Jacques had gone beyond his own understanding of himself, and he was frightened, so when Abe Farber invited him and Sarah to join his table at the Israeli Ball, Jacques accepted without a moment’s hesitation. In the past couple of years, he had fallen into the careless habit of humoring friends by buying expensive tickets to their balls and galas, then going, or not going, as the mood struck him at the time. Now he was determined to bring back the gaiety in their life together; he would not drag Sarah down into the mourning that enshrouded him. Grieving, mourning, that was what it felt like, gnawing away at him through sleepless nights. Why should his ghosts dim Sarah’s gentle, blue-eyed joy in life?
They were delayed by some flap at Sarah’s office the day of the ball—an American poet on a lecture tour working his way down the coast from Lomé had overslept and missed his flight and could not get to Kinshasa for another five days.
She came out onto the terrace where he was having a whisky, listening to the sounds of the dark river. She stood a moment, waiting for his attention to turn to her, then twisted and twirled her skirts flirtatiously and took a long sip from his drink.
“Ready?” she said.
“Ready for what?”
“The ball.”
“If that’s your preference,” he said and laughed, taking her arm. Her skirts tangled voluptuously around his legs as he walked her to the car, and he felt weak with desire for her.
“Where’s Louis?” she said.
“Off tonight. He’d be up all night. The Israelis give a real bash.”
The ball was held, not at the Israeli Club, but in the large ballroom of the InterContinental. At the wide double doors of the ballroom a dozen or so burly Israeli security guards, squeezed into dinner jackets, paced about, studying the crowds coming in and out, as if searching for a temperamental date who had wandered off to the ladies’ room and never returned.
They were six at table: Abe Farber and his wife Lorraine, who had the rosy, round-faced look of a woman who has just delivered a baby, and a willowy, dark officer in army uniform whom Farber introduced as Colonel Lou Pinsky and his date, a stunning mulatto woman named Francine, who worked for Air Zaïre.
Sarah recognized Colonel Pinsky as the Mossad officer who had stood beside her on the platform at Camp Tshatshi during Kowalski’s anti-terrorist exercises. She glanced at him and looked quickly away, ignoring his insistent, slightly leering look of complicity when he squeezed her hand.
“Jacques Delpech?” Pinsky said. “I’ve heard of you.”
“Every beer drinker in Kinshasa has heard of Jacques,” Farber said. “Jacques and I used to play tennis together. Did Jacques tell you that, Sarah? Won the Cercle Royale de Belgique prize for doubles in ’68, didn’t we, Jacques? We were just kids. Just innocent kids, eh, Jacques? And my old man beat the hell out of me that night because we went out and got drunk at that Italian girl’s house because her parents were in Rome. What was the name of that girl, hmm? Remember that, Jacques?”
Abe Farber had pudgy chipmunk cheeks and talked with his head thrown far back as if he had some sort of peculiar eye problem that made it hard for him to focus on people’s faces at any other angle.
“Luciana. Her name was Luciana,” Jacques said.
“You sure it wasn’t Sophia?”
Loud, recharged, the band came back from a break, and the spacious dance floor filled up with sweating men, huffing and gyrating, and women, stiff and cautious, determined to keep their expensive coiffures intact for a few more hours. The ball committee had flown down a popular group of Israeli musicians called The Gaza Strippers, who performed in nightclubs in Paris. The songs, a jumble of Hebrew, Yiddish, and French, involved strenuous rhythms and a good deal of shouting from the musicians.
“What’s your riot story?” Pinsky said, bending low over the table to make himself heard.
“What?” Jacques said.
“Did you get caught up in the riots?”
“No.” That was the great thing about being an expatriate, Jacques thought, the skies could be falling, people could be dropping like flies, but what the hell, there was always a good story, an anecdote, something entertaining, amusing. A laugh. Crazy old Africa.
“What do you think? Is the Man losing his grip?” Pinsky said.
“Looks like it.” Jacques was determined not to let the Israeli pick him over. He sat watching Sarah, moving as quickly as a drop of mercury, dancing with Abe Farber. Pinsky’s Zaïrian girlfriend had left the table for her second or third trip to the ladies’ room.
“You don’t really believe that, Jacques,” Lorraine Farber said. “It will take more than a three-day riot in the rainy season to shake loose Mobutu’s hold on this country. Outside of Kinshasa he’s as popular as ever. Abe says.”
“What about Tshisekedi?” Pinsky said. “Think he has a chance, Jacques?”
“They’ll all have a chance if Mobutu goes.”
“That’s it. It’ll be a mob scene. There’s no organized opposition,” Lorraine said. “And Tshisekedi’s no saint. He can’t wait to get his hands on the goodies. That’s what Abe says.”
“Whatever happened to the one mixed up in that coup monté et manqué back in 1982, the one who set up an office in Brussels, you know the one.”
Pinsky had sounded another false note. Jacques lit a cigarette and looked at him appraisingly. Pinsky was not really searching for the right name to put on the coup monté et manqué. And it was not an accident that Pinsky was seated at this particular table.
“Oh, you’re talking about Boketsu Bika,” Lorraine said. “He’s the one you mean.” Colonel Pinsky looked annoyed.
“Lorraine, you’re a nursing mother. No more champagne. Let’s dance,” Jacques said.
“I thought you’d never ask,” Lorraine said.
At two in the morning, when the crowd had dwindled down to a hundred or so dancers, the horah began. On the second turn, as the women sang and shouted encouragement in a hoarse roar, the men took off their jackets and ties. On the fourth turn, they removed their shirts which the women grabbed and whipped round and round over their heads as they danced. The men moved to the center and crouched down to kick and turn, their naked torsos slippery with sweat.
Jacques was not surprised to see that Colonel Pinsky was one of several men in the circle with a Browning 9-mm automatic shoved into his belt band at the small of his back.