Norton had become animated. He was standing up straight and gesturing energetically. He looked like someone explaining to a friend what good times he had devoted to his hobby.
‘You asked me before about the woman. In Pandora in the Congo there’s a princess. I talked it over with Marcus, because I wasn’t sure what to do. On one hand we needed a female protagonist, in order to follow Flag’s outline. But incorporating a love story seemed overly melodramatic. I hesitated, as you say I am not a novelist. The only thing that we wanted was an alibi that would acquit Marcus. I didn’t know what to do. And finally I said to Garvey, “Look, Marcus, have a girl come out of the mine. If Thomson likes her, let her live. And if you see that he doesn’t like her, have the Craver brothers kill her, for whatever reason. Improvise.” And he said to me, “Oh, don’t worry, Mr Norton. I’ve got this poor devil’s number. The secret is telling him what he wants to hear. Every day, when we start our session, I just encourage him a little bit so that he himself tells me where the story should go. I tell him what he wants to hear, and that’s it.”’
‘And that’s it,’ I said.
Norton stopped dead. As incredible as it may seem, he still hadn’t realised that I could find his words offensive. His body suddenly jerked, aware that he was acting cruelly. But he couldn’t help a timid smile, like someone remembering some insignificant, pleasant detail. He said, ‘Garvey often rebelled. One day I showed up with a pile of pages that you had written and I said to him, “Garvey, there’s an inconsistency here. In all these pages, and there are many, you never mention any cannibals’ pot. I want one of those pots, round and big enough to boil up two men in there.” Garvey replied that in Africa he had never seen one of those pots. That at the camp they used quite large aluminium military pots, but nothing as big as what I was describing. “I don’t care,” I said. “In Doctor Flag’s book there is a pot, do me the bloody favour of telling Thomson there was one at the camp.” But Garvey refused, had one of his tantrums, like a spoiled child. He said that they would never have been able to transport such an enormous oval pot, that they were already very loaded down. He said that in our story Africans barely appeared. And that in the Congo he hadn’t met any African cannibals. So, why on earth would they cook at the camp with a bloody cannibal pot? “How can you write an African novel without a cannibal pot?” I had to threaten him. “Either tell Thomson about a big pot that you had at the camp or you can find yourself another barrister!”’
I didn’t respond. He felt obliged to add something else. His gaze turned me into a transparent object. ‘You didn’t know it, but we were a good team. For example: one of the literary problems was the character of Pepe. In Pandora in the Congo Simba the lion returned and saved the main character in extremis. Fine, so I had Pepe return to the clearing to rescue Marcus. But as you probably remember, in Pandora in the Congo Simba ends up in London Zoo. For obvious reasons we couldn’t allow Pepe to end up in England. I didn’t know what to do. Marcus took responsibility of finding an end for the character. Torturing and killing him, of course.’
Norton paused. Since I remained mute, he commented, ‘Garvey was a cruel creature. We can put hyenas in cages, but we can never domesticate them. I often butted heads with him. He wasted three entire sessions, for example, talking exclusively about his supposed sexual exploits with the female protagonist. I shouted at him,’ and here Norton pointed into thin air as if Marcus was still in front of him, ‘“Behave yourself, Garvey! Don’t stray from the script! Doctor Flag ties up his protagonists on separate stakes to avoid the temptations of the flesh. And look what you’re doing!” But he laughed, and he said, “Oh, shut up, you don’t know how boring it is in here. Let me have a little fun with that poor devil Thomson.”’
‘Before, you said that barristers and novelists complement each other well,’ I cut him off suddenly. ‘There is a difference. Novelists’ lies don’t hurt anyone.’
Norton opened his arms and counter-attacked, ‘But, don’t you understand, for God’s sake? That turns your book into a real literary work. Until now you were just a chronicler from a distance, a journalist of secondary sources. When it’s consecrated as a work of fiction it will be a novel in every sense of the word.’
Here I wanted to respond, but every time I tried to say anything I stopped myself just as the words were about to cross my lips. Norton respected my silences. Since I was still half drunk and my lungs had collapsed, it became more and more evident that I wasn’t going to manage to express myself with the plenitude the situation demanded. Norton smiled. His speciality was leaving his dialectical opponents speechless. I had to struggle to hold myself up, even seated in the armchair. How could I talk? But Norton was wrong. Finally I was able to concentrate the entire matter into three words. And, like a child that spits out a poorly chewed mouthful of food about to choke him, I vomited out, ‘You tricked me.’
Norton’s face contracted like a sponge. Why did he place so much importance on my accusations? I don’t really know. Maybe it ruined the resolution of the Garvey case for him, which was masterful, a perfect legal conspiracy. Or maybe he didn’t want to hear any voice that reminded him of the ultimate essence of his profession.
He sat down again. Beneath that apparent calm hid a barely contained displeasure. I had truly offended him. I had never noticed, but he was a man with very long extremities. His arms extended beyond the arms of the chair. The tips of his fingers grabbed the velvet. In that position he looked like a pharaoh about to pronounce a sentence. Finally he spoke.
‘Love stories, as enchanting as they may be, always create problems, a multitude of problems. On the other hand, when a love story is perfect it has one problem, just one: that it’s a lie.’
Possibly Norton wanted me to interrupt him, that we talk about something, anything else. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to spare him the sentence.
‘You are an intelligent, talented and well brought-up person,’ he continued. ‘Now answer a question frankly, just one. Tell me something, Mr Thomson: did you not doubt Garvey’s credibility at any moment? Did you really believe that entire story of underground races and ladies the colour of cheese with hot skin?’ Norton made, for the last time, the pyramid of fingers that ended at his nose. ‘Did you believe Garvey’s story because you wanted to save him or because you had to write a novel? The heroine: did you love her because of what we can read about her in the book? Or is she so seductive in the book because you wanted to love a woman like her?’
I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to answer. I can only say that more than sixty years have passed and I still haven’t been able to answer. The answer to that question is, in fact, this book.
I wanted to leave. I had trouble keeping my balance, as I got up from the armchair, like a boxer that doesn’t want to admit he’s been knocked out. Norton also stood up. He reverted to the kind host that accompanies guests to the door. And he said, with his hands in his pockets, relaxed and calm, ‘Tommy, can I ask you one last thing?’
I didn’t have the energy to refuse. I could barely locate the door, which spun in front of me like a top.
‘In Pandora in the Congo there is a concept that I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘I never dared to ask you about it because I was afraid that you would then make the link between the two stories. Well, I suppose that doesn’t matter now.’ He wrinkled his brows, seriously absorbed, and asked me, ‘What on earth is the Spore Theory?’
I don’t recall any more of that dreadful conversation. I can’t even remember how I got out of the house. I only remember that as I crossed the threshold it occurred to me to think out loud, ‘Can you imagine the laws of the universe having been written like this? The declarations of independence, King’s wills, our holy books. Imagine they were all the work of a ghost writer, and that behind the ghost writer lay nothing? Or at most, a writer of bad outlines.’
Norton passed a very long arm over my shoulder. He was trying to be affectionate, but had the mechanical compassion of a doctor adm
inistering chloroform. That arm comforted me and pushed me out of his house.
‘Trust me,’ said Norton, ‘don’t think about things like that.’
Once I was out on the street he added, ‘Everything is a question of style.’ And before he closed the door, ‘Farewell.’
The light of the new day hurt my eyes. I took stock of myself: I was a wreck, dirty, drunk and my lungs ached. My cheeks felt like used sandpaper. My tobacco breath disgusted me. I only thought of her, her, her. Do we stop loving a person when we realise that they are dead? Why should we stop loving them when we realise they were never born?
I stumbled through the streets and they all seemed the same to me. At first it was a distant buzz. Then a shouting framed by drums and trumpets that became clearer and clearer. Without wanting to, attracted by the sound, I approached the source of the music. I arrived at a large avenue. Before I realised it I was immersed in a joyful crowd. The Great War had ended. Everyone was celebrating. The Great War had ended, and the world’s pain had vanished along with it. The crowd trapped me like an octopus. They didn’t let me past.
The people were happy. Norton was happy. Garvey was happy. Everyone was happy. I wanted to go home. What could be lonelier than a sad man in a crowd celebrating victory?
The Congo. A green ocean. And, below the trees, nothing.
Also by Albert Sánchez Piñol
Cold Skin
About the Author
ALBERT SÁNCHEZ PIÑOL was born in Barcelona in 1965 and is an anthropologist and writer. Cold Skin, his first novel, won the Ojo Critico de Narrativa prize on its original publication in Catalan in 2003. Pandora in the Congo is his second book. Together with Cold Skin it will form part of a trilogy.
Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2008 by
Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street,
Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This digital edition first published in 2009 by
Canongate Books Ltd
Originally published in Spain in 2005 as Pandora al Congo by
Edicions La Campana, Barcelona
Copyright © Albert Sánchez Piñol, 2005
Translation copyright © Mara Faye Lethem, 2008
The moral right of the author and the translator has been asserted
This work has been published with a subsidy from the Directorate-General of Books, Archives and Libraries of the Spanish Ministry of Culture
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 84767 576 7
www.meetatthegate.com
Albert Sanchez Pinol, Pandora in the Congo
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