ABSTRACT
In colonial fi ctions, the mail is associated with an attenuated sense of privilege and belonging. Doris Lessing notes in Martha Quest (1952) how on mail days cars of ‘every degree of wealth’ gathered in town allowing all shades of white to meet: ‘it was all backslapping and Christian names, a happy family atmosphere which had a touch of hysterical necessity in it’ (Lessing 1993: 64). Mail days afford a sorely needed moment of mutual recognition among the settlers. In Camaxilo, the desolate Angolan outpost in Castro Soromenho’s 1949 novel Terra Morta (‘Dead Land’), the tension and feeling of release triggered by the mail is extreme. As the three Portuguese functionaries Américo, Vasconcelos, and Silva settle down one evening to a game of cards, the cry erupts: ‘A truck! A truck!’ (Soromenho 1975: 108). The colons are incredulous. Thinking it is the distant sound of drums that they hear, they are uninterested at fi rst, but once they realize it is a certain Rocha coming from afar with the mail they get excited. Months have gone by since the last postbag arrived. Now, there is intense anticipation of the letters, offi - cial announcements, magazines, and perhaps books that are about to reach them. As soon as the bag has been opened, the administrator and his wife sit down to read ‘family letters that arrived in this corner of the world after endless journeys’ while the functionary Vasconcelos ‘nervously paged through the Boletim Ofi cial in search of his transferral’ (Soromenho 1975: 112).1
