Agualusa - The book of chameleons

The Book of Chameleons both delights and breaks your heart with its Borgesian invention and Raymond Chandleresque mystery. Here are ruminations on love and the coarse brutality of history. Cross J. M. Coetzee with Gabriel Garca Mrquez and youve got Jos Eduardo Agualusa, Portugals next candidate for the Nobel Prize.

Alan Kaufman, author of Matches

Agualusas subject is the great melodrama of Angola, the horror as well as the scents and high colours, not to mention the question of how we make up our memories and pretend thats who we are. A book as brisk as a thriller and as hot and alarming as the most powerful kind of dream; like a tropical night, its as charming and lovely as it is deadly.

Michael Pye, author of The Pieces from Berlin

Without doubt [Jos Eduardo Agualusa is] one of the most important Portuguese-language writers of his generation.

Antnio Lobo Antunes

The Book of Chameleons is a magical tale of metamorphosis, friendship and revenge. Hahns English translation matches the originals playful inventiveness with language. I loved this book.

Margaret Jull Costa, award-winning translator of Jos Saramago and others

Lovers of stylish literary fiction will rejoice at this charming tale by Angolan writer Agualusa.

Publishers Weekly

A subtle, beguiling story of shifting identities.

Kirkus

A work of fierce originality, vindicating the power of creativity to transform the most sinister acts. Not since Gregor Samsas metamorphosis have we had such a convincing non-human narrator, brought vividly home to us by Daniel Hahn.

Amanda Hopkinson, The Independent

Strangeellipticalcharming.

Guardian

A poetic, beguiling meditation on truth and storytelling and a political thriller and wholly satisfying murder mystery.

New Internationalist Books of the Year

Ingenious, consistently taut and witty.

The Times Literary Supplement

Humorous and quizzical, with a light touch on weighty themes, the narrative darts about with lizard-like colour and velocity. Agualusas delightful novel skitters across minefields with grace and poise.

Boyd Tonkin, The Independent

Simon & Schuster

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New York, NY 10020

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2004 by Jos Eduardo Agualusa and Publicaes Dom Quixote

Translation copyright 2006 by Daniel Hahn

Originally published in Portugal in 2004 as O vendedor de passados by Publicaes Dom Quixote

Translation originally published in Great Britain in 2006 by Arcadia Books Ltd Published by arrangement with Arcadia Books Ltd

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Paperbacks Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Agualusa, Jos Eduardo.

[Vendedor de passados. English]

The book of chameleons / Jos Eduardo Agualusa; translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn.

p. cm.

I. Title.

PQ9929.A39V4613 2007

869'.3dc42 2007042119

ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-8809-2

ISBN-10: 1-4165-8809-4

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If I were to be born again, Id like to be something completely different. Id quite like to be Norwegian. Or Persian, perhaps. Not Uruguayan, thoughthatd feel too much like just moving down the street.

Jorge Luis Borges

I was born in this house, and grew up here. Ive never left. As it gets late I press my body against the window and look at the sky. I like watching the flames, the racing clouds, and above them, angels hosts of angels shaking down the sparks from their hair, flapping their broad fiery wings. The sight is always the same. But every evening I come here and I enjoy it, and Im moved by it, as if seeing it for the very first time. Last week Flix Ventura arrived earlier than usual and surprised me in the act of laughing at a massive cloud out there in the tempestuous blue that was dashing about in circles, like a dog trying to put out the fire in his tail.

I dont believe it are you laughing?

The creatures amazement annoyed me. I was afraid but I didnt move, not a muscle. The albino took off his dark glasses, put them away in the inside pocket of his jacket, took the jacket off slowly, sadly and hung it carefully on the back of a chair. He chose a vinyl record and put it on the deck of the old player. Acalanto para um rio, Lullaby for a River, by Dora, the Cicada, a Brazilian singer who I imagine must have had some sort of reputation in the seventies. Im assuming this because of the record sleeve, which shows a beautiful black woman in a bikini, with big butterfly wings fixed to her back. Dora, the Cicada Acalanto para um rio todays smash hit. Her voice burns in the air. These past weeks this has been the soundtrack to our evenings. I know the words by heart.

Nothing passes, nor expires,

The past is now

A river, sleeping

Memory tells

A thousand lies.

The river waters are asleep

And in my arms

The days are sleeping

Sleep the wounds,

The agonies.

Nothing passes, nor expires,

The past is now

A sleeping river,

Seeming dead, just barely breathing

But rouse it and it bursts to life.

Flix waited until the light faded, and the final notes from the piano faded too; then he turned one of the sofas, almost soundlessly, till it was facing the window. At last he sat down. He stretched out his legs, with a sigh

Ppilas ! he exclaimed. So I see Your Lowness is laughing?! Thats quite a novelty

As I looked at him, he seemed worn out. He brought his face close to mine, and I could see his bloodshot eyes. His breath swamped my whole body. Acidic, and warm.

Youve really got terrible skin, you know that? We must be related

Id been expecting something like that. If Id been able to speak I would have answered him back. But my vocal abilities extend only to laughing. All the same I did try to aim a sort of fierce guffaw at his face, a sound that might succeed in alarming him, to get him away from me but all I managed was a sort of flimsy gurgling. Until last week the albino had always ignored me. But since then, since he heard me laughing, hes started coming home earlier; he goes to the kitchen and comes back with a glass of papaya juice, he sits on the sofa, and shares the sunset rites with me. We talk. Or rather, he talks, I listen. Sometimes I laugh this seems enough for him. I get the sense that theres already a thread of friendship holding us together. On Saturday nights but not always the albino arrives with some girl. Theyre slender girls, tall and supple, with thin heron legs. Some of them are scared as they come in, they sit on the edge of their chair, trying not to look directly at him, unable to hide their disgust. They have a soft drink, sip by sip, and then in silence they undress; they wait for him lying on their backs, arms crossed over their breasts. Others bolder will wander around the house on their own, assessing the shine on the silver, the antique quality of the furniture, but they quickly come back to the living room, alarmed at the stacks of books in the bedrooms and the corridors, and more alarmed still at the fierce gaze of the men in top hats and monocles, the playful gaze of the bessanganas , those bourgeois women of Luanda and Benguela, the astonished stare of the officers from the Portuguese navy in their ceremonial outfits, the wild stare of a nineteenth-century Congolese prince, the challenging stare of a famous black North American writer each of them in golden frames, posing for all eternity. They look around the bookcases for records: