Seven Houses in France

XII

THE CLUB STOREROOM had always been a place of refuge for Donatien, as well as the school in which he received lessons from his brothers. Sometimes, he lay down in his corner, remembering how they had behaved, what they had done or not done; at other times, he tried to get in touch mentally with the most intelligent of them and imagine what he would have advised him to do had he been by his side in Yangambi.

After the arrival of the Virgin, he made even more of an effort. In his concern not to spoil the splendid direction things had taken once Chrysostome had passed the test, he tried to be even more attentive and to assimilate more thoroughly those family lessons, in short, to study harder. He recalled one of the intelligent brother’s favourite sayings:

‘The fox may know a lot, but the hedgehog knows more.’

This needed no explanation. The message was clear: he should take no part in the excitement that had built up around the Virgin. Let the sirens wail, let the bugles sound, he would keep well out of the way. He would stay in the storeroom, in his school, in his refuge, like a hedgehog.

For a few days he stuck to his plan. He took Lalande Biran his breakfast, quickly cleaned his office and bedroom, then hurried back to his hiding place.

A week later, Donatien remembered his brother’s exact words:

‘The fox may know a lot, but the hedgehog knows more. But you’re a dog, Donatien, and a dog is more like a fox than a hedgehog.’

With that, the lesson was complete. His brother was right. The hedgehog life bored him. It wasn’t right to race out of the storeroom at the first blast of a siren but neither was spending most of the day dozing. It would be best to find some middle way. To have a little fun now and then, go for a stroll and see what was happening.

One day — the eleventh or twelfth day after the Virgin’s arrival — he could stand it no longer. He went out onto the porch with a packet of biscuits and started eating them, sitting in the rocking chair that Lalande Biran usually sat in.

‘A drop of anisette, Monsieur Donatien?’ asked Livo, peering round the glass door that gave onto the porch.

‘What colour is your oimbé today, Livo?’ Donatien asked, aping Lalande Biran’s usual greeting.

‘Anisette? Cognac? Martini?’ asked Livo, ignoring the question.

Donatien gave a laugh, which announced that he was about to make one of his jokes. ‘I’ll have an anisette today. My oimbé is thirsty.’

Livo vanished, wearing a smile whose days, one might say, were numbered.

Donatien was a little afraid of his liking for anisette. He could never forget that most of his brothers, eight or nine of them, had had serious problems with alcohol, and that they all favoured sweetish drinks. He did what he could to keep this tendency at bay: a small glass on ordinary days, two or three on Thursdays and Sundays, but never a drop more.

Livo returned with a glass of anisette.

‘Livo, you must come with us when we go back to Antwerp,’ Donatien said. Livo, he thought, would make the ideal waiter for the brothel that he and Cocó were planning to open there. That Twa tribesman, so small and black, with his curly, greying hair, would be the perfect emblem for the brothel. There would be nothing in Antwerp to compare.

Livo smiled and went back into the club.

‘You may not want to, but if Cocó likes the idea, you’ll have to come,’ said Donatien, nibbling a biscuit.

He glanced over at the Virgin. She was still where they had left her, in the middle of the beach, but completely alone now. She hadn’t been alone during the days immediately following her arrival, when all the inhabitants of Yangambi, white and black, had crowded round to contemplate this work by the new Michelangelo and to wonder at the expression in her eyes or the shape of her nose, or the extraordinarily lifelike folds of her dress. The flurry of excitement in those hearts, however, proved short-lived. The beach soon emptied of admirers. Now those who passed by on their way to the Club Royal gave her only a cursory glance, while they continued to think their own thoughts. Then came a storm, with high winds, and the footprints left on the sand by her admirers were erased. The place reverted to its former self. While the statue of the Virgin did not become just another feature of the landscape, like a log or a rock, it did lose its lustre and ceased to be the star of Yangambi.

Donatien ate three biscuits one after the other, then washed down the crumbs caught in his throat with a little anisette.

He looked again at the Virgin and froze as if he too were a marble statue. There on the beach, head bowed, was the Best Soldier, the new William Tell, the finest marksman in the whole of the Congo, the son of Britancourt. In a word, Chrysostome.

He wasn’t usually to be seen there at that hour, for he tended to be one of the last to arrive at the club; however, the most unusual thing was his posture. Chrysostome never walked with his head bowed. On the contrary, he walked rather stiffly, with his chin lifted. He knew he was a ‘magnificent’ member of the Force Publique and he flaunted it.

Donatien put down the biscuits and the anisette and went to hide in the storeroom so that Chrysostome would not know he had seen him. Before going in, though, he turned and peered furtively at the beach. Chrysostome was kneeling before the Virgin.

Seated in his usual corner, Donatien began to think.

‘This fact is pure gold,’ he heard a voice say in his head. It was his intelligent brother again.

He was right. True, Yangambi wasn’t Antwerp and Chrysostome left much to be desired as a source of information, and yet Donatien sensed that in some way what he had just seen could prove beneficial to him. There was something odd about that man kneeling at the Virgin’s feet, head bowed. He needed to find out more. The following morning, as soon as he had finished his work in Government House, he would go straight to the beach to inspect the terrain.

The tracks left by Chrysostome ran in almost straight lines along the shore of the river, but became crooked and uneven as they approached the Virgin. They seemed to contain some secret message.

‘Something has happened to Chrysostome. He has a problem and is worried,’ said Donatien’s intelligent brother, and Donatien agreed.

He wanted to find a clear, categorical answer in those marks on the beach, such as ‘Chrysostome’s problem is …’, but in that respect, the beach was silent, a blank page. When Donatien went back into the storeroom and lay down in his corner, he couldn’t get to sleep. The unease provoked by the sense that something was going on, something he was unable to identify, prevented him from sleeping.

That night, the same thing happened, and he spent most of the time awake. He simply could not sleep and, when he did close his eyes, rather than the image of a girl or some other similarly soothing image, he saw the image of Chrysostome, just as he had seen him on the beach, kneeling before the Virgin, head bowed.

He felt incapable of solving this mystery, even with the aid of his intelligent brother, and decided that perhaps it would be best to refer the matter to Lalande Biran. Easier said than done. The first day, he found Lalande Biran completely absorbed in reading a book; the second, he was in a rage because he couldn’t find his wedding ring; the third and the fourth, he was busy discussing the rubber crop with Van Thiegel. As Donatien waited for the right moment, time was slipping by, and the only reliable help he had were his brother’s encouraging words. Often, while he sat on the porch of the club, with a glass of anisette in his hand, his brother’s voice would ring out loudly in his head, always saying the same thing: ‘Be patient, dog. Soon you will learn something about Chrysostome and receive your reward.’

The fifth day, he went into Government House in order to clean the Captain’s office and found that Richardson and Van Thiegel were both there too. Seated on the wicker armchairs around the table, they were discussing the details of the bishop’s visit with absolute military seriousness. The paths and streets in Yangambi would have to be cleaned and three new huts prepared for the visitors: a large one for the bishop, another for the priests and a third for the journalist. The blessing of the Virgin would take place, at the express wish of Brussels, on Christmas Day, which left them just two weeks to organise everything.

Donatien dusted the furniture and the various objects in the living room, the rhinoceros horn, the desk, the rocking chairs, the books on the shelves, and the photo of the Captain’s wife, Christine Saliat de Meilhan, because once the rainy season was over and the mud in Yangambi had dried, dust invaded everything.

‘This whole business makes me nervous,’ said Lalande Biran.

‘You and everyone else,’ said Donatien, butting in.

Only one person noticed his remark: his intelligent brother. ‘Be patient, dog,’ he warned him from inside his head.

‘What makes me nervous is that Virgin in the middle of the beach. It will be a weight off our shoulders once we deposit her on Samanga,’ added Richardson.

Donatien nodded.

‘Let’s move on to the next point. Let’s talk about the menu,’ said Lalande Biran. He got up and started pacing round the table. ‘I thought we could start with a few smoked wapose, followed by kid soup, roast leg of goat with sweet potato sauce and, to finish, fried bananas. Oh, and a bit of chocolate to accompany the coffee. If we have any chocolate. Do we, Donatien?’

‘Yes, Captain. There’s a big box in the storeroom,’ answered Donatien.

There was disagreement. Richardson disapproved of the smoked wapose. They were, of course, delicious, but they looked hideous. There was no escaping the fact that they were worms, and the bishop would be sure to find them disgusting.

Lalande Biran expressed his thoughts out loud. The bishop and the journalist, especially the journalist, would have to realise that they were in the Congo, in Africa. Kid soup and roast goat were fine, but one could find such dishes in Brussels or in Paris. They needed something distinctive, a bit of local colour. If not wapose, they could perhaps choose something similar.

‘If we ply them with enough champagne, there won’t be any problem. Our visitors will eat everything that’s put before them, even grilled snake,’ said Van Thiegel.

‘What about smoked antelope fillets?’ suggested Donatien.

This time, Lalande Biran heard what he said and looked at him with his blue-gold eyes.

‘That’s not a bad idea,’ he said.

‘Thank you, Captain.’

‘How long would it take to prepare and smoke an antelope properly?’ asked Lalande Biran.

‘About a week, or so Livo says,’ answered Donatien. ‘UnesmenpepreçamdiLivoquendmem.’

Richardson clapped him on the back. He thought the antelope an excellent idea.

‘And it’s easy enough to hunt them at this time of year,’ he said. ‘The other day, when I was out with the rubber-tappers, I saw a whole herd of them.’

Lalande Biran walked up and down the room, thinking, his arms folded, his left hand cradling his chin. He stopped by the bookshelf and selected a cookery book.

‘I would cook it just as I would venison,’ he said as he searched for the recipe. ‘We have wine, even if it is only palm wine, and nutmeg too. The trouble is,’ he concluded, ‘we don’t have any spring onions,’ and he returned the book to its place and came back to the table.

‘You could use mulberries and other berries from the jungle,’ suggested Donatien, who had abandoned his labours and was taking part in the conversation as an equal. ‘Livo cooked it like that once. I think it was when you were off hunting elephants.’

Donatien’s last sentence oozed caution.

‘It would seem that you eat best when I’m away,’ said Lalande Biran, but he didn’t seem really bothered.

‘At least let there be French champagne, made, if possible, by the Widow Clicquot. I’m sure the bishop won’t object,’ said Van Thiegel.

Now he was pacing the room, and when he reached the corner where the rhinoceros horn was on display, he picked it up as if testing its weight.

‘The bishop won’t be our most influential visitor, Cocó. I’m not drawing up the menu with him in mind. I’m thinking of the journalist and his Kodak.’

‘I’ll pose like this and ask him to take my photo. Then I’ll have another one taken with the Widow Clicquot,’ said Van Thiegel, placing the rhinoceros horn on his head.

Richardson and Donatien both laughed. Lalande Biran merely smiled.

When Van Thiegel put the rhinoceros horn back down on the floor, he inadvertently knocked over a portfolio that was leaning against the wall, and its contents spilled out. They were Lalande Biran’s sketches of naked girls; one was larger than the others, and when he pulled it out, he saw something that sent a shiver down his spine. It was a photograph of Christine Saliat de Meilhan, but utterly different from the photo the Captain kept framed and on view to anyone visiting the office. According to a note in one corner, it had been taken on the beach in Biarritz. It showed Christine in a wet bathing suit, with her equally wet hair — one curl of which was stuck to her cheek — her flat stomach and her athletic thighs all the way down to her knees, where the photo ended.

He put the photo back and quickly closed the portfolio. He felt shaken. He could understand now why the Captain had those young girls brought to him. It can’t have been easy to fill the space left in his bed by such a woman.

He realised that he had dust on his fingertips. Donatien only cleaned the visible surfaces, but never went further than that. The portfolio had spent weeks, possibly months, leaning unopened against the wall. It was incredible. That photograph deserved to be in some far worthier place than a dusty portfolio.

Lalande Biran was telling Richardson about Ferdinand Lassalle. He was a great journalist, the winner of the Prix Globe no less.

‘He’s just the man to present Europe with a favourable image of us. That’s why I’m taking such care over the details of the visit.’

Richardson covered his face with both hands.

‘This is how I’ll be posing if he tries to take my photo. I gave my wife the slip years ago, but if she sees me in the newspaper, she could easily turn up in Yangambi. And I’m certainly not having that, gentlemen. Certainly not.’

This time, they all laughed, Van Thiegel loudest of all.

‘Tomorrow, gentlemen, I will go and hunt that antelope with which we intend to impress our guests. I’ll ask Chrysostome to come with me,’ Lalande Biran announced.

‘May I come too, Biran?’ asked Richardson. ‘As you know, we old men need our exercise.’

‘I’ll stay here,’ said Van Thiegel, ‘and start organising the clean-up. It’s not going to be easy getting things spick and span, mind, especially not in the African quarter. There are too many animals there to make it entirely presentable.’

His mind had split in two again, and both halves contained the same image: Christine Saliat de Meilhan in a wet bathing suit on the beach at Biarritz.

‘Excuse me, Captain, but tomorrow is Thursday,’ Donatien put in.

Lalande Biran looked at him with his blue-gold eyes.

‘I mean that Chrysostome has to come with me to find a girl,’ he explained. ‘JevedirqueCriomedoallermoipourcherunefille.’

‘You’ll have to go alone,’ replied Lalande Biran. ‘I need Chrysostome to accompany me on the antelope hunt.’

‘Of course,’ said Donatien, but his Adam’s apple disagreed and suddenly vanished beneath his collar.

Van Thiegel raised his arm, like someone demanding the floor at a crowded meeting.

‘Speaking of Chrysostome, Biran, there’s something I’ve been meaning to say. That poofter has been washing the young girls and so on for a while now, but I haven’t seen any difference in him. We ought to change tactics.’

Donatien shook his head. They were quite wrong. Chrysostome was very different. He felt like telling them about what he had seen from the porch, but he was angry with the Captain now and disinclined to give him that information. Why didn’t he invite him to go hunting? Why did he choose to send him off to find a girl without Chrysostome’s help? It was partly his own fault, for talking too much. The idea of including antelope on the menu had been his, but it was also partly Livo’s fault. Livo really liked antelope meat, and Donatien was tired of hearing him go on about it. Whenever Donatien took him the mice he caught in the storeroom, Livo always said: ‘I’d prefer an antelope’ — ‘Je préférais une antilope.’

‘We have far more urgent matters to deal with at the moment,’ said Lalande Biran to Van Thiegel, ‘like preparing a warm welcome for our visitors and taking the Virgin to Samanga.’

‘Yes, Samanga’s an excellent spot for that sculpture,’ said Richardson.

‘I’m just worried that some rebel might have seen it on the beach,’ Van Thiegel commented. He wanted to free himself of that image of Christine, which had taken root in both parts of his mind, keeping him from concentrating on the conversation. ‘If they have, they’ll be expecting something to happen. And of course if they find out a journalist is coming, they’ll probably plan an attack. It would be great publicity for them.’

‘Yes, I’m nervous about that too, and getting more nervous,’ said Donatien.

He hadn’t been into the jungle to look for girls for weeks now and it suddenly seemed to him incredible that he once used to visit the mugini accompanied by only four askaris.

‘If I may, Captain, I’ll go and tidy your bedroom,’ he said and left the office, forgetting to salute.

He didn’t, however, go into the bedroom, but went straight out into the garden. There was no sign of smoke or drumming from the jungle, only the occasional shriek from the monkeys, nothing more. The monkeys weren’t very bright and screamed at the slightest thing, whereas the rebels crouched silently in the darkness under the trees and the undergrowth, watching.