The Mission Song (15 page)

Family interests include coffee and vegetable plantations, hotels, a brewery complete with fleet of trucks, a minerals
comptoir
trading in diamonds, gold, cassiterite and coltan and two newly-acquired discothèques which are Haj’s pride. Most of these enterprises are dependent on trade with Rwandans from across the border.

So a warlord who is not a warlord, then, and is dependent on his enemies for his livelihood.

Haj is a skilled organiser who commands the respect of his workforce. Given the right motivation, he could instantly raise a militia of five hundred strong through his links with local headmen in the Kaziba and Burhinyi districts around Bukavu. Haj’s father Luc, founder of the family empire, runs an equally impressive operation in the northern port of Goma.

I allow myself a quick smile. If Bukavu is my childhood paradise, Goma is Hannah’s.

Luc is a veteran of the Great Revolution and long-standing comrade of the Mwangaza. He has the ear of other influential Goma traders who, like himself, are incensed by Rwanda’s stranglehold on Kivu’s commerce. It was Luc’s intention to attend today’s conference in person, but he is currently receiving specialised care at a heart hospital in Cape Town. Haj is therefore standing in for him.

So what precisely do they offer, this father-and-son duo of urban barons?

Given the moment and the man, Luc and his circle in North Kivu are ready to spark a popular uprising in Goma’s streets and provide underhand military and political support to the Mwangaza. In return, they will demand power and influence in the new provincial government.

And Haj?

In Bukavu, Haj is in a position to persuade fellow intellectuals and traders to embrace the Middle Path as a means of venting their anger against Rwanda.

But perhaps there is a more prosaic reason for Haj’s presence among us here today:

As a token of his willingness to commit to the Middle Path, Luc has agreed to accept an advance commission of [DELETED] for which he has signed a formal receipt.

Haj speaks Shi, poor Swahili, and for trading purposes appears to have taught himself Kinyarwanda. By preference he speaks ‘highly sophisticated’ French.

So there we have it, I told Hannah, as I rose to answer the banging on my door: one Munyamulenge farmer-soldier, one crippled Mai Mai warhorse and one French-educated city slicker deputising for his father. What possible chance had a septuagenarian professor, however idealistic, of knocking this unlikely trio into a peace-loving alliance for democracy, whether or not it was at the end of a gun barrel?

‘Skipper says here’s the rest of your homework,’ Anton advised me, shoving an office folder into my hand. ‘And I’ll take that item of obscene literature off you, while I’m about it. Don’t want it lying around where the kids can get at it, do we?’

Or in plain language: here is a photocopy of Jasper’s no-name contract in exchange for Philip’s no-name briefing paper.

Restored to the Shaker rocking chair for my preparatory reading, I was amused to observe that the French accents had been added despairingly in ink. A preamble defined the unnamed parties to the agreement.

Party the First is a philanthropic offshore venture capital organisation providing low-cost agricultural equipment and services on a self-help basis to struggling or failed Central African states.

In other words, the anonymous Syndicate.

Party the Second, hereinafter called the Agriculturalist, is an academic in high standing, committed to the radical reorganisation of outdated methodologies to the greater advancement of all sections of the indigenous population.

Or in plain French, the Mwangaza.

Party the Third, hereinafter called the Alliance, is an honourable association of community leaders pledged to work together under the guidance of the Agriculturalist—see above . . .

Their common aim will be to advance by all means at their disposal such reforms as are essential to the creation of a unified social structure embracing all Kivu, including a common fiscal policy and the repossession of Kivu’s natural resources for the greater enrichment of all its people . . .

In consideration of Syndicate’s financial and technological assistance in the lead-up to these reforms, hereinafter called the Event, the Agriculturalist in consultation with his partners in the Alliance pledges to grant favoured status to Syndicate and such corporations or entities as Syndicate at its sole discretion sees fit from time to time to nominate . . .

Syndicate for its part undertakes to provide specialised services, personnel and equipment to the value of fifty million Swiss francs by way of a one-time payment as per attached Annexe . . .

Syndicate undertakes to provide out of its own purse all necessary experts, technicians, instructors and cadre personnel as may be necessary to the training of the local workforce in the use of such equipment, and to remain on site up to and including the formal consummation of the Event, and in all circumstances for a period of not less than six months from the date of commencement . . .

For such an imprecise document, its Annexe is remarkably detailed. Basic items to be provided include shovels, trowels, pickaxes, scythes, heavy and light wheelbarrows. For use where, please? In the rain forests, what’s left of them? I close my eyes and open them. We are bringing modernisation to Kivu with the aid of scythes and pickaxes and wheelbarrows?

The cost of any
second
tranche of equipment, should it be required, will not be borne by Syndicate but ‘set against gross revenue generated by the Event prior to all deductions’. Syndicate’s philanthropy, in other words, stops at fifty million Swiss francs.

A page of figures, terms and pay-out rates addresses a division of spoils in the wake of the Event. For the first six months, Syndicate requires solus rights on all extracted crops of whatever nature within the Designated Geographical Areas, defined by longitude and latitude. Without such solus rights, the deal is void. However, as a token of its goodwill, and subject always to the good faith of the Alliance, Syndicate will make a monthly ex-gratia payment to the Alliance of ten per cent of gross receipts.

In addition to its six-month free ride less ten per cent, Syndicate must be guaranteed ‘exemption in perpetuity from all local levies, taxes and tariffs in the Designated Areas’. It must also be guaranteed a ‘secure environment for the preparation, harvesting and transportation of all crops’. As ‘sole backer and risk-taker’, it would receive ‘sixty-seven per cent of first dollar of gross receipts before deduction of overheads and administrative costs, but only with effect from commencement of the seventh month following the Event . . .’

Yet just as I was beginning to feel that Syndicate was having things too much its own way, a final passage triumphantly restored my hopes to the level they had achieved after my discourse with Maxie:

All remaining proceeds accruing after the termination of the six-month period will be passed in their entirety to the Alliance to be distributed equally and fairly to all sections of the community according to accepted international principles of social advancement in the areas of health, education and welfare, with the sole aim of establishing harmony, unity and mutual tolerance under one flag.

Should factional divisiveness render a fair distribution unworkable, the Mwangaza would on his own responsibility appoint a panel of trusted representatives charged with allocating what was henceforth described as ‘the People’s Portion’. Hallelujah! Here at last was the source of money for schools, roads, hospitals, and the next lot of kids coming on, just as Maxie had promised. Hannah could rest easy. So could I.

Settling to the antiquated electric typewriter on the mirrored dressing table, I went briskly to work on my Swahili rendering. My task completed, I stretched out on the bed with the intention of talking myself into a less excitable frame of mind. Half past eleven by Aunt Imelda’s watch. Hannah is back from night shift but she can’t sleep. She’s lying on her bed, still in uniform, staring at the dusty ceiling, the one we stared at together while we traded our hopes and dreams. She’s thinking: where is he, why hasn’t he rung, will I ever see him again, or is he a liar like the others? She is thinking of her son Noah, and of one day taking him back to Goma.

A small plane flew low over the gazebo. I sprang to the window to catch its markings but was too late. By the time the trusty Anton once more appeared at my door to collect my offering and command me downstairs, I had vowed to give the performance of my lifetime.

8

Breathlessly following Anton back into the gaming room where I had encountered Jasper earlier in the day, I was quick to observe that it had undergone a subtle scene-change. A lecturer’s whiteboard and easel stood centre stage. The eight chairs round the table had become ten. A post-office clock had been installed above the brick fireplace, next to a No Smoking sign in French. Jasper, freshly shaved and brushed, and closely attended by Benny, lurked next to the door leading to the interior of the house.

I scanned the table. How do you put out name cards for a no-name conference? The Mwangaza was
MZEE
and had been placed at the centre on the inland side, the seat of honour. Flanking him were his faithful acolyte
M. LE SÉCRETAIRE
, and his less faithful
M. LE CONSEILLER
, alias Tabby, whom Maxie wouldn’t trust to tell him the time of day. Across the table from them, their backs to the French windows, sat the Gang of Three, identified by
MONSIEUR
and initials only:
D
for
DIEUDONNÉ
,
F
for
FRANCO
and
H
for
HONORÉ AMOUR-JOYEUSE
, the Mr Big of Bukavu, better known as Haj. Franco, as eldest, had centre position opposite the Mwangaza.

With the sides of the oval table thus occupied, it was left to the home team to divide itself between the two ends: at one,
MONSIEUR LE COLONEL
, whom I assumed to be Maxie, with
MONSIEUR PHILIPPE
next to him, and at the other Jasper and myself. And I could not help noticing that, whereas Jasper was awarded full honours as
MONSIEUR L
’
AVOCAT
, I was dismissed as
INTERPRÈTE
.

And in front of Philip’s chair, a brass bell. It rings in my memory now. It had a black wooden handle and was a replica in miniature of the bell that had tyrannised the daily life out of us inmates of the Sanctuary. It had dragged us from our beds, told us when to pray, eat, go to the toilet, the gym, the classroom and the football field, pray again and go back to bed and wrestle with our demons. And as Anton was at pains to explain, it would shortly be sending me scurrying up and down to the boiler room like a human yo-yo:

‘He’ll ring it when he’s calling a recess, and he’ll ring it again when he wants you back at table because he’s lonely. But some of us won’t be recessing, will we, governor?’ he added with a wink. ‘We’ll be down the apples-and-pears in the we-know-where having a quiet listen on the Spider’s web.’

I winked back, grateful for his comradeship. A jeep was pulling up in the courtyard. Quick as an elf he darted through the French windows and was gone, I guessed to take command of his surveillance team. A second plane buzzed overhead and again I missed it. More minutes passed during which my gaze, seemingly of its own volition, abandoned the gaming room and sought respite in the stately grounds beyond the French windows. Which was how I came to observe an immaculate white gentleman in a Panama hat, fawn trousers, pink shirt, red tie and a tailored navy-blue blazer of the type known to Guards officers as a boating jacket, picking his way along the skyline of the grassy mound before coming to rest at the gazebo, where he posed himself between two pillars in the manner of a British Egyptologist of bygone times, smiling back in the direction from which he had just arrived. And I will say here and now, with that first glimpse of the man, I was conscious of a new presence in my life, which was why I never doubted that I was taking my first covert reading of our freelance Africa consultant and—Maxie’s words again—
boss of the op
, Philip or
Philippe
, fluent in French, Lingala, but not Swahili, architect of our conference, befriender of the Mwangaza and our delegates.

Next, a slender, dignified black African man appeared on the skyline. He was bearded and clad in a sober Western suit, and so contemplative in his gait that he put me in mind of Brother Michael processing across the Sanctuary quad in Lent. It required accordingly no great insight on my part to appoint him our Pentecostal pasturalist, the warlord Dieudonné, empowered delegate of the despised Banyamulenge, so beloved of my dear late father.

He was followed by a second African who could have been designed as his deliberate opposite: a hairless giant in a glittery brown suit of which the jacket was scarcely able to encompass him as he limped along, dragging his left leg after him in ferocious heaves of his torso. Who else could this be then but Franco, our lame warhorse, former Mobutu thug and currently colonel-or-above of the Mai Mai, avowed adversary and occasional ally of the man who had just preceded him?

And finally, as a kind of lackadaisical concession to the rest of them, enter our third delegate, Haj, the egregious Sorbonne-educated, uncrowned merchant prince of Bukavu: but with such disdain, such foppery, and such determined distance from his fellows, that I was tempted to wonder whether he was having second thoughts about standing in for his father. He was neither skeletal like Dieudonné nor shiny-bald like Franco. He was an urban dandy. His head, close-shaven at the sides, had wavy lines engraved in the stubble. A lacquered forelock protruded from his brow. As to his clothes: well, Hannah’s highmindedness might have dulled my appetite for such vanities but, given the tat Mr Anderson had inflicted on me, his choice of suiting brought it rushing to the surface. What I was looking at here was the absolute latest thing in the Zegna summer collection: a three-piece, mushroom-coloured mohair for the man who has everything or wants it, set off by a pair of pointed slime-green Italian crocodile shoes which I would price, if real, at a good two hundred pounds a foot.

And I know now, if I didn’t fully know it at the time, that what I was witnessing on the grassy mound was the closing moments of a guided tour in which Philip was showing off to his wards the facilities of the house, including the bugged suite where they could let their hair down between sessions, and the bugged grounds where they were free to enjoy that extra bit of privacy so essential to your full and frank exchange of views.

At Philip’s behest the three delegates peer obediently out to sea, then at the cemetery. And as Haj turns with them, his Zegna suit jacket swings open to reveal a mustard silk lining and a flash of steel caught by the sunlight. What can it be? I wonder. A knife blade? A cellphone, and if so, should I warn Maxie?—unless, of course, I could borrow it and, in a surreptitious moment, call Hannah. And somebody, I suspect Philip again, must have made a joke at this point, perhaps a bawdy one, because they all four break out in laughter that rolls down the lawn and through the French windows of the gaming room, which are wide open on account of the heat. But this does not impress me as much as it should, life having taught me from an early age that Congolese people, who are sticklers for courtesy, don’t always laugh at things for the right reasons, especially if they’re Mai Mai or equivalent.

When the party has recovered from its mirth, it proceeds to the top of the ornamental stone staircase where, under Philip’s lavish coaxing, Franco the lame giant slings an arm around the neck of the frail Dieudonné and, avowed adversaries though they may be, adopts him as his walking stick, but with such amiable spontaneity that my heart fills with optimism for the successful outcome of our venture. And it is in this manner that they commence their laborious descent, Philip tripping ahead of the bonded couple, and Haj trailing after them. And I remember how the northern sky above them was ice-blue, and how the enlaced Mai Mai warlord and his skinny prop were chaperoned down the hill by a cloud of small birds who high-jumped as they flew along. And how as Haj entered shadow, the mystery of his inside jacket pocket was resolved. He was the proud owner of a fleet of Parker pens.

What happened next was one of those cock-ups without which no self-respecting conference is complete. There was to be this greeting line. Anton had explained it to us in advance. Philip would march in with his Gang of Three from the garden side, Maxie would sweep in simultaneously from the house side with the Mwangaza’s entourage, thus effecting the great historic coming-together of the parties to our conference. The rest of us would line up and either have our hands shaken or not, depending on the whim of our guests at the time.

Whereas what we got was a damp squib. Maybe Maxie and his party were that bit slow completing their own tour of the premises, or Philip and the delegates that bit premature. Maybe old Franco, with Dieudonné’s bony frame to help him, was faster-footed than they’d given him credit for. The effect was the same: Philip and party swept in, bringing with them the sweet smells of my African childhood, but the only people on hand to greet them were one top interpreter with his minority languages missing, one French provincial notary, and big Benny with his ponytail—except that as soon as Benny spotted what was happening, he was out of the door to find Anton double quick.

At any other conference, I would have taken matters over at this point, because top interpreters must always be prepared to act as diplomats when called upon and I have done so on many an occasion. But this was Philip’s op. And Philip’s eyes, which were highly compelling inside the creaseless cushions of his fleshy countenance, summed up the situation in a trice. His two forefingers lifted in simultaneous delight, he emitted a cry of
ah, parfait, vous voilà!
and whisked off his Panama hat to me, thereby revealing a head of vigorous white hair, waved and flicked into little horns above each ear.

‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ he declared in finest Parisian French. ‘I am Philippe, agricultural consultant and indomitable friend of the Congo. And you are, sir?’ The perfectly groomed white head tilted towards me as if it had only the one good ear.

‘My name is Sinclair, sir,’ I responded with equal alacrity, also in French. ‘My languages are French, English and Swahili.’ Philip’s darting eyes inclined towards Jasper, and I was quick to take the hint. ‘And allow me to present Monsieur Jasper Albin, our specialist lawyer from Besançon,’ I went on. And for additional effect: ‘And may I, on behalf of all of us here, extend our very warmest greetings to our distinguished African delegates?’

My spontaneous eloquence had consequences I had not foreseen, and neither, I suspect, had Philip. Old Franco had elbowed aside Dieudonné, his human walking stick, and was grasping both my hands in his. And I suppose that to your average unthinking European he would have been just another enormous African man in a glittery suit grappling with our Western ways. But not to Salvo the secret child. To Salvo he was our Mission’s self-appointed and rascally protector, known to the Brethren and servants alike as Beau-Visage, lone marauder, father of numberless children, who would pad into our red-brick Mission house at nightfall with the magic of the forest in his eyes and an archaic Belgian rifle in his hand, and a case of beer and a freshly killed buck sticking out of his game-bag, having trekked twenty miles to warn us of impending danger. And, come the dawn, would be found seated on the threshold, smiling in his sleep with his rifle across his knees. And the same afternoon, down at the town market square, pressing his grisly souvenirs on the luckless safari tourists: an amputated gorilla’s paw or the dried and eyeless head of an impala.

‘Bwana Sinclair,’ announced this venerable gentleman, holding up a clenched fist for silence. ‘I am Franco, a high officer of Mai Mai. My community is an authentic force created by our ancestors to defend our sacred country. When I was a child, Rwandan scum invaded our village and set fire to our crops and hacked three of our cows to pieces in their hatred. Our mother led us into the forest to hide. When we returned, they had hamstrung my father and two brothers and hacked them to pieces also.’ He jabbed a curved thumb at Dieudonné behind him. ‘When my mother was dying, Banyamulenge cockroaches refused to let her pass on her way to hospital. For sixteen hours she lay dying at the roadside before my eyes. Therefore I am not the friend of foreigners and invaders.’ A huge breath, followed by a huge sigh. ‘Under the Constitution, the Mai Mai is officially joined to the army of Kinshasa. But this joining is of an artificial nature. Kinshasa gives my general a fine uniform but no pay for his soldiers. They give him high rank, but no weapons. Therefore my general’s spirits have counselled him to listen to the words of this Mwangaza. And since I respect my general and am guided by the same spirits, and since you have promised us good money and good weapons, I am here to do my general’s bidding.’

Fired by such powerful sentiments, I had actually opened my mouth to render them into French when I was stopped dead in my tracks by another meaningful glance from Philip. Did Franco hear my heart beating? Did Dieudonné, standing behind him? Did the popinjay Haj? All three were staring at me expectantly, as if encouraging me to render Franco’s eloquent speech. But thanks to Philip the truth had dawned on me in the nick of time. Overwhelmed by the solemnity of the occasion, old Franco had lapsed into his native Bembe, a language I did not possess above the waterline.

Yet to believe his face Philip knew nothing of this. He was chuckling merrily, twigging the old man for his mistake. Haj behind him had exploded in hyena-like derision. But Franco himself, nothing daunted, launched upon a laborious repetition of his speech in Swahili. And he was still doing this, and I was still nodding my appreciation of his oratory, when to my intense relief the door to the interior of the house was banged open by Benny to admit a breathless Maxie and his three guests, with the Mwangaza at their centre.