The Tuner of Silences by Mia Couto Page A

black, scorched colour from when it had been set on fire. With a little stone, I drew a star on this big old wall. I heard my father’s voice behind me:
    â€” What the devil is this?
    The darkened wall was covered with thousands of tiny stars that Ntunzi had scratched every day, like the work of a prisoner on the walls of his cell.
    â€” This is Ntunzi’s sky, each star represents a day .
    I can’t be sure, but my father’s eyes seemed to fill with unexpected tears. Could it be that a dike had burst deep within him, and the grief of past ages that he had managed to contain for years was now bubbling up? I’ll never be sure. For a moment later, he seized a spade and began to scrape the wall with it. Its metal blade re-emphasized the blackened layer upon which Ntunzi had recorded the passage of time. Silvestre Vitalício took his time over this labour of destruction. By the time he had finished, the surface was covered with a darkened squares, while he, exhausted, went back the way he had come like some black, scaly reptile.

UNCLE APROXIMADO
    Someone says:
    â€œThere were roses here in the old days”
    And so the hours
    Melt away indifferently
    As if time were made of delays.
    Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
    W hen he drove us to the camp eight years ago, the ex-Orlando Macara didn’t believe that his brother-in-law, the future Silvestre, would remain so true to his decision to emigrate from his own life for good. Nor did he suspect that his name would be changed to Uncle Aproximado. Perhaps he preferred the form of address his nephews used for him previously: Uncle Godmother. None of this crossed our uncle’s mind when he brought us to the reserve. It was late in the afternoon when Aproximado climbed down from the truck, and pointing at the wide expanse of bush, said:
    â€” This is your new home.
    â€” What home? —my brother asked, as his gaze swept across the untamed landscape.
    My father, who was still sitting in the truck, corrected him:
    â€” Not our home. This is our country.
    In the beginning, Uncle even lived with us. He stayed for a number of weeks. Aproximado was a former game warden who had lost his job because of the war. Now that there wasn’t even any world left, he had time to spend wherever he liked. For this reason, during the time he stayed with us, he put his hand to building and re-building the dwellings, repairing doors, windows and ceilings, bringing in sheets of corrugated iron and cutting down the vegetation around the camp. The savannah loves to gobble up houses and make castles unfit for human habitation. The earth’s great mouth had already devoured some of the houses and deep cracks had opened up in walls like scars. Dozens of snakes had to be killed inside and in the vicinity of the ruined houses. The only building that wasn’t rehabilitated was the administration block in the centre of the camp. This residence — which we came to call the “big house” — was cursed. It was said that the last Portuguese administrator of the reserve had been killed there. He had died inside the building and his bones must still be lying there among the rotting furniture.
    During those first weeks, my old man was in a state of apathy, removed from the intense activity going on around him. He only busied himself with one task: making a huge crucifix in the small square in front of the big house.
    â€” It’s so that no one else can get in.
    â€” But weren’t you the one who told us we were the last ones alive?
    â€” I’m not talking about the living.
    As soon as he had nailed the sign to the cross, our old man summoned us all and, priest-like, conducted the ceremony of our re-baptism. That was when Orlando Macara ceased being our Uncle Godmother. His new designation indicated that he was not Dordalma’s blood brother. Hewas, as Silvestre put it, a brother-in-law twice removed. He had been adopted at birth and for the