Luís Cardoso

After his long absence, his son had been struck dumb. They gave him the position of chief of the suku as a way of forcing him to speak. They did not understand that he had left behind himall the tricks in which men wrap their intentions. He wante to invent a new language without those traps and obstacles. The old man only realized this later, when he began sailing at night and was the only one awak. He read the language of the stars, of colours and of the sea. And now his son was right there in front of him, talking. They understood each other's words, pauses and silences.

Whenever reality killed one of my illusions, it was immediately replaced by another, like a bead on a rosary. I used to walk by the river at the hour when others were leaving the city, especially if it was raining and the square was empty. I would watch the path followed by people leaving their ofices and heading for home where there domestic duties awaited them. I was not bound by routine, but I longed for it. In the end, war, heroism and betrayals were all extreme acts carried out in order to attain precisely that kind of normality. Remaining on the outside could only lead to madness.

He was no longer the Platonist who used to try to persuade catechumens of the need for resignation, arguing the existence of an extraterrestrial paradise; now this hard-line militant wanted to impose a belief in an earthly paradise, tested and proved fruitful in other latitudes under a different name and open to all those who had been marginalized ... Secretly, I noted that he remained immune to happiness.

Sometimes I got the feeling that my father wanted to talk about what had happened in the bush. On the maubere radio I had heard news about the Indonesian campaigns and about the atrocities committed. He had been there and I longed to know the truth. Acts of heroism and betrayal, people dying and abandoned, suicides and murders. But he was travelling further back in time, avoiding my questions and mixing up the war against the Japanese with the war of Manufahi. When I tried to broach the subject of his painful experiences in the bush, he would shut up like a rock. Then he would weep silently. Like morning dew falling on stone.

The dead fish left behind by the retreating tide lay intact on the sand. With no one to eat them, they were swimming onto dry land. He picked them up, one by one, and put them back in the water. He was not trying to restore them to life. He knew they were dead. As a former nurse, he had a very clear idea about what death was. The river was behaving like time, discarding the weakest ones along its shores. It simply horrified him to see something dying out of its natural element.

After his long absence, his son had been struck dumb. They gave him the position of chief of the suku as a way of forcing him to speak. They did not understand that he had left behind himall the tricks in which men wrap their intentions. He wante to invent a new language without those traps and obstacles. The old man only realized this later, when he began sailing at night and was the only one awak. He read the language of the stars, of colours and of the sea. And now his son was right there in front of him, talking. They understood each other's words, pauses and silences.

Whenever reality killed one of my illusions, it was immediately replaced by another, like a bead on a rosary. I used to walk by the river at the hour when others were leaving the city, especially if it was raining and the square was empty. I would watch the path followed by people leaving their ofices and heading for home where there domestic duties awaited them. I was not bound by routine, but I longed for it. In the end, war, heroism and betrayals were all extreme acts carried out in order to attain precisely that kind of normality. Remaining on the outside could only lead to madness.

He was no longer the Platonist who used to try to persuade catechumens of the need for resignation, arguing the existence of an extraterrestrial paradise; now this hard-line militant wanted to impose a belief in an earthly paradise, tested and proved fruitful in other latitudes under a different name and open to all those who had been marginalized ... Secretly, I noted that he remained immune to happiness.

Sometimes I got the feeling that my father wanted to talk about what had happened in the bush. On the maubere radio I had heard news about the Indonesian campaigns and about the atrocities committed. He had been there and I longed to know the truth. Acts of heroism and betrayal, people dying and abandoned, suicides and murders. But he was travelling further back in time, avoiding my questions and mixing up the war against the Japanese with the war of Manufahi. When I tried to broach the subject of his painful experiences in the bush, he would shut up like a rock. Then he would weep silently. Like morning dew falling on stone.

The dead fish left behind by the retreating tide lay intact on the sand. With no one to eat them, they were swimming onto dry land. He picked them up, one by one, and put them back in the water. He was not trying to restore them to life. He knew they were dead. As a former nurse, he had a very clear idea about what death was. The river was behaving like time, discarding the weakest ones along its shores. It simply horrified him to see something dying out of its natural element.