Necropolis (50 page)

the future liberation of the race.

May the banks of the great rivers that transport

your living waves toward the future

be yours!

May all the earth and all its riches

be yours!

May the hot noon sun

burn away your sorrows

May the rays of the sun

dry the tears spilled by your ancestor,

in the torment of these sad lands!

Our people, free and happy,

will live and triumph in our Congo.

Here, in the heart of great Africa!

 

The audience greeted the poem with thunderous applause and somebody at the back cried out: “Freedom for Lumumba!” The poet Bumenguele raised his hands to calm the enthusiasm and announced that he would now read his text. When the audience had fallen silent he brought the microphone closer and began reading:

 

It might not be entirely pointless to tell you something about myself, but for now I shall refrain from doing so and will only tell you that little of myself that truly matters to the narrative. Indeed, I should like to create a wall of smoke around my own life, a wall that might be of bamboo or of sand, or even of ice, something to separate me from the person of whom I am going to talk to you this afternoon, about whom I have written and thought so much and who justifies this introduction, as you will see, none other than the great poet Elmord Limpopo, one of the greatest that post colonial Africa has had, in the opinion of many, worthy to stand beside such outstanding figures as Joseph Yai Olabiyi Babalola, from Benin, or the Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, and without any doubt the best poet in Kenya, may God place him, not at His right hand, but in the darkest of His dungeons.

Although I am quite aware that it is inappropriate to use this kind of expression at the beginning of a biographical speech, I will say that these are words that express the purest of truths, which after all is the objective of any scholar of life, whether a biographer, a philosopher, or simply a citizen, which is why I repeat, they are an expression of the truth, which is a way of saying, they come from my own truth and experience, and in spite of the fact that they presuppose an adverse moral posture, I want to make it very clear to you, from the start, that I was one of Limpopo's most devoted followers, that I have given the best years of my life to his work and that, in some strange and inhuman way, I still admire him. I write about him because I know him, in that always imprecise way in which one may know a life, including one's own, that is to say, as an interested and in no way impartial observer, because any life that is close to us usually has serious repercussions on one's own, I know what I am saying and so do you, given that as one's life, the life of any one of us here, including the honorable audience, is a block of marble that is shaped by circumstances, our times, and the corner of the world in which we chanced to arrive, as well as the people we meet, and that close contact, that drumbeat whose rhythm never varies and never stops, helps a figure emerge from the stone, an imprecise silhouette that is born inside the block and gradually acquires depth and volume until it forms that unique, irreplaceable being that is each one of us, as unique and irreplaceable as the circumstances of each life. It is the immaterial and intangible tam-tam of life that makes us different, but anyway, some of you may already be saying to yourselves that I was not invited to this golden conference to come out with polished reflections on existence, which is something that should be done in privacy, or is more appropriate to a written essay or a bohemian disquisition. I am aware of that, and I beg your forgiveness in advance. I assure you that I am as suspicious as you are of those philosophers who constantly practice the vain exercise of great ideas on their audience. In any case, we shall see how these introductory reflections acquire their full meaning as we find out about the terrifying life of this man, or rather, of this unusual human case, and now we are indeed coming to the point.

I shall begin by telling you that Limpopo was born in Kilimani, an area of Nairobi that we could define as previously middle-class and now definitely well-off, close to Ngong Road and Argwings Kodhek Road, and although his young mother could have chosen between the National Hospital and the Aga Khan, both very close, she decided to give birth in her own home, a two-story wooden building with a porch, facing north toward the famous hills of Ngong so often spoken of by Karen Blixen, whose mansion, as you know, is today one of the attractions of the capital. In the mornings, a very cool air blows through the city from the mountains and is one of its subtler vices. Whoever has breathed it, enjoying it in silence, will find it difficult to leave it behind and Nairobi will be impregnated forever in his memory, he will remain irrationally trapped in that plain and his imagination, his pleasures, will be marked by the memory of those cool mornings, still damp with the night rain, when a slight mist rises and the red earth of the streets is like a mirror in which the children sink their feet as they run to school. It could also be the image of a lost innocence that refuses to disappear.

During the 1960s, one of those children was a boy running to the Presbyterian school of Newshenwood with a bag tied around his neck and his head seething with dreams, with constellations of dreams that might begin with the most distant star and end with one of the hummingbirds he could see from his window. His father, Clarence Limpopo, was Professor of World History at the National University of Kenya, and his mother, Evelyn, who had studied to be a teacher, taught biology at the English College. Young Elmord was an only child, so the attention of these two intellectuals, fascinated by independence and the socialist ideal of a dignified, self-sufficient country, as represented by Jomo Kenyatta, was entirely focused on him.

When he was nine, his father read to him aloud from the poetry of William Blake and Milton's Paradise Lost. He explained to him why Africa had to unite in a single great nation and recover its dignity before the white man, who should not, however, be hated, because what was hateful was the system imposed by a series of white nations which, with the shameful complicity of Africans, had come to Africa to steal its wealth, rape its women, and confine its men in labor camps or, in the best of cases, to give them ridiculous uniforms, with epaulettes and boots, and make them serve in their houses and clubs.

But according to Elmord's father, all that was over. With Jomo Kenyatta at the helm, his country could lift its head high and look with dignity at the other nations of the globe. Now they were independent, masters of their lives and destinies. They had to educate themselves, work hard to obtain the benefits of freedom, and make sure these reached the whole population, not only a few privileged people, as used to happen, and as had happened to him, Clarence Limpopo, who had gone to university and graduated in contemporary history, a destiny that had come about by chance, as he had been born on a farm owned by an old Englishman who had decided for some mysterious reason to give him an education, perhaps out of philanthropy or a feeling of guilt, he never knew which, because his mother, who might have known why, died when he was a child, so Clarence Limpopo had gone to university and was now a professor, and that was why his son, Elmord, had to have the best, had to be privileged so that he could be first in line and show the way to his countrymen who had not had the same luck, those Kenyans who died of malaria or typhoid, who lived in the slums of Nairobi, near the railroad tracks, feeding themselves on something similar to ugali, but without proteins, a crust of hard bread in water, hence the huge bellies of the children, the absent eyes of malaria, the high fevers, anyway, that was the great luck of Clarence and later of young Elmord, who by the age of ten was already mentioning in his poems the grave injustice of God, so grave, he wrote, that it deserved human judgment, a Nuremberg trial, or at least the same legal process that was given to any of his brothers when they were caught stealing or killing, because that serious crime had caused death and humiliation and was the midwife of great violence. “My God, I don't know how anyone can still believe in you,” was the conclusion of young Elmord Limpopo's poem.

At the English College, his poems were regarded with a degree of anxiety, but because he was the son of a teacher none of the staff took much notice. Not even when at the age of twelve he presented in the English literature class a poem that said:

 

Yesterday, in the midst of sleep,

I saw trees on fire in Nairobi,

rivers of forest where before there were streets

and specters of ash weeping on the sidewalks.

A group of lone men were climbing a hill

crowned by a church,

climbing in the midst of pain,

death and ashes

led by a strange being.

But before reaching the church,

all the way up there,

something exploded in the blackest part of night.

A burst of gunfire stopped the silent group

and threw it in the dust,

in the ashes.

 

It was pure chance that this and other poems came to the attention of Dr. Growsery, an elderly English entomologist now retired from the university and a great lover of poetry, who read them with great interest up to a dozen times and finally delivered his verdict: a great poet has arrived, but I don't know if we are ready for what he has to say.

It is worth pointing out that this had all come about by chance. On Wednesdays, Dr. Growsery would come to West­lands to pick up his grandson from the English College. He was waiting in the cafeteria when he found a small case that somebody had left behind and, in order to find out who it belonged to, opened it and found the young man's poems. Then, when he had located the owner, who of course was Elmord, and went to give it back to him, he said, I saw there are poems in your case, whose are they? and Elmord replied, they're mine, sir. Although surprised, the old man asked, but are they yours in the sense that they belong to you or in the sense that you are the author? The young man said, I'm the author, sir, I wrote them.

That was the beginning of the friendship between Dr. Growsery and young Elmord Limpopo. Growsery decided to send a selection of his young friend's poems to London and eight months later his efforts bore fruit and a university review, Literary News, published three of them on a page devoted to Africa. Two weeks after this a package arrived, addressed to Dr. Growsery, with five copies of the review. Elmord's poems were on page 76. It was a very emotional moment when the young man first saw his work in print, and it made him feel dizzy. It is such an extraordinary thing for a human being to see his creations on display, a beautiful, complex thing that can determine the future course of a life. After the first impact, Elmord looked at the page with his poems and it struck him that they would have been better if instead of being arranged horizontally across the page they had been placed one above the other. He also had objections to the typeface used and the size of the capitals. A young poet writes to get close to the center of his soul, and the graphic appearance of his work is the packaging of that search . . .

 

At this point, a loud explosion interrupted Bumenguele, and the amphitheater, where the audience had been listening with delight, filled with cries, smoke, and gas.

Such things can happen in a second.

The building shook. The lights flickered and went out. Only one of the walls remained illumined by the glare of a fluorescent tube, giving the hall a marmoreal appearance. Glasses of water fell to the floor and a shower of dust and fragments shrouded the air.

Then came a second explosion which must have hit the hotel full on, and almost immediately there was a third, which made part of the ceiling come crashing down on us. Not the structure, luckily, but a stucco vault and a few lamps.

The air filled with the smell of fuel, of chemicals. Also with smoke and the smell of burning plastic. A cloud of dust hit our heads like hail.

In spite of being on a mezzanine, with windows that looked out on an inner garden—which luckily had shattered, letting the air in—the people clambered over the rubble to reach the main doors at the top of the semicircular auditorium. I looked toward where Jessica and Egiswanda had been, but could not see them. It was darkest in that area of the auditorium, and a layer of dust and smoke hung in the middle.

I was under the delegates' table. The first explosion had thrown me to the floor, and that sturdy table seemed like a good place to wait; I had been in bombed cities before and I knew that the best thing was to stay still, like a hunted animal. I was not the only one under there: farther back I could make out Elsa Goudinho, Bumenguele, and Rashid. I went to Rashid and asked, are you O.K.? Well, I've been better, said Rashid, but I'm not complaining; I think I have a few pieces of glass in my underpants, but no cuts, how about you? I'm fine, I said, but there are some wounded people in the hall.

Above the cries of those clambering over the rubble, I thought I could hear moaning from people lying on the ground, unable to move. I thought of Jessica and Egiswanda, had they managed to get out? or were they on the floor, bleeding, hit by one of the lamps or trampled by the others? Some of the bodies seemed strangely motionless. Marta was not there, but that did not worry me too much as I had not seen her earlier either, perhaps she had gone to meet Amos? It was highly likely. In the upper part of the hall, dozens of desperate people were piling against the doors, since only one was open. They finally opened wide and there was a stampede. A powerful beam of light invaded the hall and everything appeared to come back to life.