not acknowledged in one of the places of pleasure.
Ana said, “I don't know whether she put it there. Or whether she squatted on the bed.”
I said, “Don't think like that. Just think that you're getting rid of her in the morning.”
She said, “I want you to stand by in the morning. Don't show yourself, but stand by, in case she turns violent.”
In the morning Ana was composed again. When Júlio's daughter came, Ana said, “That was a vile thing to do. You've been in this house since you were born. You are a vile person. I should have you whipped by your father. But all I want is that you should leave now. You have half an hour.”
Júlio's daughter said, with the pertness she had picked up in the places of pleasure, “I am not vile. You know who's vile.”
Ana said, “Get out and don't come back. You have half an hour.”
Júlio's daughter said, “It's not for you to tell me not to come back. I may come back one day, and sooner than you think. And I'll not be staying in the quarters then.”
I had been standing in the bathroom behind the half-opened door. I felt that Júlio's daughter knew I was there, and I thought, as I had been thinking all night, “Ana, what have I done to you?”
At our Sunday lunch that week there was a man from the local mission who had come back from the mission's outposts in the north. He said, “People here and in the capital know nothing of the war in the bush. Life here has gone on just as it has always done. But there are whole areas in the north now where the guerrillas rule. They have schools and hospitals, and they are arming and training the village people.” Gouveia said, in his joking way, “And when do you think we'll be hearing the crump of artillery in the hot tropical night?” The missionary said, “The guerrillas are probably all around you. They never attack settled areas in the way you say. They send unarmed people. They look like ordinary Africans. They spread the word of revolution. They prepare the people.” And I thought of my impressions of the very first day, of Africans walking, and the later impression of the estates and the settlements of concrete being in an African sea. Gouveia said, “You mean I can be held up on the road now?” The missionary said, “It's possible. They're all around us.” Gouveia said, only half joking now, “I think I shall try to leave before the airport closes down.”
Mrs. Noronha said in her prophesying voice, “Hoard cloth. We must hoard cloth.” Somebody said, “Why should we do that?” No one since Carla Correia had spoken like that to Mrs. Noronha. Mrs. Noronha said, “We are now like the Israelites in the desert.” Somebody said, “I've never heard of the Israelites hoarding cloth.” And poor Mrs. Noronha, all her mystical credit gone, recognising that she had confused her prophecies, pressed her head against her shoulder and closed her eyes and was wheeled out of our lives. We heard later, after the handover to the guerrillas, that she was one of the first to be repatriated to Portugal.
Well before that handover Graça's house was finished. She and Luis gave a housewarming. They had very little furniture. But Luis carried off the occasion with his style as a host, bending forward almost in a confiding way to offer a drink. Two weeks later he and his Land Rover disappeared. The colonial police, at that time still in control, said he had probably been kidnapped by the guerrillas. No official in our town had any contact with the guerrillas, so there was no means of finding out more. Graça was wild with grief. She said, “He was full of despair. I can't tell you how full of despair he was ever since we moved into the house. He should have been happy, but it worked the other way.” And then some days later some herdsmen found him and the Land Rover well off the dirt road, near a cattle pond. The door of the Land Rover was open, and there were bottles of drink. He was almost naked, but still alive. His mind had gone, or so the report suggested. All he could do was to repeat words spoken to him. “You went out on a spree?” And he said, “Spree.” “Did the guerrillas pick you up?” And he said, “Guerrillas.”