The Mission Song Read online

  The fruits of eavesdropping, Mr Anderson never tires of reminding his disciples, are by nature incoherent rubbish and endlessly frustrating. The patience of Job is not sufficient, in Mr Anderson's judgment, to separate the occasional nugget from the sea of dross in which it swims. In this regard, the opening exchanges of our three delegates in no way diverged from the norm, being the anticipated mix of scatological expressions of relief and, only rarely, sighting shots for the battles yet to be joined.

  Franco: (scathingly enunciating a Congolese proverb) Fine words don't feed a cow.

  Dieudonne: (capping Franco's proverb with another) The teeth are smiling, but is the heart?

  Haj: Holy Shit! My dad warned me the old boy was heavy duty, but this is something else. Aw, aw, aw. Why does he talk Swahili like a Tanzanian with a pawpaw up his arse? I thought he was a home-grown Shi.

  Nobody bothers to answer him, which is what happens every time you put three men in a room together. The biggest mouth takes over and the two people you want to listen to go mute.

  Haj: (continued) Who's the pretty zebra anyway? (Mystified silence, echoing my own) The interpreter guy in the linoleum jacket? Who the fuck is he?

  Haj is calling me a zebra? I've been called most things in my time. At Mission school I was a metis, a café au lait, a shaven pig. At the Sanctuary I was anything from a fuzzipeg to a golliwog. But zebra was a brand-new insult to me, and I could only suppose that it was of Haj's personal manufacture.

  Haj: (continued) I knew a guy like him once. Maybe they're related. A book-keeper. Fiddled the accounts for my dad. Screwed every girl in town till some angry husband shot his arse off. Vump! Wasn't me though. I'm not married and I don't kill guys. We've killed enough of ourselves. Fuck us. Never again. Cigarette?

  Haj has a gold cigarette case. In the conference room, I saw it peeking from the mustard silk lining of his Zegna. Now I hear its clunk as he snaps it open. Franco lights up and is seized by a gravedigger's cough.

  What on earth was that about, Brian?

  They're speculating about my ethnicity.

  Is that normal?

  Pretty much. Dieudonne, having first declined, mutters a fatalistic “Why not?” and lights up also.

  Haj: You sick or something?

  Dieudonne: Something.

  Are they sitting or standing? Listen carefully, you get the uneven squeak of lame Franco's track shoes while Haj prances around the hard floor in his slime-green crocs. Keep listening, you hear a grunt of pain and the puff of a foam cushion as Dieudonne eases himself into an armchair. That's how good we sound-thieves become under Mr Anderson's tutelage.

  Haj: Tell you one thing for openers, pal.

  Dieudonne: (wary at being addressed so warmly) What?

  Haj: People in Kivu are a whole lot more interested in peace and reconciliation than those pricks in Kinshasa, (affects a rabble-rouser's voice) Kill 'em all. Gouge their Rwandan eyes out. We're right behind you, man. Like two thousand kilometres behind you, mostly jungle. (Waits, I suspect, for a reaction, but gets none. Slap of crocs resumes) And this old boy he goes along with all that shit (mimicking the Mwangaza, quite well): Let us cleanse our fine green land of these pestilential cockroaches, my friends. Oh yes. Let us restore our homeland to our beloved countrymen! I agree with that. Don't we all? (Waits. No response) Motion carried unanimously. Chuck 'em out, I say. Vump! Pow! Fuck off! (No response) Just non-violently. (rattle of crocs) Problem is, where do you stop? I mean, what about the poor bastards who came over in '94? Do we sling them out too? Do we sling out Dieudonne here? Take your kids with you but leave your cows behind?

  Haj is turning out to be the wrecker I feared when he was upstairs. In a casual yet subversive manner he has contrived to bring the conversation round within minutes to the most divisive issue before us: the unresolved status of the Banyamulenge people and Dieudonne's eligibility as an ally in our enterprise.

  Franco: (yet another proverb, this time spat out in challenge) A log may remain ten years in the water. It will never become a crocodile!

  (Long, tense pause)

  Dieudonne: Franco!

  The screech in my headphones has nearly pitched me out of my hot-seat. In his fury, Dieudonne has shoved his chair across the stone floor. I imagine his hands clawing at its arms, and his sweated head lifting to Franco in passionate appeal.

  Dieudonne: When is this ever going to end, Franco? You and us? The Banyamulenge may be Tutsis, but we are not Rwandans! (His breathing gets him, but he keeps fighting) We are Congolese, Franco, as Congolese as the Mai Mai! Yes! (shouting down Franco's derision) The Mwangaza understands that and sometimes so do you! (and in French, to ram it home): Nous sommes tous [?]airois! Remember what they taught us to sing at school in Mobutu's time? So why can't we sing it now? Nous sommes tous Congolais!

  No, Dieudonne, not all of us, I mentally correct him. I too was taught to sing those words at school in proud unison with my classmates, until the day they poked their fingers at the secret child and screamed: Pas Salvo, pas le metis! Pas le cochon rase!

  Dieudonne: (continuing his tirade) In the '64 rebellion, my father, a Munyamulenge, fought alongside your father, a Simba (rasp as he reaches for breath) and you as a young man fought alongside both of them. Did that make you our allies? (rasp) Our friends? (rasp) No, it did not. (he breaks angrily into French) C'etait une alliance contre la nature! The Simba continued to kill us and steal our cattle for their troops, just as the Mai Mai kills us and steals our cattle today. When we retaliate, you call us Banyamulenge scum. When we restrain ourselves, you call us Banyamulenge cowards — (drowning gulps now). But if we can join together under this — (rasp) — stop the killing, and the hating (rasp) — stop avenging our dead ones and our mutilated ones — if we can stop ourselves — and unite — under this leader or any other . . .

  He breaks off. His wheezing is so bad it reminds me of Jean-Pierre in the hospital, minus tubes. I wait on the edge of my hot-seat for Franco's rejoinder, but must once more listen impotently to Haj.

  Haj: Allies in what, for fuck's sake? To achieve what? A united Kivu? North and south? My friends. Let us seize hold of our resources and thereby control our destiny. Humph humph. They've been seized, arsehole! By a bunch of Rwandan crazies who are armed to the eyeballs and raping our women in their spare time! Those interahamwe guys up there are so well dug in, the fucking UN doesn't dare to fly over them without asking their permission first.

  Dieudonne: (contemptuous laugh) The UN? If we wait for the UN to bring us peace we shall wait until our children are dead, and our grandchildren too.

  Franco: Then maybe you should take your children and grandchildren back to Rwanda now and leave us in peace.

  Haj: (interceding fast in French, presumably to head off the argument) Us? I heard us? (veritable fusillade of croc-slapping, followed by dead silence) You seriously think this is about us? This old guy doesn't want us, he wants power. He wants his place in history before he croaks, and to get it he's prepared to sell us out to this weirdo syndicate and bring the whole fucking roof down on us.

  I have barely finished rendering these heresies before Philip's handbell summons us to round two.

  • • •

  And here I must recount an incident that at the time of its occurrence made little impact on my overburdened mind, but in the light of later events merits closer examination. Philip's bell sounds, I detach my headset. I rise to my feet and, with a wink at Spider in reply to his, ascend the cellar staircase. Reaching the top, I give the pre-arranged signal: three short taps to the iron door, which Anton opens part-way and closes behind me, unfortunately with a loud clang. Without a word passing between us Anton steers me round the corner of the house to the eastern end of the covered walkway, leaving me only a short distance to the gaming room, all again according to plan. But with one difference: neither of us had reckoned with the sunlight, which is shining straight into my eyes and temporarily unsighting me.

  As I begin my walk, with my eyes directed
downward in order to avoid the glare of the sun, I hear approaching footsteps and hoots of African laughter from the delegates coming at me from the opposite end of the covered way. We are about to encounter each other head-on. It is therefore apparent to me that I must be in possession of a convincing cover story to explain my emergence from the wrong side of the house. Did they glimpse Anton shooing me round the corner? Did they hear the clang of the iron door?

  Fortunately I am trained to think on my feet, thanks to the One-Day Courses in Personal Security which all part-timers are obliged to attend. How had I been spending my precious leisure minutes while our delegates recessed for their private discussions? Answer, doing what I always do in breaks between proceedings — enjoying a bit of peace and quiet in some out-of-the-way corner until the bell rings. Thus mentally prepared, I continue my advance on the gaming-room door. I arrive, I stop. They arrive, they stop. Or rather Haj stops. Haj, being the most agile, is out front, whereas Franco and Dieudonne are following at a few paces' distance. They have still not caught up when Haj, who minutes earlier had dubbed me zebra, addresses me with exaggerated courtesy:

  “So, Mr Interpreter, you are well refreshed? You are ready for our next battle?”

  It was a harmless enough question and harmlessly put. The only problem was, he was speaking Kinyarwanda. This time, however, I needed no Philip to flash warning signals at me. I gave a puzzled smile, subtly tinged with regret. When that didn't do the trick, I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head, indicating my continuing incomprehension. Haj woke to his error, or appeared to, emitted a bark of apologetic laughter and slapped me on the upper arm. Had he been trying to trick me? He had not. Or so I persuaded myself at the time. He had merely fallen into the trap that awaits any multilinguist worth his salt. After speaking Kinyarwanda nineteen-to-the-dozen in the guest suite, he had neglected to change track. Happens to the best of us. Forget it.

  10

  “Gentlemen. I give you Monsieur le Colonel!”

  The light of battle gleams in Maxie's washy blue eyes as he towers before the easel, hands on hips: three years to go before his Borodino. He has thrown aside his jacket but left his tie in place. Probably he wears one so seldom that he's forgotten about it. Our numbers have shrunk. The Mwangaza, once a veteran of the barricades but now a Prophet of Peace, has withdrawn to the seclusion of his royal apartments, taking his pigtailed acolyte with him. Only Tabizi — boxer's shoulders hunched, gaze lidded, dyed black hair scrupulously swept back to camouflage a bald crown — has stayed behind to see fair play.

  But it's not Maxie I'm staring at, not Tabizi, not the delegates. It's my childhood. It's the large-scale military map of the town of Bukavu, jewel of Central Africa and some say all of Africa, set at the southern tip of Africa's highest and therefore coolest lake. And this lake, swathed in mist and cradled by smouldering hills, is magical, ask my dear late father. Ask the fishermen he gossiped with at the dockside while they picked the sambaza from their nets and tossed them into yellow plastic buckets, where they flipped for hours on end, hoping someone like me will put them back. Ask them about mamba mutu, the half crocodile, half woman; and the bad people who creep down to the shore at night and, by means of witchcraft, trade the living souls of innocent friends in exchange for favours in this world and retribution in the next. Which is why Lake Kivu is whispered to be cursed, and why fishermen disappear, dragged down by mamba mutu, who likes to eat their brains. Or so the fishermen assured my dear late father, who knew better than to mock their beliefs.

  The main avenue is lined with classic colonial houses with rounded corners and oblong windows overhung with tulip trees, jacaranda and bougainvillea. The hills around bulge with banana groves and tea plantations like so many green mattresses. From their slopes you can count the town's five peninsulas. The grandest is called La Botte, and there it is, on Maxie's map: a boot of Italy with fine houses and pampered gardens descending to the lake's edge — le Marechal Mobutu himself had deigned to have a villa there. To begin with, the boot shoots boldly into the lake, then just when you think it's headed straight for Goma, it crooks its foot sharp right and lashes out at Rwanda on the eastern shore.

  Maxie's paper arrows are of strategic practicality. They point to the Governor's house, the radio and television stations, the United Nations headquarters and the army barracks. But none to the roadside market where we ate goat brochettes when my father brought me into town for my birthday treats; none to the green-roofed cathedral, built like two washed-up ships turned upside down, where we prayed for my immortal soul. None for the grim-stoned Catholic university where one day, if I worked hard, I might get to study. And none for the White Sisters' Mission where they fed sugar biscuits to the secret child and told him what a dear kind uncle he had.

  Maxie stands with his back to us. Philip sits at his side, his features so fluid that you have to be quick to catch a particular expression. You think you see one, but when you look again, it's gone. Our three delegates sit where they sat before, Franco at their centre. Dieudonne has acquired a harder face. The muscles of Franco's neck are braced. Haj alone displays a provocative disdain for our proceedings. Zegna-clad elbows on the baize, he appears more interested in the window than in his own fiefdom on the easel. Does he care? Does he love Bukavu as much as I do in my memory? It is hard to believe so.

  Enter Anton, bearing billiards cue. His appearance confuses me. Why isn't he out there with his watchers where he belongs? Then it dawns on me that, for as long as our delegates are in the conference room, there's nobody left for him to watch, which only goes to show that when you're geared up to peak performance with your nerve-ends out and your interpreter's third ear on red alert you can still be thick-headed when it comes to common sense.

  “Bit of soldier talk coming up, old boy,” Maxie warns me in a murmur. “That going to be all right for you?”

  All right, Skipper? You asked, can I do military, and I can.

  Anton passes Maxie the billiards cue as a replacement weapon for the Mwangaza's magic stick. A drill movement, man to officer. Maxie grasps it at its point of equilibrium. Clipped, clear voice. Plain words and good pauses. Now hear this. I hear it and render it with everything I've got.

  “First things first, gentlemen. There will be no, repeat, no armed intervention by non-Congolese forces in the province of Kivu. Make sure they've got that loud and clear, will you, old boy?”

  Surprised though I am, I do as I am asked. Haj lets out a yip of delight, giggles and shakes his head in disbelief. Franco's gnarled face stirs in perplexity. Dieudonne lowers his eyes in contemplation.

  “Any uprising will be a spontaneous, brushfire outbreak of traditionally opposed tribal groups,” Maxie goes on, undeterred.

  “It will occur without, repeat, without involvement of non-Congolese forces — or none that are visible — whether in Goma, Bukavu, or wherever. Make sure Haj gets that. It's what his father signed up to. Tell him that.”

  I do. Haj returns his gaze to the world outside the window where an air battle is raging between rival squadrons of crows and gulls.

  “A delicate domestic balance of power will have been temporarily disturbed,” Maxie resumes. “No outside agency, national, mercenary or otherwise, will have fanned the flames. As far as the international community is concerned, it will be Congolese business as usual. Ram that home for me, will you, old boy?”

  I ram it home for the skipper. Haj's crows are in retreat, outnumbered by the gulls.

  “UN headquarters in Bukavu is a pig's breakfast,” Maxie declares with mounting emphasis, though I am careful to use a less emotive term. “One mechanised infantry company with mine-protected armoured personnel carriers, one Uruguayan guard company, one Chinese engineering unit, Rwandan and Mai Mai representatives bumping into each other in the corridors, one Nepali half-colonel soon to be retired running the shop. Smallest thing happens, they're on the satcom yelling at headquarters to tell 'em what to do. We know. Philip's been listening to their conversations, right?
”

  Philip takes a bow in response to the merriment occasioned by my rendering. A freelance consultant who eavesdrops on UN headquarters? I am secretly flabbergasted, but decline to let it show.

  “If the fighting is reckoned to be Congolese on Congolese, the only thing the UN in Bukavu or Goma or anywhere else will do is bellyache, evacuate the civilians, withdraw to their installations, and leave it to the hellraisers to slog it out. But — and make it a bloody big but, will you, old boy? — if the UN or anybody else get the idea we're coming from outside, we're fucked.”

  Swahili possessing a rich store of equivalents, I do not presume to water down the skipper's raunchy language. Yet if my rendering wins more approving laughter from Franco, and a wan smile from Dieudonne, the best Haj can offer is a war-whoop of derision.

  “What the hell does he mean by that?” Maxie snaps out of the corner of his mouth, as if I, not Haj, had offended.

  “Just high spirits, Skipper.”

  “I'm asking him, not you.”

  I pass the question to Haj, or more accurately to the back of his Zegna.

  “Maybe nobody feels like rioting that day,” he replies with a lazy shrug. “Maybe it's raining.”

  On cue as ever, Philip glides into the breach. “All the colonel is talking about here, Haj, is a few smashed shop fronts. A little looting and shooting, I grant you. A burning car here or there, but nobody's asking you to set your own town alight. Your father is quite determined there should be an absolute minimum of destruction in Goma, and I'm sure you feel the same about Bukavu. All we're looking for is enough fireworks — enough disturbance generally — to create a situation where a charismatic and popular leader with a message to impart — in this case, your father's old comrade the Mwangaza — can emerge triumphantly as the peacemaker. Luc had the rather good idea, for Goma, of kicking off with a protest rally that goes mildly wrong, and letting the beer do the work thereafter. You might consider taking a leaf out of his book for Bukavu.”