The Catastrophist: A Novel (4 page)

“I can see one man down,” he says. “Two.”

The shooting continues intermittently for four or five minutes more. I look around at the faces of the guests. It is strange but there is no trace of emotion. People are being shot and there is no visible reaction. But then . . . why should there be? This is a garden party, after all. There is the tennis and the croquet lawn and the children, there are the water-skiers and the kingfisher and all the innocence and play this implies. Shots have been fired, but injury and death in this arrangement still seem incongruous, mistimed. No one—least of all I—can be sure of our connection with the fuzzy events across the wide river.

The murmuring onlookers start to drift off, back to the swimming pool, back to the gazebo. Madeleine rejoins her tennis partner. A houseboy comes up and offers to replenish our glasses. I search the man’s eyes for something, anything. A response of some sort. Resentment, anger, hate. But there’s nothing. He fills my glass and smoothly turns to another guest.

Stipe hands me the binoculars again and this time directs my line of sight.

“You see that big floating island of green? The one over by the little jetty?”

I focus on a tangle of vegetation. Amid the trailing roots and the broad, fleshy leaves are mud-flecked flowers of pale blue.

“Water hyacinth,” Stipe explains. “It’s an exotic. Some fool brought it over from South America because he thought it would look pretty in his garden pond. The damn thing spread like a plague.”

“It does look pretty.”

“It’s a parasite,” de Scheut says vaguely. “It eats the oxygen and kills the river.”

I see something more than flowers. I am not aware of making any reaction, but Stipe picks up on some minuscule betrayal in my attitude, or in my breath, in my smell.

“You see now?” Stipe says.

I see.

It is a human body, half submerged, half supported in the chaotic lattice of the drifting island. I move my field of vision up to the jetty where a group of black soldiers, directed by a white officer, are heaving a second dead man into the water. More corpses—four, five, six—are being brought to them for disposal.

The shooting has stopped. Now there is only the noise of Madeleine’s tennis game and the gentle roar of the cataracts, many miles away.

“I must take my children home,” de Scheut says.

He puts a hand on my shoulder.

“Du calme, du calme,”
he says.
“Adieu.”

He clasps his children to his sides. They trudge up the garden.

I go to Inès. I can see the fury in her, she is absorbed in rage and grief. I saw some things in the army, but have never been witness to anything like what has happened here today. I long ago gave up the search for anger in myself. As I look at her, my thoughts splinter and in their disorder my mind turns to my mother. I am thinking about love—fierce love—and loyalty, and the intent of these things. My mother loved, passionately and unselfishly. She loved the man she once idolized, loved him even after he deserted her and her children. Inès would deny it, but she no longer loves me, not the way she once did. I know it. I can see it. In spite of my welcome, in spite of last night. I am for now replaced by other things. Dramatic, involving—they will take her. But I will not give up hope. The politics of idealism go hand in hand with disillusion, and when disillusion sets in I will still be here for her.

Out on the river the speedboats have started up again. The water- skiers detour towards the jetty. Like drivers at the scene of an accident, they slow down as they pass the water hyacinth and its bleeding litter. Then they accelerate and head out to uncontaminated waters to continue their sport.

In the tropics one must before everything keep calm.
Of course. Behind, from the tennis court, someone shouts “Well played, Madeleine.”

Du calme, du calme.
Of course. Always.

She divides me. Her words divide me. Her language refuses the disciplines of the eye, of history, of the world as it is. Her imagination turns on symbol and myth. She lives in the rush of all-embracing sympathies, and sometimes, listening to her song, my lulled emotions slip their noose and follow in the blind career of her allegiance; but then a word, a single word, a note so obviously wrong, interrupts and I am filled with resentment of her and her histrionic lexicon. She said to me once—it was during my first visit to Bologna, when she was showing me the plaques which commemorate the city’s fallen partisans—“I often think I am so fortunate to have had the
experience
of the Party, to know there is something to support you always, that you aren’t alone in the world. I can’t imagine to be without this.” We’d had a nice day: we had got up late, had coffee and
bigné
and
canolo
for breakfast, drunk wine at lunch and strolled through the arcades in the afternoon. She had laced our time with excited talk, but I looked at her when she said this and brutal thoughts hit me like stones:
Who do you think I am? What have I ever said or written to give you the impression I have anything to do with what you’re talking about?

I should have told her then, “Inès, I know myself too well. This isn’t going to work.” But I didn’t, I couldn’t; I loved the spirit behind the hopeful, spinning monologues. I am in love with it still.

She has left the apartment to file her story from the little office near the Marché Indigène which she shares with the ABC correspondent. Why did I react so strongly? So savagely?

She had sat at the little table before the window overlooking the street and stabbed at the keys of the typewriter. A wind came up and the late afternoon light gave way to a brooding, luminous gloom. A sudden gray rain swept the street, there was a stunning clap of thunder and the downpour began. She passed me the pages as they came off the roller, translating the words I did not know.

“Well,” she said, her head bent over the typescript, “what do you think?”

“I think you should take an hour to cool down.”

Her head jerked up and her eyes flashed fiercely: “What?”

I shrugged; she’d heard. She was on her feet in an instant.

“What are you saying?”

I had no time for this. She clutched at my arm.

“What are you saying?” she demanded again.

I shook her off.

“All right,” I said with heat, “feel angry about what you saw. But you are a journalist. At least keep a sense of proportion, at least try to keep some distance.”

“And how would you write about this?”

“You don’t have to shout to be heard.”

“People have been murdered.”

“People have been shot,” I corrected her, “and you weren’t the only one who saw that.”

“Have I said that I was? Where have I said anything like that?”

Her jaw was set, her face flushed.

“Where?”

It was in every word. The rage of her writing made her the exclusive witness, banned, disqualified the rest of us. This empathetic one-upmanship always infuriates me.

“To write about injustice without anger,” she shouted at my stiff back, “is another injustice.”

“I feel confident I could make a strong case for exactly the opposite proposition,” I replied with the disdainful calm I know incenses her.

She snatched up her pages and left.

Why did I react so acerbically? The answer is not hard to find. I am being squeezed out of her orbit. I have come a thousand miles to pin her down, but I see there is no chance of that in these crowded, coursing times. I am bitter. There is no place for me.

But it is also to do with words. The implications go deep: it is about the way we see the world. I know there are inner things, below, beneath, from the dominion of hesitation, and that these, in some degree, count. But not for much, not for as much as Inès thinks. It may not all take place on the outside but there is still much on the surface. What is real to me is what can be seen; I understand above all else the evidence of the eyes. She is moved by things that cannot be described, that are only half glimpsed, and when she writes—is this allowable in a journalist?—it is not primarily to inform her audience, but to touch them. I object to this; I find it embarrassing, unprofessional, and I object to the implication that those of us who cannot or will not produce in our writing so ostentatious a display of outrage are in some way at fault, that we are at worst collaborators with the enemy, at best heartless, selfish, trivial. Words, real words with real meanings, matter to me. I have never taken strong beliefs seriously; in my first career I was a historian.

She is gone and I feel suddenly very alone. I drink what whiskey I can find. I want to shake her and tell her to hurry up and grow up and get disillusioned like the rest of us; and I want her not to change, ever, for I need her to be like this: I have been stimulated, I have found things I otherwise would not have found. I live in the tension of our disparities. But where is this going, this strange affair?

The storm has passed. I pour the last of the whiskey, swallow it in one gulp and go outside; I have to walk off my anger. I stride away, careless of direction. The light is fading fast. I walk and walk until I find myself in one of the residential districts. The streets are deserted; most of the houses are locked up. I walk on, further and further from the city. The houses become fewer, the tarmac gives out, the night comes in. I visit bitter retaliations on Inès, I do not keep track of my route. After a while I am completely lost.

Eventually, I flag down a car and ask for directions from a man who is at first wary, then, once I explain the situation, concerned about my safety. After what happened today, he says, who knows what the blacks will do. There are rumors of more disturbances and some property somewhere is already burning. I can taste the smoke and also something sharp—tear gas perhaps. He offers me a lift but I thank him and decline. He is hesitant about leaving me, but I insist I will be all right. I need more time to myself.

I follow his directions but get nowhere. The night is sticky, the shirt is plastered to my back, my hair is flat with sweat. Soon I wish I had accepted the lift.

In the distance I see lights, and, as I approach, I hear the high, heedless voices of people at a party. The poison of the things I said to Inès still courses in my veins and the sound of friends and lovers enjoying themselves only adds to my rancor. When I am close to the bungalow I stop and shut my eyes. I really do not want to face anyone now, not even to ask for directions. What am I doing here? What am I doing in this country? Why did I come here? The heat has drained me, the drink has made me self-pitying.

I have to take stock, Inès. I have to think and I have to be honest. I have to be honest for once in my life.

I open my eyes to see two young women come out on to the bungalow’s brightly lit verandah. They wear strapless evening dresses and talk with an animation that is intimate and knowing and innocent. In the darkness I have not been noticed. The smell of smoke is stronger now and there are embers in the air. A gust of wind comes up and the glowing cinders glide like ragged fireflies. The women, with skin exposed, shriek in playful alarm. The younger of the two, a tall girl with short dark hair, takes courage and blows at the invaders, as at bubbles, to the applause of her merry companion. The commotion stirs their friends, and the men come out, gallant and laughing, to perform mock heroics. I watch this cheerful little war, fascinated by the high spirits I cannot be part of. I look. I look too long. What forms in front of my eyes is the disdain and envy in my own face—the compound that is the habitual onlooker’s most unappealing property. How many times have I caught myself looking at Inès like this, wondering at the secrets of her optimism and her easy friendships, then waspishly questioning their authenticity and congratulating myself on my own distant self-sufficiency?

I have to be honest. Self-sufficiency has its limits. I have spent too much time in the cheerless solitude of my own ego. In Inès’s absence over the last few weeks it has been more than I could stand.

There is a woman in London. Her name is Margaret. I am not proud of this. Some days before I left for Léopoldville I rang her. I had not seen her for several weeks and had not slept with her since Inès. We met that evening in the pub near my flat in Camden. I started, as I am prone to, tentatively, even shyly, not speaking much and tending to avoid her gaze. After a few failed attempts to draw me out, Margaret asked if at that moment I was where I wanted to be. I made some vague sound of affirmation. She asked about Inès and how she was getting on in the Congo. I said she was doing fine and left it at that. Margaret regarded me for a moment, weighing up my silences, speculating on the likely course of the night should she decide to spend it with me.

“James,” she said simply, “whenever we meet it’s as though you have to spend the first hour deciding whether you like me or not.”

It might have been more hurtful to Margaret to get up and walk out. But that is not why I stayed. I desperately needed company and I wanted to forget Inès, to forget her hold on me, to announce my independence to myself. All very banal. I was aware of it at the time, but this did not stop me.

So I told her that I was, really, happy to see her again. She was not convinced. I was acutely aware of my lack of credibility. I was banking on time and the drink to establish my case for me. Sure enough, glass by glass, I began to relax. I encouraged her to talk, which Margaret always does well. I let her fast, salty chatter mask my evasions. I started to remember why I liked her, why I enjoyed her hearty presence. She always made me laugh. She told me stories from the set of her new film, and of how when she had gone for the insurance medical the doctor had asked what height she was. Five-eight, she had replied, only to be told she was in fact five-five.

“Are you sure?” she had demanded, lofty and offended. “Is that measuring thing right?”

She shrieked with laughter.

“I’ve lied so often about it, James, I couldn’t remember what height I really was.”

Margaret was permanently amused—by life, by others, by me, by her own ripe physicality. Her fine hair fell loosely around her shoulders. She employed the little tricks of seduction with gusto—an occasional flutter of the eyelids, leaning forward to show her cleavage, a casual readjustment of skirt which could not but call attention to her legs. She enjoyed to the full the happy accident of her sensuality.

At closing time she asked again if I was sure. By then the alcohol had done its work for me. Fortunately, in the company of women, I am a happy and flirtatious drunk. Margaret always used to say I should drink more often.

Afterwards, did I feel guilty? I imagined an argument with Inès in which I defended myself from her jealous indictment of my infidelity with
You left me, you went away and left me! What did you expect?
Then I thought of something worse. That her feelings had changed to such an extent that she might not care now at all.

I walk on. It gets lonelier with every step. The pulsing throb of the frogs and cicadas is my only reassurance and whenever it stops I stand still, cautioned and vigilant like some nervous forest animal. I cannot see to put one foot in front of the other. I stumble and fall on the track. An insect I cannot see crawls over my hand and I brush it quickly away.

A car approaches, sweeping me with the headlight beam. I get to my feet and wave it down. I suppose I must look quite frantic and I am surprised when it slows to a halt. The driver reaches across and opens the passenger door. I climb in, muttering a thank-you in French.

“It’s dangerous to be on foot,” the driver says with a mixture of sternness and solicitude.

“Yes, I know,” I reply contritely. “I got lost.”

“Tonight the blacks are going crazy.”