FROM SCHIPHOL, I sent an e-mail to Martin, a kind of draft and not very clear, but I believe the meaning was there. It’s not easy for a timid heterosexual to write a love letter to a homosexual. I didn’t use the word “love.” I beat around that bush that is “I love you,” used stylistic effects, allusions, evocations, but never the whole sentence. I’ll tell him when I come back. I’m not a man yet. I am escaping, still fleeing life. I’ll learn. It’s not too late.
Gate C 47 at Roissy is a suburb of Kinshasa. Gangs of kids streaked away from their shrieking parents, dignitaries polished their cufflinks, their carry-on bags were larger than my suitcase I’d surrendered to checked baggage, and impatient men harassed the women working the gate. In the fast-food restaurants, families set up camp. Myriam smiled, the undisciplined children amused her, she chatted with the mothers who offered her the cookies they had set aside for their kids. She felt, she told me on the plane, that concupiscent look that said the White man’s Black wife must be good in bed, better than the average Black woman. She also felt the contempt for the woman who has betrayed her people to live with a rich man.
We flew over Paris, headed for Toulouse, turned toward Cairo, and now we are crossing the desert. The man sitting next to me is vaguely a minister, according to his initial introduction, but then come the nuances. He says secretary, assistant, bureau chief. His position varies according to the services he thinks he might be able to render. He greets a man walking past, calling him “esteemed colleague.” The children have fallen asleep. This airplane is a village; almost everyone knows each other. At a thousand euros a ticket, you had to belong to the elite to get a seat, and here is the elite at its best, a little on the corrupt side, wheeling and dealing, incestuous, the Congolese elite at its most typical, straight out of the Mobutu mould. My bureau chief offers to look after my affairs, facilitate my undertakings, to introduce me to everyone, “As a matter of friendship, dear colleague,” since I have come to contribute to the development of the Congo. They bled them for all they were worth, as long as they could, those who came to contribute to the development of the country, knowing they too were predators, wild beasts devouring the mines and forests, leaving a few golden turds on the ground riddled with destruction. My new friend gave me three business cards, and he knows the manager of the Memling Hotel where we would be staying. I know that Évangéliste, for that was his name, will show up tomorrow at noon by the pool and exclaim, “Ah, how fortunate it is to run into you, Claude!” He was wearing a Cardin suit from the 1990s and a Rolex on his wrist, and he stank of fragrance for men.
Myriam has a tragic face when she sleeps, long, fine, and delicate like ancient porcelain. A face frozen in time, smooth, as if her features, so pure and free of tension, were those of a dead woman.
What is Kabanga doing tonight in Bunia? Having a quiet supper in the a restaurant, bestowing smiles and handshakes. He is reclaiming his spot. The man is a criminal, but he isn’t crazy like some African warlords I had investigated. He isn’t a blood-thirsty killing machine. He earned a diploma in psychology from the Kisangani university. That doesn’t qualify him to treat serious afflictions, but he had learned enough from his old dog-eared textbooks, outdated for psychologists everywhere else in the world, to sound convincing when he talked about the torments of the soul. I knew the man well. Proud but patient, violent but methodical. Kabanga wanted to be emperor when he went back to Bunia. Like Napoleon, he was exiled, then returned. But Kabanga is no Bonaparte. He is a man of meager personal ambitions, which makes him a prudent specimen. He wouldn’t want to frighten the Kinshasa government with a triumphant return. He will lie low, like a patient crocodile with one eye open, motionless in the muddy water, waiting. Then he will swim toward the bank and—clack!—devour the nearest child playing by the water, and then its mother and the rest of its family if necessary.
The passenger next to me asked me what I thought of the situation in the Congo. I told him I didn’t really know his country. You know that Kabanga has returned home? I don’t know any Kabanga. He launched into the story of the poor patriot perverted by foreign powers, a good man who made mistakes, but everyone makes mistakes in this country. What are mistakes anyway? Fighting, warfare, and crimes, but who hasn’t committed crimes in this country? “He’s a good man. He has style. He has assurance and he talks well. You can see he’s an intellectual. And he’s intelligent. My cousin lives in Bunia and he told me about the way he came back. He didn’t allow the members of his party to come and celebrate at the airport for fear of opening old wounds. He just wants to be an ordinary citizen again, ready to cooperate in the development of his country and the stability of the Ituri region.”
What about the three thousand child soldiers? The bureau chief, or whoever he was, told me those were White man’s stories, you never know the age of a child, and anyway, children like to fight and play with guns. I think of my child soldiers, Josué, Béatrice, and the other witnesses, Marie and Aristide who lost the protection of the Court and are wandering the hills or the suburbs of Bunia, hiding, because rumour says that Kabanga has decided to kill his accusers. He’s just waiting for the right time. I know him, my Kabanga, he’s a patient man. I am too. I need to learn the African way of doing things. The African way, five hundred doses of tritherapy.
I looked at my neighbour’s wrist.
“How much is that Rolex?”
“Three thousand euros. It’s one of the least expensive and I got it through a friend.”
“The civil service must pay well in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”
“No, not at all. I have some money from the family.”
“What did the family do under Mobutu?”
That’s not the African way. I need to learn to ask questions without asking them, because my neighbour suddenly goes to sleep. This world is not for me. The family must have been in diamonds, gold mines, in the obligatory taxes levied on unfortunate foreigners, they must have been attentive to orders, delivering up a cousin when the authorities demanded it. I don’t know, I’m imagining. To wear a Rolex and travel first class, and dress like a scarecrow from the 1990s, you had to be a bandit or the son of one. But in this airplane, a bandit isn’t a criminal. He’s a minister or a public servant.
The bureau chief woke me up. “Kinshasa.” I asked him if he could find me a Rolex for the same price. He smiled. Myriam was sleeping with her fists clenched, like a child. We were landing; I felt the deceleration and the pressure blocking my ears. He wanted to meet to see whether he could help me with my plans and enterprises. This is the first time in my life I have had no project. I have only a destination: a strange city and a companion who is still clenching her fists. How could I explain to this man who is used to skimming off a piece of everything that passes, and starting quick friendships with anyone who might be useful to him, and dropping those who turn out not to be, that this isn’t “how men live”? The bureau chief will drop by the Memling to talk about the Rolex and my future plans.
Joseph, whom I had already met in The Hague, was waiting for us on the tarmac. He took our passports and led us into the VIP salon, then disappeared to take care of the formalities. In Kinshasa, half an Airbus 340 ended up in the VIP salon while several dozen Josephs took care of the formalities. The bureau chiefs paraded their power, since all of them had been enemies at one time, ministers wandered past, glancing around to see whether a journalist wasn’t waiting for them, ambassadors from lesser countries cooled their heels, girls were on the lookout for customers fresh off the boat. Myriam found a spot between two leather couches. She dug herself in like a fearful animal in a makeshift lair. She seemed so gentle and fragile in this salon full of ogres and predators. The bureau chief smiled and nodded in my direction. Joseph returned with our passports in his hand like a pair of trophies.
Joseph is not the brightest light going. He has a diploma from Kisangani university like Kabanga, but he specialized in communications. For the past three years he has worked for the clerk of the Court in Kinshasa, and his job is to explain the ICC’s legal decisions to the local media. Colleagues have told me that during press conferences, he stumbles and grasps for words, gets tripped up in the “directives” handed down by The Hague, and inevitably ends by declaring that justice will be just because it is international. The journalists in the capital considered him a mercenary, a fake. Yet there was no one more honest than Joseph.
He piloted his Cherokee through the night, along the road to the centre of town. They call it the Highway. Vehicles move like ships through the reddish mist, hundreds of ghosts, zombies, shades, and spectres wander in this fog of sand and dust, illuminated by headlights and cooking fires where women sat, selling a few onions or bananas and or some manioc. Men weighted down with burdens slipped among the vehicles. This isn’t a highway, it is an anthill, and no horn can frighten the ants. They challenge the four-wheeled monsters, blocking their way and their shiny metal, casting contemptuous looks at them when they finally decide to let the highway do its job. The disorder delighted me, the warm breezes excited me, and I loved the way the dust danced and scrolled like red smoke. Everything was completely foreign, it corresponded to nothing I knew, and I wondered why I had waited so long—why I had waited so long for life. Because here it is, Life, this teeming unpredictability, non-stop improvisation, a carnival ride gone mad, a provincial circus trotting out three Spanish hens, two camels, and a gnu. Life in its smallest detail, at the level everyone lives. Waking up on an uncertain morning, with the sound of children, a glance outside to see if the sky is grey or in flames. I have never lived that way.
Before we got to the hotel, Joseph confided his apprehensions. Ever since the rumours brought the news that Kabanga would be freed, his men have been preparing his revenge. Houses have been burned. Weapons hidden under the woodpile or in false ceilings have reappeared on the streets. The old uniforms too, ones from Rwanda. “Back to the future.” Two witnesses were decapitated and their bodies dumped in front of the Lebanese restaurant, on avenue de la Libération. He feared others would meet the same fate. It is impossible to remain anonymous when rumours make the law.
The lobby of the Memling: lacquered wood, valets in livery, VIP reception, credit cards, Dior suits, and Rolex watches contrast with life. Dinner by the pool, Chinese men trading entire mines for a promise of credit, American dollars for everything, even a bottle of Perrier. Here is the official Africa, that of ministers and top civil servants. I pictured Charles Taylor on the stand in The Hague, the prosperous businessman, his look of contempt and apparent disinterest in his own trial. These people live outside of their world. Maybe Kabanga, the psychologist, could explain how a man becomes a predator, how he comes to devour his brothers and sisters, a lying sorcerer, a professional imposter, a wheeler-dealer and murderer and torturer, while displaying a smile for foreigners from the World Bank or the representative of Chinese investors.
Myriam veiled herself in luminous yellow. She ordered a Coke. Her clothing made her all the more desirable. The veil underlined her delicate features that hinted at the promise of her concealed body. A man looked at her eyes and imagined her legs, her sculpted nose and breasts. The veil conceals and invites desire. More than Western clothes that advertise the merchandise, the veil provokes violent desire. The veil demands to be torn away despite the prudery and dissimulation. Is that why Islam has so often insisted on veiling women—to provoke concupiscence and mad desire?
I didn’t tear away her veil, but I did pull it off abruptly. I forgot my old hesitations and pushed Myriam onto the bed without a word. No kisses, no caresses, just the ragged breathing of sexual desire, the rough, staccato movements of possession, the heavy grunting of masculine satisfaction. She moaned in protest, then told me drily, “That’s the way they used to do it to me.” Another part of life I haven’t understood. I won’t tell her it’s the veil’s fault. I won’t tell her that I’m not a rapist. I was carried away by desire. It’s become all too clear to me that I don’t know how to love.