by Matthew Head
I hadn’t, but he went on talking as if I had said yes, I knew all about it.
“The other two natives got killed when they captured them,” he said, “but this last one was brought back. Of course the administrator here sentenced him to death. It was the first capital crime in Bafwali—the only one. And then nobody wanted to hang him. It had to be a white man but none of them wanted to do it, so I did it.”
I believed him now. He tossed the rope across the room onto the box it had come out of. All of a sudden he seemed to lose interest, and he looked tired out. He was haggard at best, but I thought again that it might have been a good face once. He tilted the bottle up and showed the scar again. After a couple of breaths he said, “They paid me one franc to do it. They had to pay something to make it legal. Hangman’s fee, one franc. I had the franc made into a watch fob, but I’ve lost it somewhere.”
He started to pour me some more whisky but I hadn’t touched what was already in the glass.
“You don’t like whisky as much as most Englishmen,” he said.
“I’m not English,” I said, “I’m American.”
“American! What are you doing in the Congo?” There wasn’t any secret about it, and I began telling him. He stared at me as I talked, and you’d have thought I was changing form before his eyes. First he looked startled and suspicious, and then it was crazy, but he began to look scared. There was nothing much to what I was telling him, but it certainly meant something more to him than it did to me as I told it, and it made me into somebody he wasn’t happy to be around.
I have already said this wasn’t a war story and it still isn’t. But the Congo was producing a lot of war materials and it could produce a lot more, which was why I was there. Washington had sent a mission of six men to the Congo to serve as liaison with the producers and to see what could be done about increasing production and buying all of it. It was really a simple job because the Congo government backed us up in everything we wanted to do. The other five men were working on romantic-sounding things like rubber and diamonds and so on, but I’m a botanist and my particular job was to go to the various stations that were working on agricultural commodities and see how they stacked up. I was classified 2-A and got leave of absence from the University for the job. Maybe you’ve never heard of pyrethrum or if you have you think it’s a garden flower. All the same it has served you well many a time—it’s a flower used in making insecticides. Japan grew a lot of it, so after Pearl Harbor we had to find new sources. The Congo had always grown some, and my job was to see what could be done about their growing more and improving the breeds to yield a higher toxic content. Then there were the various fibers that we lost when we lost the Philippines, and the quinine we lost with the East Indies and so on. I was making a tour of the stations to see if I could help out on the plant breeding and to check up on what laboratory equipment they absolutely had to have that we absolutely had to supply. There’s nothing obscure or ominous in all that, but I’ve told you how my hangman reacted to it. “I’m going to Mont Hawa from here,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, “the government silk-culture station. You’ll meet Mr. Rollet there.”
“That’s the one,” I said. Sometimes I thought every white man in the Congo knew every other white man there. “Then Costermansville, to the Office du Pyrèthre, and the experimental station at Ineac-Mulungu.”
“Mr. Sladden and Mr. Stoffels,” he said. “Don’t you go to anything but government stations?”
“I go to private ones too,” I said. “I’m going to inspect the Congo-Ruzi on this trip.”
“I see,” he said, and he paused for a long time. Then he said, “I suppose you know who you’re going to see there.”
“Of course I know,” I said. “He has a fancy name—André de l’Andréneau.”
It was only a name to me, that I had remembered particularly because it was so fancy, but it went into him like a bullet. He froze there staring at me for a moment, then he broke his eyes away and stood up. “You may wait here for the ivory carvers if you wish, monsieur,” he said formally, “but now I must tell you good-by.” He didn’t even offer his hand, but turned and walked out of the room. I heard the front door close after him.
I certainly wasn’t going to run after him to ask what it was all about, and I didn’t intend to stay there and wait for the ivory carvers, either. One thing I did know, though. The beers had been doing what beers do, and there was a door in the room which by rights should lead to a bedroom, with the closest imitation to a bathroom that the place afforded. I walked across and opened the bedroom door.
I wished later that I had looked longer, to get a clearer picture of the woman. She gasped and swung quickly around, facing me with her back to the window. With her back to the light that way, all I got was the impression that she was small and young, with heavy dark hair. In the shadow of her face I could see her eyes and mouth—black and red. There was a low bed between us, with crumpled sheets on it. When I tried to remember her that night, lying awake up at the rest house, I found that I could put almost any face on her I wanted to, and it would fit. As for what kind of person she was, my only mental tie-up with her was the rumpled bed, a pretty strong tie-up at that, but one that under the circumstances didn’t mean anything. One thing I was sure of: I had discovered something the hangman of Bafwali didn’t know, which was that there was a woman in his house that afternoon. She stood perfectly still for the few seconds that I looked at her, then I closed the door and walked back through the house and outside. When I got to the end of the rutty lane there was nothing to see down the road but a little dust. It could have come from a bicycle.
I walked back up the road, and with every step I felt that circumcision knife pressing into my side where I had stuck it under my belt. I kept telling myself it was mine, but by the time I got to the Airways house I knew I couldn’t keep it. The fellow had been drunk when he gave it to me, and we hadn’t parted friends in any case. I knew it would always be on my conscience if I kept it. I didn’t dare pull it out to look at it because I knew that then I’d keep it for sure.
The woman back of the counter was all smiles but I didn’t feel like talking pretty.
“The man you sent after me,” I said, “will he be back here?”
“Oh, yes, monsieur,” she said. She pointed to the table where he had been sitting. “That’s his bottle of whisky.”
“Then give this to him when he comes in,” I said, and pulled the knife and sheath out from my belt and laid them on the counter in front of her.
I tried not to look, but I couldn’t help taking a last glance. It was a wonderful piece and I could still have it. “Just give it to him,” I repeated, and turned and started out as she picked up the knife. I heard her cry out as she looked at it.
I turned around and said, “What’s the matter?”
“Oh, monsieur,” she said reproachfully. “So ugly!”
She didn’t know any English, so I used it to say, “It isn’t half as obscene as that goddam plaster bulldog. Adieu, Madame.” I never saw her again. But the knife, the hangman, and the woman in his room—that’s a different story, or, rather, the rest of this one.
CHAPTER TWO
André de l’Andréneau
NOTHING HAVING TO DO with this story happened for the next couple of weeks. I went to the government stations and made my inspections and they went off well. Everybody treated me like a prince and I made a lot of recommendations for equipment because the stations were really doing a wonderful job. At the end of the two weeks I was tired out and ready for the few days’ rest I had counted on at the Congo-Ruzi, because my actual work there wouldn’t take any time at all. There really never had been much point in my going there; it was a tiny station and I didn’t see what they could be doing that the government stations weren’t already doing better, but I had had all these letters from this André de l’Andréneau asking me to look over the place, so it had been included as a tag-ender on this leg of my tour. Als
o, everybody said it was in one of the most beautiful parts of the Congo. I could already see that was so, if it was anything like Costermansville where I wound up the last of the government stations. Costermansville is on Lake Kivu, five thousand feet up, and the mountains go up another five or seven thousand from the edge of the water—great disorganized-looking mountains thrown around without any reference to reasonable geology.
It turned out that I had company, not entirely welcome, for my trip from Costermansville to the Congo-Ruzi, a ten-hour drive that I had looked forward to doing alone. The Congo agricultural commission had turned over a little pickup truck to me for my inspections, and they insisted that I go on and use it for the trip to the Congo-Ruzi too. They didn’t have to insist very hard because there wasn’t any other way to get there except to ride the poste, the mail truck that made the trip once a week on a strictly God-willing basis.
The Kivu country was wonderful, all volcanoes and strawberries. I had never seen a volcano nor had my fill of strawberries and I got fixed up on both deals. It’s fabulously green country, everything from blackish blue-greens on up through the sickish yellow-green of the banana patches. The natives grow these patches everywhere for making banana beer, which is what they live for. It’s a thick brownish slush with bubbly scum all over the top, smelling like a cross between chocolate and paint remover, and liberally spiced with the carcasses of drowned flies.
I drove along through this country wondering about André de l’Andréneau. When my hangman walked out on me in Bafwali I had my first suspicion that there was something wrong with the Congo-Ruzi and especially with de l’Andréneau. Nobody else ever walked out on me, but every time I mentioned de l’Andréneau’s name, people would start hiding behind their faces and talking about something else. I reread the letters I had had from him but they were only the usual European business letter, full of a lot of highfalutin stock phrases.
It took about half an hour to get into country that looked as if no white man had ever been there before except for the road, which turned into a miracle of hairpin turns. I had to cross a barrier of mountains and when I went down the other side it got hotter and hotter, and big open patches, brown and dry, began to appear in the green bush. Sometimes they would be burned black from grass fires. The dust got bad and there was no air stirring, so that sometimes I would go down around a hairpin turn and come back into my own dust settling from above.
So I hated to pass this White Father on his motorcycle. He was kicking up a pretty good dust-cloud himself, skittering over the loose surface of the road at a good clip. He was a particularly fine specimen complete with sun helmet, and I could see the points of his long beard flying back over his shoulders. When I honked at him he drew over to one side of the road and stopped to let me by, straddling his motorcycle. I couldn’t bring myself to pass him up so I drew alongside and asked if he wanted a ride. It took him about ten seconds to tuck his white robe up around his waist and sling the motorcycle into the back of the truck before I could get out and help him. He was a sturdy guy, like all these Fathers out there.
I kept telling myself that I was in a very interesting situation, riding through the wilds of Africa with a picturesque man of God, but it didn’t help much because Father Justinien turned out to be just a plain bore. He was smiling and affable all the time, but that was part of the trouble. I don’t know just how old he was. There was plenty of salt and pepper in his beard but not many lines in his face.
He couldn’t get over the idea that any American could come to Africa for anything except to take movies of it or write a book about it, and he kept saying to me, “Ça mérite quelques lignes, ça mérite quelques lignes,” all the time, he was so afraid I wouldn’t notice every mountain. He was right about the landscape meriting a few lines. It was wonderful, but every time we turned a corner, which was every few minutes, I had to burst into new cries of admiration and astonishment, or Father Justinien would start goading me into it.
There was nothing on the road between Costermansville and the Congo-Ruzi except two little gas and emergency stations. Father Justinien was going all the way to the last of these, called Ruzi-Busendi, so this ride was a break for him. I had just finished one of my required appreciation routines when I saw another big curve coming up, so I said to Father Justinien desperately, just to have something to say, “Do you know a man named André de l’Andréneau?” He did. He gave a start and the smile came off his face and he forgot about the scenery.
“I’m on my way to see de l’Andréneau,” he said.
“You mean you’re going on to the Congo-Ruzi station?” I asked. It wasn’t so surprising after all; there were only two or three places he could be going on this road. “So am I. You won’t have to get off at Ruzi-Busendi, you’ve got a ride all the way.”
He said, “Thank God,” not rhetorically, but as if I had really been sent along in the Lord’s work. “We may be in time yet.”
“What do you mean, in time?” I asked.
“But you know about de l’Andréneau?”
“I guess I don’t,” I said.
“He’s dying,” said Father Justinien. “He may already be dead. I had a letter on the poste from Madame Boutegourde asking me to come. I think it must be her idea—she’s a Godly woman, very Godly, and de l’Andréneau is far from a Godly man, very far. Although he may have felt the need of the church when he felt the end coming. Some of them do. You must know Madame Boutegourde?”
“I don’t know any of them,” I said, and told him why I was going to the Congo-Ruzi. “This really knocks things into a cocked hat as far as my inspection goes,” I said.
Father Justinien looked uneasy at that, so I said, “There’s no point in my going now but I’ll take you there anyway. You’d be two days on your motorcycle.”
According to Father Justinien, André de l’Andréneau needed extreme unction just about as badly as anybody could need it. I began forcing the truck, and Father Justinien began talking less. I discovered that if I took the turns fast enough he lost interest in the scenery and concentrated everything on hanging onto his seat. I got a new picture of myself, rather pleasant, as a heavenly messenger in a race against the forces of evil, a sort of angel of deliverance in a pick-up truck. From then on things were quieter and we made good time.
At Ruzi-Busendi they had put out lanterns to stop us. We saw the lights from away down the road, and then as we got nearer we saw them lift up in the air a few feet and begin waving from side to side. There were four or five of them, and when we drew up to a stop the native boys drew close to the truck holding the lanterns high. Their eyes glistened and the light slithered over their oily black skins.
A middle-aged white woman came hurrying toward us from the little building at the roadside. She came up to the window on my side and said, “I beg your pardon for stopping you, monsieur, but have you seen—” but just then she caught sight of Father Justinien and broke off. “Oh, there you are, Father!” she cried.
“This young man picked me up on the road,” said Father Justinien. “Madame Boutegourde, this is Mr. Taliaferro. He is the young man who is going to make an inspection of the station.”
“Oh, the American!” said Madame Boutegourde. “Enchantée, monsieur. We tried to reach you. Have you told him about André, Father?”
“I can go back, and make my inspection some other time,” I said. “I wanted to get Father Justinien here.”
“Oh, no,” said Madame Boutegourde. “You must stay now, we will find places for everybody.”
I could see only her face and shoulders in the lamplight, and one hand resting on the window of the truck cab. She was forty-odd with very fine dark eyes and dark hair drawn back from her face. Except for the eyes her face was undistinguished and a little plump with middle-aged plumpness, but it was pleasant and intelligent looking. The hand on the door was small, with the skin a bit reddened and shiny. She had good fingers with the nails cut short, and she wore a wide gold wedding band.
“I have a truck here,” she said. “If you will follow me now.”
As she turned and walked away I caught a glimpse of the rest of her. She was a little taller than average and considerably plumper, but she looked strong and solid, not flabby, and she walked erect and with a vigorous stride as she disappeared into the dark.
To one side of the road the lights of the station truck went on and we saw Madame Boutegourde lean out of the right window and motion us to follow. Apparently somebody else was in the driver’s seat—a native boy, I saw later. The boys with the lanterns piled themselves into the back of Madame Boutegourde’s truck and we started off.
As soon as we turned off the road onto the Congo-Ruzi’s lane, we began to jounce and bump. The boys in the truck ahead had to cling to the sides, and I thought they would break their lanterns. In a general way we were going uphill again, but I had come down a lot from Costermansville during the day, and now it was only beginning to cool off a little bit.
“Madame Boutegourde is a very fine woman,” Father Justinien told me between jounces. “She and Monsieur Boutegourde have been in the Congo for twenty years now; they are real Congolese. Madame Boutegourde will cook you a real Congo meal.” He let his voice grow roguish and said, “And they have a very pretty daughter.” I was too tired to make a roguish response so I let it pass, and after half an hour the truck ahead stopped and Madame Boutegourde came back to us. I could see lights a few hundred feet off the road. “If you will come with me, monsieur,” she said. “Father, if you will wait in my truck—unless you want to see Henri?” Father Justinien said he would see Debuc tomorrow, and climbed out. We said good night and Madame Boutegourde climbed in beside me.
She directed me down a side lane toward the lights and after a minute or two I could see a small open-looking house surrounded by a flimsy porch. All along the porch against the light were the silhouettes of plants trailing out of hanging baskets.