‘Come this way,’ the young man beckons.
The first room shows broken taps protruding from walls and a channel, or sluice, cut into the floor and running out into the River Bamba.
‘Come in, come in.’ My guide pulls me into the gloom of the first chamber and then through a little passage into a second room where there are the remains of a giant fridge. In the fridge are rails and butchers’ hooks which he sends spinning along the rails with a musical clash of steel.
‘Here people were killed, on a table here,’ – the young man shows me precisely – ‘the blood and other parts were washed down the drains in the floor into the River Bamba outside. Sometimes the meat was rolled. Sometimes they hung the whole person on a hook and then the cook came here to make his choice. All this I saw, me,’ says the young man and touches his eyes, ‘myself.’
On the floor of the giant fridge are fragments of bones. And scattered among the bones, little white flakes of something. Rice! Next door is the dining room.
‘Here stood the table.’ With the flat of his hand he gives me not only the position but the height of the Redeemer’s table, then a swift tracery in the air describes the glittering chandelier which hung above it and the twenty places it could accommodate. Again there is that curious sparkle of pride. ‘The Monster ate here with his guests. Afterwards they watched the lions.’
The lions’ cage is out in the open and the throne is there where the Redeemer sat to decide the fate of his enemies. The young man sits on the marble throne, beside which are dead fountains that once sprayed scented water and played tunes, the ‘Marseillaise’ and ‘Waltzing Matilda’, I know this because my guide whistles them while sitting on the throne. Those not fed to the lions went to the crocodile pool, now simply a sludgy trench, and those who escaped the crocodiles were thrown into the snake-pit, all now empty, nondescript, decaying, dirty, non-existent you might say, were it not for the brilliant performance of my guide, the living theatre of the Redeemer. It’s all cheaper, poorer, hotter than I thought it would be. Nothing is ever like the movies except the movies and sometimes I think I made a mistake in drowning my walkman.
‘Where is he now?’
‘He?’ The question appears to amaze him, he scratches his head, he pulls at his lips. ‘He was a bad man, very cruel. An animal!’
I’m beginning to think the record’s stuck. ‘Where can I find him?’
I don’t really expect an answer but I get one and it staggers me. ‘Maybe his mother tells you.’
At first there is no way of telling whether the little old lady in front of me in the dust, in the tiny mud house, with the pink, marbled gums, smooth of any hint of teeth, and the rheumy eyes, is who I take her to be. My guide claims that she is the mother of the Redeemer and who am I to contradict him? What can we do when we are faced with configurations we do not recognise but which others insist are perfectly matched to our expectations, sorry, our theories – what can we do but watch and study and wait for the clue, the evidence which might suggest that what we are seeing is what we think we are seeing. I don’t see any family resemblance. In fact if she looks like anybody she looks like the lead guitarist with Giuseppe and the Lambs – but perhaps I’m rather tired. What I see in front of me, in so far as I can see in this gloomy little hut, is a lady of about ninety, I guess, her old black face wrinkled and lit by the astonishing pink of her gums when she smiles. She points to my pendant and says something to the boy. He nods vigorously. The diamond seems to fascinate everyone who sees it. I remember the warning of the customs’ man to keep it hidden. Except that these people aren’t in any way threatening. They seem pleased to see the stone.
‘Say that I know her son.’
The old woman smiles and nods as if this isn’t news, that everyone in the world, if they know what’s good for them, knows her son.
‘Say I knew him in the country where I live, in France.’
He tells her and I can see that this information is a bit puzzling, because she interrupts the translator with a series of brief little barks and when he argues with her she shrugs her shoulders and seems to be prepared to give me the benefit of the doubt, to say, OK, so this crazy child thinks she knew him in her country, but then he is world-renowned, they know him everywhere, so if you want to know him in France, good luck to you.
‘Ask her if she knows where he is now. Is he here?’
She gives a short emphatic grunt. My chest is so tight I find it difficult to breathe and my heart is loud in the darkness and noisy, it’s beating so that it actually moves me as I try to stand steady on the earth floor peering down at the little lady who lifts her hands and points them in an arrow shape, fingers extended to show us where he is. Her fingers! Each and every one of them the same; tubular, uniform fingers that made it so difficult to wear rings, so difficult when your subjects wish always to kiss your rings …
‘She says her son is near. Her daughter will take you. We go.’
Strange, again, how when one piece of evidence emerges, others follow, first her fingers and then her daughter. Daughter-in-law, more likely, for as soon as the woman approaches us outside the old lady’s hut, I recognise her. Certainly she may have put on a little weight since the days when she made a wonderful Venus to his Mercury, after Correggio, the one with the wings that gave Brest the butcher so much pleasure, the recreated painting in which my Redeemer plays Mercury in the baseball cap and is seen with one of his sixty-five children as Cupid. Harp, his third wife! The very same.
‘She leads, we go after,’ my guide answers.
We go after, as he says we should. This outfit was certainly not the right thing to wear: the grass is high and sharp and tears at my bare legs and although my outfit is pretty light, the heat is intense; this might be winter but the temperature is surely well into the thirties as we walk behind Harp who leads us to the centre of the little town of Bamba where there is a kind of rocky table of land surrounded by trees and heavily overgrown with vines and creepers. It was walled once, though there are great breaches in the walls as if this place has been under heavy bombardment. Harp, who has not spoken and only turns now and then to make sure we are following her, will go no further. The guide nods me towards the entrance, which carries the very faint sign painted high on the wall in ornate script, Jardin de Thé – Tea Garden.
‘You go in. He is there.’ My guide pushes me. ‘The daughter says.’
‘Won’t you come with me?’
He gives an embarrassed laugh, shakes his head and says nothing. I can see he’s frightened.
At first I see what I think is a glass altar set in a kind of arena or amphitheatre. There are tattered flags, their ends eaten by the winds, hanging from four flagpoles set at each corner of the altar. There is a steel turnstile, long rusted and no longer turning. In the tall grass I find fragments of statues. There is a Victor Hugo asleep on his face in the sun; and Napoleon without hands; an orb and a sceptre that can only have come from some statue of Queen Victoria of whom there is now no sign. And the altar is not really an altar, I see this as I get closer, nor is it made of glass but probably of perspex, like Clovis’ boot. It’s a tomb, a hero’s tomb. There are also shreds and tatters of some kind of canvas in the grass, a livid green with yellow stipples, and it occurs to me that this was probably some kind of tent or canopy to keep off the sun which beats down mercilessly. Strewn in the long grass are pieces of rusting equipment, cogs and wheels. Into the frieze at the base of the tomb messages had once been cut but these have been removed by the simple expedient of rubbing cement into the carving. This tomb has been defaced and then desecrated. I step closer to the glass coffin which is covered with dust and leaves and bending over I sweep away one corner and look inside. I feel as I did when I looked through the lake water at La Belle Indifférente in her watery grave, so perfectly preserved and so remote, lost to us and yet so near.
The tomb is empty. Whoever was here on
ce is gone. On one of the pieces of equipment in the grass, I can make out the words Refriga Hungarica … I understand now that this was some kind of cooling plant, and here he would have lain in state, preserved under the canopy, cooled by the conditioning plant, surrounded by statues of the great ones.
He was to sleep forever, preserved against rot and damp, worms and wives, pharaohed in his greatness, ever secure in his box. Which came first – tomb or tea garden? Tea garden, of course, though at some point it was, as they say, redeveloped, the place made ready, the cooling system brought in, turnstiles erected, glass polished; then something happened. Before the remains of the old imperial tea garden could be torn away there came disaster, the clock stopped, the bush came back, the sun wouldn’t go away. New times, new regimes – another ruler who objected to the old pretender had had his praises obliterated, maybe the Number One Peasant, or Number Three or Four, maybe all numbered peasants are indistinguishable, except by their numbers … I breathe on the glass and rub it with my hand in case there is something I missed. Nothing. Not a bit of bone, a tooth, not a relic, not a grain of rice. The purple hangings that were to keep the sun off are torn, all the statues are stones in the grass. But the intention is there, the prayer is there, he was to have lain here in the way my little boat lay on the floor of the lake, La Belle Indifférente, and no doubt children passing this way were also to pause and gape in wonder, perhaps to giggle softly as they leaned over the grave, hands on their knees. Nothing. Nothing except the sound of the sun which has been squeezed into a hot choked ticking in the long grass. But I feel him! As I felt him when he stood beside me by the lakeside and peered into the grave of the drowned boat. Suddenly, in case I hear a voice in my ear and find him beside me staring into the glass box built to hold himself, I straighten. The boy watches. He blinks at me, quick and hurt, I think he must be crying until I feel the tears on my own cheeks.
‘Ask her if she knew my father. A white man – a friend of the Redeemer?’
In answer Harp turns and moves away, giving us a glance over her shoulder meaning that we are to follow, and we go out of the garden and down a track and through thick reeds where the ducks fly upward in panic, and there by the riverside, moored in the brown waters of the River Bamba, is a houseboat. It’s just like the houseboats I saw in his photographs in his room in the Rue Vandal. It hasn’t been occupied for a long time – months, years perhaps. Creepers have begun to grow over it and it creaks protestingly as we climb aboard and clouds of mud float up to the surface of the water as she moves sluggishly beneath our weight. The rugs, the twirly table-legs, the settled, solid and rather pushy, overclothed permanence of a floating home. It’s sweltering hot, the windows have not been opened – well, since he went away. Everything is as he left it.
On his desk the photographs stare at me. Here is my mother, young and very beautiful, posing for once for somebody else’s camera, hand on her hip with the sea behind her and the wind lifting her hair. Here I am in my First Communion dress and here again on a bicycle, about eight years old, smiling toothily from a gilt frame. And here I am, a baby, sitting on Uncle Claude’s lap while he reads to me from Euclid. I am crying but he does not appear to have noticed.
And here is a letter, his pen lies on the paper, uncapped, just as he left it …
‘My dear Bella,
Do not believe–’
Though I try several times the pen will make no mark; it simply scratches the paper of his unfinished letter.
Do not believe?
The boy and Harp regard me silently. He laces and unlaces his hands. Harp hangs her head and speaks to him in a low whisper.
‘What does she say?’
‘She asks where you got the stone you wear around your neck.’
‘From my father.’
‘She says only wives wear such a stone. It is a gift from him. She asks if you are a new wife. She asks if he made your picture.’
Harp watches me and holds up five fingers. I nod. ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘wife number five.’
The boy translates. Harp’s face breaks into an enormous smile, relief, happiness and something else. It’s only when she goes down on one knee that I recognise what it is, adoration …
I missed the bus. But there is a little steamer that plies the River Bamba, fifty years old at least; it was called the Comrade Atkins but that’s been scratched out and it is renamed the Uncle Dickie. Signs of the developments which are everywhere in the air. Up the River Bamba, beating against the current, the steep-sided banks where the monkeys scream overhead and the tight green bush ticks like a bomb. Everybody seems to be travelling to Waq and by the time we reach the confluence of the Bamba and the River Zan, the little steamer sits low in the water and there is no space to be had. Someone has a crocodile aboard and feeds it twice a day with bushmeat, propping open its jaws with a piece of stick and tossing titbits into its jaws like a mother bird feeding her baby. The water ran out soon after we left and only beer remains. Plantain, if well roasted, is tolerable, the cooks working on deck sweating over their smoking braziers. The first-class cabins are crowded with important functionaries travelling to the capital to see for themselves the developments of which everybody has heard, although no one can say what they are. The second- and third-class cabins are stifling black holes, best never entered. Once we reach the Zan we begin stopping like a train at so many small sidings, packed villages on the banks where the looming ebony and mahogany trees have been cut back and dug-outs push from the shore to offer fish, manioc, out-of-date penicillin and even older pop cassettes …
Do not believe – the last words my father wrote. Well, that’s not so difficult, I do not believe. But Lord, help my belief!
In Waq I find they are doing something to the facts of history. The facts are in a state of continual revision; like symptoms of serious diseases, if you catch them early enough, repercussions can be prevented.
I am met by a party of Wouff all in a great state of excitement, jumping up and down so that their little skirts flap and the hollowed-out stones that they wear around their necks bounce on their chests; they sing and dance, and it seems that I am expected, known, and this is why they go down on one knee and bow their heads and insist on escorting me to the Kingdom Towers Hotel, even coming with me into the foyer, though the doorman who wears the hat which once hung on the tree beside the door tries in vain to prevent them. They spill into the newly painted lobby, chattering and smiling and pointing, happy as children. The Kingdom Towers Hotel is now another place, smart and sparkling. Big cars draw up to the entrance and men in suits climb out. The swimming pool has been cleaned, the urchins banished and women lie about in bikinis, sipping drinks from coconut shells. The Roumanian manager is a changed man, running up and down the foyer shouting ‘Front!’ and ‘Good day!’ and beaming horribly, and smacking his hands together with a sound of paper bags bursting. On the walls are framed telegrams praising the President of Roumania for his shining achievements: King Olaf of Sweden congratulates him on the new spirit of architecture; and Queen Elizabeth of England celebrates with him the anniversary of his accession to power. The manager wears a swallow-tail coat and pretends not to recognise me.
‘Do you have a booking?’
‘What do you mean, a booking? I have a room. I’m staying here.’
‘Dear Miss, we are very busy. We have the President upstairs, Comrade Atkins. Up on the tenth floor, plus his entourage, plus medical staff. We have visitors from everywhere. We’re having to double up. Rumours about the health of the President have attracted enormous attention.’
‘But where am I to stay?’
He shrugs. ‘I’m sorry. But if you have no booking … Are these your Wouff?’
He looks coldly at my chattering entourage.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m afraid we allow no one in tribal dress into the hotel.’
It’s no better in the bar, where Kwatch als
o refuses to recognise me and it’s only when I go over with my hand outstretched that I force him to see me. He takes my hand vaguely and shakes it.
‘It’s me. Bella.’
Kwatch stares. ‘Bella?’
‘Bella Dresseur, you know.’
Now he does know me, he smiles, he shakes my hand vigorously. But this recognition I do not like, this recognition is for somebody else. ‘Miss Dresseur,’ – he smiles widely – ‘I knew your father! When did you arrive? Have you come all the way from France?’
‘I have no room. The manager says I have no room.’
‘It’s true, the hotel is very crowded. But surely you’ve booked? We’re packed out. There isn’t a millimetre of space to be had. If we’d known you were coming … I was very attached to your father, he was a good friend to this country. But we have great developments going on here, you see. Many foreigners in town.’ He points to a group of noisy beer-drinkers in the corner: ‘South Africans. Keen observers of our political developments. And over there,’ – he drops his voice – ‘with the vodka, Russians. You see – it would have been wiser to book …’
My accompanying band of Wouff seem delighted that I have been refused entrance and I guess that’s why they pick me up and carry me along Patrice Lumumba Drive towards the Presidential Palace.
My Chocolate Redeemer Page 29