The Catastrophist: A Novel

by Ronan Bennett

  “Doesn’t look so bad,” he says nonchalantly. “Have another drink and I’ll take you to a doctor.”

  I feel surprisingly calm. Not even the wound alarms me. I feel pleased with myself. I have my story, I have my fat. I have the kind of authenticity which experience like this confers. I feel quite the intrepid reporter.

  When Stipe returns with the whiskies I tease him. “You must be pleased with the way things are going. Mobutu’s good for the Americans.”

  “Good for the Congo,” he replies with a wink.

  “How much longer do you think Mobutu can keep Lumumba under house arrest?”

  “Not much longer. He needs to find a permanent solution to the Lumumba problem.”

  “The colonel was telling me something along the same lines before he got his head blown off,” I say. “What would this permanent solution be?”

  “Gizenga’s in Stanleyville but he doesn’t have Patrice’s following or charisma. Without Lumumba, the revolt in Orientale will fizzle out. But if Patrice gets to join him there it would tear the country in two. It would be full-scale civil war.”

  “What would happen to Lumumba if Mobutu could get at him?”

  After Lumumba was placed under house arrest, the U.N. put a cordon of troops around the Primature—the prime minister’s residence in Gombé—very close to my own house—to protect him. Mobutu suspected that the U.N. might allow Lumumba to escape, so he placed an ANC cordon around the U.N. one.

  Stipe says simply, “If Mobutu’s men got through the U.N. cordon, I don’t think we’d ever see Patrice Lumumba again. And to be frank, it would be no loss to anyone.”

  Stipe has never admitted, even to me, the extent of his involvement with Mobutu’s coup. But it doesn’t take much imagination to work it out. On September 10th, Mobutu, the ANC chief-of-staff appointed by Lumumba himself, held a pay parade at Camp Léopold, personally handing out the soldiers’ overdue wages. Lumumba’s government was bankrupt—the Belgians had made sure of that—and the soldiers’ indiscipline was largely due to the arrears in their pay. Where had the money to buy the army’s loyalty come from? No one could say for certain, but Stipe’s presence at Camp Léopold raised suspicions.

  Four days later I was with Grant and Roger in the Regina when Mobutu walked in and announced that the army had taken power. Lumumba’s tenure as prime minister had lasted less than three months. We dashed for the phones and telex offices. Later that night I went to look for Stipe and found him at the Zoo having dinner with his ambassador, Timberlake. They were in good and generous spirits and invited me to join them. Timberlake, whom I had not met before, struck me as a crude man, a Cold War warrior of the most extreme type. He seemed too loud to be a diplomat. Perhaps he was being open with me because he knew of my friendship with Stipe, or perhaps it was simply because he had been cheered by the events of the evening. He was openly celebrating the coup. Kasavubu had been hopeless, he said, impossible to spur on to action. Mobutu was altogether different. He was tough, efficient, capable, dependable, honest and not anti-West, unlike—and this is how he referred to the deposed prime minister throughout our meeting—the awful Lumumbavitch. Lumumbavitch was commie through and through. When I suggested that he was more of a pan-African nationalist than a communist, Timberlake dismissed the distinction as meaningless. Lumumbavitch, if not an actual commie, was playing the commie game. He had called on the Soviet Union and China to send military aid. He had accepted a flight of Ilyushin jets. He had accepted eighty Zim lorries for his troops fighting in the Kasai, he had taken the communist Gizenga into his cabinet . . .

  We were joined by another American, a ruddy-faced little man with thinning fair hair and pale blue eyes to whom Timberlake referred as Dr. Joe from Paris. I had not seen Dr. Joe before. He did not seem to me to have much of the general practitioner’s or surgeon’s manner. If he had ever been a doctor—which I was inclined to doubt—I imagine he was struck off early in his career for something unsavory. When I asked how long he’d been in Leo he gave me a vague reply, and he was evasive about every other direct question I put to him, no matter how mundane. I got the impression Stipe was not pleased about my running into Dr. Joe, an impression confirmed some minutes later when he made a transparent excuse to take the doctor off. In their absence Timberlake rambled on. Lumumbavitch’s allies and supporters, even the lowliest clerk with Lumumbavitch sympathies, would now be rounded up and thrown in jail. Too bad Gizenga had already escaped to Stanleyville, but they would get the others: Okito, Mulele, Mpolo, Smail, and—this took me by surprise—Auguste.

  I went to see Stipe the next morning to tackle him about the list of wanted Lumumbists. When talking about Okito, Mulele and the others, even when talking about Lumumba himself, Stipe’s tone was neutral, but something hard and personal crept into his voice when he came to Auguste. According to Stipe, Auguste had spent a month in Czechoslovakia for cadre training and had recently risen to become chairman of the Jeunesse MNC, which he described as the terrorist wing of Lumumba’s party. I was skeptical, but Stipe assured me it was all true. Then he asked a question that alarmed me.

  “Have you seen Inès lately?”

  “No. Not since independence day.”

  “I know things between you are difficult, but if you see her, you should try to persuade her to get out as soon as she can.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “She should get out while she can,” he said with a shrug, and though I pressed him he would say no more on the subject.

  Then, as we were parting, he told me that Auguste and Inès were lovers.

  Yes, the Congo has been good for a laugh. I did not feel very much when Stipe broke the news. In fact I remember laughing in Stipe’s face. Not because I didn’t believe it to be true. I could see it all too clearly, in fact I had already suspected it. I knew the kind of man who excited Inès’s interest. I had seen the little signs when Inès and I still lived together. But—out of deference to Inès, and partly for fear of being thought patronizing or churlish or, worse, jealous—I had never expressed my real opinion of Auguste. The truth was I had always seen him as a clown. The quoter of Erasmus, the lover of Socrates, Plato and John Stuart Mill, the member of the Association of the African Middle Classes and wearer of false spectacles and gaudy shirts. The man who was going to have a lawyer’s office on Park Avenue with half a dozen pretty secretaries. How do you take a man like that seriously? How do you take a man like that as a lover? But Inès would. She would see in him other things. She would see in him suffering and struggle, heroism and resistance and self-sacrifice.

  Was I jealous of this absurd man?

  No.

  Not remotely.

  I was madly jealous—insanely, self-pityingly, violently so. The night Stipe gave me the news I went to Houthhoofd’s house on Eugene Henry for one of my trysts with Madeleine. Madeleine had not fled, and she was contemptuous of those who had. She is a woman of aggressive instincts and these instincts she takes with her to the bedroom. Sex with her is never gentle. There have been times when I demurred but she always egged me on. “I want it like this,” she would say to put my mind at ease, and she would whisper, “hurt me.” She knew me. She knew me well. She sensed the hatred massing in me that night. She did not complain. And when it was over she smiled knowingly, triumphantly, as if at last I had entered a dark place into which she had been trying to tempt me for a long time.

  While she showered I lay on Houthhoofd’s bed, thinking of Inès, thinking of Auguste. I knew what would happen to Auguste if Mobutu’s men captured him or if Stipe found him. I had seen the results of their handiwork. During the fighting at Bakwanga, Baluba soldiers had sought revenge in the capital for the atrocities committed on their tribe by Lumumba’s troops. One morning I came across a knot of people by the golf course. A Ghanaian officer with the U.N. forces, one of General Alexander’s men, approached the small crowd. The men stood aside to reveal the body of a sleek young man lying face up on the street. I recognized the vict
im, had been on nodding terms with him. His name was Justin and he had been a low-level official in the MNC, an ardent supporter of the prime minister and a friend of Auguste’s. Now he was dead—hacked and slashed and torn. I stopped for a closer look. The Ghanaian officer, squatting to inspect the corpse, flicked away a half-finished cigarette; it landed in the dark oil of blood by Justin’s right leg. The bystanders spoke in loud voices, the officer wiped sweat from his eyes. The flies buzzed. The ash of the discarded cigarette glowed briefly in the pool of sticky crimson, then began its careless disintegration. I knew what would happen to Auguste.

  I got off the bed and went into the shower. Madeleine looked at me in surprise. She glanced down at my cock and smiled. “So soon?” she said, amused. Without another word, she slowly turned her back on me and spread her palms against the white tiles to steady herself. As I fucked her I saw Auguste’s face where Justin’s was. I saw him dead, mutilated, bleeding. I started to say, “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.” I went on and on. I was shouting at Auguste, I was shouting at Inès. Madeleine was groaning. She was bent fully over, squashed into a corner, contorted, pressed against the tiles, the water running off her back and broad, strong shoulders. There were little juddering, rippling movements in the flesh of her backside as I rammed against her. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.

  Will somebody please take me away from this? From where I am now. From what I am doing. From all this hate. From myself. Please.

  “Come on,” Stipe says, finishing his drink, “let’s get you to a doctor.”

  I suggest he take me to Roger’s.

  “Have you heard anything of Auguste?” I ask.

  “He’s still hiding in the city somewhere,” he replies.

  “Do you think they’ll find him?”

  “They’ll find him,” he declares flatly. “It’s only a matter of time.”

  Though I make no comment on his answer, he knows it holds satisfactions for me. I am partly ashamed by my response. Partly.

  c h a p t e r t w o

  Roger offers Stipe a drink. He downs it quickly, then says he should get back to the embassy.

  “You know,” I begin sheepishly, “I don’t like melodrama any more than you, but you probably saved my life.”

  He makes modest disclaimers but I can see he is pleased by my recognition of what he has done for me. He pats me on the shoulder and says he’ll call tomorrow.

  Roger carefully removes my broken and bloodstained shoe and cuts away the sticky sock.

  “It’s a graze and there’s some bruising, but it’s not serious. I’m afraid your shoe’s a write-off, though,” he says in a voice that betrays the merest hint of disappointment; I suppose like all professionals Roger likes the occasional challenge. He points to my foot.

  “You can see here the line of the bullet along the instep. I’ll clean it up for you and you’ll soon be right as rain.”

  He gets to work and I ask how much longer he thinks he’ll stay on. Though he’s threatened to go many times before, Roger never seems able to bring himself to leave.

  “Oh, someone has to look after things,” he says quietly. “One never likes to speak ill of one’s colleagues, but the Belgian doctors have been rather irresponsible, you know. Packed up and left like everybody else. Thought nothing of the patients. The whole health care system’s in a frightful mess.”

  Roger is a kind and honorable man. Every time I see him I feel embarrassed about my dismissive appraisal when we first met in Houthhoofd’s garden. And though we have become friends of a sort I regret that we will never be closer, never know each other better. We share a drink every now and then—a meal would over-burden the slim frame of our connection—but even in our cups we never really talk. He is one of those reserved Englishmen whom it is easy to like and impossible to know.

  “Things are turning terribly nasty,” he says, swabbing my pathetic little wound. “The atmosphere is not good at all.”

  “Lumumba made sure of that on independence day,” I say.

  “I don’t think it’s fair to lay all the blame on Lumumba,” he says gently enough but with a conviction that surprises me, for he has never given any indication of his political views; I always took him to be one of those men for whom what he did in the polling booth was as private as what he did in the bedroom, and not a proper subject for civilized conversation. What politics he had I had always assumed to be conservative; I suspect he thinks Macmillan a good egg.

  “Lumumba’s speech on independence day may have been a little intemperate,” he continues, “but understandable in the circumstances. What was King Baudouin thinking of trying to tell the Congolese that Léopold had established the colony by treaties and peaceful methods! Rather a load of twaddle, frankly. Gave the natives a few bits of cloth and a crateload of gin in return for their land. The chiefs had no idea what they were agreeing to. In some cases they weren’t given the chance to say no. Did anyone ever tell you what happened to the Bayeke?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “The chief of the Bayeke was a man called M’Siri. Terrible despot. Lived in a mud and thatch palace surrounded with skulls on sticks. The Belgians wanted a treaty because the Bayeke land had all sorts of minerals. M’Siri wouldn’t give them one so they shot him on the spot. Then they asked M’Siri’s eldest son if he wanted a treaty. It turned out he did, lucky for him. The treaty put practically the whole of Katanga under Léopold’s rule in exchange for the son being allowed to remain chief. Is that stinging?”

  “Hardly at all,” I say.

  He drops the swab into a plastic bin, goes to wash his hands and prepares some lint and bandage.

  “Still, I suppose the Belgians would say that the Congo was in an appalling condition when they arrived. There were cannibals, you know. Far more of them here than anywhere else in Africa. The people just didn’t have enough to eat. They also had malaria, leprosy, trypanosomiasis, tropical ulcers, everything you care to mention. Frightful place, really. Slavery was the biggest problem, of course. They reckon thirty million Congolese were taken off as slaves. The Arabs were the worst. Tipu Tip—he was a friend of Stanley’s. A terrible rogue. Made a fortune from slaving.”

  He finishes the bandaging. It is very tight.

  “How does that feel?”

  “Fine.”

  He goes to the sink and starts scrubbing his hands.

  “The Belgians actually made Tipu Tip governor of Stanleyville and gave him a salary of $150 a month into the bargain. Didn’t do their reputation a lot of good with the natives.”

  He takes a white towel and rubs his hands.

  “I’m not saying we haven’t made our own mistakes, but I do think the British would have done it rather better,” he says, going to a cabinet by his desk. “I’ll give you some antibiotics. The wound’s not serious but you have to be careful with that kind of thing in the tropics.”

  “You’re very kind.”

  He waves me away dismissively. “Can you put weight on your foot?”

  I stand up from the chair.

  “It seems okay.”

  He regards me, as though hesitating to say something.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “I’ve been asked to pass on a message to you,” he says. “I didn’t tell you straight away because I know how things are between you two.”

  “Who’s the message from?”

  I have no need to ask. My heart is thumping.

  “Inès.”

  “I see.”

  I have to sit down.

  “She telephoned earlier. Twice, as a matter of fact. Apparently she’d been trying to get hold of you at home and you weren’t in. Then she thought of me. I wrote down a telephone number. She said it’s important.”

  He hands me a scrap of paper and looks at me with sympathy.

  “Are you all right, James? Would you care for a whiskey?”

  “No, thank you. May I use your phone?”

  “Of course. It’s in the hall.”

/>   My hand is shaking so much I misdial twice. The phone at the other end rings only once.

  “It’s me,” I say.

  “I need to see you.”

  She sounds strange, as though having to make an effort merely to talk.

  “Are you all right?”

  She is not well. I can hear it in her voice.

  “Yes, fine,” she says peremptorily, but unconvincingly. “Can I come to your house?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll be there in one hour.”

  “Do you want me to pick you up?”

  “No. It’s not safe. I see you in one hour.”

  I am about to tell her that I am so happy to hear her voice again, that she will never know how much I have missed her, that I love her, that I think about her all the time . . . She has put the phone down, and saved me from another humiliation. Slowly I replace the receiver. I close my eyes. I hunch my shoulders and make fists of my hands. I must be strong, I have to be strong. Perhaps they have captured Auguste. Perhaps he is dead. Perhaps she wants to come back to me. Let him be dead, please let him be dead. Come back to me, Inès, where you belong.

  From behind I hear Roger ask if I would like him to run me home. I realize I have been standing alone in the hall for several minutes. I turn to him and force a wide, nonchalant smile to my face.

  “Yes, that would be very kind,” I reply; and I joke lamely, “I’m not sure how far I’d get in just the one shoe.”

  “No, indeed,” Roger says, smiling back at me. “I’ll just get my keys.”

  We have barely left the house when Roger asks, “Are we being followed?”

  I turn to look behind us.

  “There’s a black Citroën with two rather unpleasant-looking gentlemen in it,” he says. “I wonder if they might be Congolese Sûreté.”

  The roads are almost empty and the Citroën’s presence is conspicuous, and suspicious. But still I say I can’t imagine why anyone would be following us.

  “No indeed,” Roger says doubtfully. “Probably just taking the same route.”