THE DIRECTOR RECEIVED many visits from members of the Congolese Workers’ Party, and we were supposed to set them an example. When these ‘high-up people’ were due to visit, he became tetchy, yelling that if we acted like the kids from Pointe-Noire we were so fascinated by, and showed no respect for the national flag or the representatives of the Party, we would receive a punishment we would never forget.
He prepared us for these visits, instructing us how to behave before our guests. Of course there was no hope that these Party members, who, unlike Papa Moupelo, were stiff and inhibited, would get us dancing and singing in the club hut of the National Movement of Pioneers. Since the men from the CWP didn’t speak Lingala, we wondered if they really understood what they were saying in their French that was laced with adverbs and present participles. Their vocabulary featured mostly difficult words, which we called ‘bad words’. Anticonstitutionally was their favourite, and intergovernmentalisation, a word first used by the Prime Minister, because up to that point each minister had been used to working in his own little corner and the new thing was to get them to talk to each other. On the other hand, it was the Secretary of the Congolese Workers’ Party, comrade Oba Ambochi, who, as a put-down to the imperialists and their local lackeys, maintained that they were constipated by the success of our Revolution and were suffering from coprastasophobia.
We all lined up in front of the red flag and listened to these speeches, which were so mannered and puffed up that the next day some of us were afflicted with cephalalgia. As in the days of Papa Moupelo, when we talked in our sleep it was with the same convoluted words as the Party members. Except that now, even in dreams where the dreamer could lift mountains, leap across the Amazon or the River Congo or drink the entire Atlantic Ocean in a couple of minutes flat, he’d be incapable of reeling off the word coprastasophobia…
We all wore wrist bands with our names on – I had to have one on each arm because my name was so long. We were put into groups of ten for ‘community’ jobs on Sundays, and since the President of the Republic declared the year the Revolution hit the orphanage the ‘Year of the Tree’, even planting a soursap tree himself at the entrance to the People’s palace before the massed cameras of national television, we too, following Dieudonné Ngoulmoumako, had to plant a soursap tree, behind the central building, which made Bonaventure wonder:
‘Is it the day of all trees, or just the soursap?’
‘Kokolo!’
‘You called me Kokolo again! Don’t do it, I don’t like it!’
Generally speaking, it was the children who hadn’t recited the President’s latest speech well enough who were made to sweep the yard. But Dieudonné Ngoulmoumako could decide to hand a broom to anyone who failed to lower their gaze before the staff or members of the Party. He shut up the recalcitrant ones in a building used by the Revolution, now simply used as a cell in which people were coerced into an understanding of the obligations of the pioneers of the socialist Revolution, with a heavy metal door and a small hole through which they slid rotten food. These ‘prisoners of the Revolution’ – as distinct from ‘pioneers of the Revolution’, who were altogether more decent, better-formatted, obedient – were forced to listen to the quavering voice of the President of the Republic on constant loop on a cassette player, supplied by the government to institutions like ours, which now reported to the ministry of Families and Childhood…
There were three hundred of us orphans, three hundred parrots, in fact, our heads stuffed full of things of no apparent value. That was all we had to do: learn by heart things which, so we were told, would be extremely useful for us boys once the first hairs began to sprout on our chins; and for the girls, once their breasts ripened like great papayas and their behinds drew the fascinated gaze of every man…
I’m quite sure it was fear of ending up prisoners of the Revolution that inspired us to recall with precision that our country lay straddled across the equator, that it had a total surface area of three hundred and forty-two thousand square kilometres, that the countries closest to us were Gabon, Angola, Cameroon, the Central African Republic and finally Zaire, with whom we shared the river Congo. Nor should we forget that before the arrival of the Spanish colonisers, and before we were turned into Christians, several of these neighbouring countries formed one vast territory, the kingdom of Kongo, and a certain brave and loyal woman by the name of Nzinga, mother to three children, two twin boys and a daughter, was our common ancestor.
When the Revolution came along I did a quick volte-face and was soon able to give fluent recitals of the speeches of the President of the Republic in our consciousness-raising classes. Visiting members of the Party congratulated me, which is why Dieudonné Ngoulmoumako put me in the front row and asked me to put my hand up to ask some question he’d prepared earlier, which was generally designed to reflect glowingly on him, and show how effectively he’d set us on the path of the Revolution.
I was unbeatable, particularly in my recitation of that memorable speech in which the President paid tribute to the workers, especially the women, of our country. As he put it:
‘There they are, at break of day, with all their children, and even grandchildren. They transform nature, they create, they work in production. A few men are also engaged in similar tasks, and you are all, here, in our capital city, part of the poor peasant class, the most important in our society. It has become clear to me that there is a great difference between what I wish for and what I achieve, between what I say and what actually happens on the ground. It is clear to me that we run the risk of an ever-widening gap between directive and execution, theory and practice…’
His high-flown rhetoric meant nothing to us, nor did the Director’s either, with his skilful intertwining of his own and the President’s words. By now I knew how to flatter his ego. I simply recited his latest editorial from Pioneers Awake! and he was all smiles, nodding his head throughout and rewarding me afterwards with a Biro, which was an event in itself, considering he was as tight-fisted as they come.
SOMETIMES, I KNEW, Bonaventure pretended to be an idiot just to tease me and the other orphans. For example, he begged me to explain to him a lesson we’d had in class.
‘D’you think Monsieur Ngoubili’s right, when he says if you have two verbs together the second one must be in the infinitive?’
‘That’s right, that’s the rule!’ I replied, rather surprised by his question, since it was now a good ten days since we’d studied this in class.
‘And what happens if you don’t follow the rule?’
‘Well then, people talk and write just as they please and don’t understand each other.’
‘Yes, but if there are four, or six or ten verbs in a row, what do you do then? Because Monsieur Ngoubili only talked about two verbs!’
‘How are you going to get four or six or ten verbs all lined up together, as if they’d nothing better to do? When did you ever see that?’
At this he stroked his chin, with the air of someone deep in thought. I loved his very dark, unblemished skin, the dimple in his chin that got deeper when he was feeling happy. His face was thin and the bones showed through, but his body was good and strong, discouraging any other boy to give him trouble. But really he was just a colossus with feet of clay.
‘Several verbs can come one after the other, for example, if you’re doing ten things at once and…’
‘Doing what, for instance?’
‘Eating, drinking, peeing, sleeping, waking up, brushing your teeth, opening the window…’
‘That’s impossible, to do all that at once, you have to do one thing at a time, properly…’
‘That was just an example, you’re yelling at me now, just like the others, because you think you’re cleverer than me! D’you want to thump me too? Shall I just lie down right here to make it easy for you?’
‘No, I won’t thump you, I’ve never thumped you, you know that! We’re brothers, I’m not like the others, I won’t play football with you one minute t
hen turn on you the next…’
Unlike me, Bonaventure knew who his mother was. She would sometimes come to Loango, and though we hadn’t seen her since the Revolution this didn’t seem to bother her son much.
Zacharie Kokolo, his biological father, whose name he bore, had disappeared as soon as the pregnancy was announced. He was a public employee, working for the National Water and Electric Company. He used to fix the dials on the electricity and water meters at my friend’s mother’s house, so she had nothing to pay for years and years, or at least only a tiny sum which wouldn’t buy you one packet of water at the Grand Marché in Pointe-Noire. He did fiddles like this on behalf of the entire population of the town, and the Pontenegrins paid him a sum of money in return. There was no risk as he was hand-in-glove with some high-up people in the Water and Electric Company. Bonaventure’s mother would have been just another client, had Zacharie Kokolo not been determined to convince the poor woman he should take her as his second wife. He visited her Fridays and Saturdays, in the early afternoon, and went home to his existing wife and four children around six in the evening, in Loandjili, on the other side of Pointe-Noire. Bonaventure’s mother’s other man was called Mbwa Mabé. The people of Voungou called him ‘the official incumbent’ and he often turned up three hours later after a long and exhausting day’s work as a lorry driver in the Tchibamba district, on the Angolan border. He was known as ‘the official incumbent’ because he got in long before Zacharie Kokolo, the public employee, and no one ever really saw him, because of his profession.
So on the one hand there was Mbwa Mabé, a bachelor, childless, seeking neither marriage nor posterity of any kind, and who would disappear into the hinterland and come back a month or two later.
On the other there was Zacharie Kokolo, who had a good, secure position at the Water and Electric Company but who put off for forever and a day making any real commitment, that is to say publicly taking Bonaventure’s mother as his second wife. And she knew full well that like many women in Pointe-Noire who had decided to be content with the small space allotted them by the married man in their lives, she would remain, for the rest of her life, the public employee’s spare wheel, with no way of getting him to change his mind. Unless perhaps a child should result from this backroom relationship, in which the public employee, hoping to safeguard the reputation his illicit activities had somewhat eroded, still checked left and right before entering or leaving Bonaventure’s mother’s house. When she fell pregnant she was suddenly assailed by doubts. Judging by the dates of her cycle and the period of fertility, everything seemed to point to the public employee of the Water and Electric Company, since Mbwa Mabé had been absent from Pointe-Noire for over sixty days, training the lorry drivers of a rich businessman who had just bought three Isuzu trucks. Zacharie Kokolo knew of the existence of the ‘official incumbent’, and when Bonaventure’s mother explained that the other couldn’t possibly be the child’s father, he made no fuss, and seemed to take a pretty responsible attitude, along the lines of, ‘Oh well, love, it was bound to happen one day, I don’t know why people get so upset about these things. It’s our child, I’ll look after it like I do the others, don’t you worry…’
Then, to Bonaventure’s mother’s great surprise, he dropped out of circulation. Perhaps he had realised that if he carried on seeing his mistress, the news would get round to his wife, who until now had always thought that even if her man was cheating on her, he wouldn’t dare make a baby behind her back. Time and time again, Bonaventure’s mother turned up outside the offices of the Water and Electric Company in the hope of seeing him there, and getting an explanation for his cowardice from his own lips. But she never got past the front desk. Every time she was told that the public employee was busy, that he’d be in touch.
Two months later, riled by his desertion, she returned to the front desk of the company and threatened to take him to a tribunal. Just as the security people were about to throw her out, she lifted her pagne and showed them her belly, which was already visibly rounder, though it was still early days. After this incident the company staff all noticed that Zacharie Kokolo decided to shift up a gear. He had influence, and he wanted it to be known. He began by using his connections to turn the game around and denounce his former mistress to the Water and Electric Company. In less than forty-eight hours the Company sent her bills for water and electricity going back several years, to be paid within sixty days. It then took her to court, two months before Bonaventure was born, claiming she was the one who’d fixed the water and electricity meters.
The courtroom was packed to the gills, as though it was a criminal trial. Most people were inhabitants of Vongou, who were not there to support the defendant, but to see how the judge was going to judge her offence, because many of them had also had their meters fixed by Zacharie Kokolo or other employees of the WEC who were no doubt also present in the chamber.
The National Company won their case. But in view of the condition of Bonaventure’s mother, whose belly was on the point of exploding, the WEC declined to take it to the criminal court and merely placed a claim for the company’s damages.
And so Bonaventure’s mother went from bright light to darkest night; from light bulbs to a hurricane lamp and from water from the tap to water from the river, which she had to boil so it was safe to drink.
When her son was born, she decided to call him Bonaventure Kokolo, because deep down she’d always been in love with the public employee and thought it right and proper that the child should bear his father’s name, whether present or absent, whether he liked it or not.
‘The official incumbent’ had broken off all contact with Bonaventure’s mother and was travelling the length and breadth of the country at the wheel of the Isuzus belonging to the rich businessman who had at long last given him a proper job and a house in Tchimbamba, where perhaps he had married and was planning to have children.
After two months, during which the young mother was at her wits’ end to know how she’d cope with Bonaventure on her own, one of her cousins mentioned the ‘Bembé’ who ran the orphanage at Loango, and said that if she went to see the boss and spoke to him in Bembé, even though she was Dondo herself, he’d grant her request.
When the young mother turned up with Bonaventure in her arms at the door of the institution, I had already been there a week myself, and we were both exactly two months old…
I could see why Bonaventure got cross when I called him Kokolo, but I wasn’t sure what else I should call him, since that was the name his mother gave when she registered him and the name of his real male parent.
However hard I tried to call him ‘Bonaventure’, Kokolo was the name that slipped out. On good days – especially when we’d had beef and beans at the canteen – he didn’t seem to mind. I could even see a glimmer of pride in his face, the pride in being the son of a public employee, even a cowardly one. On these occasions Bonaventure would boast that his father was rich, and owned land and houses in Pointe-Noire. Then suddenly his face would darken and the dimple in his chin would vanish. When that happened I knew he was about to explode with rage at the man who, as I’d often told him, could, with a simple click of the fingers, have taken him from the orphanage and transformed his life.
At this, pushing away his plate, he would paint a different picture altogether, of a cold man, a profiteer with a taste for young women. These words seemed to issue not from his mouth, but from that of his mother, who painted a darker picture every time she spoke to her son of his father. How else could Bonaventure know about the actions of someone he’d never seen, and who he believed to be the most selfish, most contemptuous, but also richest man on earth?
Our friendship was like the one between the lame and the blind man. He was my legs. I was his eyes, and sometimes the other way round. If ever I couldn’t see him I looked for him everywhere. I started in the playground, went on to the store room, ending up at the place where we used to have catechism, where I’d find him sitting on the ground,
nodding his head like a little lizard. He’d take a stick and draw an airplane in the dust, saying that one day it would land outside the orphanage, just for him. He was obsessed with planes, and the moment he heard one passing overhead, he’d leap up, run to the window and stay there till it vanished into the clouds.
Then he’d turn to me, despondent, and say:
‘It didn’t land here. They’ve forgotten me again.‘
AS BONAVENTURE CONTINUED to ask me questions about Papa Moupelo, I made it clear to him that we’d have to get used to the situation some day, that in any case we had to pretend to go along with the Revolution, and learn the speeches of the President of the Republic, instead of the prayers and the dances of the northerners and the Pygmies of Zaire.
‘I don’t want their Revolution, I want Papa Moupelo back!’ he’d grumble.
One afternoon, when we were in the playground, keeping well apart from the boys who were playing football, a sport neither of us was any good at, I found myself staring at him, perhaps more intently than usual, because I felt really sorry for him, and he seemed more affected than me by Papa Moupelo’s absence.
‘Is it serious?’ he asked, in alarm.
‘I was just thinking, you’re lucky, at least you know your mother, and …’
‘Don’t talk to me about her, Moses!’
Deep down, Bonaventure wasn’t such a bad boy. He was probably a bit oversensitive, and had often hidden that side, though it might actually have corrected the negative view many people had of him. There was no reason he should be here with us in Loango and I was always wondering if his biological father might possibly turn up and take him away, even though he was thirteen now, and they would need to get to know each other and the father would have to find a way to make his excuses to his offspring.
Black Moses Page 4