The Mission Song (25 page)
Until now Haj’s responses have been scarcely audible, hence Tabizi’s practice of repeating them at full volume, I assume for the benefit of the contingency microphones that I wasn’t cleared for, and for anyone else who may be listening on a separate link—I’m thinking particularly of Philip. But with the mention of
Kinshasa
, the mood in the living room alters radically, and so does Haj. He perks up. As his pain and humiliation turn to anger, his voice acquires muscle, his diction clears, and the old, defiant Haj miraculously re-creates himself. No more whimpering confessions extracted under torture for him. Instead we get a furious, freewheeling indictment, a barrage of forensic, vituperative accusation.
Haj: You want to know who they are, these wise guys in Kinshasa I spoke to? Your fucking friends! The Mwangaza’s fucking friends!—the fatcats he won’t have anything to do with till he’s built Jerusalem in Kivu! You know what they call themselves, this band of altruistic public servants when they’re swilling beer and screwing whores and deciding which kind of Mercedes to buy?—the Thirty Per Cent Club. What’s thirty per cent? Thirty per cent is the People’s Portion that they propose to award themselves in exchange for favours they are granting to the Middle Path. It’s the piece of this crappy operation that persuades arseholes like my father that they can build schools and roads and hospitals while they line their fucking pockets. What do these fatcats have to do to earn themselves the People’s Portion? What they like to do best: nothing. Look the other way. Tell their troops to stay in their barracks and stop raping people for a few days.
Haj adopts the wheedling tones of a sly street-trader. If he were able to do the gestures too, he would be happier:
Haj: No problem, Mzee Mwangaza! You want to stage a couple of riots in Bukavu and Goma, take the place over ahead of the elections, kick out the Rwandans and start a little war? No problem! You want to grab Kavumu airport, play the minerals game, steal the stockpiles, take them to Europe and depress the world market with a short-sell? Do it! One small detail. We distribute the People’s Portion, not you. And how we distribute it is our fucking business. You want your Mwangaza to be Governor of South Kivu? He has our total, selfless support. Because every fucking building contract he awards, every road he thinks he’s going to build and every fucking flower he plants along the Avenue Patrice Lumumba, we take one-third. And if you shit on us, we’ll throw the constitutional book at you, we’ll run you out of the country in your fucking underwear. Thank you for your time.
Haj’s diatribe is interrupted by, of all things, the ring of a telephone, which startles me twice over because the only functioning telephone I’m aware of is the satellite phone in the ops room. Anton takes the call, says, ‘Right here,’ and passes the phone to Tabizi, who listens, then protests volubly in atrocious English:
‘I just broke the bastard. I got a right!’
But his protests are evidently to no avail for as soon as he has rung off, he delivers a parting salutation to Haj in French: ‘Okay. I got to go now. But if ever I see you again, I will personally kill you. Not at once. First I kill your women, your kids, your sisters and brothers and your fucking father and everybody who thinks they love you. Then I kill
you
. Takes days. Weeks, if I’m lucky. Cut the bastard down.’
The door closes with a slam as he departs. Anton’s voice is confiding and tender.
‘You all right there, son? We have to do what we’re told in life, don’t we, Benny? Simple soldiers, us.’
Benny is equally conciliatory. ‘Here, let’s clean you up a bit. No hard feelings, right, mate? Be on the same side next time round.’
Caution tells me to switch back to the library, but I am unable to move for Haj’s pain. My shoulders are rigid, sweat is dribbling down my spine, and there are red marks in my palms where my fingernails have driven into the flesh. I check on Spider: wolfing lemon cheesecake with a plastic spoon while he reads his military magazine, or pretends to. Will Anton and Benny provide him with a user’s report: great little cattle prod, Spider, we had him sobbing his heart out in no time?
Hearing a distant crash of water from the bathroom of the royal apartments, I switch from
DRAWING ROOM to BATHROOM
and am in time to catch a bawdy male duet from Benny and Anton as they sponge their victim down. I am beginning to wonder whether I should reluctantly leave him to recuperate on his own when I hear a surreptitious double click as a distant door opens and closes. And I know, since I hear no footsteps, that silky Philip has arrived to take the place of the over-zestful Tabizi.
Philip: Thank you, boys.
He’s not thanking them, he’s telling them to go. The same door opens and closes, leaving Philip alone. I hear an ambient tinkle of glass. Philip has picked up a drinks tray and is placing it somewhere more to his liking. He tries a sofa or easy chair, moves to another. As he does so, I hear the slow slap of slime-green crocs on hard floor.
Philip: You all right to sit down?
Haj sits on soft chair or sofa, swears.
Philip: You missed out on lunch. I brought you some tuna salad. No? Pity. It’s rather good. What about a thin Scotch? (
He pours one anyway: a dash, plenty of soda, two plops of ice
)
His tone is incurious. What happened just now was nothing to do with him.
Philip: Regarding
Marius
. Your brilliant friend and colleague from Paris days. Yes? One of eight bright young partners in a multinational venture-capital house called the Union Minière des Grands Lacs. Their number two in Johannesburg, no less, with a special eye for the Eastern Congo.
Crackle of paper being unfolded.
Haj: (
in English, probably one of the few phrases he possesses
) Go fuck yourself.
Philip: The Union Minière des Grands Lacs is a multinational corporation wholly owned by a Dutch conglomerate registered in the Antilles. With me so far? You are. And the conglomerate is called—yes?
Haj: (
indistinct growl
) Hogen[?]
Philip: And their policy?
Haj: Make business, not war.
Philip: But who
owns
Hogen? You haven’t enquired. A foundation in Liechtenstein owns Hogen and by any normal standards that should be the end of the trail. However, by a stroke of fortune we are able to provide you with a cast list.
The names that he reads out mean nothing to me nor, I suspect, to Haj. It’s only when Philip begins to recite their job descriptions that my stomach starts to churn.
Philip: Wall Street broker and former presidential aide . . . CEO of the PanAtlantic Oil Corporation of Denver, Colorado . . . ex-member National Security Council, vice president of the Amermine Gold & Finance Corporation of Dallas, Texas . . . principal advisor to the Pentagon on acquisition and stockpiling of essential minerals . . . vice president of the Grayson-Halliburton Communications Enterprise . . .
There are nine names on my notepad by the time he ends: collectively, if Philip is to be believed, a Who’s Who of American corporate and political power, indistinguishable from government, a fact that he is pleased to underline.
Philip: Bold, conceptual thinkers, every one of them. A-list neo-conservatives, geo-politicians on the grand scale. The sort of fellows who meet in ski resorts and decide the fate of nations. Not for the first time their thoughts have turned to the Eastern Congo and what do they find? An election looming, and anarchy the likely outcome. The Chinese on the hunt for resources and baying at the door. So which way to go? The Congolese don’t like Americans and it’s reciprocated. The Rwandans despise the Congolese, and run a tight ship. Best of all they’re efficient. So the American game plan is to build up Rwanda’s commercial and economic presence in the Eastern Congo to the point where it’s an irreversible fact. They’re looking for a
de facto
bloodless annexation, and counting on a helping hand from the CIA. Enter your friend Marius.
If my brain is racing too fast, Haj’s must be spinning out of control.
Philip: All right, I grant you, the Mwangaza has cut a dirty deal with Kinshasa. He won’t be the first Congolese politician to cover his backside, will he? (
chuckle
) But he’s a better bet than a Rwandan takeover, that’s for sure. (
Pause to allow what I fear is a nod of acquiescence
) And at least he’s working towards an independent Kivu, not an American colony. And if Kinshasa gets its money, why should it interfere? And Kivu stays within the federal family where it belongs. (
Sounds of pouring and clinks of ice as Haj’s glass is presumably replenished
) So the old boy’s got a lot going for him, when you work it out. I think you’re being a little hard on him, Haj, frankly. He’s naive, but so are most idealists. And he does
mean
to do good things, even if he never quite brings them off. (
abrupt change of tone
) What are you trying to tell me? What do you want? Your jacket. Here’s your jacket. You’re feeling cold. You can’t speak. You’ve got a pen. What else do you want? Paper. Here’s a piece of paper. (
Tears a page out of something
)
What in Heaven’s name has happened to Haj’s hyperactive tongue? Has the whisky gone to his head? Has the cattle prod? Scratch, scribble, as he writes vigorously with one of his Parker pens. Who’s he writing to? What about? It’s another duel. We’re back in the guest suite and Haj has put a warning finger to his lips. We’re on the gazebo steps and Haj is trying to baffle the microphones and me. But this time he’s thrusting handwritten notes at Philip.
Philip: Is this a bad joke?
Haj: (
very low volume
) A good joke.
Philip: Not to me.
Haj: (
still low
) For me and my dad, good.
Philip: You’re mad.
Haj: Just fucking do it, okay? I don’t want to talk about it.
In front of
me
? He doesn’t want to talk
with me listening
? Is that what he’s telling Philip? Shuffle of paper passing from hand to hand. Philip’s voice freezes over:
Philip: I can very well see why you don’t want to talk about it. Do you seriously think you can gouge another three million dollars out of us just by scribbling out an invoice?
Haj: (
sudden yell
) That’s our price, you arsehole! Cash, hear me?
Philip: On the day Kinshasa appoints the Mwangaza Governor of South Kivu, obviously.
Haj: No!
Now!
This fucking day!
Philip: A Saturday.
Haj: By Monday night! Or it’s no fucking deal! Into my dad’s bank account in Bulgaria or wherever the fuck he keeps it! Hear me?
His voice drops. The enraged Congolese is replaced by the scathing Sorbonne graduate.
Haj: My dad undersold the deal. He neglected to maximise his leverage and I propose to rectify that error. The revised price is an additional three million US dollars or it’s no deal. One million for Bukavu, one million for Goma, and one million for strapping me up like a fucking monkey and torturing the shit out of me. So get on the phone to your no-balls Syndicate now and ask for the guy who says yes.
Philip haggles while striving to retain his dignity: in the unlikely event of the Syndicate considering Haj’s offer, how about half-a-million down and the rest on completion? For the second time, Haj tells Philip to go fuck himself. And his mother, if he ever had one.
Sorry to have neglected you, Brian dear. How was it for you?
Sam’s intrusion comes from another world, but I respond to it calmly.
Uneventful, basically, Sam. Lot of food, not a lot of talk. Aren’t we about due upstairs?
Any minute, dear. Philip’s answering a call of Nature.
The door closes, leaving Haj alone drifting round the room. What’s he doing? Staring at himself in the mirror, fathoming how he looks now he’s sold himself for three million dollars by Monday, if he has? He starts to hum. I don’t do that. I’m not musical. My humming embarrasses me even when I’m alone. But Haj is musical, and he’s humming to cheer himself up. Perhaps cheer both of us up. He’s shuffling heavily round the room to the sound of his humming, slap, slap, slap. He’s humming away his shame and mine. His choice of tune, unlike anything he has sung or hummed in my hearing, is Mission church jingle, evoking the dismal hours I spent in Sunday School. We stand in line in our blue uniforms. We clap our hands and stamp our feet,
bomp-bomp
, and we tell ourselves an uplifting story. This one is about a little girl who promised God she would protect her virtue against all comers,
bomp
. In return, God helped her. Every time she was tempted, He reached down His hands and put her back on the straight path,
bomp
. And when she chose death rather than succumb to her wicked uncle, God sent Choirs of Angels to greet her at the Gates of Heaven.
Bomp, bomp
.
Philip’s handbell is ringing for the next session. Haj hears it. I hear it distantly over the mikes, but I do not reveal this to Spider. I stay seated with my headphones on, scribbling on my notepad and looking innocent. Haj bomps to the door, shoves it open and sings his way into the sunlight. All along the covered path to the guest suite, the microphones pick up his treacly dirge about virtue’s triumph.
Even today I am hard pressed to describe the many contradictory emotions sweeping through me as I emerged from my incarceration below ground and took my place among the little cluster of believers entering the gaming room for the final session of the conference. Back there in the cellar I had seen no hope for mankind, yet traversing the covered walkway I convinced myself that I was in a state of divine grace. I looked at the world and concluded that in my absence a summer storm had washed the air and put a sparkle on every leaf and blade of grass. In the afternoon sunlight, the gazebo looked like a Greek temple. I imagined that I was celebrating a miraculous survival: Haj’s and mine equally.
My second delusion, no more praiseworthy than the first, was that my mental faculties, impaired by repeated immersions beneath the waterline, had yielded to fantasy: that the entire passage of events, commencing with Haj’s scream and ending with his cheesy song, had been a psychic hallucination brought on by overstrain; our audio duel on the stone steps was another, and the same went for any other sinister fantasies about notes being passed or bribes negotiated.
It was in the hope of verifying this convenient theory that, on resuming my seat at the green baize gaming table, I undertook a swift survey of the players in my illusory drama, commencing with Anton, who had armed himself with a pile of buff folders and, in the parade-ground manner dear to him, was laying one to each place. Neither his clothing nor his personal appearance bore signs of recent physical activity. His knuckles were a little red, otherwise no abrasions. Toecaps glistening, trouser creases razor sharp. Benny had not yet materialised, which enabled me to believe that he had passed the lunch break minding his ward Jasper.
Neither Philip nor Haj being yet among us, I transferred my attention to Tabizi who appeared distracted, certainly, but so he should be, given that the post-office clock stood at four-twenty and the hour of reckoning was upon us. Next to him sat his master the Mwangaza. With the sun glinting on his slave collar and making a halo of his white hair, our Enlightener was the embodiment of Hannah’s dreams. Could he really be the same man who in my fantasy had traded the People’s Portion for the tacit connivance of the Kinshasa fatcats? And on the Mwangaza’s other side, the sleek Dolphin, smiling his cheery smile. As to Maxie, the mere sight of him, sprawled beside Philip’s empty chair with his legs stretched out, was enough to convince me that it was I who was the odd one out, and everyone around me was who he claimed to be.
As if to reinforce the point, enter by way of the interior door my saviour Philip. He bestows a wave on Dieudonné and Franco. Passing Tabizi, he stoops to murmur in his ear. Tabizi responds with an expressionless nod. Arriving at the place reserved for Haj, he conjures a sealed envelope from his jacket pocket and slips it like a tip inside the buff folder that awaits our missing delegate’s arrival. Only then does he take his seat at the further end of the table, by which time I am, as Paula would say, out of denial. I know that Philip has spoken to London and asked for the man who says yes. I know from Tabizi’s scowl that Haj accurately calculated the weakness of the Syndicate’s position: namely that their preparations are too far advanced, the prize is too great for them to give up at this stage, they’ve put in so much already, they might as well put in a bit more, and if they pull out now they won’t get a chance like this for a generation.
In the same grim light of reality I take a second look at the Mwangaza. Is his halo blow-dried? Have they shoved a poker down his back? Is he dead already, and strapped into his saddle like El Cid? Hannah saw him in the rosy haze of her idealism, but now that I am able to look at him clearly, the sad arc of his life is written all over his crunched-up face. Our Enlightener is a failed state of one. He has been brave—look at his record. He has been clever, diligent, loyal and resourceful throughout his life. He has done everything right, but the crown has always gone to the man next to him or the man below him. And that was because he wasn’t ruthless enough, or corrupt enough, or two-faced enough. Well, now he will be. He will play their game, a thing he swore he’d never do. And the crown is within his grasp, except it isn’t. Because if he ever gets to wear it, it will belong to the people he has sold himself to on the way up. Any dream he has is mortgaged ten times over. And that includes the dream that once he comes to power, he won’t have to pay his debts.
Haj is only a couple of minutes overdue, but in my head he has kept me waiting several lifetimes. Everyone round the table has opened his buff folder, so I do the same. The document inside seems familiar, as well it might. In an earlier life I had translated it from French into Swahili. Both versions are on offer. So are a dozen pages of impressive-looking figures and accounts, all of them, so far as I can see, projected into the far future: estimated extraction rates, transportation costs, warehousing, gross sales, gross profits, gross deception.
Philip’s groomed white head has lifted. I see it at the top of my frame as I work my way through my folder. He is smiling at somebody behind me, a warm, complicit smile of confidence, so look out. I hear the slap of approaching crocs on flagstone and feel sick. The slap-rate is below average speed. Haj saunters in, jacket open, flashes of mustard-coloured lining, Parker pens in place, lacquered forelock pretty much restored. At the Sanctuary, when you rejoined your peers after a beating, ethic required you to appear carefree. Haj is guided by the same principle. His hands are thrust into his trouser pockets where they like to be and he is jiggling his hips. Yet I know that every movement is an agony to him. Halfway to his chair he pauses, catches my eye and grins at me. I have my folder before me and I have opened it, so in theory I could smile vaguely and return to my reading. But I don’t. I meet his gaze full on.
Our eyes lock and they stay locked while we stare at each other. I have no idea how long our look actually lasted. I don’t imagine the sweep hand of the post-office clock moved more than a second or two. But it was long enough for him to know that I knew, if either of us had ever doubted it. And long enough for me to know he knew I knew, and so back and forth. And long enough for any third party who chanced to be watching us to know we were either a pair of homosexuals sending out mating signals, or two men with a very large piece of illicit knowledge in common, and how did
that
come about? There wasn’t much light in his bubbly eyes, but after what he’d been through, why should there be? Was he telling me, ‘You bastard, you betrayed me’? Was
I
reproaching
him
for betraying himself, and Congo? Today, with more days and nights than I need to reflect on the moment, I see it as one of wary mutual recognition. We were both hybrids: I by birth, he by education. We had both taken too many steps away from the country that had borne us to belong anywhere with ease.
He sat down at his place, winced, spotted the white envelope peeking out of his folder. He fished it out with the tip of his finger and thumb, sniffed at it and, in full view of whoever might be looking on, fiddled it open. He unfolded a postcard-size piece of white paper, a printout of some kind, and skim-read the two-line text which I presume acknowledged, in suitably guarded language, the deal he had just negotiated for himself and his father. I thought he might tip a nod to Philip, but he didn’t bother. He screwed the bit of paper into a pellet and lobbed it, with impressive accuracy given his condition, into a porcelain urn that stood in a corner of the room.
‘Bull’s-eye!’ he exclaimed in French, swirling his hands above his head, and won himself a tolerant laugh from round the table.
I will pass over the laborious negotiations, the endless trivialities by which delegates of every stamp convince themselves they are being astute, protecting the interests of their company or tribe, are smarter than the delegate sitting next to them. Putting myself on autopilot, I used the time to get my head and my emotions under control and, by whatever means that came to hand—such as manifesting total indifference towards anything that Haj happened to say—dispel the notion that he and I might in some way be—to employ a phrase favoured by our One-Day Course instructors—mutually conscious. Privately I was wrestling with the notion that Haj might be suffering from internal damage, such as bleeding, but I was reassured when the ticklish matter of the Mwangaza’s official remuneration was raised.
‘But, Mzee,’ Haj objects, flinging up an arm in the old manner. ‘With respect, Mzee. Hang on a minute!’—in French which, because it’s Haj speaking, I render tonelessly to the Perrier bottle—‘these figures are frankly ridiculous. I mean, fuck’—now energetically appealing to his two companions for support—‘can you imagine
our Redeemer
living on this scale? I mean, how will you
eat
, Mzee? Who will pay your rent, your fuel bills, your travel, entertainment? All those necessary expenses should come out of the public purse, not your Swiss bank account.’
If Haj had drawn blood, it was appropriate that none be visible. Tabizi’s face turned to stone, but it was pretty much stone already. Philip’s smile didn’t flinch, and the Dolphin, replying on behalf of his master, had his answer pat.
‘For as long as our beloved Mwangaza is the People’s choice, he will live as he has always lived, which is to say, on his salary as a simple teacher and the modest income from his books. He thanks you for your good question.’
Felix Tabizi is padding round the table like an ogre turned choirboy. But it isn’t a hymn sheet he’s handing round, it’s what he calls
notre petite aide-mémoire
—a one-page conversion table setting out, for the comfort and convenience of our readers, what is understood in the real world by such lighthearted expressions as
shovel, trowel, pickaxe, heavy and light wheelbarrows
and the like. And since the information is provided in Swahili as well as French, I am able to remain as silent as everybody else in the room while philosophical comparisons are drawn between words and meaning.
And to this day, I couldn’t tell you what was what. The best
light wheelbarrows
hailed from Bulgaria, but what on earth were they? Rockets to put in the nose-cones of white helicopters? Ask me today what a
scythe
was, or a
tractor
, or a
combine harvester
, and I would be equally at a loss. Did it pass through my mind that this might be the moment for me to spring to my feet and cry foul?—act like the brave little gentleman in the trattoria? Roll up my buff folder, hammer it on the table:
I will speak, I owe it to myself. Therefore I shall
? If so, I was still debating the question as the interior doors opened to admit our distinguished notary Monsieur Jasper Albin, accompanied by Benny, his conscientious minder.
Jasper has acquired status. He didn’t have it earlier in the day when he seemed proud that he had nothing to offer but his venality. I remember experiencing wonderment that an enterprise so audacious and richly funded should have placed its legal business in such hands. Yet here was a Jasper grown to the part, even if what followed was a piece of theatre—or more accurately mime, since much of my memory’s soundtrack of the historic moment has mercifully gone missing. Afternoon sunlight continues to pour through the French windows. Specks of dust or evening dew float in its rays as, from his fat briefcase, Jasper draws two identical leather folders of regal appearance. On the covers is inscribed the one word
CONTRAT
. Using only his fingertips, he opens each folder in turn, then sits back, permitting us to behold the original, the sole, the ribbon-bound, unenforceable document, one version in Jasper’s French and the other in my Swahili.
From his magician’s bag he produces an antiquated hand-press of stippled grey metal which in my out-of-body state I identify as Aunt Imelda’s orange squeezer. It is followed by a single A4-sized sheet of greaseproof paper on which are mounted eight peel-off, Soviet-style red stars with extra spikes. At Philip’s beckoning I rise to my feet and position myself at Jasper’s side while he addresses the delegates. His speech is not a rousing one. He has been advised, he tells us, that the parties to our contract are in accord. Since he has not been privy to our deliberations, and since complex matters of agriculture are outside the ambit of his professional expertise, he must absolve himself from responsibility for the technical wording of the contract which, in the event of a dispute, will be for a court to determine. Throughout my entire rendering, I have contrived to avoid Haj’s eye.
Philip invites all signatories to rise. Like communicants at Mass they form a queue with Franco at its head. The Mwangaza, too important to stand in line, lurks to one side, flanked by his handlers. Haj, whom I continue to ignore, brings up the rear. Franco stoops over my Swahili version, starts to sign, and recoils. Has he spotted an insult, a bad omen? And if not, why are his old eyes brimming with tears? He shuffles round, dragging his bad leg after him, until he is face to face with Dieudonné his many-times enemy and now, for however long, his brother-in-arms. His huge fists rise to shoulder height. Is he about to tear his new friend limb from limb?
‘
Tu veux?
’ he bellows in French—you want to do this?
‘
Je veux bien, Franco
,’ Dieudonné replies shyly, upon which the two men fall into each other’s arms in an embrace so fierce that I fear for his ribcage. Horseplay follows. Franco, eyes streaming, signs. Dieudonné shoves him aside and tries to sign, but Franco has him by the arm: he must have one more embrace. Finally Dieudonné signs. Haj rejects the fountain pen offered him and whisks one from the pocket of his Zegna. With no pretence of reading, he scrawls a reckless signature twice, once for the Swahili, once for the French. The applause starts with Philip and spreads to the Mwangaza’s camp. I clap with the best of us.
Our women appear with trays of champagne. We clink glasses, Philip speaks a few exquisitely chosen words on behalf of the Syndicate, the Mwangaza responds with dignity, I render both with gusto. I am thanked, though not lavishly. A jeep pulls up in the forecourt. The Mwangaza’s handlers lead him away. Franco and Dieudonné are at the door, holding hands African-style, kidding with each other as Philip tries to shoo them towards the jeep. Haj offers me his own hand to shake. I accept it cautiously, not wishing to hurt it, not knowing how the gesture is meant.
