The idea had been formulating in Marcus’s mind at the furthest margins, without him realising. Of the route he had travelled with William he especially remembered the Sea of Young Ladies, that immense expanse filled with stone columns. ‘Look, the pillars of the Earth,’ William had remarked.
If someone could blow up those columns the inner ceiling would collapse. The Sea of Young Ladies extended halfway between the two worlds, you couldn’t get from one to the other without passing through it. And if the Tectons weren’t discouraged by that unexpected obstacle, if they decided to excavate it stone by stone, it would take them a thousand years to get to the surface.
After their descent from the tree Marcus headed towards the clearing with Amgam. They began a march as resigned as it was determined. The jungle had never seen any living being face his destiny with so much energy and decisiveness. And his courage had better not abandon him, because the future of the world was in the hands of a short-legged, naked little gypsy. The days he had spent living up in the tree had regenerated his body to a miraculous degree. An invisible suture had closed all his wounds, which now seemed very old. The diet of rainwater, fruit and sex had slimmed him down. And it was as if that period filled with pleasure had sucked all the impurities out of his body.
The clearing was empty, exactly as they had left it. More desolate, perhaps. A languid tropical sadness floated in the air. The scattered remains made it look like a beach after a shipwreck. There was only one tent standing, but many of the pegs had loosened and the wind made the canvas tremble. The big pot where Marcus used to cook was knocked over like a defeated king in a game of chess. From inside it emerged a small anteater, hairy and tough, that ran away, shrieking indignantly, when it saw them. The dead Tectons were less than carrion. Besides that, the jungle had preferred to remain at the margins of that clearing, ignoring it. It seemed that all the trees had turned their backs on the mine.
Amgam got to work. From the remains of the Tectons’ equipment she selected carefully the most useful pieces for the journey that lay ahead. Particularly a couple of very long sailors’ haversacks. Once full they resembled sausages, which allowed them to be carried through even the narrowest corridors. Amgam made clear that they should be tied to one’s ankles, so they could be dragged behind them. Marcus also packed dynamite, a lot of dynamite, as many sticks as they could find. Then they helped each other buckle up the clasps of the Tecton armour.
But when they were just about to go down into the mine, they were stopped by an authoritative voice: ‘You see, Marcus? You see how we’re all the same?’
It was William, of course. He was wearing Tecton armour and brandishing his Winchester. It didn’t take Marcus long to reconstruct the events. William must have hidden shortly after abandoning Marcus to fight the four Tectons. He must have hidden himself in some corner, a bit further on, and realised that Marcus was returning to the surface. A Marcus that had won, that was armed and wore Tecton armour. In those conditions William must have decided not to attack him, and not to reveal himself. Returning to the lookout point where the battle had taken place, William would have gathered what provisions remained. He then followed Marcus at a safe distance, aware that there were still three Tectons alive in the camp and he was unarmed. When William finally decided to surface he found two very pleasant surprises: that Marcus had killed the Tectons and that the little packets of gold that he had buried under the tent were intact. For someone like William Craver that was incomprehensible. Why hadn’t Marcus taken the gold, the poor devil? In any case, if Marcus were alive, surely sooner or later he’d come back to the camp to look for the gold. So he waited, and now Marcus’s presence confirmed the criteria with which William judged the human soul.
Marcus quickly grasped William’s reasoning and said, ‘I’m not looking for the gold.’ But he soon gave up. ‘No, of course you can’t understand what I’m doing here. You would never understand it.’
And he did the only thing that William wasn’t expecting him to do: ignore him. He continued to pack the dynamite sticks as if William wasn’t there. William triggered the Winchester’s magazine with an abrupt noise, his way of attracting Marcus’s attention.
‘You’re the one who doesn’t understand. You don’t understand that the only life you have left is the time my finger grants you,’ he said.
In that moment Amgam said something. They couldn’t understand her, but she seemed distressed. Any other person in Amgam’s situation would have been rabid, indignant or frightened. She was just sad. No, it was more than that, it was as if Amgam’s body was the vessel that all the sadness in the world had been emptied into. She took steps towards the two men. Her sadness was like a threat. Marcus realised that William’s expression had changed. He didn’t know who to aim at and even he looked inhibited. Marcus stood up.
‘You haven’t touched her, have you?’ Marcus asked. ‘That’s what it is.’
Marcus and William were like a pair of duellists. They stood thirty feet apart. William was armed with a Winchester, Marcus with a truth revealed.
‘All those nights with her, in your tent, you couldn’t touch her,’ he said. ‘Not even you were able, you didn’t dare. And all these days, here, hidden with a rifle in your hands … Be honest, you weren’t waiting for me. You were waiting for her.’
Marcus looked at his rival as if he were a book, a book written in such tiny print that it was impossible to read.
‘You love her?’ he continued. ‘No, I don’t think so. You aren’t capable of loving anyone. And yet you wanted her to love you. That’s why you didn’t kill me like a dog. You wanted it to be the Tectons, you wanted it to be them that eliminated me, so that she wouldn’t accuse you of having killed me. But if that’s the case, William Craver, what good does that rifle do you?’ Marcus opened his arms. ‘Will she love you more, when you’ve killed me? Do you think she doesn’t know what you’re like?’
Furious, William raised his rifle, ready to beat Marcus with it. But she didn’t let him. Amgam held William by the wrists. She hung on to him with unshakable fingers and a disgusted expression. Everything happened quickly, so quickly that William didn’t even have time to protest. Amgam made a sudden gesture with both hands. Through the clearing a sound like almonds cracking resounded: it was the bones in William’s wrists, suddenly fracturing. William shrieked, more appalled than in pain. The rifle fell to the ground and he looked stupidly at his broken hands, which hung like those of a puppet. Amgam looked pensive; she hadn’t wanted to hurt him, just prevent him hurting Marcus.
A concert of insects invaded the air of the clearing. Those happy songs couldn’t have jarred more with William’s stance.
‘Now you can’t use this,’ said Marcus, putting the Winchester’s strap over his shoulder. ‘I may as well take it along with me, so you don’t hurt yourself.’
Amgam went into the mine and Marcus followed her. With his body still visible above the ladder, he said farewell with the following words:
‘You are a unique creature, William Craver. They should put you in some museum. Your existence proves the extent of inhumanity people can reach if they put their mind to it. That’s why saving the world is worth it. Because the rest of the human race could have been like you, but they chose not to be.’
Marcus didn’t want to tell me much about that second expedition to the depths of the Earth. The first days they advanced very quickly. Unlike before, Marcus wasn’t exhausted and beaten and in pain, and Amgam was a master at moving underground. I said that Marcus didn’t tell me much about that trip, but there was one scene that stayed etched in my mind.
They tumbled out into that small air bubble that was shaped like a stone intestine and which marked an obligatory stop in the route towards the underworld. What moved me was the image of Amgam and Marcus holding each other in that inhospitable space, without making a sound, together for the penultimate time. The two of them and nothing more, surrounded by all the stones in the world and the green half-light of a wo
rm lantern. They were aware that soon they would have to say goodbye forever. Without them having to say so, they sensed it, knowing that once they had lit the fuse each of them would venture towards their own world. And, even still, they had made up their minds to save millions and millions of people they had never met in exchange for nothing. I couldn’t imagine two more solitary lovers. All they had in that world was the will to save it and a handful of phosphorescent worms.
After some days walking they reached the Sea of Young Ladies. Soon everything was set. The dynamite was in place, carefully attached to the hourglass columns. Marcus slowed the preparations, aware that when the work was finished it would be time to say farewell. Amgam was the one who put the box of matches in his hands: he might never have made up his mind to do it. They had to go in opposite directions. Marcus came from one world and Amgam from another. Marcus could never live in hers, and it was impossible to imagine that she could have a remotely normal life in England. She’d be lucky if she ended up in a zoo. After meeting the Craver brothers, she knew that. What other options did they have? Live in the jungle like primordial man? No. With Pepe dead, without anyone to intercede on their behalf with the African population, Marcus didn’t dare to risk Amgam’s life. One can make love anywhere, even in a tree. But only monkeys live up in the trees.
Marcus lowered his head, shook those wooden matches that were as long as fingers and only said, ‘Go, go, go.’ He couldn’t look her in the face. She didn’t go. Marcus realised that Amgam was crying. A tear fell from each of her eyes, just one. A dense liquid turned slightly green by the lantern. The two tears slid down those long cheeks slowly. Amgam wanted to cut the agony short. She kissed her lover’s lips and forehead, and when he moved to kiss her back he could only kiss the air. Amgam was already far away. She had fled into the darkness, back to the Tecton world. On the ground were the two tears, which had turned into diamonds the size of footballs. Marcus placed them in one of his deep pockets.
He waited another forty-eight hours before lighting the fuse. He had no idea of the magnitude of the destruction that he was about to cause, and he wanted to make sure that she had enough time to get far away.
At this point we could reflect on the philosophical meaning of that fuse. Lighting it meant separating two worlds forevermore, the two worlds that shared intelligent life on planet Earth. Did Marcus and Amgam do the right thing by blowing up the only bridge that connected them? I only can offer one response: that we will never know to what extent it was the right decision, but that it was unquestionable that they were the two beings best suited to make it, because no one knew the two worlds as well as they did and, above all, no one stood to lose as much as they did.
So two days later Marcus lit the long fuse and ran in the opposite direction of the flame. A few agonising seconds passed. Marcus ran, and behind him he soon heard some pop, pop, pops, more languid than violent. Every pop was a column blowing up. The explosions echoed with a muffled sound, as if the dynamite didn’t have the courage to detonate in such a spectral place. How many explosions had he heard? One hundred? Two hundred? Marcus ran and ran until he had to stop, gasping for breath.
After climbing through the canyon’s passageway for an hour or two, he sat down, his tunic soaked with sweat. As light as it was, the stone armour was weighing him down. He could go no further.
He raised the lantern above his head, trusting that the elevation he had gained would allow him to see the destruction down below, in the Sea of Young Ladies. But what he saw froze his blood.
Yes, there was a vast area where many stone columns had been destroyed. He could tell by the immense carpet of red sparks and scorched rocks that were being consumed like coal. But it didn’t look like the dynamite had achieved its goal: destroying the base so that the ceiling would collapse. If big boulders had fallen from that far up he would have heard them.
Marcus was devastated. He continued along the passageway whining like a puppy and fiercely biting his fist. According to William it was porous terrain, and he had referred to the columns as ‘the pillars of the Earth’. But he was wrong. The columns must have been gigantic stalactites and stalagmites whose ends touched. They weren’t the supports of that inner ceiling, just a simple product of the depths.
Had it all been a waste of time? The Marcus that had first set foot in the Congo had nothing in common with the one that had tried to save humanity. But what good had it done the world to save Marcus if the world didn’t let Marcus save mankind?
He continued going up, listlessly. He lost all sense of time. Maybe he was already near the entrance to the cave. Maybe not. He didn’t care. He lay down with the green lantern by his side, curled up like a dog and fell asleep. He dreamt that it was raining. In that dream Marcus was sleeping in some corner of the jungle until a clap of thunder woke him up. First it was a soft clap and then one a bit harder. But he wasn’t in the jungle, he was still in one of the steps of the passageway. He heard another thunderclap, and he asked himself, ‘Am I still dreaming?’
He was awake. And it wasn’t exactly a thunderclap. It was a noise like paper being torn. A sheet of paper as large as the sky. He realised that up above, far above, the ceiling was cracking. He could hear stones crashing, all the stones in the world.
Run, Marcus Garvey, run! And, indeed, he now ran for his life. But he ran laughing, because only a little while earlier his life had been useless, and now even his death could not cancel out his victory.
It began to rain sand and rocks. At first they were just small rocks. Soon he was bombarded by increasingly large meteorites. Most of them he couldn’t see. He could only hear them, falling very close to him, ringing against the ground and exploding like shrapnel. Some fell so close that his lantern illuminated them, as if they were green shooting stars.
The earth was crashing down onto his head. If he didn’t manage to get into the cave ahead he would be crushed. He finally slid through the narrow opening that he and Amgam had left between the millstone and the wall of the cave.
He got there just in time, because immediately afterwards the world began to shake. Some people have been in the eye of a hurricane. Marcus could claim the bizarre honour of having been beneath an earthquake. Imagine a man that raises a box of matches to his ear and shakes it to see if any are left inside: Marcus was the match. As everything was shaking and jerking, deafened by a thousand drums beating at once, he was still heaving the millstone back into place. It had to fit perfectly into the cave’s entrance. It was the only way he could block the tunnel from that solid flood. But he couldn’t do it. The stone was too heavy. Amgam’s more muscular arms had had no problem rolling it, but, by himself, he couldn’t make it budge.
An ocean of grey ash and pulverised rock, a dense, dark wave, was coming up the passageway with terrifying speed. He had to move the stone or he would die. It was that simple.
And that puny, little, short-legged man did it. He fell back, exhausted. His arms felt as if they had been stretched on some medieval torture rack. Behind the stone floodgate he could hear the roar of the storm. He dipped his hand into a pocket and pulled out the two crystallised tears. He laughed. It was the most tortuous laugh in the world. He wasn’t thinking about having saved mankind, he was only thinking about her. He was the happiest man in the world for having had her. And he was the unhappiest man in two worlds for having lost her.
We could say that Marcus Garvey’s adventure in the Congo ended right there and that what happened after was just one long stroll leading him directly to prison.
Once he got to the surface he equipped himself as well as he could, with European clothing, his stableboy’s hat and a Tecton haversack, and he set off through the jungle. In the end, the path that he took through the vegetation wasn’t really that different from the underground tunnel. It rarely forked, so it was hard to get lost. He reached the clearing dominated by that large tree, the same one he had climbed up alone to look out over the vastness of the Congo.
William was there.
He was hanging upside down from one of the lowest branches. The natives had left him that way to prolong his agony, with his head a few feet above the ground. William must have spent the last hours of his life twisting like a worm to protect himself from the scavengers’ leaps. Marcus approached the naked body. The chest, arms and head were gnawed. Marcus wondered what kind of creatures had done that. It looked like they hadn’t been large enough, or strong enough, to pull the body off the rope since they had only devoured the parts in their reach. Through the fleshless ribcage, he could see the other side as if he were looking through a window. From the elbows down, the arms had no skin or muscles, just bones. Both hands were missing. The savages had removed the upper part of his skull as if it were the lid on a small cooking pan. Marcus knelt to have a look. Animals had polished off the brain, every last morsel, but had left the shell. Marcus didn’t have it in him to take the body down, and he left silently.
Pandora in the Congo Page 28
