A few minutes later, I felt her warm hands on my skin, and the cold, red liquid sinking into the wounds, as she reassured me in her softest voice:
‘I won’t put any alcohol on, or they’ll hear you scream from here to Pointe-Noire…’
I kept my eyes fixed on her, thinking how lucky I was to receive this special treatment from her. But Niangui didn’t just nurse me better. On many occasions she gave me sandals, shirts, pants, shorts, colouring pencils, children’s books telling of dwarves and a beautiful princess, or others in which I devoured the stories of two girls who lived on a farm with animals who could talk, and conspired against humans.
The only presents I remember ever getting were the ones she gave me. The staff were forbidden to show any generosity to any one of us. Niangui was given some leeway, because along with Old Koukouba she was one of the oldest members of staff. Either that or, if rumour was correct, there was something between her and the Director which meant he allowed these gifts, and didn’t sack her. It was said that Dieudonné loved women, and schemed with the mothers of our little comrades, Yaka Diapeta and Kiminou Knzonzi, and those of Nani Telamio, Wakwenda Kuhata and Kabwo Batélé. As they were single mothers, and thought that if they offered their bodies to the Director he would give their children special treatment, he was able to exploit his position to make them stay longer in his office, two or three hours longer, maybe, and when they came out, their hair was messed up and they had their pagnes on inside out.
I didn’t dare picture the Director pumping away on top of Niangui. Dieudonné Ngoulmoumako would find it tricky, with his paunch belly, that flopped down as far as his genitals, and even in the dorm we’d hear him huffing like a buffalo. He’d expire from a heart attack while squirming away like a catfish on top of poor Niangui, and I’d never be able to look at her the same way again, because she’d never admitted what was going on between her and him, when she was my shield, an unfailing presence, always there just when she was needed, constantly with me, since the moment I’d first arrived, and prepared to do whatever it took to protect me. How could she pleasure this dreadful man, who inspired such fear in us? I stopped myself asking her. I dreaded getting an answer that made me feel even more sad. The older boarders often told us that when two people make love they end up thinking the same thoughts and swearing to look out for each other. Which, to my mind, meant Niangui had gone over to the side of those who gave us such a hard time. I didn’t want her to look after me now, didn’t want her hands on me. At night, before I went to sleep, I’d shake my fist at Bonaventure, to make him stop bombarding me with questions, I spread out the mosquito net and hid under my sheet, and began a long prayer in which, instead of thanking the Almighty for giving me the name Tokumisa Nzambe po Mose yamoyindo abotami namboka ya Bokoko, I begged Him to put a curse on the Director and Niangui.
If only Niangui had spoken to me earlier in the way she did on the day of my thirteenth birthday, when I was in bed, I’d have judged her less hastily than the other boarders and I’d have known that the things that were said about her were a pack of lies…
The day after Niangui told me all this, my fever completely vanished, as if by magic. My nose was unblocked, my breathing eased, and I just had a few spots left, though I’d disinfected them with Monganga before I went to sleep.
I was waiting for her to show up again, to hand me a glass of water and a pill, and sit down on my bed and talk to me in her sing-song accent that she exaggerated, probably to irritate the Director, who was known for his visceral loathing of all northerners. I’d apologise to her for having believed, like the other inmates, that she’d been carrying on with Dieudonné Ngoulmoumako. I was sure she would say: ‘Don’t worry, lies will never hurt me…’
For almost an hour I’d hear again her warm, reassuring voice. I’d feel her look at me fondly while I examined the grey hairs on her temples. And maybe I’d ask her to let me try her glasses, which still intrigued me. She wouldn’t refuse, I knew. And all at once I’d see the world as she saw it, and everything little would suddenly look big when seen through her glasses, and perhaps that was how she spotted the faults of humans and could separate the bad ones from the good.
Niangui did not come and give me a glass of water and a pill. Something told me she’d never come back, that maybe she’d only told me all these details about her life because she knew she wouldn’t see me again, and that, as she’d said, a page of the orphanage had been torn out, and the first sign had been the humiliation of Papa Moupelo.
Our last meeting began to seem more and more like a final farewell. After two weeks of no news from her, the entire staff acted as though she’d never existed, and no one even mentioned her name.
At that point I knew it was the end of an era…
I was wrong, though, because one afternoon, when I was on my way to the toilets, dragging my feet, my arms flat against my side, I noticed the shape of a woman a few metres in front of me, with a mop in one hand and a bucket in the other. All that was missing was the presence of the Director for me to feel nothing had changed, it was all an illusion, Niangui hadn’t disappeared at all.
I wanted to cry out ‘Maman!’ to welcome her, but my voice wouldn’t come out. I wouldn’t ask her to explain where she’d been all this time. What mattered was that she hadn’t abandoned me. That she’d come back, just to see me, why else would she have chosen that exact moment to cross my path in secret as I walked to the toilets? I was filled with a joy so intense that I could hear my own heart beating against my chest. I went towards her with my arms wide open, a huge smile on my face. She didn’t move, indifferent, almost, to my excitement, her face rounder than it used to be, with small eyes, that gave her a look of perpetual gaiety. Her skin was darker than before, and just as I was about to fold her in my arms, she pushed me away with a violence I’d never known in her.
Surprised by this, I raised my head and suddenly realised it wasn’t Niangui standing there. It was Evangelista, the young woman who was rumoured to have replaced Niangui.
‘When’s Niangui coming back?’
It was almost as though she’d been expecting the question.
‘She’s not coming back, not ever, she’s retired!’
She told me, with a smile I couldn’t decipher, that Niangui was too old, in any case, she claimed she was forty, but in fact you could add another twenty years to that.
Evangelista looked very cheerful. She’d only come to taunt me, because she turned straight around and went back towards the girls’ block. I just stood there in the corridor, watching her walk away, and the further she got, the more it felt like it was Niangui disappearing, and that she’d gone into Evangelista’s body to force her to tell me once and for all that she wouldn’t be back, that the page telling the story of her time in the orphanage had just been torn out too, that first I’d lost Papa Moupelo and now I’d lost her too, the woman who was almost like the mother I might have wished for…
WE HAD NEVER SEEN the Director in such a state. He came pelting into the courtyard, and bumped into Kokela, the gardener:
‘Well? Did you see them, the guys I told you about?’
The gardener shook his head, then the Director himself headed for the main door of the orphanage, peeped his head out, and gave a sigh of relief:
‘I don’t think they’ll come today, it’s already midday, phew, what a relief…’
Dieudonné Ngoulmoumako hadn’t slept properly for months. Four men, dressed in black suits and red ties, had turned up unannounced at the orphanage and shut themselves up in his office with him. Things got heated, and we could hear the Director shouting:
‘Do you know who you’re talking to? I’ll have you thrown out, or my name’s not Dieudonné Ngoulmoumako!’
Even as the visitors were leaving, the Director knew they’d be back again, but when? He began spending less and less time in his office and apartment. To shake off his unwanted visitors he had fixed up a little room for himself in the girls’ block, and every day be
fore going to sit in it with the doors and windows closed, he’d issue the same orders:
‘If those shit-stirrers come back, tell them I’m not here, I’ve taken a trip to Pointe-Noire for a congress of our division of the Congolese Workers’ Party.’
He became more and more ridiculous in the eyes of our fellow pupils, who couldn’t understand how four men in suits could upset him like this when he had so much power. And when he finally decided to return to his office, in the belief that the four ‘invaders’ had given up and gone away, the Director was surprised to see them back again, as though they’d been hiding out with binoculars opposite the orphanage, just waiting for this moment.
Dieudonné Ngoulmoumako had had enough. He called everyone together in the yard and standing on the platform, with his six caretakers behind him, announced:
‘We are going to throw out these invaders who’ve come nitpicking in my tonsure! And the only way to do it is to get our voices heard right at the pinnacle of the Republic, because I’m quite sure the President is unaware of this witch hunt against me. We’re going to go on hunger strike, until the Minister for Families and Childhood asks these people to go away and leave me alone.’
A few days before this, however, in an editorial in Pioneers Awake!, the Director congratulated the Minister for Families and Childhood on his nomination of new heads of public – and indeed private – establishments for the care of minors who were not just orphans.
The Director painted a rather flattering picture of the new minister, Rex Kazadi:
‘Gifted with the intelligence and wisdom which gained him a place among the most brilliant graduates of the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, Rex Kazadi embodies the awakening of our nation, the new face of a policy which is both rigorous and – more than ever – dedicated to the service of the people. This young man was known in Europe as one of those opposed to our country being taken hostage by the imperialists and their local lackeys. Rex Kazadi had managed to mobilise the majority of our young compatriots, and alert them to the dangers threatening our beloved and beautiful country. We wish him every success in the new role assigned to him by the President of the Republic, as Family and Childhood are the foundation, I should say the very cornerstone, of our society…’
In the rest of his editorial, the Director tried to defend his own house, but his justifications produced the opposite effect, and revealed that he had actually transformed the institution into an orphanage for correction – and protection – which was why terrible children like the twins Songi-Songi and Tala-Tala got sent there.
His speech was less enthusiastic than the one he had made announcing that the Revolution was entering the orphanage. He looked shifty, his voice was hoarse, his gestures were limp.
Even so, he found the strength to shout:
‘Let’s revolt! These northerners turn up here unannounced! What do they think this is, the Court of King Pétaud, all chiefs and no Indians?’
He could sense that this time things were different. He had omitted to point out in his editorial that the government was now inveighing against ‘the bad habits of the Administration’ and had actually created ‘the Ministry for the Struggle against Tribalism and Nepotism at All Levels’.
‘Yes, we must unite as one man…’
Looking across at the female staff he corrected himself…
‘What I meant to say was, let us unite as one man and one woman, but my mouth ran ahead of my thoughts…’
In the face of general indifference, he struck what he guessed would be their most sensitive nerve:
‘Do you understand the gravity of this situation? If I stop being Director of this institution, it will be mayhem, chaos, the end of the world, utter darkness, and you’ll all lose your jobs as well!’
We all wanted to burst out laughing, but we felt sorry for him too. My real feeling was that his time was up, and that the wrath of God, to whom I’d cried out and who had struck fear into the Pharaoh of Egypt, the bête noire of the Hebrews, was on the march. This man here was just an emperor with no clothes, encountering the first obstacle to threaten his career. Instead of putting up a fight he had one knee on the ground and was shamelessly begging for help from us, who’d been less than nothing up till now.
And Bonaventure kept saying:
‘This is serious Moses, really serious! He’ll go to prison. He’ll be in handcuffs, I swear!’
Gone were the days when Dieudonné Ngoulmoumako always managed to be in the right place at the right time, and switch sides in the blink of an eye. A product of the National Civil Service School of Brazzaville, he’d never married and never had children, which would, he believed, have impeded his upward progress. His Bembé descent was a sure string he could pull every time he wanted to secure a post in the administration. In this way he got into the office of the Minister for Public Affairs, also a Bembé, and then was appointed deputy prefect of Mouyondzi, the symbolic hometown of his ethnic group, where he stood in the municipal elections, but was beaten by a candidate parachuted in by the government. This candidate had not run a campaign and wasn’t even a Bembé, but a northerner, who’d been at lycée with the President of the Republic. As consolation, he was appointed prefect of Mabombo, a town in Bouenza, his native region, where, three years later, he ran for deputy. This time too he was beaten by a candidate supported by the government, none other than the daughter of the President of the Republic’s medicine man. The name of this woman only appeared on the electoral lists twenty-four hours before the vote…
Dieudonné Ngoulmoumako decided he needed a job that no one else was likely to want. When, as a consolation prize, he was offered the post of Director of the Loango orphanage, he hesitated briefly.
‘I don’t like children! I haven’t got any, I don’t plan to have any! Why can’t I run the port of Pointe-Noire?’
He was given to understand that the port of Pointe-Noire wasn’t that easy to run. It changed directors almost every year and he’d find himself sitting on an ejector seat. When he was assured that in Loango he’d be able to decide on his own salary, his own staff, and his own budget, and the government would have no say, as the money would come from the wealthy heirs of the kingdom of Loango, Dieudonné Ngoulmoumako finally agreed. And for more than three decades everyone left him alone and he was able to do just as he pleased, until the arrival of the men in suits who kept him awake at night, and seemed to be saying that the end of his reign was nigh.
As soon as the men he referred to as ‘intruders’ turned up, the Director knew that he would be spending hours and hours in their company, answering the same questions a thousand times over. They opened boxes of files and whole colonies of cockroaches marched out, his office was such a dump, smelling permanently of musty tobacco.
He had to account for how we spent our time at school, and in the playground, our activities, whether there was any sexual interference with the children on the part of the staff, how often we were given food, and above all our physical and intellectual progress.
All Dieudonné Ngoulmoumako could reply was:
‘What ridiculous questions! Everything’s normal here! You really must stop imagining orphanages are full of paedophiles! They have that in Europe, not here!’
Without even being asked the question, he volunteered:
‘Smacking a child is standard! That’s how I was raised, and it worked! Let’s not make a dish of pork and plantains out of it!’
Although he managed to make his case, and none of the children questioned actually reported any sexual abuse, he couldn’t stonewall the inspectors when it came to his salary or his staff’s, or the administrative jobs or the financial management. Why, for instance, was the purchase of a clock recorded under ‘Hygiene and upkeep of buildings?’ And how come his salary went up by over fifty per cent each year, while an old hand like Old Koukouba hadn’t had a raise in over seventeen years? What were the reasons for the abrupt dismissal, without compensation, of certain employees like the carpenter, Bounda Na
Gwaka, the stock-keeper, Mayele Nasima, and the cleaning woman, Sabine Niangui, who had all been hired back when the orphanage had been run by a religious community?
‘I’m the Director, I hire and fire who I choose!’
‘And thanks to this discretionary power, you’ve hired six wardens who are direct members of your own family?’ said one of the inspectors, ironically.
‘It was all perfectly legal!’
Dieudonné Ngoulmoumako had tried to insist on his status as supporter and member of the Congolese Workers’ Party, thinking this would earn him immunity. The inspectors reminded him that members of the Party had to set an example and that from now on, until such time as his fate was decided by the Ministry for Family and Childhood – dismissal or relocation to a post in the backwoods – his three nephews, Mfoumbou Ngoulmoumako, Bissoulou Ngoulmoumako and Dongo-Dongo Ngoulmoumako, were relieved of their functions as heads of the department of the Union of Young Congolese Socialists within the orphanage. They became corridor wardens again, like Mpassi, Moutété and Mvoumbi…
We’d been on hunger strike for two days, but the inspectors didn’t show up. We’d had enough, and at night, in the dorm, we binged on supplies stolen from the refectory by the twins. What was the point of going on hunger strike if the President of the Republic didn’t even know about it? On the third day everyone just ate their fill.
A week later, there were still no inspectors, but Dieudonné Ngoulmoumako organised a protest on the first floor, with his nephews. If the inspectors did show up, they would be met with a fine surprise. It was perhaps the only way, he said to himself, to make sure the President of the Republic got to hear what was happening to us.
OLD KOUKOUBA NOW HAD some serious health problems, and was rarely ever seen in the main yard. He had difficulty urinating, and when he did finally manage to squeeze out a few drops, he yelled so loud it was more like someone was slitting the throat of a bull in the staff toilets. A succession of doctors from Pointe-Noire attended him, all bald and wearing the kind of large spectacles you see on people who’ve studied in France, not in the USSR, but none of them managed to cure his urinary infection. They threw in the towel, claimed the caretaker’s illness was linked to his senility and that at seventy-two his goose was well and truly cooked.
Black Moses Page 7