He stops and, like Uncle René did earlier, looks right and left, then across at the door, though it’s closed, and asks:
‘Any further questions?’
No one answers. Uncle René and Uncle Jean-Pierre Kinana are such good speakers, if you’re not careful you’ll fall for the way they express themselves and forget that you don’t understand what they mean with their talk of the Military Committee of the Party, the Constitution, the vacating of power, as if presidents of the republic are allowed to go on vacation, just like us school children. Surely a president can’t take holidays, who’ll do his work while he’s off? So he has to work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
Uncle René nods at Uncle Martin Moubéri.
‘Martin, get the document out of my briefcase …’
Uncle Martin Moubéri presses a button on the briefcase and it opens with a click, which immediately gets our attention. He takes out several sheets of paper and selects one, which he unfolds before us. I can see some typewritten words, but I can’t read them properly, everything’s upside down. The only reason I recognise the name of ex-president Alphonse Massamba-Débat is because Uncle René’s said it a lot this evening.
Uncle Moubéri hands the sheet of paper to Papa Roger, and he reads it in a low voice, as though he’s praying at Saint-Jean-Bosco’s. Uncle Moubéri didn’t hand the sheet of paper to my mother first, because my mother can’t read, though she’s very good at speaking French, and at arithmetic, since she’s a market trader.
Papa Roger suddenly places his finger on the sheet of paper, brings it up close to his nose and cries:
‘NO! NO! NO! It’s not true!’
Uncle René folds his arms and adopts an expression of sorrow.
‘Yes, Roger, I’m afraid it is true.’
‘But maybe this document—’
‘This document is the real thing, Roger; it comes from a properly authorised source …’
‘But what do they have against the captain? What has he done to them?’
‘He was up to his eyes in it.’
‘Was?’
Uncle René doesn’t reply. Uncle Kinana looks over at Uncle Martin Moubéri, then they both look at Uncle René, but all three of them avoid Maman Pauline and it’s Uncle Martin who announces:
‘Captain Luc Kimbouala-Nkaya was shot in cold blood yesterday at his home in the Plateau des Quinze-Ans neighbourhood of Brazzaville, by a group of militiamen, in the presence of his wife, his children and other members of the family—
Maman Pauline screams so loud my ears pop.
Papa Roger thumps the table with his fist and the grapefruit seeds rattle in my glass.
I thump the table too, and the wine glasses almost tip over and add more stains to our tired old tablecloth.
Out of all my uncles, Captain Luc Kimbouala-Nkaya was the one I knew best, apart from Uncle René and Uncle Mompéro, because Maman Pauline and I went to stay with him when Maman Pauline took me to visit Brazzaville for the first time. Oh, I was eight and a half years old and it was also the first time I’d travelled in the Micheline, the train that stops everywhere. We were lucky, there were no fatal derailments around the stations at Dolisie, Dechavanne, Mont Bélo, Hamon or Baratier; we arrived on time, that is to say a day and a half after we left. The station at Brazzaville was full of jostling people buying things that had been brought from Pointe-Noire. They didn’t speak Munukutuba there, they spoke Lingala, and there weren’t just Brazzavilians, there were people from Zaire as well, who’d crossed the river in canoes to get their hands on the produce. I saw trader women greet my mother respectfully. She responded by saying that she hadn’t brought any bananas with her; she was taking me to spend my holidays with her brother Luc Kimbouala-Nkaya. As soon as they heard my uncle’s name, they hunched themselves up small and were even more respectful to my mother. We took a green taxi, on to which had been loaded everything Maman Pauline had brought to give Uncle Kimbouala-Nkaya: two white cockerels, two bunches of bananas, two large portions of peanut butter, ten maniocs she’d spent twenty-four hours in the kitchen preparing with her own hands, a little bag of cola nuts, two litres of corn liquor and two west-African tunics from the Grand Marché.
After a twenty-minute drive we arrived at the captain’s home, which was guarded by two soldiers who treated us so respectfully, you’d have thought we were members of the Popular National Army. Uncle Kimbouala-Nkaya and his wife had killed a pig in our honour. That is the custom of the Babembe. We ate so well at my uncle’s house that I told my mother I’d like to stay in Brazzaville for the rest of my life, in this fine, brick-built house, eating pigs when we had visitors. Also, because he was such a nice man, and didn’t speak much, he let me try on his beret in front of the mirror in the living room, where I would take up a military stance and shout: ‘Atten-shun!’ He was kind, but you had to be careful not to overstep the mark. His children and I knew we weren’t allowed to touch the gun hidden in a locked case. My uncle kept the key in his pocket, or my cousins would start World War Three, some of them hiding behind the house, others in the neighbours’ yards.
I first watched television at Uncle Kimbouala-Nkaya’s, and I’ll never forget it, because the whole household stayed up till dawn to watch the fight beamed in from Zaire. We saw Muhammad Ali fight George Foreman at the 20th of May Stadium, and each time Ali hit Foreman in the face we cheered and chanted, ‘Kill him, Ali! Ali, boma ye! Ali, boma ye!’
Uncle Kimbouala-Nkaya’s house was very fine. Even though it wasn’t finished, it wasn’t like the ‘houses in waiting’, because the captain kept on with the building work – he had enough money to finish everything sooner or later. Everyone in the Plateau des Quinze-Ans neighbourhood envied this house. Before you arrived in the inner courtyard, you had to walk down a long corridor, and along this corridor there were rooms which any member of the family could stay in when they passed through Brazzaville. I remember there were three rooms on one side and three on the other. At the end of the corridor into the little circular inner courtyard was a wonderful light, as if God Himself had lit the house. All around this inner courtyard, Uncle Kimbouala-Nkaya had built four apartments, and the one he lived in with his wife was the one facing you as you came in, the biggest and lightest of all. In this room there was a shower, like in the Victory Palace Hotel, and toilets, again like in the Victory Palace Hotel, so you had to take care because as soon as you’d finished what you had to do in there you had to pull on a chain to flush away whatever had come out of your belly, which I won’t describe here, or people will say oh Michel always exaggerates and that sometimes he says rude things without meaning to …
‘What really happened, René?’ my father asked. Uncle René empties his glass.
‘Like I told you, Roger, it’s a witch-hunt against the southerners in the National Popular Army. And it’s not just the military: Cardinal Biayenda, a Lari, has already been arrested, and he’s a man of God. They’ll do the same to him as they did to the captain, and it’ll be the same for ex-president Alphonse Massamba-Débat. All the names on the list I showed you will go the same way, and their families …’
When Maman Pauline hears these words she quickly wipes her tears with the edge of her wrap.
‘So you’re telling me these wicked soldiers from Brazzaville are going to come to my house and murder me right in front of Michel, like they murdered my brother in front of his wife and children?’
Uncle René shakes his head – for yes or for no? I can’t tell.
‘Pauline, it depends … How will people know we are related to the Kimbouala-Nikayas, since we don’t have the same family name?’
Maman Pauline is almost yelling at my uncles Kinana and Moubéri:
‘Why couldn’t my brother come with you yesterday in your plane? Why did they kill our brother? Tell, me – why?’
After a pause, Uncle René answers:
‘Pauline, I always had the feeling that Captain Kimbouala-Nkaya was aware of the terrible fate awaiting him, but
even though he knew, he wasn’t someone to draw back from death. His whole life was like that, courageously lived, and we have just lost one of the greatest Babembe soldiers ever to serve this country …’
Uncle René tells us that the captain went to the Military School at Saint-Cyr with Louis Sylvain-Goma, who is now a member of the Military Committee of the Party. He says this school in Saint-Cyr is really famous, all soldiers dream of being trained over there in France. The captain had met other Congolese during his training, in particular Comrade President Marien Ngouabi and Joachim Yhombi-Opango, who had also joined the Military Committee of the Party.
When Uncle René explains all this, we begin to realise how small the world is, and that Uncle Kimbouala-Nkaya knew most of the people on the Military Committee of the Party, or maybe it was them that knew him and had reason to fear him. We all thought we knew the captain, but we knew nothing about him. Maman Pauline never told me the whole story about him. And besides, since she didn’t go to school how could she understand that the school at Saint-Cyr isn’t like the Three-Glorious-Days or the Karl Marx Lycée? That’s why I listen with all ears when Uncle René tells us that after his training at Saint-Cyr the captain came back to this country and was given the job of training future soldiers to safeguard our Congolese Socialist Revolution. He did such a good job that he was transferred here to Pointe-Noire and put in charge of the soldiers. But I wasn’t born then, and Maman Pauline was living in Mouyondzi, in the Bouenza region. Uncle René, back from his training in France, and Uncle Albert, who had been taken on by the National Electricity Board, were the only ones who used to go and see the captain in Military Zone 2, where he was in charge. Uncle Kimbouala-Nkaya was such a good worker that he ended up as Chief of Staff. But when the regime of President Alphonse Massamba-Débat fell, they sacked Uncle Kimbouala-Nkaya from his post and replaced him with Louis Sylvain-Goma, the one who’d been a comrade of his at Saint-Cyr, the one who’s now on the Military Committee of the Party.
Again I think about how all these people knew each other. Especially when Uncle René reveals that even after Uncle Kimbouala-Nkaya had been sacked, he was called back to create the National Council of the Revolution, along with other soldiers including Marien Ngouabi, who wasn’t yet our president, and Denis Sassou-Nguesso and Louis Sylvain-Goma, who are both now members of the Military Committee of the Party. Uncle Kimbouala-Nkaya also went on to help create our Congolese Party of Labour, which is like the baby of the National Council of the Revolution. The captain was starting to work his way back up through the ranks when comrade Marien Ngouabi became president of the Republic: by this time he was deputy political commissioner of the Army, alongside Ange Diawara, former Commander of Civil Defence, and ex-president Alphonse Massamba-Débat. My uncle and Ange Diawara were great friends. They got on really well; they both wanted our country to work. That’s why they were outspoken in criticising the tribalism that appeared to surround Comrade President Marien Ngouabi. Because he said too much, criticised too much, the captain was sacked by Comrade President Marien Ngouabi. On 22 February 1972, Uncle René says, the captain’s close friend Ange Diawara launched a coup d’état against Comrade President Marien Ngouabi but it failed. Our uncle was in immediate danger, being too close to Diawara. He was put in prison, condemned to death with other politicians thought to be part of the plot.
Uncle René is sweating, he’s talked too much. He takes out a white tissue and wipes his brow.
‘Captain Kimbouala-Nkaya and the other so-called accomplices in the coup d’état were not killed, they were pardoned by Comrade President Marien Ngouabi … Five years later – that is yesterday, 18 March 1977 – only a few hours after the assassination of Comrade President Marien Ngouabi, a group of military men went to our brother’s house to arrest him, on the pretext that he was either intimately or loosely involved with the plotters. And during the course of his arrest, he was killed in cold blood …’
Uncle René’s stopped talking. He looks at each of us in turn, as though trying to assess how sad, but most of all, how angry we are.
Maman Pauline asks again:
‘Does this mean that the military from Brazzaville are going to come and handcuff us and take us to the Côte Sauvage to be killed at five in the morning?’
‘Pauline, I’ve already told you, we don’t have the same name. You’re Kengué; I’m Mabahou; Mompéro’s Mvoundou! Who’s going to know we are all children of Grégoire Massengo?’
‘But practically speaking, René, what should we do?’ asks Papa Roger as everyone starts to get up from the table, and my uncle turns back his jacket collar.
Uncle René addresses my mother:
‘I have to ask for your total discretion; you never know. That’s why Moubéri and Kinana have left Brazzaville, where they were too exposed. I’m going to keep them at my house for the time being … For now, Pauline, there must be no trading, and no trips to the bush. If you need money I’ll give you some from time to time, but I want you to stop travelling, the trains are full of soldiers, and they check everything …’
Hearing all this, Maman Pauline sobs even louder. She goes off into her bedroom and I know she’s gone to weep real tears now, a flood of hot tears, because this business has touched the thing she loves most: her trade in bananas. And when I think of the flood of hot tears coursing down her cheeks I want to go into my room too, I can feel myself beginning to cry. I’ll weep like Maman Pauline weeps, not just because my mother’s business has been ruined by Comrade President Marien Ngouabi’s death, not just because Uncle Kimbouala-Nkaya has been assassinated in front of his wife and children, but also, and no one here knows this, because I still can’t understand why my dog hasn’t come back home when there’s a curfew on, and he may be in danger somewhere out in this sad city, that lies so silent this Saturday night, 19 March 1977, when each of us stands alone, quite alone.
A car engine starts up outside. Uncle René’s left, taking my two uncles with him …
Sand in my eyes
I can hear my parents’ voices. Normally at this hour, if we hadn’t had a bucket-load of bad news, they’d already be snoring away. But they’re arguing about something that bothers me: Maman Pauline is telling Papa Roger that she’s going to shave her head, so she’ll have a total skinhead like women do when a member of their family’s just died. They keep their head shaved for one month, minimum. As soon as it grows just a few millimetres they shave it again, and when you stroke their heads it’s like cement, all smooth and clean. Every day these women mark a cross on the wall, and once they get to thirty crosses, they know it’s been a month already and soon they’ll stop shaving because the mourning is over and no one will mind now if they’re beautiful, they don’t have to stay ugly till the corpse of their loved one’s rotted away. While they’re in mourning they’re not allowed to dance, wear lipstick, nail polish or make-up. It’s only after a month they can do that, a little bit at a time, because if they make themselves exciting and delicious all of a sudden the dead person will be cross and refuse to rot away in the ground. If they don’t rot it’s dangerous for everyone: he’ll come back and complain every night in the dreams of the people in the family, and he’ll be seen weeping with his back pressed up against a tree that’s lost most of its leaves and has stopped giving fruit.
That’s why Papa Roger doesn’t want my mother to shave her head:
‘Pauline if you shave your head people will think there’s been a death in the family and—’
‘So?’
‘Well, then people round here are going to ask where the corpse is, so they can chip in and support you! Is that what you want?’
‘Roger, I am going to shave my head!’
‘No, you must stay natural, discreet, as though nothing had happened!’
‘What do you mean, as though nothing had happened? My brother’s been murdered by the northerners!’
‘Listen to me, Pauline. I feel your pain, but we need to be careful.’
‘So I’m n
ot meant to weep for my brother, is that it? I’ll never see his body?’
‘That’s not what I’m saying, but I’d be surprised if they allow anyone to organise a funeral in Brazzaville for someone they were so keen to get rid of …’
‘All right then, I’ll make the northerners I know pay for what they did to my brother!’
‘Pauline …’
‘I’ll make them pay, I swear it! Just who do they think they are?’
‘I see. So you’re going to get a gun and go and mow down the members of the Military Committee of the Party, one after the other. Be realistic!’
‘On Monday I’ll go to the market and if the stall holder who’s owed me money for months now doesn’t pay back the whole lot, I’ll teach her not to mess with Pauline Kengué, daughter of Grégoire Massengo and Henriette Nsoko! Then she really will see I’m the younger sister of Captain Kimbouala-Nkaya!’
‘That’s not a good idea. The northerner you’re talking about isn’t just anyone, you know she’s not, she’s a member of the Revolutionary Union of Congolese Women—’
The Death of Comrade President Page 9