The Congolese Who Laughed
Excerpt from novel Kongolsen som skrattade
by Lennart Hagerfors
- Norstedts, 1987
- Translated by Ken Schubert
- (Translation approved for the Internet by the author)
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As I.S. passed the swimming pool after lunch, the water threatened to flow over the sides and engulf him. The cement under his feet gave way like the deck of a boat besieged by a huge wave. When he took a deep
breath, muggy air poured into his lungs. The taste of his own saliva turned his stomach, and he collapsed into a lounge chair that was standing in the shade. This must be what it feels like to have a stroke, he thought.
It was a hot summer day and I had gone down into the subway. There were entrails everywhere I turned. Directly in front of me, pairs of jeans slithered down scrawny butts while belly buttons stared resignedly at each other under grayish T-shirts. Some teenagers were wiping red saliva off each other’s chins. An older couple stood right where they had been for the last few weeks. Not far off a woman come along hand in hand with her little daughter. They walked as if they were on their way to an audience with the pope. I heard a dull whirring sound, not unlike a large elevator starting up. Suddenly the whole intestinal apparatus lost its bearings with a mighty tremor. The entire subway station began to stir like a huge animal that had been sleeping for a very long time, first in a barely noticeable ascent, then in a gradual descent. An hour later we started to sense the water, beginning with an odor of mire and slough, perhaps the sea itself. Ever so slowly the station immersed its belly in a soft, soggy, lustrous substance.
The glittering water in the pool lacerated his eyes like a razor blade. His tongue was swollen. The lounge chair rocked lazily with the waves.
I recall a documentary on TV. Children so emaciated they resembled grotesquely modernistic sculptures erected on dry, dusty soil. The only thing that attested to life was eyelids blinking so slowly that they didn’t even scare away the flies. The film was spliced at that point, and a new scene immediately flashed onto the screen, a wide road somewhere in Nigeria. Guffawing drunkenly, a couple of government soldiers shoved the butts of their rifles into the guts of a young Biafran soldier as he recoiled into a ditch. An overwrought British reporter held a microphone up to the soldiers and inquired as to what they planned to do with the prisoner. The soldiers replied laughingly that the man was a rebel and a bandit who deserved to be severely punished. In a falsetto voice, the journalist asked whether they intended to kill him. That just heightened the mirth of the soldiers, but they both responded with a deprecating shake of the head. With that, the reporter turned to the Biafran youth, still in the ditch, and assured him that his life was no longer in danger. The boy listened with his head outstretched and his gaze fixed on the reporter’s lips. He didn’t appear to comprehend what was happening – either that or he had realized in a blinding flash that his life was no more secure than a drop of water on the head of a pin. A moment later, just as the camera had tilted upwards in a lapse of concentration, the soldiers changed their minds. In a spasm of fury, they unloaded a volley of bullets into the floundering little body. The last thing you heard before the film was spliced once again was the reporter’s voice, “No, no, why did you have to do that?” I saw it on Swedish TV, but Parker wasn’t very far from the event itself. I would have killed someone without hesitation in order to escape witnessing the boy’s fear. In reality, it’s not death I’m afraid of. It’s true I feel scared now and then as I lie awake at night meditating on oblivion and the yawning jaws of nothingness. But what I’m most terrified of is fright itself, the cosmic queasiness that pounds on my chest like a relentless sledgehammer.
His legs stiff, he returned to the hotel. The sun had reached its zenith and the heat poured out of the whitewashed buildings. Nobody else seemed to be out and about. As soon as he entered his room, he walked up to the window to look out over the courtyard and apartments of the hotel employees.
Lisa sat in my lap all the way to the Stockholm airport. Eva was expecting Manne at the time, and the two of us were planning a vacation in Crete. Lisa would be staying with Eva’s parents. She played, whined, chatted, blithely unaware of what has about to happen. It’s true we had told her that she would be staying at Grandma and Grandpa’s for a few days, but how could she understand what that was all about? Only when she saw the big plane and Grandpa cheerfully explained to her that Mommy and Daddy would be whisked away into the sky did a worried expression come over her face. But she didn’t believe a word of it, that was obvious. As Eva and I passed through passport control, we turned around one last time and encountered Lisa’s stare. She had finally comprehended. It was as if there was no room for her gaze in the departure lounge. Her shriek, on the other hand, was much too feeble. The entire vacation felt like a separation, a betrayal. We wandered around Crete with the sensation that our skeletons were in the process of decomposition.
Loneliness is our fate. One day we will all be abandoned. You sit in somebody’s lap, you play, you rendezvous with your lover in a park and laugh at your new clothes, you go to work and solve problems that nobody would have thought you capable of. But it’s all a game. The muzzle of the gun is pressed to your cheek and fear pounds in your chest. Everything is coincidence, a fluke of fate. And you don’t even have Mommy and Daddy to cling onto.
After taking a shower, I.S. decided it was time to get to work. Resolutely, as if he had an important assignment to fulfil, a deadline to meet, he threw his pencil and note pad into his briefcase and stepped briskly outside, tramping along as if totally unaffected by the heat. Sweaty and ornery, he didn’t slow down until he saw a sign for the English Department with an arrow pointing toward a low white and yellow building that sprawled out every which way. Once there, he regretted his sudden burst of activity. It was all so inconsequential. He would have to put an end to this farcical pursuit of interviews and cultural contacts. His brusque, bureaucratic ego was ill-suited to his listless and perspiring body, he thought while standing outside an office that reminded him of Dapo Baye’s.
“May I be of assistance?”
The person who had stopped and taken pity on him was a tall and robust Nigerian man with a beard, eyeglasses and deep voice. I.S. guessed that he belonged to Nigeria’s ageless generation between the years of 30 and 40 – i.e. between youth and middle age – every member of which looked as if he had recently assumed an important post and was still trying to get the hang of it. Threre was a gently ironic expression in the man’s black eyes and on his broad face that immediately made I.S. feel at home.
“To tell the truth, I’m not sure whether you can help me or not. Could you possibly point out Yemi Omotoso’s office to me.”
“I know just where it is. Follow me please.”
After they had gone a few steps, the man turned around and said casually, “By the way, I’m Yemi Omotoso.”
I.S. thought there was something familiar about Omotoso’s beard and glasses. He knew someone who resembled him, but he couldn’t figure out who it was. On the other hand, a Marxist with a beard and glasses was about as abnormal as a businessman in a suit.
Omotoso was wearing a pair of slippers that flopped on the pavement as he sauntered past the long verandas. The fingertips of his right hand skimmed along the railing and he hummed a monotonous tune to himself. There was something terrifying in his virile lack of constraint.
His office possessed a kind of Western coziness: wall-to-wall carpeting, plus a low couch stacked with newspapers, books and magazines. On the walls hung a number of posters with either revolutionary or traditional African motifs. A red streamer had been nailed up at the far end of the room. It said, “Analysis has no value unless it is related to an actual struggle. Amilcar Chabral.”
“That’s an unequivocal message,” said I.S, pointing to the streamer.
“It’s been up there for a long time.”
Omotoso smiled wearily and offered I.S. a seat in a corner of the couch that wasn’t overflowing with books. Excusing himself to make a few phone calls, he kicked off his slippers, one of which made a couple of loops in the air before landing on top of the desk.
It wasn’t until I.S. had settled into the couch that he discovered a young woman sitting by the door. She was staring straight ahead without appearing to observe anything in particular. When I.S. nodded awkwardly in her direction, she didn’t respond. Her impassive gaze was focused on a single point – perhaps a void – somewhere inside her head. She was beautiful in a way that struck I.S. as both natural and vulgar. Her short skirt exposed a pair of ample, glossy thighs. Her plump lips were heavily painted and her cheeks were powdered. Her red fingernails glistened against her black skin and the white necklace she held stiffly in one hand. Her extraordinary appearance diverted I.S.’s attention from Omotoso, who was muttering into the receiver in a mixture of Yourba and English. He caught himself staring at her and hoping that she would do something to at least acknowledge his presence.
When Omotoso finally completed his long-winded phone conversations, he turned to I.S. with a polite smile on his face. Suddenly the woman stood up with a determination that took I.S. aback. Walking rapidly up to Omotoso, she gave him a resounding slap on the cheek and flung the necklace down so hard that the beads ricocheted and rolled off the edge of the desk. The frightful echo of the blow hung in the air even after she had dashed tearfully out the door.
They sat there silently as her pattering footsteps faded away down the walkway.
“That was Flora, one of my students.”
I.S. nodded as if he had just been imparted some vital information. When his shyness came over him once again, his gaze wandered up to the streamer, which he read out loud.
“I wonder what kind of analysis her struggle is based on,” laughed Omotoso ruefully.
“An emotional one perhaps.”
“You’re probably right. You know the fate of slogans.”
“Yes I do.”
Rising from his desk, Omotoso stretched out his arms so energetically that his fingers and back both snapped at the same time. He tugged on his beard and sighed, “The last few days have been a little chaotic. I guess I should go and find out what’s up with Flora.”
They arranged to meet again the next evening.
“Feelings have no value unless they are related to an actual struggle,” said Omotoso thoughtfully as he slowly walked off toward where Flora’s sharp heels had just pounded despairingly into the hard pavement.
On the way back I.S. discovered to his astonishment that he was in a good mood. The swallows circled over him in nervous intoxication. Scooping up a huge spiral-like pod from the ground, he laughed at how weightless it felt in his hand. Walking up the hill to the guest house, he stopped and watched a group of boys playing soccer. When the ball happened to roll his way, he blocked it with his foot and dribbled around the boys, dodging cheerfully. They just stood there and gazed at him with listless suspicion. Kicking the ball over to the youngest of them, he hurried away in embarrassment. When he noticed that the boys had stopped playing altogether and were heading for the employee quarters, he thought: the moment I’m happy something inevitably goes wrong.
Once I saw a TV program about a race between Idi Amin and Uganda’s leading swimmer. Amin won. What the young swimmer was never permitted to divulge was the following (I still can’t forget the look in his eyes). My parents had spent their life savings on my high school education. Of eight brothers and sisters, only two of us ever went to school. I had scarcely a year left to go when this incident occurred. My father earned his livelihood by fishing in Lake Victoria, just like his father had. Our village was a good 50 miles west of Kampala. My brothers and I were the first members of our family who had ever learned to swim. The school’s five fastest swimmers, of which I was one, were given the privilege of practicing two mornings a week at a hotel pool. One afternoon the principal strode into our classroom and announced that the very best swimmer in the school was to come with him. As it turned out, the best swimmer was home sick that day, so the principal shouted irately that somebody else would have to take his place. Since I was sitting closest to the door, the teacher pointed to me. The principal took me to his office, where he proclaimed with a dark and solemn expression on his face said that I had been accorded the great honor of racing the country’s esteemed leader, General Idi Amin. Something in his voice make me feel as if the whole thing were my fault. A British TV crew would film the event. “You must do your best,” admonished the principal, “otherwise neither you nor I can expect to live much longer. But under no circumstances can you permit yourself to win. If you do, you will plunge your school, your village, your people, indeed your whole country, into a state of terror that none of us dares imagine.” Our fate was to be decided within an hour. The principal and I were driven in a Mercedes to Amin’s residence. The chauffeur took a back route. We passed throngs of boy servants, maids, police, security people, heavily armed soldiers and women I assumed to be Amin’s wives. Every last one of them stared at me in hatred. It was all beyond my comprehension. Everyone at the residence was as mute and somber as if they had just returned from a funeral. Our distinguished leader was in another part of the building at the time. When I vomited in a corner of the hallway, the principal gave me a hard slap. Shortly afterwards he helped me off with my clothes and handed me a pair of swimming trunks. When he saw that I had peed in my pants, he snorted and smacked me once more. After that, we just stood there for a long time and waited. Finally the door to the pool opened and a man in civilian clothes ordered me inside. Leading me up to the pool, he stationed me on one of the long sides. Directly across from me the English photographers were gaily setting up their cameras and flipping their notebooks. Suddenly a door opened right behind me and Amin strode in, laughing loudly. The journalists applauded. Amin walked up and shook my hand. I’d never seen such a huge man. His chest and belly were like a piece of convex sheet metal, his feet like enormous joints of meat that had been flung down at the edge of the pool. “May the best man win,” he said, pointing over at the photographers. That was when I realized that we were to swim only the width of the pool. The lifeguard was given the signal to start us. He counted to three. I took a deep dive and braked the plunge with my arms. There was no ignoring the shock wave when Amin plopped in; I’d never felt anything like it, although I had often jumped in together with an entire class. As I headed back up, my body contracted in a series of spasms and I had a frightful headache. A couple of meters diagonally in front of me I saw Amin’s hippopotamus-like head shoot up above the surface. Out of sheer panic I began to swim, swallowing mouthful after mouthful of water. Amin’s enormous arms splashed torrents of water my way, my calf muscles felt like canonballs and I was certain I would drown. When I got to the other side, I was completely done for. Amin was already clinging to the side, panting and bellowing at the top of his lungs, “I won, I won.” The photographers laughed and clapped once again. After pulling himself up onto the side of the pool, Amin triumphantly cast himself back into the water. The backwash swept me right out of the pool, and they led me through the door. The principal was drenched with sweat. “He won and he’s happy ,” I told him before bursting into tears. Back at school, he handed me the equivalent of six months salary and sent me home. I packed my bags that same evening. Early the next morning I took the bus to my village. My father wanted to know why I was back. I told him the whole story. He listened without once looking at me. When I was done, he asked me to help him repair a net. Since then I’ve never even considered going anywhere. I’ve dropped my plans to become an engineer once and for all. I earn my livelihood by fishing and don’t swim any longer.
At 6:00 that evening I.S. found himself in a lounge chair near the swimming pool. For some reason the pool was completely drained, so that a threatening and startlingly deep hole gaped up at him. The rectangular gorge gave the impression that there had been a serious error in the blueprint.
The thin air was bluish in the twilight. He could hear the clatter of dishes and silverware coming from the restaurant on the second floor. The first laughter of the evening floated in from the bar. The guests filed past I.S on the way into the dining room: first the British couple, followed by Jochen, along with a group of Europeans and Africans whom I.S. didn’t recognize. Bringing up the rear, Parker strode in and announced immediately that he had succeeded in arresting the progress of his cold. I.S. had to repeat over and over again that he was waiting for his dinner companion to arrive.
“Since you’re having to wait, he must be an African,” said Parker and took off up the stairs.
When Baye turned up half an hour later, it was already dark out. Not having seen him come in, I.S. gave a start when he discovered a dark shadow next to him. Baye greeted him with an indolent little laugh. As they walked up to the dining room, I.S. noticed that they were proceeding in single file, their backs erect and their feet cautiously taking one stair at a time.
“I’m just going to have something light,” explained Baye as he ordered a bowl of soup.
Revealing what was perhaps a subconscious wish to compensate for Baye’s austerity, I.S. asked for the Nigerian dish Parker had devoured with so much gusto at lunch. Baye shook his head skeptically. “Get something European instead,” he advised.
But I.S. stood his ground. With a couple of rapid movements, he grabbed his pencil and note pad out of the briefcase that was leaning against one leg of the table. He looked over at Baye. “Well, what can you tell me about the generation that succeeded Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe?”
Just as I.S. was formulating his question, the people at the next table fell silent in order to begin their meal. I.S.’s voice seemed to be coming from somewhere else, as if he were speaking for everyone in the room.
“There isn’t very much to say,” replied Baye in a subdued tone, his gaze fixed on the opposite wall. “There’s a little group of young authors who have succeeded in capturing the spotlight.”
Their meals arrived. The food formed a pattern on his plate that was remarkably reminiscent of Parker’s at lunch. For a moment he had the sinking feeling that Parker had regurgitated it and sent it back to the kitchen to be warmed up and served again.
“What did I tell you,” said Baye, shaking his head, “It’s no food for a European.” Smiling, he discreetly slurped his soup.
Putting the pencil and paper aside, I.S. attacked his food. This dinner wasn’t about to go down without a struggle. His questions stuck to the roof of his mouth along with the pasta, and his thoughts slithered between his teeth like the gristle. The raw onion stung his nostrils, his eyes were watering and he gazed at Baye as through a fogged-up windshield. As he tried to slice his meat, the knife slipped out of his hand and clattered to the floor. When he bent over to pick it up, he accidentally elbowed his briefcase, which fell over with a sigh. Next thing I’m going to let go with a loud fart, he thought.
“Don’t finish that food, I’m warning you.”
Pushing his plate away, I.S. wiped the sweat from his brow and tapped on the note pad with the pencil.
“Say something already!”
A boyish expression on his face, Baye let out an unexpectedly amiable laugh. In an attempt to conceal his amusement, he covered his mouth with one hand. “To sum it all up,” he said, “European influence has been on the wane ever since the universities stopped offering a complete curriculum in European literature.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it.” After jotting down Baye’s concluding remark, I.S. put the pencil and notebook back in his briefcaste.
They said good-bye in the darkness outside the bar. Baye assured him that he had found their discussion both interesting and worthwhile. I.S. protested that the pleasure was all his, and they promised to get together again soon.
When Baye turned around to go, I.S. suddenly got angry and asked, “Do you believe in Ogun?”
That didn’t seem to surprise Baye. All he said was, “What do you mean by believe?”
When I.S. shrugged his shoulders, Baye returned the gesture. I.S. thought that he saw see a glint of hatred in the other man’s eyes before he disappeared into the night. I.S. just stood there staring at the void Baye had left behind. The darkness had swallowed him up. I.S. heard no footsteps dying away, no car door slamming, no motor being turned on. For a moment he had the uncanny sense that Baye had tumbled into the empty swimming pool. It was hard to believe that they had just eaten dinner together. He felt as though he had been abandoned.
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