The Boy Who Stole the Leopard's Spots

by Tamar Myers

  A woman—herself excluded, of course—wanted a strong protector, and a provider for her children. It did not matter if he was a priest of the Holy Roman Church, because there was not a woman alive who did not believe she could change man’s allegiance. A man, on the other hand, desired only two things: a fertile woman through whom he could pass on his seed, and someone with whom he could find sexual pleasure. These two aspects did not have to occur in the same woman by any means.

  “For God’s sake, mademoiselle,” the OP shouted, “tell us what is going on behind your washing stand!”

  Madame Cabochon glared at the OP. She had watched helplessly as her father physically and mentally abused her mother. She had also been the victim of an older brother’s bullying. When she was in third form and François in fifth, he and his friend Jacques once made her swallow a live grasshopper. He would often steal sweets—treats of any kind, really—and even money from their mother’s purse and blame it on his sister. It was Madame Cabochon who took the beatings for that.

  When she at last began to grow a woman’s body, he pinned her to the bed one day in an attempt to rape her. Fortunately she was able to grab a pencil from the bedside table and stabbed him in the right eye, permanently blinding it. However, for the sin of disfiguring her father’s “only heir,” Madame Cabochon was sent to a convent in Elizabethville for a year, where she learned a life lesson that was to color her worldview from then on: there is no such thing as reality, only one’s perception of the way things are.

  Chapter 17

  The Belgian Congo, 1935

  The clever Mushilele did not translate the white man’s words as they were spoken. The chief and his elders had been very generous with their gift of life, and it was not right that they should be repaid with insults. Besides, is not the bearer of bad news likely to be confused with the person, or persons, who really are responsible? Nevertheless, the clever Mushilele gave the boy a threatening look, as if to warn him never to speak of this matter to anyone on pain of death.

  The clever man need not have concerned himself with trying to frighten a small boy. After the white man ran into the bush, in the black of night, he was not followed. Instead, the chief nodded to his drummers, and everyone present began to sing and dance.

  It was a good time; it was a happy occasion. The younger twin’s innocence had been restored, and those men seeking special attributes from the victim had been given a chance to feed on the corresponding limb or body part. Now it was only a matter of “wait and see.” In the meantime, the drums would beat and the people would celebrate, for life was short, and every heartbeat was an occasion to celebrate.

  “Uncork all the gourds of palm wine,” the chief said. “We will feast and drink until we are so drunk that we cannot hear the women conducting their celebration.”

  It was then that the older twin realized just how much of a boy he still was, for he longed to be back in the village with the women and the other boys his age. Some of the men—he knew this from how they acted in the village—became mean-tempered and picked fights when they were drunk. A couple of them even sported nasty scars. And truthfully, the scent of his mother—wood smoke, breast milk, and sweat from a day in the manioc fields—these and others combined to tug at his heart and his eyes filled with tears.

  He wandered to the edge of the light ring, and just a bit into the bush, because he felt queasy. He was the chief’s son and would not bring shame to his father by throwing up in sight of the elders. Besides, he had just successfully completed his first tasting. If he was seen vomiting, would they tell him to eat again? If so, he would refuse! Then what would become of him? What would become of his weaker brother, who now still lay sleeping despite the great noise?

  Chapter 18

  The Belgian Congo, 1958

  The OP was a reasonable man. All Marcel Fabergé desired out of life was to make it through to the end as comfortably as possible. Wasn’t that what any normal human being desired? Even the savages who worked for him? So what if in Marcel’s case being comfortable meant retiring to a seaside villa in the south of France? Few men could say that they had worked harder than Marcel to get to where they were.

  When Marcel was ten years old, his father, a Rom (a member of France’s Gypsy community), sold the boy to a bricklayer. It wasn’t a legal sale, of course, but it just as well might have been. It quite possibly saved Marcel’s life, because although the lad was immediately put to work carrying bricks, eventually he was adopted and given the family name. When Europe’s Gypsies, like her Jews, were rounded up by the Nazis and shipped off to be exterminated, nobody gave Marcel Fabergé a second thought. Okay—perhaps a second, and a third, but never more than that.

  “Why is Uncle Marcel so dark-skinned?” That was a frequently asked question among each new crop of Fabergé children. The Fabergés, you see, bred like rabbits; they were almost as prolific as the Flemish. Mama Fabergé, a great believer in Walloon efficiency, delivered her babies in litters—always twins or triplets—until eventually there were eighteen, including Marcel. All seventeen genetic heirs were male, and all seventeen eventually joined their father’s construction firm: Fabergé et Fils.

  As one might imagine, the boy couldn’t wait to strike out on his own and become self-sufficient. And when he did, it was as if the Fates had been waiting and were all aligned and on his side. In scarcely more than a decade, the young man went from mail room clerk to operations manager in one of Africa’s most lucrative diamond mines. That an abandoned Gypsy boy from such a large adoptive family could rise so quickly in his chosen profession, that of administrator for the Congo Mining Consortium, was a marvel for everyone in his working-class neighborhood back in Brussels.

  But just because the OP had a working-class background, and pressed into his soul were ancient, long-forgotten memories of Mother India, these things did not make him in any way less a Belgian; and most certainly no less astute than his predecessor. There was, however, one huge difference between him and the miserable fool who had held his position before him; namely that Marcel Fabergé lacked the capacity to learn foreign languages while the aforementioned had possessed a moderate ability in that regard.

  Now this American woman with her English that was not quite English was about to drive him crazy. “Mademoiselle,” he roared again, “I demand that you tell me what is going on!”

  “S’il vous plaît, monsieur,” Madame Cabochon said, wagging a finger at him as if he were a schoolboy, “your manners, please. No shouting at my table. This is a dinner party, not a flamenco performance! Now apologize at once.”

  How dare the bitch! Madame Cabochon was known for speaking her mind, but this—this flamenco reference was a racial slur. He’d never told a soul at Belle Vue about his Gypsy ancestry. Only his wife, Hélène, was privy to that information, and that little lemur had enough skeletons in her family tree to worry about. Besides, Hélène adored Marcel in her own way, and he her. If outsiders didn’t understand the dynamics to their relationship, so be it.

  Thank God then that Hélène screwed up the courage to defend him. “Forgive my English, please, for it is very poor. But it is my husband who is owed an apology,” she said softly. “It is she who must make the forgiveness. Always he works very hard for the people of Belle Vue—European and African, and always they make for him only much trouble. Is that not so, Marcel?”

  “Your English is fine,” the American said, “and I am very sorry, sir, if I have I contributed to your distress.”

  “Do not be sorry,” Madame Cabochon snapped. “When Monsieur Fabergé took over as OP, all the whites working for the Consortium were promised a raise. Ha! My husband’s pay packet has not increased even by one franc! But the Africans—now that is a different story, is it not, Monsieur Fabergé?”

  “My housekeeper is a wise woman,” the American said quickly, picking up her story. “A mumanyi. The people come to her for advice.”

  “
Attention, mademoiselle,” said Monsignor Clemente, “a wise move on your part would be to stay clear of witchcraft.”

  “Oh, but Cripple is not a witch!”

  “Is not her husband a witch doctor?”

  “Oui, but not a very good one. In fact—Pierre, will you help me explain?”

  This reliance, of the silly young missionary, on a Belgian police chief was as absurd as it was irritating. The OP was about to speak his mind—social consequences be damned—when someone knocked on the front door with such force that Madame Cabochon’s very attractive derrière literally parted company from the chartreuse silk pad that covered the woven raffia seat of her chair.

  The large golden brown eyes of Madame Fabergé also observed her hostess’s dramatic reaction to the rapping at the door. Hélène Fabergé was a big admirer of Madame Cabochon, whom she thought of as strong—at least for a lady. Yes, Hélène was a keen observer of all the qualities that made up a lady, for like her husband, she too was a Gypsy. A Roma: it was a word meant to be spit from the lips of a real Belgian.

  “Garçon!” Madame Cabochon barked to her head table boy, although everyone knew by now that his name was Weak Eyes. “Open the door.”

  “Oui, madame.”

  Hélène expected to see Monsieur Cabochon stagger through the massive French doors, for he was a known drunkard. Instead, she had the pleasure of being utterly shocked by the sight of a very drunk villager: the headman! After all, there were so few things that were truly amusing in this staid little European enclave. One would have thought that a gathering of expats so far from home would be living it up.

  Well, that was certainly not the case here, whereas it was rumored that in British East Africa, particularly Kenya, the whites were having the time of their lives. Already the exploits of Baroness Blixen and Denys Finch Hatton were legendary. Even certain male members of the British Royal Family were said to have availed themselves of their hard-drinking colonialists’ most prized possessions.

  Hélène Fabergé missed nothing of what happened that evening in Madame Cabochon’s home. Hélène’s eyes and ears recorded everything and imprinted the events on a mind as sensitive as celluloid film.

  “What do you want?” Madame Cabochon had demanded of the uninvited visitor. She spoke in French, and it was quite clear from her tone that she had purposefully omitted the use of an honorific.

  The headman swayed slightly as he slowly fixed his stare on Madame Cabochon. “You are what I want.”

  “Madame,” said the OP. “You forgot to say Madame.”

  The headman turned. “I did not forget”—he stopped, as if carefully searching through his bag of verbal insults—“whitey.”

  “Get out of my house!” Madame Cabochon ordered. Now there was a lady worthy to be admired. Of course if you are just another dirty Gypsy, just about anyone was a step up on the scale—c’est vrai?

  The headman didn’t budge. “On the morning of Independence Day, this will be my house—oh yes, I can see that it is a fine one even from where I stand. And you, madame, will be my fourth wife. But you will not speak to me then like you speak to me now—unless you want a fine beating. Because if you sass me, madame, I will sit upon your neck, and beat you about your back and buttocks with a wire that will leave thick welts upon your skin.”

  Perhaps a lesser Belgian housewife would have backed off at this point. It is doubtful, however, that a prewar Gypsy woman would have even flinched; but Nazis had been just as successful in their campaign in exterminating the Gypsies as they had been in getting rid of the Jews. Most Romany these days tried to remain in the background as much as possible. This translated to accepting their role as second-class citizens, so of course Madame Fabergé said nothing. She even lacked the courage to talk back to an African.

  “You do not frighten me,” Madame Cabochon said, although her tone might have been interpreted as saying something altogether different. “Because now we Belgians are still in power. Unlike many of my fellow whites I try to be fair in my dealings with you Congolese—go ahead, ask my houseboys—but you, monsieur, you are nothing but a savage.”

  “And you are a whore!”

  Mon Dieu! Hélène saw the vein in the police captain’s temple begin to twitch as he squirmed in his seat. She fancied she saw the hate streaming out of the savage’s eyes. She sensed from her husband’s heavy breathing that his blood pressure was climbing to dangerous levels. The monsignor, however, sat expressionless and absolutely still, like a buddha in a black silk dress.

  When Madame Cabochon rose to her feet, she was magnificent. “For the last time, monsieur, get out of my house!”

  It was only then that the three so-called white men—cowardly little boys all of them—had the nerve to also stand and square their shoulders. As for the American girl—pff!—always so entitled they feel, no? She remained seated as if she were the queen of L’Angleterre.

  “I have changed my mind,” the headman roared. “I do not want you for a wife, only to take you as my woman. After that I will kill you—with a machete—chop, chop. But the young woman”—he pointed straight at the American, despite his drunken state—“she will be my next wife. But the other one; she is not so white. I will take her as my woman and then pass her around. Maybe then we will chop, chop, chop.”

  Hélène screamed.

  Only then did the pitiful European men advance on him, but the headman managed to escape into the darkness and rain, leaving only the stench of palm beer behind.

  Chapter 19

  The Belgian Congo, 1935

  It happened so quickly that the boy did not have time to scream. So dark was the night, however, that his first thought was that the hand over his mouth belonged to the white man with the dark eyes and hair. But then he was lifted off the ground—plucked like a chicken hawk might seize a fledging from its nest—and literally carried some great distance from the men’s camp. How far, he was never to know, but long before he was set down again, the sounds of celebration emanating from both the place of his abduction and his home village had long faded, and all he could hear was his own heartbeat and that of his abductor.

  At last the man set him down in a clearing, but not before tying the boy’s hands together behind his back, and then his feet. “Boy,” he said in Tshiluba, “do you understand this language that I speak?”

  “Eyo,” the boy said, “for I am not a monkey like a Mushilele. Not only is Tshiluba the language of the Baluba and Bena Lulua, but of the entire region.”

  The man struck the boy, knocking him to the ground. “Perhaps it has not occurred to you that you are now my slave.”

  “I am a chief’s son; I am no one’s slave.”

  The Mushilele kicked the boy just under the sternum, knocking the breath out of him. The boy had once almost drowned in a small pond, his legs hopelessly tangled in water lilies. The feeling now was similar. His captor yanked him to a standing position again, which helped somewhat with his breathing.

  “Do not think, boy, that you can win favor with me by acting brave. I know that you are only barely past the weaning stage, for I saw you cry for your baba, and later I observed as you took no more than two sips—three at the most from that gourd—and then fell promptly to sleep.”

  The boy said nothing in response, for he was much relieved to think that this Mushilele did not realize that he was a twin. The Bashilele, like the Bapende, did not suffer their twins to live. If his status as a twin were known, then he might not even be seen as fit for slavery. In that case—well, never mind; he would keep up the deception.

  Still, he was deeply troubled by the revelation that this man had observed his twin brother crying. How long had they been watched, and by how many? What about the village? He knew that each Mushilele youth was sent out to retrieve an enemy skull at the time he wished to prove his manhood, but this Mushilele was a full-grown man. Plus, he intended to sell the boy into slaver
y, not use the boy’s skull as his trophy drinking cup.

  Could there have been an entire war party hiding in the thick bush surrounding the men’s ritual camp? Were they at that very moment all being slaughtered? Then after the men were killed, the Bashilele were sure to invade the village proper and capture all the women and girls of breeding age—or soon to be of that age—and carry them off with them. The old, the infirm, and all male children would be summarily slaughtered. Even in the boy’s eyes this was neither right nor wrong; this was the way things were—the way things had always been, although that did not make it any easier to think that you might never see your mother and twin brother again, unless you ended up in the same village someday as a slave. Or perhaps you might even have to wait until you entered the spirit world to be reunited with your family.

  But he must stop thinking, because his Mushilele captor seemed capable of reading his face just like his father could read the paw prints along the marsh.

  Chapter 20

  The Belgian Congo, 1958

  Cripple wrinkled her nose. “Their Death,” she said, “I smell the approach of much trouble.”

  Their Death grunted. As was often the case at night, especially those nights when the kerosene lantern had to be lit, Their Death’s thoughts left his head to enter a book. Once inside the book Their Death’s thoughts would journey to faraway places, sometimes even over the Great Water to the white man’s land known as Mputu in the Tshiluba language (although no one is quite sure why it is named thus). Perhaps it is a corruption of the word Portugal, although it also means “a child born just after twins.” Change the word to mputa and it becomes an “ulcer,” a “weeping abscess.”