Pandora in the Congo

by Albert Sanchez Pinol

  ‘A fence,’ said Richard finally, as if he were reading an instruction manual written on the air. ‘We have to surround the anthill with a fence.’

  ‘A fence?’

  ‘Yes. We’ll build a fort, but in reverse. It won’t keep the Tectons from entering the mine, but it’ll keep them from coming out of it.’

  ‘You heard the man, Marcus,’ said William, who approved the idea. ‘Start chopping down trees. We’ll need lots of trunks. Let’s go.’

  And he took Marcus to the forest while Richard stayed at the anthill taking measurements and reactivating his military engineer brain.

  William and Marcus started cutting trees. They couldn’t be too large or too small. They were looking for trunks between six and nine feet, tall enough that they couldn’t be climbed once they were driven in vertically and formed the fence, but not so large that they couldn’t be dragged to the anthill. They each had an axe and they worked very closely with each other. William said, ‘You haven’t been on our side for a while now. Don’t bother denying it, I know. What I don’t understand is why. Why, Marcus? Is it the money? You think you deserve more?’

  Marcus didn’t speak. William continued, ‘Do you really believe we haven’t been thinking of you? Don’t be an idiot, you’ll be compensated. You’ll return richer than a tramp like you could ever dream of being. The Cravers never turn their backs on faithful servants.’

  The trees fell. Once they were on the ground they chopped off the branches so that the fence would create a solid wall. Marcus maintained a stubborn silence.

  ‘So it’s not about the money,’ concluded William.

  They tied a few trunks together and then put the end of the rope on their shoulders so they could pull them like mules. But at the last minute William let Marcus drag the whole load by himself. He walked at his side, like a mule driver.

  ‘Is it about the Negroes? Could it be that behind that gypsy skin lies a philanthropic soul? No, it’s not that. There are no more Negroes now. And you’re glummer than ever. So why then?’

  Marcus collected the trunks in a pile near the anthill. Amgam sat in front of the tent with her legs crossed. William stopped. His grey pupils were two lead coins.

  ‘It’s about her,’ he finally guessed. ‘Her.’

  William’s head turned from Marcus to Amgam and from Amgam to Marcus. He was having trouble putting the two characters together. It wasn’t often that someone like him found reasons for admiration.

  ‘It’s about her,’ he repeated. ‘It’s about her.’

  The three Englishmen spent five days and five nights building the little fort. But as hard as the work got William never forgot the feelings he had discovered in Marcus.

  Richard began the work by driving in a stake right beside the anthill. Out of the stake came a cord twelve feet long, at the other end of the cord they had tied another stake. When the cord was taut he went around the anthill once striking the ground with the point of the second stake. The cord created the radius and Richard used the stake to mark the ground like a plough. That was how he drew a circle. William and Marcus dug the furrow marked by Richard until it became a small trench, and they put the trunks in there. They raised them vertically, they strengthened them and tied them together with cords; they built a solid wall. They used picks, shovels, axes and hammers. They were afraid and they had to work with their rifles on their backs. The butt constrained them; the rifles’ bands, crossed on their chests, were an irritation; their mouths were filled with curses, their hands covered with cuts and blisters. No one would have ever thought that something so simple would require so much effort. They continued working at night lit by three oil lamps that multiplied the shadows by three. They appeared to be nine men.

  William and Richard kept thinking about how to perfect the wall, how to make it higher, stronger, more impenetrable. And while they applied technical principles there was no room for spiritual arguments, which at the same time were obvious: that the fence was an aberration, and that anyone with a bit of sense would have fled.

  There was a moment when Marcus was about to shout, to say that’s enough. Didn’t they see it? No fence would stop the Tectons. He dropped his tools and walked towards Richard with firm steps. He was the weakest of the two. Maybe if Marcus yelled at him he would see the light. Richard worked seated beside the fire. He was smoothing the trunks for the fence with a machete.

  ‘Do you want something, Marcus?’ said Richard as he saw him approach.

  But before explaining his point of view about that ridiculous wall, Marcus couldn’t help making a spontaneous observation.

  ‘No, Richard, not like that,’ he suggested. ‘Don’t cut off the branches that stick out of the upper part of the trunk. Trim them and sharpen them. That way if they try to climb up the trunks they’ll cut their hands.’

  ‘You’re right!’ acknowledged Richard. ‘That’s a very good idea. Good thinking, Marcus!’

  From that instant on he didn’t know how to oppose the project. Richard’s praise, paradoxically, made Marcus feel more a part of it. His criticism of a small aspect of the fence implied a tacit acceptance of the whole thing. And Richard, who was so terrified that he would have accepted any help no matter where it came from, didn’t hesitate from that moment on to consult with him on every detail with extreme affability. And so, without his really knowing how, it became impossible for Marcus to express his true feelings about the wall.

  In all of those days he only had one chance to get close to Amgam. Taking advantage of an accident on the job, when the point of a stake he was handling opened up his whole forearm in a wound that was longer than it was deep, Marcus took a break to tend to his arm. Amgam, seeing his injury, went to help him.

  They were standing next to a tent. Marcus emptied the water from a canteen over the wound. She brought him some bandages. That allowed their hands to touch. But Marcus knew that now William wouldn’t take his eyes off them. She knew it too. All the love she could give him was a little pressure with her hand. She squeezed Marcus’s hand with her six fingers a few seconds longer than necessary. It couldn’t have been very intense contact. And, yet, it was.

  He wasn’t alone in the world. Those amber eyes thought of him. Squeezing his hand, conveying that supernatural warmth, let him know that Amgam’s mind was only working on one thing: freeing him.

  Besides that episode, though, they only lived for digging. They worked and worked, until a week later, one evening, when the wall finally stood, magnificent, with that undeniable beauty that constructed things raised in the middle of wildest nature have, Amgam approached it.

  The night was particularly chilly and damp. Thousands of insects saturated the air with the clamour of shrill bursts. Around the anthill there was a wall of perfect trunks. It even had a little door that opened like a drawbridge. If the fence were a watch face, the entrance would have been at six o’clock. From one side to the other of the drawbridge, which is to say from five to seven, they had created some lookouts from which they could watch the anthill and loopholes to stick the rifles through. At twelve o’clock there was a third shooting point. Richard’s idea was to create a system of crossfire, so that the invaders would be shot down as soon as they appeared through the anthill.

  Amgam went into the space enclosed by the wall. For some reason, no one restricted Amgam’s movements. Worn out by the long day of work, not thinking clearly, they let her do it. And they went in behind her. They watched as she observed the wall. Suddenly, without anyone really knowing why, Amgam’s opinion had become important.

  Three equidistant lamps hung from the inside of the fence, one above each loophole. Their cold light created weak, twisted shadows. The nine shadows, twelve if we count Amgam’s, stopped. She had understood, finally, that the purpose of this construction was purely military. She approached the anthill. There she saw the work from the perspective of an attacker emerging from the depths of the earth. She sat, in her usual style, on her heels. Marcus, William and Richard coul
dn’t take their eyes off her. Finally Amgam made a gesture.

  Words were unnecessary; all three of them understood her. More than a gesture, it was a general prostration of her body, a spectator’s sadness. They all comprehended that Amgam was feeling something unknown to the three men: she was feeling someone else’s pain.

  Richard was the most affected. ‘Somebody get her out of here,’ he whined in a defeated voice. ‘Please, oh please, somebody take her.’

  No one listened to him, and he was the one who ended up leaving. William and Marcus stayed by themselves inside the fence, each one on one side of the anthill. The three lamps made a slight sound of gas escaping that imposed itself on the jungle’s nocturnal sounds. Now that William knew of his feelings for Amgam, Marcus feared that he would use them as another weapon. But that evening William seemed like a different person.

  Marcus sat down, tired, his back against the fence. William’s legs, sheathed in those white trousers, planted themselves before him.

  ‘She came out from below ground … like a worm … and you love her … you love her …’

  He didn’t say it with disdain. He spoke more like someone trying to resolve the Times crossword out loud. William grabbed one of the lamps, which was surrounded by insects and moths. He put it on the ground between them and knelt down. With two fingers he captured one of the largest moths, one with white wings. He let it fall through the upper opening of the lamp. It lit up like a paper kite. He didn’t take his eyes off the insect in flames.

  ‘Tell me, Marcus Garvey, what is it that you like about her? I want to know.’

  William had discovered the truth, it was useless trying to hide anything from him. And he didn’t have the energy to start a dialectical duel with someone so superior to him, either. Above them, the Milky Way crossed over the sky of the clearing like a spinal column.

  ‘I like touching her,’ he said.

  William’s eyes had never looked so much like a shark’s. Sharks’ eyes show no love. But those eyes, that evening, were also conscious of their inability to be anything else. William left. He went to his tent, with her. He would surely force her with the coldness of a scientist experimenting with laboratory rats. That was the paradox that distanced William Craver from the human species: perhaps he wanted to reach love, but the only route he knew was rape.

  A little while later Richard approached Marcus, who now lay on his back. Richard was the one who was most scared. Or, the one who was worst at hiding his fear. They smoked together. Marcus’s thoughts were lost in that fantastically star-filled sky, and Richard said, ‘I don’t like to look at the stars. When I do, I have the feeling that the stars are closer to home than we are.’

  Marcus sat up. But once he was upright he couldn’t help looking at William’s tent. What must be going on in there? He didn’t want to know, he didn’t want to hate William more than he had already learned to hate him. And while he observed the khaki canvas of the tent he had an idea: never before had someone so desirable and someone so undesirable been together. It was like sticking absolute good and absolute evil in the same bottle. Marcus closed his eyes. No, he definitely did not want to know what was going on inside there.

  ‘Let me tell you an old family story,’ said Richard. ‘When I was small someone gave us a kitten. The only detail that differentiated it from the other cats was its white-tipped tail. William played with it a lot. My father did as well. That was very surprising to me, since I was used to having the very serious Duke of Craver for a father. My mother was already ill from the disease that would take her to her grave, and the pet thoroughly cheered her up. One day the kitten was found dead, in the garden. There was blood everywhere. If you looked carefully you could see that its body had been cut exactly into two equal halves. My father said that it had been crushed by the wheel of a cart, but it wasn’t any cartwheel that split that kitten like a guillotine. It was an axe blow. Well, actually two blows. Even a child can use an axe.’

  Richard sighed.

  ‘I remember another time. The family was sitting at the table. William explained to us a discovery he had just made. He said that feelings weren’t like opinions, because one could change an opinion when one wanted to, but that it was impossible to have a feeling if the feeling didn’t want you to have it. That night I overheard my father talking to my mother about William. He said that William had a lot of talent. He said that William was like an extraordinary book. But that the good Lord had forgotten to write in the full stops, the commas and the accents in that extraordinary book. My mother asked him, “Do you mean to tell me that the boy has bad feelings?” And my father replied, “No, my dear, it’s worse. What I’m saying is that he doesn’t have them.”’

  We might think that the fact that Richard shared this with Marcus indicated a weak spirit, and that Marcus should have taken advantage of that to make him come back to his senses. No. Marcus didn’t miss any opportunity, for the simple fact that the opportunity never presented itself. Richard was too dependent on his brother to stand up to him. Any independence of Richard’s personality was mortgaged as soon as a crisis appeared. And who could imagine a bigger crisis?

  The next day was the beginning of what was to be the last period of human life in that damn clearing. For William there was no contradiction between his objectives and his circumstances. Once the defences were established, according to his logic, there was no reason not to continue extracting gold. The day went like this: Marcus, inside, was in charge of picking at the walls of the mine and filling a large wicker basket with the earth he had extracted. From above, William pulled up the full basket with a rope. He went through the door of the fence with the basket in his arms and he headed towards the tub, where he emptied out the basket’s contents. Richard was in charge of separating the dirt from the gold. William returned to the anthill. Meanwhile, Marcus had had time to fill up another basket. William lowered the empty basket and pulled up the full one.

  The mine had become an enormous subterranean vault. At least for one man alone. Now the light of the lamps, spread out over the dozens of beams that held up the ceiling, struggled to illuminate the inner surface. Midday announced itself with a shaft of sunlight entering vertically through the anthill, falling like a theatre spotlight.

  Before, one hundred Negro bodies had filled the mine. Now it was empty. Marcus’s voice bounced against the spherical walls. Between baskets he opened a flask of whisky to have a sip, and the squeak of the cap unscrewing came back to him multiplied a thousand times. When that happened he couldn’t help looking around him. It seemed like the tunnels were telescopes into another world. And that they were focused right on him.

  But I have to say that what most impressed me about the story of that period, leaving to one side moral judgements, was the figure of William Craver. What extraordinary willpower, able to contradict and combat all the laws of the universe!

  Why did he do it? Gold fever? He didn’t even have any miners left. Richard might be a bundle of lethargy, but William was too smart a man. Why did he stay there, then?

  I think that he was compelled by a hidden impulse, as powerful as it was invisible. I think that in William’s recklessness there was a secret desire to die. He was a killer. And now, for the first time in his life, he was the victim.

  Here’s a story: a famished snake approaches a little bird, the bird sees the snake coming. Why doesn’t the little bird fly away?

  Because he wants to find out how the story ends.

  FOURTEEN

  WHAT MOST UPSET MARCUS about the recent events was that they kept him from Amgam. Without being able to camouflage himself among the Negroes, without being able to meet in secret in the jungle as they had before, Marcus was further from her than ever. He spent the day working in the mine, and at night she was shut up in William’s tent. And William, ever since he had learned of Marcus’s feelings, watched over her with a mix of hatred and distrust. No, that wasn’t exactly it. No one could ever really fathom what William was thinkin
g.

  At night someone always had to watch over the anthill. The distribution of turns was a reflection of the established hierarchies. William was exempt from any obligation. Richard kept watch a third of the hours of darkness, while Marcus took care of the other two-thirds. In order to make up for his lack of sleep they let him have a nap after lunch. But he didn’t get enough rest and every night his fatigue increased. Looking at it with that perspective, then, one could say that it was William who provoked it all. It was one of his favourite tactics, first he would create the conditions for someone to make a mistake, he would make it inevitable, and then he would punish the offender with utmost severity.

  One night William surprised Marcus.

  ‘You fell asleep, Marcus! What would have happened if the Tectons had appeared? It’s incredible, they could come at any moment and you fall asleep …’

  Marcus apologised. And apparently that was it. But in the evening, when they were about to end the workday, William took the ladder out of the mine.

  ‘William! What are you doing?’ shouted Marcus from the bottom.

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s the best thing for everyone.’

  ‘You can’t leave me here all night! Alone and unarmed!’

  ‘Oh, no? Why not?’

  ‘Because the Tectons could appear at any moment! You said it yourself!’

  ‘Exactly,’ said William’s lanky figure. ‘I want to make sure you won’t fall asleep. If they come, let us know. But don’t you dare cry wolf.’

  ‘William! William! William!’

  But William had already gone. Marcus couldn’t believe it. William was probably with Amgam, and he was stuck at the bottom of the mine. He went towards the large hole from which the Tectons had appeared. Every day, while he worked extracting dirt from the walls, he looked at it out of the corner of his eye. Now he discovered that it was worse at night. Especially without the ladder nearby. When they returned everything would depend on whether or not William and Richard could rescue him in time. But that wasn’t worth thinking about: William had left him there because he had no intention of helping him. He put his head into the hole. Once again he felt that gust of cool air on his face. ‘It’s not air,’ Marcus told himself, ‘it’s the devil’s breath.’