Rysiek

Rysiek is the correspondent whose decision to leave Angola brings his reporting journey to a provisional close. Out of money and barely able to continue, he asks the foreign desk for permission to return home, even as he believes the Angolans will ultimately win. His departure is not presented as a clean escape from the war: it is an exhausted retreat made while the outcome remains uncertain and still distant, and it ends with farewells rather than a resolution of the conflict.

Identity and Position

The available account identifies Rysiek through his work and circumstances rather than through a personal history. In a message to Michal, he identifies himself by name and reports that his money ran out long ago. He describes himself as barely alive and on his last legs, a blunt measure of the physical and financial strain under which he has been working. These are his own descriptions, not an independent assessment of his condition, but the request that follows makes their consequence clear: continuing in Angola has become untenable for him.

His appeal is directed to the foreign desk, placing his decision within a working relationship that can authorize his return. He does not say that he has lost faith in the Angolans’ prospects. On the contrary, he considers their eventual victory more or less clear. The difficulty is the time it will take: in his judgment, the outcome is still far enough away that he cannot remain to see it through. His position therefore holds two facts together—confidence about the eventual political result and an inability to keep enduring the present wait.

The Decision to Return

Rysiek asks permission to go home and points to a possible route: a plane is expected to leave for Lisbon, and he asks whether it could take him. The exchange is practical and compressed. The answer gives him permission to come home if he has had enough; he responds that he will begin arranging his departure. The decision turns on his condition, but it also depends on ordinary logistics: a flight, authorization, and someone to meet him at the other end.

The foreign desk tells him that Mirek will be waiting in Lisbon. That detail gives the planned return a specific destination and an anticipated point of contact, without suggesting that the larger situation has been settled. Rysiek is preparing to leave a country where he expects the Angolans to win, but his message offers no timetable for that victory and no certainty about what will happen before it. His departure is thus a personal limit reached inside an unfinished political struggle, not a declaration that the struggle is over.

Farewells and Departure Preparations

The account moves from the exchange about permission to the practical acts of leaving: packing and saying goodbye. The departure is made tangible through what Rysiek carries away. Pablo gives him a box of cigars for the road, and Comandante Ju-Ju gives him Davidson’s book on Angola. These parting gifts are distinct in kind—a consumable for the journey and a book about the country he is leaving—and both accompany him toward Europe. The evidence records the gifts without explaining what either giver intended them to mean.

That evening, Rysiek brushes the mildew from his suit and puts on a tie because he is returning to Europe. The gesture contrasts with the worn condition of the suit: he prepares himself for departure by making it presentable, while the mildew registers the conditions under which he has been living. The account does not confirm that he boards the plane or completes the journey. It establishes his intention to return, the permission and arrangements that make the attempt possible, and the preparations he makes before leaving.

Agostinho Neto and the Limits of Reporting

Before setting out, Rysiek visits Agostinho Neto. In Neto’s cramped office, a wall map is marked with small green and yellow flags indicating the positions of the FNLA and UNITA. The map offers a compact image of the military situation as it is being tracked in the office, while a wall of books provides, in Rysiek’s view, a more fitting background for Neto than a public rostrum, despite Neto’s ability as a speaker. Rysiek has never seen him in uniform and cannot remember him going to the front; these statements describe the limits of the correspondent’s own experience and recollection, not proof that Neto was absent from the war.

Neto says he has had no time lately to write poetry and nods toward the map. Rysiek wants to learn the details of how badly things are going, but he also feels unable to ask questions that would hurt. The encounter consequently yields no fuller account of the military situation. Instead, it ends in silence, followed by Rysiek saying goodbye and leaving. His restraint is part of the record: the correspondent seeks information, yet recognizes a moment when pressing for it would be painful, and does not do so.

Narrative Role

Rysiek’s departure gathers the pressures of the account into a small sequence of decisions and objects: an appeal sent to the foreign desk, a possible flight to Lisbon, a box of cigars, a book on Angola, and a suit brushed free of mildew. His belief in an eventual Angolan victory does not spare him from exhaustion or make the wait bearable. The farewell to Agostinho Neto adds another limit, this time to what reporting can extract from a personal encounter. The episode leaves Rysiek poised to return to Europe, while the war and its outcome remain beyond the ending of his own journey.