Pandora in the Congo

  ‘But Mr Thomson,’ declared Marcus with a thin voice, ‘I couldn’t shoot William.’

  ‘No? Why not? He was watching you like a hawk?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You were afraid of Richard’s retaliation?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well then?’

  Marcus glanced around, and then he clarified his statement with an extraordinarily kind voice.

  ‘Mr Thomson, I couldn’t shoot him because I’m not a murderer.’

  I was quiet. There are silences and silences. Mine was the guilty kind.

  I was becoming too absorbed in the book. I could recognise the symptoms: excessive sympathy towards Garvey, a shift in the narrative objectivity in favour of his interests. I thought it would do me good to have an injection of divergent opinions to counteract it.

  The main originator of the accusations against Marcus was Roger Casement, the British Consul to the Congo at the time of the events. I had already spoken with the Duke of Craver, and I didn’t see any reason why I shouldn’t pay a visit to Casement.

  At the offices of the diplomatic service they told me which hotel he was staying at. They also told me that he was heading to a new consular destination that very day. I was lucky to have caught him. At the hotel I asked for Mr Casement. The receptionist pointed me to the stairs.

  ‘There he is. He was just leaving the hotel. All this luggage is his and they’re taking it to the port,’ she said, referring to the thirty or forty suitcases scattered on the ground around the reception desk.

  But Casement was very understanding with me. He was so energetic that he instantly struck me as a pleasant man. He was one of those people that as soon as you meet them you think, ‘I would pay to have him as my friend.’

  ‘Marcus Garvey? The murderer of the Craver brothers? Of course I remember him,’ he told me. ‘I can only offer you five minutes. I’m on my way to Montevideo … if the U-boats allow it. Unfortunately, the boat won’t wait for me. And there are no other boats to Uruguay today.’

  He spoke with me right there, at one of the tables in the hotel lobby. His eyebrows were as thick as his beard and he looked as if he had practised ten different sports in his youth.

  ‘Perhaps this will surprise you, but I work for Marcus Garvey’s lawyer,’ I began, deciding to be frank.

  ‘Well, I think you’ve got the wrong man. What do you hope to get out of me?’

  ‘Just the truth. Each day I have fewer doubts about Garvey’s innocence.’

  ‘Have no doubt. Garvey is guilty, guilty as sin.’

  In other circumstances I would have beaten around the bush before getting to the heart of the matter. But as we were pressed for time I said, with a certain vehemence, ‘Mr Casement, I admit that my feelings are not based entirely on rational evidence, but I find it hard to believe that Marcus Garvey killed the Craver brothers.’

  Casement drew his body forward. He touched my knee with two fingers.

  ‘Mr Thomson: there are places where God has written the word “no”. And Marcus Garvey is not innocent. He simply isn’t. No. Perhaps you would like him to be, but he’s not. No, no and no. Have I repeated the word “no” enough times?’

  A young man brought Casement an apple juice. He drank it in one gulp. Then he spoke: ‘The autumn of 1912 was terribly muggy and more tiresome than ever. Nothing happened in Leopoldville, nothing new to inspire the labours of us withered Europeans. And all of a sudden Marcus Garvey appeared. He had returned from the jungle completely alone, without William or Richard Craver. The white community in Leopoldville is very small. It wasn’t hard at all for me to find out what he was doing. He spent his nights in a horrible, seedy bar, drunk and surrounded by Negro prostitutes. When he met someone white willing to listen to him he didn’t wait five minutes before he was declaring what he had done: he was boasting about having killed two Englishmen in cold blood, as boastful Irishmen often do at the pub.’

  That same day, at the boarding house, Mr MacMahon had allied himself with Marie Antoinette in one of her usual tricks, and I murmured in solidarity, ‘Those damn Irish …’

  ‘Marcus wasn’t Irish,’ said Casement, interrupting me. ‘I am.’

  He smiled, I blushed. He continued.

  ‘I couldn’t ask the Belgian authorities to arrest him or even to interrogate him. I couldn’t do anything. They were just rumours, the voice of a drunk in a bar. But, as I said, the white community in Leopoldville is very small. Everybody knows everything. Finally they told me the complete story: according to how Garvey himself had explained it, he had killed them for two diamonds. So we already had the crime and the motive.’

  ‘So,’ I replied, ‘you weren’t a direct witness to the events.’

  Casement smiled.

  ‘Allow me to take it one step at a time. If it were true, if Marcus had committed the crime, he would try to leave the country with his haul. And here his real problems would begin. The Congo is like a vice: going there is much easier than leaving. The traffic of precious stones and metals is severely punished. And you can’t imagine how scrupulous the Belgian authorities are.’

  ‘Were the diamonds that big? Would it be that difficult to hide them in a pocket or secret compartment and elude the customs officers?’

  ‘I suppose that sooner or later he would have tried it. But I offered him a less risky alternative.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I made friends with him. Or better put: I provoked a friendship. Sadly, going anywhere near that bar, and Marcus, sullied my reputation with a stain larger than the map of Australia.’ Casement laughed and made a gesture of resignation. ‘But what could I do? Setting a trap always has its risks. One day I mentioned to him casually what a diplomatic pouch is. Meaning that the customs officers never go through the luggage of the consular staff.’

  ‘What you are telling me is that Marcus confessed to his crime the day he asked you to send the diamonds to England in your diplomatic pouch.’

  ‘Exactly. He had trouble making up his mind. He didn’t trust me. But I gave him enough rope and he hanged himself.’

  ‘I can imagine how it all went. Marcus and the diamonds travelled to Europe in separate compartments. One day Marcus showed up at some office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, asking for an envelope in his name and he was arrested immediately.’

  ‘I sent the diamonds with an explanatory note, along with a sworn declaration made by some of the Europeans that had heard Marcus’s story. Whoever claimed the package would be the guilty party. He did and he was arrested. The last news I had of the case was that Garvey had confessed and was awaiting trial. Are there any new developments?’

  ‘Allow me one last question.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Casement, crossing his hands on top of his belly.

  ‘Do you remember what colour Marcus Garvey’s eyes are?’

  Saints are possessed by the Holy Spirit in the same way that Casement was possessed by common sense. But for a few brief moments his conviction wavered. It made me think of a dog that had received a smack on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper. He spoke very slowly.

  ‘Yes, his eyes. Don’t think I don’t understand you, Mr Thomson, I understand you better than you think. They weren’t the eyes of a murderer.’ He made a small pause. ‘But a man consists of more than his eyes. And even though it’s hard to believe, those two diamonds were bigger and shinier than Marcus’s eyes.’

  He recovered himself. His friendly fingers returned to my knee, and as he gave it a few little taps, he declared, ‘Believe me, Mr Thomson, your efforts deserve a better cause.’

  He patted my knee a little more, as if it were a cat’s head. I didn’t move it or get upset, and he left for Uruguay, U-boats permitting.

  * * *

  The next pair of Tectons that came out of the anthill launched themselves against the door with just as much force as the others had. But they found a surprise: the door opened just as they tried to knock it down. It fell like a d
rawbridge, and behind it appeared Marcus flanked by William and Richard. The two brothers shot the two Tectons point-blank. William shot his victim in the chest. The victim of Richard’s rifle went flying, propelled by the powerful ammunition.

  ‘Now!’ shouted William.

  They crossed the few feet that separated the door of the fence from the anthill. Marcus carried the ladder. William and Richard moved as if they were attacking with bayonets, with their rifles in front of them. Once they got to the anthill Marcus lit the dynamite’s fuse. The day before, Marcus had only thrown a single stick, now he carried a whole bundle in his hand. Simultaneously, the face of a Tecton without a helmet appeared through the hole. He had chosen a bad moment to leave the mine. William shot him immediately, the rifle’s barrel a hand’s span from that face. The bullet entered the upper part of one cheek and made an eye go flying. The ocular sphere took off, upwards, until it reached the exact height of Marcus’s nose. For an instant that ball of gelatine stayed there, hanging in the void, looking at a flabbergasted Marcus. And he had the sensation that, all of a sudden, the world had decided to turn with a cruel slowness. Meanwhile, William and Richard shot into the hole, without any concrete target. The fuse was burning down. But Marcus’s fighting spirit had gone. He held a bundle of dynamite between his fingers the same way he might have held a cigarette.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ bellowed William. ‘Throw the dynamite! Throw it or it’ll blow us sky high!’

  He didn’t really throw them. Marcus got rid of the sticks of dynamite like someone shaking off filth stuck to their hand. William and Richard threw themselves to the ground. Marcus didn’t. He looked at the black hole of the anthill, which now seemed bottomless. He had the feeling that the eye and the lit bundle were rational beings. The eye fell through a dark shaft, and the sticks followed it lovingly, with all the love that dynamite can feel for an eye. Marcus had a twisted, lucid thought, and he said to himself: she is the eye, I am the stick of dynamite.

  ‘Come here, idiot!’

  It was Richard. With one hand he grabbed hold of one of Marcus’s ankles and pulled him to the ground, away from the mouth of the mine. Just in time. Down below, the dynamite blew up with a deafening, ugly sound. William, Richard and Marcus lay flattened on the ground, but the underground explosion made the three bodies rise slightly.

  A few seconds later the anthill looked like the mouth of a giant coughing smokestack. A thick black cloud poured out and it was as if they were emptying sacks of soot above it.

  ‘Now, now!’ said Marcus, who had recovered his fierce spirit and was lowering the ladder. ‘Cover me!’

  ‘There’s still too much smoke,’ said Richard, his face blackened. ‘You won’t see them!’

  ‘They won’t see me either,’ replied Marcus.

  He went down with all the force his little legs allowed him. William and Richard’s mission consisted of shooting those Tectons that tried to get near him. And they had to do it from a difficult position, since they were getting all the smoke still spitting out of the mine directly in the face. But they had few targets. In that enclosed space the expansive wave had reverberated against the wall, amplifying itself. The floor of the mine was a heap of writhing bodies and toppled beams. Most of the bodies were still moving, and Marcus thought of the worms in a fisherman’s pot. The dying Tectons moaned, and their moans were very similar to horses neighing. The ones that were most burned gave off a horrible smell of vinegar. A whiff of that stench of detonated flesh entered his nostrils. He couldn’t take it. He even wasted a few precious seconds covering his mouth and nose with a handkerchief, like a highway man.

  The mine was filled with a dense screen of smoke. The explosion had shook the red dirt walls, so that the black cloud caused by the dynamite had pomegranate tones. In addition, millions of tiny yellow dots like flying fleas floated in the air: powdered gold. And that wasn’t all: from the knees down the surface shone with thousands of green sparks. He didn’t understand it until he saw the stiff hands of some of the dead Tectons, which still held up tools in the shape of large pears. They were transparent bags, like sewn animal intestines. They were filled with extraordinarily luminescent green worms. ‘The Tectons’ lanterns,’ he said to himself. Many of those lanterns had burst from the explosions, and had freed hordes of green worms that now slid free.

  Marcus moved amongst those vivid colours, trying to contain his disgust. The contact with the dead Tectons frightened him. He moved forward by jumping, almost like a frog, but he couldn’t avoid stepping on soft appendages, chests and stomachs. His feet touched flesh and armour, which crunched like glass underneath him. He kept sinking down and he finally fell on top of a heap of dead bodies. He dragged himself along the ground until he found Pepe, the remains of Pepe. All that was left of his friend was a torso and a disfigured head, a body that had all traces of human dignity torn from it. Marcus whimpered and raised his eyes to heaven in a gesture of piety. Up above, William and Richard continued to shoot every which way. The bullets whistled, grazing his ears with the sound of bumblebees. But no, at the moment, Marcus didn’t fear for his life. William wouldn’t kill him as long as he was useful. And he still needed him.

  He arrived at the entrance to the tunnel that the Tectons had used to get into the mine. Marcus carried three bound sticks of dynamite and a long fuse. While he lit it he leaned against the wall, with the mouth of the tunnel above him. That way he could keep an eye on any wounded Tecton that still had the pluck to drag himself over towards him. It wasn’t necessary, really. In that mine there were only two sorts of Tectons: dead ones and dying ones, and the Craver brothers’ bullets were making sure to hasten that process.

  The only thing that he hadn’t foreseen, absurdly, was that they could attack him from the tunnel itself, where supposedly the surviving Tectons were hiding. Marcus didn’t see the hand that came out of the hole and clamped his wrist. The Tecton stuck out half of his body, and with his free fist he beat furiously on Marcus’s skull, once, twice, three times. They rolled around on the floor of the mine. Marcus lost the dynamite. Those three bound cylindrical units giving off sparks didn’t mean anything to the Tecton.

  ‘Help!’ shouted Marcus. ‘Help me!’ ‘If we shoot we could hit you!’ said Richard from the entrance to the anthill. ‘You’re too close together. Get him off you!’

  * * *

  And now, a regrettable digression. We were all three at the prison, in the same cell as always. Marcus Garvey, me and Sergeant Long Back, sitting behind the bars. I remember that I had given up taking notes. I had my elbows firmly glued to the table, my two hands creating blinkers on either side of my eyes, to focus better on the story. I could see the landscape that Marcus described with hallucinogenic clarity. I saw the dying Tectons at the bottom of the mine, twisting like gutted octopi; I saw the torsos of William and Richard at the upper part of the anthill, shouting so that their vocal cords were about to burst. I could hear their voices, which reached Marcus’s ear with the distortions a funnel would make. I could smell the corrupt oxygen of the mine, with some sort of metallic, yellowish dust floating in the air and the green sparks of the Tecton lanterns. I could feel the weight of the attacker with his dirty, silvery stone armour. I felt the touch of the Tecton, I hated his fists, fists that were the frontline of attack for an entire race. And, above all, I could feel Marcus’s anguish as if it were my own, struggling hopelessly in the depths of a bewitched mine in the Congo. Marcus spoke and I was flooded with all those images. And what happened?

  Well, at that moment in the story, at that precise moment, Tommy Thomson, your humble servant, the lily-livered Tommy Thomson, couldn’t think of anything better to do than faint. And that’s where the session ended.

  SEVENTEEN

  IHAD BECOME USED to working at night. Each evening I worked later and later. On one occasion, at half twelve in the morning, I went to the kitchen to make myself some tea. In the boarding house hallway it was very quiet. You could only hear, b
ehind the doors, the muffled cough of some boarder. And, of course, Mr MacMahon’s bowels.

  I didn’t find any tea in the kitchen. And I didn’t dare take even a pinch from Mrs Pinkerton’s tin. That crow in skirts was capable of mobilising all of Scotland Yard to find the thief. Mr MacMahon didn’t have any tea either, just a giant carafe where he kept the poteen he got drunk on at the end of each month. After a few moments’ hesitation I took the carafe to my room.

  I don’t know what was in that liquid, but before I realised it I was very drunk. And, the truth is I wasn’t sorry. Since I hadn’t had the intention of getting drunk it was like enjoying a surprise party. Instead of continuing to write I decided to read what I had done up to that night. Actually, four-fifths of the novel was already written. ‘Relax Tommy, just try to read the book like any other reader would,’ I said to myself.

  I was a fair reader, I think, even though MacMahon’s alcohol ran through my veins. It wasn’t all that bad, it wasn’t bad at all for a lad who was just barely twenty years old. But what I wanted to know was if I had a superior piece of work before me. And I didn’t. Not even close. How disappointing.

  The more I read the more defeated I felt. Had I written that? The world came down around me. Where was Amgam’s love? Where was the Tecton threat? Those pages were a landscape filled with fog; I, who knew them well, could guess at the outlines. But for an anonymous reader they would have been worthless.

  I went to sleep with a knot in my stomach, as if I had swallowed a rock. The room spun. From the alcohol and from the disillusionment. Perhaps MacMahon’s illicit whisky was one of those magic potions that made its victim smaller. Yes, I felt very small. The typewriter seemed larger than a piano, I was less than a molecule. What could I do? I drank more.

  I had stretched out on the bed and was staring at the ceiling like a dead man. I said to myself: well then, so much anguish and so much discomfort, so much effort invested, and all for a mediocrity like that? One of the things that makes youth so painful is the belief that much struggling is enough to get what you want. It’s not true. If it were, the world would belong to the just.