I left behind part of my youth that night. Or, at least, I had the impression that I matured more in that one night than I had in an entire year. I asked myself, ‘Is it worth it to go on with this book?’ I would rather have slept than answer. Even still, I forced myself to respond to that question, and an hour later I had arrived at a pact between my limitations and my aspirations: I decided that Marcus needed me to finish the book, whether it was good or bad, and that in our case that justified the author’s suffering. Cold comfort.
And that’s how, defenceless, with my conscience numbed by alcohol and resignation, I found myself in the midst of a catastrophe. It was a dry, hard detonation, followed by a crashing rain, like rubble falling. My God, what a shock! I leapt from the bed. The only familiar thing was Mr MacMahon’s voice. I could hear it through the wall that separated our rooms. He was shouting out excuses, ‘It wasn’t me! I swear!’
I opened the door and I was immediately blinded by a cloud of grey dust. The other boarders had done the same and were gathered in the hallway. They were all in pyjamas or underwear and were more frightened than I was, because I, at least, had drunkenness to dampen my shock. The only one who was still lucid was MacMahon. While the others shrieked and asked stupid questions that no one could possibly answer, he trotted up and down the hallway like a buffalo, knocking on doors and ensuring everyone was out of their rooms. The scene was reminiscent of a shipwreck, all you had to do was substitute smoke for water. But it was all so unreal that I wasn’t afraid, I couldn’t be. And I don’t really know how, separating myself from the hubbub, I ended up in the dining room.
It was right in the exact centre of the room, surrounded by rubble. On the floor you could see the enormous hole it had caused. It was like a small metal whale. Driven by the naïveté of the drunk I approached it and placed my hand on its iron back. It was cold and touching it made me scared. It occurred to me that I could make use of that contact. Yes, I would make a metaphor between William Craver’s skin and Amgam’s. It wasn’t until later that I thought: what on earth was a bomb doing in the dining room?
I looked up and, through the hole in the ceiling, in the sky, I saw some sort of gigantic flying sausage. It was fleeing from twenty or thirty thin, compact beams of light that crossed the air with frenetic strokes. Its objective, no doubt, had been Royal Steel. Either the zeppelin’s gunner had a very bad aim or the spy had informed them that the factory’s coordinates were Pinkerton’s old boarding house.
‘It’s alive!’ Mr MacMahon said suddenly from the threshold of the room.
I leapt, as if the bomb had bitten me. But Mr MacMahon was referring to some small columns of pressurised smoke coming out of the holes in the casing.
‘Let’s get out of here!’ he bellowed, pulling me by the elbow. ‘It’s going to blow up any minute!’
In the hallway the whirlwind of dust raised by the bomb’s impact wasn’t dissipating. MacMahon shouted and everyone rushed down the stairs. I said before that I was drunk, much more drunk than I realised, because all of a sudden everything seemed hilarious to me: a bomb had fallen on our dining room. A bomb! MacMahon examined me with a quick once over. He saw how I was laughing, he smelled my breath, and he realised I was drunk.
‘Oh, Lord …’ he moaned.
While he held me with one arm, he used the other to shove the boarders in front of him. He turned his head and asked me, ‘My God, where is Mrs Pinkerton?’
‘A bomb!’ I laughed hysterically. ‘I can’t believe it! A bomb fell on our dining room! It came in through the ceiling and flattened the table!’
‘Mrs Pinkerton! Where is she?’ shouted MacMahon, running through the hallway and dragging me with him.
‘You don’t know? I do! Where do you think she’d be?’ I said.
MacMahon stopped for a second to listen to me. But I said, with a big guffaw, ‘Negotiating the rent with the bomb!’
Pinkerton hadn’t moved from her room. She was sitting on the bed, petrified. The chaos was too much for her organised little brain to take in. And a woman like her would never have come out of her room in a nightgown, in any case. Not under any circumstances. But Mr MacMahon wasn’t going to waste time. He carried us, one on each shoulder, as if he were carrying two sacks at once, putting up no complaints, and he galloped through the hallway like a racehorse. Suddenly I saw myself hanging off MacMahon’s back. If I looked down, I saw his heels, if I turned around, I saw Mrs Pinkerton’s head, parallel to mine. She looked like a recently caught eel. I was about to burst with laughter.
‘Hello, Mrs Pinkerton! Hello! Hello!’ I said to her while I waved as if we were two acquaintances that happened to meet on a train. But when MacMahon started to go down the stairs things got more complicated. I had the impression that I had climbed up on a camel’s hump. When we were on the street a safe distance away, MacMahon placed us on the ground. I couldn’t get up. I was too dizzy. Some very civic-minded neighbours helped me to sit up. But nothing was wrong with me, I just wanted to throw up.
All of a sudden the bomb exploded with a black and bluish flare. From our position we could see perfectly the floor of the boarding house flying through the air. And that wasn’t all. The force of the detonation and the weight of the rubble made the fourth storey collapse onto the third. The third onto the second and the second onto the first. The full effect was that the entire building folded like some sort of giant accordion.
Mrs Pinkerton cried inconsolably on Mr MacMahon’s chest. He hugged her in solidarity while shaking his head sadly. I hadn’t quite taken in the extent of the tragedy. I just laughed and laughed. I heard Mrs Pinkerton, as if she were very far away, lamenting the loss of everything she had in this life. I kept laughing. Lose it all? What could I lose, poor me, except an old gramophone and a typewriter? I abruptly stopped laughing. The book.
Everything I had written, including the four onion paper copies, was inside the house. Thinking of it sobered me up instantly, like a tap cutting off a stream of water. I leapt like a panther and grabbed Mr MacMahon by the shirt collar.
‘Mr MacMahon! We’ve lost everything!’
‘Everything, son, everything … But we’re alive,’ said MacMahon.
His arms held up both me and Mrs Pinkerton at the same time with tremendous ease. I freed myself.
‘Mr MacMahon! The book is in the house!’
‘Book? What book?’
‘The book!’ I was becoming distraught.
MacMahon was still consoling Mrs Pinkerton. With his free arm he gave me a manly pat on the back and said, ‘Don’t worry, son. It was just a book. You’ll write another one.’
He didn’t understand. I had to finish the book, good or bad. At that point it had become some sort of bank of the spirit where I deposited all my efforts as a human being. And now that bank had burned down and I could do nothing about it.
The neighbours looked on more out of curiosity than solidarity. It was one of the first air attacks and no one had been prepared. For them the bomb was more of a spectacle than a drama.
The firemen worked all night long. First thing in the morning, we were still there, sitting stoically on the pavement opposite. Some of the neighbours had brought us blankets, tea and biscuits. A kindly soul put a mug of warm milk in my hands. Wrapped in a blanket, sitting with my back against a wall, I simply couldn’t believe I had lost the book, I just couldn’t. But all of a sudden, hope. A fireman came towards us. Beneath one arm he an unidentifiable little bundle.
‘We found this inside the house. Does it belong to anyone?’
The light of dawn was sluggish and we couldn’t see very well. From the dimensions, the size, it looked like a packet of pages with singed edges. My heart leapt. Paper is much more fire-resistant than people think, at least when it’s grouped together in a compact package. I launched myself up to grab the bundle with both hands. It wasn’t paper, it was wood. Through a hole in the package appeared a head.
‘Marie Antoinette!’ exclaimed Mrs Pinkerton, bursting in
to tears again, this time from happiness.
There are cursed books just as there are cursed houses. Everything had conspired against me, so that I would never finish the book, from Marie Antoinette to the Kaiser of Germany. I threatened the heavens with a fist, bellowing, ‘May God curse the German Empire! And its Kaiser! And its zeppelins!’
At that moment a postman appeared on a bicycle. He asked the neighbours some questions, until finally someone pointed at me. He approached me and said, ‘Mr Thomas Thomson? Is that you? We’ve had quite a time finding you.’
I didn’t pay any attention to him. I continued insulting all the powers that be. But the postman insisted that I sign a receipt.
‘Now you can do something more than insult the Germans,’ he said, amiably. ‘Now you can kill as many as you like.’
‘What are you talking about?’ I growled. ‘And what’s this you want me to sign?’
‘Your conscription papers.’
The next morning I had to go to the recruiting office. According to an old law, updated for the war, the beneficiaries of state poorhouses were obliged to serve in the armed forces in the case of war in return for services received from the state. They had been looking for me since the hostilities began. And I was lucky they hadn’t declared me a deserter yet, with all the criminal consequences that that would imply. As wild as it seems, seventy-two hours after receiving the notice I was in uniform. I didn’t even have time to see Norton. I wrote him a note, with great difficulty, explaining my transformation from civilian to soldier. As far as the book’s destruction went, I didn’t mention it. I wasn’t even able to say goodbye to Garvey.
EIGHTEEN
MARCUS WAS STARTING TO lose consciousness from the Tecton’s attack. Or to be more accurate, he was hallucinating from the toxic air he was inhaling and from the blows of the Tecton, who was intent on cracking his victim’s skull. Guilt and memories mixed together, and the Tecton that was beating him, seated on top of him, holding down his chest with his legs, was no longer a Tecton. It was Pepe the bear, who had come from beyond the grave, furious because he had been turned over to the authorities of that Welsh town. Pepe the bear said, ‘Do you know what they did to me, Marcus? Do know how the tools of an abattoir feel on a bear’s body?’ Pepe the bear turned into Godefroide Pepe, and said, ‘Do you know what they did to me, Marcus? Do you want to know how the Tecton torturers treat their captives?’
‘No!’ shouted Marcus suddenly. ‘I didn’t turn you over to anyone, Pepe! They took you away because Mum was dead! I was just a boy, I couldn’t stop them from taking you away!’
The Tecton stopped hitting him. His curiosity was aroused by the tone of voice he had just heard, so despairing, so out of place. He contemplated his victim with the air of a hunter that couldn’t quite identify what he had just caught. That gave Marcus a few precious seconds. Behind the Tecton, and up above, he saw the anxious faces of William and Richard. And while he spat blood, he cried out, ‘Shoot! For the love of God, shoot!’
Richard decided to take the risk. And, by some miracle, the bullet lodged in the Tecton’s back. He made a face that was more surprised than pained and he fell on top of Marcus like a felled tree.
He still wasn’t free. With the Tecton’s body and his stone armour on top of him, Marcus could barely breathe, much less get it off him. And far from his reach the last inches of the fuse were burning down. Marcus tried to push on the dead Tecton’s chest. His hands felt richly embossed geometric forms. But the Tecton’s body didn’t budge an inch. A moan.
‘You can do it, Marcus! Get him off you!’
It was William’s voice.
‘Stick your elbows in the dirt and push! Push!’
And, somehow, Marcus managed to get out of that spot. Not so much by the force of his pushing, but rather by sliding underneath the body. He looked for the fuse, a flaming spark. But he was half blind. Blood from his brow flowed into his eyes, covering them like a red liquid mask. The mine was one big crimson stain. From above William shouted, urging him to put out the fuse.
Guided only by the faint sound of the burning fuse, he looked for the dynamite. He dragged himself, feeling along the ground, until he felt sparks hitting his hand. He had never been so happy to burn himself.
What came next was more mechanical. Marcus wiped the blood from his eyes. Immediately after, more calmly, he pulled out the burning fuse and replaced it with another, longer one. He listened carefully: indeed, from the back of the tunnel he could hear the last voices. Some of the invaders were using it as a hideout, just as the Craver brothers had foreseen. Marcus lit the new fuse and threw the charge into the hole with all the strength he had left. The tunnel was L-shaped and the dynamite disappeared round the bend.
Marcus fled. As he climbed up the ladder Marcus could see in William’s face the temptation to push it, to leave him in there forever. But there was also another hand that held the ladder with an unsuspected moral strength: Richard Craver’s.
The dynamite took a surprisingly long time to explode. When it did, though, they had the sensation that it blew up very deep down. They heard a sharp rumble at first, then an opaque echo. For a few endless seconds the Englishmen’s feet vibrated as if they had beehives in their shoes. Then they noticed the first sign that it was all over: from the jungle, surrounding them on all sides, the shrieks of the animal world awakening.
‘Bravo!’ said Richard enthusiastically, giving Marcus appreciative pats on the back. ‘Bravo, lad! You were magnificent!’
Marcus’s only response was to laugh like a maniac. The Cravers didn’t understand until Marcus pointed to their faces: the smoke from the explosion had blackened all three of their faces. They looked like chimney sweeps. Or Zulus. Especially William, always so white and now so black.
When he stopped laughing Marcus felt exhausted. It had been twenty-four hours since he had slept. He lay down for a moment with his knees bent. William had already forgotten about him.
‘Yes, it’s a shame that the explosions destroyed the beams,’ he said as he looked into the mine. ‘The ceiling could fall in on us. We’ll have to rebuild it all.’
But Richard replied with an icy voice, ‘My God … Are you still thinking about gold? How is that possible, William?’
It drew Marcus’s attention that Richard, someone like Richard, was able to express such a deep, lucid thought. But he was too worn out to be supportive. He needed to rest. He left a dreadful argument behind him. William and Richard were screaming at each other. This time Richard did not back down, as if everything he had been through had finally given him the strength to oppose his brother. Marcus could have taken advantage and, amid the confusion, moved closer to Amgam’s tent. No, he didn’t have the strength even for her. It had been hard enough for him to get to the campfire and drop down beside it.
He closed his eyes. One cheek rested on the red sand, that red African sand, as fine as if it had been through a sieve with a thousand holes. The contact was very pleasant. He could hear, at the fence, William and Richard’s crossfire of expletives. Marcus discovered that being on the sidelines of a dispute could be a source of pleasure. And so, while he enjoyed that semi-unconsciousness that was so delightful, his thoughts turned, yet again, to her, to Amgam.
What had she wanted to tell him the day before, when she wrote those signs on the sand? Marcus didn’t know how to read, much less in Tecton. Amgam was an intelligent woman, she knew her lover’s limitations. Why had she been so stupid as to think he would understand?
A few minutes passed. No, he was the stupid one. Amgam would never have made such a mistake. Amgam hadn’t written anything. She had drawn. He tried to remember. It was the shape of a spider web, with a centre and some points a distance away from the centre. What could she be trying to tell him?
Oh, my God, thought Marcus, what if Amgam was trying to depict the Tectons’ excavations? And what if those drums that thundered, those attacks in pairs, were nothing more than a distraction tactic so they could drill so
mewhere else? And what if they wanted to hide the sound made by their digging other tunnels that would allow them to attack from behind?
He opened his eyes. The campfire filled his entire visual field. Suddenly the fire disappeared, sinking down as if it had been drawn in by a whirlwind of dirt. A growing hole appeared before him. Marcus had the impression that this part of the clearing was the surface of an hourglass, and the time had come for him to be sucked down into the lower half.
Everything happened very quickly. The Tectons appeared like white shadows, cleverly coordinated and with lightning speed. They looked like lizards the size of humans. One ran to the right, another to the left, alternately, keeping apart so they were harder to aim at. Marcus barely had time to shout at the top of his lungs, ‘Tecton!’ as he fled towards the fence.
‘Let’s go in!’ improvised William. ‘Barricade ourselves inside!’
It was a desperate defence. Marcus stopped abruptly. No, he couldn’t face going back in there. Instead of obeying, he fled. He left them behind and ran towards the jungle.
He ran and ran. Fear had taken hold in his knees. But he ran and ran. As he arrived at the threshold of the jungle he tripped and fell. He looked back. What he saw terrified him.
William and Richard had hidden inside the fence, sticking the barrels of their rifles through the loopholes and shooting wildly, without even bothering to take aim. Marcus saw some Tectons scaling the trunks that made up the fence. One of the Tectons, very adept, slithered along the ground, beyond Richard’s angle of sight. When he was underneath the shotgun, he grabbed the barrel with both hands. But after a few tugs Richard was able to recover the weapon. William and Richard fought back to back from the middle of the fence’s enclosure, from the anthill itself, shooting any Tecton that dared to climb the defences. Richard was shouting wildly.
Pandora in the Congo Page 21