The Catastrophist: A Novel (28 page)

As we reach the hotel we see a small black woman come out. She wears a dark blue
pagne
but is naked from the waist up, her hair is shorn and her eyes are downcast. A small crowd of people follow her out of the hotel and stare after her.

“It’s Pauline,” I say.

We stop and watch as she makes her way down to the boulevard. Word is spreading. The curious are coming down from the cité.

“What’s going on?” I ask George.

“She came to ask if the U.N. would help to get her husband’s body returned,” George replies. “The trouble is, I’m not sure there is a body.”

Grant, standing among a small group of reporters and photographers, comes up to us.

“My God. I didn’t expect to see you two here again.”

He seems genuinely pleased to see both of us. We shake hands and he asks if we’ve heard the news.

“The story about the villagers is a transparent lie,” he says, “and Tshombe and Munongo couldn’t care less that no one believes them. I’ve been piecing together what happened when they sent Lumumba to Elisabethville. Apparently on the plane, Lumumba, Okito and Mpolo were roped together. The soldiers beat them so sadistically that the Belgian captain had to send the co-pilot back to tell them to pack it in, they were actually endangering the craft. By the time they got to Elisabethville airport—so the Swedish U.N. soldiers there say—Lumumba and the other two could barely stagger off the plane. Then they were forced to run a gauntlet of Tshombe’s soldiers. It seems that night they were taken to a farmhouse owned by a Belgian. I’m pretty sure they were done in then and there, though after God knows what kind of treatment. I’m pretty sure too that Tshombe and Munongo were there to watch it. Munongo may even have given Lumumba the coup de grâce himself—a bayonet in the chest is what people are saying.”

Inès says she wants to go after Pauline.

A photographer with a London accent asks Grant, “What’s with the black bird having her tits out?”

“It’s the traditional way women mourn here,” Grant replies icily.

He suggests we take his car and catch up with Pauline on the boulevard. Inès and I get in the back, one of the other reporters gets in the passenger seat beside Grant.

“Have you seen Stipe?” Grant asks as we set off.

“No,” I say.

“I’d stay out of his way, if I were you. He wasn’t too happy when he realized you’d pulled a fast one on him.”

He takes General Tombeur de Tabora, one of the smaller avenues that runs parallel to the boulevard.

“By the way,” he says, turning to look back at me, “I heard about what happened at the Central Prison.”

The other journalist, who as far as I know I have never seen before, likewise turns round.

“Yes,” he says, admiration in his voice. “That took some guts.”

I feel Inès glance at me.

“I don’t know why I did it,” I say vaguely.

Inès puts her hand on top of mine.

“Lo sai
,” she says.

Inès may think she knows, but she doesn’t. She thinks my motives honorable, possibly even heroic. They weren’t.

At Avenue du Marché Grant turns right. He finds a place to park and we walk down to Albert I. There is the most incredible sight. The traffic in both directions has come to a halt as Pauline walks forlornly down the boulevard. People are pouring from the side streets. Young and old, men and women and children. Hundreds of people, thousands of people. They fall in behind her and around her, a great, silent throng. We start down to meet them. I work my way to be next to Inès. I can hold off no longer.

“Do you know what you’re going to do?” I ask her.

She stops and looks at me. Grant and his companion walk on.

“Yes,” she replies, and because she says the word sadly I know what her decision is.

“I’m being selfish, I know,” I say. “I’m thinking only of myself. I know there are important things, that there’s no comparison between what I want and what you want, but what can I do with this love I have for you? Please don’t go.”

She is crying. I look away. I look at the trees and houses and the cars. I concentrate on those things. I take her hand in mine.

“Don’t go.”

I feel someone brush against me, then someone else. The vanguard of the march. People surge past. A river, an unstoppable black river.

I look at Inès. She gives me a small smile.

“Is this it?” I say.

“Yes,
amore mio.
”

We are knocked and buffeted. I hold on, I try to hold on, but her hand is jolted from mine.

“Inès!” I cry. “Inès!”

She moves on with the crashing current, carried away by it.

“Inès!”

I scramble after her but it’s impossible. I see her look back briefly and try to raise her hand in farewell. Then I cannot see her anymore. I dive into the crowd. I struggle and fight my way through. But I cannot find her. I stare blankly into the crowd for a long time. She is gone.

A white man is elbowing his way through the crowd. He is coming towards me. Stipe. He stands before me glaring angrily. He looks me up and down. I am vile, I am a figure beneath contempt. He has no words for one such as I. The crowd surges past, knocking us, shoving its way through us, around us.

“You lying fuck,” he says. “After all I did for you.”

“You didn’t do anything for me, Mark. You got me to do things for you and the pathetic thing is I didn’t see that until it was too late.”

“Jesus, what did Inès do? She must have fucked you last night. You sound just like her.”

His ability to put his finger right on a thing has not deserted him.

“No,” I say, “I’ll never be like her. I just don’t see the things she sees and I never will. But I see what you’ve been doing, Mark. Inès was right about that all along and I hope she and Auguste succeed in whatever it is they’re trying to do. I hope that what they want happens. I hope they kick you and Houthhoofd and Dr. Joe and all you people out of this country forever.”

The crowd streams past the two white men glaring angrily and insignificantly at each other.

“That’s not going to happen,” Stipe says. “Auguste picked the wrong side. When he’s caught and they put him up against the wall maybe he’ll realize then he should have listened to me. Maybe then he’ll know I was a better friend to him than Inès could ever be.”

“That’s always been your way, Mark,” I say. “As long as the other person takes your advice there’s no problem. The minute he thinks for himself he’s dead.”

His face is red, the pulse in his forehead throbs. He can contain himself no more.

“It’s always good advice. He should have listened,” he says. “And so should you.”

He slams his fist into my face. Such is Stipe’s strength that even though he had little room to swing, the blow knocks me down. He stares coldly at me on the ground, then turns and fights his way through the crowd, muttering at people, commanding and cursing them. I try to get to my feet but the marchers trample over me, staggering, losing their balance. A nervous murmur goes up from the crowd. I try again to get up but am knocked down once more. A woman falls on top of me, her legs caught up in a tangle with mine. She starts to panic and fights me like an enemy in order to be free. Someone else falls. Another. Another. People are screaming now and flailing madly. The crush is terrifying.

Then, from nowhere, I feel powerful, unwavering arms take hold of mine, an unshakable grip, and I am lifted, pulled clear by an irresistible strength.
“Malámu, nókó
?”

I look into the houseboy’s smoky eyes and for the first time he holds my gaze.

“Are you all right, Mr. James?” Charles asks in French.

“Yes, Charles. Thank you. I am better now.”

The fallen marchers are being helped back on their feet, the panic is over. Charles smiles and guides me by the arm. I find his step and walk on beside him. The crowd lets a sudden deafening roar.

Depanda!

And for a moment—a split second only as the sound breaks over me—I think I glimpse the dreams Inès can see.

Bardonecchia, August 1969

I have friends in Rome. Some people are very kind. They ask why I come here to the cold north, but the isolation suits my purpose and in any case by mid-June the weather has usually picked up. I have been spending the summer here for three years. I arrive in May when the last of the snow has gone from the streets, and the ski runs are clear and the only tourists are weekend visitors from Turin and Milan or day-trippers from France. I usually stay until the end of August. There are few distractions. I can get on with my work. I write for three or four hours in the morning, have a light lunch, then walk up into the mountains. There are a number of routes I take, but my favorite leads west from town on Via Modane. Keeping the cold, slate river to my right, I climb up past the ruin of the old tower. I cut across the snaking road which runs to the French border until I reach the hedge-lined path. It will take me to the derelict stone farmhouse. Beyond the farmhouse are the steeply sloping woods where the deer and foxes are, and beyond the woods is the mountain with its scree and rocks and dirty white blankets of leftover snow.

In the evenings I dine at the Gaucho, the restaurant near the top of Via Medail. The atmosphere is relaxed and friendly, the food excellent. One of the waiters there, Angel, a beautiful and sad-faced Argentine, will, during his less busy moments, come to my table and ask politely if he can sit for a while. He likes to talk to me about South America and Italy and things of the heart. He used to own the restaurant, but something he does not talk about went wrong and he sold it to Gaspare, the blue-eyed Sicilian who came to the mountains eight years ago. Sometimes, if I arrive late, I will eat with Gaspare and Tommi, the other waiter, and Massimo, the pizza cook. Occasionally we are joined by Maurizio and Mattia from the little stationer’s and bookshop on the other side of the railway line, whom I got to know during my first stay when they fixed my typewriter. They are all amused by how much I drink, though I do not think my consumption excessive by any means. I finish the evening with a cold
limoncello
or a
grappa,
sometimes two. Their talk is always lively. It’s an easy fellowship and makes the loneliness—self-inflicted—easier to bear. They still ask, after three years, what I am doing here. “Why Bardonecchia,” they say, “the lost place?” To write, I tell them, in peace and quiet, though of course there is far more to it than that.

This year Alan has come out to join me for a week. His reputation as a publisher has grown in tandem with mine as a writer. It is a moot point who has done more for whom. We do not explore this. We accept that our lives and careers are bound together, and we know instinctively that the best way to avoid a falling-out which would damage us both is not to go into the detail or history of our connection. Like many middle-aged, professional, urban men we have developed a keen amateur interest in the natural world, an attempt at an antidote, I suppose, to our paper lives. And so, kitted out with our boots and field glasses and pocket guides, we spend the afternoons sharing our finds: the snow finches and stonechats, the ringlets and skippers, the scarce coppers and silver-washed fritillaries.

On our last day together, as we are coming down from the mountain, he asks about my next book.

“I thought I might try something historical.”

“Really?” he says, surprised. “That would be something new for you.”

“I was having a clear-out of the flat,” I say, “and I came across the notes for my D.Phil. There was a very interesting infanticide case. Well documented too, for the times. I thought I could make use of the material.”

“Sounds very interesting,” he says.

I can hear the disappointment in his voice.

“You don’t approve?”

“I’m sure it will be a marvelous book.”

“Is there something else you think I should be writing about?”

“No, no,” he says. “Not at all. The last thing I’d do would be to try to tell you what you should be writing, James.”

“You’re protesting rather too much, Alan.”

He points to a little treeless tussock away to our left. A rodent scurries to its bolt-hole. “Is that a marmot?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve never seen one before.”

“They’re quite common here,” I say.

Back at the apartment we take our cold beers to the little balcony and sit in the last of the sunlight.

“Do you want to use the shower first?” Alan asks.

I tell him to go ahead. I help myself to another beer.

Why Bardonecchia? For six years I resisted coming to Italy at all. I trained myself to avoid anything that would remind me of her. We had parted well, at least as well as one can in these affairs; we had made up some lost ground and there was that last sweet night with her. But none of that stopped resentment and acrimony visiting me later. I admit I was for a long time—for too long a time—desperate and unhappy. I lost myself in the murk of my work. I wrote that novel, the one for which the idea came when Inès first left, the one about the idealistic young girl and the lecherous middle-aged man and the confusion of their motives and identities. Bitter, splenetic, comic, and much-read. It was a great success.

I eventually wrote Inès out of my system and I wrote myself out of my gloom. I was after a time able to get on with my life. I had affairs; some were quite important to me. During a motoring holiday in France one year I ended up in Modane. The woman I was with suggested a day’s excursion on the Italian side of the Alps. Of course, why not? I had put her out of my mind, I had my own life, my work, a lover—she figured no more. Italy was safe. It held no memories, evoked nothing from the past.

We crossed the border and came to Bardonecchia. The moment I heard the language, saw the gestures, tasted the sweet strong coffee I began to tremble. I made some excuse and we cut short the outing and returned to France. On the way back to England all I could think about was her.

I was not honest with myself about coming here. I said it was to escape the interruptions of London, to write in peace and quiet. But it didn’t need to be Italy. I could have gone anywhere. The truth is I came for her, again.

I have not seen her since the crowd swept her away from me on the Boulevard Albert I. I have not spoken or communicated with her in any way for almost nine years. In the Gaucho one night—it was during my second summer—I heard her name spoken by a young man at another table. A wave of jealousy crashed over me. I looked at the speaker—young, good-looking, beautifully groomed—and for a mad moment I imagined he was her lover. Angel, who was sitting with me, asked if I was all right. I got him to translate what the young man was saying to his friends—my grasp of Italian remains as poor as ever. Angel listened and told me the talk was about Vietnam, something to do with an article in the paper that morning by Inès Sabiani. Inès Sabiani, I said vaguely and disingenuously, I know that name. Yes, Angel replied, she’s one of Italy’s best-known journalists. She’s been doing a series of special reports from Vietnam and the young people are all talking about them. Angel asked me about Ireland, what I thought of what was going on there. Stupidity, I say. Why can’t Ireland just grow up? He asks me to explain what it’s all about. Bigotry, hooliganism, intransigence, a refusal to look the modern world in the face. The madness seems general and bound to get worse. It has infected my sister. And my mother, who should know better. They are enthusiastic marchers in the cause of civil rights. My mother even walked some of the way with a band of students called People’s Democracy who were marching from Belfast to Derry to highlight some injustice or other. Siobhan wrote and told me the students applauded the old woman when she left them at Glengormley. When I talk to my family, which is not often, I avoid this subject.

Inès has been in Ireland again. I can read enough Italian to see that she has not changed. Her articles in
L’Unità
are as passionate and denunciatory as ever. I have asked my friends in Rome about her. They know friends of her friends. I have found out that she and Auguste are no longer together, but I haven’t been able to discover why she returned from Stanleyville, or even exactly when. There are different accounts. In one she and Auguste left the Congo after the Simba rising was put down and spent a short time together in Gabon before parting for some unspecified reason. In another, she left while Auguste stayed behind to take part in another luckless campaign against Mobutu. In London I ran into Grant outside Hatchards. He was an old Africa hand by then, well regarded as a journalist, and he had just published a book of his own. I bought a copy and he signed it for me and we went for a drink in Piccadilly and talked about old times. He told me that the last positive sighting of Auguste was shortly before an ambush in the Kasai, when the small mixed force of Congolese and Cubans of which he was part was surprised by South African mercenaries. But only a few weeks later another correspondent told me Auguste was living comfortably in Senegal, that he had a job at the university and was married to the sister of a government minister. The same journalist also told me that Stipe had resigned from government service and returned to the Congo to become a manager and kind of general troubleshooter for Bernard Houthhoofd and his business interests there.

Alan comes out of the shower. I finish my beer and go into the bedroom.

Inès never contacted me. I’m sure she must know that I asked about her. Even after nine years, when I’m in London, I haven’t lost the habit of arranging as far as possible my morning around the increasingly unpredictable delivery of the post. For the first year I was certain a letter would come. I always thought that at some lonely point, at some moment unfilled by danger or excitement or others, she would think of me and want to get in touch. She never did.

At the Gaucho, Gaspare, Maurizio and Mattia hail us excitedly. Have we been watching the television? The pictures from Derry and Belfast are incredible. Amazing things are happening. War has broken out. Alan is more interested than I. He hurries me when I’m eating, refuses dessert and coffee. He wants to go back to see the news.

We settle in our chairs in front of the television. Brick-strewn streets, burned-out cars, gutted buildings, milk bottles filled with petrol, youths with scarves around the nose and mouth, rioters, refugees, police, soldiers. He is transfixed.

“My God,” he exclaims. “Had you any idea this was coming?”

I say that I had not, and I say that I think I’ll have an early night.

In the morning I walk Alan to the station. He tells me he has had a wonderful time.

“I don’t suppose you’d want to write something about what’s happening in Ireland?” he says as his train pulls in. “You could set a novel there. Terribly interesting background, don’t you think?”

I think of the television pictures. The place holds no interest for me.

“No,” I reply. “No, I don’t think so. It’s not for me.”

“No,” he says after a while, “I suppose you’re right.”

I help him aboard with his luggage and we shake hands. Alan has his ambitions, he can sometimes be pompous, but he is a good man. I am sad now that he is going.

I do not feel like working when I go back to the apartment. Instead I walk up Via Medail, over the bridge and along Via Modane, following my favorite route. I pass the ruined tower and the old stone farmstead with its garden of nettles and its caved-in roof and mossy gray timbers. I walk through the woods and up the rocky slopes where the scree underfoot has the tinkle of broken glass.

I sit on a boulder overlooking the valley. Inès told me once in a letter—I still have it—that she wanted me to know where to find her, and how. It’s taken me a long time to understand what she meant. I had to look in a place where skeptics like Stipe and doubters like me, like Grant, like Roger, like most of us, do not believe anyone really wishes to be—anyone sane, adult, mature, reasonable. It’s a place we laugh at, we scorn, and we sometimes say does not exist at all. But I caught sight of it at the Sankuru when Patrice stepped onto the
barque
to recross the river, and again on my last day in Léopoldville when the silent crowds followed Pauline down the boulevard and Charles picked me up from the road. I glimpsed it when I was with Inès. She encouraged me, beckoned me forward. She promised that was where I’d find her. But I could never join her there. I was always too much a watcher, too much
l’homme-plume;
I was divided, unbelieving. My preference is the writer’s preference, for the margins, for the avoidance of agglomerations and ranks. I failed to find her and I know this failure will mark the rest of my life.

There is no one on the mountain. I am here, safe in my anomie. There is only the screech of the kites, the barking deer and the quiet work of the meltwater. I think I must leave this place and not come back.