Johnny Mad Dog

by Emmanuel Dongala

  Run to get the wheelbarrow. Find Mama. Lift her into it. Tie the large bundle firmly to my back. Sling my leather bag across my torso. Raise the handles of the wheelbarrow and push. Leave—flee with all possible speed from this camp which had become a trap, where no one and nothing remained to protect us.

  I couldn’t find the wheelbarrow! Yet I had put it there myself, after the interview with Katelijne. With growing alarm, I went through the entire large shed that had served as the camp’s emergency center and that now looked like a ruined warehouse. Gone! Someone had borrowed it—no, someone had stolen it. My alarm turned to panic—a panic that had contrasting effects. On the one hand, it threw my mind into a state of extreme agitation just when I needed a cool head to cope with the situation; on the other, it paralyzed my body, impeding my movements just when I had to hurry as fast as possible to leave the compound. How could anyone have stolen the wheelbarrow of a poor crippled woman? Human beings had fallen really low, if they’d stoop to that. Well, you’d have to be completely naive to think that the world was good, that the world was beautiful. I was angry at myself for not having learned, despite all I’d been through, that faith in people was a fine thing, but it was even better to tie up your wheelbarrow the way a trader tethers his camel in the desert, though he knows there isn’t a single other person for a thousand miles around.

  My mind had calmed down, but not entirely; my body could move, but only slowly and hesitantly. I was a zombie when I finally rejoined Mama. I sat down heavily by her side while the rest of the camp seethed with activity, people rushing in all directions, commotion everywhere. She looked at me with questioning eyes. How could I tell her that our wheelbarrow had been stolen, and that if we were to flee the compound I’d have to carry her on my back?

  Chapter Eighteen

  Johnny, Known as Mad Dog

  Obviously, things were more complicated than I thought. After those UN soldiers threw us out of the compound, I figured I could simply call Giap and explain the situation. Giap in turn would call our new head of state; the president would send troops to back us up; and in the blink of an eye we could empty the compound and at last root out the Chechens who were hiding among the refugees. Well, it didn’t work out like that.

  First, it wasn’t easy to reach Giap. When I finally got hold of him, he told me to hang up and he’d call me back right away. A quarter of an hour later, he still hadn’t called. I waited another ten minutes while my anger mounted. The asshole! What did he take me for? If he didn’t get back to me in five minutes, I was damn well going to call him so he could hear what I had to say, and I wouldn’t mince words! We couldn’t stay here indefinitely, cooling our heels in front of the compound where those Mayi-Dogo killers were sitting around so peacefully . . . Five minutes passed . . . Okay, I was going to call him. I stepped away from the others so they couldn’t overhear the conversation. I checked again to verify that five minutes had passed. They had—six whole minutes, in fact. I punched in the number but hung up before it rang; you should always give people a second chance. I would allow him five more minutes and then I was going to—My cell phone rang. I jumped and pressed the talk button. It was Giap.

  He sounded preoccupied. He explained that the city had not been entirely pacified and that there were still pockets of strong resistance. It was thought that the Chechens had foreign mercenaries fighting with them and that the mercenaries’ planes might even bomb the city. Our job was to surround the HCR camp to make sure that no one came out and, at the same time, that nothing—no food, no medicine—could get in.

  My unit consisted of only about fifteen commandos. I didn’t see how we could prevent armed men, like the UN soldiers I’d seen inside, from entering and leaving the compound whenever they pleased. I needed reinforcements. I told Giap that I hadn’t seen anything of Idi Amin and his commandos, though he said he’d sent them to help us prevent people from taking refuge in the embassies. Giap replied that he couldn’t reach Idi Amin—maybe the guy’s phone was broken or the batteries were dead. Instead, he was going to tell Savimbi to leave the Sarajevo district and come to back us up. I would have preferred him to send Snake instead, but it made no difference. I didn’t have anything against Savimbi. We’d been Mata Mata together in the old days, under the command of our great leader Giap.

  I thanked him, and said that of course I’d be in charge of both units, mine and Savimbi’s, and that he could rely on me—we’d keep the compound sealed as tight as a drum. Giap laughed. He said I hadn’t understood a word he’d said. The blockade was of such strategic importance that it would be carried out by soldiers of the regular army, with the aid of heavy weapons. We’d be there only as adjunct forces. Still, our presence was important, since there were things we could do that the regulars couldn’t. These last words eased my disappointment, but not completely. I hung up.

  Yeah, the world was full of injustice. We’d shown our stuff by carrying out our assigned mission, and we’d taken the Huambo district without encountering any resistance. Then we’d been told to prevent people from taking refuge in the embassy compounds, and we had again been the first ones on the scene. And now they were laughing in our faces, telling us we weren’t even capable of mounting a simple blockade. I was pissed off. There was nothing for us to do but spend the night here, out in the open, and wait for the army instead of routing out the enemy ourselves. I summoned all of the Roaring Tigers, including our new recruit, Lovelita.

  “In cooperation with Giap, we’re going to set up a blockade around the HCR compound to prevent anyone from entering or leaving. Food and medicine, too. Understood? The army is coming to lend us a hand.”

  “But you said we were going to punish those UN soldiers and their Pakistani leader for kicking us out,” said Stud.

  “They didn’t kick us out,” I said, annoyed because that shit-head Stud wanted to humiliate me in front of Lovelita.

  I know what men are like, and seeing the way his bug-eyed gaze slithered over Lovelita’s ass when she was walking ahead of him, I suspected he was feeling her up on the sly. I said in a firm voice:

  “They didn’t kick us out. It was I who decided to make a tactical retreat.”

  At that precise moment, Piston’s pig—which I’d forgotten about—squealed loudly. I don’t know why, but that squeal brought my irritation to a peak, and suddenly it occurred to me that the pig’s filth was beginning to stink up my command vehicle.

  “Piston, you’ve got to slaughter that animal!” I snapped, turning my gaze away from Stud.

  “Not yet, Mad Dog!” Piston protested.

  “And why not?”

  “Well, because . . . because we’re on a mission and . . . Let’s wait till we have some bananas, so we can cook up a nice dish . . . And we need a good knife, because to kill a pig and do it right . . . you don’t kill a pig the way you kill a man—that is, any old way . . . you have to do it properly, with respect . . .”

  I’d had enough of his hemming and hawing. In a split second I’d reached the pig, whose legs were tied together. I dumped it on the ground and drew my pistol.

  “Let’s see if this doesn’t do the job as well as a good knife!”

  Blam! Blam! The creature gave an agonizing squeal, twitched two or three times, then lay still. No one said a word, but I sensed that Piston was angry. He would have murdered me if he could. But since he couldn’t do anything, he stalked away, then came back after a few minutes, walking slowly and calmly. I was sorry for what I’d just done—I don’t know why I’d taken it out on Piston and his stupid pig when it was Giap and Stud who’d gotten me so mad. But that’s the way things are—life is unpredictable.

  We all realized, at one and the same time, that we were hungry. To my great surprise, after we’d rummaged around in our packs and looked through everything we’d looted, we found we had nothing to eat. Night had already fallen but we couldn’t go till morning without something in our stomachs, especially if we had to stay awake and keep watch.

  “Let’
s take the car and go find something to eat,” suggested Lovelita.

  That seemed like a good idea to me, but I couldn’t leave my post. I was the leader.

  “Who wants to go with Lovelita?” I asked.

  I was sure that Stud would volunteer, if only for the pleasure of being with Lovelita when I wasn’t there. But no, he didn’t react. He must have known that I’d refuse. So I picked two other commandos, one of whom was Piston.

  They weren’t gone very long. I don’t know how Lovelita, who was at the wheel, managed during the trip, but they returned with cassava, roasted chicken, tins of sardines and corned beef, several baguettes of bread, and some bottles of beer. A real feast. We had such a good time that for a while we forgot we were on a combat mission. Sometimes war can be a real blast.

  After drinking two bottles of beer, I remembered we had a demijohn of palm wine, courtesy of Little Pepper. Since we’d left it out in the heat all day, it had fermented and, as the connoisseurs say, had acquired “body.” I helped myself from the bottle several times. I was feeling good. I put some music by Papa Wemba on the cassette player and grabbed Lovelita by the waist. She, too, was in a great mood. We danced together while the others clapped, and then everyone began to dance. After a while my bladder felt like it was going to burst, so I left them dancing and went off to take a leak. As I was pissing, I gazed up at the moon. It was big and round—the eye of a spy, of a Judas, scrutinizing the world. I’ve always distrusted the moon. It throws a smooth, deceptive light that conceals snakes in the grass and makes dogs howl. I prefer the fiery rays of the sun.

  I rolled a joint and took some long, deep puffs. Matiti Mabé, poison weed. I felt the warm smoke fill my lungs, spread through my blood, rise to my brain, exploding it into a thousand pieces. And then the foul moon turned blue and I began walking on air. The wind lifted me as if on pigeon wings and set me down amid my commandos. They were all dancing and having fun. I took another deep drag on my joint and the night began to glow. I saw what the darkness had been hiding. I saw Stud’s hands reaching out toward Lovelita’s behind as she danced. I drew my pistol and aimed it at that son of a bitch, yelling, “Hands off my Lovelita, you asshole!” and I fired. The shot missed. I hurled myself at him, but he began to run. I couldn’t see him anymore, because the sky had spit out all its stars, and these, dancing about chaotically, had made the darkness dazzlingly, blindingly bright—which didn’t prevent me from firing several more shots in his general direction. I was furious.

  The others had stopped dancing, and Lovelita came toward me. Lovelita, my darling. I ordered her to smoke the joint with me. She took a few puffs, and I drew her far away from their prying eyes, into the high grass. My thing had gone all stiff, and like a heat-seeking missile it set about probing my Lovelita’s mouth. Then I turned her around, so she was on all fours. I pulled down her jeans and panties, which fell around her boots. Bending over her, I slid my hands upward along her sides and cupped her breasts, like two oranges, which I’d been sucking a moment before. An electric charge ran the length of my spine and spread through my entire being. Finally the head of my missile and its long shaft penetrated the silky moist tunnel she offered me, her hips slightly raised and angled back. With violent thrusts I took her again and again, until, driven mad by the spurt of steaming lava ejected from the Nyiragongo of my loins, she uttered a cry of pleasure—a scream more heartrending than that of Piston’s pig—and sank her teeth into my forearm. I cried out, too, but from pain. The bitch! She’d probably bitten off some of my flesh in her cannibalistic orgasm. Utterly spent, the two of us collapsed on the grass.

  I’m not sure why—perhaps it was the coolness of the night—but I awoke with a start. I was sweating profusely, trembling all over and racked with nausea. I thought it was the end. I was going to die. When I got up to take a piss, a knifelike pain pierced my lower belly, rose into my chest, and stifled me. The next moment I was vomiting onto the grass with such violent spasms that I thought I was going to throw up my guts. Then everything subsided. I felt fine.

  It was like emerging from a fog. I saw Lovelita sprawled on the grass under the pale, sly moonlight. Why was her crotch exposed like that, her beige panties and her jeans pushed down around her ankles? Oh, yeah, I remembered—we’d been screwing. I hadn’t raped her. You don’t rape a woman you love, especially not on the grass. I woke her. She squatted on the grass to piss, then pulled up her panties and jeans, a bit unsteady on her feet. We walked back to the car, where the rest of the commandos were gathered. I checked the time—it was four in the morning.

  If Giap could have seen them! They were snoring away in a sea of empty beer bottles, after their blowout of a feast. The demijohn of palm wine was also completely empty. Their guns were strewn on the ground. I’d heard people speak of “warrior’s repose,” but I had no idea it turned guys into such shit-heads. Piston was the only one who was armed and keeping watch, sitting up against the car, puffing on a joint. The anger that rose in me was directed not only against the others but also against myself. I began to yell, kicking and swearing at those so-called soldiers.

  “Idiots! You’re lucky the Chechens didn’t come by, or you’d all be dead! You’re not worthy of the name Roaring Tigers!”

  They came to without really understanding what I was saying. Some of them were yawning during my tirade. Others unzipped without embarrassment and, in front of Lovelita, took out their things and began to piss, staring dully at me like a bunch of cows. Finally, after much shouting and cursing, I managed to haul them into reality and got them lined up and standing at attention. I inspected them the way Giap inspected us, with his evil eyes, and I noticed that one member of the unit was missing. At first I thought I’d counted wrong, since there couldn’t be a deserter in our ranks. I tallied them again in my head, and in fact we were one short.

  “Where’s Stud?” I snapped. He was probably guzzling palm wine somewhere, or maybe he was still knocked out by the weed he’d smoked.

  They looked at me with surprise. Then one of them said:

  “He took off because you tried to kill him last night.”

  It was my turn to be surprised. Me? Kill Stud? Why would I want to do that?

  “You thought he was trying to grab Lovelita’s behind.”

  From the fog of memory, the scene came back to me. A jealous commander chasing after one of his men and trying to kill him! I felt sheepish, confused. If Giap heard about it, he’d certainly think even more highly of Stud! What should I do? What should I say?

  “He must be found and brought back! In any case, you’re a sorry bunch. Piston is the only true soldier here—he was the only one who remained on guard with his weapon. The rest of you ought to be ashamed of yourselves! I have more respect for him than for all of you put together! As for Stud—”

  “Piston couldn’t sleep because he was so angry,” said Little Pepper. “You killed his pig.”

  My god! Echoing through the mist in my head came the grunts and squeals of the pig. Yeah, I’d shot the animal. Why had I done that? Piston had never done me any harm or shown me any disrespect. It had been a stupid thing to do. Piston looked at me without saying anything, his eyes completely blank. If he’d at least been angry, I would have known how to react. I, in turn, gazed back at him like a fool.

  The sound of approaching tanks rescued me from an awkward situation. The troops that Giap had told me about were arriving. I led the guys over to welcome them. Actually, they weren’t tanks but a couple of light armored vehicles escorting two transports filled with soldiers. In any case, they weren’t militia fighters like us, since they wore real uniforms and were better armed than we were.

  The commanding officer stationed his men around the compound without consulting me. I went up to him to explain that they were intended to serve as reinforcements and not to take our place.

  “And who are you?” he wanted to know.

  I told him that we were the ones who’d pacified the area, that I was in charge of the unit, and t
hat Giap was our commander.

  “Who’s Giap?” he asked curtly.

  Unbelievable! He’d never heard of Giap? The leader who’d captured the radio station and who’d been promoted by our great commander-in-chief?

  “Giap is the head of one of those militias,” said his lieutenant.

  “And where is he?”

  “He’s with the other militia leaders—they’ve all been summoned to the central office. I think the authorities are going to give them military titles to flatter them and win their loyalty, and at the same time let them know that although their commandos aren’t prohibited from looting, the government would like to see them devote their main efforts to combat.”

  The army officer turned toward me. “Okay. Stay here—maybe we’ll need you.”

  They finished taking up their positions, aiming their vehicles’ guns at the front of the compound so they were ready to fire on anything that came through the gate.

  The first humanitarian convoy arrived at about eight o’clock. Three trucks, each emblazoned with a large red cross. The soldiers stopped them and made everybody get out. The leaders of the convoy explained that they were bringing in emergency medicine and food for the refugees, but it didn’t do any good. On the contrary, the soldiers gave them a hard time—searched the trucks for hidden weapons, took the sacks of rice and crates of canned food for themselves, and refused to let the convoy pass. The army guy, the one who’d never heard of Giap, said that the HCR had been given an ultimatum: if the refugees hadn’t been evicted from the compound by 1500 hours on the dot, local time, the soldiers would enter by force. The head of the convoy told the soldiers they had to respect the Geneva conventions on the treatment of prisoners and refugees, but the army officer told him this wasn’t an international war—it was a war being waged within a sovereign nation and as such was not the concern of the international community. After much arguing, the humanitarians decided to make an about-face without even trying to reclaim the sacks of rice that had been confiscated.