by W. T. Tyler
N’Sika interrupted him angrily, motioning him back in his chair, and pointed to Reddish. “Tell him,” he commanded. “Tell him in English.” He seized the front of his damp shirt with one hand, and with the other lifted the ambassador’s helpless, shrinking arm from the chair rest, dangling it aloft by the sleeve.
Reddish translated as N’Sika spoke:
“In this uniform—this shirt, there is a man. Just one man. Now, if you lie or make a false report to your foreign ministry, and someone discovers it is a false report … a lie … they won’t take you out and shoot you because you failed, will they?… They won’t hang you, will they?… No, of course not!… But if I fail, they will shoot me … They will shoot me or hang me or whatever!… So I must be careful not to fail—and I must be careful to teach my enemies what justice is … not abstract justice or diplomatic justice, the kind you deal with in telling me you are troubled by these executions, but not so troubled that your tears or your grief will kill you tomorrow if someone else dies! But if I can’t teach my enemies what abstract or diplomatic justice is, send them to Brussels or Paris or America to the universities to learn as you’ve learned, I can show them what my justice is.”
N’Sika released his shirt and dropped the ambassador’s sleeve, standing now in front of his chair. He took from his pocket the handwritten note he’d studied at the beginning of the meeting, the remarks prepared for him by his advisers.
“And do you know where my justice is? Not in the universities or the foreign ministries! Do you know? Not here in this room with us, in your words or in my words, no! Who sent you these words? The same men who gave me these words?”
He ripped up the paper contemptuously and threw it across the table, then flung his arm out behind him, pointing down the hillside:
“My justice is down there, against the stone wall of that prison on the hillside. Would you like to see it? To visit it for yourself? I’ll take you, yes, because I have nothing to hide. I mustn’t hide it—never! My justice is against the stone wall of that prison and I want everyone to know what it smells and feels like! It smells and feels like death, because that is what it is—for me, for my council, for all of us! Not paper or parchment. It smells and feels like death, and if you don’t know its smell, then it will never find you, but if you do, it will—wherever you’re hiding, in whatever commune or village! Because as surely as I’m talking to you this way, if there are those out there in the darkness who have no reason to fear me, to smell and know my justice, then as surely as we sit here this minute, those men will be the ones who one day will put me against the wall and shoot me!
“But you don’t understand that, do you? No. How can you. When they shoot you, they’ll only shoot the name your father gave you, the idea of your name, whether it is good or bad. When they hang you, they’ll only hang the uniform away someplace in a dusty closet that doesn’t smell of death, but of ink, parchment, papers, and everything else diplomats worry about. But you will keep your pension, your villa, your children, and your wife. But when they shoot me, it will all be butchered together, everything—collar, sash, medals, bones, and meat, like mwamba, and afterward it will all be thrown in a ditch like the carcasses of the dogs the street sweepers find each morning in the capital, and in that ditch I’ll smell of death too, not pensions, or ink, or dusty closets where foreign ministries hang the sashes and medals of diplomats who fail. So that is the difference and that is why I shot those men, and if you still don’t understand, we will go down to the prison and see for ourselves, just the two of us, you and I, no one else.”
It was N’Sika speaking, not the man fabricated by his policy and protocol advisers, but the man Reddish had heard speak at Martyr’s Square, the man behind the coup d’etat and everything that had followed. Bondurant and Lowenthal sat stricken, like Majors Fumbe and Lutete, eyes never leaving N’Sika’s face. The darkness pressed in on all sides from beyond the windows; the sounds of cartridge belts and rifles, metal on metal; the low, sibilant voices in the garden; the clatter of the dry raffia palms.
Reddish knew that he had dared all, this man. Whatever psychological taboos had been inflicted by decades of foreign rule, he had violated. Whatever quietism was implicit in his own tribal tradition, he had violated too. He had devastated the social fabric, smashed the polity that held each in place, and torn himself from the peaceful anonymity of a corrupt social order to declare himself its master. Now he had described the consequences. He had triumphed, but the agony of will remained. The nation was still an abstraction; there was no historical, legal, or social authority to which he or his majors might appeal if they failed, just the same barbarism that had awaited the old President. Even as village boys they’d known that one day they would die, but their triumph had made the extinction more absolute, the knowledge more dreadful, and the moment itself more terrifying.
He wondered, as they filed out silently, how well Bondurant had understood that.
Becker was waiting in the ambassador’s study with Carol Browning as they entered somberly. Becker looked from the ambassador’s ashen face to Lowenthal, who was even paler, and finally to Reddish. Bondurant hadn’t uttered a word during the long drive down from the para camp.
“Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln,” he inquired of Lowenthal, “how was the play?”
“Appalling,” Lowenthal whispered, sinking down in an armchair.
Bondurant ignored them both and moved heavily to the bar cart. Becker followed him with his eyes, puzzled, and looked back at Lowenthal.
“Brutal and primitive. I trust I shall never again have to witness an episode like that. Fear so thick you could cut it with a knife.”
“What did he say, this Colonel N’Sika?”
Encouraged by Bondurant’s silence, Lowenthal sat up, like a stand-in thrust center stage. Carol Browning still waited with her stenographer’s pad in front of the couch. The ambassador noisily filled his glass from the ice bucket. Watching this drawing-room tableau, Reddish, for the first time that night, was suddenly depressed.
“About the executions?” Lowenthal continued. “He told us in a wholly bizarre, improvisatory way that because of circumstances over which he had little control, moot in any case, I must say, that these draconian measures must continue—”
“Fix yourself a drink, Simon,” Bondurant interrupted, his back to them.
“Sorry?”
“Fix yourself a drink and sit down. That’s not what he said at all.”
Bondurant crossed the room deliberately, drink held to his chest carefully, like a vicar moving to the congregation, chalice in hand, and sank down in his favorite armchair. The whiskey was very strong, the glass filled to the very brim. “Do you have your pad, Miss Browning?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. What did N’Sika say? What did he say indeed.” He sipped from the glass and put his head back, gazing off into the middle distance. “He said what Napoleon said when he explained to Metternich at Dresden in 1813 why he couldn’t surrender.” He took another swallow, his eyes brightening. “He said quite simply that others’ fear was his strength, that he was an orphan of history, which is quite correct, that kings might surrender a dozen times, yet go back to their thrones as royalty still, like diplomats with their pensions or their retirement cottages at Bar Harbor, but not men like him, which is also correct. He could surrender only once, he said, and when he did, he would be killed for it, dead in that absolute way neither bureaucrats nor diplomatic royalty can ever understand.” He turned his gaze to Lowenthal. “How primitive is that?”
“That puts a fine point to it,” Lowenthal said.
“The point was perfectly made.”
“He quoted Napoleon?” Becker asked, astonished.
“I quoted Napoleon, just this minute, but it’s not the Schönbrunn Palace atmosphere I’m trying to evoke, Dresden either,” Bondurant replied, his irritation muted. He looked back at Lowenthal. “You frighten me sometimes, Simon, more than N’Sika.” He looked at Reddish. “W
hat do you think?”
“The point was clear.”
“Good. I don’t believe he would have managed it in French, do you?”
“Probably not.”
“I thought not. A very impressive man, this N’Sika. Keen, tough, and very intelligent. And a way of projecting himself too—a bit sly, perhaps, like an actor, but that’s a quality such men always have. Molotov had it, so did Spaak and Adenauer. So now we know who the revolution belongs to, don’t we?”
The telegram to Washington reporting the talk went through two drafts. There may have been an incipient paranoia in the efforts of Becker and Lowenthal to paint the most flattering portrait, that of a beleaguered African nationalist beseeching American support, detectable even in their bureaucratic jargon, which didn’t deal with the subconscious. Tired of their tinkering, Bondurant rejected their rewrite and adopted his original draft.
Chapter Thirteen
The midday sun splintered on the azure lozenge of the Houlet swimming pool and the leaves of the lime and avocado trees nearby. Reddish followed the white-jacketed Bakongo houseboy out the french doors and across the shaded courtyard to the pool. Gabrielle lay on a zebra-striped lounge chair, her eyes hidden by sunglasses. Yellow and green finches scolded and thrashed in the shrubbery.
She sat up slowly, surprised. “I was in the neighborhood,” he began, almost apologetically. “I thought I’d see if you were still here.”
She quickly pulled a terrycloth beach robe over her bikini.
“That was very kind of you. Please, do sit down.”
“I can’t stay very long.” She’d been swimming and her hair was still damp. “It’s my lunch hour.”
“But you’ll have something to drink, won’t you?” Masked by the sunglasses, her face seemed different to him. She may have been conscious of it. She removed the glasses as she called the houseboy back. Her face was the same as he remembered from the other night, and he sat down. On the metal table were a book and a few travel brochures.
“Planning your next trip?”
“Not really. Houlet suspects I’m not anxious to return to Paris. He brought me those. He thinks a trip to Capetown or Durban might be interesting. I’m told the Capetown beaches are lovely. Have you been to South Africa on holiday? I’m told many diplomats go.”
“No, I’ve never had time for it.”
“It’s not the Africa I wanted to see.”
“I guess not.” They sat in silence for a minute. She didn’t seem to know what to say. “I’m sorry about what happened the other night,” he offered.
“Yes.” She nodded, still looking at the travel brochures. “I’m sorry too.”
The houseboy brought Reddish a gin and tonic.
“It is very depressing sometimes,” she began after he’d gone. “I was very upset. I made up my mind to leave as soon as possible. It’s only a matter of deciding where to go.” She stood up. “Do you mind if I change into something comfortable. I’ll only be a minute.”
She left him alone on the terrace holding the drink on his knee. The pool surface was unbroken, reflecting the drifting cumulus overhead. In the silence his gesture seemed wasted, inconsequential, less important than a wet bathing suit or the prospect of the white sand beaches of the Atlantic. He pulled Masakita’s letter from his pocket, received that morning by Nyembo at the embassy, delivered by an anonymous messenger. Now, in light of the events of the past week, it seemed a letter from a stranger. He found the sentences that most troubled him:
The interior is peaceful. I’ve decided not to seek exile, whatever happens, but to search for a permanent solution to this problem between the government and me. But I will need the help of those powerful enough to convince the N’Sika government to agree. The Americans would benefit from such an accommodation, as would the entire country. Should you wish to contact me, you have simply to come to Benongo.
“I’m glad you came,” Gabrielle said as she returned wearing a denim skirt and cotton blouse. “After the other night, I wouldn’t have expected it.”
“We didn’t get the chance to talk,” he answered, folding away the letter. He watched her sit down again. “I was wondering which you were, the romantic or the writer.”
She gave a small laugh. “The writer, I suppose, the journalist,” she added in despair, “but a failed one. A failed romantic as well.”
“Is that why you’re here?”
“It is difficult to explain.”
“Like Stendhal?”
“Yes, like that story. I would have explained the other night, but then the Houlets returned and everything was impossibly mixed up.”
“I thought maybe you wanted some help on planning a trip someplace.”
“Yes, that too.” She turned her head away for a minute, looking across the garden, as if trying to find a way to begin. He waited silently. “I haven’t been completely truthful with you, either about why I came here or why Houlet wants me to leave. I went to Chad to do a story on the French military offensive against the rebels in the Tibesti, France’s African war.” She turned to him.
Her voice was different, even her eyes. He didn’t know how to answer her so he said nothing.
“I’ve learned since I came here,” she continued, “not to be too direct, at least among diplomats, like Houlet, who concede to you only what they concede to their wives, their secretaries, or their mistresses. If they give you only that advantage, that of being a woman, it’s best to use it, and not to be too ambitious with your own ideas.”
“Fair enough,” Reddish said. “I think I know the problem. What happened in Chad?”
She’d gone to Chad with a photographer and an anthropologist she’d met at the African studies center in Paris; the latter had worked among the nomads of southern Algeria and Libya and spoke Arabic. The French Ambassador at Fort Lamy was suspicious, and the French military commander denied them permission to travel to the north in the Tibesti region, where the unpublicized French military action was under way. They were restricted to Fort Lamy.
“There was no water at the hotel, no electricity some nights. It was beastly hot. My two companions began to lose their appetites for the trip. The advance we’d gotten hadn’t fully covered our expenses, and I made up the difference. I had a furious argument with the French Ambassador one night, and then with them. They were both worried about keeping on the best of terms with the French authorities. The anthropologist had been doing some work among the remote villagers of Tunisia, funded in part by the French government. The photographer was simply a coward. They proposed doing an article on the fishermen of Lake Chad instead, the African fisherman, and I refused. At the French Embassy the next day, the two made their amends with the authorities and prepared for the Lake Chad excursion. I refused and my visa was revoked by the Chadians, who put me on the next plane. To Entebbe, as it turned out. For three days, nothing but rain. It was a complete disaster, all of it.”
“So you came here.”
“I thought Houlet could help me with the Quai and have my visa reissued, but he wouldn’t even try. I’d researched the Chad background for five months and was totally unprepared for anything else. So I was bitter about that. The political situation here bored me—I’m sorry to say that, knowing how you feel about this country—but it did. It was so predictable, so corrupt, so unoriginal. But then the coup came. The more I saw and heard, the less I understood. The situation in Malunga seemed to me quite different from what Houlet and others were claiming, but I didn’t fully understand why. I tried to do a little investigation of my own, but without success. I knew so little, no one was prepared to help, the foreign ministry is in chaos, like the university—”
“How did Houlet react to that?”
“I didn’t tell him, but he probably suspected. Why should I take Houlet or Armand seriously? Then that night at dinner I quite lost my temper. I told them what I’d seen, how brutal it was, how totally absurd the idea that a radio station was operating out of the party compound, or that t
he blacks in Malunga were preparing to smash the government—”
She stopped, her bitterness gone suddenly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say all of this.”
“No, I think I understand.”
“Do you?” She turned toward the sunlit garden again, leaning back in the deck chair. “You’re quite lucky,” she continued after a minute. “You have a profession you can claim, something that claims you. That’s important not to forget. You don’t have to justify yourself every minute, every hour, every day.”
“Why should you feel that?”
“But how else can I feel? Ten years doing nothing. What resources do I have except my own? You see?” she said after he didn’t answer. “Why should you understand? You’ve never had to recover your life from someone or something, to take it back from nothing, to begin again.”
“So that makes you ambitious.”
“No, not ambitious. Just to know yourself again, is that ambition?” She gave a dry, bitter laugh. “You don’t understand at all, do you?”
“Maybe not. What does your former husband do?”
“He’s a lawyer. Yes, a very successful lawyer. Too successful, I suppose. In his success he didn’t understand why his brilliance shouldn’t suffice for everyone else. He had no interest in family talent not his own. He didn’t understand what was happening to him. After so much success, his career had become a substitute for life, his cleverness a substitute for thought. He was bored with what he had become, and he met a young woman who made him feel he could live again. But it wasn’t his fault, not completely. I helped too. It’s a very simple formula and that’s why it happens. But you’re divorced too. Was that the price of your success or did others pay it?”
