By the end of the week Jacques had stopped expecting Boketsu to call. Even supposing that he had gone directly from Njili to the president’s palace in Gbadolite, which was likely, he would have called by now. Perhaps Bika had decided not to forgive him.
In Jacques’ two-month absence from Africa a serious problem had cropped up in every brewery. The new machinery for the plant in Kinshasa had arrived in Matadi on schedule, or almost, but two trucks had already broken axles on the potholed roadway that was gradually going back to bush between the port and the capital. His plant foreman in Lubumbashi, a young man not yet out of his twenties, had been carried off by cerebral malaria in less than twenty-four hours. A vicious fight had broken out in the plant over the foreman’s job, leaving one man with a broken leg and the bottling hangar a mess of broken glass and burned plastic. Jacques had little time to think of Boketsu and broken friendships. But he did. He could not help himself. He could not think of anyone, except his father, who had been more important in his life than Bika.
The head office of Delpech breweries was a two-story nondescript cream stucco building on the outskirts of the city near Ndolo airport, which until the late fifties had been the capital’s main airport. Since then, Ndolo was used mainly by the dozens of bush pilots, darting in and out in their mud splattered, frail aircraft, who flew passengers, mail, and cargo for businesses and missionaries. For two days Jacques’ plane had been waiting there, ready to take him to Lubumbashi. It was a long flight out, over eight hours, and there was enough work there to keep him in Lubumbashi for at least three days.
In the years since Albert Delpech, Jacques’ father, had dredged up all his savings and thrown them into the suitcase of a departing third-generation Flemish colon who had founded the most modern brewery in Zaïre, the business had prospered even beyond old Albert’s expectations. In the wake of their long colonization, the Belgians had bequeathed to their former subjects their love of beer. Delpech beer became the champagne of the cité. Only once did the fortune of Delpech breweries falter. In the late seventies, rumor spread in Shaba and Equateur provinces that Delpech beer caused impotence. Sales dropped to near zero over the next few weeks. Albert Delpech, a slight man with the temperament of an eccentric schoolmaster, watched with disbelief as his thriving business circled the drain. Eccentric, perhaps, but shrewd, Albert Delpech sat up late one night and worked out his strategy: he changed the name of the beer to Simba, Swahili for lion, bottled the beer in a new brown bottle, and paid scores of men to sit around in cafés and beer gardens boasting of their sexual prowess after drinking Simba. When six men in Shaba claimed to have fathered a male child after drinking only one bottle of Simba, “la brune” was launched on its prosperous journey.
Jacques stood at his desk, stuffing into a briefcase the papers his secretary handed to him. In a low singsong, the secretary identified each file as she passed it along to him. It took them a moment to realize that they were not alone, that Josh Hamilton had come into the room and closed the door behind him. He stood watching them, his eyes wide.
The secretary clicked shut the briefcase, turned the combination lock, and set the briefcase upright on the desk. Ducking her dark head discreetly, she slipped past Josh Hamilton.
“Josh? Aren’t you supposed to be working? Want to come along with me to Lubumbashi? Good beer out there.”
Josh lowered his head like a rebellious child and shook it vigorously back and forth. “No,” he said finally. He walked stiffly over to a chair in front of Jacques’ desk and sat down.
“Jacques. Listen, do something for me, will you?” His voice was tight and hoarse.
“Sure. If it can wait until I get back.” He pushed back his sleeve and glanced at his watch.
“No. It can’t wait, Jacques. Really can’t wait.” Josh Hamilton sat up very straight and reached out and put his hands on Jacques’ desk. He was a tall, thin Englishman, good-looking in a frail, feminine way, so blond and fair that he was obliged to wear a hat, even in the shade. Even so his narrow forehead was pocked with scars where small cancers had been removed. He was boyish and fun-loving and there was something weak and inconclusive about the slope of his chin. For over ten years he had managed the largest diamond-buying office in Kinshasa. Josh had all the right contacts and lived in grand style in a hilltop house overlooking the city with his wife Fiona, two children, three parrots, a green monkey, and two enormous Dalmatians, which no one bothered to house train. At their cocktail parties a guest always ended up with a wet leg, with no apologies from the host or hostess. Still, invitations to Josh and Fiona Hamilton’s parties were much sought after. They were British, they were dashing, they had money and a certain rather seedy style. They did exactly as they pleased and didn’t give a damn what anyone thought. Jacques found them the most frivolous people he had ever met, but, then again, they did not seem to have anything in their lives to be serious about.
Jacques stared at the small pocket of saliva in the corner of Josh’s lips.
“What is it?”
“Just now . . . coming through Binza village . . . on my way back downtown after lunch. I . . . I had . . . It was an accident. I . . . It was crowded, you know how it is in that patch with all the dinky shops and stalls and damned Africans all over the road, coming at you from every direction, not looking where they’re going, they never do, and I . . . I was going along and out of nowhere, I mean, Jesus H. Christ, I couldn’t possibly have seen this kid, out of nowhere comes this kid . . .”
Someone cranked up a heavy truck in the courtyard below, and it backfired with a deafening blast. Josh jumped and stared at the window.
“So what happened?” Jacques could feel his hands going cold.
“I . . . I . . . I . . . hit this kid. She ran out from . . .”
“A little girl?” Jacques said, his voice barely a whisper. He tried to raise his hand to loosen his tie, but it lay there next to his briefcase, useless, trembling.
Josh said nothing.
“Was she hurt?” He waited. Josh stared out the window. “You don’t want to answer? Think you don’t have to answer for anything, is that it, Josh? Is that it?”
Jacques wiped his forehead and lowered his voice. “Answer me, Josh. Was she badly hurt?”
Josh gave a slight nod.
“Dead?”
The word echoed around the still room. Josh Hamilton still gazed out the window.
“Must be . . . I must have . . .”
“Jesus Christ! You don’t know for sure?”
“What the fuck, Jacques! No need to shout! It wasn’t my fault. She came out of nowhere . . . Boom! Right into the car!” He smashed his fist against the palm of his hand. “It wasn’t my fault.”
Jacques swung his briefcase off the desk.
“Nothing’s ever your fault, Josh. Think about it.” He headed for the door.
“Jacques, for God’s sake! I need your help. You’re the only one who can help.”
“Why me? Go to your embassy, to your ambassador what’s-his-name. They will know what to do. I can’t do anything.”
“Yes, you can, Jacques.” Josh Hamilton stood up and rubbed his palms against his thighs. “It’s simple. I’m not asking much. And I’ll pay. Whatever. That’s no problem.”
“Pay me for what?” Jacques watched him with disgust. The small pouch beneath Josh’s sloping chin was shaking.
“Look, you’ve got garages here. All this equipment. Trucks. Cars. You’ve got it all here. Everything I need. I want you to have your men paint my car.”
“Paint your car?”
“Right. New color. I can’t . . . I have to have a new color.”
He followed Jacques down the steps. “I drive through that fucking village three, four, hell, I don’t know how many times a day. How many ways are there to get downtown? They’ll recognize me or Fiona. They’ll remember the car. They’ll drag me out of the car and stone me to death. You know how they . . .”
“Buy a new car.”
“I can’t . . . I mean, I don’t want to. Jesus, it took me nine fucking months to get that Jag down here . . .”
“You can get a new Mercedes within a week. Stop whining.”
“Bloody hell, Jacques, everybody in Kinshasa drives a fucking Mercedes. I want my Jag.”
In the sunlight of the courtyard, as if mesmerized, Jacques walked over to the metallic blue Jaguar XJ6 parked in the shade of the building.
“Fiona’s car,” Josh said. “She wanted my car and driver to go to lunch at the InterContinental.”
Jacques stared at the car, clean and gleaming and innocently blue. He walked around the car to the passenger side. Then he saw it. The sideview mirror jammed back against the door, the streaks of mahogany red starting at the mirror and disappearing over the top of the car. Jacques stepped closer. There was something caught in the mirror hinge . . . something small and mostly pink, splattered with red. He reached out his hand to touch the familiar thing. He pulled at the still slippery thing, twisting it from the grip of the hinge . . . a little girl’s barrette, a cheap, plastic barrette with a dark clot of hair stuck in the wires. The barrettes on her wet pigtails had made a loud click-click against the concrete when he turned her over, finally, onto her back, his hands numb. Célestin, the second gardener, little more than a child himself, kneeling on the manicured grass, wailing, his hands clasped as in prayer, “Oh, s’il te plaît, patron! Oh, s’il te plaît, patron!” Over and over, beside the glimmering swimming pool. And from her mouth, a kind of yellow string tinged with green, like the yolk that seeps from a cracked egg being boiled too quickly.
He could feel his knees weaken and the heavy briefcase dragging him to the ground.
“Jacques?” Josh said. “Jacques?” Reluctantly, he took a few steps forward. “Jacques? I say, you look as if you’re about to do a toss up.”
Jacques turned away and seemed to be looking at the front bumper.
“It’s only blood,” Josh said. “No dents. I checked myself.”
“Brown,” Jacques said after a moment, his back still turned. “Brown is the only color we can do.”
“Brown will do nicely,” Josh said.