1. Very hard and solid Chinese acacia wood.
COMPROMISE OF PRINCIPLES
连累
The sun was definitely beating down too intensely, and when you spend your day running around the city in every direction there comes a moment when you need to take a break, preferably in the shade with a cool drink in your hand. Isookanga took Avenue Tombalbaye to Kiro Bizimungu’s office at the building housing the Conservation Service of Salonga National Park. Bosco the soldier escorted him to his commander.
“Glad to see you again, my fellow countryman,” the former rebel greeted him. “Are you well?” he continued after sending the bodyguard out to get a Fanta and a beer.
“Not bad,” Isookanga replied, taking a seat.
“I’m glad you came by. Since we last saw each other, I’ve been thinking a lot about those ancestral technologies you told me about. Do your practitioners really know how to cure a sick tree?”
“Absolutely. And they can cure human bones the same way they cure trees: they fix them when they’re broken; they straighten them when they’re crooked.”
“Have you seen them do it?”
“Of course.”
“Well, then, Little One, if those people can treat a tree, they should also be able to make it sick.”
“I don’t think so, Old One. My uncle Lomama knows only one thing: the forest. And he knows everything you need to know to help it flourish and survive. He can make it rain when the vegetation needs it. He’s a rainmaker; he knows how to juggle stratonimbus clouds like nobody else, Old One.”
Bizimungu leaned over to inspire trust. “Tell me, with the help of specific substances, couldn’t you find a way to determine the type of soil you’ve got so you know whether it contains something like coltan or diamond? You know, the same thing you do to test for gold. You take a stone from the Salonga, you rub it on a piece of metal, bring it in contact with one of the substances your uncle is acquainted with, and see if it changes color. Isn’t that possible?”
“I don’t know, Old One. I’d have to find out.”
The door opened and Bosco came in with the beverages. He took the caps off with his teeth, put the bottles on the table, and vanished without a word, looking gloomy, impassive as if he were made of cobalt. Isookanga took a swig straight from the bottle. Kiro emptied his glass in one gulp and poured himself another one.
“Little One, it’s difficult,” he said shaking his head. “But if your elders are capable of such things, then why are they not called on to plant new trees in Chad, for example, or in Saudi Arabia? They’d make a lot of money.”
“Fortunately, nobody listens to them. Can you imagine? I saw some of them move whole swarms and send bee colonies to pollinate entire territories.”
“I’ve heard of that,” the former rebel interrupted, disappointment in his voice. “Early in the war, when we carried the RCD sign,1 some of the comrades-in-arms were blockaded for months in Kabinda, in the Kasaï, bees pestering them from morning to night. Firing at them was pointless; they thought bullets were their cousins who’d come to play with them.”
Bizimungu chuckled. “We never could take Mbuji-Mayi and its diamonds. Tried everything but we had to give up. Were your chiefs responsible for that? Really, some serious sorcerers you have there!”
“Obviously. If I could help you get rid of all those trees for us, Old One, I’d do it. But they didn’t teach me how to break that ecosystem. I was initiated to become a future chief, but my training wasn’t completed. If only they had taught me to locate oil, diamonds, cassiterite, at least, I’d feel like a veritable potentate, powerful, looking to the future. Yet I’m forced to be content with this,” Isookanga said, holding up his thumb, vaguely pointing to the posters behind him. With Raging Trade, at any rate, you don’t have all these problems, you do what you want.”
“Raging Trade? What’s that?”
“It’s a video game you play to put your hands on raw materials, Old One. In Gondavanaland.”
“And what kind of land is that?”
“Gondwana. When Pangaea still existed in the Paleozoic era. South America, Africa, India, Australia, all of it was one landmass—ore aplenty.”
“How do you know this game?”
“I’m an internationalist, that’s how. Anything that has to do with mines or oil interests me. Even in the village I already had a laptop. That’s where I learned it. It’s diabolical. Lots of us in the world are playing, and for now I’m almost master of the situation.”
Indeed, under the tag “Congo Bololo” Isookanga now knew how American Diggers increased its points. It was GGAP, Skulls and Bones Mining Fields, and Kannibal Dawa that snuck off on the sly. All three of them had succeeded in opening secret accounts where they stored whatever they wanted: points, vouchers for weapons, offshore companies. Congo Bololo figured it was time to break up some of these agreements. Thanks to his sophisticated weapons, he had managed to repel Skulls and Bones into the same zone as the Goldberg & Gils Atomic Project. Suddenly their alliance had shattered in a gruesome way. The corner where they must have assembled their troops was bursting with gold, diamonds, and cobalt. What was bound to occur actually happened. To control the wealth, they started firing at each other. From the distance, Congo Bololo had witnessed the carnage and snickered.
“In this game, Old One, I’m a raider. I recently annihilated everybody but one, Kannibal Dawa, who maliciously caught a second wind despite the losses I made him suffer. He did some wicked lobbying and has now procured a non-permanent member seat at the United Nations Security Council. He can do anything there. He can acquire depleted uranium arms at market prices, order satellite photos, build himself a steel dome if he feels like it, but most of all he can influence resolutions. According to what I read on my screen the last time I looked at him, Congo Bololo had just copped an embargo on the weapons because of that bastard Kannibal Dawa. They upbraid me for recruiting women to fight. You realize how unfair that is, Old One?”
“Really, Little One, you’re in deep shit.”
“Don’t worry on my account. They haven’t heard the last of me yet. I still have an arsenal of stealth weapons hidden here, there, and everywhere and I expect to use them. I’m going to put pressure on them.”
“Good. Take heart, Little One. I need to get going now. I’m going to have a bite to eat. Come by and see me again. Salonga is your home even if I’m in control of it.” Bizimungu managed a dismal smile.
Isookanga emptied what was left in his bottle, got up, and went to the door. “See you soon, Old One. As you know, I keep thinking about the raw materials.”
And he was back in the street.
“Mr. Isookanga!”
The young Ekonda had no time to turn around before Aude Martin already had her soft arms around him. “How are you?” he said.
“I’m so happy to run into you. My research is done and I really wanted to see you again before leaving. Come pick me up tonight if you can; we’ll have a drink together. I’m still on Avenue de la Libération.”
“I’ll try.”
“Promise you’ll come. It means a lot to me.”
“All right, I’ll be there. But I have to go now. See you soon.”
“Very soon,” Aude Martin answered, a little breathless.
She left the young Pygmy with an ecstatic look and walking on air.
It must have been around two in the afternoon when Waldemar Mirnas was at a table by himself in the Inzia restaurant in the shaded Gombe district. The many customers under the large thatched roof consisted of Congolese and Westerners, most of whom were experts in culture, humanitarianism, or conflict resolution—subject matter that the autochthones didn’t seem to practice as they should. Consequently, the international community had mobilized and dispatched entire legions of experts to compensate for these serious omissions.
Where culture was concerned, young people came to initiate all sorts of projects, ranging from music to theater, graphic arts to dance, both to promote and c
apture heartbeats, original scansions, ancestral pantomimes, and riffs on the satonge.2 The result would increase the perspectives and revenues of subsidized organizations, of artists categorized as contemporary, of confidential and Africanist labels. To propagate holiness around zero latitude, humanitarians in their immaculate vehicles were distributing rations of sanctified cookies throughout the land and attempting to comfort poor genuflecting souls, muttering dogmas they’d memorized in the humanities departments in the northern hemisphere. As for those in charge of conflict resolution, rather than silencing the guns, they struggled to identify the acronyms represented in the east of the country—RCD, CNDP, FDLR, FNL, etc.—their observers’ eyes focusing on a line that an inescapable United Nations resolution had drawn.
Dressed in black, the restaurant staff went from table to table, putting down malangwa with sorrel, fumbwa, lituma,3 fried sweet potatoes, catfish in banana leaves, turtle with squash seeds. The patrons seemed to enjoy their dishes: clanging of cutlery accompanied by cheerful murmuring floated above the diners’ heads. Waldemar Mirnas prized the local cuisine and would occasionally eat here. He liked the flavors he had discovered, so different from what he was used to in Vilnius.
The officer had entered the Lithuanian armed forces when they were created more than ten years earlier, after the separation from the Soviet bloc, which hadn’t happened all that smoothly. Since he had an engineering degree, he’d been recruited as second lieutenant, had climbed the ladder to the rank of major, and was now wearing the blue helmet of the UN operating in Congo. He’d arrived three years earlier and worked with contingents of all kinds: Senegalese, Moroccans, Pakistanis, Ghanaians, French … It wasn’t an easy task. He had to intervene, negotiate, open fire if necessary. Over time it had all become quite tedious.
Yet, he wasn’t growing tired of the country, and the ever present sun had something to do with that. Vilnius’s grayness, the very low temperatures in winter, the muck that muddied the landscape during the thaw wouldn’t have to be his for the rest of his life, Mirnas decided upon his arrival. He was the only Lithuanian officer at MONUSCO—the UN mission for the Consolidation of Congo. He’d been in Afghanistan on behalf of NATO and didn’t really like it. The unbearable heat in the summer, the almost Lithuanian cold of the winter nights, the men and vehicles packed with explosives that could detonate at any moment, and the Taliban, above all, so hard to identify since they resembled the man in the street just as drops of water are alike. You could easily become paranoid over there. Kivu, where he was sent next, wasn’t a whole lot better, but the climate was nicer and the land of the Pashtun didn’t conceal any coltan, cassiterite, or diamonds. Afghanistan was fine for yokels.
At least in Congo anything was possible, and with a little effort you could even change your life and climate. It was enough to lay low a bit, cash in, and go off to what were certainly more temperate lands such as Kuala Lumpur or Phuket, for instance; some place where the picture-postcard image might be hiding things that were far more intense than they seemed. And it was precisely in Congo that Waldemar Mirnas had met up with this intensity. Paradoxically, it was not on a battlefield as was to be expected, but, more prosaically, it was while wandering the streets of Kinshasa at night, driving through the Great Market area, when he first noticed the street kids, those girls with their outrageously arched tiny posteriors. Little girls, afraid of nothing, vulgar almost to the point of indecency. One night in the shadows he spotted Shasha la Jactance, the child whore, and from that moment on his blood had not stopped boiling in his veins, especially in those that flooded his head.
Kivu stood for violence but also for abundant riches—until the incident in Kamituga. A section he commanded had fallen into an ambush on a mining site and its members were massacred. What were they doing there? the UN functionaries in New York had wondered—all the more because, thanks to their satellite telephones, the massacre had been followed live from the offices on Millennium Plaza, on the bank of the East River between First Avenue and Roosevelt Drive. Apparently, they had not yet identified the perpetrators of the attack and were still looking for the motive for the crime. There were armed groups everywhere in that area, and the investigations came up against all kinds of difficulties, considering the murkiness of the situation in that part of the world. With the six victims whose death throes were heard in real time right there in Manhattan, Major Mirnas’s command became questionable. In order not to stir up too much unrest, he was called back to Kinshasa and promoted to other duties. From then on he handled logistics, a much cushier job with respect to his abilities. Sending armaments and munitions to the MONUSCO troops at the front was part of his new assignment.
But since the famous peace accords, the enemies he had once fought were walking in the city in suits, and the Lithuanian had a hard time putting aside the events that had taken place in the square in Kamituga. More often than not with a disdainful smile, he had from time to time run into some warlords.
As he was stuffing Nile perch in tomato sauce into his mouth, his face lowered, someone tapped him on the shoulder with a finger as hard as tropical wood and said, “How are you, Major? It’s been a long time.”
Kiro Bizimungu towered in front of Mirnas’s table at his full height. “May I?” And, motioning to one of the waiters, he sat down.
Waldemar Mirnas frowned. If the recycled rebels were milling about town, the bloodthirsty commander Kobra Zulu was clearly the last one he wanted to meet. The Lithuanian forced a smile. “Well, Commander. I didn’t expect to see you here. Have you been in Kin’ long?”
“Yes, actually. But I don’t go out very often. You know what it’s like—you have to adapt, become integrated … But I rather like the city. And you, are you passing through?”
“No, I’ve been transferred here. I had a problem with one of my sections and lost six men.”
Seeing Kiro Bizimungu’s astonished face, Mirnas added, “Don’t act so surprised. You must know about that, right? Wasn’t the guy with whom my men had a run-in one of your sector commanders?”
A waiter approached and handed Bizimungu the menu.
“Don’t bother,” he said, “chicken with moambe4 and steamed green plantains will do. Thank you. And a beer.”
The waiter was barely gone when he continued: “Obviously, I was told about it. After all, I was in charge of the territory.”
“Exactly.” Mirnas’s voice was bitter with controlled anger. “And I really doubt you had nothing to do with what happened.”
“True, we haven’t had time to talk about it yet, but you must admit some of it was your own fault.”
“My fault!” The blood rose in the officer’s face.
“Me, I know nothing, good God! But from what I’ve heard, the men were nervous that day. The delivery was not what it was supposed to be. That’s not acceptable from your end. You promise one thing, you bring something else. They felt they’d been ripped off, and they fired. And besides, your men didn’t negotiate as they should have. When you have a difficult case on your hands, you should talk; we’re not animals, after all. Is it true that you’re in logistics now?”
“How do you know that?” Mirnas asked, feeling ill at ease.
“We have people at all levels, as you well know. It seems, in fact, that you’re responsible for delivering weapons and munitions to the front.”
“Leave me alone, Bizimungu. You’ve caused me enough trouble already.”
“Don’t be that way, you know we’re allies you and I. We’re like comrades-in-arms in a way, aren’t we? Do you think that because I’m here in Kinshasa, the rest down there in the bush have been laid off? You’re wrong. This is business. When they sign peace accords everything is liquidated, they file bankruptcy like any other company, then they recreate the armed group but with a different acronym; that’s how an economic system functions when it wants to forge ahead. We, we’ll always need equipment to do our work well, and as for the materials, I still have some and can pay you the same way as before;
all you have to do is say the word. Your job is to ship, isn’t it? Some of it to MONUSCO, some of it to my guys. What do you think?”
“Listen, I want nothing further to do with you, is that clear?”
“Calm down, Mirnas, I only want what’s good for you.”
The Lithuanian was beside himself but trying hard not to show it. He emptied his glass of beer in one gulp, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and leaned over to Bizimungu. “There’s an inquest in progress,” Waldemar Mirnas retorted. “I’d hurry back where I came from if I were you. If you believe …” The man stopped, made a face.
“What’s the matter?” Bizimungu asked.
“Nothing,” he said, touching his belly. Then he continued: “If you think you can get away with it, you’re sadly mistaken. Six of the peacekeeping force killed—that’s more than the UN can accept, and you’re just about the only one on the list of suspects. I don’t know how far they’ve come with their investigations, but I don’t think they’ll condone it this time.”
“I have nothing to do with that business of yours. Besides, the sector commander who was in charge of everything has been dead for a long time—a grenade. And don’t try to implicate me, because should it turn out badly for me, I can’t guarantee anything for you.”
Congo Inc Page 15