Congo Inc

by In Koli Jean Bofane

  Old Lomama knew what was responsible for this state of affairs. For him it was the telecommunications pole those barbarians with their flying monster had planted among the trees. Obviously, the animals had fled without a murmur. Why shouldn’t they? Since it had been put up, that bit of metal had brought nothing but trouble. First of all, it had caused harm on the level of social peace, because it had its detractors among the majority of the Ekanga population as well as its supporters, who were thrilled to finally join the modern world. Although one could ask in what way the antenna could possibly be of service to them—phone whom? surf what?—they would defend the iron tower as if it were a member of their own family. Then there was the matter of subsistence; sustenance had turned on its heels. Now they had to go for miles to flush it out. Some people simply didn’t look any farther than the end of their nose.

  And his own nephew Isookanga was one of them. Nothing but nonsense. Modernity, modernity. Can you eat modernity? Yet, until his adolescence Isookanga had been well trained, but then within the space of a few years he’d become rebellious, starting to defend ideas that had nothing to do with the Ekonda and the preservation of their biosphere. A kid talking about pipelines and oil wells has a problem and should be taken to the fetishist.

  And where was he now? Since their separation, he and Isookanga hadn’t really talked. The old man was pining for his nephew. The young man often did exactly as he pleased, but Old Lomama missed him. He hadn’t been able to convince him to stay, and he bore that as a failure that had been gnawing at him for months. What was his nephew doing? Was he all right? Did he have enough to eat? Where was he sleeping? The old man was worried about his sister’s son. The little guy was meant to succeed him as chief, but Old Lomama didn’t even know whether he was going to come back one day.

  The sun was high in the sky, the heat and humidity saturating the air. Only a few rays of the daytime star were visible as they managed to pierce the dense, leafy screen and were reflected on some of the trunks, where they scattered into small patches of light. Old Lomama stopped in front of some suspicious tracks on the ground. The characteristic smell of a corpse hovered in the air. He moved forward again and noticed that the earth under his feet was churned up as if two elephants had been fighting. He looked around more intently and examined the broken branches in the immediate area. Tufts of hair he recognized were stuck here and there. Old Lomama identified it as leopard’s fur. The carrion odor he smelled must be coming from one of its victims. But normally, Old Lomama thought, a leopard kills to eat and doesn’t usually abandon its prey.

  Lomama wanted to find out where the stench was coming from. He didn’t have to look very far. An enormous leopard was lying on its side, chops bared over impressive fangs, face frozen in a bitter grimace. Old Lomama would have recognized that fur among thousands. This was Nkoi Mobali,15 lord of the site, who made the laws for miles around. What had happened to him? Lomama sat down on one knee next to the remains. The animal had deep lesions across his entire body—bites and tears like furrows. What enemy was this, capable of such a fierce attack on a leopard? With what kind of power was it endowed? The old man didn’t understand. One or several jaws had bitten Nkoi Mobali’s neck and hindquarters. The jugular had been severed and the big cat had bled out, a dark stain spread out underneath him. He’d been dead for about two days, Lomama figured. All sorts of insects had infested the body. Squadrons of ants, beetles, and carcass-eating creatures were engrossed in a gargantuan feast.

  Old Lomama left the corpse to study the tracks left by one or more aggressors. On the soil he found the footprints of an animal with two nails in the front like those of a wild boar. They were similar but smaller, less massive, carrying something lighter. A herd of young boars? Impossible. Because it seemed Nkoi Mobali had been faced with a large number of individuals. Lomama kept searching. He reexamined the branches. Looking carefully, he found nothing but the leopard’s coat. Long brown-black hair, undoubtedly from his mane, and tatters of dirty, gray-covered skin were present at the crime scene. It was a villainous crime without any real motivation. One didn’t kill someone like Nkoi Mobali. After all, he was at the peak of the food chain. Nature knew how to regulate her own operation and counted on the leopard for that. He was one of her crucial elements, in fact. Furthermore, it concerned a noble animal.

  He and Old Lomama had known each other a long time. They had actually met during a wild boar hunt. The old man was tracking a solid male when he and Nkoi Mobali came face-to-face. The animal stood steady on a low branch, its long tail whipping the air. He growled once. Surprised at first, Old Lomama no longer budged. He pretended to be looking elsewhere and had started talking.

  “Nkoi Mobali, I humbly ask your permission to pass. I truly know that you are the king of this region. I haven’t come to quarrel over your power. I’m here to find food. The wild game here is yours, I know, but you could eat some of it and leave a little for us. Over there in the village the children are counting on me. Even if you don’t like getting married, would you let your children starve? I’m tracking a boar right now. Let me have him, and I’ll pay you back.”

  While the old man was talking, Nkoi Mobali stopped moving his tail and kept staring at Old Lomama with his piercing, cold eyes. From his throat came a sound that could pass for acquiescence. The animal had jumped to the ground very close to Lomama and, turning his back, left to vanish lithely as if absorbed by the shade of the forest.

  The old man remembered his bearing, his volume, and couldn’t understand what was at the root of the drama that had transpired here. The Ekonda immersed himself again in analyzing the indications. He took a bit of the other hair in his fingers. The animal—or, more likely, animals—that had singled Nkoi Mobali out for such treatment had a bushy mane. Old Lomama brought the strands of hair to his nostrils. He knew what he was holding but couldn’t draw any conclusions from it, for the animal with this characteristic hairiness didn’t live in any adjoining area. It came from far more open country. Despite anything Old Lomama might think of this, what he was holding between his fingers came from the skin of a warthog—there was no doubt. It was insane, but the facts were there, Nkoi Mobali was unquestionably dead. Old Lomama tried to reconstruct the event.

  If the lands belonged to the Ekonda as administrators, Nkoi Mobali was king. His reign was absolute. There was not even a queen who lived with him. He was hard on everyone; he was hard on himself. He regulated the demography and distribution of the fauna. He had the power of life and death over all the vertebrates within his range. Nkoi Mobali needed to know what was happening in his territory and, thus, crisscrossed it daily from one end to the other. He didn’t have to hunt every day, eating on occasion was enough for him, but he had to show himself to make his power known, display his yellow eyes and his fangs, which were as long as two human fingers. He left the imprint of his claws on the tree trunks and paths and marked his territory with urine.

  The intruders Nkoi Mobali challenged that day were not familiar with the established rules, and a fight had broken out. In view of the leopard’s downfall, they were inevitably mismatched. Warthogs moved in large groups, had an irascible character, and their tusks could cause nasty gashes. Like their brothers the pigs and wild boars, they sank their teeth in and pressed down so their jaws would meet and break the bones, or not. They liked to feel their teeth make contact. And, indeed, the leopard’s body was riddled with bright red patches where the flesh had been bitten and ripped off. Judging by the ravaged area, the fight must have gone on forever. The big cat must have fought with all the power of his royal rank, but in the end he’d been brought down.

  Then Old Lomama spoke: “Ah, Nkoi Mobali! Immortal hero! I shall always speak of your dignity, your noble bearing, now and forever. Nkoi Mobali, I shall speak of your courage and strength, but of your magnanimity above all. Because of your demise, people will know that the end of the world is near. Heroes die first because they’re destined to show us the way. I’ll take your skin, Nkoi Mobali
, and display it so everyone will know what’s going to happen to us, to show that what was not possible at one time has now become possible.”

  After these words, Old Lomama took his knife and began to skin the animal. Despite the appalling smell, he continued his task to the bitter end. When he was done, he wrapped the skin in several layers of leaves larger than two human hands and tied it up with a bit of twine. He no longer felt like hunting and went back to the village, his head full of questions, beginning with the presence of warthogs on Nkoi Mobali’s terrain. The metal pole had certainly played a role in this tragedy—Old Lomama was sure of it. How else could the disappearance of ordinary caterpillars from the area be explained, or the fact that warthogs were venturing this far in? Old Lomama knew that signals were transmitted from Kinshasa, and to remedy the problem he’d have to go to the source. The antenna could kill. The skin he was carrying wrapped around his waist was an irrevocable witness to that. Rage molded by revolt stirred inside Old Lomama. He had to let the country’s leaders know that Nkoi Mobali was dead, the victim of a cowardly murder by a coalition of warthogs. It might seem unimportant, but it might also be a sign of the early stages of an event, like the end of the world or something similar.

  1. RCD stands for Rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie (Rally for Congolese Democracy).

  2. A one-stringed instrument.

  3. Fish, peas and beans, mashed green plantains.

  4. A sauce made with palm nut pulp.

  5. “Mortar, pestle!”: a sexual allusion.

  6. IMF stands for the International Monetary Fund.—Tr.’s note

  7. “You broke off and took your distance, Nicky D / Please leave me a souvenir so I won’t forget / I have my darling whose name is Nicky D / You are sincere love / Between us there’s no problem / I wanted to go out with you on Sunday to Inzia / There, I’m filled with shame / My worries are never-ending.”

  8. “Hey, you’re not circumcised! I don’t want to anymore!”

  9. Police commissioner, executioner of Patrice Emery Lumumba.

  10. Tintin in the Congo by the Belgian cartoonist Hergé.—Tr.’s note

  11. “What’s going on here? What are you doing to her?”

  12. “You, why are you torturing her?”

  13. “What did I do?”

  14. “That’s no way to treat a woman!”

  15. Male leopard.

  PLEASE READ THE ATTACHED NOTE

  请阅读附上的说明

  Since the Hundredfold Law had been introduced, the Church of Divine Multiplication was always full. The Sunday after the account of Paradizo Ltd. was opened the reverend informed his congregation: “Dear brothers and sisters, I have prayed and to me the Lord has revealed the following: ‘Jonas Monkaya! Your faith is still not great enough. I am going to put it to the test before proving to you with copious blessings that I am the Lord of lords. You must intercede with me on behalf of everyone by fasting and praying for a week. I want to see what you’re capable of. Follow my directives, do what I ask, and glory shall be yours. You will also challenge your faithful to see if they believe in you. Ask them to write their name on an envelope; I shall multiply its contents a hundredfold. Thus, they will see that I am the Lord of hosts.’ That, dearest brothers and sisters, is roughly what the Lord said to me.”

  There was an explosion of praise. “He lives / the King of Kings…,” the congregation sang.

  A week later, as soon as the faithful had stopped shoving one another to deposit envelopes filled with their contributions, from behind his lectern the reverend, face raised to heaven and eyes closed, interrupted his song to speak: “I see … I see three checks coming directly from heaven. There are names on these checks. Names of true, wholly virtuous Christians. These people, they did not hesitate to give to the Church. Deacon, go get the checks!”

  Brother Kasongo went behind the curtains and returned holding rectangles of watermarked sheets of paper.

  “Brother Kas, read what’s written there! But before anything else, tell us who issued them.”

  The congregation held its breath.

  “It says, Paradizo Limited.”

  Inquisitive whispers and gesticulations followed. Everyone was calling his or her neighbor to witness.

  “Now, Brother Kas, read the names and the total amount entered.”

  The music was playing softly, instruments making themselves unobtrusive, although drum rolls could be plainly heard. In a loud, clear voice, the deacon read, “Malundana Crispin, two thousand dollars!”

  Incredulous exclamations. The deacon continued: “Bahati Amisi, five thousand dollars!”

  The cries swelled, and applause began.

  “Sister, ya poids,1 Mokobe Hémeline, ten thousand dollars!”

  Total frenzy ensued. Now booming, the orchestra accompanied the shouts of joy. The choir abidingly struck up some harmonies across several octaves. The flock was stamping its feet and dancing as it had never done before.

  In the pulpit the pastor was relishing his triumph. His eyes ran over the audience, in full agreement with the generosity of spirit that, thanks to his intervention, reigned supreme. His glance came to a halt on Adeïto Kalisayi. Her eyes were raised, she was deep in prayer. The expression on her face didn’t seem to share in the pervading joy. The pastor had noticed this woman before. There was something restrained and incredibly dignified about her. He knew nothing about her except that she always came with bodyguards who would wait for her at her car. She must be the wife of someone important—that’s what she looked like, at least.

  Then, not knowing what came over him, he closed his eyes and started speaking into the microphone. In the middle of prayers, the assembled clearly heard, “I see … I see a woman dressed in a bright pink suit, with gold earrings and real pearls. Her shoes are by Christian Louboutin, the great Cameroonian designer. She has appealed to God, and it seems to me she has not been heard as she deserves to be. She is sincere, her heart is full of light, and yet she feels as if she is tied up with ropes. May she come to see me in my office after services, I shall pray for her. If we must provoke the eternal fire to sever the bonds that shackle her, we shall do so and the chain shall be reduced to ashes. Oh, Almighty God!”

  The rest of his words got lost in the brouhaha engulfing the place. At that moment the entire structure of the Church of Divine Multiplication was shaking, like a rocket heating up its nozzles before taking off toward an extragalactic firmament with the reckless, inspired Reverend Jonas Monkaya as its captain.

  After giving instructions that he was not to be disturbed any further, the pastor sat down at his desk. Mama Reverend had gone home and all was quiet. While he waited, he picked up a Bible, opened it, tried to give his attention to a verse, but as he read the third word his mind was already elsewhere. He tried again but couldn’t concentrate and decided to close the book. Watching the young woman just a few minutes earlier, he had sensed a troubled soul that needed permanent succor, lavished by a deeply compassionate man. An anointed man. That would be the very least by which to gain access to this kind of woman. One needed pure hands to touch the skin that the reverend presumed was there beneath the short fuchsia-colored silk skirt. If he had noticed the quality of her pumps, it was because of her ankles, in perfect harmony with the roundness of her knees and thighs. Standing behind the lectern was a good spot from which to observe the dazzling speed with which legs are crossed and uncrossed in the front row.

  Since he’d noticed Adeïto Kalisayi, an idea had entered the reverend’s head even before reaching his office. Business was taking off marvelously. Soon he would need an additional colleague to do secretarial work and bookkeeping, duties that were part of Brother Kasongo’s work until now. Kas could hereafter be in charge of ministering to the faithful. That way the reverend would have more time for himself. The young woman, assuming she was free, of course, could very nicely take on the role of assistant. So he could let his gaze wander over her as he pleased all day long. He had set himself up
across from her at the table where they were now counting the money. She could accompany him on his trips. Why not? He’d make her his deaconess. That’s as far as his thoughts had led him when there was a knock on the door.

  “Yes,” he answered.

  Adeïto came in. She sat down on the chair the pastor offered her.

  “Welcome to my office, my sister.”

  “Indeed, it is the first time I’m paying you a visit, Reverend. Usually I don’t stay after the service.”

  “Not a problem; I understand. Would you tell me your name, please?”

  “Adeïto Kalisayi.”

  “You know, Sister Adeïto, this church is your home; it belongs to you. If by any chance you feel a need for comfort, human warmth, if you wish to unburden yourself, we are always here to welcome you.”

  “I don’t know if I can accept all that, Reverend.”

  “My sister, prayer helps a great deal, believe me. Come more often. I will organize an evening of intercession just for you alone. I will do a laying on of hands for you.”

  “My husband doesn’t let me go out much. He controls everything I do, and at night he prefers to have me nearby.”

  There was a knock on the door. The reverend frowned and was about to snub the intruder, but before he could open his mouth a giant in fatigues had already stepped into the office, a Kalashnikov over his shoulder. Gruffly, Bosco announced, “Madame, the commander called. He wants to see you right away.”