The Catastrophist: A Novel (12 page)

She talks instead about Patrice. He is too trusting of the Belgians, apparently. Like the other delegates he was thrilled to be in Brussels. He thought he was being treated as an equal, meeting ministers, meeting the king; all the misunderstandings of the past had been cleared up. He and the others were so proud of having won independence, they didn’t think about the details—and the details, she insists, are very bad.

“Are they?” I ask without enthusiasm.

“The economic and financial details are terrible. Patrice thinks he will win the elections and probably he will, but he will still not have power because the bankers, the businessmen and the mining corporations, they will control the economy. The Belgians are being nice to him now, but does he really think the Union Minière in Katanga and the Société Général will be partners with him in the new Congo, that they will agree to use their wealth for the people?”

“Does he?”

She still doesn’t hear the void in my voice.

“Probably,” she continues. “I will have to talk to him. I can explain to him where he has gone wrong.”

“I’m sure he’ll appreciate that.”

“Yes.”

She starts to slip down in the bed, overtaken by tiredness. I kiss her gently on the lips. She raises a hand. I clasp it.

“I am so ’appy,” she whispers.

“Me too.”

She embraces me, pulling me down to the pillows, and with the last of her energy kisses me noisily and playfully—the Italian girl again.

“Don’t stay up too late tonight,” she says.

“I won’t.”

“Good. I want you to do to me what I did to you.”

Hold up the moon. Who needs daylight? Wrists fast in my grip, ankles at my shoulders. Hold me, don’t let me breathe! She is almost doubled, her eyes are screwed shut. There are flinches in her when I push. I pause to pray, to count, to remember.

I want to find a story to tell her. But she knows me. I cannot move her with tales of my past in which I appear well or wounded. There is nothing new I have for her, no secrets with which to fascinate her now. But tonight it doesn’t matter. Tonight I am enough.

I have come with Stipe to Mungul’s house to see Lumumba. Stipe knew it would be a long wait and he wanted the company. We sit with Auguste on a rough bench in the courtyard. Moths wheel round the hurricane lamp, fireflies blink in the dark corners, and the air smells acrid, of batshit and sewage. A dozen or so young men—guards, officials, cousins, brothers, hangers-on—loll pointlessly around, the usual MNC coterie. No one ever seems to have anything specific to do, no one ever seems to know anything. They can’t say whether Lumumba is expected or not, or even if he’s here already.

So we wait. Recently, Stipe’s air of imperturbable good humor has given way to something more withdrawn. These days his friend Patrice is getting harder to pin down. He hasn’t been returning calls, he’s been missing appointments. The election campaign is in full swing, there’s always an excuse, but Stipe doesn’t like it. Lumumba’s elusiveness has coincided with a souring of the political atmosphere. For some weeks after the Brussels announcement Patrice seemed to be cooperating with the Belgians, and they, dropping their old favorite Kasavubu, noisily promoted him as the new Good African. Then, for reasons no one is quite sure of, the insults began. The
colons
started calling him nothing better than another Hitler; Lumumba was a Bad African after all, no better than the communist Gizenga with whom he was now cavorting. Kasavubu was discovered to be a Good African after all.

In the glow of the lamp Stipe turns to Auguste and speaks in a low voice, a mixture of Lingala, English and French. It is always touching to watch them together, even more so by this soft light. Their intimacy is that of brothers, or better—if the thought weren’t so comical—sisters. They huddle, they conspire, they read each other’s whims and intentions, and laugh together at things outsiders don’t think funny. Whatever Inès might think of him, whatever Stipe is doing in Léopoldville, with Auguste at least he is a good man. And a different man. Auguste brings out in him something lighter, younger, carefree. He teases him in a way I could not contemplate, about his lack of height and hair, about his drinking, about his pronunciation of African names. Stipe chuckles at all of it. It is more than simple good-natured patience at being ribbed, more than not wanting to appear defensive. He enjoys it, savors it. Auguste takes him out of himself in a way I cannot.

And in return Stipe is a good friend. De Scheut and I accompanied him the night he went to the police station in Avenue Lippers to demand Auguste’s release after the demonstration. He argued and threatened until the jailers produced their prisoner. Auguste was tame and fearful, and Stipe looked him over in angry silence, taking in each cut and bruise as if they were injuries to himself. His broad face filled up with red, his lips paled and pursed. A Flemish gendarme unchained Auguste and pushed him forward and for a moment I was sure Stipe was going to explode. I put a restraining hand on his arm but he shook me curtly off. Somehow he mastered his rage and went instead to embrace Auguste and tell him he was safe now and always would be. I left them outside the station to go back to Inès, but de Scheut told me later that Stipe had driven Auguste to his own apartment where he bathed him and cleaned up his wounds. Then he took him to the Zoo, seated him ostentatiously, glared at the Belgians and ordered the most expensive champagne in the house. Auguste has told me that Stipe gives money to his family, that he paid for medical treatment for his grandmother, that he is putting one of his brothers through school.

Stipe is a loud and a quiet man.

And yet something is changing between them. I can see it even now as the bats flit in their crazed paths around Mungul’s house and the bored young men whisper and snigger. Inès has had a hand in it and though Stipe has said nothing to me, I know he is not at all pleased with her intervention.

I first noticed that something was going on when we went to an MNC congress in Léopoldville, one of a series staged throughout the country as the elections neared. The event had culminated in a torch-lit rally in Matongé football stadium. Sweat glistened on every face, spirits were high and the booming chorus of
Depanda!
filled the night. Lumumba had given the most effective speech I had heard him deliver. I had heard many by then, for I had gone for the
Observer
to rallies at Luluabourg, Coquilhatville, Ininongo and Stanleyville. Until that night in Matongé I had thought of Lumumba as a kind of conjurer; I knew there was magic but I knew there was trickery behind it. This performance, however, was special. It had the hairs on the back of my neck bristling, it raised goose bumps on my arms. There were moments when I found myself being swept along in the emotional waves he sent crashing over us. I had to force myself to pull back, to stop, to think, to listen to the words—the habitual words of the politician, all the usual grievances, exaggerations, platitudes, generalizations and promises. I had to fight, to make an effort of will in order to hold on to myself.

I bumped into de Scheut and his children. They had not held on but had been swept along; de Scheut was brimming with sentiment. People were decent, the world was good—and would soon be better. He always sees the best in everyone.

The children, Julie and Cristophe, greeted me a little shyly but with none of the tormented awkwardness of some youngsters.

“Wonderful speech,” de Scheut said, “wonderful, wasn’t it? This really is a momentous time—the first chance people in this divided land have had to find a way to live together in equality and peace, our first chance to compromise.”

“Do you think Lumumba is interested in compromise?”

“Oh, yes, undoubtedly. Don’t listen to people who say Patrice is a communist and an extremist—and he’s not a racist either. He genuinely wants the whites to be part of the new Congo. He’s a fine and honorable man.”

“Patrice used to come to our house,” Julie said shyly.

“And what did you think of him?” I asked.

“He’s very nice,” she replied, tightening her hold on her father’s arm as the departing crowd swayed this way and that.

“We played football with him,” Cristophe put in. “He’s very good at football.”

De Scheut smiled at his son. The boy’s skin was clear and his fair hair was neatly combed across his head. He had sloping little ears.

“It’s going to take a lot of effort and goodwill,” de Scheut said, “but we can make it work if we put our minds to it.”

He said Inès and I must come for dinner soon. He said good night and put his arms across the shoulders of his children and I watched him navigate their way through the streaming crowd, an old, good father with a beautiful child on either arm. On the morning Inès told me that she wanted to have a baby—crude as this sounds (and it was deeply confusing to me)—my reactions were centered in my cock: I experienced an erection so strong, so instant it was painful. When I moved, I felt the wetness on my thigh. Inès discovered my arousal—she was always highly attuned to my sexual state. She laughed and said it was appropriate, in a biological sense.

If there had been a child, the possibility of children . . . ?

Stipe and I found Inès talking to Auguste. There was something collusive about their manner, something excluding, which Stipe and I had different reasons for disliking. Inès gave me a particularly hard look—a rebuke for being with Stipe. Auguste was wearing glasses with heavy black frames of the kind Lumumba favors. I had not known he wore glasses and commented on them and said he looked well. He beamed at my compliment.

Stipe did not waste time on pleasantries. He long ago gave up trying to get through to Inès.

He said, “Come on, Auguste. Let’s get the car.”

And then there was something extraordinary. Auguste, standing next to Inès, hesitated. He stood there and he looked at his employer, his friend, his mentor, his master, his provider—but he did not move. It was the first time I had witnessed anything like this between them. In that moment I recalled something Stipe had said to me one afternoon over drinks in the Colibri.

“Are you familiar with the concept of neoteny?” he had asked.

“It’s a zoological term.”

“I don’t think so.”

“It’s about stunted growth, you might say, psychologically and emotionally speaking. The dog is neotenic in that over thousands of years we have bred it from a wild pack animal into something more at home in your yard. We’ve done it by encouraging the retention of the juvenile characteristics of submission and subservience in the adult. That’s why your mutt licks your hand instead of tearing it off the way its wolf ancestor would.”

“Science is always good for metaphors,” I’d said, “though they can sometimes be a little obvious.”

“Yeah, but no less true for that,” he’d replied.

In Matongé stadium, in front of the hesitating Auguste, I wondered if Stipe was thinking about neoteny. No amount of intimacy could disguise the obvious bias in their relationship. Stipe seemed to be the only one who couldn’t see it. He looked at his driver and worked through the implications. I knew he was thinking Inès was behind this little rebellion and I felt awkward about it.

“Are you coming, Auguste?” Stipe said slowly.

The words were filled with meaning, and also with emotion. This was not simply the insubordination of an employee, but the betrayal of a friend. Stipe’s cold fury concealed a deep hurt.

Inès’s face was set, she was ready for combat. But the fight was not to be that night. I think Auguste may have seen the anguish behind Stipe’s eyes, even if Inès did not. He smiled suddenly—his special huge smile of deference and nonaggression. He was not yet ready to bite, but I knew then he was tired of licking hands.

When they were gone, I asked Inès if she was ready to go home. I did not want to talk about Auguste and Stipe, for I knew her mood. She looked frail and worn. She had of course resumed her schedule as soon as she had risen from her sickbed.

“No, I have some work to do,” she said abruptly.

“What work? It’s after midnight.”

She looked at me severely.

“I would hardly discuss this work with you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“So you could tell your spy friend.”

“Inès,” I said softly, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder.

The last thing I wanted was an argument, but she twisted away from me, out of reach.

“What work?” I demanded, annoyed.

“I have been asked,” she began deliberately, “to do some work for Patrice, and I said I would do it, so I am going to do it.”

“Okay, do your work. What time do you think you’ll be home?”

“I don’t know.”

She said it aggressively.

“I don’t understand why you’re so angry,” I said.

“I am angry because of Stipe. Because you should not be with him.”

“He’s my friend. Why shouldn’t I be with him?”

“You think only of yourself, as usual. It’s always about you.”

I had in my right hand a rolled-up newspaper. Without thinking I swung it at her face. I felt brutal and hurt, and this time I was not going to be weak and pleading. My pride would not allow it. I was going to tell her once and for all that sometimes she could be a silly bitch and why didn’t she just stop all this nonsense. She jerked her face away, letting out a little cry, but I stayed my hand in time. I did not hit her.

“Oh Inès, I’m sorry.”

She glared at me.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated.

“I have work to do.”

“Inès, is there someone else?” I asked.

“No,” she replied, but there was something in her voice that did not convince me. It wasn’t hesitation—it wasn’t that, she hadn’t hesitated at all; it was more the boredom with which she had said it.

“Is that the truth?”

“Yes it’s the truth.”

And again I did not feel convinced, again because of the lack of effort she put into her answer.

“I don’t know what time I’ll be back,” she said, starting off.

“Are we going to argue because of Stipe?” I called after her. “Are we going to lose all the ground we made up because of him?”

She spun round to face me.

“When will you see what he is doing?” she said sharply. “When will you see what is happening around you?”

I would rather have heard her condemn me as a woman-beater than hear this. At least then it would have been about us. She turned and walked away. Away to do her work for Patrice.

Things have been cold between us since. She is involved with her people, her cause, as never before, staying out all hours, spending more time in the MNC headquarters and Lumumba’s house than in her own office. She is frequently with Smail.

The bats continue in their zigzag flight. The young men are still bored and listless, they drift away and back again, murmuring to each other indifferently. A large flying beetle, the buff-colored kind that stream in from the river, lands in my hair. I flick it off with a shudder and the young men snigger among themselves. I am getting sleepy. Tomorrow I have a long article to write for the paper. I also have to get back to work on my novel. I have reached the climax. The son has found his father but has not yet found himself, and I have not yet found a way to make his feeling of failure and desperation seem real to the reader. I will have to write again to Alan, there will be another delay in delivery.