Christmas Trees & Monkeys

by Keohane, Dan

  In one hand, Mabeli carried the small spear he’d made with Akujay’s help, when his father was healthy and could sit upright. In his other, a wide mongongo leaf. If someone caught him at play instead of gathering leaves to patch his parents’ hut, he could hold it up and say, “See? I am gathering them.”

  But no one bothered him. Yesterday’s hunt was short-handed but successful. Enough meat for many meals, including the upcoming festival and more for Kalegi to take into the village to barter. Mabeli would play now. He’d asked his sister to join him, but she remained with their mother at Akujay’s bedside.

  He knew he should be there as well, display the same concern for his father’s illness. Instead he felt anger. For the third time in recent memory, they would soon pack up camp and move on. Mabeli felt a driving need to escape into the woods, alone if not with his sister, and play his games. Chase the mboloko.

  Too many people were dying. The tribe would have yet another Molimo festival to bring better luck, and dance around the Kumamolimo - the festival’s central and sacred fire. Pretend it was doing good.

  At nine, Mabeli was old enough to understand something evil was among them. The other day a Muzungu priest, his once-white skin sun-burnt and peeling, accompanied Kalegi back from the nearby village of Epulu. The priest talked among the tribe, then performed a ceremony over Akujay and others who’d fallen ill.

  As he prepared to leave, the priest approached Mabeli. The tall man spoke fluent Kingwana, warning the boy to be careful, speaking of the disease in terms of sexual intercourse, of blood. The ideas had both amused and frightened Mabeli, who quickly excused himself to run to the other side of camp.

  Looking back, he regretted the reaction. The priest had stared after him with a look that was akin to fear - for Mabeli and his people. Something very bad had found its way among the pygmy tribes of the Ituri, something which had been ravaging the rest of the continent for a much longer time. Many Muzungu had lately tried to explain this, but the concept eluded most as the Mbuti tried to carry on with their lives. How could they accept a disease, especially one revolving so strongly around sex, which even the best roots and herbs could not conquer? It was Death gone out of control.

  This afternoon, Mabeli thought none of these things. He saw only his imaginary antelope break free of the bushes. He shouted and hooted, gave pursuit back and forth across the underused pathway. As he rounded a vine-choked mongongo trunk, he saw the spirit.

  Mabeli stumbled back and dropped the leaf. The figure was pale, more so than the Muzungu priest, almost shimmering in the muted sunlight. The spirit stood no taller than Mabeli’s four and a half feet but the face was that of a boy - rounded and smooth. Perhaps he was lost, having wandered too far from the village.

  “Who are you,” Mabeli shouted, and raised his spear for dramatic effect more than any real malice.

  No reply. Instead, the other raised a hand and pointed. Though his lips moved, he had no voice. Mabeli felt a coldness creep into his arms and legs. The reason for the other’s odd coloring became apparent. Mabeli could see through him.

  A spirit. Perhaps the very mbolozi which some suspected of plaguing his people.

  “Speak to me,” Mabeli said, sterner now. The spirit moved its lips. They stood less than three huts’ length from each other, but still Mabeli heard nothing. No voice, no breath. Only the wind through the trees and the constant chatter of wildlife.

  His legs twitched. He should leave this place. Sacred or defiled, he did not belong in this creature’s presence.

  The sprit turned suddenly to reveal a second figure emerging from the air behind it. The first moved its lips again, then blurred and disappeared. The new figure stared, as if in wonder, at Mabeli and spoke with the same silent voice.

  The pygmy child felt a scream catch in his throat. He should not show fear. He would not.

  The second figure was familiar, even in its transparent, wavering state. Its skin was dark with close-cut white hair. When it raised its hand, Mabeli fell to his knees and shouted words that were unintelligible, sounds to reflect his fear. The man in front of him was Akujay, Mabeli’s father whom he left wheezing and dying back at camp. He looked much older, but healthy and strong as he leaned on a gnarled staff and regarded the boy.

  Mabeli’s unwanted tears blurred the forest around him. What should he do? If it was his father, then -

  Something moved between them, an animal perhaps, and was gone before Mabeli could see it clearly. He hurriedly wiped away his tears, to find himself alone. The figure had vanished.

  Mabeli found his voice. “Father?”

  No answer, nor did he expect one. That was not his father. The mbolozi was mocking him. Akujay was alive. He was alive.

  For the first time in his life, Mabeli got lost in the forest in his haste to return home. When he finally found camp he crawled into his parent’s small hut. Akujay was there, gasping for breath as he’d been doing all morning.

  Mabeli’s mother turned to her son and regarded him, keeping one hand protectively on her swollen belly. Her face had become thin, perhaps from tending to her husband, perhaps from the same disease which was stealing away so many Mbuti.

  Mabeli looked at his father. The sores on the man’s face and arms were either pale white or bruised into indigo. Mabeli had seen none of these on the false spirit. His sister came in and moved to her mother’s side. They looked at Mabeli, waiting for him to speak. He said nothing, but backed slowly from the hut.

  * * *

  ‘81

  The boys walked past the bench. When they moved on at a good distance, Mabeli rose slowly from the bench and followed. He tried not to look too long in their direction should they turn and see the short old man once again trailing behind them. If they stopped, he would cross the road, perhaps look into a storefront window. The crowd was heavy enough that they hadn’t yet noticed him.

  The feeling of anticipation in Mabeli’s heart quickened as the white boy and his friend crossed at the intersection onto the Rue Ituri, named decades ago by the French-led crew which slowly, methodically, rebuilt the old Congo pass-through (merely an overgrown path during Mabeli’s boyhood). It served as the primary thoroughfare to the capitol Kinshasa - the largest city in Zaire. Other roads had been laid out in recent years, smaller tributaries leading Northeast to Niangara and south as far as Kamina and Saint Joseph’s.

  The sidewalks at this western edge of Epulu were wide, lined with storefronts and vendors. So many people, a mixture of black and white. The term Muzungu had long lost its meaning in the mass influx of Americans and Europeans. Some days, Mabeli would spot someone unmistakably African, someone born, like himself, to this land. It had been too long, however, since Mabeli met someone descended from the pygmy tribes. Most that survived the plague still lived in the reservations outside of Likasi. But their numbers dwindled as the New World slowly closed around the basin.

  The boys stopped on a vacant bench to return to their comics. Mabeli passed by, careful not to look in their direction.

  If this was the day, the boys would eventually follow.

  Here at the boundary of the city, the edge of the Ituri forest rose high. Mabeli watched road crews clear away branches and pull shoots from the ever-present cracks in the road. These men were state-compensated ants, keeping the Congo at bay while the rising presence of the city slowly pushed of its own accord.

  Mabeli followed the curve of the Rue Ituri and entered the shaded twilight of the forest. Here under the canopy, the sidewalk remained wide enough to accommodate bicycles and pedestrians, before narrowing to a more respectable (and maintainable) level. Mabeli let the cool green light move over him. As always, the sensation of entering his real home returned with such power. He breathed the overpowering aroma of life, and searched out a new bench upon which to rest, and wait.

  * * *

  ‘35

  “Are you the leader here?” The speaker was a tall white man with a short-clipped moustache.

  Mabeli waited
for the translation from a second man, an Angolan dressed in much the same manner as the first - a uniform donned by so many, lately. The Angolan soldier translated the question from French into rough Kingwana. Mabeli stiffened, more at the original tone with which the question was asked than the words. The first man’s face was tight, not from rage as much as defense, a self-enforced mask against the presence of so much death around him.

  Someone guided Mabeli’s sister off his arm. She was too tired to stand and wait for her brother to deal with these men, and needed to cope with her own grief. It didn’t matter how much the strangers’ arrival, and medicine, had been a blessing. Kalegi had been her husband and she had the right to ignore the visitors for the moment. Mabeli let her go reluctantly, and gave his full attention to the tall Frenchman.

  “We have no leader,” he said quietly. “We do not believe in governing by only a few.”

  The Angolan translated. Mabeli still had trouble understanding the Muzungu’s varied languages. Kalegi once explained that some spoke a language called French. The other was the more guttural, syllabic tongue of English. Mabeli understood little of either, but enjoyed the cadence of the French.

  The white man looked puzzled. The Angolan spoke further in French, perhaps explaining Mabeli’s answer. Finally, the first asked, “Then who can I talk to?”

  Mabeli shrugged at the translation. “You can speak to me.”

  After Akujay, Mabeli’s father, passed away the tribe did as they had always done and abandoned camp for a new part of the forest. No matter where they went, how many seasons passed or Molimo festivals danced, the disease slowly, methodically, ate away at the age-old barrier between Mbuti tribes. As their numbers decreased, they eventually came together out of reluctant necessity. Daily life improved for a while, but the plague did not end.

  The final wave of newcomers found them. Most were physicians and laborers, or an occasional priest (Mabeli never again saw the priest he’d met as a boy). Soldiers for protection should their presence not be welcomed. The people brought medicine. Most came from countries whose names Mabeli could never quite pronounce, or from the northern regions of Africa. They called themselves the United Nations. Mabeli thought it an admirable term.

  They arrived to help. A white wave of mercy descending upon the Congo with open hearts and promises of aid for a stricken people. The medicine did help, but it did not cure.

  “Too expensive,” said a physician from a recent group. “Too many of you have been infected.” The impact of her words, spoken with an honest sorrow, fell greatly upon Mabeli’s heart. Until that moment, he assumed there was no cure for the plague - no hope that the physicians could stop its onslaught.

  There was a cure, of some kind, in some form. But it was not for them. Too many infected, she had said.

  Mabeli thought of his mother struggling for breath only a few seasons after his father died. He thought of his baby brother born that year, emerging from the womb already sick, living no longer than his first few weeks. Even Kalegi could bring nothing useful back from the Epulu village except news of more sickness and death. Now his widow, Mabeli’s sister, moved through the days with liquid lungs.

  Too many. Surely, he thought, they could have saved one of them.

  The large Frenchman looked at the pygmy for a long time, his stern mask slipping into a hesitancy which worried Mabeli. “We have to ask,” he said, “that you and your people relocate, so we can better help.”

  The Angolan translated, then looked back at the Frenchman with a hard stare that offered Mabeli some hope, some unspoken alliance.

  Mabeli could have objected, but what would it accomplish? Only four adults in the tribe, not counting the seven elders who found their increasing responsibilities more daunting every day and a few children finally reaching a rebellious maturity.

  He looked at both soldiers, nodded once, and walked away.

  The village of Epulu seemed to have tripled in size since Mabeli’s last trip to barter. His people arrived with their UN escorts and were led onto a waiting truck. Mabeli stayed behind. His sister wailed and tried to drag him up to sit beside her. He touched his sister’s cheek, careful to avoid the sores which had formed there.

  “I need to stay,” he said. “Here - in the village for a while. I have to understand what’s going to happen. To see.”

  She stared at him so intently Mabeli wondered if perhaps she could read his thoughts. Please understand. I cannot watch you die, too. “I’ll join you soon,” he said. “I promise.”

  The truck pulled away. Only then did Mabeli realize he still held his sister’s walking staff. An acacia branch, trimmed and polished for her by an elder. Mabeli instinctively moved to abandon it against the side of a nearby building, then stopped to examine it more closely. The limb was gnarled and thick, quite sturdy. Standing in the settling dust of the truck carrying away his tribe, Mabeli found within it a reassuring familiarity. He would keep it, for a time at least.

  When the French soldier saw Mabeli he tried to usher him towards the next caravan.

  “This is my home,” the pygmy replied. “I’m not sick, as you can well see. Unless your intentions for my people are other than you have mentioned, I’ll go now and find a place to stay.” The Angolan soldier gave the translation then laid a firm hand on the Frenchman’s arm. Mabeli walked into the village.

  Talking with those villagers who spoke his tongue, he learned what their world had fallen into. Then he could listen no further. Mabeli stayed in his cramped room within the burgeoning UN compound for three days without emerging.

  Three-quarters of the sub-Saharan African population was gone. Dead, or soon to be. Mostly adults, leaving as their survivors children with no one to lead them save the very old, who in turn had none to care for them but the children.

  The feared instability of such a population, one crumbling national government beside another, finally pulled the United Nations to its occupation. The world moved in to save and control a devastated continent. A wave of mercy, or an invasion. To Mabeli, when he finally stepped from his room, it made no difference.

  If the newcomers chose to save some of his people, even at the expense of taking their land, then perhaps there was hope. The decision, it seemed, was not his to make.

  * * *

  ‘81

  Mabeli’s heart skipped a beat as the two boys came down the path. This is the day, he thought again. The crawling of his skin as they approached, the electric smell in the air, the increasing clarity of that long-ago memory, all told Mabeli it was true.

  From the moment of that brief vision in his childhood, Mabeli felt a thread connecting him to something beyond himself. As his life in Epulu wound out, Mabeli found himself with too much time to think, to remember. He held no job, save the occasional employment taken more for distraction than obtaining means. The reparative social programs enacted for the Mbuti and other displaced natives adequately carried him along day to day, year to year. The memory cultivated in his mind and settled among the mundane events in his life, and the meaning of what he’d seen slowly dawned. He’d made a mistake in those earlier years trying to define it.

  What he saw was not his father nor some mbolozi from another realm, but a glimpse into a future that did not yet exist. He saw himself. A thread, unraveled between two moments of the same soul. This thought, and hope, Mabeli held close as the world he knew collapsed around him, only to rise from its ashes as something other than his home. Buildings challenged the jungle before them and Mabeli found himself adrift in a sea of foreigners flocking to their “new world”. As he shuffled along well-paved streets into old age, the chance of reconnecting with his past, if only for a moment, became a lifeline.

  He knew what would happen as he leaned on his walking stick and rose from the bench, once again following the boys. He did so with a clarity of purpose, as in a dream, and dared not question it without the risk of missing his destination. The end of the thread.

  The sidewalk began to narrow
where the white boy named Mike stopped. His friend walked on a moment longer before turning and calling back. Mabeli was close enough that he should hear, but the sounds of the forest and occasional traffic were drowned by a buzzing inside his own head.

  Expectation. Maybe terror. The sound of blood pulsing through his temples.

  Mike stared at something just inside the tree line. The friend, a few paces ahead, stood on tip-toe to see what Mike saw. He asked, “Qu’est-ce que c’est?”

  Mabeli was almost upon them.

  “It’s OK, “ said Mike in English, not to his friend but to some unseen third party. Mabeli reached the boy and stopped, perhaps too close. Mike wheeled around in surprise.

  “Hey,” he said. “What are you doing?”

  Mabeli ignored the question and moved in front of him. Mike lashed out half-heartedly then muttered something under his breath about “that crazy old man from the store”. He joined his friend down the sidewalk. They stopped a safe distance away and watched with nervous curiosity.

  Mabeli raised a shaking hand to his mouth and looked at the image of himself standing just inside the trees. The young boy, naked save for a single strip of cloth covering his genitals, stooped lower, a small spear raised defiantly. His ash-black skin shimmered. The old man noted without surprise that he could see the blurred outlines of the foliage behind him.

  He thought, What do I say? then whispered, “Everything is fine,” in the old Kingwana tongue. The boy would understand nothing else. “Do you know who I am?”

  The boy spoke, shouting, but no sound came forth. With an expression of slowly-dawning terror, young Mabeli dropped his spear and sank to his knees. He shouted again, and the old man knew the boy was screaming. Mabeli felt time slipping away, the thread thinning. His heart beat with renewed urgency. So many years leading to this moment. He had to concentrate, come up with the right words, knowing they would never be heard. “Mabeli,” he said, “understand this, there are some -”