The Shades of Meaning

By Nathan Levi

The Shades of Meaning combines autobiography and fiction across three continents. It is a quest for passion and spiritual fulfilment, which ultimately steers the main character towards ancient Oriental thought in his search for peace.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312789692

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The Shades of Meaning

THE SHADES OF MEANING

Nathan Levi

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2015 by Nathan Levi

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the author except for use of brief quotations in a book review, papers, magazines or scholarly journal.

ISBN: 978-1-312-78969-2

Nathan Levi

Via di Romagna 100

34134, Trieste, Italy

This novel has first been printed and published in Italian in November 2014 by Tresogni with the title ‘La cinese di Maputo’.

The author has the right to publish the English version of this novel.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nathan Levi was born in Tel Aviv in 1945, after which he lived in Jerusalem for seven years. In 1957 his family returned to Trieste (Italy), where he lives at present. As a specialist in Pediatrics, he worked at the Burlo Garofolo Hospital in Trieste and, later, as a family pediatrician for the National Health Service. From 1985-88 he worked in Maputo Central Hospital (Mozambique), coordinating a mother and child care project for the Italian International Cooperation. He spent a period in Shanghai studying Traditional Chinese Medicine. In 1994 he was one of the founders of the School of Phytotherapy and, since 2002, has been teaching this subject at Trieste University.

The Shades of Meaning is his first novel. It combines autobiography and fiction across three continents. It is a quest for passion and spiritual fulfilment, which ultimately steers him towards ancient Oriental thought in his search for peace.

For further information and contact, please visit my website www.theshadesofmeaning.com and Facebook.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS and DEDICATION

Cover art by Manuela Damiani

The Mozambican people have been a great inspiration to me. Without them this book would never have been written.

My deepest thanks go to Alyson Watt and Ann Akal for reviewing the English version.

I dedicate this novel to my wife Carole, for her patience and support and, above all, for translating it from the Italian version.

CHAPTER ONE

Emilia was the angel of my welfare throughout the whole year I spent in Maputo; she took care of my cleaning, my laundry and my cooking.

Lorenzo had introduced her to me, My maid has a sister who has several children and no husband. She is out of work at the moment, but I can vouch for her.

Next day, early in the morning, a black woman in her thirties arrived on my doorstep. She appeared to be shy; was sturdily built with a round face, and carried her youngest child in her arms. He was a chubby little boy of ten months, whose sleeping face rested on her ample breast that acted as a soft cushion. She lived far away on the outskirts of the town, in the Canisso, a collection of huts built from bamboo canes. Since that first meeting, Emilia made the round trip of eight miles every day to my home, often bringing her baby with her.

With time, she gave me short, usually vague snippets of information about her life, always and only in response to my questions. She did not like talking about it, either because she was shy or because she felt that her world was so different from mine.

She was born in Lichinga, which at that time was known as Vila Cabral, a town in the province of Niassa in the North of Mozambique, on the border with Malawi. Her parents had worked on a farm belonging to a Portuguese settler and she remembered a hard but pleasant childhood collecting hens’ eggs and milking goats and cows. At sixteen, she was married to a young blacksmith who worked in the town. They had two daughters, Rosa and Carmela and a son, Paulo. Her parents and five siblings had died two years earlier, during the War of Liberation. Then, when her husband died from malaria, she decided, together with her sister Sara, to undertake the long and dangerous journey to Maputo. She was twenty when she arrived in the capital on the eve of Independence, having lost her beloved Rosa.

She needed a man to help her build a hut to live in so she had accepted the aid of Christiano, many years her senior. They were married shortly afterwards and had two children, Francelina and Joaquim, the little one she was carrying the day I met her. Unfortunately, she soon found she had made a serious mistake in her choice of husband because he frequently got drunk and beat her. Luckily, one day he disappeared and since she had not heard from him again, she prayed every night that he would never return.

She had worked for people of various nationalities on aid programs, including other Italians, and one day she confided that she was particularly happy to take charge of my cooking and cleaning.

You are a good and generous person, she told me once, and you don't have a wife.

I had been to see her several times on my motorbike but I had promised myself that I would follow on foot, the same route that she took every day with apparent ease. She was expecting me, together with her children, for a last farewell. Walking at a fast pace I reached the Avenida Julius Nyerere then turned West between streets and paths in the dried earth. I had kept some useful references in mind, a well, a solitary acacia, the vegetation on the edge of the Canisso that was visible from afar. That cluster of huts on the outskirts of the big city gathered those who had not found a place within and who lived in the hope of a better future. They were mostly people displaced by war, who had escaped from the flames of their burning villages and sought protection under the shade of the skyscrapers, distant but visible and reassuring.

I set off across the sandy loam among the bamboo huts. They appeared to be all alike, with reeds held together vertically by two wooden planks running horizontally along the walls. Rusty corrugated iron sheets held down at their edges by blocks of stone formed the roof, and old doors recovered from the town protected the entrance.

I arrived exhausted. Emilia and the children were waiting for me on the doorstep, standing side by side. I do not know how long they had been waiting there, but they welcomed me awkwardly with shy smiles. Carmela, the eldest daughter, was leaning on her arm against the wall. She held her hand on her hip in a provocative manner or perhaps she was just trying to balance the weight of little Joaquim, wrapped in a capulana, on her other side. Paulo and Francelina, who were twelve and seven years old respectively, were standing up straight as if to attention, but had laughing eyes and mouths as though they were posing for a souvenir photograph. For the occasion, the whole family wore sandals or sneakers, instead of being barefoot as was customary.

Ciao, I hope you haven't been standing here too long.

No doctor, you said four o'clock and it's only ten past, she answered, glancing at the wristwatch I had given her. You did well to come on foot and find the place.

I told you Emilia, that I would be able to walk the distance. Well, maybe not like you... twice a day and carrying heavy loads.

But we are used to it. Come inside ... You must be thirsty.

Thanks Emilia; what lovely children you have. Carmela has grown into an attractive young lady and I'm pleased to see she helps you with Joaquim.

Ah yes, she helps me, but she’s starting to have ‘romantic distractions’, shall we say ... I’ve seen lots of young men hanging around her. The girl reacted with a grimace; she frowned at me and walked away with her little brother without saying goodbye.

The flooring of the single room was the same as the ground outside. A curtain divided the sleeping area from the cooking space, where there was just enough room for a small yellow cabinet and a stove. The walls were an orderly and colorful display of utensils and other items. Everything was clean and organized carefully to save space. Emilia offered me coconut milk and slices of mango and papaya, which we took outside so we could sit on her bench to enjoy it.

Doctor, I'm sorry you are leaving, she said after a long silence.

Me too, Emilia; I already feel really sad about leaving your country and I shall miss seeing you every morning. Have you found another job yet?

No, but Doctor Lorenzo promised that I will find work soon. After a pause she said, You know doctor, she lowered her eyes and her voice became subdued and hesitant, they told me that my husband is alive and living with a woman in Inhambane. I don't envy her, but I really hope that she won't let him go. I often have nightmares about him and Inhambane isn't that far away!

"Forget him, Emilia. I am sure he won't return. Besides, the road to Maputo is infested with bandidos. It will be I who returns within a year, and I will come back to see you. If you move, leave your address with Lorenzo in the Pediatric ward at the Central Hospital. Ask for Doctor Raya."

I will be here. I applied a long time ago for an apartment in town, but as long as there is war ... There are too many of us.

Even wars come to an end.

It became cooler. A hint of moon was peeping over the horizon. Sharp shadows were lengthening on the ground. Not far away, two young women were bending over, washing clothes in a bucket. A little boy was staring boldly at me with fists on his hips, as though underlining the fact that I was the outsider. A distant relative of a German sheep dog was stretched out in the shade of a hut. It was time to go. Night would soon be falling and it would not be safe to go back in the dark. I felt that this goodbye to Emilia, her children and the Canisso, was a last farewell to the real Africa.

CHAPTER TWO

One year before

I was about to spend a long and uncomfortable night before reaching that place unknown to me; a place of mystery and imagined fear, of famine and war; our inhospitable cradle that enchants with its eternal call.

I was trying to steal at least a few hours’ sleep despite the roar of the engines and the general buzz of the passengers. Under these conditions, I knew for sure that I would not be able to sleep. We had never been friends, sleep and I. It was, in fact, his habit to keep his distance if he could not recognize the usual bed, the familiar smell of home and the silence. I remember as a child, I used to while away the time before I fell asleep by imagining the incredible perennial journey of the Earth, including myself, around the Sun, or otherwise, by brooding over the surprising wonder of how babies are born. I was ten years old and, at that time, this sort of information was passed on distorted and belated.

Now and then, instinctively, I stuck my nose against the porthole with the illusion of catching a glimpse of the African continent. Of course, outside total darkness reigned, like that of the cosmic vacuum. I had to be patient. Maputo, the capital of Mozambique and my final destination, was still far away. According to the atlas, this mysterious country was almost at the southern extremity of the Continent, close to South Africa.

A hostess offered me a blanket. The dinner was good and plentiful, or so it seemed. I was accustomed to simple food, of the kind my mother used to prepare, due either to lack of interest or time, and which later I prepared for myself. As a young man, I noticed that for many people, food was not just a means of silencing hunger but also an opportunity for enthusiastic conversations. Having nothing to say on this subject, I consoled myself with the idea that I ate to live while others lived to eat. I am not at all averse to the pleasures of life, but I suspect that I had lost one along the way.

I pulled the blanket over me and closed my eyes. I was distancing myself from my work at the hospital, my friends and a woman who was only partially mine. I was approaching a new country and a new task, which were both vague and frightening and made me feel inadequate, like the first day of school in Jerusalem or the first night on call in the Children's Hospital of Trieste. The deep roar of the plane had almost disappeared. I felt my head falling backwards, as though pressed gently but firmly by an imaginary hand. I fell asleep. At times, perhaps due to some sudden queasiness caused by the sharp banking and tilting of the plane, I felt my eyelids part slightly and my bewildered gaze wander among the shadows of my travelling companions.

Sleep came and went as if playing hide-and-seek following a rhythm all of its own. I had a strange dream about the streets of Jerusalem, a crowd dressed in black and conspiratorial conversations and chants. On awakening, I felt strangely joyful as if the dream had found some treasure in the depths of my memory.

The hostess called me back to this world. She had the same fixed smile as before, but it had faded and her eyes betrayed the weariness of the night vigil. I curiously observed the activities of my fellow passengers on this new day. There was a queue for the bathroom, a dark-skinned woman intent on breastfeeding her baby, a child running up and down the narrow aisle trying in vain to pass the food trolley and a man, whose eyes refused to stay open, attempting for the third time to pull on the sleeve of his jacket.

The porthole turned a rose-tinted blue. A female voice announced in several languages, including Portuguese, that we had started the descent to Maputo and invited us to sit down and fasten our seatbelts. It was the first time I had heard the Portuguese language spoken and, at the thought that it would be my native language for the next year, I felt a concern I had not experienced before. I had a nasty feeling I was guilty of having underestimated the problem.

The sea appeared below. The Indian Ocean, I told myself. I felt elated at this first encounter. On the horizon, it was dark blue, almost black, fading into green and brown as the gaze followed it towards the coast. I noticed a golden beach, a brush stroke painted by an uncertain hand, defining the eastern edge of the big city.

We were lining up to Maputo International Airport. Despite not being a believer, I mentally pronounced in Hebrew a few sentences of an ancient prayer I had learned as a child, for a safe landing and success in the adventure that was awaiting me.

It was August, the southern winter. The sky was a deep blue and the air was fresh. A breeze from the West brought the mixed odors of a world yet to be discovered. The national flag waved proudly after four centuries of colonialism.

The customs officer who was staring at me from behind the counter did not look quite so welcoming. I held out my passport. There was also a visa and the temporary work permit. Who knows why, but even when you have a clear conscience and the documents are all in order, you can never be completely at ease under these circumstances. After having leafed through page after page with irritating slowness, his dark eyes softened in a reassuring smile and he said "Bem-vindo em Mozambique, senhor!" I was one-step closer! Now I would have to deal with those two customs officers over there who were turning the suitcases of my travelling companion inside out.

Outside the airport building, dazzling sunlight and a strip of blue sky awaited me, deeper than I remembered ever having seen before. A great weariness overtook me. I did not know whether it was caused by the journey or the panic at having arrived. At forty, the boldness of youth was only a memory. What am I doing here, I wondered, where everything is so strange to me, including many of the illnesses I would have to treat? Too late. There was no going back and there was no magic carpet to carry me to safety. That officer, who had eventually smiled at me, would certainly not allow me to retrace my steps.

Welcome to Africa! Had a good trip?

I watched Lorenzo Guandalini come up to me out of breath. He shook my hand warmly. He was a colleague, a pediatrician from Bologna whom I hardly knew. He was a few years younger, tall and thin, with sparse dark hair due to premature baldness. He appeared even taller with his long face and imposing nose highlighted by the hint of a moustache. His light green eyes, shaped like triangles, gave him a mischievous air of youth in stark contrast to the prominent Adam's apple and the curly chest hairs peeking out from the checkered