The Great Agony & Pure Laughter of the Gods (16 page)

Zaina told Risto in a sad and soft voice that Néné didn’t live in town anymore. She had been kidnapped by the foreign militia; no one knew if she was still alive or not. Pendo gave her sister a fierce look; she wanted Zaina to stop her stories. The younger girl stopped speaking and looked down.

‘She is alive,’ Risto said sadly. ‘Maybe one day she will come back,’ he added, even though he did not see how this was possible.

His sisters looked at one another with amazement, but did not say more.

Days passed by as Bukavu, the town where a story travels like wind, gossiped about a child soldier, a militia boy who had come back from close to death. The supposedly secret story travelled the streets faster than a storm; it caught each ear along its way. A wife would tell her husband, he would relate it to his closest friends, who would in turn recount it to their wives, who would debate it in the open market of Kadutu.

Néné’s mother came to ask Risto questions about her daughter. Each one of her words carried tears, and when she thought about the fate of her daughter, she tore at her hair, pulling tufts out. Risto didn’t know how to describe the situation with the militia; it was torture to recall, and he wept at the horror of it. Eventually, he told Néné’s mother how her daughter cried every day in the forest, how they had been taken, and how he had been rescued. He didn’t have words to describe the evil man who had taken Néné as his wife; and because he did not want to kill the woman with the full story, he said little, trying to keep his account as broad as possible. The few words that Risto did say made the woman mad with grief; she threw herself to the ground, screaming. She cried out, imploring, why this had happened to her, to her daughter? Risto didn’t have an answer; he had the same question, and he never knew who to ask it of.

Two weeks after arriving home, Risto was still barely able to leave the house. The experiences he had when he went out frightened him. Twice he had left for the market, but was unable to finish his shopping. He could not explain why. He had sensed an omnipresent person following him, but whenever he looked behind him, the person hid. He could tell no one about the creature in empty streets and corners; it might make them wonder about his past, about his healing, or perhaps they would think he was going mad; no one would take him seriously.

Risto’s mother wanted him to meet people, to talk to his friends and to visit family members. She wanted Risto to start a new life, socially and mentally. She was particularly displeased because he kept postponing visits to his uncle at the last minute.

This time, she was serious; the visit to his uncle had to take place. He was a successful businessman who stayed in the Avenue du Gouverneur, one of the richest suburbs in Bukavu. Risto knew what he needed to avoid along the way; eeriness and empty paths and gossiping women who hung around the streets looking for slander and lies. The plan was simple; in order to avoid walking and talking, he would get a moto-taxi.

The main road was about a hundred feet from his home; he waited there for a moto-taxi. It was a sunny morning. The first moto-bike passed, the motard leaving a cloud of black smoke behind. He didn’t look around. He had a fat woman on his bike. Another one passed, a young woman on the back. It was moving more slowly than the previous one, perhaps because the customer had a child on her lap. Two women who saw shouted at the woman with the baby and her motard. How could she carry a child on a dusty road with a crazy motard!

Motards were cursed every day by elderly and conservative people. They were hated for their way of driving, and the noise and trouble they created in the streets and roads of Bukavu. The roads had merely the colour of tar, covered with a thick layer of dust, but the motards didn’t consider it dangerous to speed along these so-called roads. They would drive as fast as they could in the dust, hooting a horn that could destroy a person’s eardrum. They cared less about getting fined by the police. What mattered to them was the attention and esteem of other motards. Each motard wanted to be known as the master driver, and so they never respected the laws of the almost non-existent roads. They would make up roads where roads never existed, and passed where this was forbidden. Even in the midst of many people in a narrow space, they would pass, hooting insistently, while pushing and knocking human bodies.

For the elders and all true Bukavians, the most abhorrent thing about the moto-taxi industry was its growing popularity. Many women now used moto-bikes as their preferred means of transport, even though their husbands and fathers judged this unacceptable. They could never understand how women could bear the reckless driving of the motards. The design and size of the motorcycles themselves left women in an uneasy situation because of the clothing they wore. Most women wore pagnes or loincloths which easily left their bodies exposed once seated on the moto-taxi. Men thought this was intolerable. And the danger of an accident was always imminent. The motard would drive fast, racing against the wind, and the customer could cry and curse and scream, but the motard would not slow down until the final destination was reached.

The motard who stopped for Risto was young, as most of them were. He wore fashionable expensive pants, shoes and a shirt, with a brand-new cell phone hanging from his neck. This was typical. Motards used the money they earned to show off to girls and to impress their colleagues, showing that they were not afraid of spending. Each motard wanted to show that he was a cut above the rest, and richer than his peers.

‘Where to?’

‘Avenue du Gouverneur,’ Risto said.

‘300 francs Congolais.’

‘No, 150 francs.’

‘Make it 250,’

‘I only have 200.’

He had more, but bargaining was like a genetic disease in this part of the world and Risto couldn’t help it.

‘Where to exactly?’

‘The third house, near the governor’s.’

‘Fine.’

Every ten seconds, Risto passed a motard and his client. This wasn’t the case before he had left Bukavu; there had been a moto-taxi revolution while he was away. He realised that he had spent a long time in the jungle and hospital; many new things had happened. The motard hooted as he reached one moto-taxi station and held down his clutch to make a loud noise. His colleagues hooted back. The wind was stinging Risto’s ears and eyes. He had to clear them with his hands.

He heard a voice singing his name. He looked all around, but could only see motards and their clients, taxis and private cars, and a few people walking. No one seemed to be singing. Then he saw her; a young girl, fourteen or fifteen years old, with a child on her back. She wore old-fashioned clothing. She was neither on a moto-bike nor in a car, but she was moving fast – she was being carried by the wind. At first she was in front of them, then she fell behind. She yelled at Risto, she cried and sometimes sang. Then she was in front of them again.

‘Do you know her?’ Risto asked the motard, slapping him on the back.

‘Eh, stop it, stop it! Know who?’

‘The girl with the child on her back?’

‘Where did you see her?’ The motard held his anger in his teeth.

‘Look … look! Look in front of us!’

‘Am I not looking in front of us? Do you think I am looking behind? Eh, man, one more time and you are off my moto!’

The girl had gone and the voice had died. Even so, a mysterious creature was drawing closer to Risto. He could feel its breath on his neck.

‘Okay, okay, drop me here!’ he yelled in the ears of the motard.

‘This is Nyawera, we are close to Avenue du Gouverneur.’

‘No, no. Drop me here. Drop me, please!’ He was desperate to jump off the motorbike.

The motard stopped and drove off after Risto had paid. The omnipresent creature was still there, behind Risto’s back; this time it was spying on him. It was following him, Risto could feel it. At first he thought it was a man, but then he felt it was a woman. But why was he or she following him? He felt insecure. He needed to get home as soon as possible. There were many routes to take, but at each corner, he was afraid that the person would be waiting for him.

Risto decided to stick with groups of people, not to be alone. He took a seat among a dozen people on the
CINELAC
company compound. Some of them were eating, others discussed politics, and a few others watched the motards at the moto parking lot of Nyawera.

Half an hour passed. It was around 2pm. Risto bought ten bananas; he dropped three in the hands of a blind man who sat close to the wall. He hated the rebel movement, the blind man kept shouting. He would use whatever means he could to defeat the rebel movement that divided the country. He was patriotic and ready to die for his country. Risto sat and listened to the tirade. Then he heard a man’s voice whispering in his ears.

‘Go, give the medicine to my daughter, she is very sick.’

He was startled. He looked around; no one was close to him, so he pretended that nothing had happened while his eyes went east, west, north and south. No one else in the crowd seemed to have noticed. He shook in agitation, looking in all directions.

‘My daughter is very sick, give the medicine to her. You did not let me give her these pills. Go, go, she needs her medicine.’

The voice shook Risto’s bones. He wanted to flee and took the road that headed up around the main building of the Institut Supérieur Pédagogique, but was confused about the direction and soon found himself back at the point he had started from. He went to the edge of the Avenue du Gouverneur; the traffic was too fast for him to cross. He went back again, this time following the road going to the high school Atheneé D’Ibanda. This didn’t seem safe either, and he found himself back among the people endlessly debating politics. No one in the crowd seemed interested in his crazy movements, except for a shadowy mysterious creature that peeped from a faraway corner. He had taken almost all of the six roads that split at Nyawera junction, but none of them seemed to be right; and besides, they all carried mysterious blinking eyes in their corners. Risto was lost in his own town. He jumped into a taxi, the fifth passenger in a white Toyota Corolla. The driver was heading towards the Atheneé D’Ibanda. They passed by the office of the Mayor, la Mairie as they called it, and headed down Feu-Rouge.

‘Where do we stop?’ the taxi driver asked; two passengers still remained in the taxi.

The woman in the front seat said she wanted to be dropped off at Feu-Rouge.

‘Where are you going, driver?’ Risto asked.

‘Eh! Where are
you
going?’ The driver stared at Risto in his rearview mirror.

‘No, I want to know your last destination.’

‘The lady will stop at Feu-Rouge, then you will remain alone.’

‘Then where will you go?’

‘Eh! Eh! I am working, boy, don’t waste my time. Where do I drop you?’

‘I am going to Buholo II.’

‘Damn! Didn’t you see the taxi for Buholo II? You are in a taxi of the Nyawera-Nguba line.’ He laughed, and shook his head. ‘Where are you from?’

‘I am from here, a Bukavian,’ Risto answered.

‘How can a boy from Bukavu get lost in a taxi? I will drop you at Place du 24, you can take a taxi to Kadutu there. Do you know Place du 24?’ Now the driver was making fun of Risto; anyone from Bukavu would know the historic square. It carried the spirits and bones of people who died in the Zaire Republic during the revolutionary march of 24 November 1965; their names were engraved on the monument erected in their honour. It was a junction between many important roads. It united the North and South Kivu, and joined the four Zones of Bukavu: Kadutu, Bagira, Ibanda and Kabare.

To avoid arousing suspicion, Risto gave a fake smile.

‘Yes, I know it. Sorry, I was a bit distracted.’

‘My daughter wants her medicines. Here they are, take them to her.’ It was the same voice that Risto had heard a few minutes earlier. Risto stood at the Place du 24, terrified, wondering where he could run. There were other taxi drivers shouting, calling for customers who were going to Kadutu.

Risto closed his eyes, but left the lights in his room on. Darkness scared him, and nights were getting worse and worse. He left his lights on all the time. Although people spent more time in darkness because of power-shedding, he had as a result told everyone they were never to switch off the lights in his room.

He listened carefully to the noise of children playing outside; it was getting late. They spoke about their plans for the next day, what their mothers were cooking, their schoolmates, and so on. He could hear them wishing each other goodnight.

Sleep would not come yet; it was still too early, only 6 or 6:30pm. His fear was greater than ever before. How would he feel when midnight approached? He didn’t know what to do or how to protect himself. He waited for the voices to appear again; these voices without bodies wrenched Risto’s bones and killed any hope of a better tomorrow.

He didn’t know whose voice would strike at him next. Maybe the spirit of the Mai-Mai soldier he had shot would come for him. Maybe he would hear the cries of the woman and her daughter he saw being raped in the village of Birava. During his entire time in the jungle, he hadn’t touched a woman, neither beaten nor raped one, but he had watched the others do these things. Now he was haunted by people without flesh, by awful voices that followed him wherever he went. He didn’t know whose voice would be next, or what would follow. Maybe the people he had stolen from, maybe the people he had beaten and tortured, maybe … there were a lot of possibilities. Worst of all, he might hear Benny’s voice reproaching him. Maybe all of the people he had hurt or killed would appear at once in his room and attack him, striking with one voice. But he would be dead before they touched him. Their voices would be stronger and more powerful than he could bear.

Sleep still would not land in his eyes. It was quiet, very quiet outside. The children were already in their homes by now. He could hear his mother and father speaking; they were asking about him. But he didn’t move; he knew if he left his room and spoke to them, the questions would be hot. They would ask about his visit to his uncle, and if he told them about the strange voices he had heard the whole day, they would think he was mad. And then they would never trust or believe his words again. All he ever said would be taken as the ramblings of a mad boy. They would think he belonged at the Heri-Kwetu, a well-known church centre for people who had mental and other handicaps.