The Boy in the River (29 page)

‘Tell me something, Richard,’ she said with the glimmer of a smile. ‘I know why I’m here. It’s my job. But what’s a nice guy like you doing in a place like this?’

At that moment Remy’s mobile rang, startling us all. He fumbled it out of his pocket, perhaps surprised to find that he still had it after the mêlée. He spoke briefly into it, then looked at me.

‘It’s one of my team,’ Remy said. ‘Londres’ uncle is at the house now.’

Sacha and I agreed that I would grab a taxi. He would take the crew to Boulevard Kasa-Vubu in the Land-Cruiser via the main roads. They would get close enough to film unless it was actually dangerous, but would stay as inconspicuous as possible.

When I arrived at the boulevard, I told the driver to wait and crossed to the red door between the garages. This time when I thumped on it the door was opened by a shifty man in a blue T-shirt and flip-flops. He looked startled to see me. I took advantage of the fact that I towered over him, and before he could marshal his thoughts I barked, ‘Are you the uncle of a boy called Londres?’

‘Who gave you this address?’ he blustered, but under the bravado he looked guilty, as if I had caught him out, and I felt sure he had been inside the house and deliberately avoiding me on my earlier visit.

‘It doesn’t matter who gave it to me. Are you the boy’s uncle or not?’

‘Well, yes, but—’

‘Is he here?’ I looked past him into a shabby room with a plastic chair and a dirt floor.

‘No.’

‘Where is he, then? When are you expecting him?’ I glimpsed the white Land Cruiser pulling up on the far side of the boulevard.

‘I’m not expecting him,’ he stammered. ‘He’s at my sister’s.’

‘Which is where?’

He gave me an address and I turned on my heel and marched to the taxi. I gave a cautious thumbs-up to the Land Cruiser across the road, and as we pulled away I had the reassurance of seeing the shiny vehicle nose into the traffic behind us.

To bitter complaints from the taxi-driver the route took us down a maze of sand-choked and potholed alleyways, into which the beaten-up cab bounced and bottomed. After about half an hour we stopped in a surprisingly well-to-do district, at least by Kinshasa standards. A lane shaded by palms led away from the street where we had parked, dwindling to a footpath a few metres down.

‘There,’ the driver said, jerking a surly thumb. ‘The place you’re looking for is down there.’

I paid him and he drove of at once. It was quiet after the mayhem of Kasa-Vubu. I started to walk down the narrow street. I felt very alone and a little afraid, and I was relieved when the white Land Cruiser appeared behind me and pulled up near the entrance. From there, I guessed, Petra would be able to film the house. I reached the address I had been given, a respectable dwelling with a security gate and – as I could glimpse over the wall – a couple of acacias growing in an inner court. I knocked on the door.

It was opened by a sullen woman of about thirty in a scarlet and white cotton wrap.

‘I’m looking for a boy called Londres,’ I said. ‘Are you his aunt?’

She squared up to me. ‘Why? Who are you?’

Evidently my bully-boy tactics were not going to work on this one.

‘I’ve come from London,’ I said, more agreeably. ‘I’m a university researcher, and I’m writing a book about African churches. I’m very interested in Londres’ story.’

‘What story?’ she demanded.

‘I understood that he had come back to Kinshasa to undergo deliverance?’

‘So? What of that?’

I hesitated, and in that moment a withered old woman appeared beside the aunt. She was toothless and keen-eyed and she peered narrowly at me.

‘It’s about that boy, is it?’ she demanded. ‘That Londres?’

‘Yes, madam,’ I said quickly, my heart beginning to thump. ‘Is he here?’

‘Nothing but trouble, that boy,’ the old woman muttered. ‘I should know. He’s my grandson. They put him through deliverance at the church, but it didn’t do much good. We sent him back for another lot. But the
kindoki
’s too strong in that one.’

‘He has
kindoki
?’

‘Of course he has. There’s a lot of it about, but he’s got it bad.’

‘He’s not here,’ the younger woman put in before I could go on.

‘But he lives here?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Will he be back soon?’

‘Who knows?’ she said. ‘He may be on the other side of the city. How should I know when he’ll be back?’

‘Could I wait for him? He’s not in any kind of trouble, not with me. I just want to talk to him.’

She paused, but then gave in, perhaps realizing she was not going to get rid of me easily, or maybe convinced by my reassurances. Perhaps she even saw me as a potential source of profit.

‘You’d better come in, then,’ she said grudgingly. ‘But like I say, I don’t know how long he’ll be. Maybe he won’t come back at all tonight.’

I thought of the camera crew in the car just a few yards away. I didn’t want them to lose sight of me.

‘If it’s not too much trouble,’ I said, ‘perhaps we could have a couple of chairs out here? It’s so much cooler in the breeze.’

She shrugged, contemptuous of the eccentricities of foreigners,but brought out a couple of chairs and went back for another. In a few minutes, Londres’ aunt, his grandmother and I were sitting in the gathering dusk waiting for the boy’s return and chatting with stilted formality.

By this time we had an audience. A considerable crowd of children had gathered around us, steadily filling the lane. Most looked better cared-for than the kids along Kasa-Vubu, but they behaved in much the same way, some standing and staring, mostly at me, and a few scuffling and shoving one another. When they grew boisterous the aunt would snap at them and they would fall silent for a minute or two before starting up again. They knew who I was looking for: I could hear Londres’ name whispered among them.

I sat there in the mosquito-humming gloom for perhaps an hour. I dreaded the moment when the aunt would declare that we had waited long enough and tell me to clear of and not come back. I strongly suspected she thought I was trouble and I feared she’d got a message from someone to keep the boy away.

Just then one of the kids near my chair sidled up and jostled my arm. When I glanced at him he nodded down the alley to where a thin boy had just turned the corner and had stopped at the sight of the crowd.

‘Londres,’ the lad whispered in my ear.

I jumped up before anyone could speak to the new boy. I walked over to him, and as I drew closer I recognized him from his photographs. The gauntness of his face made his eyes look very large, and his whole aspect was wary and fearful, but he was the boy I was looking for. I felt a rush of relief.

‘Hello, Londres,’ I said slowly in English, not really sure if this child in the middle of the Congolese capital would really follow.

‘Who are you?’

He wasn’t tall for his age, but he had a certain breadth to his shoulders, and I guessed in England he would have been called stocky. Now the flesh had fallen away and left him looking pinched and underweight.

‘My name’s Richard,’ I said. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’

‘For me? Why are you looking for me?’ He looked cowed and unhappy, but his accent was pure street London, all fat vowels and glottal stops.

‘He wants to hear your story,’ the aunt called scornfully. ‘I don’t know why.’

The boy’s eyes were full of suspicion.

I told him I’d heard he had been through deliverance, and that he’d been brought back to Kinshasa for that. He watched me in silence.

‘They tell me you miss London,’ I said.

‘Yes.’ I could see hope jump in his eyes. ‘I miss London. I hate it here.’

‘Nothing but trouble, that boy,’ the toothless grandmother spat. ‘Trouble and ingratitude.’

‘Let’s not talk about it now,’ I said, leading him over to the two women and addressing myself to them. ‘Why don’t I come back in the morning and I’ll take Londres out somewhere for the day?’

‘Take him where?’ the aunt demanded.

I said I’d take him somewhere respectable, and suggested the Portuguese Club, which wasn’t far away and had a pool and a restaurant. I told the women I would buy the boy lunch and bring him back before dark. Before they could object I turned to Londres and asked him if he’d like a chance to chat about England, and especially football. He tried to look nonchalant, but in his eyes I could see a gleam of collusion, as if a secret message had been exchanged between us.

39

Kinshasa, August 2005

I was back outside the door by 9 a.m. the next morning.

I worried that Londres’ family might have had a change of heart; when I arrived and the aunt opened the door to me I could see no sign of him.

‘He’ll be around,’ the aunt told me, offhandedly. ‘You can wait inside.’

She walked of into the house, her flip-flops slapping on the cement. This time I followed her, and she led me into a neat room of an internal courtyard. A tall, elderly man I had not seen before was already sitting there. He was grey-haired and had a certain bearing, and as I entered the room he rose and greeted me coolly.

He explained, with some dignity, that he was Londres’ grandfather, and asked me to tell him what I wanted with the boy. I went through my patter: I was an academic, writing a book on the phenomenal rise of African revivalist churches, and I was interested in the experiences of someone who had gone through deliverance.

‘Not that it did him any good,’ the grandmother put in, shuffling past the doorway. ‘Trouble, that boy.’

‘I am concerned about this,’ the grandfather said. ‘I hear you want to take him to some club?’

It was a fair point. A foreigner appears out of the blue and wants to whisk your fourteen-year-old grandson of for the day? He had a right to be suspicious.

I said that I would take Londres for lunch, and maybe a swim, and that he would be back by the afternoon. I made a big thing of saying that naturally I wouldn’t want to do any of this without the grandfather’s agreement, and with that I produced a consent form. I had thought this piece of bureaucracy might be an obstacle, but now it worked to my advantage. Impressed by the formality of my important document, and with his authority acknowledged, the grandfather barely hesitated before signing.

As he did so, Londres walked into the room.

His face lit up when he saw me. Perhaps he hadn’t truly believed I would come back.

‘Hello, Londres,’ I said. ‘Shall we go?’

‘Yes,’ he replied, nodding rapidly. ‘Yes.’

When we arrived at the Portuguese Club at ten that morning we were its sole guests. The only sign of life at all in the gathering heat of the day was an old man listlessly sweeping up between the poolside tables.

The club is one of those fading expatriate social clubs that can be found in every former colonial city. I had chosen it because it wasn’t far from Londres’ house and because I slightly knew one of the Congolese chefs. The crew set up under one of the thatched shelters that surrounded the pool.

Londres was surprised to find that he was to be filmed, and a bit overwhelmed by all these unexpected professionals bustling about, but the crew – Andy in particular – were wonderful with him and he soon relaxed. Within a few minutes, with a Coke on the table in front of him, he was telling me his story.

‘I’ve been in London since I was four,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know anything about this
kindoki
, or whatever it is.’

‘And you didn’t want to come back to Kinshasa?’

‘Why would I? I don’t even speak their language. All my mates are in London. Besides, I was always afraid of coming here.’

‘Afraid? Why do you say that?’

‘It’s a place people try to get out of. Refugees and that. They only come back if they get caught or they’ve messed up.’

I could hear the faint whirr of the camera over my shoulder and could almost feel the crew engaging with his story. I was desperately sorry for Londres. I couldn’t miss the sadness in his large, pleading eyes. I had been told he’d been in trouble at school, and I didn’t have much difficulty imagining that, but to me he seemed like a typical fourteen-year-old London boy. He liked rap music and McDonald’s and was passionate about football. He supported Manchester United and idolized Cristiano Ronaldo.

‘Londres, do you have a British passport?’

‘I would’ve had in another month. I was sent here just before I was going to get it.’

Just one more month.

‘Tell me how you got here,’ I said.

‘My mum told me we were going on holiday. Switzerland, she said. I’d always wanted to go to the mountains, the snow and that. I was really excited. I thought she meant it. I really did.’ He was quiet for a moment, thinking back to this betrayal, still wounded by it. ‘I only caught on we were going to Kinshasa when we changed planes in Paris. Too late by then.’

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘When we landed, my mum handed me over to this bloke from the church. That’s where he said he was from, anyway. I’d never seen any church like it. He took me away to some compound and locked me in a shed. Just like that, like I was a prisoner or something.’

‘And your mum?’

‘I saw her once more, a bit later. Then she went back to London and left me there.’

‘And what happened to you in that place?’

‘They call it deliverance. They’re mad, this lot. I mean, seriously mental.’ A flicker of fear entered his eyes and his voice. ‘I was kept in this church place for four weeks. I was alone most of the time. I got bread and water, and not much of that.’

‘For four weeks?’

‘Every now and then these people would come in and shout and rave at me and sometimes slap me about. I didn’t know what they wanted me to do. I couldn’t even understand what they were saying. They just screamed and shouted and then went away and locked me up again on my own.’

‘And then?’

‘They said it hadn’t worked. They moved me to some other compound and it all started again.’ His voice became urgent and he leaned across the table. ‘They’re bad people, Richard.’

‘The church, you mean?’

‘Yes. They’re bad news.’ He looked around as if he might be being watched. ‘They run all sorts of shit in this town. They can get anything done. You wouldn’t believe.’