If only Patrice had listened to Elijah and not delivered that inappropriate address during the independence celebrations, insulting the Belgians and particularly the Belgian king. If Patrice had followed Elijah’s advice and not involved the Russians, would things have turned out differently? Would the history of the Congo have gone in a different direction?
Futile questions. One might as well say, what if Kings Leopold II, Albert I and II and Boudewijn had treated the people of the Congo well, instead of humiliating and abusing them? What if they had invested in the country, instead of taking from it as much as they could? Would the country’s history have been different then? So much wealth. Copper, uranium, barium, diamonds and who knows what else? So much potential. But it was exactly that wealth under the crust of the earth that awakened greed and megalomania. Followed closely by cruelty and inhumanity. Especially in a country where violence was the rule, rather than the exception.
Ammie gave a deep sigh. According to Lieve, she was becoming very forgetful. She remembered very little from the last few years. Goodness knows, she would give anything to be able to forget the entire past.
Actually she hated lucid days like today.
Erevu
Antwerp
Erevu read yesterday’s message again.
From: Jela
To: Erevu
The opportunity arose. Dove was unable to find objects at address. Nor any luxury articles. She seems not to have the goods. She did not sell them.
Managed to get information. Still going through rest of computer but e-fax was sent to Belgian consulate—motivation for expediting visa. E-mail: Booking for September 17 on KLM flight to Schiphol confirmed.
Over to you.
He had answered immediately.
From: Erevu
To: Jela
Good work. Sorry it could not be wrapped up sooner, but nothing worthwhile comes easily.
Dove should fly here 16th latest. We’ll take over from there.
Just now Jela gave him the good news.
From: Jela
To: Erevu
Dove’s flight arranged. Lands 15th. Schiphol.
The answer came quickly. 100%. Will make arrangements.
It was twelve years since his mother had confessed on her deathbed—told him at last where he came from. Gave him what was his due. Told him there was much more.
A year after his mother’s death, he had persuaded his uncle to give him more information. Names. Places.
Two years ago, when his cousin had drunk too much beer at his uncle’s funeral, he had learned about the nkísi, the two woodcarvings occupied by his ancestral spirits and imbued with special powers.
Since then, he had been trying to follow the tracks that had been covered by time and cunning.
Through guesswork and a lot of determination, Jela had found out the Colijns’ last known address in Pretoria. The old woman and her eldest daughter had long since gone back to Belgium, and the old man had died. Evidently the youngest daughter had remained behind on her own but they hadn’t been able to track her down. And now, this link to her.
For the past two years he had been hot on her heels. He had gone to Belgium for four months at a time. He had found the old woman and her daughter in Ghent. Pretending to work for the telephone service, he had attached a device to their landline that relayed the numbers they dialed to his cellphone.
Now it was almost time. Nothing was going to stand in his way. Nothing and no one. The nkísi had to be found.
The timing was excellent. Their holy calling was bleeding to death without the power of the ancestors. And the nkisi were the vessels of that power.
Five
Sunday, September 9
Caz
Overberg
At last Catya had calmed down after her fierce battle with the poor policeman who had rescued her from the tree. She had eaten her first proper meal and stopped running helter-skelter at the least sound or movement. Caz understood how the cat felt. She was a bit skittish herself.
Thank goodness for Ellen. Caz literally fell into her char’s arms when Ellen responded immediately to her call and offered to sleep over on Friday and Saturday.
Not only was Ellen kind; she was also a miracle worker. Alone Caz would not have managed. As it turned out, it took them all of Saturday to get the house back in order. But it was Ellen’s empathy that meant most and helped Caz get over the worst of the shock.
Now she was alone again, and still living in fear. That, and the rude invasion of her sanctum, annoyed her most. TVs and computers could be replaced and one could probably get used to a Victorian front door without its original panes, but she doubted that the dread and the feeling that her sanctuary had been contaminated would ever vanish completely.
She was too bloody scared to water her garden. To sit on the veranda. To open a window. She jumped at every sound, every movement she saw from the corner of her eye. She didn’t go anywhere without the damned panic button in her hand.
How dare a frigging tikkop who was no use to society change her life like that? What was more, the bastard had got away with it. And she was one of the lucky ones. She had only been robbed, and thankfully she hadn’t even been home.
She couldn’t begin to imagine the fear of people who had had much worse experiences. People whose loved ones had been murdered, people who had been the victims of armed robbery, hijacking, rape. Farm attacks.
The windowpanes were replaced late on Friday afternoon. That same evening, the security people tested the alarm system and declared it in perfect order. But not before telling her off for not phoning them at once.
“And it’s no good if you don’t switch it on, ma’am,” she was told. “Even when you’re at home, understand?”
She thought of asking whether she was to be confined to a single room at a time for the rest of her life, taking every movement into account, calculating where the sensors would pick her up. She said nothing however. It would serve no purpose. In South Africa you had to accept that criminals controlled the lives of good citizens, and made their lives a misery. That you had a better chance of being raped than getting a promotion at work.
She could only hope the insurance people wouldn’t refuse to pay out on the grounds that she had apparently failed to switch on the alarm. It would be the cherry on the icing on top of the terrifying cake.
One consolation was that the computer guy in Stanford knew what he was about. She would fetch the new laptop she had ordered the next day and he would help set it up. It would save her a trip to Somerset West. She’d just have to take the knock and pay with her credit card, though she hated running up debt. Hopefully the insurance company would pay out before she left.
But the pragmatic implications were the least of her problems. The solitude she had always cherished here on the smallholding had now become a hazard. She could go out to places where she’d be among people, but she still had to return. Sleep alone.
She would have to learn to face her fears, get used to moving around fully alert and the panic button around her neck like a talisman.
A dog. She should probably get one again. Though she had sworn never again. Having Rufus put down in April, after he had been her constant companion for twelve years, had broken her heart. For weeks she had moved around in a daze, her emotions fluctuating between self-reproach and grief.
Maybe she would find the courage when she returned from Belgium. If she ever returned to this lousy country.
Luc
Leuven
Ammie’s apartment was on the ground floor in a quiet street facing a park. The woman who opened for him was short and round with a ruddy complexion. Her hair was streaked with gray and had clearly recently been styled. The dress looked new and the shoes were serviceable, but shiny. Around her neck was an ornamental cross. Evidently Ammie was not dependent on st
ate care. It was hardly likely that employees of the state would be allowed to openly display religious symbols.
Instead of letting him in, she stepped outside and shut the door behind her.
“Professor DeReu? I’m so glad you kept your word. I know you must be very busy.” She hesitated. “Miss Ammie doesn’t know you’re coming. I didn’t know how to tell her. I was afraid it would send her into a tizz. She had a lucid day on Friday but yesterday the veil came down again.”
Couldn’t she have let him know before he came all this way? “In that case, maybe it would be better to try again another time, Mrs. Luykens.” Hypocrite. If he walked away now, he wasn’t coming back.
On his way over he had convinced himself he wasn’t trying to bond with Ammie again. He merely wanted to hear what had made her leave her husband and stepson high and dry. He was not sure he was ready to hear the answer, though. What if it was something dreadful that threw an entirely new light on his youth and his parents?
“Oh no, Professor. Please don’t go without seeing her. I’m hoping she will be brought back to reality when she realizes who you are.” Lieve wrung her hands.
“Fine,” he agreed after a short pause. He was here anyway and if she wasn’t of sound mind, little harm would be done. At least he could soothe his conscience if she passed away, tell himself that he had tried. “I can’t stay long.”
“The pastries are ready, I’ll just make the coffee.”
He sighed. Evidently coffee and eats were non-negotiable.
Lieve took a deep breath and exhaled audibly before she turned and pushed open the door. Her nervousness rubbed off on him.
A door in the hallway led to a living room. Lieve stopped in the doorway.
“Miss Ammie,” she said with a cheeriness that sounded slightly fake.
“Who was it, Lieve? Who bothers us on the holy Sabbath? People with leaflets again?”
Over Lieve’s head he saw Ammie sitting in a chair by the window. Her snow-white hair was fixed in a loose bun. She was still an attractive woman, though the years had left their merciless mark on her face.
“No, you have a visitor, Miss Ammie.” Lieve stood aside for him to pass.
Luc entered the living room and crossed over to where she sat. He bent down and held out his hand.
“Good day, Mother Ammie. It’s Luc. Jacq’s son. Do you remember me?”
Ammie’s eyes widened, swept across his face. “Jacq!” She pushed his hand away and tried to hoist herself to her feet by pushing on the armrests of the chair, but sank back down again.
She stared at Luc, bewildered. “I was at your funeral!” Her eyes searched for Lieve. “Lieve, hold up your cross!” She grabbed her walking stick and swung it in Luc’s direction.
Luc ducked but the stick struck him on the thigh.
“Miss Ammie! It’s Luc. Not the professor.” Lieve grabbed the walking stick and wrapped her hand around Ammie’s. “I mean, he’s also a professor, but it’s not Jacq. It’s his son, Luc.”
Ammie let go of the walking stick and sank back in the chair. “Luc?”
Luc nodded. “It’s me, yes.”
“But you’re an old man?”
He grinned. “Fifty-two, Mother Ammie.”
“A professor?”
“Of history. Like Father.” Except that Father had stuck to medieval history and I didn’t, he thought, but he doubted whether Ammie would be interested. His own students were barely interested in his field of study, never mind anyone else. Colonialism and postcolonialism aren’t the most exciting subjects in the field of history.
“A professor as well. Who would have thought. Jacq would have been proud of you.”
Hardly. He’d never quite lived up to Jacq’s expectations. “I’m glad you think so, Mother.”
Luc cursed his inability to make small talk. To talk, period. He guessed he could ask how she was, but it was evident that Ammie was losing the battle against age.
He could ask about her life in Doel, but what could she tell him? That she had been cruelly forced to sell her house before it was expropriated? He knew that. She was one of many.
Never mind Doel. The only thing he actually wanted to know was what had happened between her and his father. But even he, socially inept as he was, realized that he needed a preamble.
“Shall we have coffee?” Lieve asked when the silence lingered.
“That would be nice, thank you, Mrs. Luykens.” Just let it be over.
“Please, call me Lieve. Miss Ammie likes café latte. What do you prefer? I could make a macchiato?”
He had never been able to fathom the Starbucks coffee religion. With a little, a lot or without milk. Cappuccino or espresso. That was all he understood. He preferred coffee with lots of milk; it was all he ever ordered. “Koffie verkeerd is fine. Thanks.”
“Two café lattes then.”
Koffie verkeerd is latte? Now he knew too.
“What are you doing here, Luc?” Ammie asked bluntly. “You’re not here to visit an old woman out of pure kindness. With or without koffie verkeerd.”
Luc was caught off guard.
“Miss Ammie ...” Lieve tried to step in.
“Go make the coffee, Lieve. The man is a professor, I’m sure he can speak for himself.” Ammie suddenly looked surprisingly lucid for someone supposedly living behind the veil of the past.
With an apologetic glance at Luc, Lieve obeyed.
“I want to know why you divorced my father and just left us. Never contacted me again,” he blurted out tactlessly.
For a moment Ammie gazed at him in silence. “I didn’t just leave you. Your father told me to move out and never contact him or you again.”
He was caught on the wrong foot again. “But why? What was it about?” He was probably being rude, but after his first undiplomatic question, the damage had been done. “I know he loved you.”
Ammie’s expression was neutral. “He found out that we weren’t legally married.”
Luc stared at her, astounded. “I beg your pardon? After a marriage of eighteen years?”
“I’ve just told you, there was no marriage. The ceremony wasn’t legal. We’re not divorced either, because we were never married. The woman he loved didn’t exist.” She turned her face to the window. “There was a lot about me he didn’t know. He had no idea that I was never sure whether my first husband was alive or dead and that I was possibly a bigamist.”
Hell and damnation! His father, who always kept to the straight and narrow, would definitely not have been in a forgiving mood after a bombshell like that. His world was black or white, with no gray in between. Right or wrong, without any nuances. He would have been shocked to the very depth of his Catholic soul. But had it been enough grounds to make him react the way he did? Enough to shatter him like that? Perhaps. Because to Jacq DeReu two things were more important than anything else: his good name and the respect he enjoyed. Moreover, his belief in law, order and social structure was without compromise.
“How did he find out?”
Where she had been quick to reply a moment before, she now took her time. “Does it really matter?” she asked at last.
Probably not, he had to admit.
“I presume you confirmed afterwards that your first husband was no longer alive? Or divorced him? You got married again, after all.”
“Tobias and I weren’t officially married. We just pledged ourselves to each other during a personal ceremony. Unlike with Jacq, I was honest with him. More or less.”
“Why didn’t you? I mean make sure, or get divorced?”
“I didn’t dare leave a trace anywhere. I couldn’t risk my first husband finding me. Nor his daughter.” Her gaze went past him as if she had stepped into a different world. “I cursed her. No one will ever believe her. Even if she finds out.”
“Cursed?”
>
“The day she was born.”
“You were present at your husband’s daughter’s birth? Cursed her?” How did that make sense? An illegitimate daughter?
Lieve stopped on the threshold. She looked as taken aback as he felt.
“Of course I was present. Go away now. I’m tired. Lieve ...” Something happened in her eyes, as if a membrane was pulled over them. “Who is this man, Lieve? Did he bring leaflets? How many times must I tell you ...” Her eyes closed.
March 1961
Ammie
Katanga
“You are better now. You must go.” There was no expression on Tabia’s face.
Ammie was quiet for a long time. Where would she go? “Give me a few more weeks, Tabia. Please. To make plans. To try to get help. How will I get away on my own?”
“There is no time. It will just get harder. You can’t have the baby here.”
“Baby?” Shock surged through her. Yet she knew at once that Tabia was right. The signs were unmistakable. Perhaps she had just refused to acknowledge them.
“Your other child, he is safe at kimisionari. He is protected. This one is not good here. This one is msichana. We mean nothing.”
“How do you know it’s a girl?” Ammie felt dazed. Tabia’s words hardly made sense.
“I know. Maybe you are hurt inside. When they kicked you. You need daktari, not mganguzi. The ancestral spirits do not work for white people. My brother’s child will take you tomorrow. It's a long walk. To the Angolan border. The road to Northern Rhodesia is not safe.”
Tabia got up from her haunches, disappeared into the hut and came out with a canvas rucksack in her hands. Ammie recognized it. It was César’s.
She took out a dress that belonged to Ammie. It was creased, but clean. “My brother’s child go to your home.”
Ammie’s eyes widened. “César?”
“He is not there. Brother’s child watched the house a long time. Nobody there. The dog is hiding. Or left country. Or he is dead. Gendarme looking for him.”
Tabia had been trailing César the day he murdered Elijah. She had watched the whole horrifying tableau on the savanna from behind a clump of bushes. She saw the other vehicles speed away when César started kicking Ammie. Only one helper stayed and joined in. And she saw them leave Ammie for dead and drive away.
Sacrificed Page 6
