Читать книгу Sea Loves Me - Mia Couto - Страница 10

I dreamed of her. She was in the backyard, working at her pestle. Do you know what she was grinding? Water. She was grinding water. No, it wasn’t corn, or mapira,‌1 or anything else. It was water, grains from Heaven.

I drew near. She was singing a sad song, it seemed as if she were lulling herself to sleep. I asked the reason for her work.

—I’m grinding.

—Are those grains?

—They’re your tears, husband.

And then I realized: the origin of my suffering lay in that pestle. I asked her to stop but my voice could no longer be heard. My throat had gone blind. Just the tonk-tonk-tonk of the pestle, pounding, pounding, forever pounding. Then slowly I began to realize that the noise was coming from my chest, that it was my heart punishing me. Do you think I’m inventing this? Anyone can invent. But from this cell, all I can see are the walls of life. I can feel a dream, a passing whiff of perfume. But I can’t grab it. Now I’ve exchanged my life for dreams.

It wasn’t just tonight that I dreamed of her. The night before last, Your Honour, I even cried. It was because I witnessed my own death. I looked down the corridor and saw blood, a river of it. It was orphan blood. Without its father, which was my severed arm. Imprisoned blood like its owner. Condemned. I don’t remember how it came to be severed. I have a darkened memory because of these countless nights I’ve drunk.

And do you know who it was that saved my spilled blood in that dream? It was she. She scooped up the blood with her ancient hands. She cleaned it, lovingly extracted the dirt. She put all the bits together and showed them the way back into my body. Then she called me by that name of mine which I have already forgotten because nobody calls me by it. Here I’m a number, my name is made of digits, not letters.

You asked me to confess truths, Your Honour. It’s true I killed her. Was it a crime? Maybe, if that is what they say. But I sicken with the uncertainty. I’m not one of those widowers who buries his memories. They are rescued by oblivion. Death hasn’t taken Carlota away from me. Now I know why: the dead are all born on the same day. Only the living have separate birthdays. Did Carlota fly? That time I spilled water over her, was it over the woman or the bird? Who can tell? Can you, Your Honour?

One thing I know for sure: She survived outside her coffin.

Those who wept at the funeral were blind. I was laughing. It’s true, I was laughing. Because inside the coffin they were weeping at, there was nothing. She had fled, saved by her wings. They saw me laughing like this, but they didn’t get angry. They forgave me. They thought it was laughter of the sort which is not an enemy of sadness. Maybe it was sobbing in disguise, the sweat of suffering. And they prayed. As for me, I couldn’t. After all, it wasn’t a fully deceased dead woman lying there. Rather, it was a piece of silence in the form of a beast, that’s what it was.