Drums Along the Congo Page 9

  “Look at this,” Innocent exclaims, pointing at a poster advertising Michael Jackson’s “Bad” album.

  “The priest gave it to me,” Idrissa says.

  It turns out that some counterfeit merchandise seized in America several months ago was donated to Catholic Charities, which forwarded the goods to its regional office in West Africa. Several crates eventually made the trip upriver to Epena.

  “Want to buy the poster? T-shirt? Pins?… Tapes?…” Idrissa singsongs.

  “I’ll trade you two of these for the soap, okay?” I pull out two packs of cards, each containing a stick of gum and eight pictures of Michael Jackson.

  He opens a foot locker brimming with the same cards.

  I offer the pencils, fishing hooks, and small knives, but he shakes his head and says, “Cash or no soap.”

  CHAPTER 12

  I AWAKEN THE NEXT MORNING with a nasty hangover, remembering only that we toasted Marien Ngouabi endlessly; beyond that, my recollection of the party is as fuzzy as the predawn light. Innocent is snoring next to me on the bed, but I don’t know where we are or how we got here. My clothes reek of whiskey, and there’s a horrid taste in my mouth, as if I’ve licked several ashtrays clean. I force down five aspirins and try to concentrate.

  Our hosts, I discover, are sleeping on the other side of a wattle partition. My gear is here, and everything appears to be in order. There’s a ceramic bowl near Innocent’s pillow, but I’m unsure whether it’s a pee pot or a water urn. Directly overhead, three wasp nests cling to the main rafter; two appear abandoned, but the third is definitely inhabited, and its residents buzz me periodically. The room is about ten feet square and furnished only with the chunk of foam that serves as our mattress. Against the far wall is a doorway covered by a thatch panel.

  I step outside to orient myself. Nothing looks familiar. A half-dozen footpaths radiate out from the house, so I opt for the one that seems to lead to a rising plume of smoke, hoping it’s coming from the stove at the village cafe.

  Along both sides of the path are rows of planted sago palms, looking like giant swizzle sticks from a Polynesian restaurant. Each of them has one or two gourds hanging from taps to collect the rich palm sap, which is fermented into a potent wine, which I don’t want to think about right now.

  Set back from the path, nearly hidden behind a stout hedge of flame vines, is a house that looks identical to the one I just left, making me wonder if I’ve walked in a circle. Looking closer, I can see it’s a different building, however. Epena houses may share the same set of blueprints, but the residents embellish them with personal touches such as hand-painted shutters and window boxes. As I pass the grammar school, a low, rambling building with eight doors, a flock of paradise flycatchers on the playground stop preening their red, yellow, and green feathers, and we all exchange blinking stares.

  “See-see-se-ah-seez,” I call, hoping it’s not too early for small talk.

  The birds scramble skyward without a chirp. Their tail feathers, much prized for headdresses, stream out behind them. I stagger after the flock, my bleary eyes trying to focus on the plumes that only chiefs and great hunters may wear.

  About seventy-five yards from the school the path dead ends at a fifteen-story barricade of green. This morning, with a soft breeze stirring the foliage, the jungle wall looks like an enormous woven quilt hanging down from the sky. A corridor of scorched earth corrals its hem. Once a week, Guillaume told us, fires are set along the village perimeter to check the jungle growth; otherwise it would reclaim the town in a matter of months. From somewhere behind the wall a piping hornbill issues a raucous call.

  “Baaaaahrooom!” I bay in return.

  The jungle reports back with an orchestra of sounds, a legion of notes that meld in a pleasing way, quite different from the noises of the river. I recognize woodpeckers, babblers, honey-tongued warblers, coucals singing as one, finches, and gray parrots whistling up and down the scale.

  As the sun begins to rise, nearly all of the wildlife community is stirring. The nocturnal feeders are hurrying through their last rounds; the daylight shift is awake and on the prowl, one eye out for food, the other searching for love.

  The thought of food draws me back to the caffeine trail. As I had hoped, the fire has been stoked by the owner of the cafe. The postmaster, his only other customer, is sitting on his moped near one of the outdoor tables. He dismounts and asks me if the colonel is coming. I explain that we slept in different houses, but considering how late we celebrated, it’s doubtful the colonel will appear any time soon.

  “Good,” the postmaster says, relieved. “I wouldn’t want him to see me this way again.” He points to his pants hanging from a date palm, drying in the heat of the cookfire. “They are clean, but still wet from yesterday’s washing.”

  Other than his pants, he’s dressed for work: pencils fill his shirt pocket, and various rubber stamps weigh down his regulation blue jacket; paper clips and rubber bands are wedged inside his hatband.

  “Is there a plane due today?” I inquire.

  “No, no… Maybe next week,” he says, checking a pocket calendar. “It all depends on the rain.” He glances skyward and adds, “That’s a wet sky.”

  The cafe owner pokes his head through the doorway, and I order a large coffee.

  “The mail should be here in an hour or two. There’s so much to do,” the postmaster sighs.

  “Mail today?”

  “Never-ending.” A beleaguered look crosses his face. He bums a cigarette, lights it, and lets the smoke waft up and into his wide, pocked nose. He leans forward and says, “Mail is tricky business.”

  It turns out that the plane is only one of several courier systems. Once a day Pygmy porters carry mail pouches overland from Impfondo, the provincial capital, situated on the Ubangi about fifty miles to the east; other mail comes and goes aboard pirogues at unpredictable intervals. The twenty villages in the Epena postal district cover an area approximately the size of Holland.

  The coffee arrives in a plastic mug with the words “I Love Christ” printed on it; in smaller lettering is “Compliments of the United Baptist Ministries.” No matter, the coffee tastes delicious. When I compliment the cafe owner, he offers to show me the coffee bushes he cultivates behind his house. We make a date for later in the day, and I order another large cup of the home-brew.

  “Do you know how many letters come and go from this station?” the postmaster asks, after checking his still damp pants.

  “Many, I’m sure.”

  “Right. Dozens a day. I’m the best, but, monsieur, I am only one man, and they expect me to do the work of an army. I don’t like to complain, but…”

  His list of grievances threatens to go on for hours. “Did you enjoy the party last night?” I interject.

  “Yes, thank you… Ngouabi was a great man. He was a northerner like us, you know. Believe me, southern tribes are not to be trusted.” He launches into a tirade aimed at the Laris, Fangs, and Batekes; ironically, Ngouabi’s life wish was to end this type of intertribal bickering.

  The postmaster pauses to catch his breath and bum another cigarette. “They say you are leaving for Boha to look for Mokele-Mbembe.”

  “Yes, I am. Have you ever seen the beast?”

  “I heard a great noise once years ago, upstream about fifteen kilometers. Sounded like thunder, but the sun was out. It had to be Mokele-Mbembe.”

  “Did you chase after it?”

  “I am not a fool, monsieur. I ran the other way. You will understand if you stay here long enough. The forest is home to many, many spirits. Some are evil.” His voice trails off as a raindrop splatters on the ground. “Au revoir, monsieur,” he says, grabbing his pants and stuffing them under his jacket. He hops aboard the moped, tips his hat, and speeds off, beeping as he passes the kitchen door.

  In minutes the sky changes from soft gray to greasy black. The wind kicks up, jostling the trees, and several miles away the clouds begin to grumble. The rain comes in gi
ant drops.

  Innocent is still sleeping when I race back into the house. We have unexpected company: a stray dog has come in through the doorway I forgot to cover. Considering the weather, I decide not to throw it outside; besides, he’s better company than the snoring Innocent. He’s a typical forest breed, with long legs, large muzzle, and short foxlike ears; his yellowish fur is caked with dirt. Jungle dogs are bred and trained not to bark; silence is the rule when hunting in the jungle, and each canine is expected to earn its living as a tracker. The tail and eyes do all its talking.

  The skies open. Buckets of water cascade down the corrugated tin roof, thin streams leaking through the nail holes. As the downpour grows heavier, the rain striking the tin sounds like thousands of bouncing Ping-Pong balls.

  “Hey, cut it out, please,” Innocent groans as the noise increases.

  “It’s the rain.”

  “Oh… You’re up and dressed. Good for you,” he mumbles, falling back to sleep.

  The dog thrusts his head into my lap as I sit on a bag near the doorway. Together we share what’s left of a chocolate bar and watch the small puddles outside flow together to form a miniature lake. A fig leaf floats by with three ants and a beetle aboard. They patrol the edges, feelers out, searching for solid ground. The leaf spins around the corner, out of sight, into the high seas.

  The equator is only seventy miles to the south, and the Atlantic lies five hundred miles to the west, which places Epena close to the true heart of Africa and absolutely in the center of the second largest rain forest in the world. The forest stretches for 1,500 miles from Cameroon to the Mountains of the Moon in Uganda;

  only the Amazon forest is larger. In an average year, Epena receives 80 inches of rainfall and once, in 1921, the skies dumped 112 inches. Even though the temperature remains constant throughout the year, Innocent told me that people still divide the year into four seasons: greater wet, lesser wet, greater dry, and lesser dry. Right now, in the last week of March, we’re at the end of the driest part of the year.

  The rain finally stops around ten o’clock, allowing the still groggy Innocent and me to search out the district military commandant. We need to have our visas stamped before we can depart for Boha, the closest village to Télé. Neither Innocent nor I can remember whether we met the commandant at the Ngouabi bash.

  “Wonderful party … I enjoyed talking to you both last night,” the commandant says. “I forgot to tell you that I’ve met several famous Americans. It was a reception for Mr. Eldridge Cleaver back in 19 … hmm, 19…?”

  “1971,” I offer, recalling the year Cleaver and other prominent members of the Peace and Freedom Party visited the Congo as guests of the state.

  “Exactly, 1971. Do you know Mr. Cleaver?”

  “By reputation only, sir,” I reply, not wanting to break the news that the former radical ran for the U.S. Senate on the Republican ticket. As a born-again Christian, Cleaver now quotes Ronald Reagan and the Bible in the same sentence.

  Both Innocent and I nod agreeably while the commandant relates stories “about the old days … when we were fighting the old order … when issues were black and white.” Eventually he stamps our visas.

  “There is one problem,” he says, rising from his chair to wrap an arm around me in an avuncular fashion. “There’s no petrol … no gas for the ferryboat, no gas for the generator.”

  By paddle, it’s a twelve- to fifteen-hour boat trip to Boha, and since the arrival of outboard motors, no one will undertake the task. He describes the overland route between here and Boha as an “impossible, snake-infested” trek through miasmal swampland.

  “You can go that way if you want… I’ll write up something for you to sign, just so Brazzaville knows that you were warned.”

  We’re left with two choices. We can either wait for the next pirogue from Boha and go back with the crew (there’s no telling when that will be: it could be today or ten days from now), or we can hire Pygmy porters to fetch gas from Impfondo. It’s a two- or three-day round trip, depending on the weather.

  “Where can we find a porter?”

  “Don’t worry,” the commandant says, his words somehow provoking the opposite response. He flicks a light switch. “The electricity has been off for weeks… It would be a shame to send porters all the way to Impfondo for a few liters of gasoline when the town generator has no fuel. Perhaps you will…”

  I hand over enough money to hire three porters to tote twenty-five gallons of gasoline, ten for the ferryboat and the rest for the generator.

  Later in the afternoon, as we walk back from our tour of the cafe owner’s garden, Innocent discovers that the porters maintain a cache of fuel nearby in the jungle. They’ve already delivered the town’s fifteen gallons of gasoline, but our supply will not arrive for two more days. Now I better understand why the cafe owner said, “Everyone is happy to see new faces in town.”

  We run into Guillaume on his way home from school. He tells me that Marie, the village mystic, might know something about Mokele-Mbembe. We set off toward her hut on the far side of town.

  “Watch it!” Guillaume warns, pulling Innocent to the side of the path. He was about to step on several eggshells lying at the base of a termite hill.

  Once we leave the womb, we are unprotected and need the help of the gods to survive, Guillaume says. The eggshells symbolize man’s birth and vulnerability; people often add them to their offerings of fruit to the gods.

  Up ahead is a rickety structure built of sticks and dried mud, roofed with freshly picked palm fronds and plantain leaves. An old woman with hunched shoulders peers out from the tiny doorway and waves us into her cramped house. Marie’s nose is rather flat and her skin has a reddish hue, indicating Pygmy blood. She stares at a pot on the kerosene stove, not looking up; as she meditates, I look around the hut.

  On the shelves running around the walls are statues of Saint Anthony; there must be a hundred of them. In most he is holding a black baby Jesus. I had heard about the Antonian cult in Brazzaville, but I was unable to find a priestess of this outlawed sect, denounced by witch doctors, Catholic priests, and government officials alike. The cult was founded in the early 1700s by Kimpa Vita, a woman who claimed to have died and been resurrected by Saint Anthony. Among her miraculous powers was the ability to straighten bent trees. Kimpa Vita preached about a heaven full of black saints and a supreme black god. When she denounced the institution of slavery and demanded that the white man be thrown out of Africa, colonial officials burned her at the stake. Fearful that her bones would be used as relics, they burned her twice, until there was nothing left but ashes of ashes. Her followers express their devotion with statues of Saint Anthony.

  Marie clicks off the stove and looks up at us. Her sunken eyes are abnormally large, and deep furrows run across her brow and cheeks. She wears a loose-fitting print dress and no jewelry, though there’s a bit of twine tied around her neck. Her head is shaved, normally a sign of mourning.

  She speaks softly, and Innocent leans forward to hear as they talk for several minutes.

  “I’ve told her that we’ve come in search of Mokele-Mbembe. She wants to see your hand.”

  I put out my left hand. She grimaces and shakes her head.

  “The right hand is the male hand. Left is for women,” Innocent tells me.

  She runs her fingers across my palm, applying pressure as she traces my lifeline.

  “She wants you to think of Mokele-Mbembe and look into her eyes. She will see what you see.”

  Marie presses an ivory statue of Saint Anthony into my palm and folds my fingers over it. I begin to think of Mokele-Mbembe, black as night on the shore of Lake Télé, muscles rippling under its dark skin. When the beast turns its head, a lone tooth glints in the night.

  “Bon!” Marie exclaims. She talks hurriedly in broken murmurs, injecting passages that sound like incantations. She sighs loudly, falls silent, and relights the stove.

  “Well?” I ask.

  “We must ta
ke a Toni with us if we want to see him,” Innocent explains.

  “Toni?”

  “One of the Saint Anthony statues. A special one.”

  She holds out a well-carved antique ivory Toni. “Only forty dollars,” she says. Innocent takes the Toni as I hand the bills to the priestess.

  “Au revoir,” Marie bids, and returns to stirring her pot.

  Further questions about Mokele-Mbembe are met with silence. “Au revoir,” she says again, sprinkling white powder into her pot.

  “Magic potion?” I ask.

  “No, the soup needs salt.”

  Guillaume rips into me once we’re beyond earshot of Marie. He says Marie is old and sometimes forgets things, and I’ve taken advantage of her by buying one of the precious Tonis, part of a set that should never be broken up. The entire village relies on them to ward off devils, sickness, and infertility. Unlike fetishes, which may be used only once, Saint Anthony statues accrue power over time and can be used for an endless variety of purposes. Taking the statue is a sacrilege.

  Innocent hands him the statue. There will be no refund, I’m told, other than what the gods decide to dole out. The collection of statues is restored, my wallet left thinner.