The Catastrophist: A Novel

by Ronan Bennett

  And so I leave her to sleep and say nothing.

  I am writing at the table one afternoon when she calls to me.

  “Do you want something?” I ask from the door.

  She looks low.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  My hopes are up. There is never a chance of anything between us when she is happy, distracted by her commitments. In her sadness there are openings.

  “I don’t know,” she says wearily.

  She looks a little better. Her eyes at least are clear, though her face is still drawn.

  “Come here,” she says.

  “Do you want me to read to you?” I say, sitting on the bed.

  “No,” she says. “Are you working?”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t want to interfere with your work.”

  “What’s work, Inès? You have interfered with my life.”

  She reaches up and kisses me.

  With my hand, with my right hand, I stroke her. She whispers for me to get undressed. I hang my head, feeling nervous and uncertain. We have not made love for many weeks. Our last attempt was not a success.

  “Come on,” she says gently.

  I do as she says and open the sheet. The bed is an envelope of her smell. She has never been fastidious, there is no rule about showering every day. I lie beside her and press my nose into the sourness of her armpit. I breathe in deeply and kiss the side of her breast. She says nice things to me, that I am patient, not just in bed, that I am a good man, that I am kind. It is true, I suppose, I can sometimes be kind. I would put it no higher than that. But at this moment I do not want to contest her judgments; I want to feel well about myself.

  “Tell me more,” I whisper.

  Instead of speaking she gently pushes me onto my back.

  “Are you sure you’re strong enough?” I say.

  “I am very strong.”

  She reaches down to take hold of me. We both smile. This is one of our shared sexual jokes. Once—soon after we became lovers—I had guided her hand to my cock. She hesitated and I was surprised because in everything else she had been abandoned, and I felt a little humiliated, as though chastised for something unseemly, for greed or perversion. But she had explained, “I am no good at this, I have never known how to do it right.” In my lover’s joyful egoism I said I would teach her. But I never did: patterns formed, self-consciousness settled, the moment never arrived again.

  I do not at once collude in what she is doing, I do not relax—out of fear she will lose confidence, that she will think it is taking too long. But she continues, she goes on. Then I close my eyes and give myself up to it. I caress her back, I lower my hand to her cheeks and cup her and squeeze her. I give her small signals that it’s working, a clinch of my hand, a flaw in my breath. She kisses me and I respond.

  “I want to be inside you,” I tell her.

  She shakes her head. “I want to do this for you.”

  She licks my teeth and lips and moves her mouth to my chest. She licks my nipples, bites them, flicks them with her free hand. I say her name over and over and say don’t stop, don’t stop and when she makes me come I feel momentarily embarrassed, a weakness exposed. But she does not make the false cooing noises of mistimed or unsatisfying sex. I see that she is excited by what she has done—even that it has made her love me again, and I feel suddenly whole and happy and confident.

  She lies quiet, her hand running across my shoulder. After a while she begins to press herself against my thigh. She moves up to the bone and, reaching across my stomach, pulls us closer. I feel the prickle of the hair between her legs, a burn on the smooth skin of my hip and waist. I feel wetness and heat. How I love it that she comes so easily.

  I can feel her breath on my stomach. We lie in silence until she tells me she loves me.

  “Where is this going?” I say.

  “You are . . . I cannot think of the word in English. In Italian it would be catastrofista—a catastrophist. Is there this word?”

  “I’ve only ever heard it used in a geological sense.”

  “As usual! English is always so poor. The meaning of this word is much bigger. If you are catastrofista no problem is small. Nothing can be fixed; it is always the end. Do you recognize this person?”

  “A little.”

  “Me too.”

  “But if the problem is big,” I say, “if it can’t be fixed, the only thing to do is leave it behind.”

  “You are catastrofista,” she says, putting a hand to my cheek, “but I don’t care.”

  She sits up. I regard her from behind. Her vertebrae are clearly visible, there is a slight curvature from left to right. Her little bottom sinks into the mattress and looks as though squashed, pressed.

  “I am depressed,” she says.

  “Depressed?”

  “It’s this stupid thing,” she says, reaching down to the floor. She comes up with a newspaper. “Here,” she says, presenting me with this morning’s edition of Indépendance. She taps the page. “It is the Loi Fondamentale.”

  “You’re depressed about this?”

  La Loi Fondamentale, the sixteen resolutions passed unanimously by the Brussels conference, will form the basis of the post-independence constitution and the future Congolese government. They were agreed with pronouncements of high sentiment, amity and idealism—the kind that typically are made at the end of long and bitter conflicts when those charged with finding a settlement find first and most praise for their own statesmanship, far-sightedness and generosity. I saw a newspaper photograph of Lumumba shaking hands with Eyskens, the Belgian prime minister, just after the Brussels meeting broke up. Inès thought he looked handsome and dignified; I saw the child in the schoolyard who had at last been allowed to play with the big boys. At the time, La Loi Fondamentale was hailed as the beginning of a new era.

  “No, not depressed, just . . .”—she trails off and shrugs—“sad, I suppose, that Patrice agreed to these things.”

  Oh, talk about us, please, not the politics of this absurd place, anything but that. What is wrong with us cannot be recomposed so easily, so quickly. It will take more than an afternoon in bed. Talk about us, Inès, and what the future will be.

  She talks instead about Patrice. He is too trusting of the Belgians, apparently. Like the other delegates he was thrilled to be in Brussels. He thought he was being treated as an equal, meeting ministers, meeting the king; all the misunderstandings of the past had been cleared up. He and the others were so proud of having won independence, they didn’t think about the details—and the details, she insists, are very bad.

  “Are they?” I ask without enthusiasm.

  “The economic and financial details are terrible. Patrice thinks he will win the elections and probably he will, but he will still not have power because the bankers, the businessmen and the mining corporations, they will control the economy. The Belgians are being nice to him now, but does he really think the Union Minière in Katanga and the Société Général will be partners with him in the new Congo, that they will agree to use their wealth for the people?”

  “Does he?”

  She still doesn’t hear the void in my voice.

  “Probably,” she continues. “I will have to talk to him. I can explain to him where he has gone wrong.”

  “I’m sure he’ll appreciate that.”

  “Yes.”

  She starts to slip down in the bed, overtaken by tiredness. I kiss her gently on the lips. She raises a hand. I clasp it.

  “I am so ’appy,” she whispers.

  “Me too.”

  She embraces me, pulling me down to the pillows, and with the last of her energy kisses me noisily and playfully—the Italian girl again.

  “Don’t stay up too late tonight,” she says.

  “I won’t.”

  “Good. I want you to do to me what I did to you.”

  Hold up the moon. Who needs daylight? Wrists fast in my grip, ankles at my shoulders. Hold m
e, don’t let me breathe! She is almost doubled, her eyes are screwed shut. There are flinches in her when I push. I pause to pray, to count, to remember.

  I want to find a story to tell her. But she knows me. I cannot move her with tales of my past in which I appear well or wounded. There is nothing new I have for her, no secrets with which to fascinate her now. But tonight it doesn’t matter. Tonight I am enough.

  c h a p t e r s e v e n t e e n

  I have come with Stipe to Mungul’s house to see Lumumba. Stipe knew it would be a long wait and he wanted the company. We sit with Auguste on a rough bench in the courtyard. Moths wheel round the hurricane lamp, fireflies blink in the dark corners, and the air smells acrid, of batshit and sewage. A dozen or so young men—guards, officials, cousins, brothers, hangers-on—loll pointlessly around, the usual MNC coterie. No one ever seems to have anything specific to do, no one ever seems to know anything. They can’t say whether Lumumba is expected or not, or even if he’s here already.

  So we wait. Recently, Stipe’s air of imperturbable good humor has given way to something more withdrawn. These days his friend Patrice is getting harder to pin down. He hasn’t been returning calls, he’s been missing appointments. The election campaign is in full swing, there’s always an excuse, but Stipe doesn’t like it. Lumumba’s elusiveness has coincided with a souring of the political atmosphere. For some weeks after the Brussels announcement Patrice seemed to be cooperating with the Belgians, and they, dropping their old favorite Kasavubu, noisily promoted him as the new Good African. Then, for reasons no one is quite sure of, the insults began. The colons started calling him nothing better than another Hitler; Lumumba was a Bad African after all, no better than the communist Gizenga with whom he was now cavorting. Kasavubu was discovered to be a Good African after all.

  In the glow of the lamp Stipe turns to Auguste and speaks in a low voice, a mixture of Lingala, English and French. It is always touching to watch them together, even more so by this soft light. Their intimacy is that of brothers, or better—if the thought weren’t so comical—sisters. They huddle, they conspire, they read each other’s whims and intentions, and laugh together at things outsiders don’t think funny. Whatever Inès might think of him, whatever Stipe is doing in Léopoldville, with Auguste at least he is a good man. And a different man. Auguste brings out in him something lighter, younger, carefree. He teases him in a way I could not contemplate, about his lack of height and hair, about his drinking, about his pronunciation of African names. Stipe chuckles at all of it. It is more than simple good-natured patience at being ribbed, more than not wanting to appear defensive. He enjoys it, savors it. Auguste takes him out of himself in a way I cannot.

  And in return Stipe is a good friend. De Scheut and I accompanied him the night he went to the police station in Avenue Lippers to demand Auguste’s release after the demonstration. He argued and threatened until the jailers produced their prisoner. Auguste was tame and fearful, and Stipe looked him over in angry silence, taking in each cut and bruise as if they were injuries to himself. His broad face filled up with red, his lips paled and pursed. A Flemish gendarme unchained Auguste and pushed him forward and for a moment I was sure Stipe was going to explode. I put a restraining hand on his arm but he shook me curtly off. Somehow he mastered his rage and went instead to embrace Auguste and tell him he was safe now and always would be. I left them outside the station to go back to Inès, but de Scheut told me later that Stipe had driven Auguste to his own apartment where he bathed him and cleaned up his wounds. Then he took him to the Zoo, seated him ostentatiously, glared at the Belgians and ordered the most expensive champagne in the house. Auguste has told me that Stipe gives money to his family, that he paid for medical treatment for his grandmother, that he is putting one of his brothers through school.

  Stipe is a loud and a quiet man.

  And yet something is changing between them. I can see it even now as the bats flit in their crazed paths around Mungul’s house and the bored young men whisper and snigger. Inès has had a hand in it and though Stipe has said nothing to me, I know he is not at all pleased with her intervention.

  I first noticed that something was going on when we went to an MNC congress in Léopoldville, one of a series staged throughout the country as the elections neared. The event had culminated in a torch-lit rally in Matongé football stadium. Sweat glistened on every face, spirits were high and the booming chorus of Depanda! filled the night. Lumumba had given the most effective speech I had heard him deliver. I had heard many by then, for I had gone for the Observer to rallies at Luluabourg, Coquilhatville, Ininongo and Stanleyville. Until that night in Matongé I had thought of Lumumba as a kind of conjurer; I knew there was magic but I knew there was trickery behind it. This performance, however, was special. It had the hairs on the back of my neck bristling, it raised goose bumps on my arms. There were moments when I found myself being swept along in the emotional waves he sent crashing over us. I had to force myself to pull back, to stop, to think, to listen to the words—the habitual words of the politician, all the usual grievances, exaggerations, platitudes, generalizations and promises. I had to fight, to make an effort of will in order to hold on to myself.

  I bumped into de Scheut and his children. They had not held on but had been swept along; de Scheut was brimming with sentiment. People were decent, the world was good—and would soon be better. He always sees the best in everyone.

  The children, Julie and Cristophe, greeted me a little shyly but with none of the tormented awkwardness of some youngsters.

  “Wonderful speech,” de Scheut said, “wonderful, wasn’t it? This really is a momentous time—the first chance people in this divided land have had to find a way to live together in equality and peace, our first chance to compromise.”

  “Do you think Lumumba is interested in compromise?”

  “Oh, yes, undoubtedly. Don’t listen to people who say Patrice is a communist and an extremist—and he’s not a racist either. He genuinely wants the whites to be part of the new Congo. He’s a fine and honorable man.”

  “Patrice used to come to our house,” Julie said shyly.

  “And what did you think of him?” I asked.

  “He’s very nice,” she replied, tightening her hold on her father’s arm as the departing crowd swayed this way and that.

  “We played football with him,” Cristophe put in. “He’s very good at football.”

  De Scheut smiled at his son. The boy’s skin was clear and his fair hair was neatly combed across his head. He had sloping little ears.

  “It’s going to take a lot of effort and goodwill,” de Scheut said, “but we can make it work if we put our minds to it.”

  He said Inès and I must come for dinner soon. He said good night and put his arms across the shoulders of his children and I watched him navigate their way through the streaming crowd, an old, good father with a beautiful child on either arm. On the morning Inès told me that she wanted to have a baby—crude as this sounds (and it was deeply confusing to me)—my reactions were centered in my cock: I experienced an erection so strong, so instant it was painful. When I moved, I felt the wetness on my thigh. Inès discovered my arousal—she was always highly attuned to my sexual state. She laughed and said it was appropriate, in a biological sense.

  If there had been a child, the possibility of children . . . ?

  Stipe and I found Inès talking to Auguste. There was something collusive about their manner, something excluding, which Stipe and I had different reasons for disliking. Inès gave me a particularly hard look—a rebuke for being with Stipe. Auguste was wearing glasses with heavy black frames of the kind Lumumba favors. I had not known he wore glasses and commented on them and said he looked well. He beamed at my compliment.

  Stipe did not waste time on pleasantries. He long ago gave up trying to get through to Inès.

  He said, “Come on, Auguste. Let’s get the car.”

  And then there was something extraordinary. Auguste, standi
ng next to Inès, hesitated. He stood there and he looked at his employer, his friend, his mentor, his master, his provider—but he did not move. It was the first time I had witnessed anything like this between them. In that moment I recalled something Stipe had said to me one afternoon over drinks in the Colibri.

  “Are you familiar with the concept of neoteny?” he had asked.

  “It’s a zoological term.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “It’s about stunted growth, you might say, psychologically and emotionally speaking. The dog is neotenic in that over thousands of years we have bred it from a wild pack animal into something more at home in your yard. We’ve done it by encouraging the retention of the juvenile characteristics of submission and subservience in the adult. That’s why your mutt licks your hand instead of tearing it off the way its wolf ancestor would.”

  “Science is always good for metaphors,” I’d said, “though they can sometimes be a little obvious.”

  “Yeah, but no less true for that,” he’d replied.

  In Matongé stadium, in front of the hesitating Auguste, I wondered if Stipe was thinking about neoteny. No amount of intimacy could disguise the obvious bias in their relationship. Stipe seemed to be the only one who couldn’t see it. He looked at his driver and worked through the implications. I knew he was thinking Inès was behind this little rebellion and I felt awkward about it.

  “Are you coming, Auguste?” Stipe said slowly.

  The words were filled with meaning, and also with emotion. This was not simply the insubordination of an employee, but the betrayal of a friend. Stipe’s cold fury concealed a deep hurt.

  Inès’s face was set, she was ready for combat. But the fight was not to be that night. I think Auguste may have seen the anguish behind Stipe’s eyes, even if Inès did not. He smiled suddenly—his special huge smile of deference and nonaggression. He was not yet ready to bite, but I knew then he was tired of licking hands.