Until Stones Become Lighter Than Water by Antunes António Lobo

Author:Antunes, António Lobo [Antunes, António Lobo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300226621
Goodreads: 48252602
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2017-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

13

At Christmastime the supply column brought four women stuck between the crates of the last Mercedes, not very young, not very attractive, not very clean of course, with soldiers’ caps on their heads and in camouflage clothes too large for them, looking fearfully at the tall grass and the trees on both sides of the dirt road, my grandfather to my father softly, without raising his weapon, passing a slow finger between the ears of the dog

—Those are not partridges that’s a hedgehog watching the burrow

already with the first beetles, the first butterflies, that sort of difference in the back of the neck that precedes the heat, soldiers from both sides inside the jungle and from time to time crushed branches, protesting reeds two or three soldiers in front sweeping for mines, a bumpy tin on the ground, a rainy sky in the west still very far away, after the first curve the slope that led to the camp where wasps were swarming over a pool of stagnant water, my daughter on a stone in the yard without speaking to me or looking at me, when little I used to sit her on my knees going up and down

—Little horsey little horsey

and she laughing with pleasure, with fear and with the pleasure of fear, she content, with her hair to one side and then the other and a missing baby tooth next to her incisor, not one wrinkle my God, still not one wrinkle, her skin so smooth, dimples on her elbows, dimples on her cheeks

—More

her tiny toes, round, brown eyes, not really brown, green specks and now unfortunately glasses, her mouth serious, closed, with a parenthesis on each side, what happened to you, what happened to me, the column entered the camp truck after truck, with the blacks from the huts observing at a distance and the soldiers jumping down from the cab, the G-3s a stronger sound than the Kalashnikovs, every time I put my daughter on my knees she messed up my hair

—Run

and me holding onto her ankles afraid to trip in the garden and fall, a scorpion appeared on a stone and raised its tail at once, the troops were looking at the women from a distance while the quartermaster helped put up, hammering them, the wood planks for two canvas tents with dry mattresses missing straw inside, in the column a mail bag without a single letter for me, my wife used to write me once a week, ashamed of her handwriting

—It’s so ugly

where she told me about whatever would fill the paper with me thinking about her body, if you still remember me, the women who the captain came to observe, with a second lieutenant behind, three dark-skinned and one almost albino, thin as a rail

—Not as bad as last year come on at least none of them is black

they undressed in the tents while a sergeant was giving out tickets to the soldiers

—Five minutes to speed up the service they have to leave

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