Читать книгу Sea Loves Me - Mia Couto - Страница 15

Mississe was a widow, a Chinese one, a woman of secrets and mysteries. Her shop was situated at the point where the roads end and all that is left are the unpaved tracks of the poor. There was no set time for opening and closing: her mood dictated this. It was she who decided what time of day it was.

Happiness stepped out of her life and forgot to return.

Sadness was a closed padlock on Mississe. They even said it was Chinese bewitchment and that her far-off homeland, travelling in clouds of vapour, was tormenting her soul.

Nobody knew how she had come there, how she had abandoned her people. And China, as everyone knows, is a distance away. The journey is such slowness that a man has time to change colour. Her neighbours and customers wondered to themselves about her dead husband. And at night, whom did Mississe share the cold with? Who was it who snuffed out her darkness?

When she had arrived in Muchatazina, she was still young. Pretty, say those who knew her then. The Portuguese came to visit her beauty on the sly. They failed to enter her favour, remained substitutes of nobody. The widow wrapped herself in a cloak of sourness, becoming ever more widowed. The Portuguese, rich ones even, would come out of there with heads bowed. They would pause in the garden, taking advantage of the shade of the many cashew trees. To distract their frustration they would tear the fruit from the branches. The cashew is the blood of the sun suspended, its fiery sweetness the juice we drink. Then they would walk away, venting their threats.

On Saturdays the widow would indulge herself in bazookas, large bottles of beer, first one, then another, and then more and more. She would finish when the beer had wetted all her blood. The store gave off brightness, the generator chugging away to push out that light. Fumes and mysteries would seep from the window, the Chinawoman’s incense drugging the moons. It was at such times that the pain of this woman could be heard. Screams echoed in the corridors, her voice spiralled down a dark well. One night they distinguished words in her wailing:

—My children! Give me back my children, murderer.

So there were children after all? How could that be if no one knew of them? The neighbours listened in astonishment to her lament. The widow groaned, screamed, howled. They tried to go to her assistance, to wipe away her furies, but no one could get near. Shadow was ever-present. Death was the only garden round her house, enclosing her widow’s despair.