24 HOURS TO LEAVE ANGOLA

the outbound train. less than ten hours left. for a moment past the docks, gliding (if that can be done unsteadily) over the top of my ria. past the art deco…warehouses? then past where those give way to the ruins of the factory or cannery village -- and then along past. once again to the lighthouse -- or past it, anyway.  (“you live at the beach?” he had asked. “so are you an artist or a fisherman?” but the real fishermen get on in olhão.) off to the royal city rebuilt by the duke of pombal where the tuna don’t bite anymore. where the modernist who would build the beach was born and learned to work from the men and women who got up to can the tuna. past salt pools and the nature park. past the cyclists on the greenway that runs the length of my ria. past the faces that disembark for the beach at fuseta-a(mor). (my ria disappears for a moment behind an orchard of…figs?) on to tavira, but no stopping off for fish. a panoply of popular saints couldn’t save me now. (orchards. vineyards?) luz. by the beginning of the high season, once the stores at the forum have stopped stocking new swimwear, if you haven’t found someone at the beach to take on dates to the food court then you have to leave. and yesterday afternoon we were stopped at the airport roundabout; and he could see that we were only still friends. so he gave me back my smile without returning it, stood up from the window and spoke through the air above the car. twenty-four hours to leave angola. porta nova, and i lose sight again of my ria. the flamingos left when the season opened. conceição. orchards. i don’t cry when we pass through the tunnel and i lose sight of the man working alone in the fields. orchards. oranges or olives. repetition, they say, is the site of the trauma. and faster now. outbound. cacela. a windmill on a drying hill on the last stretch of the backward journey of maria la portuguesa. desde faro a ayamonte. castro marim. my ria. the egrets haven’t all gone. at monte gordo, the beatufiully composed mistress looks sadly at the two bastards. maybe i look sad, or else she wouldn’t look at me like that. but i don’t cry when i see the bridge. vila real de santo antónio. o algarve começa aqui, at the end of the line. but strangely, the tracks continue past the train. and you can almost hear the elegant and stately angolan woman at city hall as she takes a break from work to sigh: “fucking immigrants.” then god, we have the last laugh.