Paul Theroux - Sir Vidia's Shadow - A Friendship Across Five Continents

One of Lord Invader’s songs was “That Old-Time Cat-o-Nine,” which Vidia sang in his scratchy needle-on-record voice:

The only thing to stop these hooligans from causing panic in the island;

Well, I go by the government,

Say they need another kind of punishment,

I say one thing to cool on this crime

Is bring back that old-time cat-o-nine—

He took a breath and, in the same tone-deaf voice that oddly affected me, sang the chorus:

That old-time cat-o-nine

Bring it back!

That old-time cat-o-nine

Hit them harder!

Send them to Carrera where it licks like fire

And they bound to surrender!

“Words to live by,” I said.

“Where are we?”

We had left the Kingdom of Ankole, ruled by the now emasculated and chastened Omugabe, and filled with wild game — antelopes (specifically, the Uganda kob) and elephants and zebras. We were approaching the Kigezi district, in the southwest corner of the country, where Uganda, Rwanda, and the Congo met. But the borders were obscure because they lay at a high altitude, among the volcanic Virunga Mountains, which were forested and thick with browsing gorilla families. The people here were called the Bachiga, who were sneered at for their diminutive size and their unusual customs. In addition to the urine ceremony, there was something called the fire dance, which encouraged sexual precocity in young boys. And, unlike the cow-tending, beef-eating Banyankole, the Bachiga ate monkeys.

Vidia wanted to know this. He wanted to know much more. He was the most wide-awake person I had ever traveled with. He needed to know the name of that river, that large tree, that flower, that mountain range, and when he saw a peak on the horizon, he had to know what it was called. It was called Mount Muhavura, 13,500 feet and beautifully shaped, like all these mountains, which were symmetrical cones, the very emblem of vulcanism, some of them still smoking.

He asked about my name. What was my reaction when people spelled it wrong?

“Everyone spells it wrong.”

“That’s an insult,” Vidia said. He said he had once received a letter from Penguin Books addressed to “V.S. Naipull.” It was from a man named Anthony Mott. Vidia replied, typing on the envelope, “To A Mutt,” and began his letter, “Dear Mr. Mutt…”

It was a long journey. We talked about everything. After circling through the terraced gardens and stepped fields of the Virunga foothills, we came to Kabale, which lay in a steep green gorge. I stopped at the White Horse Inn, which was known for its hospitality. It was mid-afternoon, and we had hardly stopped since leaving Kampala in the early morning.

“I’m hungry,” I said.

Vidia did not move. “You go ahead.” He smiled. “I’ll wait here.”

“Aren’t you hungry?”

He yanked his bush hat lower on his head and said, “Please go on. Don’t worry about me.”

“Vidia,” I said. “This might be a good place to stop for the night.”

“Oh, no. Not that. Not that.”

I could not understand his reluctance. I said, “The only places between here and Kigali are two really tiny towns, Kisoro and Ruhengeri. The border might be closed by the time we get there.”

“We’ll stop at Kisoro then, at the Traveler’s Rest.”

“What’s wrong with this hotel?”

At first he hesitated. Then he said, “I couldn’t possibly stay here. I’ve quarreled with the manager.”

“You were here before?”

“With Patsy.”

This was news to me.

“Quite a while ago. You were in the north. We stopped for lunch. I was quite taken with the place. It’s Oldie Worldie, isn’t it? But”—he made his disgusted face, his sour mouth—“it was a mistake. I said I wanted to talk to the manager. When he came to our table, I said, ‘You have very strange rules here.’

“‘Strange rules? What do you mean?’

“‘Rules governing the condition of your staff uniforms,’ I said.

“‘We have no such rules. Only that they wear them.’

“‘Don’t you have a rule saying that all staff uniforms must be dirty?’

“‘No,’ he said.

“‘Oh,’ I said, “I thought that, because they were all dirty, your staff must be obeying a rule.

“The manager glared at me. But I was not through. ‘The other rule I noticed was the one about serving. Whenever a plate or bowl is brought to the table, the waiter has his thumb stuck in the food. That’s surely a rule, because they all do it.’

“The manager fumed and said that if we did not like it, we could leave. I said, ‘With pleasure.’ But you see, he wanted to have a row. I’m afraid I obliged him. So it’s better that I stay here. Take your time. Enjoy your lunch.”

But lunch had ended, so an African waiter told me. The manager confirmed this. He was a thin, irritable-looking man in a crumpled white shirt and club tie and black trousers.

“I’ll have tea, then.”

“You’ll have to take it in the lounge. We require a jacket and tie in the dining room.”

Over two hundred miles from Kampala, in the Virunga forest of wild Kigezi, among the pissing, monkey-eating Bachiga, where gorillas were commonplace and bird squawks filled the air, where everyone went barefoot and many women bare breasted, I could not enter the dining room of the White Horse Inn without a tie knotted around my neck.

Sniffing defiantly at me, the manager shuffled papers and was gone. I had tea in the lounge: cookies, sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and fruitcake. An elderly African hovered next to me, pouring tea through a silver strainer, adding hot water to the teapot, smoothing the napkins.

“Did you see him?” Vidia said when we were under way again.

“Yes. He was rude to me. He said I needed a necktie to eat in the dining room. He stuck me in the lounge.”

“Infy.”

Before Kisoro, misreading a sign, I took a wrong turn. We traveled down a narrowing road that seemed to be going nowhere except into deeper forest, one that had only thickened and risen and never been cut, where there were no huts, no straying chickens. Such a place, like the Ituri and the woods near Lake Edward and some others, was distinctive for its darkness, the green-black shadows of dense ferns under a tall canopy of foliage.

After twenty minutes in that dark forest we came to a border post with a wooden shed, a barrier, and a few men wearing colorful shirts. They were drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. I saw the pack in one man’s shirt pocket with the name Belga. It was Primus beer. Congolese brands. We were on the wrong road.

“ Bienvenue à la frontière congolaise ,” one man said, swigging beer and welcoming us.

Vidia was delighted. The Congo! He spoke to the man in beautifully accented French. “ Incroyable! Nous n’avons aucune idée que nous nous dirigeons vers le Congo! ” he said. We had no idea we were headed for the Congo!

“ Monsieur, vous êtes au Congo ,” said the beer-drinking man with the loudest shirt, its pattern of big red poppies like a mark of his authority. The Congo is here, sir. His foot was propped on the barrier, a rusty horizontal pipe.

They bantered for a while and Vidia finally said, “ C’est dommage que nous allons à Rwanda .” It’s a shame that we’re going to Rwanda.

“ Rwanda est par là ,” the man said. Rwanda is that way. “ Mais re-tournez un jour et visitez le Congo .” Come back sometime and visit our country.

I reversed the car and drove away from the shed, heading back the way we had come. This was the easternmost border of the Congo, as distant as it was possible to be from Leopoldville. I kept thinking of that Congolese frontier post, the little shed, the tiny postern to a great and enigmatic castle of a country.