My house in the Muhumba district is a Belgian colonial bastard's palace at the lake's edge, but he must have been a decent sort of bastard because he built a Garden of Eden all the way down to the water, with every flower you heard of and some you didn't. Candle trees, bottlebrush trees, aloe trees, bougainvillea, hibiscus, jacaranda, agapanthus and arrowroot, but my orchids are a fuck-up. We've got spiders the size of mice, and mouse birds with fluffy heads and long tails, in case you've forgotten. Our weaver birds have a great technique for pulling girls. The male weaves a nest on spec, then talks the girl inside. If she likes what she sees, they fuck. Tell that to your evangelists.
I meant to say that this garden has a bungalow. I built it for my sainted wet-nurse who took one look at it and died. She was the only woman I loved and never fucked. It has a tin roof and a verandah and is presently occupied by about a million butterflies and mosquitoes. If you ever make it to Bukavu, have it. The Goma cheese is still okay, the lights go out for three hours a day, but nobody puts out the lights on the fishing boats at night.
Our leaders are total arseholes who can't think beyond the level of five-year-olds. Not long ago, our masters in the World Bank conducted a lifestyle survey of the Congo. Question: If the State was a person, what would you do to it? Answer: We would kill him. We have Black Awareness but every street hawker in town is selling skin-lightener guaranteed to give you cancer. Young Congolese talk of Europe as the promised land. So be aware: if you make it here, you're going to look like a rejected zebra. The elections won't deliver solutions but they're ours. We have a constitution. We have kids with polio and kids with the plague who are feeling richer by three million dirty dollars. One day, we may even have a future.
HAJ
We are on the coast here too, Noah. Each morning my heart rises with the autumn sun. Each evening it sinks. But if I bring my chair to the window, and there's a good moon shining, I can just make out a sliver of sea a mile beyond the wire. And that's where their England ends and my Africa begins.
The End
Acknowledgements
Sincere thanks to Stephen Carter, my indefatigable researcher; to Brigid and Bob Edwards for journalistic and spiritual counsel; and to Sonja and John Eustace for matters nursing and medical. I am deeply indebted also to Jason Stearns of the International Crisis Group for his unique expertise and guidance during my brief visit to the Eastern Congo; to Al Venter, renowned veteran and chronicler of mercenary warfare; and to Michela Wrong, author of the splendid In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz and I Didn't Do It For You, for giving so generously of her wisdom and editorial creativity. It is a convention in these cases to protest that the opinions expressed in this novel are, like its errors, mine alone. Such, as Salvo would say, is indeed the case. It is equally true that without my wife, Jane, I would still be floundering around page sixteen and wondering how two years had flitted by unnoticed.
John le Carre
Cornwell, 2006
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