them died. It was right at the exit to the barracks, some five hundred metres away. One of them came running on fire, from the site of the explosion to the barracks, and he died there, beside us. Along the way he set fire to the bush on the roadside, the fire spread, the village nearly burned down as well. I saw the ball of fire down below and then the bloke in flames coming up. When he reached the gate he curled up on the ground and stopped moving. Only one guy escaped, he was wearing shorts, his trunk naked, he didn’t have any clothes to burn. He lost his eyelashes, the hair on his head, his body hair, his skin was all burned, but he got away with it. The flames couldn’t get hold of anything.”
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To wake up late, run out of the dormitory, followed by the shouts and insults of the officer of the day, the butt of colleagues’ laughter, get up into the truck almost naked, like a chicken with its head cut off, to tell the officer to fuck off under one’s breath—that might be the passport to life. On another day it might be the ticket to death. And this stupid lottery, with no heroism nor grandeur, sticks forever to whoever played in it and confers on him a strange gravity.
January 2024