The Catastrophist: A Novel (24 page)

The captain strides over to me. He slaps me hard across the mouth, grabs my hair and bangs my head against the wall. With his other hand he pins me by the throat and screams into my face. I am fascinated by his teeth. I understand nothing of what he is saying.

He turns quickly and marches back to the desk. The civilian says something, the captain sweeps the register from the desk to the floor and glares at him. The civilian slowly pulls open a drawer and removes a bunch of keys. He pushes back his chair—careful to show he is in no great hurry—and gets up to open the gate. The captain says something sarcastic, then beckons his soldiers.

We pass into a corridor with solid cell doors on either side. Is Smail here? The place smells fecal. There are stains on the concrete walls. At the far end, on the left-hand side, is an open door. They push me forward. I have never in my life been locked up. I do not want to go inside.

“I want to speak to Mark Stipe,” I say quickly, doing my best to keep my voice intact. “Together we can help you. We can help you find Auguste.”

All this succeeds in doing is to provoke more screams from the captain, and his screams set off someone else’s. The whole place erupts. The mad howling from the cells sends shivers down my spine.

I must not admit that I know where Auguste is, for then the captain would decide to beat it out of me. I must tantalize him. I must make him understand that he will only get what he wants in the presence of Stipe.

“Look,” I say as we near the open cell, “I know you want to find Auguste and I want to help you, but I have to talk to Stipe.”

For the first time the captain does not respond with screams and threats. We are at the cell’s threshold. I glance inside. I must at all costs prevent the door from closing behind me.

“Look,” I say reasonably, sensing headway, “there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding, but if you bring Stipe here I’m sure we can clear it up in no time and then we can all go home.”

Still no screaming. Even the howling from the cells has subsided. There is complete silence. The captain looks at me with his wide-spaced eyes. His mouth hangs open slightly, like a punch-drunk boxer. Then he starts to chuckle. It is not a pleasant sound.

He says in French, “You lied to the American. Stipe is not your friend anymore.”

“You’re wrong. Stipe is my friend, my very good friend. He will want to know that I am here. He will want to come to see me.”

The captain’s chuckle lengthens into a weird, thin laugh. The two soldiers glance at each other. They want to be out of here.

The captain says, “Stipe already knows you are here, and he doesn’t want to see you.”

He puts a hand square on my chest and shoves me inside. The door bangs shut and I am alone in the pitch black.

I put out my hands. I bump into a wall. I turn, put my palms and back flat against the concrete and slide to rest on my hunkers. There is the smell of urine. I can see nothing. I might easily be sitting in a puddle of piss. I put a hand down. The floor seems dry. The smell is revolting. Then I realize I am the source. I pinch the inside of my trouser leg and tug away the material. The skin feels prickly and irritated. I need to see. Perhaps there is a light. Gingerly I get up—pain is taking hold everywhere, in my legs, my sides, my chest, my stomach, my head—and like a blind man I run my hands over the four walls. There is no switch I can find. I slide to the floor again.

Stipe. Was the captain lying? Surely he was. I think of all the times Stipe and I spent together. We shared so much. From the very start he showed the solid marks of friendship. We talked about books and writers and irony and women. He told me about Rita, his college sweetheart. He told me about Rita, the wife who no longer loves him. I told him about Inès and her childlessness. We shared meals and drinks. We went places together. He gave me material and I wrote articles. Last night he saved my life. We were friends. We are friends.

I understand. It’s the same as it was with Auguste. Stipe is a generous friend. He is in his own way a needy man. He is strong, he is powerful, he knows what he wants, but he needs to be liked. He gives—perhaps with a little ostentation, but generously—and he asks nothing in return except the loyalty due to a good friend. First Auguste betrayed him. Then me. Of course he is bitter, of course he is angry. Only a few hours ago in the Regina he told me he could help me if I told him first. I did not tell him. I fucked him. Now he is fucking me.

I stretch out on the floor. I don’t care what I am lying on. I don’t know what might crawl over me. I don’t care about anything.

I must have fallen asleep. I don’t know how. The floor is hard and every part of my body aches and my mind has never known such confusion and fear. Still I slept. I do not know for how long. I have no idea of the time. When they arrested me it was not yet four. Half an hour, three quarters at most to get to the cell. I may only have been asleep for minutes. It might not yet be even five o’clock. Roger might still be playing tennis with the U.N. man. Madeleine might be in her bath, preparing for an evening with a lover. I laugh at the thought of her finding a
macaque
in the bed she uses. She will not like that at all.

Inès. Oh Inès, how did it get to this? I veer between love and hate for you. I wish I could be free of you. But no one has ever provoked in me what you have provoked. You discovered me, and then you didn’t want me anymore. This happens. It’s nothing unusual. It’s everyday stuff. I think I could have coped if only you’d dealt with it better. If you’d said to me one morning, tenderly, as though it mattered to you that you were going to hurt me, if you’d put out your hand and touched my face and said to me that things had changed, that your feelings had changed, that you were sorry . . . But there was none of that. There was no kindness, there was no consideration. Just impatience, and coldness and disregard. And I know I made it harder for you by demanding reassurances. But I think I deserved better. Not because I was good or blameless or . . . I cannot think of what else I can say I was or wasn’t. I can only say I deserved better for the simple reason that I loved you and was bewildered and sad. Love has responsibilities. The last of these—the most arduous perhaps—applies to the end of love, when the spurned love has a right to demand help, and this responsibility you ignored. You went off for your higher things without regard for me.

I can’t help myself now. I have to tell them what I know. It’s not revenge. At least I don’t think so. It might have been earlier, when I thought Stipe would come here, but not now. Now it’s a question of survival. And I’m sorry. I really am. I can hear the howling again. Oh Inès. Come to me, hold me.

The door swings open. I think I must have been sleeping again but I cannot be sure. I cannot remember closing my eyes, or opening them. I remember no dreams.

The light from the corridor is not strong, but still I blink. I put my hand in a peak over my eyes. I hear a voice. It is not the captain’s. It is quieter, more educated, but it is still peremptory.

“Get up.”

I do as I am told.

“Where is Auguste Kilundu?”

“I have no idea,” I reply at once.

I don’t know why I say this. Perhaps simply because I’ve been saying it since they came to arrest me and it’s embedded in my head, or because I’ve made a swift calculation about the likely benefits to me of telling them at this point.

“Come.”

Movement is not easy. During the night—if it was the night—my body has tightened. At each step part of me rebels.

“Come,” the voice snaps. “Get a move on.”

“I need water,” I say.

My visitor says nothing.

Keeping my eyes down, I limp into the corridor. Once there, someone grabs me by the arm and marches me down to the barred gate. I wince with the pain and stiffness. It means nothing to my escort of course. I chance a look. There are three of them, all in civilian dress. They have the look of policemen, bored and well watered and fed. As we emerge from the cells area one of them goes to the desk. The same man is still on duty. He doesn’t bother to look at me. The policeman signs in the register, turns and signals to his two companions and we move on. We turn right into another passage. We come to a staircase. We go up. We go through a door into a short passage. We go through another door. We come out into the blinding daylight. I shade my eyes with my free hand. They half lead me, half drag me across the courtyard towards another building, another door. The light sears. It goes into the back of my brain and burns. I blink, I screw up my eyes. I see the silhouettes of what I think are armed guards standing before the new door. As we approach I begin to make out small details, a little relief, some color. One of the policemen opens the door. I am pushed forward. I glimpse the guards as we pass. One of them seems to be white. I pass within a few inches of him. He is definitely white.

“Mark?” I whisper hoarsely.

Stipe—if it is Stipe—does not respond.

“Mark? Is that you? Help me, Mark.”

There is nothing from the white man. Before I can say anything more the policemen have pushed me through and closed the door behind us.

They pull me down another corridor. At the end an open door leads into a bedroom. Bedroom? There is a man lying on a bed, sound asleep. My eyes are adjusting to the light. The man in the bed comes into focus. Except it’s not a bed. It’s an office table. They push me into the room so violently I have to put a hand out to stop myself from falling over. I touch the sleeping man. He is cold and clammy and soft. I snatch my hand away. The man is not sleeping. I look around the room. In one corner, grinning to himself, is the captain.

I look again at the body. The head is hideously swollen. The bruising is so severe and so widespread that at first it’s not easy to see that the body is white. It is Smail. His testicles are the size of cricket balls. There is blood at the tip of his stubby penis.

“Where is Auguste Kilundu?”

The voice comes from behind. The question registers but in my shock I do not understand that it requires an answer. One of the policemen spins me round.

“Where is Auguste Kilundu?”

I have no voice.

“We will leave you here with your old friend and the captain,” the policeman says, “unless you tell us now where Auguste is hiding.”

“I’m very thirsty,” I say. “I’d like some water. I also want to see the British ambassador.”

The policeman swings a fist into the side of my face. The blow is hard, though not enough to fell me. I go down anyway to avoid more punches. All three kick at me. The captain gets up to join them. He is carrying a heavy stick. I put up my hands to protect my head. He lashes me across the neck and shoulders. The room is small and they are in each other’s way. I find some protection under Smail’s table. One of them takes hold of my ankle and starts to pull me out from under the table. I grab the legs. The blows come down on the exposed part of my legs and lower torso. Someone is stamping on me. I hold on to the table and try to pull myself under. It moves. They continue to pull. The table moves, it slides on the floor, it topples over. Smail is lying on top of me. Suddenly the beating stops. One of the policemen says something. A few moments later the door closes and there is total silence. They have left me alone.

I lie still. I lie under Smail’s body, my face pressed into the cold death-sweat on his chest. Then, as if only understanding at that moment the horror of my situation, I panic and flail about to struggle out from under him. I kick my legs free and when I am free I gaze in revulsion at the corpse. I crawl to the furthest corner. I wipe my face and bare arms, any exposed skin, to be cleansed of the touch and smell of him. The air is putrid. I take deep breaths. I concentrate, count, breathe. Calm. Calm, be calm . . . I have another story. A fantastic story, better than the killing of the ANC colonel. Zoubir Smail, Lebanese-born diamond merchant, Communist Party member, close associate of deposed prime minister Patrice Lumumba, widely rumored to have organized and facilitated secret Soviet funding of the MNC, murdered by Mobutu’s secret police. Eyewitness account of tortured body in Léopoldville’s Central Prison. I can use all of this—along with my own arrest and beating—for novels, stories, plays. It can be the dramatic set-piece around which my work will turn. I will be able to make something of this. Yes. As long as I can make the deal with Stipe. I gaze at Smail.
Does a man die at your feet, your business is not to help him, but to note the color of his lips.
I must gather my wits. I must note the color of his lips.

Listen to me.

There is a dead man—not a friend, but a man I once knew—lying in a pathetic heap not ten feet from where I am and I am thinking about my own advantage. I feel suddenly repelled—utterly disgusted—by my own callousness. Is this all I have ever been? A selfish, egotistical watcher? I let out a groan. I bury my face in my hands and start to sob, from fear, from despair, from loathing of myself. I never said I was brave or idealistic, but I kept my weakness from myself. I always managed to do that.

This is me talking now. No tricks, no artifice, no writer’s advertisements. No false self-accusation that will make me look well. There is nothing hidden or complicated or deep or doubting. I am banal and self-serving. This is the truth. I have disguised myself with words. Fiction words. Lie words. Others—not all, but many—are taken in, but I am no longer taken in by myself. Fiction words once made me feel well, but no more. They serve the liar who arranges them, the solipsist who designs their effect, the egoist who veils their sly, unpleasant insinuations and passes off brass as gold. Other people? Other lives? Where do others come into this? What room is there in this, in what I do, for others? My every waking thought turns on myself. I am at the forefront of my own imagination. Others—insofar as they exist at all—move around my sun. They live in my light and my darkness. At my whim. I have never had a single genuine concern—real, heartfelt—for another human being. I have never been honest. I have never once given up anything for another person. This is not exaggeration. I am not making myself look bad to make myself look good. I have got away with it until now because like the clever criminal I leave no fingerprints at the scenes of my crimes and I am always careful to go masked. Poor Smail. How small he looks in death, how reduced. I will lay him out. I will get him back on the table. I crawl back to him. Where the skin is not bruised it seems blue. It’s the blue of blood in the veins of very old people, the men and the women with pale, papery skin who wait for death in rooms which smell of fish paste and mothballs. I will get him on his table. He’s heavy and I am not strong. I take him, hands under his arms, and strain against the weight. His bloody swollen head lolls forward. I strain, pull, hoist. It’s no good. I try again but I can’t get his upper body onto the table. I let him down gently. I roll him onto his front, crushing his big bruised balls under him. I say out loud, sorry. Sorry. I stand over him. The ends of his fingers are black, as though frostbitten. I lean down and take him by the waist. I heave with all my strength. He’s doubled over, bent in the middle, head on the floor, knees and feet on the floor. Sweating with the effort I swing him round to the table. He’s slipping from my fingers. I let out a groan as I make a final effort to lift him another few inches to get a part of him, any part, on the table. I can’t do it. I don’t want to drop him, but he’s slipping from me. He crumples to my feet.

The door opens. It’s Stipe. He barely glances at Smail.

Staring at me, he says, “I’ve seen you looking better.”

“Look at what they did to Smail. Look at what they’ve done.”

He looks at the body for a second. His face registers nothing. Boredom perhaps. I know his work now. I hate him.

“Let’s concentrate on you for now.”

“No, let’s concentrate on you!” I shout at him. “Let’s concentrate on what you’re doing here . . .”

“You asked to see me.”

“ . . . Here in this country.”

He shrugs. He says, “I’m trying to make this country a safe place.”

“Safe for who?”

“People like you.”

“Leave me out of it.”

“You always want to be left out of things, Gillespie,” he says scornfully, “but you’re involved in this. I don’t mean just because you have connections with the people we’re looking for. You’re involved the same way we’re all involved. People like you don’t like the dirty games people like me play, but you benefit every time we play and win. You won’t admit it, you’d probably deny it even to yourself, but you want me to win, because if I lose, then so do you. You lose everything. All your privileges. Writing, publishing, journalism—to mention only the things of particular interest to you—they’re only possible in a certain context, and my job is to make sure that context continues to exist. Sometimes that means doing unpleasant things, sometimes it means associating with unpleasant people.”

“Like Dr. Joe from Paris? Or Dr. Gottlieb, as I believe he’s called.”

Stipe flickers. For once I have surprised him.

“A poisoner?” I say, pressing forward while he is momentarily off-balance. “That’s more than just unpleasant, Mark.”

“There are a lot worse than Dr. Joe. They’re not the kind of people you feel comfortable inviting to your house for dinner. But you do. You have to. They come and sit at your table and it can be real hard to swallow your food in their company, but you make the effort. You eat the dinner, you drink the wine because you know if you don’t, our context—our precious context—disintegrates.”

He pauses. He glances at the floor, at Smail.

Keeping his gaze on the corpse he continues, “What am I doing here in this country? I am making sure that the biggest and richest country in central Africa—one with huge strategic importance—doesn’t fall into the hands of the people who want to destroy our context.”

“Keep it up, Mark. You’ll soon be telling me it’s better to be dead than Red.”

“No,” he says casually. “It’s more of a Hobbesian thing with me. Better led than dead. I’ve always been a believer in strong leadership. I’ve always believed in doing what is necessary. It’s the one thing I have in common with Inès, I suppose. How is Inès?”