Pandora in the Congo

by Albert Sanchez Pinol

  The direction of my fall coincided with the hallway window. Even still, I didn’t have to fall. But I made two mistakes. Underneath my arm I carried the portfolio of written pages. I refused to let go of it, thinking I could easily keep myself from falling with one hand. My first mistake. The second, forgetting the lesson all children are taught, that the upper part of the body weighs more than the lower. I didn’t realise the danger until I had my head and chest suspended outside the open window. I let all the pages drop, like a shower of confetti. And before I could do anything to prevent it, I was hanging over the void. I held on to the window frame, sustained only by my ten fingers.

  This was definitely one of those occasions for which expressions such as ‘Help!’ were invented. But the truth is I have never known anyone who shouted ‘Help!’ in a dramatic situation. Nobody. The only thing I could utter was, ‘Eeeh! Eeeh! Eeeh!’

  I don’t know how long I was there, hanging over the abyss and shouting. Finally a huge, solid figure appeared, framed by the window. It was Mr MacMahon. Thank God! He had a towel over his shoulders, he had just woken up and had that bovine face that people have when they’re half asleep. He looked to my left and to my right, absurdly, then rubbed the sleep from his eyes and said, incredibly calmly, ‘Tommy, old boy, what are you doing out here?’

  I could only answer, ‘Eeeeeeeh!’ then, in a whiny tone, ‘MacMahon!’

  He got me out of there, eventually. I sat down, trying to pull myself together after the scare. Marie Antoinette had taken the precaution of hiding after her victory. I was running late and I didn’t have time for retaliation. I had enough work to do recovering the scattered pages before the wind carried them off.

  Norton was impatient. Because I was late and because he had been wanting to read the first few chapters of the book for days. He received me with very few words. It was his way of showing his displeasure. We sat down.

  He didn’t like it. He read my typescript and I read his face. He got more and more nervous. He turned the pages faster and faster. He started to talk to himself. He pointed to the most troublesome parts with his finger and said, ‘But this … What is this? … And that? … And that?’

  And after reading a few more pages he concluded, ‘This is Zola in the Congo! Bakunin in the Congo! Catiline in the Congo!’ He waited for my reply but seeing that it didn’t come, he continued, all fired up. ‘Don’t you see what image we’re reflecting of the English aristocracy? What do you want me to do with all this hatred for society? I’ll never find any way to exonerate Garvey with this. There’s enough to hang him ten times in here!’

  ‘I don’t want to start any revolution, I only want to write a book,’ I said in my defence. ‘And that is an exact account of the facts according to Marcus Garvey.’

  ‘Do you want me to attack the most powerful people in Great Britain? Who do you think presides over the British courts? Robespierre?’

  I could easily have kept my mouth shut. But I didn’t.

  ‘I also wanted to tell you that I went to visit the Duke of Craver.’

  Norton put his hands on his head. Very slowly. He raised them little by little, until they were hugging that spherical capsule that was his bald skull. I continued, ‘You haven’t heard the worst of it yet.’

  Norton held his breath. He didn’t take his hands off of his head. And, after a brief pause that I used to gather my strength, I said, ‘We came to a gentlemen’s agreement. He’ll help me with the facts and dates of the case in exchange for my sending him copies of the work as it progresses. I’ve been sending him certified envelopes for two weeks now.’

  ‘What kind of irresponsible oaf have I hired?’ shouted Norton. ‘Don’t you understand, for God’s sake? Craver is the enemy! The only interest he could have is in seeing Marcus hanged.’ And, even more furious, he yelled, ‘You are insane! No! Pardon! I’m the one who’s insane! I assigned this job, and I assigned it to you! A mer cenary who, first chance he gets, gives away all the secrets of war to the enemy!’

  He stood up, paced incessantly from one end of the office to the other, with one arm behind his back and gesticulating with the other like a dictator in an operetta. His accusations became a monologue: ‘You are an untamed anarchist! Most writers are professional sycophants. And I have the bad luck of hiring a terrorist of the written word!’

  I had never seen him fly off the handle before. I had a different man in front of me, an Edward Norton I had never known. He was overflowing with rage. I realised that he must have learned to hide this more passionate side to his personality. In his daily life he must have made a huge effort to channel that primal fury towards legal empiricism. I got up from my chair too.

  ‘I won’t oppose the cancellation of our contract.’ I headed towards the door.

  ‘Thomson!’

  I turned. Norton was at the back of the room, still, firm, legs firmly together. Not even his violent rage had managed to add a single wrinkle to his clothes. He said, ‘Sit down.’

  He sat too. He had recovered his authority. His gaze softened a bit. He became that man I had met at the cemetery again, disinterestedly friendly.

  ‘You want to know something, Thomson? I’ve always hated team sports. You could be the best cricket player in the world, but if your teammates are a bunch of losers you’ll never win anything. That is why I devote myself to the art of law. I thought that as a barrister I wouldn’t have to depend on anyone, only on my own abilities. Now I see that I was wrong. Life is full of imponderables.’

  ‘I’m sorry I disappointed you.’

  ‘From now on, just write. That’s what I pay you for.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I said immediately, with a decisiveness that surprised both Norton and me. ‘I gave my word to the Duke of Craver. While I’m the one writing Marcus Garvey’s story in the Congo, the Duke of Craver is going to receive copies.’

  Norton was intelligent enough to realise that he was up against a wall. He made that pyramid with his fingers. He was coldly analysing how to get the situation back on track. Before me was more a rational machine than a man. He ignored my presence to such an extent that I felt like an object. Finally, I got tired of it.

  ‘If you prefer to indulge in solitary reflection, I won’t disturb you.’

  ‘Sit!’ he ordered for the second time. ‘How do you expect me to find another writer? I can’t start from zero at this point.’

  ‘There are thousands of better writers than me. Everyone would want the chance to write a story as incredible as this one.’ And I stressed my point by saying, ‘And they are all sycophants. They won’t argue with you about your strategy.’

  But Norton preferred to ignore my sarcasm. He wasn’t listening to me anymore.

  ‘So the Duke of Craver wants to read the adventures of his pups in the Congo, eh? Well, it looks to me like he’s going to get a lot of surprises.’

  ‘Even more? I haven’t been at all indulgent with the Craver brothers’ exploits in the jungle. You just read it.’

  Norton punctured me with his eyes.

  ‘Yes, even more. He has many more surprises awaiting him.’

  And then he addressed me informally. I remember it very well, because it was the first and only time that he did so in all the years of our relationship.

  ‘You don’t know it, Tommy,’ he murmured, ‘but the real story of Marcus Garvey in the Congo hasn’t even begun.’

  And, in essence, that was that. He didn’t like me or the book, but I was still his writer. As I returned home lost in thought, I could sense the weight of his displeasure on my back as if I carried a child on my shoulders. I was thinking about the book, about Garvey, about Norton, about the Congo. I was incredibly mixed up. From nowhere my life had taken a turn, and I didn’t know where that turn would lead me. This wasn’t a book, it was a war. And I was one of the forces involved, not exactly the most powerful one. On the other hand, it’s also true that there are things that we don’t like but which attract us all the same. When I arrived at the boar
ding house I was still swimming in that sea of thoughts. As I went through the hallway I discovered her, lying in wait behind the leg of a wardrobe.

  It was her, Marie Antoinette, scrutinising me, satanically silent. Some would say that Marie Antoinette could only express her hate in silence because she was a turtle. To these naïve souls I would reply that hate, like laughter, makes less noise the deeper it is.

  This turtle had gone too far. It was one thing that we hated each other and quite another that she had gone to the extreme of trying to murder me. I picked her up with one hand and launched her off the balcony in the style of a javelin thrower.

  Three seconds later that simulacrum of a human being named Mrs Pinkerton appeared in the hallway.

  ‘Did you say something, Mr Thomson?’

  ‘Who me?’ I remarked in the most evasive tone. ‘Nothing at all, Mrs Pinkerton.’

  ‘I’m looking for Marie Antoinette. You wouldn’t happen to have seen her, would you? Lately she’s had me worried. She’s a little sad …’

  Pinkerton began to look for Marie Antoinette in all the corners, waving a lettuce leaf as a lure. I did too. I shook a rotten leaf of lettuce and with my back hunched I called out her name; it was glorious hypocrisy. The door opened. It was Mr MacMahon, appalled.

  ‘Mrs Pinkerton! Look what fell on top of me!’

  ‘Marie Antoinette!’ exclaimed Pinkerton when she saw the turtle in MacMahon’s hands. ‘What have you done?’

  MacMahon’s shouts ratified Mrs Pinkerton’s suspicions.

  ‘She tried to commit suicide! I saw her as she fell from the window! I was coming back from mass, I was right below and I opened my arms. We’re so lucky!’

  At this point I’ll omit the jumping for joy and fussing those two did. Especially Mrs Pinkerton. Her eyes even grew damp! I had never seen her like that. She congratulated MacMahon as if he were Noah in the flesh. She wrapped Marie Antoinette in a tiny scarf and brought her a plate of warm anise so she could inhale the vapours. While Pinkerton wiped dry two little tears with a handkerchief, MacMahon asked us to wait a moment and he disappeared. A few seconds later he came back with a curious artefact in his hands.

  ‘Look what I brought for her!’

  MacMahon placed some sort of clog on the table, or that’s what it looked like. It was like a child’s wooden shoe, but wider and with some holes distributed along the structure.

  Pinkerton, or me, I don’t remember, asked what it was.

  ‘But can’t you see?’ MacMahon was surprised. ‘It’s a new shell for Marie Antoinette.’

  ‘You don’t mean to put poor Marie Antoinette in a wooden device!’ grumbled Pinkerton, who had only taken five seconds to recover her usual mood.

  ‘You offend me, Mrs Pinkerton,’ said MacMahon with his little eyes horribly sad. ‘When my hands make something, whether it’s a metal piece that weighs a ton or a wooden shell, the only thing that matters is the opinion of those affected: if Marie Antoinette doesn’t want the shell, I won’t insist. Let her be the one to decide.’

  And MacMahon himself picked up the turtle and put her down beside the wooden shell. All three of us leaned forward over the table as if we were bowing, very, very interested in Marie Antoinette’s reaction.

  MacMahon had designed the shell very skilfully. The back part was open like the neck of a pullover, so that the turtle could go in and out as she pleased. At the front, it had a hole for her head and two for her front legs. The upper part was painted with very simple geometric shapes in red, blue and yellow. While Marie Antoinette hesitated, I asked MacMahon, ‘So why did you paint the shell in bright colours?’

  MacMahon scratched the back of his neck. ‘Because it’s pretty. Don’t you think?’ He wavered and then added, ‘Wouldn’t you paint the roof of your house with bright colours if you could?’

  Marie Antoinette sniffed out the shell. She approached it with a grin that was uglier than usual. After much vacillation she stuck her head into the back entrance. MacMahon had measured very well. We saw that the turtle’s head and feet came through the pertinent holes, that they fitted perfectly.

  ‘It looks like she’s dancing,’ I said a few seconds later.

  It was true. It looked like Marie Antoinette was dancing the foxtrot, twenty years before it was invented. Which is to say, she liked it.

  MacMahon clapped. I didn’t say anything. Neither did Pinkerton. I was surprised that she wasn’t pleased. After all, it was her beloved turtle. But I was forgetting that Pinkerton was Pinkerton. And that woman, an artist of contemptible turns of phrase, managed to outdo herself.

  ‘Not bad,’ she said, stuck-up as usual. ‘If Marie Antoinette likes her new shell so much, Mr MacMahon, I’m willing to negotiate a fair rent.’

  ‘Mrs Pinkerton, I don’t charge rent to little turtles without shells,’ said MacMahon. And he added, in a raspy little voice, ‘It’s a gift. I wanted to give it to you on your birthday, but when I saw you so sad and weepy I couldn’t wait.’

  Astonishment turned Pinkerton’s face into a bank note, flat and green.

  So, if all that hid some moral lesson, that evening I didn’t have the energy to discover what it was. I remember that I went to bed, I turned out the light, I fell asleep and I had a particularly agonising dream. In the dream I was Doctor Flag’s ghost writer again. I had a question about an outline. And as much repulsion as Flag’s tyrannical figure caused me, I had no choice but to ask him, ‘In the Congo are there turtles like Marie Antoinette?’ And Flag, threatening me with his ivory-handled cane, answered, ‘Obviously not! Even a ghost writer as incompetent as you should know that in the Congo’s jungle there are only animals!’

  SEVEN

  THAT DAY I ONLY half listened to Marcus. That happened to me sometimes. His narrative thread was labyrinthine, he had a strong tendency to abuse details to the detriment of the core of the story. He would make me fill entire notebooks with futile notes that didn’t contribute anything to the story. And since I avoided interrupting him except in cases of force majeure, my mind tended to wander.

  I was jotting down some vacuous, foolish thing, when Marcus said, ‘ … and the next morning, in front of the mine, there was a stranger.’

  I looked up from my notes.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘A man, planted right in front of the anthill.’ And Marcus imitated him standing up, very rigidly, with his hands glued to his sides, looking out into the distance.

  From the other side of the bars Sergeant Long Back watched us, more suspicious than curious, unblinking. A peculiar duel between static forces began, Marcus looking like a general in formation in front of the Queen and Long Back, as always, looking like a wax statue.

  ‘At the mine? A stranger? I don’t understand,’ I said.

  ‘We didn’t understand either,’ said Marcus, sitting down again.

  ‘Was he stealing the gold?’

  ‘No. He was outside the mine, I already told you that. Outside, standing, still.’

  ‘Was he spying on the mine?’

  ‘No. His back was to the anthill. He was facing the camp.’

  ‘A Negro man?’

  ‘No. He was white.’

  ‘A white man?’

  ‘Yes, white. But not like us.’

  ‘But didn’t you say it was a white man?’

  ‘I mean that his skin was whiter than milk fresh from the cow.’

  The first ones to notice the unusual presence were the miners. It was very early, the work day had not yet started. Marcus was reviving the previous night’s fire. William and Richard had risen even earlier, bent on scouring the entire forest in search of some memorable specimen, maybe a gorilla, and had set out a while ago.

  The Negroes’ shouting made Marcus forget about the fire. The tents obscured his view of the mine, so he couldn’t see what the disturbance was about. Right away he sensed that it was something serious. Those screams reminded him of the ones heard in the villages when the dynamite exploded. He left everything and ran t
owards the anthill.

  Terrified, the Negroes shouted, moaned and gestured. Somehow they had managed to get out of the mine. The only thing that kept them from going even further was Pepe’s rifle. He was also half paralysed with fear. All the arms pointed to a human figure, thin and long like a celery stick, who observed them indolently from the mouth of the mine.

  The white man was, in general terms, a man. His entire body was covered with some sort of chestnut-coloured clothing, which ended in long tails that reached his ankles. Geometric motifs went around the clothing at belly-button height. He had a skull a bit more oval and pointy than ours, like the mummies in Peru. Bald, very bald. ‘And his ears were turned around. Write it down, write it down!’ Marcus insisted childishly, pointing at my notebook with his finger. ‘Our ears end in a hanging lobe; theirs were like bats’, with a fleshy point on the top!’ His face was full of angles and corners, bringing to mind a chiselled diamond.

  Marcus focused on the length of his fingers. And he saw that this creature had an extra one. A total of six on each hand. But the most enigmatic of all were his eyes. They scrutinised our world from caves of flesh, sunken into his face. That creature didn’t look, he focused in on things. His eyes collected information, they were as uncritical as two telescopes or, even worse, like two microscopes. Marcus understood perfectly why the men fled. Seeing a creature like that only brought one single idea to his head: to take off in the opposite direction.

  ‘Who on earth is it?’ Marcus asked Pepe.

  Pepe’s voice trembled, ‘I don’t know.’

  The stranger turned his attention to the trees that enclosed the clearing. His mouth opened in a look of surprise. Then he raised his gaze to the sun. His mouth opened even wider. He kept his eyes fixed on it without blinking, and Marcus thought he would go blind.