The Man Who Cried I Am (47 page)

Just as sudden (Max learned, still at Edwards' side) was the departure of Miss Edith Pringle, an efficient, better-than-average-looking secretary, to whom Max had spoken several times during his visits to the U.S. Embassy where she worked. Miss Pringle, it developed had been selling pussy to Nigerians for fifty dollars, cash on the navel, American money, thank you, for only one time. By the time she was found out and brought back to the Embassy from Yaba one night, Miss Pringle had accumulated several thousand dollars. Max could hardly think of her as the “Embassy Girl” the young pimp at the Kakadu had tried to steer him to. No, you just couldn't imagine thirtyish, quite proper, all business Edith Pringle kicking her thick white legs, V-ed above the back of some Nigerian civil servant who'd put his family in hock for the privilege of getting some white trim. She had been an overwhelming success as an
oyinbo
flesh merchant, and had contributed mightily to the “twenny-hungries” of the civil servants who, as it was, often ran out of money before payday, the twentieth of each month. Miss Pringle, money, diaphragms, penicillin capsules and all, was escorted quite wordlessly to Ikeja to catch the next plane home, which was a Pan-Am flight direct to New York.

“They just ain't used to all this sun,” Edwards said with a chuckle.

The whites who would have disintegrated inconspicuously in the States went with the blare of garden party gossip here. You saw it when the liquor went a bit too fast, or you saw it in the blotchy complexions of the women shopping at Kingsway or at the Lebanese supermarket (they called it); you saw it in the whiskey-inspired slobberings of the men, the restless eyes of the women. What did it matter? This was a black land and they had learned in America, most of them, that they could do anything they wished before black people and still preach church services on Sunday. Too many of them were low-ranking Foreign Service people who long ago had given up their dreams of becoming ambassadorial assistants. The paradox now was that the new Negro Foreign Service people, so long hampered, were perhaps the best personnel assigned to Africa. But the Africans, who with their independent status preferred white diplomats, were not terribly happy about the Negroes.

Max was expecting the cable. It had been due from the first day he arrived. Now, it was here. He reread it and walked to the window to gaze down at the traffic jam; there were always traffic jams on Broad Street. The porter across the street in Antoine's was just opening the doors. You had steak at Antoine's, and you ate it with the reek of feces and urine drifting in from the rear bathroom. You got used to it. Max folded the cable and jammed it into his pocket. He could not know then to what extent it would change his life, or commit him to it. He told Charity to book him a flight to Leopoldville for that evening, if possible. The cable from New York had ordered him to the Congo to (1) check on what was happening to the Katanga secession and (2) the progress of the Angolans in their revolt against the Portuguese.

Leo seemed deserted the next morning, Sunday, when Max arrived and checked into the Stanley Hotel. There was a bicycle race in progress on the main street. Here and there people watched cautiously from doorways. Max was sure that behind the closed doors and windows people were packing or listening closely to their radios.

He called the political affairs officer of the U.S. Embassy and arranged a meeting. There was little time to waste. Nearly everyone expected the Congo to blow any minute. After the call Max went to a sidewalk cafe on the Boulevard and had a beer and watched the Swedish UN troopers trying to pick up wig-wearing Bakongo girls. The wigs fascinated Max. The fashion seemed to be spreading throughout the continent. You reached for what looked like a healthy hunk of African hair and you felt a gob of synthetics. Well, American blacks had gone through that phase of disengagement with the white man's culture. They had almost stopped trying to change the hair with heavy pomades and process aids. Negro women, many of them, were wearing their hair short,
au naturel
, in what they
thought
was an African style. Negroes had passed through; Africans were just getting the full effects of the European presence.

Max was sitting in the lobby of his hotel when the political officer came in. His name was Pugh and as they left the hotel Max could
feel
him adjusting to the fact that
Pace
had a Negro correspondent in Leo, walking beside him, a man to whom he was going to give a briefing on the situation with the rebels (Angolan) and rebels (Katangese) and then send him to the UN observers already on the scene.

They shared a quiet and to-the-point dinner a short distance from the city in a small restaurant that sat in a grove of flamboyant and palm trees. Max had already learned that you could not really tell an official in a diplomatic position of a U.S. agency from a Central Intelligence Agency man. Often they were one and the same. Later when Pugh let him out in front of the Stanley he said, “We'd appreciate talking to you again when you return from your travels in the Congo.”

“Of course,” Max said. Pugh thought, naturally, if he was CIA, that Max just might get something their white contacts could not get because he was black. The next morning he booked passage for E'ville that night, then walked over to the Angolan rebels' compound to talk to Miguel Assis, their leader, whom Max had met in New York when Assis was on fund-raising jaunts there. He lunched with Assis, a dark man of medium height who wore gold-rimmed glasses and spoke in a soft voice. Max secured permission to go out with a rebel squad across the border when he returned to Leo. It was agreed on before Max thought about just how silly it was. If the squad ran into trouble the Portuguese would fire on his black face just as they would on the Angolans'. Here he had avoided Korea which at least had been an honest kind of war when compared to what was going on in Angola. Why was he going into
this
mess? He could hardly rationalize it on the basis of color, but then, color was inescapable. If the Portuguese could be driven out, South Africa in the future might also go. Perhaps it was worth a look-see. It was done and Max walked Assis back to his compound where chickens ran loose, people sprawled along the grounds pocked with green, stagnant puddles of water. It was hard for Max to conceive of Assis winning his desultory war against the Portuguese, Algerian aid or no. Maybe when he saw the troops the view might be a little different.

Elisabethville. It galled Max to see its wealth displayed so ostentatiously on the backs of its white men and women, its Avenues of Royale and Delcommune over which, early in the morning, helicopters buzzed spraying mosquito-killing liquids. But this was the capital of Union Minière du Haut-Katanga; this was what the fuss was all about. Money. As usual. More so than at Leo, everything that was in Paris was in E'ville, and more of it: clubs, swimming pools surrounded by mining executives and bikini-wearing girls, hustling houseboys in uniform bringing drinks and food to be devoured by the whites and their quiet Katangese guests who came with their wives and sat in corners.

Mornings when Max left the Hotel Leopold to keep his appointments for the day, he saw it spread out before him. The white reporters at the hotel were friendly enough, but the Katangese, from the serving boy who brought his
petit déjeuner
to his room, to the civilian and mining rulers of the province, looked at him with some confusion.
Un journaliste noir Américain? C'est curieux!
It was their smiles that gave them away, and the puzzled fingering of the press credentials, the labored answers, given as if the mind were really somewhere else. And when Max left them, their farewell almost to a man was (the smiles were politer now, more relieved) “
Content de vous voir.
” What the hell. Just like New York; ten thousand miles away and just like New York. But there
was
a difference; the whites were more receptive to his presence, his questions, than the blacks. This thought came scudding into full view now and he knew he had to look directly at it. He had known it last year, if not by experience, by sense. Now, walking toward UN headquarters it hit him so forcibly that he wondered if he could do the job
Pace
wanted in Africa. Like Pugh, Dempsey had been lured into the black-being-compatible trap. Nothing was farther from the truth.

One day the job in E'ville was done. Over were the interviews, the swimming pool parties, the exchange of information with other reporters, the acceptances, the rejections. Max filed the story and was sure that within a matter of weeks he'd have to come back; it looked that bad.

Back in Leo, before he was ready to go, that is, before he had completely rethought the entire matter, Assis sent word that the rebels were ready to send a guerilla column across the Angola border.

Two days later, following instructions from the guerilla officer in command of the column, Montante, an
assimilado
who had joined the rebels, Max left the hotel as though going for a walk, was picked up not far from where the Ford Foundation was going to build a school to train jurists and administrators, and driven south of Thysville. The guerillas carried Czech weapons—rifles and lightweight automatic machine guns. The Portuguese, it had been widely reported, were armed with the superior NATO weapons that had come from the U.S. Now, Max thought, I'll get to see Mao Tse-tung's theory in action. Pursuing the insurance of his survival, he freely passed out American cigarettes and shared his canned goods which Montante had brought for him. He took pictures of the squad together and individually. That was further insurance. He had known Africans who'd tracked to England and America, photographers that had taken their pictures. To own a photograph of oneself was a mark of status for many Africans. Max wanted the men in the squad to know him, know his face, his voice and the way he moved.

They slipped across the border along the long stretch of flat land that lies between Matadi and Popokabaka, moving like shadows toward Maquela do Zombo in the province of Luanda. There were twenty-five men in the column and the chief weapons were to be speed and surprise. The column was to meet another with twice the number of men. The second group was to hit the army station at Nóqui and then move across country to Maquela, where, it was hoped, the Portuguese would fly in reinforcements. These would be watching the west for the second column. Max's column was to hit from the north, reinforced by the larger group. After the station had been knocked out, both groups were to move east to rendezvous with still a third column coming from near Lunda.

But Max's column waited in the forests and slight hills near Maquela for five days without making contact with the larger column. Small Portuguese spotter planes passed overhead nearly every day. Rations were very low. On the sixth day Montante took fifteen men and most of the hand grenades. Max stayed behind and watched the men move silently toward the town under the cover of a sullen, purpling dusk. Two hours Max heard the soft, crumping sound of exploding hand grenades, rifle fire and long bursts of machine guns. Then there was silence. A few minutes later rifle fire was swallowed by heavy machine-gun fire. Max looked at the sky, expecting to see tracers arching under it toward the town. This time the silence was complete. The ten men with Max had crouched toward the firing at first; now they sat down. The jungle distorted sounds. They would have to wait to see what happened.

But neither Montante nor his men returned that night and morning found two small planes trailing back and forth across the sky, obviously spotting for ground forces. Still, the guerillas waited. At dusk, however, there was full accord to retreat back across the border. The “campaign” had been a failure. The larger column was gone, vanished in the soft hills. The main part of the second column was also gone. And the third column, if it still functioned, would have found them by now, they had been at Maquela so long. The retreat covered a different route; this one went through a small swift stream of dark frothing water. When Max's turn to cross it came, he froze his mind against the presence of water cobras and edged into the stream. He felt the sudden pull of the current against his legs, then slipped and went under briefly, then up, managing to hold his camera out. The guerillas smiled when he made the opposite bank. Bedraggled and chattering, the guerillas crossed the border, sent word to Thysville for trucks and sat down to wait for them. The expedition had been like placing a baby in the den of a hungry lion. Bye-bye, baby. Sixty-five men missing;
good
and missing, and there was the third column. But the men were laughing and talking. Africa which spawned so much life, took it cheaply and left only the bones to be worshiped. And sometimes even the bones weren't found.

As he had done when he returned from E'ville, Max called Pugh. Odds were that he already knew what had happened. Pugh came shortly after Max had cleaned up and sat down to pull his story together from the notes. One look at the small, thin-faced bold man told Max that Pugh had done his homework. His handshake this time was hard and firm and there was a kind of official deference about him that one finds in people closely associated with governments. Max could see Pugh telling Washington and getting the return message:
PERSON IN QUESTION O
.
K
.
MORE FOLLOWS
…

“How was it, Mr. Reddick?”

Max looked away from him, out past the balcony and the treetops. From his room he could just see the Congo River threading its way through marshland to the sea. There was no one he could hurt with the details now. Maybe all Pugh needed was confirmation of what he already had.

“You know the camp close to Thysville?”

“Yes.”

“We took a route between Matadi and Popokabaka.”

“One of the usual routes.”

“Twenty-five men in our column; we were to meet fifty other men and I don't know how many were in the third column.”

“Where were they coming from.”