The Catastrophist: A Novel (25 page)

The mention of her name jolts me back to the reality of my predicament.

“I don’t know.”

Stipe nods slowly. “You haven’t seen her?”

“No,” I reply quickly and unequivocally. “I told you I haven’t seen her since independence day.”

“Not even around town? Not even at press conferences?”

“We move in different circles, and you know Inès: she thinks press conferences exist so journalists won’t get the story.”

There is a thin crack of a smile from Stipe. It is followed by a long silence.

“Just so there’s no misunderstanding,” he says evenly, “if you don’t tell me where Auguste is, by nightfall you’re going to look exactly like Smail there and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“That’s a lie, Mark,” I reply fiercely, unintimidated by his threat. “There’s everything you can do about it. You can go to your ambassador and your ambassador could tell Mobutu to order my release and I would be out of here in twenty minutes.”

“Okay,” he says with a small smile, acknowledging my point, “let’s say there’s nothing I would feel inclined to do about it.”

“I can’t tell you where Auguste is.”

“Think about this, Gillespie.”

“I can’t tell you because I don’t know.”

He looks at me and I hold his gaze. I haven’t convinced him, but I may have created the beginnings of a doubt.

“What did you do after I left you at Roger’s?” he asks.

“Roger cleaned up my foot and drove me home. I had a drink and went to bed.”

“Did you see Roger yesterday?”

I stick to my story. “No.”

“Talk to him?”

“No.”

He pauses before continuing, weighing my answers. They have been straight, unambiguous, confident. Am I creating doubts in him?

“Ask Roger if you don’t believe me,” I say defiantly. It’s all I can say. It’s the logical challenge of the innocent man. A meaningless one, of course, because he will already have made plans to talk to Roger. What will Roger say? I can’t think of that. I have to hope. And there is reason to hope, I realize. It’s day. A night has passed. That means Madeleine has not discovered Auguste’s hiding place. Perhaps she didn’t go there after all. Perhaps there is no other lover. Perhaps I am the only one. I feel a strange surge of tenderness towards her.

“What did you do yesterday?” Stipe asks.

“Yesterday? I didn’t have much on.”

“What exactly did you do?”

“Got up, did the usual things. Coffee in the garden. I didn’t have anything to file, I’ve finished the novel, so I went for a drive, just to look round.”

“Where did you go?”

“The docks, along the boulevard, nowhere special. I called in at the Regina for a drink. I bumped into you there. You and Dr. Joe the poisoner, if you remember.”

“Where’s your houseboy?”

“Charles? I don’t know. Isn’t he at the house?”

“He didn’t turn up this morning. Do you know where he lives?”

“In the cité somewhere. I don’t know the address.”

He studies me closely. I have answered his questions without hesitation, almost believing my own lies. But I am a fraction of an inch from collapse. I have to concentrate to keep from trembling. If he presses I will go down. To divert him I take the initiative.

“What makes you think I would know where Auguste is?”

“He’s been in hiding since the coup. Then, about a week ago, Inès dropped out of sight. She stopped going to her office at the Marché and moved out of the place she was staying in Rue de la Tshuapa. Disappeared. My guess is that she joined Auguste and I have good reason to believe she has been trying to organize an escape route for him. It’s logical she would have approached you.”

“It’s not logical at all. Not after what happened between the two of us.”

He turns away and puts a hand to his mouth. He tugs at his lower lip like a professor lost in thought.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you, Gillespie, what goes through your head when you think of Inès and Auguste together. I mean, you must think about it—right?”

“I try not to,” I say.

I know where this is going . . .

“That’s wise, very wise,” he says with unpleasant smoothness. “No sense in torturing yourself with comparisons. I mean, they’re not exactly flattering.”

. . . but I cannot stop myself. I can see before my eyes . . .

“You’re a middle-aged man who’s spent most of his life behind a desk of one kind or another. You’re soft. There’s an overhang at your belt, your bulges are in all the wrong places.”

. . . the things he is taunting me with . . .

“You’re a long way past your prime and Auguste—well, that boy’s in the middle of his. And what a prime we’re talking about. I’ve seen the man, you know, the full man, if you understand me, and . . .”—he chuckles to himself—“it’s impressive. Very impressive. You look at it and you think Jesus, that’s just not fair. You understand what I’m saying? I mean it is huge.” He laughs. “What do you think Inès thinks when she looks at it? I bet it makes her a very happy girl.”

It’s pathetic that something so crude can do this to me, but the collapse is coming. Inside, things are giving way. I shut my eyes but I can’t shut out his words.

He continues, “You know, Auguste was always pretty open with me when it came to women. We had long talks. These guys, you know, they fuck all night. I mean all night. You can just hear Inès, can’t you? Squealing.”

I should be able to ignore this, to dismiss it for what it is. There are hot tears on my cheeks.

“I love that sound, don’t you? That sound a woman makes when she’s being pleasured. I was in a hotel room in Managua one time. The walls were very thin. I heard this couple making out every night. The woman—oh, I can’t tell you the noise she made, the little groans, the cries. Drove me crazy. Just think. Someone somewhere in this city is listening to Inès right now. Can you hear her, Gillespie? Can you hear her now? Listen. That’s her, she’s on her way, she’s starting to come.”

I can hear her. Stipe steps up to me.

“You know what Auguste told me? What he likes best?”

He puts his mouth to my ear. His breath smells of toast, of biscuits.

“In the ass. Think of that, Gillespie. Old Auguste turning Inès over, spitting on his fingers, moistening her up, popping a finger inside and she’s waiting for it. She knows what’s coming. He’s got his thing in his hand, it’s ready. He pushes it against her ass. Think of that. Think of the noise she’s making now. Can you imagine if there were pictures of that?”

I can see her.

“What do you think her face looks like when he’s doing that to her? What does she say when she comes, Gillespie? What does she say?”

She says
amore mio. Amore mio.
They’re my words, they’re words for me, not for Auguste, not for anyone else, for me, me. Me. Her words. My words.

“What does she say? Because she’s saying it now. Can you hear her? I can. So can Auguste. Auguste can hear her very well.”

I am lost in my tears.

“Leave me alone!” I scream.

“How do you feel about Auguste?”

I loathe him.

“Gillespie? How do you feel about the man who took your woman?”

I despise him, I hate him . . .

“Tell me where Auguste is.”

. . . if I had a knife I would stab him in the heart.

“Tell me. Everything will be okay. We can work it so that Inès will never know it was you. We can even arrange it so you end up looking like a hero, and you know how much she goes for heroes.

The two of you belong together. You know that. You can be together. You can go back to London or Rome or Bologna or Ireland. You can start a family. I know she can’t have kids, but you can get married and adopt. And if you have any problems with that, I can help you there as well. Trust me. Trust me, James. I can get Inès back for you. You believe me, don’t you?”

I nod. Like a child before its parent.

“And you want that, don’t you? More than anything else in the world.”

I nod again.

“So, where’s Auguste?”

I snivel. I wipe the last of the tears from my eyes.

“Where’s Auguste?”

“I don’t know.”

He slaps me across the face with the back of his hand.

“You’re lying to me! You’re fucking with me!”

I let out a long sigh.

“Mark,” I say with the calm that comes from total defeat, “I’d give him to you. Believe me. If I knew where he was I’d take you by the hand and if you gave me a gun—I don’t know, I might even shoot him myself. But I don’t know where he is and nothing you or any of those other people can do to me can make me tell you what I don’t know.”

He stares at me with contempt in his eyes. His face is red and the thick branched vein pulses in his forehead.

“You’ve been very stupid and you’re going to be very sorry,” he shouts.

He walks out, slamming the door behind him.

I look down at Smail, at all his wounds. I did not know him well. Hardly at all. He was a friend of Inès’s, a member of the Party. I doubt, had I got to know him better, whether we would have established any kind of friendship. He was a believer, like Inès, and with only one exception I have never got on with believers. But no one deserves to die like that. What could his last hours have been like? His last minutes? Perhaps soon I’ll know. We will be united in that at least. I kneel down beside him. I roll him onto his side. I pull up one arm. I work my other hand under his knees. I pause to get my breath, to gather my strength. I hoist the body over my shoulder in a fireman’s lift and rise, staggering under the weight, to my feet. My heart pounds in my chest and I think I will faint. I step up to the table and I lay him down as gently as I can. And then everything drains away from me. I don’t fall. I sink down and close my eyes.

The door opens. Two of the policemen enter. Come, they say. There is nothing else for it. I follow them without complaint. We retrace our route back to the cell. They lock me inside. In the dark I am not afraid. I don’t care if Stipe questions Roger and finds out that I’m lying. I don’t care if Charles turns up and tells them about Inès. I don’t care what happens to me. I feel at peace, ready for anything.

There is no interrogation. At five minutes to five they release me. I know the time because the civilian at the desk notes it in his register. A single policeman escorts me through the tunnels and out to the main courtyard. A guard opens the gate and I step through. No one says anything. No one gives me any reason for my release. Outside there are thirty or forty women and children. Some are standing, most are sitting on what look like makeshift beds on the pavement. They regard me blankly. They are the wives and mothers and sisters and children of the men inside. The gate closes behind. I look up and down the street, trying to get my bearings and thinking about where I might find a taxi.

Before I can make a move I hear a gentle voice call my name. It is Stipe.

“Come on, James,” he says, “I’ll give you a ride.”

“I’d rather get a taxi.”

“Look at yourself. What taxi driver’s going to pick you up? Come on.”

He leads me to his car, opens the passenger door and helps me inside. I wonder about my ribs. With every breath I feel a stabbing pain in my side.

Driving to Gombé, Stipe says, “You really don’t know where Auguste is?”

“I really don’t.”

“Roger’s in Brazzaville. It seems he has a patient over there who got sick yesterday. Interrupted a game at the tennis club to go over to see him. Did you know he had a patient in Brazzaville?”

“I don’t know very much at all about Roger’s practice.”

“They were talking about you, apparently, at the tennis club. It’s a small town, Leo—you can’t keep anything quiet for long. His tennis partner works out of the U.N. press office. It seems he’d heard rumors about your arrest. He mentioned it to Roger because he knew Roger and you were friends.”

I say nothing. I suspect, as Stipe may, that Roger, hearing of my arrest, decided to take the ferry across the river and await developments in safety.

“Did you get me out?”

“Yes,” he says.

“Thanks.”

“I hope when I eventually get to talk to Roger,” Stipe continues, “that what he tells me squares with what you told me.”

“If you’re going to threaten me, Mark, I’d rather walk the rest of the way.”

“I’m not threatening you.”

“I told you—I don’t know where Auguste is.”

Stipe looks straight ahead. I am certain I have convinced him.

As we near the house, he says, “I’m sorry about what I said—about Auguste and Inès, I mean. I had to try. You understand that, don’t you?”

“I understand.”

“I hated having to do it, James. It made me feel sick inside. I’m sorry.”

“I could tell your heart wasn’t in it,” I say.

He puts a hand on my arm and pats me affectionately.

He pulls up outside my house.