Johnny Mad Dog

by Emmanuel Dongala

  Mama lying in the dust, Mama trampled, Mama crushed, Mama dead . . . No, she wasn’t dead, she was breathing. I spoke to her; she didn’t answer. I patted her cheeks. Her eyes opened but didn’t focus. Could she hear me? Could she feel me? The wheelbarrow—put her in the wheelbarrow and save her! I burst into sobs. All at once, a great weariness settled on my shoulders. I collapsed next to Mama. Never had I felt so alone in the world. I’d lost all hope.

  “Come on, move! Now! Or you’ll get yourself killed!”

  A voice came from above me, a voice from the clouds, a voice from heaven. Arms gripped me, raised me, pulled me.

  “Get up! Quick!”

  I found the strength to murmur:

  “Mama—the wheelbarrow.”

  The arms let me go. They lifted Mama, who suddenly appeared to be as light as a feather, and in three or four steps had placed her in the wheelbarrow, seized the handles, and begun pushing it at a rapid pace. I quickly tied the bundle to my back, the way one would carry a baby, and I followed.

  We could go no farther, because of the crowds massed before the walls of the embassies. The blows of fists on the closed gates became increasingly violent as the gunshots of the militias grew louder. In front of the second embassy, where we had somehow wound up, appeals for help were being shouted over the wall at those who were keeping the gates locked, and these appeals were growing ever more desperate.

  After gazing so long at that colossal, unfriendly, inviolable wall, I reached a point where I ceased to notice its repellent features and found myself admiring the solidity and professionalism of its construction.

  As the daughter of a mason, I knew a fine wall when I saw one. I’d built a number of them with my father. Though the walls I’d constructed had been fairly simple, made out of concrete blocks or terra-cotta bricks, my familiarity with my father’s profession had taught me about the techniques used for constructing large buildings. Looking at the pilasters that strengthened this wall, each anchored to its own footing, I knew that these were not made of ordinary poured concrete; they were reinforced with steel cables. When we’d built our own house out of hollow concrete blocks, we had used a simple method: wooden braces had supported the formwork around the lintels, and we’d removed the forms merely by tapping them on the outside with a hammer or a mallet to make the concrete vibrate. Seeing this embassy’s imposing lintel, which topped the enormous opening that held the two large metal wings of the gate, I wondered what kind of bracing they could ‘have used to hold the formwork in place. A wall so sturdy, though it was three meters high, could only have been made of cinder blocks strengthened with interior rebars and concrete. Or was it made entirely of steel-reinforced poured concrete? The people who’d had these walls built were obviously very rich. Cost was no object for them.

  Mama had often said to me, when she returned home exhausted after selling her wares at the market all day, that she felt instantly soothed and relaxed as soon as she came through the door of our house, for the walls of a house enclosed a space of peace, security, and tranquillity. What she’d never said was that the reverse was likewise true: a wall could also be a barrier. In history class, I’d learned that in medieval times the Africans of the city of Great Zimbabwe had built high walls of enormous stone blocks around the town’s center, as protection against local invaders and Arab conquerors from the East. Similarly, the rulers of China had constructed a wall several hundred kilometers long, to defend themselves against the barbarians who roamed the border regions of their empire. Now we were the ones who were facing a wall. Were we the new barbarians, assailing the fortresses erected by the world’s current rulers?

  I’ve no idea how long my mind wandered like this, before being yanked back to reality. A young man had gotten a boost and had managed to reach through the strands of barbed wire that bristled at the top of the wall. With an effort he hauled himself up, and I saw him standing there, his shirt torn, preparing to jump down on the other side. Then came gunshots, followed by a silence. The young man flung his head back, remained motionless for an instant above the barbed wire, then toppled over, and was snagged for a few seconds on the barbs of the coiled strands before falling heavily onto the crowd.

  All hell broke loose. The guards in the embassy compound were shooting; the militiamen coming up behind us were shooting. Trapped between two lines of fire, we could do nothing but run, run, even without knowing where. Staying put would have meant sure death. And stray bullets were already claiming victims. Mama’s rescuer had once again seized the handles of the wheelbarrow. I was following. I don’t know how long we ran this way through the confusion; I don’t know how long I could have kept up such a mad pace. My breath was coming in gasps, and I had a pain in my side.

  Suddenly, ahead of us—a miracle! A metal gate, its wings outspread like the wings of an angel, wide open. We threw ourselves toward it, were entering, were inside. My legs gave way beneath me. First I fell on my knees next to the wheelbarrow, which the man had just set down—that unknown and generous man who’d saved Mama’s life. Then my head sagged and I toppled over on my back. I made an effort to keep my eyes open. As if through a fog, I saw the man’s lips move but no sound came out, as if he were speaking in a silent movie. Beyond his face, at the top of a long pole, a rectangle of pale blue cloth was undulating in the breeze. On the blue background, in white, were two olive branches cradling and supporting a number of concentric circles on which were depicted all the continents of our planet. Higher still was the sky, an immense blue sky. Then nothing more.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Johnny, Known as Mad Dog

  We had to hurry, so I took over the wheel from Lovelita. Sitting next to me, she watched everything elatedly. She was no longer afraid, and even felt a certain pleasure at being able to participate in our operation. Here was something that Giap really ought to see. If we were tribalists, would we have had a Mayi-Dogo chick with us? I came up with a neat idea—took off my cap and put it on Lovelita’s head, over her red bandanna.

  “Now you’re a member of the Roaring Tigers!” I announced solemnly in a loud voice, so that Piston, Little Pepper, and Stud could hear me clearly. She smiled and adjusted the brim of the cap. I gave her a sideways glance. The cap suited her—she looked like a real fighter, and a très sexy fighter at that. If I wasn’t a respecter of women, I would have fucked her on the spot, right there in the car, despite the fact that we were on an official mission and despite the perpetual ogling of Stud, who never took his prying eyes off us. No, I respect women, and Lovelita wasn’t the sort you’d take for a quick lay, like some low-class call girl. She was a woman you had to honor at such intimate moments. But one thing was beyond doubt: the Roaring Tigers weren’t tribalists. Didn’t we have a Mayi-Dogo fighting in our ranks?

  We drove back along the avenue at top speed to rejoin the rest of the unit and then head all together toward the embassy compounds. Giap had told us to use whatever means were necessary to prevent the refugees from the Huambo district from seeking refuge there. I don’t know where Giap had got his information, but all the people we passed as we drove were running in the opposite direction, the one we were coming from. Some of them still carried a ridiculous array of possessions, while others were fleeing empty-handed.

  “Look!” Lovelita cried suddenly, pointing ahead and a bit to the right. When we looked in that direction all of us burst out laughing, the scene was so absurd. A man—panting for breath, his shirt drenched in sweat—was struggling through the sand, trying to push a bicycle that had two flat tires. There wouldn’t have been any difficulty if he’d had only the bicycle to contend with. The problem was that attached to the bike, firmly lashed to the luggage rack, was a big fat pig which was nothing but a dead weight. And that wasn’t all: a demijohn of palm wine was hanging from the horizontal bar of the bike’s frame, secured with lengths of creeper.

  “Oh, look at that! Stop, Mad Dog, stop!”

  I might have known—it was Piston who was now shouting and gestic
ulating behind me. He could never pass up a bit of pork. In his village, pork with bananas was the favorite dish of the menfolk. Furthermore, before getting married, a suitor had to prove his worth to his girl’s family by bringing them a pig—and not just any pig, but a stolen pig. Piston’s eyes were bright with greed. Hardly had I stepped on the brake when, quick as a squirrel, he leaped from the car and ran over to the bicycle. Obviously, the violent blow recently inflicted on his bald head had done no lasting damage and had failed to curb his aggressiveness.

  “Hey, you! Gimme that pig!”

  “It isn’t mine—I’m just transporting it,” the man pleaded. “I’m being paid to deliver it to someone on Lumumba Street.”

  “I don’t care,” Piston snapped. “Give it to me.”

  While Piston was speaking with the man, Little Pepper had noiselessly come up to the bike. Supporting the demijohn carefully with one hand to prevent it from falling and breaking, he cut the creepers that attached it to the frame. He stuck his knife back in his belt and, without a word, hoisted the large bottle on his shoulder, walked away, and put it calmly in the car. Lovelita and I watched him, vastly amused. Even Piston had temporarily forgotten his pig and was admiring the finesse of Little Pepper, who didn’t give a damn about pigs. If offered a choice between a plate of pork with bananas and a plate of salted fish—preferably cod, lightly braised—he wouldn’t have hesitated for an instant. With a bit of pepper, the little red pepper that burned your mouth as soon as it touched your tongue, and a small piece of cod, he could polish off a large helping of cassava and would even ask for more. That was actually how he’d come by his nom de guerre, Little Pepper. But I never knew he liked palm wine so much that he’d steal an entire demijohn.

  Piston brought his gaze back to the man with the bicycle.

  “So, are you going to untie that pig?”

  The man looked at him stupidly.

  “But what am I going to say to the owner? He’ll take me for a thief! He’ll make me pay him back, and I don’t have any money—”

  Piston raised his gun and pointed it at him. As soon as he saw the weapon aimed at his chest, the man immediately let go of the bicycle and raised his hands in the air. The bike crashed to the ground and the animal squealed loudly from the impact. Piston bent over and untied the pig. He took hold of it and, with a clean-and-jerk worthy of an Olympic weight lifter, hoisted the animal onto his shoulders and walked back to the car with a triumphant air. “Bravo!” cried Lovelita. He quivered with pride and pleasure. If he’d been in his native village, he would certainly have won a bride.

  The man with the bicycle, standing there dumbfounded, watched him walk away and kept repeating like an idiot, wild-eyed: “What am I going to tell the owner?” The dumb shit. He was still speaking of owners and private property—in front of us, the rulers of the world. Why were we holding guns in our hands, if it wasn’t to have everything we wanted? He should have been glad we were letting him live.

  Now we had to step on it, since we’d lost a lot of time. I didn’t want Giap to start wondering where I was and realize that I hadn’t yet arrived at the embassy district. We couldn’t make any more stops. I floored the accelerator.

  “Oh, look at the radio, honey! I want that radio!”

  Lovelita, my girl. Lovelita, my love. The wife of a leader can have whatever she wants—you can’t refuse her anything. This would be her first bit of war loot. Squeal of brakes. But I’d been preoccupied with my thoughts and hadn’t noticed any radio.

  “Back up,” she said.

  I threw the car into reverse and backtracked along the street. Yeah, it was some radio! A big one, with speakers that gave out a booming bass. I didn’t know how I could have missed seeing the guy. He was young—one of those Chechen elements, without a doubt—but I was puzzled by the fact that although he had no gun, he wasn’t the slightest bit afraid. He was striding along, swaying and bobbing in time to the music, which was amplified by the boosters.

  “Hey, kid!” I shouted. “Gimme your radio!”

  He looked at me as if I were a pile of dog shit and went right on past, swinging his shoulders and snapping his fingers to the rap song he was listening to. That wasn’t normal. I honked the horn loudly. He turned around and stopped. Looking me straight in the eye, he turned up the volume on his ghetto blaster, set it on the ground, and began to swivel his hips and jump around to the rap song. For a moment, I didn’t know what to do. Usually, when I didn’t know what to do in a particular situation, I’d shoot. But this wasn’t by any means a usual situation. It was easy to kill a guy when he was afraid. But this guy? He stared straight at you, looked you right in the eye, didn’t give a damn. I felt Lovelita shiver.

  “Let’s get out of here!” she cried. “It’s a devil! Some of the refugees are ghosts, spirits—people who are already dead. The Mayi-Dogos are like that—they’re all sorcerers. I don’t want his radio anymore. Let’s go!”

  I heard mounting fear in her voice. And I must admit that after her words, I, too, began to feel uneasy. A normal guy couldn’t have managed such contortions. He writhed and twisted; his head would disappear entirely between his shoulders, then suddenly pop out on a neck longer than a heron’s; the next instant he was lying huddled on the ground; then he would leap up like a jack-in-the-box, his limbs all going in separate directions, and when they reconnected they formed a shape that was only outwardly human. This was definitely no human being! No one could ever break-dance like that. And he kept shouting the words of the rap songs the whole time he was gyrating so weirdly.

  I almost panicked when I realized that none of the fetishes I was wearing could help me in such a situation—that is, in a duel with the undead. I had gleaming bits of mirror to deflect bullets, I had a fetish that could make me invisible, I had plenty of other things to protect me—but I had nothing, absolutely nothing, to ward off a demon. Incredibly stupid of me, especially since I knew that the Mayi-Dogos were the greatest sorcerers and fetish makers in our country. But maybe the pieces of mirror on my T-shirt would blind those owl-eyes of his and drive him away. Or maybe my red cord . . . I touched the strip of red raffia that I’d tied around my upper arm. It reassured me a little. I reached for the Uzi, and as I did so I heard Stud say urgently behind me:

  “Those undead, the ones like him—you have to kill them with a knife. If you try to shoot one, the bullets will be absorbed into its boneless body and someone you’re fond of—your father, mother, brother, or girlfriend, for example—will feel a sudden pain in exactly the same place where the bullet hit the phantom, and that person will die instead. There’s only one way to kill them: by stabbing them in the heart.”

  I lowered the gun and cast a sideways glance at Stud. He’d pulled the two red parrot feathers out of his cap and was pressing them feverishly between his fingers. Little Pepper, hearing Stud’s thoughts on the matter, had unsheathed his knife and was offering it to me. Who asked him to do that? The asshole was putting me in a difficult situation: either act like a leader and take the knife—or don’t, and lose face in front of Lovelita. I began to sweat. The guy continued to jump around to the jerky rhythms of the rap music. I had to do something. It was Lovelita who saved me. Knowing the evil power of her tribespeople, she begged me to get going. I seized the opportunity, and pushing away Little Pepper’s knife I said with all the wiles of a true leader:

  “This phony human takes us for idiots. He thinks Mad Dog and his team are going to swallow his line and fall into his trap. The best way to throw him off balance is to ignore him. Come on, let’s go. He’ll understand that we . . .”

  My cell phone rang. I pushed the talk button.

  “Turf?” the receiver crackled impatiently.

  I didn’t want to answer until I’d finished my sentence.

  “. . . don’t have time to waste on shit-heads like him.”

  And I stepped on the gas.

  “Turf, are you calling me a shit-head?”

  Giap! He’d heard me.

 
; “No, no—not at all, sir. I was talking about a Chechen dead guy—undead, I mean—who thought he could trick us. I was speaking to the men in my unit.”

  “Undead? You talking crap to me about goblins? Listen, don’t fuck around with me. Where are you?”

  “Almost at the embassy district.”

  “Almost?” he shouted. “You’re not there yet? What the hell have you been doing all this time? You a snail or something? Good thing I told Idi Amin and his unit to get over there, too—I think they’ve already arrived. If it was up to you, the whole country would’ve taken refuge in the Western embassies by now. And the Chechens with them!”

  “No problem, Giap—I swear! I’ll be there in five minutes. Less than five minutes!”

  “You’d better! Come on, move your ass! Can’t believe it—dragging your feet like a slug. Over and out.”

  “Giap! Giap! Don’t hang up yet! I’ve got something important to tell you!”

  “What?” he barked.

  “Well, it’s . . . I mean . . . it’s just that Matiti Mabé . . . Turf . . . I’m done with those names. I’ve decided to call myself Mad Dog.”

  “What?” he guffawed.

  “From now on, my name is MAD DOG!” I practically shrieked.

  “Okay, okay. Grrrr! Woof-woof! I’m scared shitless of those fangs.”

  And he hung up.

  I looked at Lovelita out of the corner of my eye, hoping she hadn’t heard Giap’s last onomatopoetic words. Apparently not. And the other two hadn’t heard him, either Kalashnikovs in hand, leaning out of the car’s broken windows, they were surveying the crowd. I gave a final glance in the rearview mirror. With impossible agility, the man with the ghetto blaster was continuing to fling his arms, legs, and head in all directions like the loose pieces of a disjointed puppet. Then, focusing my thoughts on the nature of my mission—to prevent people from taking refuge in the embassies of the Western nations—I put the pedal to the floor.