Pandora in the Congo

by Albert Sanchez Pinol

  This time I wasn’t going there as Norton’s legal assistant. So, I didn’t have access to the room we had always used. I would probably have to settle for seeing him in one of those small rooms where the prisoner and the visitor are separated by very thick bars. Once I was in the waiting room I realised that Long Back wasn’t there. I saw one of the officials that was usually in charge of taking Marcus from his cell to the room where we did our session, and I asked him without thinking, ‘Sergeant Long Back isn’t here today?’

  ‘Long Back?’ he smiled. ‘How did you know that we all call him that?’

  ‘I didn’t know. It’s a coincidence. I gave him that nickname too,’ I explained. ‘In fact, he never bothered to tell me his name.’

  The official laughed.

  ‘Well, my name is John,’ he said, ‘so you don’t need to make one up for me.’

  John seemed much more human. I invited him to have a smoke, and he invited me, and I didn’t even have to ask him for anything.

  ‘On holidays, like today, there are a lot more visitors and Long Back usually “directs traffic” as he likes to say,’ explained John.

  I already knew that. I had always come in through the entrance for legal staff, but the day that Norton and I rescinded the contract that bound us I had had to give him back my pass. I had just entered through the same door I always used, and I shouldn’t have been there. I should have waited in the queue with the other visitors, and John knew it.

  ‘You don’t work for Garvey’s barrister anymore, do you?’ he said to me questioningly; but then, waving one hand disdainfully, ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter.’

  He stepped on his cigarette, looked from side to side with his hands in his pockets, and he said, ‘Do you want me to bring Garvey to the room you always use? You’ll be more comfortable.’

  And he did. He took the chains off Marcus’s wrists (but not off his ankles) and told us that he’d return when our time was up. We didn’t have to be seated and we could even smoke. We had never had such freedom. But everything began badly. When he saw me, instead of being glad, Marcus just let out an ‘Oh, it’s you!’ He smoked, expelling the tobacco from his lungs aggressively, as if he and the cigarette were personal enemies. Even with his ankles shackled, he shuffled incessantly from one side of the room to the other, with an unhealthy restlessness that reminded me of an animal that had just been locked up in a zoo. It was obvious that he wasn’t interested in me. I had come on a bad day. But could there be good days, in a prison? For me it was a very uncomfortable situation. I had gone there to distract him a bit, and instead it seemed that my presence irritated him. But in the end, I couldn’t recriminate an innocent man, whose life was hanging by a thread, for being in a bad mood.

  I showed him the book. That stopped his pacing for a few moments. He weighed it in his hands. His lips, always so attractive, even cracked a smile. But all of a sudden he raised his head, his green eyes looked at me with almost a spark of hate, and he said curtly, ‘What am I supposed to do?’

  I couldn’t answer him, I wasn’t Norton. He himself mentioned the name. He put the book down, as it interested him less than the cigarette, and he shouted, ‘What is Norton doing? Can you tell me that?’

  I thought the only way to calm him down was to keep my composure and get him to reason it out. If I offered him convincing arguments it would force him to think of a way to answer me, and that would moderate his tone. I was scared that the guards might come and I wanted to avoid their intervention.

  ‘Norton is working hard on the case,’ I began, ‘but you know it isn’t an easy one. Remember, that there’s a sworn declaration by none other than a British consul that condemns you. I don’t think that will be easy testimony to refute.’

  ‘Casement? Consul Casement?’ he said, knitting his brows.

  ‘Exactly. He and the page full of signatures he gathered from the British colony in Leopoldville. The profile that emerges isn’t quite, how shall I put it, bathed in a favourable light.’

  I was only managing to get him more worked up.

  ‘Casement?’ he repeated, raising his arms to the heavens. ‘For the love of God, Casement is a sodomite! Ask any white person that has lived in Africa and they’ll tell you! While I was in the Congo he was after me. Every day and every night that I was in Leopoldville I was subject to his attentions! Casement is bitter. He couldn’t get what he wanted, his vile propositions, and he took his revenge.’

  ‘So why didn’t you turn yourself into the British authorities after what happened?’

  ‘Why do you think? That the boat I boarded as a cook had any intention of changing its route just to take me to London? They were on a commercial route, and it took a whole year to touch English soil.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ I insisted, ‘even though it was late, once you were in England why didn’t you turn yourself in to the authorities?’

  Marcus had never opened his eyes so wide. He lowered his voice, which up until that point had been an angry roar, and he said to me, ‘How can you be such a complete fool, Thomson?’

  I sat in my chair, defeated. I looked at the wall, avoiding his gaze. Marcus was right. It had taken me four years to write his story. How could I expect a man like him, without any credentials, without any friends, without a past and without a future, to walk into a London police station and boldly explain the whole story to them? I said, still without looking at him, ‘There’s still your statement. You confessed in writing to having killed William and Richard Craver. I’ve seen a copy of the confession in Norton’s file with my own eyes.’

  I shouldn’t have said anything. It was a grave mistake. Marcus was now beside himself.

  ‘Confess that I killed William and Richard?’ he bellowed. ‘Of course, I confessed to it! What do you think the police do with people like me? To get them to stop beating me, I would have confessed to killing Archduke Ferdinand of Austria!’

  The only thing I could do was ask him to lower his voice. It was useless. Now he was shouting and jerking around like a madman.

  ‘I suppose Norton must be very comfortable, in his office! He doesn’t know how cold it can be in a cell.’ He included me in his reproaches. ‘And neither do you. No one can imagine how cold it is in a cell! It’s a cold that lives in your bones like worms in wood. And this is happening to me, to me, who’s lived in the Congo! The Congo! Why won’t they let me go back there? I want to go back to the Congo!’

  I heard the noise of gates opening, further down the hall, and I begged, ‘Quiet down, please.’

  But he was no longer listening to me. He was moving in circles like a spinning top and looking up at the ceiling.

  ‘I’ve been in the Congo. The Congo! And now, while I wait for them to hang me, I sew sacks. That’s all they let me do. Sew sacks in a prison workshop!’

  John came to tell us something, maybe to ask me for another cigarette, because our time still wasn’t up. But Marcus practically threw himself on him. He grabbed the bars and shouted, ‘Sacks! Sacks! Sacks! Sacks!’

  He looked insane. He was possibly insane. John ran off.

  ‘Do you know what he’s doing?’ I shouted. ‘He’s going for backup! Calm down!’

  Marcus’s only response was to try to rip one of the legs off the table to use it as a club. He didn’t have enough time. Long Back and a couple of guards showed up.

  ‘Mr Thomson, what are you doing here?’ said Long Back in a reproachful tone, more of a moral reproach than a legal one. ‘You know this institution well enough, and you know that you’re no longer authorised to access the inmates through this wing. You must enter as a normal visitor!’

  Marcus shouted incessantly, wildly, ‘I’ve been in the Congo, the Congo!’ and continued to attack the table leg.

  Long Back warned him three times, as the penal regulations stipulated. Then he immediately opened the door, the two other guards came in, and they beat Marcus with their cold rubber truncheons.

  I never would have thought that force applied so bru
tally could, at the same time, be so strategic. Their truncheons hit his neck, kidneys and testicles, in that order, and started again. Marcus, on the ground, defended himself like a cat, scratching and biting at their ankles. I would almost have preferred to suffer that violence than to watch it.

  I left before they finished. I walked out of the cell, turned two corners in the hall and I could still hear Marcus’s shouts. ‘I want to go back to the Congo, I want to go back to the Congo!’ Somewhere I found a tap. I wet my face with the motions of a fly rubbing its head. Then, a bit calmer, I had an idea: it was very likely that at that moment, Marcus’s friend that Norton had told me about was in the queue waiting to visit him. I knew that former African colonists were extraordinarily loyal to each other, to an extreme degree that the rest of the civilised world had a hard time comprehending. Since it was a holiday I wouldn’t have been surprised at all to find he had come out to the prison. And completely sure that, whoever he was, he would appreciate someone letting him know what had just happened. So I went to the visitors’ wing and I looked at the long queue of men and women. Two pairs of officials attended to them, filling out documents and checking them over before taking them inside. Four officials were not sufficient to take care of such a large crowd and the queue advanced extremely slowly.

  Amongst the people in line there was an incredibly tall woman. She was very thin and must have been a good six feet tall. She was dressed in severe mourning attire, black from head to toe. Black skirts to her ankles, black calf-length boots, black hat and, sewn onto the hat, a very fine net veil, also black, which covered her face. At first I took very little notice of the woman. I was searching for someone that looked like a veteran Africanist, with a face marked by the pleasures and hardships of the tropics. But I ended up focusing on that tall, thin woman.

  She must have been a special person, with her femininity hidden under so many layers of black clothing. And she seemed so downcast, she was so fixated on the queue, on moving even a step forward, that her entire world was reduced to the back of the person in front of her. She was like one of the spectres that live in Greek hells, for whom time and space don’t exist. Seeing her filled me with depressing thoughts. In order to see her beloved she had to immerse herself in that dismal prison world. And, on top of it all, she was forced to suffer the added torture of a slow queue. As I headed towards the exit I shook my head sadly, saying to myself: here is a woman that is the complete antithesis of Amgam. I thought that then I stopped as if I had come up against a wall of air.

  Could there be many women that were six feet tall, in London, in England, in the world? Who was that woman coming to visit? My eyes searched for her hands. She wore gloves, but they were of a strange design, like silk mittens, so I couldn’t count her fingers.

  Had Marcus changed parts of his story to protect Amgam? All of a sudden I opened my eyes to the truth: two lovers like Marcus and Amgam would never have separated. Ever. I said to myself, ‘If it had been you that day at the Sea of Young Ladies, with the dynamite fuse in your hands, would you have let her go?’

  I didn’t even need to answer. The question wasn’t what Marcus would have done. The question was that she, Amgam, would never have renounced love for something so trivial as saving the world. When she had to choose between the Tecton world and the human one, she had to have opted for love, wherever it might take her.

  I felt my forehead to make sure I wasn’t feverish. How could I have been so stupid? Marcus had tried to trick me about small details regarding Pepe, just to save his African friend’s good name. What wouldn’t he have said, or kept quiet, in order to safeguard Amgam?

  I remember myself there, rooted to the spot, my eyes fixed on that woman. I couldn’t move. It was as if my shoes had grown roots. While I stared at her without her realising, inside my head I constructed the entire story of Marcus and Amgam, the real story, at least that part that Marcus had hidden from me to protect his lover. I recreated it in a moment, like a spider web that’s woven at lightning speed.

  I saw Amgam taking the initiative. I saw her convincing Marcus to return to London, her beloved’s home. I saw her superior intelligence being applied to understanding a new, unknown world. And to surviving in it. I saw her in front a mirror, learning the art of making herself up in order to hide her pale features. I saw her camouflaged in Victorian clothing, in the fashion of a period that actively constrained women’s freedom, but which she used to her advantage. And then? Marcus arrested, her bewildered. Why? Why would men arrest the man that had saved humanity from the most destructive race in the universe?

  I was ashamed to belong to the human race. Amgam had left everything to come to our world. She chose to live among us, an ‘us’ that Marcus embodied. And what was the first thing we did? Kidnap her lover, imprison him behind stone walls. Walls built with stones thicker and more indestructible than all those that separated the human world from the Tecton world, because between humans and Tectons there were only stones. But now, there were imperial laws that came between her and him.

  I was struck by a cold sweat. Finding myself face to face with Amgam was what I had most wanted in the world. It was also the last thing that I had ever thought would happen. The place couldn’t be more miserable. No one saw her. The visitors in the queue only cared about moving an inch or two forward. And the prison officials, with the intelligence of trained fleas, weren’t prepared for Tecton women, just for metal files.

  I approached her, determined to lift up her veil. But when the tips of my fingers were six inches from her face I stopped. What if I were wrong? What if she was just a very tall woman? In fact, what if I were right? That was an even more horrific possibility. If it was her, and I uncovered her in public, the consequences would be fatal.

  She was so absorbed in the queue that it took her a few seconds to notice my fingers, so close to her veil. Finally she realised my intentions and she let out a startled shriek with a very masculine voice. I was more frightened than she was. She jumped back and fled. I chased after her, but before I had even left of the building I heard an authoritative voice.

  ‘Mr Thomson! Do you mind telling me what you’re doing?’

  I tried to ignore him, but Long Back then bellowed a categorical ‘Halt!’ I couldn’t disobey.

  ‘I have always had a very good impression of you, Mr Thomson,’ he said. ‘Why are you trying so hard to change it? Do you know that you have committed a serious offence? Two offences? First, seeing a prison through a restricted channel, and then, harassing a visitor.’

  Giving in seemed to be the best tactic, so I said, ‘I’m a bit confused. Please accept my apologies.’ And then immediately after, ‘Can I go now?’

  Long Back became more lenient. ‘Mr Norton told me that you were in the trenches. You fought for our country and I respect that.’

  I was like a child that can’t hold his pee for even a second more. ‘Yes, it’s true. Artillery. Can I go now?’

  Long Back, on the other hand, was talking while looking over my head and all around, as if I were the last thing in the world that interested him.

  ‘Artillery is a great weapon. I suppose, as well, that it’s the least risky of them all. Because of the distance from the enemy that it entails, I mean. Well, don’t take that as a criticism. Did you come back wounded, in any case?’

  ‘Oh, yes. My lungs are a bit less elastic, according to the doctors. But I consider myself very lucky.’

  He detained me a little longer. He switched from ignoring me to scrutinising me with his characteristic gaze, like a lighthouse on full beam. Long Back looked at every human being as if he knew something bad about them. Then he gave me two affectionate taps on the chest with his truncheon.

  ‘Just this once, we’ll keep quiet about what we’ve seen. But don’t push your luck.’ He steered me to the exit with his rubber truncheon, while saying, ‘On your way, Mr Thomson.’

  When I got out it was already too late. On the street there was only the same old pavement, bla
ck and damp, with empty corners.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  ALL OF A SUDDEN, my life did a double somersault. On one hand, the presence of Amgam. On the other, the book’s success. The newspapers were talking about it, and the reviews were good. Now, with over a half century of distance, it is easy to understand the book’s appeal. We were in the fourth year of war. Everyone wanted a change of climate. And Rufus Garvey, the character of Marcus Garvey, was ideal for asserting a different type of hero. People were sick of the war, which was becoming as absurd as it was interminable. Marcus’s cause, on the other hand, was pure and simple. The Great War was a kind of worldwide civil war. But Marcus’s odyssey reconciled humanity with itself.

  The world seemed to be falling down around me. I was proud of being the writer that had given shape to the story. But, at the same time, I wasn’t recognised as such and never would be. Can you imagine a more tragic situation for an author? And the book had even made it to the offices of the Times of Britain. By the hand, to be specific, of the ineffable Mr Hardlington.

  One day he arrived and shouted with that ever so grating voice of his, like an asthmatic parrot, ‘You should read this, Mr Thomson!’

  He surprised me by dropping my book on the desk from a great height, as if it were a brick.

  ‘A structure solid as steel and a style light as a feather.’ Then he triumphantly announced, ‘Goodbye romanticism! Goodbye social realism! This is real modern prose, Mr Thomson!’

  I wish someone had taken a photograph right then. Of me and Hardlington. Especially Hardlington. He was enthused.

  ‘I don’t think you can appreciate this book’s greatness, because you are a mere flea when it comes to literature. But try, Mr Thomson, at least try,’ he said in a falsely paternal voice. ‘You will never be able to thank me enough for lending you this literary gem.’

  He sat down, paused and began with his usual mocking tone, ‘By the way, how’s the Western front today? Are our troops holding up? Or have we already lost Paris?’