“I’m sorry,” said Robin. “Can you say again?”
“Mr. Kutu claimed three of the soldiers have been killed and, although neither fact can be verified at this point, he maintained his army had consumed the remains.”
“Oh.” Such a crisp British “Oh.” “Is this common?”
“It’s unclear. These so-called ‘Brides of Affonso’ have been rumored to engage in some fairly brutal incidences, including unconfirmed reports of cannibalism. It does seem fairly certain they’ve killed most Caucasians they come upon, as well as any Africans who disobey them.”
“And the captured soldiers? What is their racial makeup?”
“Of the original forty-two soldiers, twenty-nine are from Belgium and thirteen from Nigeria. We don’t know how many of each group survived the landing.”
“Exactly how many Kutu are there?”
“Between ten and twenty thousand. Mr. Kutu’s promise to bring back the ancient glory of the Kingdom of the Kongo, as well as rid it of all Caucasians, is a powerful one in this region. He has been winning many converts and forcibly enlisting more at gunpoint.”
“Any guesses, Julian, as to what the UN’s reaction will be?”
“Their lead negotiators are talking to Mr. Kutu. No one’s making any statements yet. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
“Well, thank you, Julian. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for the remaining soldiers. And now to a report on the homeless in Devon.”
The four women sat there in silence, no one looking at each other. Pip turned down the radio. Somewhere on the meadow outside, a forest buffalo moaned.
“OK, OK. Let me think,” Dubois said, scrubbing back her hair with both hands. “I must go to town and talk with our embassies and the government. Find out the news. The timing is good, no? We need more fuel and food. I take with me Max and Mutara. We leave tomorrow as soon as there is light.”
Mutara nodded, but Max stared down at the table, confused.
“But . . . we don’t have to worry that much, right?” she asked. “The Kutu are still more than a day’s travel from here. They’re busy with the soldiers.”
“We are six kilometers from the Congo, in a famous research station known to be full of whites, in a country that is hated by everyone in the Congo. The Kutu are being crazy now. We need to tell again the government we are here, that the gorillas are here.” The tone of Dubois’ voice suggested she believed she was being comforting. “That way, if the situation goes bad, they rescue us.”
“What about the gorillas?” Max asked.
For a moment there was silence.
“Hey, they survived the last war,” said Yoko in a forced cheerful voice.
“Why do you want me along?” Max asked.
Dubois said, “Because I need help to bring fuel and food up the mountain and your work is not so important.”
“Not so important? The plant I’m searching for could save thousands of—” The tension of the last few days was audible in Max’s voice. “You know my mother always warned me about people who had tendencies toward racism, but you, you’re something more. You’re a . . . ” She searched for the right word and in the end had to coin one, “gorilla-ist.”
For a moment none of them moved.
Then Dubois spoke, surprised. “Oui, I am a gorilla-ist.” She sounded proud as a child.
A noise came from Yoko’s direction. Max flash-glanced to see her pressing her fingers into the bridge of her nose. Her face was clenched, her shoulders hunched.
“You OK?” asked Dubois.
Yoko’s attempts to muffle her laugh sounded a bit as if she were blowing her nose. She waved her hand in front of her face, trying to direct their attention away. “I just . . . I got this image of you in a white hooded sheet.” Laughter can be so close to crying. “Burning giant g’s in the lawns of humans.”
“Pardon?”
Yoko sighed, and as fast as that, the laughter was gone. “Forget it.”
Dubois looked around at all of them. Taking her time. When she spoke again her voice was gentle. “Look, all of us worry. C’est normal. We need a change. I turn on the generator. Tonight, let us put on the lights, talk and think of nice things. It is Christmas after all.”
“Nice things?” asked Yoko.
“I have two bottles of wine I save for my birthday, but now is better. We drink them. Tomorrow we get fuel and life is more easy.”
“What kind of wine?” asked Pip.
“Sancerre.”
“Oh lovely.”
“We can turn on the lights?” said Yoko.
“Yes.”
Yoko inhaled then said, “I’ll get some music.”
And the party was on. With the generator humming again in the background, they turned on every light in the cabin, even the ones in the bathroom when no one was in there. Yoko offered up her last Toblerone bar. They each ate their piece of chocolate with great happiness except for Max, who simply sniffed hers, deep whuffling inhales, her eyes closed, and then she passed it back. Yoko, watching, said she thought Max had enjoyed her sniffs more than any of them had enjoyed the actual eating.
They played music—Etta James, the Gipsy Kings, and Midnight Oil. Mutara, surprisingly, turned out to know all the words to “Bem Bem Maria.” The volume of the music drowned out the noise of the animal calls outside.
Sometime around 11 P.M., the generator coughed once, then worked for three more minutes. It coughed again and died. The music went, the lights clicked off. They stumbled around in the dark room until they found their flashlights, bid each other goodnight and walked back to their own cabins to sleep. Although the party had seemed a good idea, now the silence and darkness seemed much deeper than before.
It was certainly easier going down the mountains than climbing up. Max strode quickly, moving with what was for her a fair amount of agility. Dubois and Mutara followed behind. She wanted to get to town to hear the news firsthand. She wanted to be further from the Congo for a few hours.
As she descended, the air got thicker. The increasing amount of oxygen filled her veins, making her feel strong as a superhero and a little giddy. After a while she was nearly running. The vegetation around her changed with the decreasing altitude: the trees getting taller, the variety of plants increasing, the bamboo stands becoming thicker. Down here, she noticed more of the plants that the gorillas preferred to eat: Vernonia, Galium, wild celery, and blackberries. This altitude was probably the gorillas’ natural habitat, but now it was too close to humans.
After an hour, she turned a corner and came upon the lot where the research station’s van was parked. The asphalt took her by surprise. After over two weeks in the jungle, the perfect flatness of its surface looked unnatural, the lack of vegetation bizarre. Stepping out from under the trees, she felt exposed. Her eyes blinked in the sun. She had assumed near civilization she would feel safer.
Two steps onto the pavement she spotted a parked jeep with a three-foot-long gun mounted where its back seats should be. She backed up quickly into the jungle. Only once she was behind a bush did she stop and examine the jeep as well as search the surroundings for its owners. The rifle gleamed, large and metal, some sort of submachine gun.
There were no soldiers in sight, only two Rwandan women and their children squatting on their heels on the far side of the parking lot, bags of food and clothing stacked up all around. The women and children stared straight at her. From the fact that they didn’t call out any greeting, it was clear even the children recognized her as a foreigner. Her lighter skin, her fancy knapsack, her gray athletic clothing.
Dubois and Mutara stepped off the trail onto the tarmac beside her to stop dead at the sight of the jeep. Dubois muttered, “Pourquoi êtes-vous ici?”
Mutara called over in Kinyarwanda to the women squatting on the embankment. They responded, their language filled with consonants in unexpected places. Meanwhile Dubois walked around the jeep, keeping a few feet back as though it might jump at her if she got too close.
Glancing again at the Rwandan women, Max wondered why it was she’d never understood her dad’s genetics were not purely African. In Maine, his skin had always appeared so very dark.
After a few minutes of talking with Mutara, one of the women eased her hand into a baby-sling wrapped around her chest. She adjusted the baby inside, then she and the others began to get to their feet, gathering the bags.
Mutara turned back to Dubois and Max. “These are women from up the road. They think it is good we move our van. The soldiers who were here before say the army will take over the parking lot later today.”
“Because of the Kutu?” Dubois asked.
“This is what they say.”
With the women standing now, it was possible to see that both of them had several chickens hanging down their backs. The chickens were alive and surprisingly calm, dangling by their feet from a rope, wings slack. They snaked their heads from side to the side, their lizard eyes blinking.
Mutara called goodbye to the women, then said, “They leave the area. One of their sisters lives fifteen kilometers from here. They think with God’s will, after things quiet down, they get their home back.”
“Aren’t they overreacting?” Max asked.
Dubois shrugged. “Radio Sidewalk. Who knows what they hear?”
Silently, they watched the family walk away, down the road, away from the border, all of them barefoot. The chickens swayed back and forth, limp and clucking. A three-year-old lagged after the rest of her family, dragging a rope bag full of potatoes. Her wails were heard long after they rounded the corner in the road.
Driving in the van down into town, Dubois, Mutara, and Max were silent. Twice they saw an army jeep rush by, filled with men and weapons. Both times, they turned to watch the other vehicle as it drove up the road.
On the outskirts of town, Dubois pulled the van over in front of a large white church. “OK, both of you get out. I drive to the town hall to talk to the officials. I use the phone. Try to hear the news.” She paused while another army jeep roared by. “Here is some cash. You and Mutara find food that is fresh, candles and lots of fuel. Buy all you can. Do not approach the soldiers, no? Meet me in front of this church at noon.”
She drove off in the van, the rattle of its broken muffler audible for a long time.
Max looked around at the buildings, the sharp angles and flat surfaces so alien from the jungle. The part of her mind that constantly monitored proximity began to tighten up again, even now, with no humans visible other than Mutara. Following him down the street, she noticed the town seemed strangely deserted, of both people and vehicles. After a few minutes, two cars drove past them and squealed off around the corner, both full of soldiers. The first car was an aging Volkswagen with its front bumper held on with rope and the second was a Citroën hand-painted a Day-Glo orange. The Citroën’s missing headlight had been replaced by a lamp glued onto the hood (a porcelain woman proudly thrusting her bare light bulb aloft). The soldiers inside were packed together. They sat on each other’s laps, rifles up, faces set, looking even more dangerous somehow in this undignified condition.
She repeatedly flash-glanced at Mutara for how to respond to all of this. At first, he seemed bewildered. He kept searching up and down the street as though expecting hidden townfolk to come running out at any moment, laughing at their elaborate joke. After a few minutes his reaction began to shift. He started walking faster. When a goat bolted out of an alley next to them, he jerked back. Max felt increasingly uneasy.
After fifteen minutes of searching, Mutara and Max found only one person, an old man carrying something small in a bag that squirmed and cried—it didn’t sound like a chicken. Mutara questioned him. The old man’s replies were terse and he never stopped walking. From the tone of Mutara’s voice as he asked follow-up questions, Max didn’t think he liked the information he was getting. She eyed the wiggling bag. The old man disappeared around the corner, calling some answer over his shoulder. Mutara scanned the street for more people. Then he announced he and Max should split up.
“You search for food,” he said. “You find a market, you point at what you want and pull out money. People understand. I find friends, learn what is happening and get fuel. We need to go fast-fast. We meet at the church. OK?”
She didn’t like this, but figured he knew how to manage this situation better than she did. He handed her some of Dubois’s money and jogged away around a corner. Wandering on alone, she continued to find street after street deserted. She looked behind her frequently. Finally she turned down a wider boulevard and found a small crowd bargaining over a few fruits and cans displayed on blankets on the ground. She walked over, for once happy to be among humans. They glanced at her, but seemed too intent on their own business to be very curious. She pointed to some mangos and pulled out a single bill. The money was a bright red color and said 1000. It caught the eye of the woman selling the fruit. Max made a scooping motion as though to take all the mangos, then held out the bill. The woman snorted through her nose. She pointed to the money, held up three fingers, then pointed to a single mango. Max didn’t know the exchange rate or how much the day’s emergency might have driven up the prices. She didn’t know if the woman might be trying to hoodwink a foreigner. She remembered that moment with Rafiki, holding the benutis plant against her chin. She trusted that communication more.
In the end, Max managed to buy five pounds of mangoes and twenty cans of something she hoped was edible because on the label was a picture of what looked like soup steaming in a bowl. Even though this wasn’t half as much food as the station needed, it was most of the food in the market and she was inordinately proud at having completed the transaction. She packed the cans awkwardly away in her knapsack and the seller handed her the mangoes in two tired-looking plastic Home Depot bags. How, Max wondered, had these bags ended up in Rwanda?
After this, she headed back toward the church. Everywhere, the streets were empty. Turning a corner she came upon a pack of wild dogs quartering the ground, sniffing for scraps. Their hides were laced with old scars, their stride effortless and feral. They came to a halt at the sight of her, heads cocked, considering the possibilities. Her right hand holding the bags, she eased her left arm out of its sling to pick up a nearby stick. She hadn’t tried to use her arm since Titus had caught her in the tree. Her shoulder still looked all wrong—pudgy and reddened—no longer clearly identifiable as a shoulder. She felt pity for it as though for some broken machinery.
In forcing her fingers to tighten around the stick, the pain didn’t bother her as much as the fact that her mouth began to salivate. There was a chance she would vomit. Her throat worked up and down, fighting the need. Slowly she eased forward, moving past the dogs. Their heads turned to track her. The only sound was the rustling of her plastic bags and their panting. She held the stick up in a way she hoped looked determined. Some decision passed through them. They turned as one, like a school of fish, and arced away down an alley.
After they were gone, she put the stick and the bags down and, using her other hand, eased her arm gently back into its sling.
Everywhere were signs that people had recently been here. Clothes flapped on laundry lines above the street. A bucket lay tipped over, the earth beneath it damp. By this point, she glanced down each street before crossing it—searching for townspeople, dogs, or Kutu, she wasn’t sure. In a doorway, she noticed a child’s toy, a foot-long racing car ingeniously modeled from a single long piece of copper wire, the number 52 traced on the hood, the metal tires made from beer cans. Clearly a labor of love, it lay on its side, abandoned.
Staring at this toy, she understood how far she’d traveled from any situation she had experience with. Glancing all around, she began to stride fast in the direction of the meeting spot.
As she turned a corner, she came upon Mutara stepping out of a door.
He flinched at her arrival, his motions stiff. He didn’t say a word. It seemed likely he’d heard some news about w
hy most of the townspeople were gone. Standing alone on this empty street, his hands limp at his side, he looked younger than before, perhaps only early twenties. Maybe he normally seemed older because of his serious voice and the confidence he showed in the jungle. During the genocide he must have been just a child.
Searching for some way to break the stillness, she held out her Home Depot bags. Worried he might bolt at any loud noise, she whispered. “Hey, look what I got.”
She could feel his eyes on her. He stared for a long moment at this American holding up mangoes for appreciation on a dirt street from which all the residents had fled.
“Christ,” he murmured. He looked up and down the street. “Maybe the féticheuse helps you.” He jerked into action, leading the way, his steps a little uneven. Perhaps his awkward walk came from the shock of whatever he’d learned or maybe he’d taken a drink to bolster his nerve.
He turned down an alleyway no wider than his shoulders. Following, Max had to twist sideways to squeeze past some stacked jerricans.
She asked, “What’s a féticheuse?”
Mutara struggled for a translation. “She has much power, might help keep you safe. Come, fast fast. We don’t meet Dubois for twenty minutes. It is better you are off the street.”
The door consisted of a gray plastic tarp hung across an entrance. It crinkled noisily as Mutara pushed it out of the way. Inside, the room was dark, no windows, no lights. Blinking, she halted. Something dripped; there was the smell of rotting meat and, behind that, the musk of drying plants. By scent she recognized tobacco leaves, mint, datura, and what she thought might be belladonna. She sucked in these smells. At least here was something she understood.
In the muted light of the tarp, a yellow ruffled dress rustled toward them, the only thing gleaming in the room. For one terrifying moment she thought “Kutu,” then saw instead this was an old woman, canted to one side by age.
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