MYRIAM LEFT ME. At first I didn’t notice. The more I think, the more I drink. In Africa the idle White man sits down in the sidewalk café to drink, then goes to the restaurant where he keeps on drinking. Not that he actually wants to drink; he wants nothing at all. I must have been sleeping while she packed her bags. Her leaving did not sadden me. Just another failure I should have foreseen. My life with the humans is a string of remarkable mistakes. I don’t know how to love, or I lost the instruction manual. The results are the same. I’m alone and I’ll never have a home of my own. Sayed thinks that my permanent state of intoxication is due to heartbreak. I haven’t heard anything from Josué for a month and Joseph disappeared a few days ago. Madeleine is doing it with me for free, and she whispers sweet nothings in my ear in an ersatz of passion. The Lebanese guy finally understood I didn’t want to invest in his dirty deals.
I’ve moved from Primus to whisky. Primus is like lead. It makes the body heavy, whereas whisky numbs me. I’m giving Madeleine a little money now, since she comes upstairs more often and she has three kids. She didn’t complain when I gave her twenty dollars the first time, and neither did she thank me. She just smiled. She’s nice, and I’m touched sometimes by her hopes both naïve and sincere in equal parts, but her eyes never really focus, and she laughs at everything and cries for no reason. I’m jealous. I have neither laughter nor tears. I can be sad and smile, but that’s as far as I go. Sayed believes in destiny, and since I’m a good man, a good woman will surely appear, carried here by an unfurling oceanic wave that will deposit love upon our shore. I went back to Kabanga’s Sunday service. His preaching has become less evangelical and more nationalist. His lieutenants have dropped the white robes and gone back to military camouflage.
I told Sayed about my idea for a French bistro. “The problem is the ingredients.” Of course he was right. How would I find quality kidneys and Dijon mustard, hanger steaks and shallots, Toulouse sausages and duck breast? Those things were just memories of my father and a time when I knew what having a home meant.
Kabanga showed up at Sayed’s restaurant and ordered fried rice and a Mutzig beer. His arrogant self-assurance got on my nerves, but I said nothing, and quieted the words in my head.
(I’ve been studying you for three years, Mr. Kabanga. I know you better than your wife does, the one who tried to kill you. I know how the rooms are arranged in your house, I know what you have for breakfast, and all your eating habits. I know the names of your tailor and your barber. I read your thesis on Hema alienation. I know about your agreements with the mining and oil companies, your deals with the Lebanese and the Rwandans. I could tell you how many ounces of gold and how many carats you’ve exported. The figures are in my room. I know that you stuck a lit cigar in a child’s anus, and that the child is named Josué. I know everything about you, and I am here so you’ll be judged for your crimes.)
It all stayed inside my head. I watched him eat and felt no pride. He offered to introduce me to some Rwandan friends to talk business. I said I’d think about it. I needed to talk to Marcel first.
“Who’s Marcel?”
“My advisor, Mr. Kabanga.”
I remembered, as I watched him go, that I never associated the title “Mister” with Thomas Kabanga.
A message from Josué, carried by the same little red-haired boy who this time asked for rice and of course a beer that he drank from the bottle like a real man. Mimicking a man, but with a child’s laughter when I made fun of the way he imitated adults. He set his revolver on the table. “I’m not a child anymore. You need to answer, Mister.”
“Everybody is here or almost. There’s thirty of us or more. We have guns. We’ve been training. We shoot good, we’re ready to move. We decided democratically to judge Kabanga and sentence him to death. You have to show us how to do a trial. We want to do it right. We want to judge before we kill him, judge the way you did in The Hague. You told me you wanted justice, you’ll get it, and so will we.”
“I’ll come when you call.” The kid ran off bearing my message. He forgot his revolver. He came back for it with a worried look. I held out the object he would probably use to perforate the lungs of some stumbling drunk who wouldn’t give him a thousand francs or a woman coming back from the market after selling her manioc paste and a handful of tomatoes. A tomato salad. I’d go for a tomato salad and another whisky. Madeleine came and sat next to me. “You’re not right, you’re not right, how come not?” Sayed and Madeleine told me I was drinking too much and if I looked close enough, I’d see happiness right around the corner.
There was that young woman on the pebbly beach. Maybe happiness was there, an aperitif away. Too afraid to offer a Ricard to a pretty stranger who smiled at me. I really am useless. This was the hour when the sun slipped behind the first hill, and the noise became lighter somehow, the vehicles slower and the horns softer. Then someone screamed. I heard shouts, people rushed into the restaurant. I saw how the walls were more cracked than ever and everything smelled bad, sweat and oil and soybeans. The world stank. Sayed grabbed me by the arm and pulled me outside. Joseph’s naked body lay there. A body missing its nose, its lips, and its penis. On his chest, his killers had painted a cross with his blood.
The lizard I have taken to calling Marcel watched me write an e-mail to a friend from the Court. “Kabanga tortured and killed Joseph. Do something, for Christ’s sake.”
The answer came back. “We can’t do anything, Claude. Kabanga is the past for us. Good luck.”