JOSEPH WAS TRAVELLING with us to Bunia, and he had taken care of everything. A Jeep Cherokee was waiting for us, and with it, government employees proposing their services to help facilitate our undertakings. Joseph is the last honest Congolese. He believes in principles, justice, democracy, and honesty, but he looked more preoccupied with survival management, and asked me for a few American dollars to distribute to worthy hands. Josué was nervous, Myriam, ravishing. Bunia’s main street unfolded like a movie set. An old Western, with businesses like saloons, storefronts painted with blue stripes at the bottom, and gabled roofs above where snipers could hide like in the pictures and war comics. The Hôtel Bunia sat facing a trading post: “We Buy Diamonds.” Iron bars, muscled, well-armed men. Here was the reign of armed force and everything that could be traded; law is the law of “no law.” There were a lot of Whites in the lobby, Lebanese most of them, sipping tea and telling their amber beads. A few girls were already sitting at the bar, sucking on a Coke and broadcasting their boredom. Josué kept turning around and grabbing my arm. “I know that one, that guy there.” He pushed me toward the wall and pointed his trembling finger at a chubby, stubbly Lebanese man. “After the fighting, he did business with the Rwandans, and Kabanga sold him all his diamonds and all his gold.”
Josué wanted to sleep with us. When we talked, sometimes he took my hand, and that put me ill at ease.
The concept of adjoining rooms doesn’t exist here, but there was a suite with three beds, cracked walls, ill-fitting windows, a dysfunctional shower, pretty little green lizards, a lightbulb that did more blinking than illuminating, photos of gorillas on the walls, and an air conditioner that huffed and puffed like an overworked draft horse. I wasn’t wrong this time. For reasons not explained, the restaurant menu tended toward Asian food, and included Vietnamese cheese. I felt strangely reassured. Some things I got right. The owner sat down at our table with a bottle of Côtes du Rhône that had spent ten years heating up on the shelf. Yes, I’m here to do business, as the saying goes. Sayed was Kurdish. He wore a fighter’s mustache and had eyes like a cat.
Josué whispered that he was going to look for the other witnesses, and would be back with news. He slipped away. I didn’t ask questions about Kabanga; I would wait until he came to me. Sayed talked business. He was looking for an associate, told me about the cut he took on the girls, who happened to be the best ones in town, and the low cost of Vietnamese imports. Josué didn’t return, and I was worried. Myriam kept her veil on, but didn’t say no to the wine. She got up and started dancing to a Céline Dion song playing on the radio: Tu ne m’as pas regardée danser. I felt responsible for Josué, not like a father, but as a legal guardian. Maybe I had failed in both my responsibilities, and worse, I had no idea what to do tomorrow. The feeling was intolerable, as if life was wheeling out of control. Everything in my world was planned and organized, and yes, I admired Myriam who was dancing, but I closed my eyes. I went up to the room with the excuse that I had phone calls to make. A lizard was sleeping on my notebook. I lay down without turning off the light that was flashing as if it had a terminal case of hiccups. Myriam came in, tipsy, and wanted to make love. I pushed her away, and told her coldly that I was worried because Josué hadn’t come back. His absence was a good thing, she pointed out, because we could love each other now. I don’t love her, at least not this evening. Her affection was a distraction. I was thinking about Josué and what I would need to do tomorrow.
At a loss, I fell asleep after three hours with my face buried in my notebook, and the lizard looking at me and wondering what I was doing. Maybe it was the same lizard that had moved in on my worktable. My program for the next day was simple: get up, take a shower, eat, wait for Josué, and an idea that might come or something that might happen. Myriam was snoring softly, another irritation.