Congo Inc Read online

  In the evening the rain came down in sheets; lightning tore across the sky and made the dark outlines of the trees a terrifying sight. The children had taken refuge beneath the undergrowth, but thick drops came through the leaves and soaked them anyway. This is how they passed the night, waterlogged, shivering, but fortunately with calmer stomachs thanks to the rather tasty tubers they’d eaten during the day. They had even drunk some rainwater, which they caught in a large leaf they folded into the shape of a shell. But the older boy was just not doing well at all.

  “Wake up, please.”

  He wasn’t moving anymore. Other than some intermittent lurches, he was completely motionless. His breathing was arduous. Out of desperation the girl decided to abandon him. She couldn’t carry both children indefinitely, and the older one’s health had now deteriorated so much that he was undoubtedly going to die. She was familiar enough with the signs. She had to make the choice to leave only with the little one, so at least one of them would live. She could no longer feel her legs and thought her arms were going to fall off.

  “We’ll be back. Wait for us here. I’ll bring you medicine and food. Sleep a little more if you want.”

  The child still didn’t move. It was as if he’d fallen into some sort of a coma. His eyes were closed, and at that moment he couldn’t see the tears flowing down his sister’s cheeks. The little brother was watching, wondering what had happened to the world they’d left only a few days before.

  The girl was on her way again, clasping the little one against her chest. She tried not to think about the one she’d left behind. From time to time, the little one asked her when they were going back to get Trésor.

  “Be quiet!” is all she would answer.

  They walked until evening. Was it the exhaustion weighing her down or the child sinking fully into her arms? It seemed to her he was heavier now. Too quiet as well. They found shelter, hoped that the rain would spare them. As she put the little one down, the girl thought his forehead felt very hot. Sleep knocked her out before she knew it. There was no storm that night.

  The girl knew something was wrong with the child by the grayish color of his skin. It was ice cold. His limbs already stiff. The boy had died during the night, gently slipping toward oblivion. Gripping the child’s body, the girl let out a long scream. After digging up the soil with the help of a branch, Kolo Eyoma, the one they would name La Jactance, buried her brother under a thin layer of earth, then hurried off in the opposite direction. The little one was dead, and now it was a matter of getting to her other brother, who was perhaps still alive.

  “Forgive me for abandoning you, Trésor. Don’t die. Wait for me, I beg of you.”

  All day long the girl muttered this litany like a prayer. She walked, windswept, indifferent to the roots and stones obstructing her path. At times she even began to run like a crazy woman. Red from tears, her eyes recognized the way she’d come the day before as best they could. She had to get to him, the one she had abandoned, before it was too late.

  She walked on relentlessly until nightfall. At dawn the next morning, looking like a madwoman, a mantra on her lips, she pressed on with long steps through the mist that covered the landscape.

  “Forgive me,” she kept repeating relentlessly. “Don’t die.”

  The child appeared so suddenly before her eyes that the girl’s chest contracted in a spasm. Trésor was lying in the same place, but now he was staring at her with a lucid, glistening gaze. He was smiling. She approached him with uncertain steps, her hands out, not believing her eyes.

  “I knew you’d come back,” he said to her.

  1. A pagne is a piece of fabric usually around two yards long, wrapped around the waist as a skirt.—Tr.s’ note. Every pagne pattern is given a title or saying.

  2. A plant heart that tastes like heart of palm and looks vaguely like macaroni.

  3. Ambroise the giant.

  4. Non-sweet fruit that is plunged in boiling water for two minutes before it can be eaten. Very good at breakfast with chikwangue—manioc—or bread.

  5. “My voice has been heard all the way outside / May those who want to hear, hear it / My life, is it in their hands? / What can they possibly do to me? / Because I am a martyr to this love? / I have no problem with the living, no, reassure me, WW Bob Masua.”

  6. “Sit down.”

  7. Electric eel.

  8. “We have water! Pure water! Pure water!” Tr.’s note: In French it is also a play on words, as “pure,” here mispronounced as pire, means “worse.”

  9. “Hey, you, what the hell are you doing here?”

  10. “Who are you?”

  11. “Friends, what’s the problem?”

  12. A form of wrestling practiced by the Mongo.

  13. “Friends, let’s compromise.”

  14. An expression that means a world of kamikazes.

  15. Street children.

  16. “We have no mama, no papa. We have nothing to lose.”

  17. Interrupting the power supply to relieve the pressure on certain parts of the electric network.

  18. “Hurry up!”

  19. The first name “Trésor” appeared in Congo in honor of Bleu Marius Trésor after July 8, 1982, the day that he scored the first goal against Mannschaft in the semi-final of the Soccer World Cup. Thousands of children were also named Giresse and Platini. Not one child was named Rocheteau, Six, or Amoros and certainly not Rummenigge, Kaltz, or Hrubesch.

  20. “Big sister, Charlene!”

  PAPER TIGER

  纸老虎

  Not far from the Great Market, the night, a witness to the depravities of the squalid shadows ceaselessly moving about within, had slipped away—in utter disgust—and left space for the day, which was tentatively beginning to break through. Zhang Xia, a Chinese national, had just opened his eyes. Next to him, lying on a piece of cardboard and wrapped in an olive-green blanket in front of a fabric store on the Avenue du Commerce, Old Tshikunku was fast asleep. He had pulled the blanket completely over his head, and only a fist tightly gripping the shaft of a spear stuck out from what otherwise might have looked like a suspicious package.

  Zhang Xia was stretched out on a wooden lounge chair facing the street. He inhaled deeply as he stretched his upper limbs straight out in front of him. Without any further ado he got up. He poured some water from a jar into a bowl and rinsed his face. He went on to light the fire in a small iron brazier, then took a teabag and some sugar from behind the chair. After fanning the fire with a bit of cardboard he put the water on to boil.

  “Old Tshitshi!”

  “What’s the matter?” the olive-green shape on the ground responded. “What do you have to tell me? That the sun’s up? What’s so special about that?”

  Grumbling, the man they called Old Tshitshi sat up and yawned expansively. With the spear in his lap he stretched his aged joints to loosen them up, then grimaced. “Sleep well, Zhang Xia?”

  “Very well,” the Chinese man said. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Thank you, sir. Sir? You’re not going to keep that formality up, are you?”

  “The tea is ready,” Zhang Xia said in response.

  The old man shook his head and studied the younger one. Old Tshitshi had tried everything but couldn’t get him to relax, even though it had been several weeks since they had been living together—or rather that they had shared the same space, the cement slab of a store not far from the Great Market where Old Tshikunku, known as Old Tshitshi, was the night guard.

  Their meeting, in which the planetary situation had played a big role to the extent that it favored the movement of goods, had been almost fortuitous. Zhang Xia didn’t realize it perhaps, but some people thought of him as a simple asset. Not as consumer goods, obviously, but he could easily pass for capital equipment.

  Zhang Xia had arrived in the DRC as baggage of Mr. Liu Kaï, both a civil and private engineering contractor. First he’d learned some bits of French, then landed in Lubumbashi in Katanga, paradise of strate
gic minerals. After laying out large amounts of money to acquire a concession for himself, Liu Kaï had ordered an enormous mechanical digger from China. He put Zhang Xia in charge of the machine, and together they had moved tons and tons of soil by truck through Zambia and Tanzania to Dar es Salaam, from where it was shipped by freighter across the Indian Ocean to Singapore to end up in Guangdong on the South China Sea. His boss maintained it was rare soil, but Zhang Xia didn’t understand this designation, considering there was nothing else to see for miles and miles and they could take as much of it as they wanted at modest cost. Zhang Xia knew that in order not to incur taxes too exorbitant for his liking, Mr. Liu Kaï, a smile frozen on his lips, maintained to the local authorities that he was looking for copper but hadn’t yet found any, that the signs weren’t exactly positive, and that the tons of soil hauled away consisted merely of samples to be analyzed.

  Business had been rather good for Mr. Liu Kaï and Zhang Xia until the moment it was discovered that the banks, with crooked publicity men as their accomplices, had managed to exacerbate Western greed and exploited it as part of an enormous trap intended to divert their cash. The money was suddenly gone, nobody knew where, but was probably hidden between two algorithms contained in the operating systems of the computers of the NYSE, Nasdaq, Dow Jones, DAX, CAC 40, FTSE 100, or Nikkei 225. They were still searching for the exact ones. Credit having been cut off, Liu Kaï had to put the key of his enterprise under the door, pack up his bags, and go to Kinshasa, where he would wait and see what would happen next. He had brought Zhang Xia along, endlessly repeating to him that they weren’t merely partners but were also essential to the smooth running of society and a guarantee of its security. To convince him, Liu Kaï occasionally had him sign a document. No one had told him yet but Zhang Xia was a straw man. Straw comes in handy. It’s isolating, ecological, biodegradable—in the trend of the early twenty-first century, in short—and it burns fast and well.

  One day, when Zhang Xia came back from an errand his associate had asked him to run, the receptionist at the shabby hotel in Barumbu where they were staying told him that Mr. Liu Kaï had just paid and left.

  “Did he leave a note for me?” Zhang Xia asked shyly.

  “No, nothing.”

  Without money or shelter, Zhang Xia roamed around distraught for days on end. At night he would doze off wherever sleep overpowered him, until the day when he sat down on a concrete slab to rest from his long walk and began a conversation with Old Tshikunku. The latter knew everything there was to know about life and its vagaries. The evening seemed endless. Between long periods of silence, the Chinese tried to tie some conversations together, one attempt more useless than the next; it was late.

  “Well, I’m going to get some rest,” Old Tshitshi said. “Here, take my chair. I’ll lie down on the ground over there, near you.”

  Spear in hand, the old man bundled himself up in the olive-green blanket and dropped off to sleep. Zhang Xia stayed in the chair until dawn. Every now and then his head would sink down on his chest because he was exhausted, but through pure willpower he managed to raise it again each time. All night long he forced himself to keep it straight up.

  Very early in the morning, having thanked him for the seat, he went back to wandering through the city, but came back that night and once again Old Tshitshi let him have his chair. Considering the situation he was in, Standard & Poor’s would have readily awarded Zhang Xia a triple A: one A for “Abnegated from his home,” another for “Abandoned like a dog,” and one for “Ah, life!” It had been going on for more than three weeks now, and it didn’t look as if the end were in sight anytime soon.

  After drinking their tea and sharing some bread from the woman who had just settled on the sidewalk two stores down, Zhang Xia wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said to Tshitshi, “I’m going to buy ice.” He took a step, turned around, bent down, and added, “You’re like a father to me, sir.”

  The old man stood on the slab, blanket around his shoulders, spear in hand pointing toward the sky. He nodded and said, “Little One, that’s what I’ve been telling you. A son doesn’t constantly say ‘sir’ to his father. Where do you think you are?”

  “Trésor, lamuka!”1

  Isookanga opened his eyes and stretched. It took him a few seconds to realize where he was. Would waking up outdoors in the heart of a city be one of the elements of a globalized model? Isookanga told himself this wasn’t the time to have any qualms about his future; there were more pressing things. Shasha was up, shaking pagne-swathed bodies. The head of a ten-year-old surfaced.

  “Ah, Yaya! Be gentle.”

  “Isookanga, let me introduce my brother, Trésor.”

  Pointing to another child of about the same age, she said, “This is Modogo. Don’t take him too seriously; he tends to say just about anything that comes into his head. Isn’t that so, Modogo?”

  “Yo waa nnex!”2

  “I’ve never seen anyone as foolish as you!” Shasha cried out angrily. “Those diabolical words of yours again? Don’t you realize where that’s gotten you?”

  Turning to Isookanga she added more kindly, “Modogo was a child sorcerer before. He frightened everyone in his village. His parents took him to the priest, who made him repeat some of his favorite phrases. He uttered them quite trustingly with everyone present. The guy and his deacons decided Modogo was possessed to the max. They did everything to him: laying on of hands, fasting for three days, beatings at home when they assumed the devil wasn’t far off. Isn’t that right, Modogo? Show Isookanga how the priest was trying to chase the devil out of your body.”

  “Leave me alone,” the boy said defensively but without conviction.

  “They forced him to leave home,” the girl went on. “That’s when he came here, strengthening our ranks.”

  Turning to Trésor, who was dragging his feet to slip into a pair of old Nikes, she called out, “You haven’t gone to get bread yet?”

  “But you haven’t given me any money yet, Ya’ Charlene.”

  After breakfast they all left to attend to their own business. Considering the crowd that had been milling about since dawn, it was clear there would be plenty of action. Isookanga decided to visit the city, where the Boulevard du 30-Juin peaked his interest. He had to take another look at those grandiose buildings, those stores filled with high-tech products, those cars that seemed to be in a race, competing in the Grand Prix of Doha. He wanted to watch the people of Kinshasa, some of whose specimens he’d studied in the village when the antenna was inaugurated. He wanted to be like them: a calm attitude, focused on keeping his spine and head straight, self-assured, with the stability of a watertight Lloyd’s of London. Before getting to that point he had to immerse himself in the city air.

  Isookanga went down the avenue, making the most of the least little scene. Near the Presidential Galleries he changed ten dollars. They gave him back wads of Congolese francs. First he bought a backpack, more practical than his jute one, to cart his meager possessions around. From a shayeur3 he then purchased a black T-shirt with a skull on it, which he stuffed into his bag, as well as a pair of Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses. He felt different the minute he put those on his nose. Imperceptibly his gait changed, gravity already releasing some of its hold over him. With the bag on his back, he turned onto a street on the right and was back in the Gombe district, where clusters of vegetation shared their space with beautiful buildings erected on well-maintained avenues. At times the vertical structures looked like tracks in the bush, but the affluence was tangible everywhere, even for a Pygmy who until now hadn’t given it any thought. Through his scratched sunglasses, Isookanga sensed that the neighborhood suited him quite well; in fact, it really fit him like a glove: the designer monogram on his frames matched the surrounding setting perfectly. Isookanga noticed the trees around him and fully understood the people who lived here. There was shrubbery around their homes, but not too much, just enough to provide some shade, not as in Équateur Province, where i
t occupied every inch of space and swallowed up the horizon.

  He went back to the boulevard, crossed, and returned to the center of town, where, like a human tide, the horde of passersby pulled him along toward the Great Market. Looking for a bit of coolness, he sat down on the steps of a gallery in front of a store that sold electrical appliances made in the Middle East and in Asia. He took a piece of electric eel from his bag, broke off a piece, and started to chew. His saliva softened the flesh, which, since it was smoked, had become as hard as wood but now regained its flavor. Smoke and heat removed the moisture and the polyunsaturated fatty acids without eliminating any of its protein benefits. Isookanga chewed carefully, appreciating every molecule that touched his taste buds. The bowayo was the most tantalizing item around. The young Ekonda knew its delicacy had been appreciated since time immemorial. The almost mythical animal was an integral part of the collective imagination of the Mongo nation.

  The bowayo is not just any animal. Stouter than a thigh, it can grow longer than a meter. It’s very dangerous, it’s a monster. You have to approach it cunningly, for at the smallest of threats it’s capable of discharging electricity of up to six hundred volts from quite a distance. A power station all by itself. That’s not all: it can come out of the water and climb up palm trees to pick the nuts of which it’s very fond. Consequently, the bowayo is officially taboo for women. When this dish is served, the husband fears that if his wife eats the eel’s head, she will no longer be docile in the conjugal home. Should the taboo be broken, she will magically be wearing the pants and her spouse will have to be forever submissive to her. As soon as it’s served, a prudent husband will check the dish to make sure that every bone and all of the skull’s flesh is there, to guarantee no part of it has landed in his beloved wife’s stomach while she was preparing it. At least he is forewarned. The bowayo is a strange fish.