I Am Radar

by Reif Larsen

The scene quickly morphed into a kind of organized chaos. The truck was backed right up to the water’s edge. Crowds of people began to haul the barges out of the way, and from downriver came another barge, pushed by a stout white tugboat—the pousser. This tug-and-barge operation, Radar realized, was to be theirs. The barge was guided into the newly vacated space by the docks. Several men scampered up the scaffolding of the gantry crane and into its cab. Radar could not imagine the old rusty creature actually turning on, let alone lifting a heavy container, but amazingly, the crane fired right up. A crowd of men put chains around the container of books on the back of the truck and then attached the crane’s hook. The cable went taut, the crane whinnying from the effort of extracting the container from its perch. Radar stepped backwards, sure that the chains or the crane would break, but gradually the container rose and swung perilously toward the barge, hundreds of hands guiding its path. The crowd seemed unconcerned with the danger of such an operation. Everyone wanted to touch the container, to help it on its way. The crane screeched, complained, turned, and—miracle of miracles—deposited the container onto the barge. The process was repeated with Moby-Dikt. Many hands guided the box, and soon the two containers lay parallel on the deck of the barge. A group of men went to fetch the pile of book offerings and stacked them neatly next to the first container. Radar made a rough count. Around five hundred books had been given to the Tatayababuku.

  By the time all of this was finished, dusk had already settled across the river. The water had turned the color of wet steel. A cloud of mosquitoes had descended upon them, and perhaps this was why the crowd around them had subsided, but Radar still felt eyes watching his every move. Horeb went off to pray, while Funes’s driver built a small fire on the front of the metal barge. Radar thought this was a risky maneuver, given that boats and fire don’t usually mix very well, but no one else appeared troubled by this incongruity. At least the smoke from the fire did wonders in keeping the mosquitoes at bay.

  Professor Funes, who had disappeared into the pousser, reappeared in the firelight.

  “It’s too late to leave tonight,” he said. “They don’t dredge the channels anymore, so you must know the precise way, and even then there’s no telling if it’s clear, because the river changes every day. I would buy all the food you need here. Enough to last at least one week. We’ll stop only at night, and you can never be sure what will be on offer.”

  Radar wanted to ask him about what he had witnessed that evening, about the books, about why the people believed in his magic. But before he could say anything, the professor bade them good night and withdrew.

  “So what do we do now?” said Otik.

  Lars smiled. “Anyone want to go shopping?”

  They looked around at the darkness. The eyes watching them.

  “I’ll go.” It was Horeb.

  He disappeared into the crowd of faces. He was gone a long time, but when he came back he was bearing two large fish on a stick. Behind him, several men were carrying sacks of rice and three large bundles of bananas.

  “Give me forty dollars,” said Horeb. “Please.”

  “Forty dollars,” repeated Otik.

  “For the food,” he said. “I’m not sure it will last us the whole time, but there are villages along the way. You can always buy fish. It’s the one thing we do have in this country.”

  The fish had long, proboscis-like snouts. Horeb expertly cut and cleaned them with a series of easy, precise movements that Radar found mesmerizing.

  “What kind are those?” he asked.

  “Elephant fish,” said Horeb. “Their eyes are small, but they use an electric field to see underwater. They are also delicious.”

  The fish were tossed into a pan above the fire, alongside a pot of rice and some cassava paste. They listened to the sounds of insects and the silence of the river and the elephant fish sizzling against the heat. The eyes, always watching them.

  Horeb was right. The fish was delicious. Succulent and sweet, tasting of river and earth and flesh, it was just about the best thing Radar had ever eaten. He could almost taste the faint hum of an electronic field on his lips. For a couple of precious seconds, he forgot about the mosquitoes dive-bombing him from all directions.

  “Let it be known that I am not pleased to be back on boat,” said Otik. “But also let it be known that I am pleased to eat this fish.”

  “Thank you, Horeb,” said Lars. “We’re lucky to have you on board.”

  Horeb cleared his throat.

  “So I am wondering: what can I do for this team? Besides get you fish.” Radar realized that this was the question he himself had not dared to ask. A tinge of jealousy. Through his simple directness, Horeb was already poised to surpass him in the pecking order. Radar needed to learn how to be direct like Horeb. To reach out and point to what you want.

  The fire crackled. No one said anything. After a moment, Lars got up and went inside Moby-Dikt. He reemerged carrying several drums.

  “You said you can play.”

  Horeb took one of the larger djembes and examined the surface of the skin. He turned the drum around and around in his hands.

  “I haven’t played this kind of drum before,” he said finally. “I usually play the log drum of the Lokele.”

  “You see?” said Otik. “I told you. He doesn’t play. He says he plays so he gets this job.”

  “It won’t speak the same language,” said Horeb.

  “Try,” said Lars.

  “Hand me another,” said Horeb, and he took the two drums between his knees.

  The first beat hit Radar so hard in the chest, he nearly fell backwards into the river. The sound—clean, flat, true—was unlike anything he had ever heard before. A sound to be felt and tasted. A sound that penetrated deep into the marrow of his bones. Then came the next beat, and the next, Horeb working back and forth between the two drums, high and low, the rhythm picking up now, shifting, finding itself, sliding into a groove, pulling back. Horeb paused, took a breath, eyes closed, and then the drumming rolled down again, rising into the night sky, his palms caressing the skin of the drums as if he were conversing with the heavens, fingers flexed up, fingers flexed down, speaking to the night, the beats flying out across the surface of the river.

  Radar heard a whoop from their invisible audience. A quick series of ululations. The darkness was filled with people. Otik looked around, his eyes alight. Radar had never seen him like this before. He heaved up his great body and hurried into Moby-Dikt. He came out with birds in his hands.

  “Lars,” he hissed. “The scene, the scene. This is happening now.”

  Lars leaped up and disappeared into the container. He emerged with a large piece of canvas in his arms.

  “Help me with this, would you?” he called out to Radar.

  Radar held one end of the canvas as they unrolled it against the side of the container. Lars went back inside and came out with several spotlights, which he pointed at the scene. He went back in, connected the cords, and then there was light.

  Radar gasped. Such was the magic of the theater. They were instantly transported. A valley surrounded by tall, rugged mountains. A cloudless sky. A sun on the verge of setting. A lazy river. This valley was the world now. He could feel the audience shifting, making room for this new truth.

  Otik touched the birds’ necks, flicked some switch, and they sprang to life. The crowd murmured as the two birds rose into the air, playing against each other, diving, falling, whirling across the backdrop of mountains. Radar realized there were actually four birds: the two in the air and then their shadows against the backdrop, which were like them but also distinct. The birds’ wings were beating to the rhythm of the drums, and Horeb was watching the birds dive above his head. It was as if he were guiding them with his music, high and low, high and low, each bird to each tone. Or perhaps the birds were guiding him—it was no longer clear who c
ontrolled whom. Every single eye in the audience watching every single movement of those two little puppets as they united, separated, drifted, spun, circled, floated, soared, plunged. The two birds bound together in understanding, never far from each other, whispering, talking, laughing: Here we are, here we are, they said, know us if you can.

  Radar felt a gear turn in his chest. He knew then what he must do. He ran into the container and fetched one of the transceivers and a speaker. He plugged the speaker into the generator, connected it to the transceiver, and clicked on the radio dial, sweeping the signal across the shortwave frequencies so that scraps of voices, music, static, electricity were scooped from the invisible spectrum and transformed into sound by the radio’s internals. Bits of Kikongo, French, pop music, reggae, hip-hop, sermons, all bleeding in and out from that uncertain fuzz. Radar closed his eyes and spun the dial. That little dial between thumb and finger became an extension of him, its sounds his sounds, its search his search.

  At a certain point the radio fell upon the sound of drums, and Radar paused there. Horeb’s drumming mixed with the drumming on the radio, the beats oscillating and intertwining. The birds and their shadows seemed to respond to this doubling—their pace increased, back and forth, back and forth. At one point they crashed into the backdrop, fell, then recovered, flying high above their heads, out of the light of the fire, disappearing into the vast bowl of darkness.

  There was a splash. Horeb abruptly stopped drumming. Radar cut off the radio.

  He was afraid to look over at Otik, fearing that he would be furious about losing his birds or furious that Radar had ruined the show with his impromptu addition. But when he finally did steal a glance at him, he saw a broad smile stretching across his face.

  “Burazeru,” Otik whispered. “I am home again.”

  Around them, the crowd was silent. There was no clapping—not that there needed to be, but after such an intimate display of aerial courtship, the silence was a bit unnerving. Slowly, though, Radar understood. They had all paid witness. There was no need to say what was already said.

  And then he heard it, faint but nonetheless certain: drumming. At first he assumed it was coming from the radio, which he must not have turned off properly, but then he realized it was coming from the opposite bank. First in one place, then drums all up and down the river, carrying out across the water.

  Horeb was sweating, smiling above his drum, the spotlight illuminating him from below.

  “They heard the message. They are calling back to us,” said Horeb.

  “What are they saying?” said Radar.

  Horeb listened. “They are speaking a different language,” he said, closing his eyes. “But I think they say, We see you, we see you, we see you . . . He is coming, he is coming, he is coming.”

  10

  Radar was awoken by a great commotion outside. He opened his eyes, his head still lingering in a dream he could not remember. The other cots in the container were already empty. He leaped through the mosquito net, tripped, and ran to the door. Blinking against the morning sun, he saw that the pousser had started to pull the barge out into the river. The docks were crammed full of people waving, crying, shouting, clapping, dancing. Funes was at the stern, holding a book, waving back at them. Radar had to admit, it was nice to have such a send-off, even if the attention technically wasn’t directed at him. He gave an embarrassed wave and then went over to where Horeb, Otik, and Lars stood watching.

  “If they think he will bring them better life, they are getting big surprise,” said Otik.

  “They want to believe,” said Horeb. “A better life can only come through belief.”

  “Belief is for stupid people. I can believe this book will save me with all of my heart, and I will still be majorly fucked.”

  “What do you believe in, my friend?” said Horeb. “Why have you come all this way?”

  Otik started to answer but was interrupted by a long, withering blast from the boat’s whistle, which scattered the crowd.

  The pousser spun the barge around and pointed them upstream. Soon, the town and its crowds of people disappeared around the bend, and just like that, the river and the jungle became the entirety of their existence. A man whom Radar had not seen before was standing at the bow of the boat, holding a long striped pole, which he would dip into the river every five seconds while shouting, “Ah yeah mayee!”

  “What’s he doing?” asked Radar.

  “He’s measuring the depth of the river,” said Horeb. “Without him, we are in trouble.”

  “Ah yeah mayee!” called the man.

  As they went on, the constant rhythm of the sounder’s declaration, coupled with the little expert dip and twirl of his canary yellow pole, became the measure of time’s passage. That pole, plumbing the distance between surface and bottom, was the engine of their progress. If the pole stopped twirling, so too would they.

  “Ah yeah mayee!”

  Professor Funes had retired to his cabin in the pousser and would not emerge for the rest of the day. Radar found this strange, but he did not have long to contemplate his absence, for there was much activity around the container. After the previous night’s performance, both Lars and Otik were visibly excited.

  “How did you know to do this?” Otik asked Radar. “With radio signal?”

  “Ah, have you met my father?” said Radar. “I grew up with radio signal. I was taking apart radios before I could speak.”

  “It is perfect. It is so fucking perfect. It is just what we needed and we did not even know it! Kaprow calls this ‘art of life.’ But we must have many radios. How many do you have?”

  “Three.”

  “No, it won’t do. It won’t do. We need at least fifty. Maybe eighty.”

  “Where are we going to get eighty radios?”

  “Was the drumming okay?” Horeb asked

  Otik ignored him. “We must rehearse!” he cried. “We must make wagon!”

  Otik, now manic, hurled himself around the barge like a loose rhino. He seemed no longer bothered by the fact that they were on a barge, though the river here was decidedly calmer than the open ocean. Together, the four of them pulled the theater wagon out of Moby-Dikt piece by piece and constructed it on the bow of the barge, attaching the top, the wheels, the curtains, the spotlights, the wings, and the scrim. Radar had to admit it was an impressive sight, a sight that beckoned with promises of a show as the river flowed beneath and the lush landscape slowly spun and revolved around them.

  But plans to rehearse quickly receded as technical problems arose when the vircator was installed inside the wagon. Something was wrong. The chips would no longer entangle. Unlike the pair last night, the birds refused to fly. They lay motionless on the deck, appearing as if they had all fallen out of the sky at once. Even Horeb’s beating of the drum would not coax them out of their stillness.

  Otik—sweating profusely and cursing a beautiful blue streak (“Jebeni kuchkin sin! Serem ti se u carapu!”)—retreated back into Moby-Dikt and began to furiously tinker away. Any offers to help were venomously rejected.

  “Let him be,” said Lars.

  “He doesn’t like me,” said Horeb, staring after Otik. “What did I do?”

  “It takes a while,” said Radar. “Believe me. It’s nothing personal.”

  “He’ll come around,” said Lars. He handed Radar a straw cowboy hat. “For the sun. It can be bad. You’ve got to protect yourself.”

  Radar took the hat and sheepishly put it on.

  “Thanks,” he said, aware of himself and all that he was not.

  “Nice,” said Horeb. “Like John Wayne.”

  “You know Morse code, correct?” Lars said to Radar.

  “I found Xanadu, didn’t I?”

  “I didn’t want to assume. It is a dying language.”

  “You think I could grow up in Kermin’s house and not le
arn CK?”

  “It would be unlikely,” Lars admitted. He handed Radar a Morse key. “We’ll set up a station for you, stage left. You’ll be the one who sends out the opening sequence. We begin every performance with that line from Numbers—you know, ‘What hath God wrought?’”

  “Baltimore, 1844,” said Radar. He plugged the Morse key into the radio and then clicked out the message: •—— •••• •— — •••• •— — •••• ——• •• —•• •—— ••• •• ••— ——• •••• — The rhythm of dits and dashes flashed out across the water and over the green islands of floating hyacinth.

  Horeb, who was sitting nearby, hit the drums in precisely the same rhythm, alternating the high and low drum for each dit and dash:

  “What language is that?” he asked Radar.

  “It’s Morse code. Each letter has a different coded sequence,” said Radar. “W is di-da-da. Short then long long.” He demonstrated: •——

  “Ah, in drumming it is different. It is not letter by letter. The drum is speaking the same words you speak with your voice.”

  “Wait,” said Radar, turning to him. “You’re actually speaking with the drum? I thought you were just drumming.”

  “Of course I was speaking,” said Horeb. “Did you not hear it? Why do you think they were answering me last night? I wasn’t sure if they would understand, because I was drumming in Kele, which is an upriver language, but they heard me and answered. They were drumming back in their local language—I think some form of Teke or Lingala, but I could still understand what they were drumming.” He demonstrated. “‘He is coming, he is coming.’”

  “But how did you learn how to speak on the drum? I thought you said you’d never been up the river before?”

  “I haven’t. I learned to drum-speak while I was at university in Kinshasa. I was studying linguistics, you see, and there was a drumming club. We met in the cafeteria in the evenings. I think it was formed to preserve and study the drum language of the river tribes. You know, most of these boys are not learning the drums anymore. They have mobile phones, they want to get to the city, they don’t care about the old ways,” he said. “But I’ve always liked languages. I’m good at them. I can imitate almost anything I hear. My aunt and uncle used to call me le perroquet when I was little. One of the students in the club, Boyele, he was from the Lokele tribe, near Kisangani, and he knew how to talk with drums. He is the one who taught us. He is an amazing man—I think he is the first person from his village to go to university. He always said he was going to go back and build a hospital there . . . I don’t know what became of him.”