Valiant Gentlemen

by Sabina Murray

  Ward asks his concubine (it’s an odd word, but what else is she?) what her name is and she supplies it. Although he does not forget that she has a name, he doesn’t use it—just directs her in small ways—as if calling her by name would be a violation. He will just say, please come here, and, turn this way. He will feel her flanks tense when he places his warm hands on this cool flesh; he will feel her force herself to relax. This is her role. Ward will let her play this role. Could it be that by not forcing her into the fullness of personality that she will be able to return to herself as she was before meeting him—as if her identity is something she could slip out of, like a coat? And maybe Ward too can do this, can slip out of himself at Yambuya, can put his golden self on a mental hook in the corner of his mind, his wide-eyed, adventurer self—Mayala Mbemba!—the linguister, hunter, and hero. This other Ward, a slippery creature, a man who assembles his moral code around his desires, he will leave in Yambuya with whatever pitiless appetites he wishes to sate.

  And who’s to know?

  IV

  Along the Congo

  February 1888

  The Florida has been wrestled back from Stanley and provided with an engine. Casement sits on her deck, waiting for his friend Edward Glave to be finished with the daily figures. Glave is the best sort of man. He speaks the local languages well and has assembled his servants from slaves that he himself has emancipated from Arabs and local chiefs. Glave is an unrivaled hunter and stalking prey with him is almost comically predictable; he can find the heart of an animal from any distance, from any angle. There’s the animal. There’s Glave. Pull the trigger. Animal collapses. Done.

  He is also good at keeping order and inspires trust in everyone: delusional supervisors, pious missionaries, committed savages. And Casement. Glave appears from his office vigorously rubbing where his forehead meets his hair with the heel of his hand. He cracks his knuckles and looks out to the water where, in the distance, a hippo sinks from view. He gives a look of a surprise to see Casement sitting there.

  “Casement, I thought you would have abandoned me. Sorry I took so long.”

  “Where would I have gone?”

  “World’s a big place.” Glave flings his arm out, embracing the Congo and, apparently, everything else. “I have whiskey.”

  “I wouldn’t want to take—”

  “Nonsense,” says Glave. He waves at one of his servants calling for some glasses, fried plantains, the location of the whiskey. Glave rubs his hands together and stands at the railing. He looks out again, perhaps making sure he isn’t under attack from Arab raiders, then turns facing Casement in a fit of earnest inquiry. “What have you done now?” Casement’s run afoul of the Sanford Expedition and will soon be unemployed.

  “What have I done?” Casement smiles.

  “That’s what the whiskey is for, I suppose, to rob you of your characteristic reserve.”

  “I didn’t like the conditions of the job at Luebo.”

  “What will you do?”

  “What have I done? What will I do?”

  “These are good questions,” says Glave. The man arrives with the whiskey and Glave thanks him, asks after the plantains, learns that he hadn’t stated how many he wanted, and Glave says to fry them all, keep half for the crew and bring the rest. He sees Casement and seems again surprised that he is there. “Well?”

  “Don’t suppose there’s any work here?”

  “Work, yes,” says Glave. “Money, no.”

  “Well then, I’m going elephant hunting.”

  “And what about money?”

  “Really, Glave, you sound like my mother.” Although Casement really means his sister, or his cousin, since his mother has been dead a long time.

  “Would you listen to her?”

  “No, actually,” says Casement, “I wouldn’t. And I’m fine. I have savings from these last several months. If you haven’t noticed, there’s not much to purchase around here.”

  Glave pushes his chair around, finding a decent angle—although according to what criteria, who can say?—and sinks lightly into it. He gives Casement another searching glance, and then sets about putting good portions of whiskey in the tumblers. “I don’t understand. You’re the best man the Sanford Expedition has working the river.”

  “People don’t like me,” says Casement.

  “That’s not true.”

  “You like me. The locals like me.” His sister likes him. And his cousin Gertrude. Ward likes him, or did. “I’ve run afoul of Taunt and Weber. I am reportedly too lenient with the natives. The only reason I am still here is because I’m necessary. Regional languages. Good at keeping the porters healthy. Things get from one place to the other.”

  “And you’re honest.”

  “I don’t know if that’s one of the good things, Glave. Not around here. People think you’re watching them.”

  “I’m honest,” says Glave. “I wonder if people don’t like me.”

  “Regardless, they wouldn’t do anything about it. You’re too good a shot.”

  Casement was tired of working for the Sanford Expedition. He was tired of the chain of command. He couldn’t sit through another tedious meeting with a company officer, still in his costume of European fat, rivulets of sweat pooling at his neckline, blinking in haste as if it warded off ignorance, or illness, or loneliness, while Casement stood performing his role against this creature on the other side of the desk as the two raced towards the inevitable last line, which was never his, “You’ll do it that way because that is what you have been ordered to do.”

  Glave says, “You have acquired a reputation for lacking respect for authority.”

  “That might be true,” says Casement, “although it all depends on your definition of ‘authority.’”

  The plantains arrive carried by Mabruki, a child who is usually carrying Glave’s rifle and shot bag.

  “Ask him how old he is,” says Glave, “in English.”

  “Mabruki, how old are you?” says Casement.

  “Ten years old,” Mabruki barks back.

  “That’s right,” says Casement. Mabruki, pleased, walks off.

  “If we actually knew how old he was. Ten seems about right,” says Glave. “He’s an orphan. A little English might put him in good stead with the missionaries for when I leave.”

  “Are you thinking of going home?”

  “England? No. I’ve become curious about the Yukon.”

  “America?”

  “Why not?”

  After plantains, it’s goat stew, and there’s chili in it, which is not always available and is always appreciated. The whiskey holds. Both Glave and Casement drink slowly, valuing conversation. Glave asks after Casement’s poetry and Casement laughs him off.

  “Everyone else is drawing or writing books,” he says. “And I don’t have time for a book, and I can’t draw.”

  Conversation takes a moment’s rest. The thrum of insects sounds in high and then higher pitches. Water makes an even wash against the side of the boat. In the black river, some large creature dips from the surface with a full, low splash.

  “You know people on the Relief Expedition,” says Glave.

  “Of course I know Ward. And there’s Jephson, who bought a position and is traveling with Stanley. I don’t know Jephson well. He’s a cousin on my mother’s side.”

  “Ward’s in the Rear Guard, isn’t he?”

  “Last I heard,” says Casement. He feels an anxious heat spreading. “Is there any news?”

  “News? Not really. Stanley is out there trying to relieve Emin Pasha of his ivory. Tippo Tib is trying to relieve Stanley of his weapons. What porters Tib has provided are slaves. Anything new there?”

  “No. And what of the Rear Guard?”

  “Well, I hope Ward’s all right. But there are rumors flying around. I pick them up from t
he Arabs passing through. The porters are dying off—everything from smallpox to starvation. Floggings of one hundred and fifty lashes or more are commonplace. Barttelot, who’s still in charge, has lost his mind. One of the officers has a fascination with cannibalism and purchased a girl to see her eaten.”

  “I wonder who that is.”

  “So do I, but the Arabs think all the English look the same, so who’s to know?” Glave packs a pipe with tobacco. “And, apparently, all the men have harems. Rumor has it that one girl was purchased with a pair of top boots.”

  Casement considers. He’ll go over this later. He’ll go over this alone. “Having a harem,” he says—as a way of sending a representation of a thought, although it is not a representation of his thought—“is hardly remarkable.”

  The water is always coursing by, but on a river this size, the current seems more of time than of rain and run-off. The Congo wants to head to eternity rather than the seashore. And sometimes, here in Africa, Casement feels more on the underside of things rather than just in a different country on the same crust of earth. It’s as if he’s the altered version of his other self—his British self back in County Antrim—enacting different rituals and, somewhere, beneath a different sun, the different him is reading different lines, involved in different actions. One Casement hunts elephants through jungle. One Casement watches osprey circle salt air.

  He has spent much time wandering the Antrim countryside. The sun felt good. You turned your face to it and the gentle heat was a benediction. That water song, like the rattle of oak leaves, the sighing string-note of doves on the wing, the splash of sunlight through summer foliage—all of it was in a gentle register. These were notes played with the right hand—a tinkling of ivory. This was, of course, back when ivory was just that: piano keys, combs in women’s hair, chess pieces moved one at a time and with exacting precision. Here, the river moves with great power, as if the engine of God starts in the heart of Africa—as if the surging power of all that man cannot conquer, cannot understand, is here. The Congo is swift and deadly. Submerged stones tear entire sheets of steel from hulls, sinking boats. Rocks reveal themselves to be crocodiles. Like a massive engine belt, the river spins her circuit, revolving, churning, splitting green from green. Off the river, the sky obscures her face behind a veil of jungle growth.

  The tree-filtered light creates a constant gloaming. Casement can hear the wash of pulse in his ears. He travels with two natives, Bongo Nsanda, who is Glave’s friend and carries a spear, and Bongo Nsanda’s friend, Mbwiki, who carries a rifle. Some ivory will supplement Casement’s income, which, as Glave knew, needs attention. Now that they have left the proximity of the villages, the elephant pits will be spiked. People fall into them constantly and time, which allows hunters to forget a pit’s location, also aids in its disguise. One must watch for cords of native twine strung low along the paths. This native device, the likongo, uses the cord to precariously hold in place a spiked beam, normally thirty feet above the ground. The wire, if tripped, releases the beam and this can fell an elephant and, therefore, anything else it manages to strike. Casement imagines his Irish self announce to a crowd of curious lyceum attendees. He hears his voice: “The likongo is a curious native device . . .” He hears the hush of surprise from the audience, the rustle of skirts and gossip, men coughing into curled fists, shamed by their ignorance of such things.

  Bongo Nsanda raises his hand, fingers splayed. Casement stops, barely daring to breathe. Both Bongo Nsanda and Mbwiki listen, their eyebrows knitted in concentration, but Bongo’s face soon opens wide—unconcerned.

  “I thought I heard something,” Bongo Nsanda says.

  “I heard you hearing something,” Mbwiki says.

  They laugh.

  “Is there any game here, except for us?” says Casement.

  All laugh. Earlier, they had seen the imprint of a leopard’s paw in the damp earth. And what is “game” after all, but the acknowledgement of an inferiority, as if we had lined up all creatures and decided, “You, gazelle, prey,” and “You, lion, predator”? Bongo Nsanda shoulders his spear and walks lightly, the shaft end and spear tip bouncing. Would this same dividing intellect look upon Casement’s rifle, Bongo Nsanda’s spear, and say, “You, white man, predator,” and “You, black man, prey”?

  Bongo Nsanda stops again. His head shoots forward and then he raises his eyebrows in an affirmative. Casement lifts his rifle, although he’s not sure where he’ll aim. And then he hears a distant crash of greenery—an elephant and moving fast. Trees are crushed, vines ripped stringing masses of undergrowth, pulling the tops of trees downward. One never knows what one will see with an elephant. Why is it running? If it is scared, it runs. If it is angry, it runs. The snap and boom of breaking trees is coming near and Casement tenses. He has seen a man gored through a leg and tossed into the air. Or was that one of Ward’s pictures? Representation and reality, the artifice and the basis, his colluding, corroding memories. And then the sun floods as the elephant tears the curtain of jungle from the brilliant sky and Casement is momentarily blinded as if he is seeing not a beast but the face of God itself.

  Reverend Slade is sitting across the desk and Casement sits wondering what else creates a divide between the two. Casement needs employment and perhaps fanning the flames of his faith is not a bad thing. It’s not as if he’s made a conscious decision against God.

  “I did not know you were a religious man,” says Slade.

  “I think that’s because I was working for the Sanford Expedition. Which is the other church in the Congo.”

  “That and the Belgian Society. Still. Working for a mission, Mister Casement, seems to be quite a shift for you.”

  “Reverend Slade, you have the same needs as everyone else here. You need things transported. You need buildings. You need someone who can communicate with the locals. It’s not that big of a change.”

  “But you are not religious.”

  “I am.”

  “You are.”

  “Recently.”

  “A convert?”

  “Not so much a conversion as a . . . reviving.” Why not try religion? It’s not as if he is in favor of slavery, and he has worked with slavers. As for the Sanford Expedition, does he really believe that elephants need to be slaughtered for ivory? Is that something to believe in? “This is a country that forces convictions on a man,” says Casement. He’s being honest. “Your outfit—”

  “The Baptist Church.”

  “The Baptist Church,” he’ll accept the correction, “cares for the well­being of the natives. I have seen men tied to the ground and flogged within an inch of their lives. I have seen the men who do such things, when their arm grows tired, hand the whip to some Zanzibari to finish the job. These same men go back home, kiss their wives, and tell of the frightening sorcerer and the horror of cannibals. This place will send you to hell or bring you to God.” Casement sits calmly. He crosses his legs. He smiles at Slade.

  “So it has brought you to God?”

  Casement nods carefully. “I don’t claim to be a favorite of our Lord,” since God has a peculiar means of trying him, “but in the end he is a solace to me and I do think our native friends might benefit from some hope that there is a better place to which we all are headed. And just the fact that you seem to think the Bolongos and Bakongos and Manyema—and the rest—are eligible for salvation makes me like you.”

  “And my outfit?”

  Casement gives a gentle nod.

  “I’d have to pay you what we pay our missionaries,” says Slade, “and they only accept the wage because it’s some sort of performance of great sacrifice.”

  “We’re poor, therefore God loves us?”

  “That would not be inaccurate.”

  “Well, I’ll be poor because it’s all you’re willing to pay me.”

  “It’s all I have,” says Slade.

 
And just like that, Casement is working for the mission.

  Now he’s bringing natives to God. In a way, so is King Leopold.

  Just last month he was surveying for the railroad. Imagine. A railroad from Banana on the coast up along the river to Stanley Pool, where the Congo becomes navigable. How many men will die in the construction of this railroad? To this point, there still has been no path created that will accommodate a donkey, so how will they create this? Casement wishes they would stick to porters because the need for porters might inspire the Belgians and the English and the French to do something about the Arab slavers. The Europeans prefer not to use slaves, but instead of abandoning all these villagers to the brutality of the Arabs under pretense of righteousness, why not protect their freedom and give them work? Casement has been successful with porters. He has. These people execute their tasks and if one is just about the payment and the distribution of the goods, relations with the natives remain friendly. Why build a railroad? And how will they do it without enslaving villagers, scaring them senseless, whipping them? And now the practice of kidnapping wives and children has been introduced. If you want your wives and children back, you will have to work for us—that’s the Belgians, right there. How is that not slavery? And this is King Leopold’s work, who managed to have all the European powers hand the Congo to him, tied in a bow, because he had formed the Aborigines Protection Society.

  So the missionaries don’t always make sense to him. Casement’s not sure why the sight of a black man wearing a suit—the buttons, the wool, the high-collared white shirt—in the searing heat brings such joy to the hearts of people like Slade. If it were up to Casement, he’d be happy to wander around without a shirt in his bare feet. The missionaries want to create God’s kingdom on earth and seem to have decided that God’s kingdom is in Suffolk—or some such place—and so the Congo will be Suffolked, one skirt-wearing woman at a time.