The Death of Comrade President
Page 18
113 Avenue Linguissi-Tchicaya
I run like a madman, right through the Grand Marché neighbourhood.
I’ve never run this fast. When I overtake people I look back without stopping, and they’re already way behind me. That’s when I realise I’m running really really fast.
Sometimes I hear people burst out laughing behind me. Maybe they’re laughing at my outfit, or at the way I’m running, a bit lopsided, a bit stooped, like a hunchback …
I turn down a little side street with no name and find myself in the yard of a family who are outside eating. It’s a gathering: there are at least forty people here, staring at me with huge eyes before they begin to shout at me, and throw spoons and forks, which I duck to avoid as best I can.
‘Idiot! Thief!’
They think I’m one of the thieves from the Grand Marché who dash across their plot almost every day.
Sweat is dripping down into my eyes. I wipe my brow with my right wrist, I don’t stop. In fact, I keep going – faster.
I’m in Avenue Paillet now, and several police cars pass me going the other way, towards the market. The sirens and flashing lights force cars to move aside and let them pass at breakneck speed.
But they’ll be too late. They don’t know Maman Pauline has already been taken away, not by a police car but by a truck full of soldiers.
As the cars go past I bounce around on the spot, like I’m jogging.
The last one has just disappeared, and I decide to turn off right, towards the Avenue Moé-Kaat-Matou.
I grit my teeth, my back still hunched. I accelerate.
This avenue’s quieter than the Avenue Paillet with banks and expensive restaurants that only whites and black capitalists go to. I’m not going to slow down just because it’s quiet here! No way!
I get to the Boulevard Charles-de-Gaulle. I need to find the Avenue Agostino-Neto, Papa Roger’s explained it to me, and I think it’s about three hundred metres further down, on my right.
I notice a military truck coming towards me. I slow down, act like I’m going somewhere and I’m looking for the street name. The truck draws level with me. I’m sure it’s going to stop, they’ll ask me what I’m doing in this neighbourhood and why I’m running like I’ve stolen something. I hear the noise of guns – Click! Click! Click! I can see them pointing at me now. I close my eyes. But suddenly I hear laughter: my armband! The soldiers have worked out that I’m a true fan of Comrade Marien Ngouabi. They’re saluting me now, then the truck accelerates off in the direction of the Grand Marché.
I’m panting. I’m trembling. If they knew who I was and what has just happened at the Grand Marché they’d pick me up at once …
I set off running again.
Yes, running.
I must get there in time. I follow the direction of the military truck they’ve loaded Maman Pauline into like a sack of potatoes. But the truck disappeared ages ago, between the moment I went to phone Papa Roger from the Post Office and the moment he says:
‘Go the way the truck went; I’m sure it’ll be going to 113 Avenue Linguissi-Tchicaya. Wait for me there …’
I know the soldiers in the truck will be roughing up my mother. What’s at 113 Avenue Linguissi-Tchicaya? I’ve never heard of this address before. Papa Roger said:
‘It’s in Mpita, near the Côte Sauvage and the whites’ cemetery.’
I’ve never been there, but I have heard strange tales about what goes on near the Côte Sauvage: sorcerers making their gris-gris on the beach at four in the morning, bodies floating on the water, albinos sacrificed and found cut into pieces …
The truck Maman Pauline’s been taken away in, heading for Mpita, was like the ones you see in our neighbourhood: black, with a bright red hood, like our revolutionary flag. The windows are smoked glass; I couldn’t make out the face of the driver or the men sitting beside him. In the back, soldiers were shouting for joy. I recalled how they had dragged Maman Pauline along the ground, ripping her clothes, how she was already unconscious, unaware they were throwing her inside a truck, full of armed men who’d probably been smoking cannabis all night to keep awake during the curfew.
The soldiers won’t go easy on her. My mother is beautiful, she’s young. Men turn round in the street to look at her. Papa Roger gets jealous if someone says his wife is pretty.
Yes, my mother is very beautiful and young, and that makes me really afraid.
But I won’t think about it.
I need to wipe it from my mind, just listen to what Papa Roger said, even if I’ve lost sight of the military truck.
‘Go the way the truck went; I’m sure it’ll be going to 113, Avenue Linguissi-Tchicaya. Wait for me there …’
As I run I start to smell the Atlantic Ocean, and it’s like being really small again. Maman Pauline’s holding my hand, we’re walking down the Avenue of Independence to go and see Uncle Albert Moukila. She tells me to behave nicely, to answer all my uncle’s questions. I promise I’ll be the smartest kid in the whole of Pointe-Noire, in the Congo, even, and maybe in the whole of Africa. She laughs and says it’s fine if I’m just the smartest kid in the neighbourhood.
‘Before you fight the big battles, son, you have to win the little ones …’
She tells me about her village, Louboulou, which was ruled by Grandpa Massengo. She’s the last but one child of Grandma Henriette Nsoko, just before Uncle Mompéro, the carpenter. But Grandpa Massengo had so many children and wives that we’re practically related to the whole village, and if you aren’t careful you can find yourself marrying a relative, and your descendants will be deformed. She grew up there, till she got together with a policeman from Mouyondzi, who ran off the day I came into the world. I have never seen this policeman.
Maman Pauline packed her bags for Pointe-Noire. Uncle René met her. He helped her to set up her peanut business in the Grand Marché. Here she met a man, a small, kind man, who was already married: Papa Roger …
She tells me something she’s often said before: if she hadn’t met Papa Roger, she and I would have been well and truly screwed. So Papa Roger is a spirit sent from heaven: he already had a wife, lots of children, but he accepted Maman Pauline and the boy who wasn’t his.
My mother isn’t sad now, not like she was before she found me some brothers and sisters. That’s life, she says. Some people can have lots, some people are just put on this earth to have one, even with all the fetishes in the world, they’ll never have another.
We’re still walking, and she keeps on and on:
‘Always do your school work.’
‘Always be in the top five in the class.’
‘Hey, Maman, I want to be top!’
She smiles and says again:
‘I just told you, son: before you take on the big battles, win the little ones …’
Then she wipes the dust off my plastic sandals.
‘Your uncle Albert doesn’t like dirt, and he sees everything, like through a magnifying glass …’
She stops and buys dumplings and Beninese soup. It’s for my cousins: Magicien and his twin sister Bienvenue, and for their big brothers, Abeille, Djoudjou and Firmin. They’ll all be happy to see Maman Pauline. Because my mother spoils them. She always gives them a bit of money when she leaves. And they all chorus:
‘Thank you, Papa Pauline …’
They call her ‘Papa Pauline’ because she is their aunt, so their father’s sister, so she’s like their ‘papa’ too, even if she’s a woman. They can’t say ‘Maman Pauline’ like me because she’s not their mother. ‘Papa Pauline’ is better, and it’s right. ‘Tata Pauline’ or ‘Auntie Pauline’ sounds too distant, they don’t like that. They say Maman Pauline is their lady papa.
I wander through Mpita with the image of my mother in my head.
I’m on Avenue Moe-Telli now; I cross it in under a minute, my heart’s got used to going flat out.
I can’t feel my breathing.
I’m like a machine with brand-new batteries.
I walk up it, and when I get to number 113 I raise my head and read on a big black sign:
POINTE-NOIRE JAIL
White cranes never die
Pointe-Noire jail is three kilometres from the Grand Marché, next to the Compagnie Territorial Police Force in Mpita, where I’ve never set foot till now.
When Papa Roger and Uncle René meet me outside the entrance, I try to hide my eyes, which are swollen with crying that started when the soldiers took Maman Pauline away in handcuffs, with the whole market watching, like it was an entertainment.
I’d managed to run off and find my way to the Post Office and make a reverse-charge call to Papa Roger, who phoned Uncle René at once and told me to start running, not to look back, and to wait for him at 113 Avenue Linguissi-Tchicaya …
Uncle René and Papa Roger walk into the jail and go up to an old policeman who’s on reception, behind some bars. It’s very busy, but when Uncle René comes through, people stand aside, because they sense at once that he’s important, just from the way he walks, in his well-pressed trousers.
You have to raise your voice really loud to talk to the old policeman on reception; he answers through a microphone, and tells you to go and take a ticket at the back of the room, leave your identity card and wait till someone calls you. He doesn’t even look up when he tells Uncle René to go and take a ticket. My uncle gives three little taps on the bars, the old policeman looks at him, he notices the Congolese Party of Labour membership card my uncle’s just taken out. The old policeman stands to attention; you’d think Uncle René was a colonel or a general in the National Popular Army.
‘At your service, comrade party member!’
‘You’re a Bembé, aren’t you?’
The old policeman likes this.
‘How did you know that, comrade party member?’
‘Your accent, it’s the same as where I come from: Bouenza …’
My uncle speaks to him directly in Bembé; he doesn’t want the people waiting for their turn to hear what’s being said. I don’t speak Bembé very fluently, but I understand what’s being said.
Uncle René asks him to take us to his boss’s office. The old policeman suddenly changes his manner.
‘Oh no, comrade party member, the boss won’t be able to see you today, there’s been a serious problem over at the Grand Marché, he’s waiting for someone—’
‘I know, he’s waiting for me, René Mabahou, we spoke on the phone a couple of hours ago …’
The old policeman goes over to talk to his colleague, who is sitting behind him, at the back, reading through a mountain of papers, his face completely hidden by smoke from the cigarette stuck in his mouth. The two policemen have a talk, look across at us, then talk some more, and his colleague comes to take the place of the old man, who leaves the cage, comes round to us, and tells us to follow him.
We go down a long corridor, the old policeman first, followed by Uncle René, Papa Roger, and last of all me. Our footsteps echo as we walk. The corridors here are like in a hospital, the walls are white, it smells of medicine, or maybe I’m imagining it.
At the end of the corridor, you turn right, the old policeman opens a door and closes it again behind us. We go up some more stairs, till we reach the third floor and the old policeman’s panting as he says:
‘Here we are …’
We’re standing at a door that has four locks. The old policeman presses a red button three times. A noise comes from the first lock, then the second, then the third, then the fourth, and when the door opens we see the head of another old policeman, though not so old as the one in charge of us. The old one talks quietly to the not-quite-so-old one, the not-quite-so-old one peers closely at our faces, pulls a disgusted face, and tells us to go in, closing the door quickly behind us, while the old policeman goes back to his cage again.
The air-conditioning’s too high; we’ll die of cold if we have to wait long. On the wall to my left there’s a portrait of Comrade President Marien Ngouabi level with me. The same one’s in Ma Moubobi’s shop, only this one’s ten times bigger, if you look at it too hard you’ll start to think Comrade President Marien Ngouabi isn’t dead, he’s just pretended to disappear, to make everyone love him more, now and for ever.
Uncle René paces around, looking at his watch.
The door next to him has just opened and a nasty-looking lady says:
‘You may come in …’
My father and my uncle hurry inside and when I get to the door the woman shakes her head.
‘You’ll have to wait here …’
Papa Roger turns around, he’s angry with the woman.
‘We’re going to talk about his mother in there, why does he have to wait here?’
‘Because he’s a minor, and—’
‘Nadège, let the boy come in, he was there when it happened …’
The voice comes from behind the nasty lady, belonging to a small, bald gentleman.
So in I go too …
This room is almost like a large house, and it’s a shame to waste so much space on an office for a small, bald gentleman. From the two large windows in the office you can see what’s happening down in the yard and in the road, where every car is being searched by policemen.
It’s hard to believe, when you’re in an office like this, that in the buildings next door they’re holding thieves, bandits, delinquents and the most dangerous criminals in the whole of Pointe-Noire.
In the middle of the office there’s a round table made of wood, with fifteen chairs – I’ve just counted.
We sit down, with Uncle René right opposite the small, bald gentleman, my father to the right of my uncle, and me to his left.
The small, bald gentleman starts by addressing Papa Roger and me:
‘For those who don’t know me, I am Donatien Mabiala, Deputy Director of the Penal Service …’
He tightens and adjusts his tie.
‘Comrade party member René Mabahou called me and requested a meeting with me regarding a serious attempted murder which took place late this morning, at the Grand Marché. Exceptionally, I agreed to the meeting, because comrade party member René Mabahou told me a little about what was happening regarding his sister, who is now being held in the building opposite …’
He pauses for a long breath and adjusts his tie again.
‘I know comrade party member René Mabahou, we used to run into each other at meetings of the regional section of the Congolese Party of Labour. I have no reason not to take his word, but in this case it’s not a question of words but of a coldly calculated act, perpetrated with the intent of taking the life of someone who is currently hospitalised at Adolphe-Cissé, and seriously wounded. Obviously there are likely to be extremely serious consequences; it’s best I warn you now. But I also promised comrade party member René Mabahou, in the light of all he has done for the Congolese Socialist Revolution, that I would do anything I could to help him, though naturally only within the limits of my means, which are modest …’
Uncle René nods, to say thank you, and the deputy director continues:
‘You will be aware, as I am, that this incident has occurred at the wrong moment, and appears to have – how shall I put it? – political implications. Madame Pauline Kengué, by her own admission, is apparently the sister of Captain Kimbouala-Nkaya. My dear René, while I have every respect for your status as a member of the Congolese Party of Labour, that just won’t wash unless you are prepared to formally confirm what you said to me on the telephone in the presence of Jean-Pierre Oko-Bankala, the examining magistrate, who has been asked by our provisional government, which is obviously already aware of the tragedy and is following the case very closely, on account of its sensitive nature, to proceed promptly and rapidly to apply the appropriate sanctions …’
Suddenly w
e hear a door opening behind us. Papa Roger, Uncle René and I all turn round: an extremely tall, thin man has entered the office. He doesn’t acknowledge anyone, just sits down next to the director who says:
‘Allow me to present the examining magistrate, Jean-Pierre Oko-Bankala …’
The man crosses his legs and opens a large blue book. He has a red Biro in his left hand and a black Biro in his right hand.
‘I would not normally hold a little meeting like this, but Deputy Director Donatien Mabiala is a friend, and he has assured me that this business is simply a misunderstanding, but I’d like to be sure that’s true, I’d like to hear it directly from the family, before deciding what course of action I should take …’
When he talks, his voice is very deep, like someone who smokes all day.
He crosses his legs, this time the other way, and looks Uncle René straight in the eye.
‘Monsieur Mabahou, either I can put a red line through this affair, here and now, or with a stroke of this black pen I can put your sister behind bars for many, many years …’
My uncle replies:
‘Sir, I think we are conscious of the difficulty of your task in these dark days of our national history, and we are here to try to find a solution …’
‘Splendid! I will ask you to be sincere with me, since I have the feeling this is no simple matter of common law, more a question of National Security …’
He plays with the black pen and asks:
‘Monsieur René Mabahou, answer me clearly, look me straight in the eye, and as your soul and your conscience are your witness: is Captain Kimbouala-Nkaya your brother, and therefore also the brother of Pauline Kengué, as the latter declared at the moment of her arrest in the Grand Marché, and continues to affirm even now, in her cell?’
Uncle René avoids looking at Judge Oko-Bankala and replies:
‘No, Captain Kimbouala-Nkaya is not the brother of my sister Pauline Kengué, and he’s not my brother either …’
Judge Oko-Bankala plays with the red Biro.
‘So you’ve never set eyes on him?’