The Catastrophist: A Novel (19 page)

I went to see Stipe the next morning to tackle him about the list of wanted Lumumbists. When talking about Okito, Mulele and the others, even when talking about Lumumba himself, Stipe’s tone was neutral, but something hard and personal crept into his voice when he came to Auguste. According to Stipe, Auguste had spent a month in Czechoslovakia for cadre training and had recently risen to become chairman of the Jeunesse MNC, which he described as the terrorist wing of Lumumba’s party. I was skeptical, but Stipe assured me it was all true. Then he asked a question that alarmed me.

“Have you seen Inès lately?”

“No. Not since independence day.”

“I know things between you are difficult, but if you see her, you should try to persuade her to get out as soon as she can.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“She should get out while she can,” he said with a shrug, and though I pressed him he would say no more on the subject.

Then, as we were parting, he told me that Auguste and Inès were lovers.

Yes, the Congo has been good for a laugh. I did not feel very much when Stipe broke the news. In fact I remember laughing in Stipe’s face. Not because I didn’t believe it to be true. I could see it all too clearly, in fact I had already suspected it. I knew the kind of man who excited Inès’s interest. I had seen the little signs when Inès and I still lived together. But—out of deference to Inès, and partly for fear of being thought patronizing or churlish or, worse, jealous—I had never expressed my real opinion of Auguste. The truth was I had always seen him as a clown. The quoter of Erasmus, the lover of Socrates, Plato and John Stuart Mill, the member of the Association of the African Middle Classes and wearer of false spectacles and gaudy shirts. The man who was going to have a lawyer’s office on Park Avenue with half a dozen pretty secretaries. How do you take a man like that seriously? How do you take a man like that as a lover? But Inès would. She would see in him other things. She would see in him suffering and struggle, heroism and resistance and self-sacrifice.

Was I jealous of this absurd man?

No.

Not remotely.

I was madly jealous—insanely, self-pityingly, violently so. The night Stipe gave me the news I went to Houthhoofd’s house on Eugene Henry for one of my trysts with Madeleine. Madeleine had not fled, and she was contemptuous of those who had. She is a woman of aggressive instincts and these instincts she takes with her to the bedroom. Sex with her is never gentle. There have been times when I demurred but she always egged me on. “I want it like this,” she would say to put my mind at ease, and she would whisper, “hurt me.” She knew me. She knew me well. She sensed the hatred massing in me that night. She did not complain. And when it was over she smiled knowingly, triumphantly, as if at last I had entered a dark place into which she had been trying to tempt me for a long time.

While she showered I lay on Houthhoofd’s bed, thinking of Inès, thinking of Auguste. I knew what would happen to Auguste if Mobutu’s men captured him or if Stipe found him. I had seen the results of their handiwork. During the fighting at Bakwanga, Baluba soldiers had sought revenge in the capital for the atrocities committed on their tribe by Lumumba’s troops. One morning I came across a knot of people by the golf course. A Ghanaian officer with the U.N. forces, one of General Alexander’s men, approached the small crowd. The men stood aside to reveal the body of a sleek young man lying face up on the street. I recognized the victim, had been on nodding terms with him. His name was Justin and he had been a low-level official in the MNC, an ardent supporter of the prime minister and a friend of Auguste’s. Now he was dead—hacked and slashed and torn. I stopped for a closer look. The Ghanaian officer, squatting to inspect the corpse, flicked away a half-finished cigarette; it landed in the dark oil of blood by Justin’s right leg. The bystanders spoke in loud voices, the officer wiped sweat from his eyes. The flies buzzed. The ash of the discarded cigarette glowed briefly in the pool of sticky crimson, then began its careless disintegration. I knew what would happen to Auguste.

I got off the bed and went into the shower. Madeleine looked at me in surprise. She glanced down at my cock and smiled. “So soon?” she said, amused. Without another word, she slowly turned her back on me and spread her palms against the white tiles to steady herself. As I fucked her I saw Auguste’s face where Justin’s was. I saw him dead, mutilated, bleeding. I started to say, “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.” I went on and on. I was shouting at Auguste, I was shouting at Inès. Madeleine was groaning. She was bent fully over, squashed into a corner, contorted, pressed against the tiles, the water running off her back and broad, strong shoulders. There were little juddering, rippling movements in the flesh of her backside as I rammed against her. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.

Will somebody please take me away from this? From where I am now. From what I am doing. From all this hate. From myself. Please.

“Come on,” Stipe says, finishing his drink, “let’s get you to a doctor.”

I suggest he take me to Roger’s.

“Have you heard anything of Auguste?” I ask.

“He’s still hiding in the city somewhere,” he replies.

“Do you think they’ll find him?”

“They’ll find him,” he declares flatly. “It’s only a matter of time.”

Though I make no comment on his answer, he knows it holds satisfactions for me. I am partly ashamed by my response. Partly.

Roger offers Stipe a drink. He downs it quickly, then says he should get back to the embassy.

“You know,” I begin sheepishly, “I don’t like melodrama any more than you, but you probably saved my life.”

He makes modest disclaimers but I can see he is pleased by my recognition of what he has done for me. He pats me on the shoulder and says he’ll call tomorrow.

Roger carefully removes my broken and bloodstained shoe and cuts away the sticky sock.

“It’s a graze and there’s some bruising, but it’s not serious. I’m afraid your shoe’s a write-off, though,” he says in a voice that betrays the merest hint of disappointment; I suppose like all professionals Roger likes the occasional challenge. He points to my foot.

“You can see here the line of the bullet along the instep. I’ll clean it up for you and you’ll soon be right as rain.”

He gets to work and I ask how much longer he thinks he’ll stay on. Though he’s threatened to go many times before, Roger never seems able to bring himself to leave.

“Oh, someone has to look after things,” he says quietly. “One never likes to speak ill of one’s colleagues, but the Belgian doctors have been rather irresponsible, you know. Packed up and left like everybody else. Thought nothing of the patients. The whole health care system’s in a frightful mess.”

Roger is a kind and honorable man. Every time I see him I feel embarrassed about my dismissive appraisal when we first met in Houthhoofd’s garden. And though we have become friends of a sort I regret that we will never be closer, never know each other better. We share a drink every now and then—a meal would over-burden the slim frame of our connection—but even in our cups we never really talk. He is one of those reserved Englishmen whom it is easy to like and impossible to know.

“Things are turning terribly nasty,” he says, swabbing my pathetic little wound. “The atmosphere is not good at all.”

“Lumumba made sure of that on independence day,” I say.

“I don’t think it’s fair to lay all the blame on Lumumba,” he says gently enough but with a conviction that surprises me, for he has never given any indication of his political views; I always took him to be one of those men for whom what he did in the polling booth was as private as what he did in the bedroom, and not a proper subject for civilized conversation. What politics he had I had always assumed to be conservative; I suspect he thinks Macmillan a good egg.

“Lumumba’s speech on independence day may have been a little intemperate,” he continues, “but understandable in the circumstances. What was King Baudouin thinking of trying to tell the Congolese that Léopold had established the colony by treaties and peaceful methods! Rather a load of twaddle, frankly. Gave the natives a few bits of cloth and a crateload of gin in return for their land. The chiefs had no idea what they were agreeing to. In some cases they weren’t given the chance to say no. Did anyone ever tell you what happened to the Bayeke?”

“I don’t think so.”

“The chief of the Bayeke was a man called M’Siri. Terrible despot. Lived in a mud and thatch palace surrounded with skulls on sticks. The Belgians wanted a treaty because the Bayeke land had all sorts of minerals. M’Siri wouldn’t give them one so they shot him on the spot. Then they asked M’Siri’s eldest son if he wanted a treaty. It turned out he did, lucky for him. The treaty put practically the whole of Katanga under Léopold’s rule in exchange for the son being allowed to remain chief. Is that stinging?”

“Hardly at all,” I say.

He drops the swab into a plastic bin, goes to wash his hands and prepares some lint and bandage.

“Still, I suppose the Belgians would say that the Congo was in an appalling condition when they arrived. There were cannibals, you know. Far more of them here than anywhere else in Africa. The people just didn’t have enough to eat. They also had malaria, leprosy, trypanosomiasis, tropical ulcers, everything you care to mention. Frightful place, really. Slavery was the biggest problem, of course. They reckon thirty million Congolese were taken off as slaves. The Arabs were the worst. Tipu Tip—he was a friend of Stanley’s. A terrible rogue. Made a fortune from slaving.”

He finishes the bandaging. It is very tight.

“How does that feel?”

“Fine.”

He goes to the sink and starts scrubbing his hands.

“The Belgians actually made Tipu Tip governor of Stanleyville and gave him a salary of $150 a month into the bargain. Didn’t do their reputation a lot of good with the natives.”

He takes a white towel and rubs his hands.

“I’m not saying we haven’t made our own mistakes, but I do think the British would have done it rather better,” he says, going to a cabinet by his desk. “I’ll give you some antibiotics. The wound’s not serious but you have to be careful with that kind of thing in the tropics.”

“You’re very kind.”

He waves me away dismissively. “Can you put weight on your foot?”

I stand up from the chair.

“It seems okay.”

He regards me, as though hesitating to say something.

“What is it?” I ask.

“I’ve been asked to pass on a message to you,” he says. “I didn’t tell you straight away because I know how things are between you two.”

“Who’s the message from?”

I have no need to ask. My heart is thumping.

“Inès.”

“I see.”

I have to sit down.

“She telephoned earlier. Twice, as a matter of fact. Apparently she’d been trying to get hold of you at home and you weren’t in. Then she thought of me. I wrote down a telephone number. She said it’s important.”

He hands me a scrap of paper and looks at me with sympathy.

“Are you all right, James? Would you care for a whiskey?”

“No, thank you. May I use your phone?”

“Of course. It’s in the hall.”

My hand is shaking so much I misdial twice. The phone at the other end rings only once.

“It’s me,” I say.

“I need to see you.”

She sounds strange, as though having to make an effort merely to talk.

“Are you all right?”

She is not well. I can hear it in her voice.

“Yes, fine,” she says peremptorily, but unconvincingly. “Can I come to your house?”

“Of course.”

“I’ll be there in one hour.”

“Do you want me to pick you up?”

“No. It’s not safe. I see you in one hour.”

I am about to tell her that I am so happy to hear her voice again, that she will never know how much I have missed her, that I love her, that I think about her all the time . . . She has put the phone down, and saved me from another humiliation. Slowly I replace the receiver. I close my eyes. I hunch my shoulders and make fists of my hands. I must be strong, I have to be strong. Perhaps they have captured Auguste. Perhaps he is dead. Perhaps she wants to come back to me. Let him be dead, please let him be dead. Come back to me, Inès, where you belong.

From behind I hear Roger ask if I would like him to run me home. I realize I have been standing alone in the hall for several minutes. I turn to him and force a wide, nonchalant smile to my face.

“Yes, that would be very kind,” I reply; and I joke lamely, “I’m not sure how far I’d get in just the one shoe.”

“No, indeed,” Roger says, smiling back at me. “I’ll just get my keys.”

We have barely left the house when Roger asks, “Are we being followed?”

I turn to look behind us.

“There’s a black Citroën with two rather unpleasant-looking gentlemen in it,” he says. “I wonder if they might be Congolese Sûreté.”

The roads are almost empty and the Citroën’s presence is conspicuous, and suspicious. But still I say I can’t imagine why anyone would be following us.

“No indeed,” Roger says doubtfully. “Probably just taking the same route.”

We get through the first roadblock without too much trouble. But at the next the soldiers are in an angry mood and order us out of the car. It turns out they have heard about the shooting at the embassy and the death of the colonel, apparently a well-known and popular officer. We stand by the side of the dark, lonely road at the end of a line of frightened blacks who are waiting to be questioned by an officer with a swagger stick. The Citroën has pulled up a little way before the roadblock. Two soldiers go to investigate. Roger and I watch as the car’s occupants—two black men—identify themselves.

“Why would the Sûreté be following us?” I ask Roger.

“I suppose they’re suspicious of any whites these days,” he replies.

An aggressive-looking NCO approaches us.

“Better not to tell them how you got your foot,” Roger whispers. “Just in case. You never know how they might take it.”

I make up a story to do with a falling gas cylinder. The NCO shouts at us for several minutes. He says that we are paratroopers, that we are spies. We are not Belgians, I assure him, we are not Flemish.

“Tu miens,”
the NCO shouts into my face.

“No,” Roger replies calmly. “We are British—British.”

The NCO jabs his rifle into Roger’s chest.

“Steady on,” Roger says.

Further up, the officer pulls a man out of the line and starts screaming at him. The soldiers start to gather round, like lions round the beast they have chosen for their kill. The officer strikes the man across the face with his swagger stick. The man mumbles something. A soldier rams a rifle butt into his back and he stumbles forward only to be met by more blows. The officer kicks at his shins; another soldier gives him a savage blow to the back of the head.

“I think we should say something, don’t you?” Roger whispers.

“This really isn’t on.”

We both know we won’t.

The beating continues. The man is on his knees. The blows rain down on him.

The NCO looks at us and grins. “MNC,” he says, jerking his head to their victim. “Lumumba man.” He runs a finger melodramatically across his throat. “All Lumumba man get this.”

“We are not Lumumba men,” I insist.

“Not by any means,” Roger adds, rather shocked by the idea that anyone could mistake him for such.

The NCO asks for money, and after a little bargaining we surrender a few francs. Once he’s pocketed them, he pats us on the back and chats amiably—we’re the best of friends now, no hard feelings—as he escorts us to the car. Lumumba man are all going to die, he tells us cheerfully. The communists will be killed. Then the Congo will be free. We drive off and leave the Lumumba man on his back surrounded by the officer and the soldiers, weakly, vainly, trying to fend off their attack.

Roger drops me at the gate of my house and asks if I can manage. I assure him I’m fine. He reminds me about the antibiotics and tells me to pop in to see him tomorrow to have the bandage changed. I thank him for the lift and he pulls away.

As I go inside I check the street. There is no sign now of the Citroën. Either Roger and I were jumping to conclusions or the Sûreté men got bored and called it a night.