I liked Kitoko as soon as I saw her. She was about twenty-five, skinny, no great beauty, but with a huge, friendly smile. Like Mafuta, she spoke only Lingala and French, but she didn’t need me to draw pictures to know that I craved a bathroom, which, luckily, they had. I was relieved to learn they had a kerosene stove—no cooking with garbage here! The place was also equipped with kerosene lamps (and plenty of kerosene smell) for when the electricity went off, which was often.
Kitoko was cooking moambé—chicken and rice with a peanut- and palm-oil sauce that filled the tiny kitchen with a wonderful fragrance. Glen showed me his collection of cassettes—half rock ‘n’ roll, half current Zairean music—and invited me to make a choice. I always hate it when people do this, so I just grabbed some cassettes at random and handed them over.
As we listened to music and waited for the moambé, Glen explained that he’d met Kitoko while flying and doing other odd jobs for the Republic of Mabili. Turns out she is the daughter of Luk’s wife’s cousin—a relation I have to admit is way beyond my comprehension. She worked downtown for an import-export firm and also served as Luk’s fixer, arranger, and eyes and ears in Kinshasa.
Art was right about one thing. I’d slept all the way to Zurich and most of the way to Zaire, and by nine o’clock Kinshasa time I was just perking up for an all-night poker game or something. However, after downing a couple of giant bottles of the local beer with dinner and after, I started to mellow out, so that by one in the morning I was ready for a nap. Eight hours later we breakfasted on bananas from their stash and Oreo cookies from mine, and Kitoko gave each of us a hug good-bye. Mafuta was waiting for us downstairs with the car, and we made it back to the airport without getting mugged, stoned, shot at, pounced on, bombed, shelled, garroted, gassed, pitched into, caught in a cross fire, sniped at, blockaded, napalmed, or trip-wired. No one even hit us with a water balloon.
All the same, overnight someone had siphoned off the gas from the helicopter, parked in plain view at the airport under guard the whole time by an airport mechanic specially bribed for that purpose. Just business as usual as far as Glen was concerned, and he had us under way after an hour’s delay.
Once we were in the air and stabilized, Glen remarked that I was now in a position to tell my friends back home that I’d met a real, live spy.
At first I thought he was referring to himself, but that didn’t make any sense. After thinking about it for a second, I said, “Oh—you mean Mafuta.”
“No, not Mafuta. He’s just muscle. I’m talking about Kitoko. Most spies that operate in real life are nothing like the ones you read about in spy novels.”
Lukambo Owana
The general route to Bolamba was simple enough: Follow the Zaire River northeast for five hundred miles, turn left at the Mongala, and after fifty miles there you are. The Zaire part would be easy enough—it’s a huge river, as big and muddy as the Mississippi. Turning left at the Mongala would be easy too—if it were marked by some nice monument like the World Trade Center. It wasn’t my problem to worry about. Obviously Glen had some way of knowing how to pick the Mongala out of all the other tributaries that wander off and disappear into the rain forest every few miles.
Even if we could have taken a direct beeline route, I’m glad we didn’t, because then I would have missed seeing one of the coolest things in the world, a sort of floating village that travels back and forth between Kinshasa and Kisingani. From what I could make out, it’s a steamboat pushing a collection of barges so totally loaded with trade goods and people that you can’t actually see the barges at all. There were live crocodiles, chickens, and goats, an overstuffed sofa and chairs being transported upriver (and meanwhile providing seating for a dozen people), boxes, bundles, crates, bales of clothes, a rusty Jeep, a stack of coffins, an upright piano, people everywhere, babies and children everywhere, women pounding something I later learned was manioc in big enamel tubs, people cooking, people trading, people gambling, people scrambling from barge to barge. Every barge has a bar, and music and dancing are nonstop day and night. Traders from interior villages paddle down tributaries to reach the river and meet up with the steamer—it can take them days. Along the way, folks paddle out and tie up to the barges to sell stuff like bananas, fish, monkeys, and parrots and buy stuff like enamel pots and bowls, razor blades, and cloth to take back to their villages. Glen said it almost is a village, with kids being born and growing up seldom setting foot off this steamer barge-train that shuttles perpetually between Kinshasa and Kisingani. I wished Ishmael could see it, it was such a great demonstration of the idea that there is no one right way for people to live—certainly not to everyone’s taste, but I have to admit it had a powerful attraction for me.
It wasn’t until we were actually racketing along half a mile above the Zaire that I understood what Glen had been telling me about night flight over the rain forest without loran or weather forecasts. The forest is just solid from horizon to horizon, and it grows right up to the river’s edge. Caught in a thunderstorm and forced to land, you’d have only two choices—to consign yourself to the forest canopy or go straight into the river itself. The first would be almost certain death and the second not too much more promising for survival. In daylight the problem could be solved easily enough by landing in the clearing of any riverside village; at night those clearings would be all but invisible.
We were in the air about three hours, I guess, when we turned north to follow the Mongala. On this tributary we saw a trio of dugouts being poled downriver toward the Zaire, where they would hook up to the floating village when it came abreast of the Mongala early the next morning. Glen said they were carrying yams and dried manioc, which he explained is a root that is pounded into flour and cooked into a sort of tropical equivalent of potato dumplings.
After another half an hour we were in sight of Bolamba. At first I thought Glen was putting me on, and that the real Bolamba was probably another thirty or forty miles upriver. But no, he was perfectly serious. This crummy little village, about the size of a baseball field, was the capital of the Republic of Mabili. I know it sounds stupid, but I felt insulted. Like, if I’d known this was all there was to it, I would have said, “Hey, look, don’t send me over to Bolamba, send Bolamba over to me.”
Sensing my outrage, Glen explained that it had been a much larger town during the colonial era and in spite of its unimpressive appearance was still a major trading center for the entire region. We landed in the school playground—and dozens of kids and grown-ups showed up to see who or what Glen was bringing in. Among them was a youngster who stepped forward to introduce himself as Lobi, the minister’s assistant, and to invite me to follow him to the official residence a block away. He grabbed my suitcase and my backpack before I could get it on and said, “Is this all you brought?”
I admitted it was, and we got under way. He asked politely, in heavily accented English, if I’d had a pleasant flight and if my stay in Kinshasa was “satisfactory.” I assured him I had and it was, and that was it, so far as conversation went.
The official residence was a collection of buildings known as the Compound, left over from colonial days—very pleasant looking from the outside, with nothing but a bronze plaque at the gate to indicate its governmental function. The building at the front actually looked like a less well-kept version of the Zairean embassy in Washington. We went in and Lobi nodded to someone at the front desk, took me up to the second floor, showed me the location of a bathroom, and sat me down on a bench.
“The minister knows you’re here,” he said, “and will come for you soon. Meanwhile I’ll take your things to your room. Is that all right?”
I said that was fine, and he nipped off down the hall. Ten minutes later he was back, looking surprised to see me still sitting there.
“Hasn’t the minister come for you?” he asked, rather unnecessarily, I thought.
I told him he hadn’t.
He said he’d see what was keeping him and disappeared through a d
oor down the hall. After about three minutes he stuck his head out into the hall and beckoned me over.
“He was on the phone,” Lobi said, “but he’s ready for you now.”
He led me through an outer office—like, designed for a receptionist but presently empty of receptionists—and into the inner sanctum, where a man who was unmistakably Luk Owona unfolded himself from his chair and rose to give me a formal bow. “Welcome to Bolamba, Miss Gerchak,” he said, in a not-very-welcoming tone, and invited me to sit down. Without showing much interest, he went through the usual rigmarole of hoping I’d had a pleasant flight and a satisfactory stay in Kinshasa, then got right down to business.
“I understand,” he said, peering at me disdainfully through his thick glasses, “that you are looking for some help in finding a home for a lowland gorilla.”
Sitting there listening to him go through all this, I finally realized how far off base Art Owens was in his estimate of this situation. I might have worked it out from the fact that Luk didn’t meet my plane in Kinshasa (and probably never had any intention of doing so). I might have worked it out from the fact that he didn’t walk a block down the street to meet the helicopter—or stick his head out into the hallway or even move out from behind his desk to greet me. But I had certainly worked it out by now.
Contrary to everything Art took for granted, his brother Luk was not our friend. I didn’t know if he was an enemy, but he was certainly not an ally.
In about three seconds flat, I was thoroughly pissed off—partly at Art for being so blind and partly at Luk for being whatever he was being. I totally lost my temper, and when that happens, I’m capable of doing very stupid things. What I did next may look spunky and courageous to some people, but I don’t have any such illusions. It was stupidity, plain and simple.
I said I understood that he and his brother had different fathers.
He was clearly disconcerted by my introducing this personal element into our conversation, but he admitted it was true.
I said, “Art’s father must have taught him manners.”
Luk sat absolutely still for about twenty seconds as he tried to get the right of this remark, then, when he did, his black face turned ashen, like dead coals.
Instantly I wished I was dead. Instantly I wished I was back home, or at least back on that helicopter. Instantly I imagined being taken away and shot. He glared at me as if he too was imagining me being taken away and shot. I glared back—at least I know that much. If you run, that’s when people attack.
“How dare you,” he finally said coldly, “come into my office and insult me.”
“How dare you,” I said icily, “be so inhospitable to a friend of your brother who has traveled eight thousand miles to ask a favor.”
Was I really inspired to the extent that I used the word inhospitable? I won’t swear to it, but I was certainly inspired.
He stared at me and I stared back. Soon the feeling grew in me that our positions had reversed. It was now he who was gradually beginning to wish he was dead.
He dropped his eyes, and I knew that, incredibly, I’d won. I may not have made a friend for life, but I’d pushed him harder than he’d pushed me.
We sat there. Clearly he didn’t know what to do, and certainly I didn’t have the vaguest idea what to do. I had just delivered a mortal insult to a man powerful enough to have me killed—and forced him to swallow it. And neither one of us knew how to proceed from there.
Finally, desperately, I said, “Your brother asked me to tell you that he misses you—and Africa.” This was a total fabrication, of course. He had never expressed such a sentiment or anything remotely like it.
“That,” Luk said, “is hard to believe.”
I shrugged as if to say, “What can one do with someone so stupid?”
“He is well?”
“He’s doing well,” I replied ambiguously. His question and my reply meant that outright war had been averted.
After another longish pause, he said, “Please accept my apology … and do me the favor of explaining to me what this business with the gorilla is all about.” I thought it was neatly done, to put the apology together with the request this way. It spared him the additional humiliation of having to sit there and receive my forgiveness.
All the same, it was clear from his tone that he assumed “this business with the gorilla” was camouflage for some more important matter. This forced me to shift slightly from the ground I’d come to Bolamba to occupy. If I told Luk the truth, that Art’s interest was nothing more than resettling a gorilla, Luk might well shrug it off as unworthy of his attention. That was certainly the impression I was receiving. In order to avoid this outcome, I turned everything around and explained that it was I who was interested in resettling the gorilla. In other words, instead of making myself out to be a tool Art was using to achieve his purpose, I made Art out to be a tool I was using to achieve my purpose. It was a bold and potentially disastrous move, since I had no more than five seconds to wonder if it made any sense at all.
It made a kind of sense to Luk that I couldn’t have predicted if I’d had six months to wonder about it. I saw it leap into his eyes. I saw it flash across the surface of his whole body as every molecule in his body realigned itself to this new reality. Art, he saw in this electrifying instant, had gone crazy. Specifically, Art had gone crazy over me. In a split second I had been transformed in Luk’s imagination from a grubby, travel-worn kid into an alluring nymphet.
There was nothing I could do about this—and nothing I particularly wanted to do about it. It clarified everything in Luk’s mind. I had a gorilla (God knows how or why) that I wanted to resettle in the rain forest of central west Africa. Art was powerless to resist helping me get what I wanted. Art couldn’t come to Zaire in person to make the arrangement, so here I was. All this tremendous fuss and expense was not for the sake of a gorilla—that would be absurd. It was for the sake of me. This was something Luk could understand … so I let him understand it.
After my meeting with Luk, I was shown to my room, which was nothing to write home about either way. I hung up the dress I’d be wearing the next day to meet Mokonzi Nkemi and tried to brush out some of the more obvious wrinkles. It was a pretty dressy little thing, a type I’m not big on, but I was told (again and again) that jeans and T-shirt would be hideously mal à propos for meeting the president of the republic. There was a bathroom down the hall with a tub almost deep enough to swim in, and I took a wonderful long bath, followed by a nap.
Since there were not that many English speakers on the premises, Just Glen had appointed himself my mentor for the evening. There would be a vast buffet dinner in what passed for a ballroom, but I was relieved to hear this wasn’t in my honor. On the contrary, it was just Nkemi’s style to provide a nightly blowout for what was basically the whole government. He and Luk were seldom on hand, as it was felt that the presence of the big bosses might put a damper on the lower orders. Tonight (as on most nights) thirty or forty people were expected to show up—workers and their families, from infants to great-grandparents.
Glen warned me that, like it or not, my entrance would create a sensation, and it did, especially among the kids and young adults. A solid wall of questioners formed around me, and Glen told me I might as well satisfy their curiosity as a group or they’d pursue me individually all night, asking the same questions over and over.
Naturally they wanted to know why I was there, and I explained that I was there to see the president. Naturally they next wanted to know what I was seeing him about. After translating the question, Glen advised me to say I couldn’t discuss it, and I took the advice. They wanted to know exactly where I was from and what it was like there, with all the details. They wanted to know what I thought of Zairean food and Zairean music and Zairean roads and Zairean weather. They wanted to know what could be seen on American television, and I got stuck trying to explain what a situation comedy is. I asked them what could be seen on Zairean television, and
that got a big laugh. Glen explained that Mobutu was crazy about professional wrestling, so that’s what’s mainly seen on television. Some of the older questioners wanted to know if I approved of U.S. policies in places like Libya and Israel and Iran. When I said I was keeping an open mind and told Glen to explain that I was joking, he said they wouldn’t get it, and he was right, they didn’t. I made up for it by being (for a visitor) unusually knowledgeable about the history of the Republic of Mabili, which obviously pleased them very much.
After an hour or so Glen called a halt so we could get something to eat. He took me around the tables, where there looked to be about fifty different dishes—most of it being stuff even Glen couldn’t identify. He picked out five or six things that he recognized and thought I’d like, then made me take dabs of another five or six, just to try—nothing weird or terribly exotic, so I didn’t get to find out if fried termites really taste like popcorn. All of it was very tasty. I mean it was unusual to encounter food that actually has a taste, as opposed to most American food, which has no taste of its own, so you make it taste like something else—salt or pepper or soy sauce or mustard or lemon juice. One of the things I took on Glen’s recommendation turned out to be smoked monkey, which I guess he thought would freak me out. It was nothing to rave about, but it didn’t freak me out.
Mokonzi Nkemi
The purpose of my interview with Luk Owona on Wednesday afternoon had been clear enough. In the fiction we were trying to sell here, it was his role to “find out what I wanted” so he could prepare Mokonzi Nkemi for our meeting Thursday morning. As far as Nkemi would know, my request had not the remotest connection to Art Owens, who was persona non grata and not to be mentioned by anyone. The meeting with Nkemi was supposed to be very simple. I’d walk in, exchange a few pleasantries, and explain what I wanted. Nkemi would say, sure, why not, then I’d say thanks, good-bye, and be on my way home. It made perfect sense to everyone that it would happen this way.