Congo Inc Page 3

  As for that last, presumably major, activity of the Bamongo, Isookanga felt especially incriminated, since, unfortunately for him, he’d never really known who his father was. All because of polyandry, an ancestral custom Isookanga found appalling. A barbaric tradition that drives a woman to consuming men at will, as she wants, as much as she wants, whenever she wants, and clearing her of any guilt in the process. If she had practiced the activity within the clan itself, it would certainly not have posed any insurmountable problems, but because of the marked fondness of the young Ekonda’s mother for men over one meter seventy-five, and because of some rather tough encounters, what was bound to happen happened: she found herself pregnant by an unknown father and brought into the world Isookanga, who had to be a good ten centimeters taller than the tallest Ekonda.

  This marked difference weighed on the young man like a true defect. “Tala ye molaï lokola soki nini!”11 That was the sentence to which he’d been convicted throughout his childhood and even afterward. He was constantly reminded that he was only half an Ekonda, that he was, in short, nothing more than the half-Pygmy people point their finger at. All of this had a negative effect on his character, on his trust in others and in himself, and prevented him from being part of the Mongo nation in general and of the Ekonda clan in particular. That position might have bothered him more, but somehow it forced him to find his true place, all the more so since he already took up very little space politically, socially, and, above all, physically, since his importance in the human arena was almost nil.

  When you use computer bits to communicate, it makes no difference whether you speak Pygmy, Lapp, or Japanese. Being a financial burden and seducing every woman? What’s the point, when it’s enough to pick up a transmitted connection thanks to Wi-Fi and sample the same vibrations as anyone else on exactly the same web reflections. Tall or not, who cares when the only thing that counts is the number of gigabytes? Materiality has become totally obsolete. In the globalized universe of the virtual world, even the sky is no longer a limit. And from the height at which Isookanga contemplated the universe that suited him to perfection, his position assuredhim extra detachment.

  Above the crown formed by the lifaki, kambala, and other precious, centuries-old trees, the sun had insisted on being impressive before going off to illuminate other worlds and, fine-tuning its spectrum, had poured purple, orange, and mauve on the jumble of clouds in front of it. Farther down, against a background of darkness, a turquoise-blue halo stretched out in the distance. Only the contours of the huts were now visible. They followed one another here and there in gloomy clustered groups along the red dirt road, making up the village of Ekanga where the Batwa lived.12 Fires had been lit in anticipation of the night, and curls of smoke were chasing each other before they intertwined. The increased shadows loosened the movements of men and women. Once darkness was complete all around, the immense majestic mass of forest would soon appear to be encroaching and then be perceived as an unmanageable, dangerous vise by some, as a protective and loving mother by others. It just depended; it couldn’t be controlled.

  “Bolongwa, bolongwa!”13

  Isookanga and Bwale were forced to move. Dressed in blue, a policeman had brandished his club and created something of a swell in the crowd on the main avenue of Wafania. In the center a VIP stand made of palm branches had been erected for the inauguration of the telecommunications tower. The notables had gathered on the structure: the district commissioner and his wife in the middle; Captain Nawej, the police chief, on the left; then Bosekota Ekumbo, one of the subdivision’s most influential men; and finally, first- and second-rank civil servants. On the right-hand side of the first row sat the invited guests from Kinshasa: next to the district commissioner was the Congolese representative of the China Network Company, owner of the tower; then came Ikele Engulu, sent by a development foundation; next was a white woman, whose attention was focused on a computer screen. After that came a high-ranking individual, followed at the end of the row by an Asian-looking man.

  Isookanga easily recognized the people from Kinshasa by the sunglasses concealing their eyes. The young Ekonda man respected the enigmatic appearance it gave them. You might have thought they came not from the capital but from much farther away—from another planet perhaps. Everything about them was different. While Wafania’s notables persisted in constantly wiping their foreheads and waving their handkerchiefs around like fly swatters, the Kinshasans remained reclined in their seats, impassive to the intense heat in spite of their suits and tightly knotted ties, and barely moving as if air conditioning had become one of the options of their organism. Isookanga was relishing the spectacle. For him it was a lesson in mastering the social graces. Besides, it wasn’t every day that such an event took place. He wanted to collect every bit of information necessary for his Kinshasan future. Too bad if they’d been waiting for over an hour under a blazing sun.

  Still, everything had been well-prepared. Dressed in their Sunday best, in colors that had once been vibrant, people had invaded the main street early that morning. Despite the almost total destitution, faces were radiant and gleamed with the palm oil that everyone had rubbed on their skin that day. At one point two 4 × 4s suddenly appeared at the foot of the stand where Wafania’s decision-makers sat. The six local police officers, poured into their uniforms and wearing white gloves, stood impeccably at attention. Their sergeant had rushed forward to open the car door for the dignitaries. Immediately thereafter resounded the military command “On guard!” followed by a barked “Attenshun!” Suddenly the air had grown tense. The very trees were taking a wait-and-see approach. One by one the Kinshasans stepped out of their vehicles. Behind their smoky glasses it seemed they couldn’t see a thing, as if by having different means of discernment they didn’t need to. They were walking unhurriedly, sure in their body language; inertia seemed to have no hold on them.

  Delightedly Isookanga took it all in, gently nodding his head. But not for very long, because suddenly another guttural command shot out from the officer’s gut and everyone rose as the bugle played the national anthem. After the last note from the brass instrument, after a conciliatory “At ease!” from the sergeant, the people standing in the heat were allowed to hear a string of interminable speeches on modernity as the spearhead of development. At the end of all this, distant drums finally announced what everybody had been waiting for: the inaugural parade.

  In the lead were the six police officers, AK rifles on their shoulders, looking austere, making a show of power as they marched in goose step. Right behind them were the four members of the local Red Cross, walking proudly in their rescue uniforms. Then came the associations with their banners: the Cooperative of Coffee Planters of the Tshuapa subdivision, the Association of Market Mothers, the Association of Pedicab Drivers, the Association for the Defense of the Mpenge Dialect, and many, many more. The onlookers were unanimous in their support of the girls from the Institute of Nurses Training in their tight-fitting white coats. Then hundreds of the region’s schoolchildren in blue and white marched by, preceded by the goatskin drums they had made to add a powerful rhythm to the demonstration; Isookanga couldn’t recall when he had last attended anything like it. To pass the time, he let his eyes wander over the seated guests, among whom especially the white woman had attracted his attention.

  “Bwale, look at that woman. She is in direct contact with the world, with the universe, even, should she want it. Look, she’s listening to everything. Did you see what’s coming out of her ears? It looks like catfish whiskers. See that? Thanks to the screen in front of her she knows everything there is to know. There is the future. And I, I’m here, doomed to staying here and listening to some Uncle Lomama who won’t stop moaning and messing up my life. And when he isn’t the problem, I have to put up with the company of old-world monkeys in the forest. Is that what life has in store for me? I’m an internationalist who aspires to becoming a globalizer, Bwale. You, you get it, don’t you?”

  “I’m fin
e right here. I’ll never leave the village.”

  “Still, you’ve told me about your uncle in Kinshasa. He’s invited you to come join him there and you refuse? You’re totally irresponsible; you’re running the risk of completely missing out on the twenty-first century.”

  “Somebody has to stay in the village. If only to manage the uncle’s branch here. And besides, what would I be doing with someone I hardly know? We’ve never even seen each other, he and I. He’s always lived far away from us, far away from our reality. All he’s interested in is his coffee trading post. Hey, Isoo! Look, she’s coming.”

  The white woman had gotten up and was heading straight for the two friends. They each glanced over their shoulders to make sure, but the woman’s smile was actually intended for them.

  “Hello, my name is Aude Martin,” she said, holding out her hand to Isookanga first and then to Bwale. Directing herself to the young Ekonda, she asked, “Do you speak French?”

  “Of course. I’ve been to school.”

  “I hope I’m not bothering you. I’m doing some research on indigenous people. I’m an Africanist with a specialty in social anthropology. They told me that I’d find members of the Ekonda clan around Wafania, which is why I’ve done everything to join this delegation to come here, and I figured you must be one of them.”

  “You should know, Miss, that the Ekonda are self-effacing and don’t much like to mix. If I am here it’s because I’m avant-garde.”

  “Would you be willing to give me ten minutes of your time for an interview? It won’t take long. I don’t want to disturb you.”

  “Let’s go over there.”

  Isookanga, Bwale, and the researcher left the crowd, moving a few feet away toward the forest that stretched out on both sides of the road. Telephone in hand, the young woman asked Isookanga questions on his lifestyle, his diet, his habitat, and the customs of his tribe. She asked if they were a patriarchal or matriarchal society, what the exact place was of the women in their society, and whether life between the authorities and the population was harmonious. In short, nothing new. Isookanga replied as candidly as possible and took advantage of the opportunity to make his views of modernity known. He tried to convince his interlocutor that it was absolutely necessary to open up the forest by placing telecommunication towers everywhere so that everyone could be connected to the rest of the world. Opening up information highways, certainly, but not just that; they also had to open up highways, period, so that the consumer goods that abounded elsewhere could benefit everyone.

  “What is the forest? It’s nothing!” he had insisted.

  Talking with Isookanga, Aude Martin had sensed an indefinable emotion from the very start. First of all, his status as a human specimen threatened by extinction in the longer or shorter term gave him an aura of fragility that had touched the researcher immediately. The young woman was rather tall. Short, dark brown hair framed a face with melancholy eyes. So he wouldn’t have to keep his head raised all the time, Isookanga began his sentences by looking at her but then systematically ended up by lowering his eyes and staring out into the distance ahead of him. The young woman attributed this to an especially contemplative spirit, or at least to a form of shyness caused by an extremely sensitive heart. At the same time, the way Isookanga had of accentuating his words, of being unambiguous in his opinions, or of sometimes taking his time when uttering a syllable to better emphasize the meaning of the word instilled Aude’s body with an energy she was unable to identify or locate. After the interview she went back to her seat, moved not so much by what Isookanga had revealed to her as by the encounter she knew was exceptional, worthy of a different universe, an experience one has only once in a lifetime.

  In the stands people were beginning to grow impatient. The Kinshasans, as always, were trying hard to assert their presence without showing it. The villagers, on the other hand, were waving their handkerchiefs around all the more. Then a huge racket came from the sky. It was like a thousand bellowing hippos coupled with the rumble from clouds having magically turned into gigantic rocks crashing into one another. Treetops bent under an enormous gust of wind, and an oblong shape materialized that even covered the sun. It was an MI-26 helicopter, made in Russia, which couldn’t be purchased without the Ukrainian pilot who came with it.

  The men with dark glasses all raised their head at the same time, as if they’d noticed a signal coming from their own world. Isookanga, too, was watching the helicopter. A cable was attached to it, at the end of which hung a reproduction of what Isookanga knew to be the Eiffel Tower, only larger. The telecommunications tower the elders had been talking about for some time was balancing gently in the air.

  Hovering in place very high up, the chopper flew above a square that on the order of the district commissioner had been poured with concrete a few weeks earlier. Then it began to descend with its charge like a bird of prey, letting itself drop like a stone, breaking the fall at the last minute. A cry of amazement rose from the crowd. Isookanga, who had not allowed himself to be in the least impressed by the stunt, had read somewhere that planes and helicopters from the Ukraine ran on a mixture of half kerosene, half vodka. Below, just underneath the helicopter, a Sino-Asian-looking man signaled the pilot with both arms like a great helmsman. Everyone looked up, evaluating the risks of the dangerous maneuver of the approach.

  “They should go back up.”

  “No, they should go to the right.”

  “Definitely not, go left.”

  “Come!”

  Isookanga pulled Bwale by his T-shirt. Cutting through the captivated throng, he dragged him behind the stands, where there was no one else.

  “Wait here for me. Keep watch.”

  Isookanga brushed aside the palm tree twine of which the stand consisted and made his way through. Crawling forward he stretched out his arm and put his hand on the case containing Aude Martin’s computer, resting on the ground not far from her feet. The Ekonda beat a hasty retreat the same way he had come but backward.

  “Let’s get out of here!”

  Bwale had no time to respond as Isookanga led him farther away and deeper into the nearby forest. “Shit, how dare you!”

  “Shut up, Bwale. I know what I’m doing.”

  The two friends sat down on the trunk of a felled tree close to a brook whose crystalline water flowed steadily from the earth. Isookanga examined the computer with his fingers.

  “You think I’m a thief because I swiped that white woman’s equipment? My act counts as a refund for the colonial debt! Bwale, you’re getting worked up over nothing. Besides, Mongo tradition demands that a future spouse steal a chicken from his own village to prove to the bokilo that he will always find a way to provide for the needs of his betrothed!14 For me, my betrothed is high technology. And my test for a union with the universe goes by way of stealing the computer you see here. Accept it as such. Don’t stand in the way of my plans. I am you, you are me. You are tall, I am short, so what? We are like fingers on the same hand, aren’t we?”

  “Shit, didn’t you see how she was looking at you? Instead of trying to ‘get’ her, you find nothing better to do than to swipe her computer.”

  Isookanga didn’t like to speak of anything that in some way might refer to his personal anatomy. For the young Ekonda, the verb “get” was ekila, taboo. And all because of his mother, who had forgotten to have him circumcised, busy as she was running around left and right. Isookanga was ashamed of his body, believing it was just rubbish.

  “Bwale, forget about me. We’ll go back to the ceremony now. Above all, we shouldn’t be noticed. But first let me hide this machine, safe with the wild boars and the ants. Once they discover it’s disappeared, it will cause a stir, and knowing Captain Nawej, he’s capable of searching the area hut by hut to find it. I don’t want to take any risks.”

  After these memorable events, Isookanga locked himself in for two days with the researcher’s machine. To plug in the mouse and the headphones he connected the cables
to the corresponding holes. It was easy—whoever had invented it knew what he was doing. Then Isookanga pressed a button and the screen lit up. Thereupon he had to grope around for a moment, putting his fingers all over the place. When he slid his middle finger onto a small gray square, the point of an arrow began to move on the screen, following a logic that he instantly grasped. When he moved what looked like a little rat, the point reacted the same way. He clicked on the rodent’s plastic head and a window opened up. A smile lit up his face, but he quickly pulled himself together because he had to stay focused. After going through many mood swings, the young man finally succeeded in typing the letters “Congo RDC” in a long, narrow rectangle marked “Google.” He pressed the button again, the arrow pointing to the word “Images.” There was a click and the world opened up before him in a way he could never have imagined when his realm had consisted only of trees, trees, and more trees. That was no life. That wasn’t it. Even for a worker like him, one of what they call the original people, Isookanga.

  After two days, as he passed the door of the Ekanga Kutu Enterprises, the store where Bwale was in charge, Isookanga had the premonition he wouldn’t be crossing this threshold many more times. At that thought he threw his shoulders back and raised his chin, the laptop hanging from one hand, a heavy jute bag from the other.

  “How moto na ngai,15 how’re you doing, friend? Since you suggested it, I’m bringing you the computer so you can charge it for me. I’ll deduct the money for the gas for the generator from my bill,” Isookanga said, putting the bag down that held his friend’s order: a freshly smoke-dried monkey and a pangolin, a scaly anteater, meant for Bwale’s uncle in Kinshasa.

  The store wasn’t very large but it had everything. Remnants of wax batik, plastic kitchen utensils, packets of sugar and rice, cans of sardines and pilchards, machetes, hoes, but mostly it was a place where you could buy coffee, stored in the back of the shop in fifty-kilo sacks meant for export. A table behind the counter served as Bwale’s office. On it stood a computer, without Internet, which worked only one or two hours a week when the small generator was running.