by Tamar Myers
“Yes,” she said. “Cripple, you are absolutely correct. We are all capable of the worst sins. Therefore now, please advise me; what do you think it is that we should do next?”
Madame Cabochon was feeling utterly miserable; and when Colette’s gorgeous exterior felt this bad, her somewhat less-than-stellar personality became downright irritable. Crabby—wasn’t that the American slang? The heat and humidity of the suicide month had plastered her clothing to her body just as surely as if she’d stood under a rancid shower. As she made her way back through the workers’ village, every fly from every dung heap, and its brother from every oozing sore on man or beast, immediately turned its attention to Madame Cabochon. Just when she thought that she couldn’t stand any more misery, the salt she secreted attracted the tiny biting insects to her eyes. On top of that, her tear-filled eyes couldn’t see well enough to do anything about this invasion.
Was Madame Cabochon the type to whine about her excruciatingly uncomfortable predicament? No! But she was most certainly the type to curse—which she did, and with great aplomb. She excoriated the gods and goddesses of antiquity, she damned the God of Father Reutner, the monsignor, and Amanda Brown, and she made several references to the devil’s abode—all without the slightest twinge of guilt, and none of it did her a bit of good.
Both the handsome police chief, Pierre Jardin, and the handsome monsignor seemed to have slipped off somewhere into the crowd, and although it gave Colette a brief thrill to think that they might have slipped off together, she quickly discarded the thought as highly improbable. Pierre was very much the heterosexual. No doubt the monsignor was heterosexual as well—at least he had been before Rome got its hooks into him. The two were most probably off somewhere “putting fires out.” That was an expression that the silly American had used the day before, and Madame Cabochon had rather liked it.
At any rate, without the opportunity to practice the harmless art of mature female flirtation, Madame Cabochon no longer had a reason to stay among the diseased and odiferous native population—although she wasn’t the least bit prejudiced—so she walked back to the Missionary Rest House at the bottom of the very steep hill.
As is often the case, going down can be more difficult than going up, and Madame Cabochon’s ill-fitting white cotton skirt (which she had had to borrow from Amanda) made several firm acquaintances with the red clay soil of the washed-out road. In addition, she broke two of her fingernails, twisted an ankle ( just a little), and had a stick jam between her big toe and the next due to the fact that she was wearing sandals. Mais oui, Madame Cabochon had every reason to lash out at anyone who crossed her, especially if that someone had been lying around all morning on American-made patio furniture.
“Sacré-coeur!” It was the OP’s mouselike wife, and she wasn’t stretched out relaxing, she was lying for all the world as if she was prostrate with grief.
The small, dark woman didn’t even have the courtesy to turn over and present her face so that she could be comforted efficiently. This further confirmed Madame Cabochon’s belief that Madame Fabergé was rude and not suited to preside over Belle Vue’s white society as its first lady. The woman was no lady; she knew nothing of manners. She lacked style, she found poise offensive, and she didn’t even know how to set a proper table—more specifically, she didn’t know how to instruct her table boy in this art.
“Madame Fabergé,” Colette said, “if you do not turn over and look at me, then I shall have to turn you over myself.”
Still there was no response, save for the heaving of her small thin shoulders and great sobs that sounded loud, even though the roar of the falls was practically deafening.
Madame Cabochon leaned in closer. “Not only will I turn you over myself, but then I will roll you off this ledge and over the cliff. The giant crocodile at the bottom will gobble you up in two bites. Of course he will spit you up a few seconds later because you are bound to be toxic—given your unpleasant nature—but you’ll be dead nonetheless.”
Although it was beyond belief, that stupid little troll remained just where she was, except that now she’d curled up in a ball like a hedgehog. Understandably, Madame Cabochon grabbed the fool by her disheveled dark hair and dragged her into Amanda Brown’s salon, where she propped the woman up in a cane bottom armchair.
“Tell me,” she shouted, “what is wrong with you? I have no patience today for the likes of you—but I am trying to be kind, I really am.”
Madame Fabergé appeared startled by such honesty. Her swollen eyes blinked rapidly and she nodded.
“I am sorry, madame. It is because—well, Monsieur Fabergé has left me.”
“Qu’avez-vous dit?”
“He left me. He said that Africa was too crazy for him. He said that because of the war and everything that he has lived through—you know—he just could not take the pressure. It was building up, you see. Now with the bridge destroyed, the mine production will be behind by many months, and it may never catch up before the day set for independence. The Consortium will surely fire him. When that happens, both his career and his reputation will be gone. He said that he may as well quit while he is in control, so that is exactly what he is doing.”
“This is very tragic,” Madame Cabochon said, trying to sound sympathetic. “I assume that Amanda Brown has a shortwave radio. And now that the electric power—”
“Non, madame, my husband came to this decision last night. Shortly after you made it to the top of the hill this morning, he also ascended. His plan was to appropriate a bicycle from one of the blacks, and then to take the old road to Luluabourg.”
Appropriate? Blacks? This was not going to go well for Monsieur Fabergé, the soon-to-be-former OP of Belle Vue. His opinions and behavior aside, the old road was all but abandoned because it was almost a hundred kilometers longer than the new, direct one. Only missionaries dared travel it now, and they believed that they had angels sitting on their shoulders. What remained of the road would be rutted. Monsieur OP’s tires would surely suffer multiple punctures, making progress so slow that he would run out of drinking water before covering even a tenth of the distance. Also, big fat poisonous pit vipers liked to sun themselves on dirt roads.
To sum it all up, one way or another, Monsieur Fabergé was doomed to further failure. The questions were how and when, but not if it would happen. Of course Madame Cabochon could not share such morbid thoughts with a grieving widow-in-the-making, not even one as unlikable as Madame Fabergé.
“Your husband is a resourceful man,” Madame Cabochon forced herself to say. “I am sure that he will be just fine.”
“Oui? Then I am crying for nothing.”
Madame Cabochon perched her shapely rear end on the edge of the dark waif’s armchair, given that there was plenty of room. American furniture, even when made in the Congo, was oversize and sturdy just like its owners.
“Indeed, you are crying for nothing. Just think, in a few weeks you will be back in Belgium; then this entire African nightmare will be over for you.”
Then Madame Cabochon actually—possibly for the first time—looked into the other woman’s eyes and saw the same look she’d seen in the eyes of captured monkeys in the village marketplace. Clearly, the woman dreaded returning to Belgium. But why?
“Madame,” she said, “excuse me for asking, but are you and Monsieur Fabergé having problems?”
“That is an understatement,” the OP’s wife said, and she proceeded to laugh bitterly. “Monsieur Fabergé cannot stand me, and he has told me so on many occasions. Once he even sent his goons to rough me up.”
“Goons?”
“Cousins; contacts from within”—she lowered her voice, which was already annoyingly soft—“the Gypsy community. Madame Cabochon, we are Gypsies.”
“C’est vrai? Fantastique!”
“Madame, surely you cannot approve. As a true Belgian, you must find us reprehensible.�
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“A true Belgian? Madame Fabergé, do you ever attend Mass?—no, of course you do not, or else I would have seen you at church.”
“I go at Christmas and Easter.”
“Bah! But never mind. It is just that if you knew anything about our faith, then you would know that all mankind descends from Adam and Eve, who lived in the Garden of Eden. This was somewhere in Mesopotamia. I believe that today it is called Iraq. At any rate, it certainly was nowhere near Belgium. Therefore, our ancestors migrated to Belgium—to Europe—both your ancestors and my ancestors. While it may be that my ancestors took a more direct path, neither group started out in the area.”
Madame Fabergé, pitiful creature that she was, let out a brief laugh despite her misery. “Madame Cabochon, just because the goons that Marcel hired to rough me up remain behind in Belgium, it does not make me any safer now than I was before.”
“I am not sure that I understand; does this mean that he hits you?”
She twisted her body and pulled up her blouse to expose her back. Then she pulled up a bit of her hem to show Madame Cabochon her right thigh.
“He hits me in places that will not show, although once he accidentally hit me in the face and split my lip. You see this white line. It was during the war, and the only person available to sew it up was a seamstress. Fortunately, we Belgians”—she smiled now—“have always been rather good with the needle and thread.”
Madame Cabochon nodded and without giving it much thought put her arm around the slim shoulders. “Madame Fabergé, if only I had known why it was that you are your mousy little self, I might have warmed up to you sooner. For you see, we have much in common. My husband also abuses me; oh no, not with his fists—you must put that picture out of your mind—but with his words. Monsieur Cabochon gets drunk every night that the Club Mediterranean is open, which is six nights a week; and when he comes home, his anger knows no bounds. Then I am a whore, a piece of excrement, an African monkey—and always, of course, the most stupid creature ever to walk this earth.”
Tears spilled down Madame Fabergé’s face. “Is this really true?”
“I would not lie about such things,” Madame Cabochon said, which wasn’t strictly true, because she did lie about such things if it served her purposes. But as it happened, she was not lying at the moment.
“Why do you stay with him then?” Madame Fabergé asked.
Madame Cabochon yawned, suddenly feeling the need for a nap. “It is the other way around, really. He stays with me, and the reason is that I am rich. Very rich. My parents made their money off a palm oil plantation up near Coquilhatville. They made tons of money, but they are both dead now.
“The important point is that I have decided to invest in the future of this crazy country and start another palm oil plantation here, as close to the workers’ village as I can procure land. You see, already the village has drawn too many people for the jobs available in the Consortium mines, and who knows how long the diamond deposits will last. On the other hand, every African in the Congo consumes palm oil at least once a day—usually twice—so that a working farm, with a processing plant and a distribution center, can be a source of employment for many people long after I’m gone.”
Madame Fabergé smiled through her tears. “You are a very smart woman, Madame Cabochon. And very brave as well.”
“Please, call me Colette.”
“Colette,” the little Gypsy woman whispered.
“Good. But I have more news to share. You see, I am kicking that drunk out of my life when his current contract with the Consortium expires, which is December thirty-first. At that point, my brother, who is a confirmed bachelor, will be moving down from Coquilhatville to move in with me, and we—well, I will get right to the point. Are you good with numbers, Madame Fabergé?”
“Numbers?”
“Adding, dividing, more adding—maybe a little subtraction, but not too much.” Madame Cabochon laughed.
“I was number one in my class at maths.”
“Excellent! Then the job is yours if you want it.”
“Job?”
“Vincent and I are looking to hire a Belgian bookkeeper and secretary. She must be a mature, responsible woman who knows her own head and who has at least some acquaintance with the Congo. We will build you a house—”
“I accept,” Madame Fabergé said as the tears resumed flowing.
Chapter 34
The Belgian Congo, 1958
The rectory of Saint Mary’s Catholic Church contained a small private chapel reserved for whites only. It was used primarily for life-cycle events, such as baptisms and funerals. First Communions, unfortunately, had to be integrated to show that the Body of Christ was one.
Father Reutner shuddered when he recalled the one wedding he’d been forced to perform. A high-ranking Consortium bachelor fell in love with the daughter of a Portuguese merchant from Angola, and since both were Catholics in good standing, he couldn’t very well refuse. But the man was of good, blond Flemish stock, and she was the sort of Portuguese who one could tell, by just a quick glance, had Moorish blood coursing through her veins. Say what you will, but it was an interracial marriage.
And then there were the relatives: scores of them. Loud, the women heavily perfumed, everyone crowded in that little cement block room barely larger than a seminarian’s cell. Surely that was what hell was like—that and what he’d seen in Europe during the war. Oh, and he’d seen plenty of evil here in the Congo as well.
In fact, Father Reutner had seen enough evil—and so little goodness—that he’d slowly, over a lifetime, come to the conclusion that he’d been fed a myth. God was not good; God just was not. For in Father Reutner’s mind there was a scale, and every time he witnessed an act of cruelty, or the result thereof, that was placed on the left side of the scale, and each time he was privy to an act of kindness, or even heard of one, that he placed on the right side of the scale. Sadly, from almost the very beginning of this experiment, the left dish of the scale never left the ground, while the right dish swung high in the air, its contents sometimes so old that he couldn’t even remember what they were.
Nonetheless, Father Reutner had remained true to his vows. Yes, of course, there were times when extenuating circumstances intervened—he was only human, after all! But he really had done his best to run a good race, as Saint Paul put it so well. And when he stumbled, he made his contrition and then kept on running. After twenty-plus years of tending to people’s souls, their health needs, and their educational needs, along came the monsignor with the news that Father Reutner was to retire.
Retire? In the outside world, was not involuntary retirement the same as being fired? And what did retirement for Father Reutner look like? For one thing, it looked like confinement to a cold, drafty dormitory with a bunch of garrulous old men who have never even set one foot out of Europe, yet who would each have a million opinions about Africa—every one of which would be wrong.
Retirement would mean having to look out from time to time and see a world that he had chosen to opt out of, and it would be a constant reminder that he had made the wrong decision. He might find himself in situations where he would see new faces, meet new women, and be acutely aware of the fact that he, and he alone, was responsible for the fact that he was doomed to live out the remainder of his days alone. How was one supposed to live with consequences that severe? Perhaps there were those who could plod ever onward, taking one day at a time, hoping that each morrow would bring a shred of happiness, but such people were fools. Such people were masochists.
Having come to the conclusion that God did not exist, Father Reutner felt a huge burden lift from him, for only then did he truly stop fearing death. For if there was no God, then there was no eternal damnation; there remained just the hell we created for ourselves here on earth. And as for heaven, any first-year seminarian would be able to tell you that the Book of Reve
lation contained detailed descriptions of the hierarchies in that mythical place. Since the church here on earth was one immutable hierarchy, with Father Reutner inexplicably stuck on its bottom rung—well, no thanks, even if it was a real place, heaven no longer held any appeal for him.
Father Reutner missed conversing in German, but he often spoke it. German was both his private language of prayer and the language in which he thought and, with increasing frequency, spoke to himself. Aloud. He had often heard it said that talking to oneself was normal—particularly among clerics living alone. It was only when you answered yourself that one had to worry. Ha-ha. People who said this sort of thing either were not being completely honest or else did not know the first thing there was to know about living alone.
“To hell with those people,” Father Reutner said as he finished tying off the rope to the heavy wooden beam that was one of six that supported the galvanized iron roof. Then he laughed at the irony of what he had said.
One of things he had always hated about this small chapel was how closed in it was; there were no windows. The point had been that the whites should be able to celebrate their private moments privately. One was forever shooing the natives away from the dining room windows of the rectory, if one desired to eat unobserved. Otherwise, it was like eating in a fishbowl. Rows upon rows of big, dark eyes followed every movement that the strange white man did with his shiny utensils, and the way the white man patted his mouth with his napkin. The blacks marveled vociferously at the amount and sorts of food that the white man ate. Sometimes scuffles would break out as boys—even men—fought for the best vantage place to look at the freak show. Of course the freak show was always Father Reutner.
Besides the door, which opened off his study, the only opening in the chapel walls was a vertical ventilation slit about a meter in height that was positioned just below the peak of the roof. From where he stood atop the stepladder, the bottom ledge of the slit was at eye level with the old priest. About half of the slit was taken up with layers of feathers and grass and whatever else it was that sparrows wove into their nests. However, through the top half of the slit Father Reutner could see the crown of an oil palm tree. Elaeis guineensis. It was one that he had planted himself from a nut one day during his very first month at Saint Mary’s.
