“Geck-yo Act Together!” It’s time to REINCARNATE!!!!!!! 💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼

Art by DimitriSirenkoArt

“We needed out own heroes like we needed bread to eat.”

José Eduardo Agualusa, The Book of the Chameleons, Pg. 110

Hello my loves! How are we all dealing with mother nature’s mood swings! I’m hoping the sun will peaked itself from the clouds once more and stay with us for much longer than a day. Before we start with today’s book analysis, let me pose you a question just to get us warmed up. So often, we are obsessed with the idea of changing our future. I know for me, I study days on end in hopes of setting my future up for success; nit-picking and altering every detail to change, or rather reshape, my future to be exactly how I want it. But what about our past? Why don’t we ever want to find avenues to reshape our past?

The short answer is: it’s cause we can’t. I remember a long time ago, my mom enrolled me in violin lessons to get my little brain activated. I quit like 3 months in cause I hated it lol. But to be honest, some days I see those insane child violinist prodigies on YouTube playing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons: Winter and totally ripping it to shreds at like 4. What if I didn’t quit violin? What If I went on to be the world’s next greatest violinist of the century? Of course, that literally would be impossible, but for hypothetical stakes, let’s abandon all sense of rationality and purpose the possibility pf creating a past you’ve always wanted. Unfortunately, our technology isn’t advanced enough where we can make ourself a DeLorean time machine and “Back To the Future” ourself back to the past. So if the answer isn’t to rip our timeline in half, then the answer is to artificially fix it ourselves.

Segwaying into this week’s novel The Book of the Chameleons by José Eduardo Agualusa. This whole idea of artificially changing people’s past is literally what Félix Ventura, one of the main characters, does for a living. In the day, he has a totally legal job, being a collector and seller of second-hand books. But in the night, he is the “seller of pasts”. He fabricates people’s histories, creating fraudulent documents, diplomas, whatever their hearts desires to give them a brand new past. He’s like bat man if bat man did identity document forgery.

His calling card was “Félix Ventura. Guarantee your children a better past.”

pg. 16

Lol okay marketing genius. But what’s interesting about this novel was the main narrator. The peculiar housemate of Félix in his little house in Luanda, Angola. The little gecko, who is unnamed for a good portion of the novel, is Eulálio. Now, upon first glance, I was a bit confused as to why this novel was named the “book of the chameleons” but there, in fact, were no chameleons in this novel. The closest things to a chameleon is it’s lacertilia cousin, the gecko, (archeology skills coming in clutch) which is what Eulálio is. I kept a mental note on that. 

To really boil it down, a mysterious war photographer seeks Ventura’s services. But he doesn’t just want a new history. No no, he wants like the full deluxe deal. He wants a totally new identity. Now with his forged documents, the mysterious war photographer becomes José Buchman. He’s even all set with a whole new fake background story. His “father” from Chibia, and an American artist “mother” who abandoned her family. The novel then goes on from there but you get the point.

Now let’s get into the nitty-gritty kind of things. My first thing on my list to touch was: why is the novel called “The Book of Chameleons” when there are not actual chameleons at play. Well, it’s because fellow reader ….I don’t know 😎😎​. Well, I have a hunch for it. It’s important to understand the backdrop of this novel, solely that the novel has undertones of the Angolan Civil War. A quick History Lesson with certified professor Shan, the civil war was a power struggle between the People’s movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) who, in other words are the communists, and the National union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) who, in other words, are the anti-communists. Beginning when Angola became independent from Portugal in 1975, you can only imagine the civil unrest and trauma imbued with such political turmoil. People try to run from the lives they lived in that dark portion of human history. And, it’s because of the devastation, painful memories, trauma, or even embarrassment that people try to run away from that portion of their lives. Take José Buchmann. Spoiler alert, he’s not José Buchmann  😱SHOCKER! José is actually a man called Pedro Gouveia who was a part of the communist part, otherwise the MPLA. Of course, he gets caught, and his wife, Marta, is murdered and his baby is tortured and taken into custody. That baby is revealed to be Angela, Ventura’s lover. LE GASP. What does this have to do with chameleons. Well, the entire truth is revealed in Ventura’s kitchen, and obviously, Angela doesn’t take this lightly. I mean, would you if you realized your father was a communist who changed his name to José. Now, in light of the truth, Angela grabs a revolver and shoots him in the chest which obviously kills him. What I personally gathered from this is that the chameleons of the novel are implicitly implied to be the people, or rather, how people react when wanting to protect themselves from the ramifications of war. Like a chameleon, people find ways to employ their “protective colourations”. Like how a chameleon changes colours to camouflage and protect themselves from predators, us humans too do this same and hide ourselves behind false pasts and even false names so as to avoid those same predators. Especially in a place imposed with war and political turmoil, you can only imagine how essential it is to hide. 

But, like José, people cannot run from their past. There were points in the novel were José seems to be taking up this fabricated life and believing it’s his own. He even searches for the artwork created by his make-believe artist-mother. But as quoted:

“I needed Felix himself to believe in my life story. If he believed it, who wouldn’t? And today, I honestly believe it myself. I look back now, back into my past, and I see two lives. In one, I was Pedro Gouveia, in another Jose Buchmann. Pedro Gouveia died. Jose Buchmann returned to Chibia.”

pg 172

Whether or not Buchmann really was assimilating into his role is another conversation. But regardless, it doesn’t eliminate the fact that ultimately, he died because of his past. In other words, no matter how good you hide, your past will always catch up. Many characters, in some way, change themselves — like chameleons — to take on new realities and lives as a form of their own “protective colourings”. People want so desperately to find solace and peace in their lives and will change whatever means necessary to obtain that serenity, especially in a place with political turmoil. The thing is, such violence and calamity of war cannot be washed away from just a mere change of name. It’s like an illusion! An illusion doesn’t change reality, it’s a mere distortion of it. Only in due time will the truth be revealed and people be left to deal with the consequences of there own actions. 

Another thing I wanted to touch on was: why a gecko? Like who even is this gecko. From last week’s class where we discussed Money to Burn, Prof Beasley-Murray said that “the story begins at an Epigraph”. And what do you know, there’s an epigraph in this one:

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

—Jorge Luis Borges

Anyone watched Rango as a kid? This was immediately what I thought of when reading the title “The Book of the Chameleons”. This is how I would imagine Eulálio if he were a chameleon.

Me too King. I too would like to be reincarnated into something completely different. Lowkey a happy dolphin because they’re said to be the “happiest animals on Earth”. What intrigued me to this was the exploration of Eulálio. It’s obvious he’s hinted that he’s “Not like other geckos” 😘 because he appears almost man-like. Was I the only one who got a weird anthropormorphism in action? My mans Eulálio literally remembers a past life he had as a man. Well, putting two and two together, Eulálio is the reincarnated Jorge Luis Borges. This is only cemented in Agualusa saying “This book is a tribute to Borges…the gecko’s memories correspond to fragments of Borges’ life” (Pg 190-191). I have nothing more to add beyond that. I thought it was cool, that’s it.

Me when I reincarnate. Imma be a happy dolphin!

All in all, since this blog post is already long, I just wanted to say that I really liked this book. Did it have me confused at times, yes. But what’s the fun in understanding everything? It also allowed me the opportunity to think of some cool gecko puns over the course of me reading. I do think that Agualusa uses his novel in such a brilliant manner to comment on the complexities of war and what it can cause the human psyche to do. We humans are just like animals, we hide from what we fear. But I really liked how tasteful Agualusa reveals that sometimes, hiding isn’t enough. We cannot run from what makes us, and therefore, we cannot run from our past. Beautiful to say the least.

Here is my question: if you would want to be reincarnated, what “completely different” thing would you be. Also, why do you guys think Agualusa used a gecko out of all other lizards? Was there a reason Eulálio couldn’t be a legit chameleon?

With Love Always,

S ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚