The Boy Who Stole the Leopard's Spots

by Tamar Myers

  Si, but these were not the thoughts that a priest should be having. These sorts of bitter thoughts were for altar boys or young men who had still to take their vows. It was a good thing that today, two days after the great storm, the weather was sunny and hotter than ever. In his black cassock the monsignor would surely be punished by the heat as he tried to forge a new path up the hill to the workers’ village. So be it. It was the least he deserved, for he was a wicked, wicked man with base, carnal thoughts. He was hardly worthy of elevation to the position of bishop in the one true church—yet, isn’t that the one thing that he desired most? At the same time, wasn’t it his desire, his hubris, the very thing that—if he were to be entirely honest with his confessor—would hold him back from advancement?

  Too bad the order to which Alberto Clemente belonged did not wear hair shirts. If so, then Alberto would own the hairiest chemise known to man; that was the running joke back at the seminary where he taught advanced New Testament Greek on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and biblical Hebrew on Mondays and Fridays. Well, at least that hair shirt might help to keep the black material of the cassock from sticking to his back, the monsignor thought as he began to hack his way through the thick tshisuku that clung stubbornly to the almost vertical side of the hill.

  With the dirt road now nothing more than a series of parallel ridges interspersed by gullies, some of them more than twenty feet deep, it was only logical to consider a new route to the top. Normally one would send a work crew with machetes and hoes up to clear out the head-high elephant grass and scrubby acacia trees. Invariably one would hear the cry of “Nyoka, nyoka!” Snake, snake! Quite possibly someone would be bitten; most likely by a mamba, but possibly by an adder or a cobra. The mamba patients usually died—there just wasn’t time to do anything for them, except give them last rites, and at least that was something. That’s why Alberto Clemente, when he was a mission priest, always preferred to hire good Catholic boys whose baptisms he could verify.

  Today the risk was all his. A long black skirt had its advantages as well as disadvantages. He was wearing trousers under it, of course, so the garment offered him a fraction of additional protection. But it also made him a larger target, and it certainly hampered his ability to run. If the monsignor temporarily removed his cassock while forging a new path up to the village, it was not to avoid the discomfort caused by the sun, but the possibility of not being able to outrun an aggressive snake like the mamba. That was only because Alberto Clemente was sure that God intended to go through with his promotion back in Rome, and, for that, God needed a corpus animus—a living body. Then again, there really was no point in pushing it. Heatstroke could be just as deadly as a snake bite.

  A grove of mango trees with high, rounded crowns of thick dark leaves stood between the Missionary Rest House and the base of the hill. Only God and the circling hawks were privy to the sight of Monsignor Clemente undressing; first the hot black cassock came off, then he stripped completely to the waist. Still, a half-naked priest out and about in broad daylight—ah, but almost immediately, the Lord sent a cool breeze up from the river that ruffled his chest hair. For the first time in years—yes, years—Alberto Clemente felt like a man, not just like a priest in service of the Lord.

  Wait: there was even one more thing that he could do that would add to this sensation. It was a very natural thing that even the Lord himself must have done hundreds of times while he roamed about in Galilee with his little band of disciples. It was something, however, that Alberto Clemente had never had the opportunity to enjoy surrounded by nature—not since leaving the Congo so very many years ago. Without further ado, Alberto unbuttoned his trousers, extricated his very impressive member, and started to piss.

  “Tangila! Lubola wa muambi udi mutoke-to!” Look! The master’s penis is whiter than white!

  Monsignor Clemente shivered with fear. He’d been seen—and by a woman no less. He fumbled for his cassock first, cutting himself on the coarse blades of tshisuku grass upon which it lay. His sweat-soaked shirt be damned for now.

  “Nganyi we?” he called out. Who are you? There is an age-old protocol one must follow when approaching members of the opposite sex who might be engaged in private acts—such as bathing in streams, using the bush as a toilet, or, God forbid, sexual relations not approved by the church. If one even suspects this might be the case, one is obliged to call out the word basope in a loud clear voice. Reserved just for these occasions, it allows the invaded participants to restore their modesty.

  Immediately a short hunchbacked woman stepped out from between two dense clumps of elephant grass. Wherever she had come from must have been as cool as a gelato, because she wasn’t sweating a drop. Her traditional “Christian” outfit—ruffled blouse and wrap skirt—were sewn from the usual cheap cotton one sees in the native stores, this one from bright yellow, sporting orange and black scenes of leopards and parrots. Her head was bare, but her hair had been expertly combed into precise squares, and then twisted into giant cloves. She was, of course, barefoot; very few, if any, village women wore their plastic sandals unless it was to church.

  “Tch,” the woman clucked. “Do not be afraid, master. It is only a woman of no account. I am a cripple by the same name, and my husband is a witch doctor. In your eyes we are like the maggots that riddle the carcasses of the jackals that Belgians delight in leaving by the side of the road, in order that we black monkeys must walk through their stench on our way to the market.”

  “Kah! I do not run down jackals,” the monsignor said indignantly, “and I call no one ‘monkey.’ Mamu Cripple, now please avert your eyes in order that I might dress properly.”

  “E,” she mumbled, but rather than ducking back into the grass whence she had come, she waddled farther out into the path he had cleared, and there she plopped herself down as if entitled to the space. As she turned her back on him, it became quite apparent that the witch doctor’s wife was soon to bear him a child.

  When he was satisfied that his dignity had been restored, Monsignor Clemente cleared his throat. “Baba,” he said—Mother—“come, let us go down to the shade of the mango grove and get better acquainted.”

  The woman called Cripple rose slowly. Twice she almost fell over backward, thanks to the steep incline, and had she been a white woman, the monsignor would have reached out and grabbed her hand—or her arm. If in the process of doing so, he had accidentally brushed any other part of her body, he would have been sure to bring the matter up to his confessor. But this was the Congo, and although the monsignor really did not view the natives as monkeys, neither did he see them quite the same way that he saw whites.

  For one thing, they had a higher pain tolerance. One was always hearing tales of native women giving birth in the fields, and then walking home with the babies strapped to their backs, a basket of manioc roots balanced on their heads, at the end of the day. No white woman could do that. It was akin to the cur dogs back in Europe that could stay outdoors all winter, no matter how brutal the weather, while some fancy purebreds had been known to die indoors just from catching drafts near windows. Besides, any attempt to grab her could be interpreted as sexual imposition on his part. The country was already a tinderbox of emotions; one had to be ever so vigilant.

  “Master,” Cripple said, having stabilized herself, “what is it that you wish to discuss? Let us hope it is not religion, for you will be bested in any argument entered into fairly.”

  He laughed with surprise. “What did you say?”

  “Only that you cannot hope to outwit me on the matter of religion; I am a proud heathen and will not be swayed by the primitive superstitions of the white man. Behold, not three months ago, the other priest tried to make a Christian out of me while I stood high upon the gallows, waiting to join the spirits of my ancestors in the other world. I was not swayed by your myths then; therefore, if you are of sound judgment, you can only conclude that there is nothing that you can say now to adva
nce your cause.”

  Alberto Clemente forgot being embarrassed and, throwing back his head, laughed with sheer delight. This woman was truly a treasure. What did the Americans say? Yes, the same thing: priceless! Rarely had he encountered an African as straightforward as this tiny, misshapen Muluba woman.

  “I am Monsignor Clemente,” he said, extending his hand. In that moment he felt real joy at being back in the Africa of his birth.

  She took his hand without hesitation—as if they were equals. Equals!

  “Tell me,” she said, “why were you, a white man, fighting your way up the hill through the tshisuku to the village in the heat of the sun? Was that not an exceedingly foolish thing to do? I have heard of more than one white who has fallen over dead from such behavior.”

  “E, you have heard correctly—there have been quite a few of us to die this way. But were you not also fighting your own way though the tshisuku at this hour? True, you have the advantage of owning a skin that is better suited to the sun than the ugly one that I inhabit; however, you are heavy with child. Surely the burden of that adds to your exertion.”

  “Kah!” She laughed so hard that she had to support the child in question with both hands while she rocked forward and back. “Does it not amaze you, master, how a tribe as ignorant as yours was able to subjugate a tribe as clever as the Baluba? Surely you must shake your head in wonder every time you give the matter consideration.”

  Alberto Clemente quickly discovered that his expansive mood was not boundless. Back in Europe he had heard and read a great deal about how cheeky the Africans were becoming now that independence was glimmering on their political horizon, but this was a bit much to take when one didn’t have to—especially since it was coming from a woman.

  “Madame,” he said coldly, switching to French, “this stupid white is no longer interested in making conversation.”

  “A thousand apologies,” said Cripple, switching to near perfect Latin, “for while it was indeed my intention to offend, at the same time I believed that the citizen of Rome was not so easily offended as all this.”

  The priest from Rome couldn’t help but stare openmouthed at the strange little creature standing before him, like a broken bird, in the shade of a large mango tree. It was hot even there, and since in every direction heat waves danced, it was easy for him to imagine that he might be having delusions.

  “What did you just say?” he finally managed to croak.

  “In which language, master, do you wish for me to repeat my words?”

  He shook his head. “How is it that a Congolese woman knows Latin? Where could you possibly have learned it?”

  “I learned it from the old priest who is yet here, and from another who is now gone. I was not allowed to attend school myself, as I am but a lowly, and crippled, female whose worth is barely that of three goats, two pigs, and a one-eyed duck—and it was a milky eye, at that. But I could not be stopped from following my older brother to the Roman Catholic school, where I sat outside on the grass all day and absorbed everything that his teachers had to say. My brother failed the sixth-form exams and became an auto mechanic like my father, but I, writing in the pages of a discarded third-form cahier, made a perfect score. However, the fact that I was already somewhat fluent in Portuguese—which, as you know, is derived from Latin—was of a great help to me.”

  “Aiyee!” said Monsignor Clemente, but not in a bad way. “Your story is most incredible.”

  “Eyo,” Cripple said. “I am of the same opinion. Kadi”—but—“even more incredible is that you did not consider the fact that you were a large man fighting your way through the clumps of tshisuku up a steep hill, whereas I am but a small woman despite my belly and that I managed to slip between the clumps as I worked my way down the hill. Behold, muambi, there is a saying: even very dull water knows that it is easier to run down a hill than up it.”

  This time Monsignor Alberto Clemente virtually roared with laughter. Damn it, if this little woman didn’t tickle his funny bone, as the Americans called it. Being a demonstrative person, quick to express himself, he unconsciously slapped the tiny Muluba on her back, which knocked her off her feet. Fortunately his large hands caught her before she hit the ground and he was able to set her down gently, almost as if nothing had happened.

  “Aiyee,” she cried in a loud and tormented voice. “Master, why do you beat me?”

  “Beat you? I do not beat you, little one. What sort of game is it that you play?”

  She glanced around deviously. Weren’t they all devious—women, that is? Alberto’s mother had spent her life seducing men for their fortunes, and when she had bled their bank accounts dry, she discarded them like silk stockings that had accumulated too many runs. Even the nuns that he’d run into at the Vatican were devious by their supposed absence. Oh, they were there all right, but only as part of the machinery that kept the great establishment going, so it appeared to Alberto that they went out of their way to make themselves inconspicuous. Yet there they were, always on the fringes, always ducking out of sight around some corner, always on one’s mind. Talk about deviousness!

  “I do not play games, muambi; games are for children. I only wish to offer you silly whites my help.”

  What cheek! Delightful cheek, yes, but it was beginning to look like this bite-size woman might not know where to draw the line.

  “You dare to call your superiors silly?” he said.

  “I would not dare to call my superiors silly,” she said, holding his gaze, “for I myself am not a silly person. But listen, muambi, can you not hear the bleating of sheep above the noise of the waterfall?”

  Alberto mopped futilely at his brow with a monogrammed handkerchief. It had begun the journey from Italy as starched white Egyptian cotton, whereas now it was various shades of gray and decidedly limp. It was like wiping one’s face with a dead codfish.

  “Those are not sheep!” he cried. “Those are white people: Belgians. They are on the bridge, but a stone’s throw from this end, but because there is a missing section, they cannot get across.”

  She cocked her head almost like a red-tailed parrot would. “What is it that they clamor for so loudly?”

  “Their houseboys, of course! Are you not aware that the power plant is still not functioning? This means that one must chop firewood to boil drinking water. And someone must cook and do the washing up afterward. And who is there to sweep the floors and mind the children?”

  The little woman had the temerity to laugh right in his face. This reaction was so unbelievable that Alberto didn’t even have a chance to get angry.

  “Is it true, muambi, that your God created white women without bones?” she immediately asked.

  “What? That is a stupid question!”

  “I thought perhaps that they were incapable of holding a broom—or an infant. Perhaps, even, they lack breasts with which to feed an infant, muambi. I say this because I have never seen the breasts of a white woman.”

  “They have breasts!” the monsignor shouted. “And yes, they have bones, and they are quite capable of holding their own brooms; it is just that they are—uh—”

  “They are lazy,” Cripple said.

  “Look here,” the monsignor said, his voice rising in fury, “if every white woman pushed her own broom and cooked her own supper, there would be many families in the village without a source of income.”

  “Aiyee,” Cripple said and clapped the sides of her head. “Sometimes the mouth on the woman named Cripple does not know when to stop. It is not my intention to bring bad luck upon the working men of my village.”

  The monsignor grunted.

  “Well then, because we did not meet under the best of circumstances, and because I have already induced in you great rage, no doubt causing you to sin—”

  There is only so much that a man can take, even a man for whom spiritual warfare is a vocation. �
�You have not caused me to sin, little woman!”

  “E, but all the same, I have a gift for you.”

  “I do not want your gift, Baba.”

  “It is the remembrance of an old ferry crossing upriver from the Island of Seven Ghost Sisters.”

  In that moment the monsignor wished to grab the twisted little Muluba woman and hold on to her so that she could not escape, lest she be an illusion. “What?”

  “In the days before the bridge, there existed a ferry. It was constructed from dugout canoes—as many as four or five—that were lashed together. This ferry was attached by a pulley to a thick metal cable that was strung from one bank of our mighty Kasai River to the other. Somehow the current pulled the ferry across—it was like magic to my eyes, but I was just a girl then.

  “When the bridge was built, the cable was dismantled and used for other things. The ferrymen were given the canoes so that they might fish—although Two-Fists Goiter was swept over the falls the very first week and was never seen again. As for the ferry landings themselves, perhaps they are now washed away or overgrown with jungle and tshisuku, but the important thing is that the land there is flat. If muambi were to use his authority—perhaps resort again to torture with the hippopotamus hide whips—a new landing could be speedily constructed. Assuredly for the right price—along with some beating—”

  “Mon Dieu!” The monsignor turned and ran.

  Chapter 29

  The Belgian Congo, 1958

  “Cripple,” Amanda said as she positioned a kitchen stool beneath the ripe yet twisted body of her former employee, “you are a hero.”

  “E, mene, mene,” Madame Cabochon said.