Congo Inc

by In Koli Jean Bofane

  Forced to be naked and on her knees, Shasha’s heart gave birth to an implacable hatred. She’d had her fill of tragedy and humiliation. The slaughter of the people in her village, the martyrdom of her parents, the escape with her little brothers, the death of the younger one, the trek on foot with Trésor to Kisangani, the compromises she had to agree to all along the way. And then the boat, the river, the arrival in Kin’, the hunger, the street life, the prostitution at age fourteen.

  Fortunately, it was as if Shasha was beside herself at the time. She would go on and on to someone; she wouldn’t stop, not until the other person withdrew. If you were a pain in the ass, she was formidable, which is why the shégués had named her Shasha la Jactance, Kolo Eyoma.8 By tooth and nail she had created a place at the Great Market for herself and Trésor. She needed dollars, but, simultaneously, her hate for those who gave them to her was mounting with each passing day—and that hate was focused specifically on Major Waldemar Mirnas, UN officer, on a mission of intervention in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

  That particular night he came after sunset to pick her up and take her home with him. On the days she was with him he gave his domestic staff time off so he could be alone with her. When she entered his villa, she followed an established ritual and went straight to the kitchen to put down the dishes she had prepared. She knew what came next. He would sit down in an armchair and take off his shirt, exposing his bare torso. The man was a giant, more than one meter ninety-five tall. At forty, he’d grown corpulent. When La Jactance came back to the living room, she went directly to him. Still seated, he started taking off her clothes, one by one, the way you remove petals from a rare flower. When he came to her panties, he removed them slowly, to let the pinkish-hued bud in the center above her skinny thighs appear like a sunrise. Then, like a blind man lost in a labyrinth, he felt her body. He wrapped his hands around her bottom, hard as ebony, and inhaled the air around her. Then he put the little apron on her, which reached to just above the triangle of her sex. At that point she served him dinner. He took his time eating, savoring each mouthful, sensing the flavors, assimilating them, while creating images in his mind: proteins, lipids, mineral salts, trace elements, iron, aluminum, coltan, manganese, germanium, cobalt, copper, uranium, bauxite, niobium, platinum, chrome, helium 3, beryl, soil with a high silicate content.

  Standing near him, as always with lowered head while Mirnas enjoyed his meal, Shasha was flooded with shame. At first, as his hands were running all over her body, she felt as if she was burning beneath her skin; she thought she would get used to it, but the sensation of an acid bath persisted, despite everything. The peace workers came to her in 4 × 4s marked “UN,” with the list of their earthly fantasies: dark, silky skin; smell of pepper seeping from armpits as intoxicating as cocaine; firm, supple flesh resisting any insistent pressure; hips moving like an unleashed wave, expert at leading you to perdition and abandoning you in the storm, the way billows would with an adrift castaway. In this ambiance, Shasha la Jactance felt like the lifebuoy that has sunk after use. Her hatred of the Lithuanian had turned so cold that the man, blinded by the whirlwind Shasha’s body created during his oneiric travels, was aware of nothing.

  Mirnas would have given anything for the dizzying journey to never stop. While he was thinking this, after a final forceful thrust, a lightning wave sharply tore his flesh and a gigantic crash ravaged his entire being, hurling him toward a kind of immateriality. Confused, he heard himself shout out a long lament while the child whore—legs bent, his palms around her bottom on the edge of the table—was pounding away with her pelvis locked around him. The head of his penis sunk deep in the blaze, Waldemar Mirnas was forced to surrender, realizing with each second what was happening to him: the never-ending reply of a surrogate eternity.

  The MONUSCO office building was easy to spot. Given the floodlights, sandbags, cement obstacles, and the barbed wire surrounding it all the way to the top of the walls, it was obvious that it contained an organization unwilling to take any risks but at the same time making many enemies. Guards in blue helmets were on duty. The gate opened to let a 4 × 4 go through. Waldemar Mirnas entered his office and turned on his computer right away as he checked his watch. Almost time. It had to be close to 10:00 AM in New York. He sat down and waited.

  Waldemar didn’t like the conversation he was about to have. The inquest into the events at Kamituga continued. What was it they wanted this time, there in New York? There was no shortage of dead people in the country. Six more or six less wouldn’t change a thing; this war was destined to continue. For once, everyone’s interests coincided—except for those of the Congolese, of course. Everything was working out well for everyone in this conflict. Nothing ideological or political about it. It was simply a matter of being in control of the largest reserve of raw materials in the world, and may the best man win.

  “Good morning, Miss Argento.”

  “Good morning, Major. Let’s get right to the point, shall we? I wanted to talk with you about something of great concern to me. I’ve spent some time studying all the reports you’ve sent me. I really want to congratulate you; you’ve done fine work.” Chiara Argent fell silent for a few moments. “When I look at the troops’ assignments,” she went on, “I can tell who was where and at what moment. However, if I check the workforce you had available in that sector, there are six soldiers too many.”

  “I don’t understand,” Mirnas responded ingenuously.

  “Let’s be clear, Major. The victims, were they really assigned to a reconnaissance mission, as your first report stated?”

  Mirnas’s face reddened. “Are you accusing me of lying?”

  “I’d just like to understand. Their movements appear in the daily reports you sent to me. But if I count your men carefully, some of them supposedly participated in this reconnaissance mission as listed in your first report, but at the same time they were doing something else. There are six phantom soldiers, Major. Your numbers don’t correspond to those we have in New York. But let’s leave this for later, we’ll certainly find the answer to this question. We’re also waiting for the reports of the communications control in the region on the date of the massacre. It’s a bit complicated, but we hope thereby to identify the activities of Commanders Bizimungu and Bob. I wanted you to be aware of that. Please check the movements of these six men on that day. I’ll call you back very soon. That will be all for today, Major. Have a good afternoon.”

  And she hung up. The Lithuanian brooded for a moment, then banged his fist on the table and cursed. He promptly felt a cramp in his body and, leaning over, put his hand on his belly. For a while now the peacekeeper had been suffering from a pain that cut across his gut from all sides at once and would stay entrenched at the level of the plexus, causing him such ferocious heartburn that it took his breath away. He should worry less, he said to himself, pay attention to the ulcer. And that bitch in New York with her pathetic questions wasn’t helping matters in the least. She should leave him alone with her reports and her insinuations. Six poor bastards had been buried long ago, over there in Uruguay; let them rest in peace.

  Nausea overwhelmed him, his mouth filled with saliva and a taste of metal. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his lips. There was blood. He cursed. He should see a civilian doctor. The physicians treating his unit had found nothing, but something wasn’t right: the atrocious pains, the bleeding—it wasn’t normal.

  “So what do you think, Celio?”

  “Hard to say. He seemed pretty undaunted where the staff assignment was concerned. It’s logical he would be defensive. When he feels a little more cornered, he can always claim there was a mistake in the report. And since there aren’t any direct witnesses anymore, he can rest easy that he won’t be linked to anything at all.”

  “You’re forgetting Bizimungu,” Chiara responded. “Commander Bob is just an underling. It’s Kobra Zulu who’s responsible for the massacre, but with impunity so prevalent in Congo that it’s norm
al Mirnas wouldn’t get flustered. He must be telling himself it will all blow over.”

  “You really think he’s hiding something? After all, it may have been some business between Bizimungu, Commander Bob, and the Uruguayans, who were acting on their own. That’s one hypothesis. But, as I think about it, this guy is not a professional in what he’s being suspected of. His system must have some flaws. If I were you, I’d take a look at his accounts. A transfer always leaves tracks.”

  “I’ll say a word or two about it in my reports to the International Criminal Court. I’m convinced he’s actively involved in this affair—why else would he falsify any documents? To cover his men? What were they doing in Kamituga? Why this massacre? The rebels in that area don’t usually open fire on our men in the context of their operations. They certainly went beyond that of a classical operation here. We’re dealing with something else. There was an outburst.”

  Chiara Argento blinked briefly. Elbows on the table, she pointed a pen in her partner’s direction. “There are far too many interests in Congo, Celio. They all want to line their pockets. It’s the only purpose of the rebellions; all of our reports prove it. Our Blue Berets act like everyone else—it’s that simple.”

  She leaned back in the leather chair. “Haven’t you noticed how slowly we’ve been made to do this inquest? Spokes in our wheels at every turn? Even though it concerns the murder of our men. As soon as I have the information I need, I’ll try to move very fast. I suspect that sooner or later they’ll tell us to stop the whole thing and deposit our files in the same cabinet where they dumped the black boxes of the Falcon that crashed on April 6, 1994, in the sky over Kigali.”

  1. Sister who carries her weight (financially, in influence, or physically, as you choose).

  2. “Old Man.”

  3. “The last person you’ll see alive,” from Scream 1, 2, and 3.

  4. Bernie Madoff, sentenced to 150 years in prison in 2009 for swindling through the establishment of a Ponzi scheme, the financial pyramid.

  5. The Great Helmsman was one of the names for Mao Tse-Tung.—Tr.’s note

  6. Lightly smoked so the meat remains tender.

  7. A vegetable.

  8. The boss of damage.

  CHANCE ELOKO PAMBA1

  运气，没什么

  Standing in front of the main station with a parcel under his arm, a suitcase at his feet, Old Lomama was gazing at a view of the Boulevard du 30-Juin that flowed majestic as a cement river lined with buildings taller than a wenge tree and two or three lifakis put end to end. The telecommunication poles stood in a row here, one every hundred meters, and the rooftops were crowned with satellite dishes and antennas. On this river, cars were making a hellish racket, calling out at one another with their roaring motors and honking horns. The people were like an ant or termite colony, about to invade the shops that made up the architecture, too ostentatious for Old Lomama’s taste.

  He cried out to a street vendor selling cigarettes, tissues, disposable razors, and organic aphrodisiac roots. “Young man, do you know Isookanga?”

  “Isookanga who, Old One?”

  “Isookanga Lolango Djokisa.”2

  “Don’t know him, Old One, sorry.”

  Old Lomama called on another vendor, carrying neckties, some of them folded and draped over his left arm, while with his right hand he waved the others above his head like a viper’s nest. “Tell me, son, you know Isookanga?”

  “Isookanga who, Old One?”

  “‘Isookanga who, Isookanga who’? Does nobody in this city know my nephew, or what?”

  The street vendor moved on, telling himself that the elders sometimes really thought they owned the world. And the mosquitoes after them.

  Old Lomama tried his ploy three or four more times. Then, although he’d always known Kinshasa was a vast metropolis with many people, he realized he hadn’t suspected that regarding a tight social fabric, that wasn’t really the point. Nobody knew anyone.

  Old Lomama was swept up in the flow of the crowd and found himself walking down the Avenue du Commerce, suitcase in hand. He approached a young man dressed in a Gucci sweat suit, headset on his ears, holding a digital pad, busy selling mobile phones stacked up in a messy pile on a small table. There were clones of all sorts—Samsung, Nokia, LG, Blackberry, iPhone—which, thanks to the technology transfers demanded by the government of the People’s Republic of China, had been duplicated and mass-produced somewhere in the periphery of Wuhan or Nanjing.

  “Son, do you know Isookanga?” he asked again.

  “Isoo who? No, Old One.”

  “He’s my nephew and I’m looking for him. He left the village a long time ago and I’d like to find him.”

  “If you really know him, there’s a way. What’s he like?”

  “My nephew? He loves technology and everything modern. He’s a determined man, my nephew, and a true Ekonda. Isookanga Lolango Djokisa—it’s the name his mother and the ancestors gave him.”

  “That’s it?” the vendor asked. “Wait, I’m looking.” He tapped lightly on the touch screen of his pad, chanting, “Isookanga, technology, modernity, determined, Ekonda.”

  He punctuated his formula with two or three light touches of the tip of his middle finger, waited two seconds, then caressed the surface of the instrument three times, the way one does to the neck of a cat in the hope of flattering him.

  “There! Read this, Old Man.” And the young vendor handed Old Lomama the screen.

  “Read it to me, please. I don’t have my glasses.”

  “There’s a story from AFP on Google sent by Le Potentiel:3 ‘Street Kids Riot at the Great Market.’ Here it says, ‘At a given moment the spokesperson of the shégués went to meet with the city’s governor. Young Isookanga, native of Équateur Province, a pure Ekonda with a profound interest in technology and modernity, gave a determined speech,’ et cetera, et cetera.”

  “Shégués, who are they?”

  “Old One, you don’t know the shégués? You, in the village, you don’t know anything. They’re the street kids. Many of them live at the Great Market, not far from here. If you go see them, you’ll find your nephew; he’s their spokesman, that’s what it says here,” he said, showing his multimedia tool. “The screen never lies.”

  “Thank you, son. Which way is it?”

  “That way, Old One. That will be a total of five dollars.”

  “What? Young man, don’t you know the law of first birthright? Five dollars! You want to disrespect me?” And the old man left to avoid having any further dealings with the young boor who didn’t know tradition.

  “You, you Batwa, you’re all the same. You don’t know how to communicate. You’ll never be on Twitter!” the vendor shouted as a curse.

  As the old man walked to where the street children were, the service that the backlit mirror-like thing had provided left him speechless nevertheless. A little dismayed as well. “I asked people,” Old Lomama said to himself, “nobody knew anything. But some little guy with a reflective screen manages to answer my question. Does that mean a machine is meant to replace mankind? Will people no longer look at the eyes of their human brother or sister, and soon refer only to a surface that generates images, numbers, and letters? And won’t those who own such instruments be tempted to dominate others, the way this brazen young man just did, expecting to get five dollars?” The old man was skeptical. As he saw it, the modernity that loomed was to be feared. It wasn’t with strings coming out of one’s ears and with letters touched on a mirror that people would understand each other.

  “I’m looking for the shégués.”

  Old Lomama was addressing a saleswoman on whose colorful stall rows of mangoes were displayed, avocados, papayas, guavas, mangosteens, star fruits, and beef heart cut in half to show the white, creamy flesh.

  “The shégués? Those sorcerers! Papa, you don’t want to be looking for those kids. They’re bad news; no one knows what to do with them.”

  “Papa, don’t listen to h
er, they’re just poor children,” said a woman in a neighboring stall who was selling exactly the same things. “God is sending us trials and tribulations to show we’re approaching the end of the world. Luke 21:23 says. ‘But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck.’ People no longer trust in Jesus. ‘He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted,’ Isaiah 61:1. It’s the fault of the parents; they’re heathens—they no longer respect the Word of the Lord. Life itself has made these children the way they are. They’re sacrificial lambs, innocents in the mouth of the lion of Judas.”

  A commotion began, the spectacle of a table collapsing and oranges and grapefruits scattering over the ground like tennis balls in a Roland-Garros Grand Slam tournament. Two boys, one tall and one short, trying to strangle each other, were stuck in a wrestling arm lock. Adults had to separate them and force them to pick up the citrus they had knocked all over the place.

  “What did I just tell you, Papa? They’re devils!”

  “Son.” Old Lomama was talking to one of the wild boys, now crouching down to pick up the oranges and wiping them with his filthy T-shirt. “Do you know Isookanga?”

  “Old Isoo?” Little Modogo answered. “Absolutely!”

  “You know where I can find him?”

  “You have to ask Shasha la Jactance. She lives over there,” he said, pointing in the direction of the recess in the administrative building.

  “Thank you, son. But tell me why you’re fighting with someone bigger than you? It’s not good; you should respect your elders.”

  “Respect Mukulutu? Never! He started it. I was just passing by, doing nothing, I only said, ‘Yowaa nex!’ And he hit me. But I’m not afraid of him; I have a toungle,” the little one said, showing a sharpened screwdriver from a crease in his jeans. “When I grow up I’m going to be kuluna. They all want me!” he added like an oracle.