Photo by Paul Melo e Castro. Please left click on the image for enlarged view.

Vimala Devi: ‘The Future and the Past’

It happened when the lotação – the bus in Brazil – sped into the tunnel and its headlights didn’t switch on for some odd reason.

Carlos Siqueira stared out through the windscreen. All he could see was a white spot in the distance, which began to expand rapidly… It was, without doubt, the other end of the tunnel, which led out onto Avenida Princesa Isabel, but at that moment this fact escaped him. All he could see was a tiny white spot in the distance, on the far side of the darkness, but growing ever larger. Of course, nothing strange or special was happening. He must have had the same experience on other occasions, but this time, due to his particular state of mind, it sent him tumbling back into the past.

Already that morning in the office, without knowing why, Carlos Siqueira had recalled the village of his birth. The memory had come suddenly and overpoweringly, but he had shaken his head and focused on the paperwork before him. It wasn’t long, however, before his pen stopped moving and his gaze drifted to the blank wall opposite. The fact was he couldn’t remember much about his village, but the life that had followed the day he left his parents’ ancient home now poured through his mind. For a moment he thought back to those hard times in Nairobi, his pitiless exploitation of the blacks, all in the hope of returning home one day, renovating his family pile, providing dowries for his sisters, of living out his years on his native soil… He thought back to the total collapse of his dreams, his jarring defeats, his flight to Lourenço Marques, and from there on to America, New York, Los Angeles… Caroline! At that moment, Carlos Siqueira snapped out of it and returned to his work. He had no time for sentimentality. The past was over. Only the future mattered. Mattered to him. The entrance of his partner Menezes interrupted his thoughts and impeded their analysis. For forty-five years he’d acted in the exact same way, forging ahead without looking back, crushing everything in his path before him. In moments of loneliness, when forced to face up to himself honestly, like when Caroline died in that accident on 53^rd Street, vague, disjointed images would sometimes float to the surface, from afar, from deep inside. But Carlos Siqueira pushed them away, hid them behind more pressing concerns. For almost forty-five years he had laid waste to the past. But on that day, when the lotação had sped into that tunnel and its lights didn’t turn on, the past came to him. That tiny spot had begun to dilate, to swell and occupy his mind. When the bus shot out onto Princesa Isabel and turned off towards Avenida Barata Ribeiro, the light outside had hit him squarely in the eyes, dazzling him and unexpectedly shutting him off from the future, a vision of which he had sought desperately to counteract his newly awoken memories. Carlos Siqueira experienced a feeling of utter defeat. That future, his future, his here and now, had nothing to do with the future of the Carlos Siqueira who had left Goa over forty years previously with a bundle of clearly defined ambitions. Deep down inside himself he felt that he’d failed, that he’d sold out his old aims for fistfuls of nothing at all…

He had forsaken everything, his entire past, even his own future. He had forgotten his family home, the old village, the sisters who must have waited year upon year for the dowry he’d promised them… It had all been abandoned, even the future he’d once dreamt of. And all for what? All for… Carlos Siqueira rose mechanically. The bus had reached his stop on Copacabana. He stepped down as he did each day and walked slowly off along the pavement. He desperately wanted to be in Goa, to see his old house again… Forty-five years! His old house… His sisters… still unwed. He could go back to the future he’d once dreamt of. He could return. Money wasn’t an issue. He would simply appear, wave a wand, and make everyone happy. He would furbish the old house, give his sisters money, he would… he didn’t know… he no longer knew what he would do! And suddenly it was he who was trying to remember, who tried to summon back the past. He strove to recall the old house, the potholed roads of his village, the sad-faced mundkars, the kunbis and their happy songs… What use was his wealth, what point importance in a land that wasn’t his own, with no one there he’d played with as a child? He tried to summon the past, but it didn’t respond. All that came were faded impressions that left him disappointed.

He trudged up the stairs. For the first time in his life he felt old, his sixty-seven years a sudden weight on his shoulders. He put his key in the lock. The mulatto maid ran out to meet him.

“Mistah Siqueira, someone on the phone for you. I was gonna say you was out when I heard the door.”

Carlos Siqueira nodded and picked up the handset.

“Is that you, Siqueira?” he heard Menezes rasp hurriedly. “Listen up, pal, I’m here with Leopoldino, you know, that guy from Curitiba. Remember that undeveloped plot we saw three months back in Jacarepaguá? The one we wanted to buy? Well Leopoldino wants to sell up and is only asking nine million! D’you remember the figures we worked out, Siqueira? In four or five years it’ll be worth twenty big ones at least. It’s a sweet deal. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! You got yourself one helluva partner, Siqueira. It’s a sweet deal. Shall I buy it?”

“Buy it!” barked Siqueira before ringing off.


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