337
A communist who arrived recently to the forest says to Clitemnestra killer of kings –
The truth is that everyone is gone. All of our comrades are in prison or exile or dead. When I joined the revolution there were a hundred of us in a room and now there are ten. The new leader is a twenty-three-year-old boy who cannot grow a moustache. Young, like you. No one else is left. Even before Marighella died. The urban guerrilla is tired. In prison or the torturer’s basement. In the cities they are disarming. The unions are dead. The fight is here. Without the support of the masses there will never be liberation or a liberated zone. And the fight of Brazil has always been the fight of the masses against the powerful, in Canudos, in Contestado, of the slaves against slave masters to create quilombos, in Canudos, in Contestado
</3
A communist who arrived recently to the forest says to Clitemnestra killer of kings –
The truth is that everyone is gone. All of our comrades are in prison or exile or dead. When I joined the revolution there were a hundred of us in a room and now there are ten. The new leader is a twenty-three-year-old boy who cannot grow a moustache. Young, like you. No one else is left. Even before Marighella died. The urban guerrilla is tired. In prison or the torturer’s basement. In the cities they are disarming. The unions are dead. The fight is here. Without the support of the masses there will never be liberation or a liberated zone. And the fight of Brazil has always been the fight of the masses against the powerful, in Canudos, in Contestado, of the slaves against slave masters to create quilombos, in Canudos, in Contestado
</3
352
What do you think your daughter will say of us
I think she will imagine –
When she talks about us
What will you tell her?
My daughter?
Yes
Well I will say
I think she will imagine that we are fighters, heroes
Martyrs
No, I think she will imagine that we are set in our ways, conservative and too stubborn
They will think we are not beautiful with our wrinkles and our white hair
Yes she will, she will think that we are beautiful
Beauty will not matter
Yes it will
She will think that we did not do enough
She will continue our fight
She will write and speak about us
No
Yes
Or tell reshapen stories
<33
What do you think your daughter will say of us
I think she will imagine –
When she talks about us
What will you tell her?
My daughter?
Yes
Well I will say
I think she will imagine that we are fighters, heroes
Martyrs
No, I think she will imagine that we are set in our ways, conservative and too stubborn
They will think we are not beautiful with our wrinkles and our white hair
Yes she will, she will think that we are beautiful
Beauty will not matter
Yes it will
She will think that we did not do enough
She will continue our fight
She will write and speak about us
No
Yes
Or tell reshapen stories
<33
370
Clitemnestra killer of kings I must tell you now why I am running. Something happened to me, it was two months before we met. For years I had been in the same working cell in Recife. With my friend Paulinho, he was also younger than me. We were working together since the beginning. Sixty-four to sixty-nine. When we started we thought that it might all be over soon and by the end we thought these are the worst years the heaviest years, years like hands and feet of lead. I had just finished studying at the university, I was studying history but by that time I did not care about the diploma. Even before the coup I did not care about the diploma; I was a communist, a revolutionary, I thought my father was a liberal for believing that elections could change anything, I believed that the duty of every good revolutionary was to make revolution. The library was for revolution and revolutionary knowledge. The classroom was for revolutionary teaching! The campus was for revolutionary organising! I was not a big reader but my mother had said to me, Read Marx, read José Martí, Rosa Luxembourg, and so I did read, because it was a revolutionary thing, do you understand? It must have happened to you when you were recruited – you had to read the books. So I read the books. I had been reading them already, books from all over, books from Europe, novels from Russia. [...]
ahhhhh
Clitemnestra killer of kings I must tell you now why I am running. Something happened to me, it was two months before we met. For years I had been in the same working cell in Recife. With my friend Paulinho, he was also younger than me. We were working together since the beginning. Sixty-four to sixty-nine. When we started we thought that it might all be over soon and by the end we thought these are the worst years the heaviest years, years like hands and feet of lead. I had just finished studying at the university, I was studying history but by that time I did not care about the diploma. Even before the coup I did not care about the diploma; I was a communist, a revolutionary, I thought my father was a liberal for believing that elections could change anything, I believed that the duty of every good revolutionary was to make revolution. The library was for revolution and revolutionary knowledge. The classroom was for revolutionary teaching! The campus was for revolutionary organising! I was not a big reader but my mother had said to me, Read Marx, read José Martí, Rosa Luxembourg, and so I did read, because it was a revolutionary thing, do you understand? It must have happened to you when you were recruited – you had to read the books. So I read the books. I had been reading them already, books from all over, books from Europe, novels from Russia. [...]
ahhhhh
375
[...] My brothers did not dream of leaving and neither did my father although maybe my mother did. We used to go to meetings in the small town and everybody knew I was the policeman’s daughter with the policemen brothers and so I had to be twice as militant twice as always ready to show them that I was a revolutionary. So I read all the books. I said train me, give me a gun, I’ll do anything. I was afraid of nothing but also I was always afraid of my father and my brothers and sometimes I could not sleep in the nights (I still do not sleep always in the nights). When I left I wrote my family a letter saying forget my name, do not look for me, I have no regrets, and this is the life that I have chosen because I believe that the people should own the fruits of their labour, that the factory worker should not toil for the capitalist to profit, that the Brazilian gold and iron and coffee and sugar and wood from the forest and oil must not be extracted for the profit of the North American imperialists and the landowners in their pockets when there are children without shoes without food or art or books, I believe that no one should be poor, I believe that no one should be unfree or unloved or shackled, I believe you know I believe in the armed struggle. If they are armed then are we to lie on the floor? Like kittens. Let ourselves be shot in the face. [...]
<3
[...] My brothers did not dream of leaving and neither did my father although maybe my mother did. We used to go to meetings in the small town and everybody knew I was the policeman’s daughter with the policemen brothers and so I had to be twice as militant twice as always ready to show them that I was a revolutionary. So I read all the books. I said train me, give me a gun, I’ll do anything. I was afraid of nothing but also I was always afraid of my father and my brothers and sometimes I could not sleep in the nights (I still do not sleep always in the nights). When I left I wrote my family a letter saying forget my name, do not look for me, I have no regrets, and this is the life that I have chosen because I believe that the people should own the fruits of their labour, that the factory worker should not toil for the capitalist to profit, that the Brazilian gold and iron and coffee and sugar and wood from the forest and oil must not be extracted for the profit of the North American imperialists and the landowners in their pockets when there are children without shoes without food or art or books, I believe that no one should be poor, I believe that no one should be unfree or unloved or shackled, I believe you know I believe in the armed struggle. If they are armed then are we to lie on the floor? Like kittens. Let ourselves be shot in the face. [...]
<3
380
Remember? You know what happens next. You’ve heard the story. In September 1974, Laura the famous revolutionary the infamous eldest daughter of the exiled governor of Pernambuco State, was taken into police custody to a building in the Zona Sul de São Paulo where she was tortured until she could not speak. The revolutionary student with the small moustache was disappeared by the military police and they never found his body despite the solidarity campaigns in London and in Berlin. There would be no more strikes or meetings and the union leaders were killed in so-called suicides or arrested and tortured or like Edivânia they were put on blacklists so that they had to move from state to state to find work taking new names everywhere they went not underground but alone so that they would not go hungry. And the communists in the forest were killed by government soldiers. The commander told them to fight. Every single one but the six who were imprisoned and the two who escaped 1000 kilometres through the forest. The commander with the grandsons in Salvador was killed and his son was killed. The commander who was 2m tall and had studied in Prague and whose parents had been born enslaved was killed and his body was hung from a helicopter and flown over the forest. [...]
Those were the darkest years, heavy like lead. The movement disarmed. The demands changed; amnesty, elections, democracy. And five years later, in 1979, the amnesty came, and the torturers were forgiven and all the people who had been communists were forgiven. And Laura the famous revolutionary went home, back to Recife, back to Sônia and Olga and Lúcia and Lamis and Lygia and the rest of her life. And she did not know if Clitemnestra killer of kings had been killed or disappeared or if she was alive. And she did not know how to find her because she did not know her real name. And it was a grief the size of the earth, as big as a life.
Remember? You know what happens next. You’ve heard the story. In September 1974, Laura the famous revolutionary the infamous eldest daughter of the exiled governor of Pernambuco State, was taken into police custody to a building in the Zona Sul de São Paulo where she was tortured until she could not speak. The revolutionary student with the small moustache was disappeared by the military police and they never found his body despite the solidarity campaigns in London and in Berlin. There would be no more strikes or meetings and the union leaders were killed in so-called suicides or arrested and tortured or like Edivânia they were put on blacklists so that they had to move from state to state to find work taking new names everywhere they went not underground but alone so that they would not go hungry. And the communists in the forest were killed by government soldiers. The commander told them to fight. Every single one but the six who were imprisoned and the two who escaped 1000 kilometres through the forest. The commander with the grandsons in Salvador was killed and his son was killed. The commander who was 2m tall and had studied in Prague and whose parents had been born enslaved was killed and his body was hung from a helicopter and flown over the forest. [...]
Those were the darkest years, heavy like lead. The movement disarmed. The demands changed; amnesty, elections, democracy. And five years later, in 1979, the amnesty came, and the torturers were forgiven and all the people who had been communists were forgiven. And Laura the famous revolutionary went home, back to Recife, back to Sônia and Olga and Lúcia and Lamis and Lygia and the rest of her life. And she did not know if Clitemnestra killer of kings had been killed or disappeared or if she was alive. And she did not know how to find her because she did not know her real name. And it was a grief the size of the earth, as big as a life.
393
The early morning radio played the sound of a meadow. Lavender attracts more bumblebees than honeybees because of their longer tongues, a zoologist who had never expected to speak on the radio said. The presenter laughed in their older person, educated person, Radio 4 way. The zoologist corrected the presenter. The presenter said that the weather that day would be crisp and fair, an English word meaning both light haired, light skinned, just and reasonable and moderate, and the experience of clement weather without rain or cloud or unbearable heat. Across the small island, and across one part of the other smaller island, people woke up, got dressed, showered, drank coffee, fed their children, overslept, got on trains and buses and started their cars; they walked into school halls, churches and community centres and voted.
The early morning radio played the sound of a meadow. Lavender attracts more bumblebees than honeybees because of their longer tongues, a zoologist who had never expected to speak on the radio said. The presenter laughed in their older person, educated person, Radio 4 way. The zoologist corrected the presenter. The presenter said that the weather that day would be crisp and fair, an English word meaning both light haired, light skinned, just and reasonable and moderate, and the experience of clement weather without rain or cloud or unbearable heat. Across the small island, and across one part of the other smaller island, people woke up, got dressed, showered, drank coffee, fed their children, overslept, got on trains and buses and started their cars; they walked into school halls, churches and community centres and voted.
396
No one slept. They stayed up all night. Melissa and Catarina watched the results come in at Ivy’s flat in Stockwell. They were drinking beers and gin and wine and eating pizzas. When the exit poll came they started to shout and grab each other. Femi called Melissa at 1am.
We kept Tooting. By over 15,000 votes. We took Battersea too.
She could hear him crying.
I didn’t think it was possible, he said.
ahhh <3
No one slept. They stayed up all night. Melissa and Catarina watched the results come in at Ivy’s flat in Stockwell. They were drinking beers and gin and wine and eating pizzas. When the exit poll came they started to shout and grab each other. Femi called Melissa at 1am.
We kept Tooting. By over 15,000 votes. We took Battersea too.
She could hear him crying.
I didn’t think it was possible, he said.
ahhh <3
399
Catarina put her hand up. She spoke loudly to project her voice.
Melissa watched as Catarina spoke, she heard the curves and corners of her accent. Catarina gesticulated. Behind Catarina’s hands and the profile of her face, the buildings turned blue under the lilac sky.
The blue buildings and the lilac sky filled her. She felt something like sureness in her body. Sureness that came from the words that Catarina spoke and the one hundred people listening with intention, who would discuss and think together into the night. They could make anything, unmake anything; the world stretched itself for them, as expansive as time, open and opening, mid pirouette
Melissa closed her eyes. She let herself fold into the night. She felt herself un bind.
Catarina put her hand up. She spoke loudly to project her voice.
Melissa watched as Catarina spoke, she heard the curves and corners of her accent. Catarina gesticulated. Behind Catarina’s hands and the profile of her face, the buildings turned blue under the lilac sky.
The blue buildings and the lilac sky filled her. She felt something like sureness in her body. Sureness that came from the words that Catarina spoke and the one hundred people listening with intention, who would discuss and think together into the night. They could make anything, unmake anything; the world stretched itself for them, as expansive as time, open and opening, mid pirouette
Melissa closed her eyes. She let herself fold into the night. She felt herself un bind.
429
But
this is the version of the archives (the scraps of paper, the lists of births and deaths, the history books and silence), that is a novel.
And so
(let me tell you)
Having taken a new name, living in the south of a continent spanning half the side of the planet Clitemnestra marries a man who will take her to England.
For ten years she had been living, repairing, getting older. Before that – those had been the freest days. Before. Where nobody knew her. Where she could spend a day kneeling in the earth, with purpose, hitting the road again life on her back like a cowboy.
And she might have stayed living that way. But she was lonely and on some nights she had bad dreams and on some nights she couldn’t sleep and on some nights she made herself come quiet and almost without moving in her bed just to get herself to stop thinking words. On some nights she felt that her heart was rotting, unsolid, its muscle unfleshing unpeeling. She felt a nothingness ahead of her like a road, this grief the size of a life. She writes a letter and for years she waits for a response.
But
this is the version of the archives (the scraps of paper, the lists of births and deaths, the history books and silence), that is a novel.
And so
(let me tell you)
Having taken a new name, living in the south of a continent spanning half the side of the planet Clitemnestra marries a man who will take her to England.
For ten years she had been living, repairing, getting older. Before that – those had been the freest days. Before. Where nobody knew her. Where she could spend a day kneeling in the earth, with purpose, hitting the road again life on her back like a cowboy.
And she might have stayed living that way. But she was lonely and on some nights she had bad dreams and on some nights she couldn’t sleep and on some nights she made herself come quiet and almost without moving in her bed just to get herself to stop thinking words. On some nights she felt that her heart was rotting, unsolid, its muscle unfleshing unpeeling. She felt a nothingness ahead of her like a road, this grief the size of a life. She writes a letter and for years she waits for a response.