Pandora in the Congo

  ‘Richard!’ shouted William, backing up. ‘What are you doing?’

  Even after hearing his own name it took him a second to recognise them. Then he collapsed. He sat leaning on the fence, his mouth open. Marcus had never seen a man sweat so much. His face shone as if it had been dipped in oil, his fringe wet, his khaki shirt absolutely soaked.

  William and Marcus also sat down.

  ‘Killing Tectons is tiring,’ said William.

  And the first giggles appeared. They had fought off the Tectons. But Marcus, without meaning to, rained on their parade. He asked, ‘And what now?’

  At this point in the story I had a little incident with Marcus. I want to mention it. He didn’t follow the narrative thread. I insisted that he tell me the events, calmly and in order, and he just complained. I can’t say he planned to defy me. It was some sort of passionate and spontaneous response. I kept asking him to stick to the story, and give details. Otherwise, we couldn’t move forward. He didn’t listen to me. His emotions overcame him, he was unable to do what I asked of him. He loathed William and Richard, especially William. He shook his chains, he was about to scream. But all that verbal incontinence was suddenly silenced.

  Sergeant Long Back was standing behind Marcus. He had placed his cold truncheon on one shoulder, brushing his neck. Just that. But Marcus shut up, trembling. All the fussing had dissipated.

  ‘Garvey,’ ordered Long Back, ‘answer what you’re asked.’

  I hadn’t wanted that intervention. Long Back made me an accomplice to his truncheon. But I needed Marcus to clarify some things for me, and I had no authority over Long Back. I said, ‘Marcus, you still haven’t told me about the Tecton weapons.’

  ‘What weapons?’ said Marcus swallowing saliva, glancing sidelong at Long Back.

  ‘You haven’t mentioned what type of weapons the Tectons carried,’ I said, examining my notes. ‘You’ve told me about the stone helmets and the armour that protected their entire bodies. But I can’t describe the attack against the fence without mentioning the Tectons’ weapons.’

  Long Back’s club moved to under Marcus’s chin. The prisoner looked at us, at the truncheon and at me, with his eyes very wide.

  ‘The Tectons only used clubs,’ he said.

  And Long Back, incredibly, smiled. Well, the ends of his lips rose as if they were manipulated by a screwdriver. But in someone like Long Back that meant a hearty guffaw. I suppose that somewhere deep down he had a certain sporting nature. He went back to his chair and sat with the truncheon on his knees. It was a club covered with rubber. I wondered if that rubber had also come from the Congo.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ said Marcus, relieved. ‘The Tectons didn’t have shotguns or pistols, or any special weapons.’

  And after a very long pause he whispered, ‘They were the weapons.’

  FIFTEEN

  THE TECTONS DIDN’T COME back for quite a while. They attacked with a new, but not very skilful, strategy in which a couple would appear from the anthill and, running in zigzag, try to reach the fence’s door with the intention of smashing it down. They were suicide missions. The Tectons were shot down before they even touched the door.

  They attacked sporadically. Sometimes one pair followed the other immediately, and other times they waited up to half an hour. The moon had already risen above the clearing and the Tectons, resolute, didn’t give up. Now a solemn music came out of the depths of the mine. It was the coordinated sound of many horns.

  ‘Do you hear that?’ shouted Richard from his loophole. ‘It reminds me of my regiment’s anthem!’

  And he laughed at his own sarcasm. William did too. Two more Tectons came out of the anthill. William killed them with his repeating Winchester before Richard even had time to aim.

  ‘William!’ he objected. ‘The next two are for me.’

  Marcus had barely slept all night and he asked William for permission to rest. The danger seemed to have diminished and the Cravers were taking the incursions sportingly, so William let him have what he wanted.

  Marcus took the chance to sneak closer to Amgam’s tent. He found her tightly tied to the central pole of the tent. This time William had imprisoned her with the bearers’ stocks. Had he discovered her previous escapes? They embraced. The only thing that Marcus could say was, ‘Beloved, beloved, beloved …’

  Her profusion of kisses and hugs, on the other hand, were of a different nature. She was glad that Marcus was alive, but at the same time she was a driven woman. She was trying to tell him something. He didn’t realise, until Amgam grabbed him with both hands by the shirtfront. Amgam looked like a waiter throwing out a drunk. Marcus understood what she was saying to him: get out of here!

  ‘You don’t understand.’ Marcus tried to calm her down. ‘You don’t know what is going on out there. It’s the first vertical war in history. But the Cravers are winning.’

  No, he was the one who didn’t understand. Amgam tried to explain, drawing things on the sand with her sixth finger. But Marcus, clearly, didn’t know the Tecton alphabet.

  Outside the Tectons kept the skirmish alive. And the music. To the underground sound of horns there was now an added sound of stone against stone made by some sort of drums. All of the music, actually, sounded as if it was created by an orchestra of stone instruments. Through the clearing boomed a cold, military sound. William and Richard could also be heard encouraging each other. They even laughed, fired up by each good shot. Marcus caressed Amgam’s cheeks with both hands.

  ‘My dear, I only wanted you to know that I’m alive. I don’t know how this will end. But remember that last night, even though it doesn’t seem true, we were worse off.’

  For a few seconds Marcus was unable to take his hands off Amgam’s cheeks. He was even scared that his palms would get stuck to her. He had never felt them so hot.

  Anyway, he had to leave the tent. He didn’t even want to imagine William’s reaction if he found them in there, together and embracing. As he was leaving she protested. She still hadn’t made him understand what she wanted to tell him. Marcus was exhausted. Those twenty-four hours of tension had eaten away at his nerves. He needed to rest. He went into his tent and before his body hit the cot he was already asleep.

  He was awoken by a hand shaking his shoulder. He ignored it, still half-asleep, until someone whispered his name in his ear. He would have recognised that voice anywhere.

  ‘Pepe? Pepe!’

  Pepe had to cover his mouth. ‘Don’t shout. The Cravers might hear you.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ said Marcus, astonished. ‘Why did you come back?’

  ‘Why? For you, of course! I’ve been spying on you from the jungle for a while. I saw you come in, and when I was sure that the Cravers weren’t paying attention, I slipped in here. They’re keeping themselves entertained over there.’

  Marcus’s eyes were still red and puffy. He rubbed his face with his hands, while Pepe said, ‘A miracle, Marcus, a miracle has happened to me!’

  ‘A miracle …’ repeated Marcus.

  ‘Yes!’ exclaimed Pepe. ‘The men forgave me, that is the miracle. I thought they would kill me, of course. After I freed them we ran together one whole day and one night. And the next day I told them that if they wanted to kill me they should go ahead, my rifle wouldn’t protect me. They didn’t want to hurt me. They told me I had helped to take their lives from them, but I had also given them their lives back. So we were even.’

  ‘That’s good news, Pepe,’ said Marcus, still half-asleep.

  The Negro noticed the lack of feeling in his words and shook him by the shoulders. ‘Don’t you understand? That goes for you too! I asked them, and they told me they wouldn’t do anything to you. The men know full well that the only evil souls in the clearing are the white ones, whether they come from above ground or below. You can escape!’ said Pepe, pulling on his arm. ‘Let’s go!’

  ‘Now you are the one who doesn’t understand,’ said Marcus, more alert and refusing
to be pulled. ‘I won’t go anywhere without her. And she can’t go anywhere.’

  Pepe didn’t say anything. From inside the tent they could make out the difference between the Cravers’ weapons. William’s rifle was heard more often. Richard’s was louder and more powerful.

  ‘Well then, stay in the Congo!’ said Pepe finally. ‘It’s the only place where no one will do anything to you two. Live in the forest. Build yourselves a cabin, hidden but close to some village. When you need it, the people won’t refuse you a bit of food, a kind word, or some help. Come on, hurry up!’

  Yes, why not? Marcus felt euphoria spreading through his chest like a liquid. Just twenty-four hours ago everything seemed lost. And now he had the chance to win it all. Marcus reciprocated by hugging Pepe. He was a very lucky man. Life had brought him to the most ominous place, to a hole at the ends of the earth, and it was there that he had found Amgam and Pepe.

  Now it was Marcus that was anxious to run away. Outside, for some reason, the Cravers had intensified the shooting. He asked Pepe to help him fill a haversack with equipment that would be useful for life in the wild. Their four hands packed tools and medicine quickly, and then Marcus said, ‘Quickly, to William’s tent. We have to get Amgam out of there.’

  Marcus and Pepe left the tent crawling along on their elbows. They only had to cross the short distance to William’s tent without the Cravers seeing them. Marcus only had eyes for the canvas of that tent. But behind him he heard Pepe let loose with an African expression. He looked behind him and realised there were Tectons everywhere.

  It wasn’t exactly a mass invasion. The Tectons ran alone or in pairs, avoiding the Cravers’ rifles more than confronting them, without any apparent objective. William was more angry at his brother than at the Tectons.

  ‘I leave you alone for one minute and you get distracted!’ he said as he shot every which way. ‘Instead of ten, a hundred could have come over!’

  Marcus didn’t have long to think about it: a Tecton jumped on him. Marcus made a mousy little squeal and defended himself by beating on him with his haversack. Pepe wasn’t as lucky. The Negro was the target of two very tall muscular Tectons. My God, they were huge, those Tectons! Between the two of them they grabbed him like a river trout, they weren’t afraid he could hurt them, just that he might slip through their fingers. With a desperate hand Pepe tore off one of the Tectons’ helmets. He couldn’t do anything else. When the Tectons had him well in hand they ran towards the fence. One had him by the neck and the other by the feet, carrying him in a horizontal position that impeded any resistance. Marcus no longer had any reason to hide and he shouted to the Cravers, pointing to the fugitives, ‘Stop them!’

  William eliminated the last few Tectons with a revolver in each hand. Richard was more focused on the inside of the fence, in case there were more invaders coming up. Neither one of them understood what Marcus was shouting about. And the two Tectons moved very quickly. Before they had time to realise one of the Tectons had already opened the floodgate. William killed him immediately, which didn’t stop the second Tecton from jumping into the anthill. And taking Pepe with him.

  ‘Don’t let him get away!’ shouted Marcus to William.

  But Richard closed the door. The two brothers looked around them; all the Tectons that had managed to get over the fence were dead.

  ‘That was Pepe!’ Marcus got angry, moving his fists up and down. ‘Pepe!’

  ‘Pepe?’ asked William, surprised. ‘And what was he doing here, the filthy runaway?’

  Marcus put his hands on his head. He fell to his knees. Pepe was inside the mine, the Tectons’ prisoner!

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Richard, thinking aloud.

  He examined one of the corpses, poking it with the barrel of his rifle. The Tecton’s armour wasn’t bullet-proof. With the butt of his rifle he banged on a helmet pierced by a bullet as if it were a cricket ball. He was disconcerted by the strategy they had chosen, sending up such a small but determined group.

  ‘Ten Tectons can do nothing against two rifles,’ he reflected. ‘At this point they should know that. What did they want, then?’

  ‘Prisoners, maybe,’ suggested William.

  From the depths of the mine came a howl.

  ‘Oh God!’ shouted Marcus. ‘It’s Pepe!’

  The Tectons wanted them to hear him. Marcus covered his ears, but the screams went through the flesh of his hands. He didn’t want to imagine the instruments of torture that could extract those sounds from a human being.

  Suddenly, an invisible hand covered Pepe’s mouth. And in its place spoke a Tecton voice. They heard it as if it came to them filtered through a stone loudspeaker. A brusque tone, with long pauses between each sentence. The speech stopped and started again.

  Marcus jumped with a start. He put his hands on William’s leather belt.

  ‘What on earth …’ he protested, but Marcus had already taken an iron ring with a bunch of keys hanging from it and was running towards his tent.

  He returned with Amgam, freed from the stocks.

  ‘Translate!’ ordered Marcus. ‘Translate!’

  Amgam didn’t need to be ordered. She listened attentively, and then she expressed herself in Tecton but with gestures added. She pointed to the inside of the mine, then to the wall of trunks and once again to the mine. It was simple blackmail, very easy to understand: if you want us to give you back Pepe, take down the wall.

  There fell a silence that included the Tectons, Pepe and even Amgam. She was the first to react. Before the Cravers opened their mouths she moved close to Marcus. She grabbed his head and rested it against her chest.

  First it was Richard. He let out a repressed gasp and then immediately after an irregular laugh. William joined in. His was a laugh that came from deep inside, dragging with it tar accumulated in his windpipe. One’s laughter fed on the other’s. They laughed and laughed, harder and harder. Rivers of sweat turned Richard’s shirt into a dark stain, but he was so overtaken by laughter that he couldn’t even wipe his forehead. William clapped like an epileptic trying to kill mosquitoes. It was really funny: the Tectons thought they would trade their defences for a Negro’s life!

  Marcus was like a child sobbing into his mother’s chest. Predictably, Pepe’s screams came from the mouth of the anthill again. The only thing the Tectons accomplished was to make the Cravers laugh even harder. None of them was expecting Marcus. He had left Amgam’s breast and now ran with a lit stick of dynamite in his hand.

  ‘No, not the dynamite!’ shouted William. ‘You’ll make the beams collapse and we don’t have miners to raise them again!’

  Marcus had scaled the wall and was already jumping inside. The fuse let off sparks while he declared, ‘I’m sorry, Pepe!’ And he dropped the stick into the anthill.

  I remember that when Marcus Garvey explained this episode to me he was crying. I hadn’t yet seen him cry. He extended his right hand and wiped his reddened eyes.

  ‘Who would have said it, Mr Thomson? That fate would punish this hand, which had killed so many Africans, by making it have to kill the only friend I had in the world.’

  SIXTEEN

  THE CRAVER BROTHERS WERE together, one at the five o’clock loophole and the other at seven. They had been talking about something for hours. Sometimes they shot into the enclosure created by the fence, at the helmets that occasionally appeared from the anthill, but it was clear that they were engrossed in a private conversation. Amgam was once again imprisoned and tied up in William’s tent. Marcus had lost his courage. He sat beside the fire, feeding it now that dusk approached. Pepe was dead and he was a defeated man. He had been about to win it all and in the end he had only managed to lose a friend.

  William took a few steps towards him. With his hand he made a gesture indicating that he come nearer to him.

  ‘Come here,’ ordered William curtly.

  When all three of them were at the fence he said, ‘Richard and I have been evaluating the situation. If we
go on like this, it’s never going to end. We have to switch strategies. This is the idea: tomorrow morning we’ll throw a couple of sticks of dynamite into the mine. You got it started today. It doesn’t matter now, we’ll have to rebuild the interior,’ said William without even mentioning Pepe. ‘The explosions will kill many of them, but it won’t be enough. It’s possible that some of them will survive the dynamite, especially if they hide in some hole. Someone will have to go down there, immediately after, and throw another stick into the tunnel they came into the mine through, in case they’re using it as a hideout. That way we’ll be sure that none of them is still alive.’

  Richard, who was keeping watch on the enclosure created by the fence, shot at something that was invisible to Marcus. Then he added, ‘If one of them survives, even just one, we won’t have won anything. The only possibility we have is that those in the place where they come from understand that the ones they sent here will never return. That way they’ll forget about us.’

  Marcus smiled enigmatically, ‘And who volunteers to go down into the mine?’

  ‘We had thought of drawing straws,’ proposed Richard.

  ‘No need,’ offered Marcus. ‘I’ll go.’

  William and Richard were shocked. Before they could speak, Marcus said the most intelligent thing that had been heard in that clearing.

  ‘I was going to end up doing it anyway. Wasn’t I?’

  ‘I suppose the battles with the Tectons must have given you plenty of chances to get rid of William Craver,’ I said at the end of that session.

  ‘I don’t quite understand,’ he said.

  ‘You were armed. You could have shot down your enemy in the clamour of the shooting.’