A General Theory of Oblivion Read Online Free

don’t believe that, even your mother wouldn’t believe that. Let us go free and I’ll give you a fistful of diamonds. Good stones. You can leave this place and make a new life anywhere else. You’ll be able to get any woman you want.”
    “Thank you. I have no intention of leaving, and the only woman I want I’ve got at home. Have a good journey and enjoy yourself, that place where you’re going.”
    Monte walked back over to the car. The soldiers pushed the Portuguese men up against the wall. They took a few steps back. One of them pulled a pistol from his belt, and in a movement that was almost absentminded, almost annoyed, he pointed it and fired three times. Jeremias Carrasco was lying on his back. He saw the birds flying in the high skies. He noticed an inscription in red ink on the bloodstained, bullet-pocked wall:
    The struggle continues
.

The Substance of Fear
    I’m afraid of what’s outside the window, of the air that arrives in bursts, and the noise it brings with it. I am scared of mosquitos, the myriad of insects I don’t know how to name. I am foreign to everything, like a bird that has fallen into the current of a river. I don’t understand the languages I hear outside, the languages the radio brings into the house, I don’t understand what they’re saying, not even when they sound like they’re speaking Portuguese, because this Portuguese they are speaking is no longer mine
.
    Even the light seems strange to me
.
    Too much light
.
    Certain colors ought not to occur in a healthy sky
.
    I am closer to my dog than to those people out there
.

After the End
    After the end, time slowed down. At least that was how it seemed to Ludo. On February 23 she wrote in the first of her diaries:
    Nothing happened today. I slept
.
    While asleep I dreamed that I was sleeping
.
    Trees, little animals, a multitude of insects were sharing their dreams with me. There we all were, dreaming in chorus, like a crowd, in a tiny room, exchanging ideas and smells and caresses. I remember I was a spider advancing toward its prey and the fly caught in the web of that spider. I felt flowers blossoming in the sun, breezes carrying pollen. I awoke and was alone. If, while we are asleep, we can dream of sleeping, can we then, when awake, awaken within a more lucid reality?
    One morning, she got up, turned on the tap and the water didn’t come out. She was scared. It occurred to her for the first time that she might spend long years shut away in the apartment. She took an inventory of what was in the pantry. She wouldn’t need to worry about the salt. She also found enough flour for several months, as well as bags andbags of beans, packets of sugar, cases of wine and soft drinks, dozens of tins of sardines, tuna, and sausages.
    That night it rained. Ludo opened an umbrella and went up onto the terrace, carrying empty bottles, buckets, and basins. Early in the morning she cut the bougainvillea and the ornamental flowers. She put a handful of lemon seeds in the flowerbed where she had buried the tiny burglar. Four other flowerbeds she used for sowing corn and beans. In another five, she planted her last remaining potatoes. One of the banana trees had borne a huge bunch. She pulled off a few bananas and carried them to the kitchen. She showed them to Phantom.
    “See? Orlando planted the banana trees so they would produce memories. They’re going to stop us going hungry. Or rather, they’ll stop me going hungry, I can’t imagine you’re too keen on bananas.”
    The next day, the water was back in the taps. From then on it would often fail, as would the electricity, till finally it went for good. In the first few weeks, the blackouts were more of a problem than the interruptions to the water supply. She missed the radio. She used to like listening to the international news bulletins on the BBC and Rádio Difusão Portuguesa. She would listen to the Angolan stations, too, even if the constant speeches against colonialism,