Stringer (12 page)

So the conversation, after its heightened middle, ended in a sort of theoretical peace.

We finished our teas. I handed the girl my porcelain.

She gave me the bags and bottle of food.

Bobby showed me to the door. We solemnly shook hands again.

The air outside was choking. The taxibus was covered in filth. The driver screamed at me to get in. I climbed into the mass of humans, the warmth, the bodily smells. This was how I had begun to feel in Kinshasa—always restricted, caught in a sort of interior, unable to sense the horizon.

I had an opportunity to verify Bobby's claims that same evening, when I called Stefano, the UN officer from Châteaux Margaux, to confirm Keith's story about the massacre. I was still considering Keith's offer to travel together to Kilwa, and Stefano had become a reliable informant. It was he who had supplied me with some of the stories about rape. And today he was in a chatty mood: his marriage was coming up. It would be a quiet affair, he said, with only the closest family and friends. There would be excellent food; the honeymoon would be on some island. But the last preparations were still incomplete, and his mind had been elsewhere. He had hardly had time to examine the UN dossiers. “I know, I know,” he said. “You need to know about Kilwa. Hold on while I look it up.”

He read me the details and I took notes in the taxi. “Any chance you could get me the full report?” I said. I heard Stefano scratch his beard. “It's complicated. We have testimonies but the report is stuck at our chief's office. Political pressure.”

“I really need the report.”

“Why don't you try at the World Bank? Really it is their affair more than ours. But I'll give it a try. As a favor. By the way, I
didn't say anything about political pressure.” I asked Stefano what he knew about Avi Mezler. “Of course,” he said. “Major guy, based in Tel Aviv. The UN has been trying to indict him for years. Why do you ask?”

“He's trying to claim this piece of land from a friend.”

“Where?”

“In Équateur. We don't know why.”

“That's strange. Mezler doesn't go sniffing just anywhere. Listen, we're having a going-away party at my place. We have a pool. There'll be good people. Bring your friend, I want to hear more about this.”

I was sitting in the minibus's only vacant seat: on a hot canister beside the driver, my legs spread to accommodate the gearshift. I pointed under my legs and asked what it was. The driver said, “Tank.” I saw a pipe from the canister lead toward the engine. On the dashboard a sticker said, “Jesus Protects This Vehicle.” But hardly ten minutes afterward the minibus began to glide. The driver pumped the pedal. The minibus jerked. Everybody was ordered to get out. I clutched my bag to my chest and watched the driver walk away. Passengers began to disperse. An old woman and I were the only ones who remained until the end. The driver returned carrying a half-liter bottle glowing brown.

I used the time to call the AP. I told the editor the Kilwa affair was serious. “Anvil organized the massacre. The UN is withholding the report but I might get it.”

“Do you have quotes?”

I told him that if we waited a few days we would have the full report; but he cut me off. “Send it tonight. If we have the news there's no sense in waiting.” The minibus reached Victoire and I rushed to the house, avoiding the garbage and gutters.

The house courtyard was empty. I locked myself in my room and began to type out the story. Stefano couldn't confirm all of Keith's details—there wasn't enough evidence, he said, though
everyone knew what had happened. I wrote the hardest-hitting story I could. Then the bulbs sparkled and died. My screen waned.

Nana moved about the house like a phantom, setting candles that lit her face from underneath and made her look sinister.

I drummed with my fingers on the chair at the dining table, trying to relax among the sounds of the creatures; small shadows flashed along the wall. I had seen rats in my room the other night. Nana had promised to set traps. “How come you didn't do it?” I said.

“I had another idea,” she said. “We will use poison.”

I held a candle while she emptied a plastic sachet and mixed a white powder with balls of bread. Going from room to room we carefully placed the balls in cabinets, among the kitchen pots and along the walls. We put some balls around her suitcase of special-occasion clothes, and beside the deep freezer. “Put some under my bed,” I said, “and behind the wardrobe. That's where they multiply.” She laughed.

The AP editor called, sounding impatient. He wanted to go home and was only waiting for my story. I followed Nana to the living room.

But we were helpless against the current; we waited, listened. The initial silence was gone. Sounds from the road: murmurs from the night crowd, a dog, the resounding cry of a bird. Bars had lit generators; bulbs attracted flying insects, the intensity of lights rising and ebbing with the pitch of the motor. Stoves scraped the ground like chalk on blackboards as women dragged the heavy metal into the courtyard. They began to braise fish. Children came out and pissed over the earth, crumpling the cloth of their shirts in one hand and watching the liquid splash against their feet. The women shouted at them to go inside. The smoke from the stoves attracted large birds that circled above and observed the cuisine from electrical posts. Orange embers
littered the courtyard. Sweating, I flapped a newspaper against my face.

“We should call SNEL,” I said. The electricity company. Nana said it would do no good.

“Didn't they fix the problem the last time you called?”

“That was a coincidence. I had nothing to do with it.”

“Can't you just call them to try?”

“You do it if you're in such a rush.”

The local SNEL officer, an elderly man who had supervised Bozene's circuits for decades, assured me the current would soon return. It always did. How soon? I explained speed was imperative. He said, “I understand, but it may be sensible to invest twenty dollars. The other houses have done so.” I thought he was asking for a bribe and was ready to promise payment, but then I heard our neighbor's television running. And the bulb at the next house glowed. I walked up to the gate, slowly, the realization growing: the sounds, the light, the activity of the street, the music playing on two-in-ones. “Why are we the only house without current?” I asked Nana. “Did we do something to the SNEL guy?”

“I've argued with Jose for two years,” she said, “you try telling him.”

Jose sat on the porch, somnolent, slumped over his hands. He said, “We're an honest family and we're going to stay honest.” I looked up at the wires crisscrossing Bozene. I had seen them before but had never realized their purpose. The other houses were stealing current from alternate power lines. Why weren't we? Because Jose was trying to take on corruption in his country alone?

I filed the story from a neighbor's house using one of Mossi's tricks: by making my phone a data transmitter. It was both slow and expensive, but it worked in an emergency. Only then did I realize how exhausting the day had been. I fell on my bed. I
surveyed the room. A pair of red eyes peered from under the wardrobe. I banged with my hand on the carpet. They hid, reappeared. “Go away,” I said, my voice ringing. I imagined the rats nibbling at the poison, and to that image I fell asleep.

The fetish boy was being remembered in front of our house, some weeks after his death. The delay was attributed to his family's quest for finances: in Kinshasa one could die poor but one still had to be buried like a rich man. The
évolué
households sensed the contradiction: Nana told me about a boy who died of typhoid because his mother lacked two hundred dollars. Immediately relatives piled her with money—more than two thousand dollars—so the boy could have an elaborate funeral.

Likewise, the fetish boy was having a gazebo erected, and for many weeks we had seen his uncles squatting on the side of the street, setting up wooden stumps with concrete bricks at the bottom and lengths of rope; the neighborhood had come together to provide fine purple cloth to drape over the wood; a tall pole was placed at the gazebo's center to make a spike at its top.

Individual houses made further contributions. Jose was generous. Once the service began, gathered in the shade of the purple cloth was a collection of Bozene's old and weary, sadly singing. Jose's loudspeakers sounded like beating tin. The gathering swayed. An old photograph of the boy stood on a shrine-like pedestal, and on one side of the gazebo I spotted my fan giving air to a few fortunate.

The loudspeaker and the fan substituted for our house's presence; though Jose was in the
ville
no one accused him of contempt. From the house we heard the ceremony last all night and then another full day. Nana stayed at home to arrange her boutique, spreading T-shirts and track pants on the table. Frida was present. Nana unbundled a woman's top and Frida claimed it would fit her perfectly. Nana pushed it her way. Frida didn't have
money. I heard the word “family.” Frida picked up garment after garment and at the end Nana wrote her a receipt. Frida gave me a glare, as if to provoke. “Watch out with her,” I mumbled. And Nana—even now cold to me in Frida's presence—scowled.

That I was tense on that day was clear to everyone who crossed my path. At the internet café I dropped a hundred francs into Stella's palm. “Boss, I've got something,” he said, pushing a paper my way:

New System of Ravagers of the Male Sex by the Magic of a Mystic Band

True Story in Kinshasa (Information @ Stella Ivinya)

He twitched his eyebrows and rubbed his fingers together. “Want the full information?” He looked around furtively.

I stared at the sheet, and the letters seemed to grow bigger and bigger, and they swam, floating across the page, and off it. I crumpled the paper in one motion. “Be serious, Stella.”

He was offended. “What's the matter with you?” he said. “Can't have a little fun?”

The tension stemmed from the Kilwa story. It had been published but only in obscure outlets. The major papers had not picked it up. I could not understand—usually an AP story was taken all over the world. Was the massacre not important enough? Had it been suppressed? Stefano called and I answered the phone in a hurry. “I saw a very disturbing story,” he said, his voice Italian neutral.

“About what?”

“I expressly told you not to quote me.”

A flurry of thoughts invaded my head. “There is nothing about the politics.” Isn't that what he said?

“I'm in big trouble because of you.”

“What's the matter? I didn't talk about political pressure. Is there some misunderstanding?”

“I'm sorry but I don't think I can talk to you anymore,” he said.

“Stefano.”

The line went silent, magnifying my feeling of shame. I covered my face with my hands—I had lost my best source of information. Worse, I had lost a potential friend. At home it was dark. I felt my way along the corridor and to the bed. But I could not sleep. A noise had erupted. In the courtyard water shot into a plastic bucket, making a hollow racket. “Something happened?”

“No water for twenty-four hours,” Nana said.

The water company workers had announced a strike. Jose said they regularly took holidays, but Nana had heard an official was protesting Bozene's ceremonies for the fetish boy. She knew which neighbors had complained. Jose still thought it might be the anniversary of the company's founding. The speculation continued as the house took on the heavy task of preparing against the drought. Corinthian stood at the courtyard door, heaving buckets that Nana filled. Jose worked in the kitchen, preparing water vessels for Nana to boil. Joining Corinthian, I lugged a bucket from the courtyard and it swayed between my legs, spilling water in the living room. I ran faster and set the bucket down with a splash, next to the others against the wall: blue, brown, red. From the living room I heard a shout. Corinthian had slipped and fallen. “What is your problem?” Nana glared.

I was banished to my room. Corinthian and Nana continued their merry-go-round until all the buckets were filled. The house regained its quiet. At some point during the night the water system malfunctioned. The septic tank regurgitated; the toilet overflowed with a sonorous gurgle and a sucking noise, like the sound an elephant might make at a water hole. Thinking it could be trouble I appeared in the corridor holding a curtain rod. A thick green mass covered the floor. Bébé Rhéma's cries reverberated through the house. Jose and Nana had opened their door, wearing loose nightgowns. Nana looked at me as though I were responsible; she had always believed my toilet paper would
clog up their tank, though Jose said it would not happen. Her expression was of distress. “I will fix it in the morning,” Jose said, stretching his arms out and yawning. “Nana, why don't you clean this mess.” Lying in my room, I wrapped a wet towel around my nose to repel the stink, and I listened to Nana's washcloth slosh.

The street suffered as well. The morning showed how the gutters had stagnated along the alleys and roads. There was no water to keep them running. The sewage turned frothy like detergent, fermenting and emanating a stink that was usually carried down the street, continually replaced by newer and fresher sewage, but now the rot stayed and grew. In spite of this people sat outside. It was worse in the houses, in the humidity and heat. I had not brushed or showered that morning. The bathroom still reeked; there hadn't been enough spare water to remove the grime, which had dried in black smears on the cistern and the floor. The Grand Hotel was the only place I knew that offered free water to the public—perhaps I could use the swimming pool. I put on some aftershave and a fresh shirt, but the ride was miserably hot and my clothes stuck to me in the most uncomfortable places.