The Book of Chameleons by José Eduardo Agualusa Read Free Book Online

to defend his own version of events. Truth, he said, is a superstition. He – Félix – was taken with this idea.
    ‘I think what I do is really an advanced kind of literature,’ he told me conspiratorially. ‘I create plots, I invent characters, but rather than keeping them trapped in a book I give them life, launching them out into reality.’
     
    I have a lot of sympathy for impossible passions. I am – or rather, I was – a specialist in them. Félix Ventura’s slow siege of Ângela Lúcia moved me. Every morning he would send her flowers. She would complain about this, laughing, as soon as my friend had opened the door to her. Yes, of course they were wonderful, the porcelain roses with their exaggerated, artificial brilliance that made them seem rather like transvestites – or rather, drag queens ; the orchids so lovely, though she preferred daisies, with their rustic beauty and lack of vanity. Yes, she thanked him for the flowers, but asked him please not to send any more because she didn’t know what to do with them all. The air in her room in the Grande Hotel Universo was heavy, overwhelming, with so many discordant scents at once. The albino sighed. If he’d been able to he would have rolled out a rose-petal carpet at her feet. He would have liked to conduct an orchestra of birds to sing as rainbows appeared in the sky, one by one. Women are moved by declarations of love, however ridiculous they may be. Ângela Lúcia was moved. She kissed his face. Then she showed him the photographs she’d taken in the previous weeks: clouds.
    ‘Aren’t they like something out of a dream?’
    Félix shuddered:
    ‘I have dreams. Sometimes I have rather strange dreams. Last night I dreamt about him…’
    And he pointed at me. I felt as though I were about to faint. I scuttled away, startled, to hide in a crack by the ceiling. Ângela Lúcia screamed, in one of those childish bursts of enthusiasm typical of her:
    ‘A gecko?! How great!…’
    ‘He isn’t just any gecko. He’s lived in this house for years. In the dream he had human form, a serious sort of man, with a face that seemed familiar to me. We were sitting in a café, chatting…’
    ‘God gave us dreams so that we can catch a glimpse of the other side,’ said Ângela Lúcia. ‘To talk to our ancestors. To talk to God. And to geckos too, as it turns out.’
    ‘Surely you don’t believe that!?…’
    ‘I most certainly do believe it. I believe in a lot of very strange things, my dear. If only you knew some of the things I believe, you’d look at me like a one-woman freak-show. So what did you talk about, then, you and this gecko?’ 

Spirit-scarers

     

     
    Out there on the veranda, hanging from the ceiling, are dozens of ceramic charms to ward off spirits. Félix Ventura brought them back from his travels. Most are Brazilian. Birds painted in bright colours. Shells. Butterflies. Tropical fish. The legendary bandit Lampião and his happy band of hitmen. When the breeze makes them tremble they produce a clear murmur of water; this is why whenever the breeze blows, as it always does at this time, thank God, you are reminded of the character of this house:
    A ship (filled with voices) moving up-river.
    Something odd happened yesterday. Félix invited Ângela Lúcia and José Buchmann to dinner. I hid right at the top of one of the bookcases, from where I could easily see what was going on but certain that I couldn’t be seen. José Buchmann arrived first. He came in, laughing, he and his shirt (printed with palm trees, parrots, a very blue sea), and like a hurricane he swept across the living room, down the length of the corridor and into the kitchen. He took a bottle of whisky from the drinks cabinet, opened the freezer and took two ice cubes which he dropped into a large tumbler, and poured himself a generous measure of the drink, then returned to the living room, all the while telling the story – shouting, laughing throughout – of how that