Johnson Denis - The Laughing Monsters

She said, “Yes. Yes. Are you?”

[OCT 16 1:30PM]

I’m back in the general’s quarters. “Coat of Many Colors”—“Coat of Many Colors”—“Coat of Many Colors”—

My pen’s got a fresh cartridge, but the ball keeps skipping. This encourages more deliberate penmanship.

Tina,—

Tina. I doubt you’ll see me again in the flesh. I may as well embrace candor. With every stroke of this pen I’ve wanted to say it: I’ve lost my heart to this woman. I’m in love with Davidia St. Claire. The sight of her blinds me. This morning, the nearness of her outshone everything going on among these violent men.

Right now I feel two ways. I’m grateful Davidia’s all right. I’m sorry that Michael isn’t dead.

Online again — bathed and shaved and revived after eleven hours’ sleep, plus three cups of coffee brewed American style — I wrote to Tina:

You’ll be hearing from the boys in Sec 4, and I suspect you’ve been briefed to some extent already by your own bunch.

I regret your involvement, nothing else. But your involvement — deeply.

I don’t mean to be curt, just brief. I don’t know how long I have the machine.

They’ll intercept this communication, I suppose, and blackline half of it — but friends, please, let me tell her this much unredacted:

Listen, Tina, when the boys from Sec 4 come around, remember you work for the US, not NATO, not really. I’d urge you not to speak to them. In fact there’s no reason why you shouldn’t just go back right now to DC. Or even home to Michigan.

Thanks, chums. Thanks for letting me transmit that bit of advice.

I just want to be careful not to overstep with my hosts. Who are they? Well fuck, as we Yanks like to say, if I know. Friends of Intelligence. Meaning allies of stupidity.

That was snotty. They’ve been cordial. I should delete it.

— But I saw them coming for me and pressed SEND.

* * *

On the afternoon of the second day, my backpack, my own toiletries, and freshly laundered underwear — also my own — appeared on my bed. But not my watch.

And not my clothes. We still paraded around in red pajamas of cotton-polyester, the same material as the white sheets on our beds — not cots, but barracks beds. And we still possessed the olive socks, shorts, and undershirts they’d issued us. We’d been allowed to keep the shoes we’d arrived in.

“We” being myself and one tentmate, a Frenchman, Patrick Roux, not Patrice, a tiny man with a sparrow’s face and giant horn-rim spectacles, and a five-day beard and bitten fingernails and a personal odor like that of linseed oil … or was my sensitive nose merely sniffing out a fake, a plant, a snitch?

The Congolese Army couldn’t reach us here. I could sleep knowing I wouldn’t be prodded awake with a gun barrel and then shot; though I rather expected to be greeted one morning with some delicious coffee and informed of my arrest on a charge of espionage.

* * *

After supper on the second night, I wrote to Tina online:

I won’t outrage you with pleas for forgiveness. I hope you hate me, actually, as much as I hate myself. And no explanation — nothing you’d understand — only this: the other day Michael asked me if I really want to go back to that boring existence. I said No.

They’ve reviewed and returned some dozens of pages I filled by hand. None of it, apparently, impinges on their plans for world domination. If I somehow crawl free of this mess, I’ll transcribe and transmit those pages to you, and I may even take time one day to set down an account of things, everything, beginning—17 days ago? Really, only 17 days?

They’ve made a few things clear. I’ll get one hour’s online access per day, sending to NIIA recipient(s) only (including you), and I’d better be careful not to compromise in any serious way what they’re up to down here — or else what? They’ll take away my red pajamas?

Right now I can tell you I’m still in Africa. Behind loop-de-loops of razor concertina wire, shiny and new. Behind barricades four sandbags thick and nearly four meters high.

I suppose they’ll redact this too, but for what it’s worth: I’m here thanks, I’m sure, to Davidia St. Claire, thanks to her relation with the US Tenth Special Forces Group, in whose hands I now find myself. I believe yesterday I caught a glimpse of their fearless leader, Col. George Thiebes himself, out there on the grounds. Commander of the whole 10th. I’m pretty sure I was meant to.

This isn’t a prison. My tentmate and I are the only ones in red pajamas. The setup for the fifty or so African detainees (they wear white) seems makeshift and temporary — they’re rounded up and soon released.

Our pajamas say “Nair” and “Roux”—handwritten with textile markers — but none of the personnel wear name tags on their utilities or have names stenciled on their T-shirts.

Even during meals, Roux removes his glasses frequently and spends a lot of time breathing on the lenses and polishing them with his shirttail. He speaks to me only in French but rolls his r ’s like a Spaniard. I gather he returned from business in Marseilles to find that his wife, a Congolese, had gone missing, and while running around looking for her he did something, he can’t guess what, to bring himself in conflict with the American dream.

Nobody stops me from having a walk around, but whenever I do, one or more large enlisted men go walking around the same places.

Davidia must still be here. I have no reason to believe they’ve taken her elsewhere.

Michael Adriko is elsewhere. He never got here. He’s gone. He got away.

* * *

After two days’ grilling, I got a break.

Off-line, I finished transcribing the handwritten letter to Tina. The notebook pages ended with this quick entry:

I’ve slept two hours with my face on the table and just woke up to find everything changed. The general returned my pack and clothes and even several hundred of my 4K dollars — all the twenties.

Michael’s sitting in the back of the general’s pickup — hands unbound. I saw Davidia getting in the front. The day has turned. Whether it turns upside down I

Much activity — time to go—

… All right, Tina, there you have it. My rise from terrified prisoner to confused detainee.

Michael or Davidia must have told the Congolese Army about her connection with the 10th Special Forces. And only about Davidia’s connection, surely, because when Michael disappeared, nobody cared.

Last time I saw Michael I was getting in the truck, up front, with the Congolese so-called general and Davidia. Michael leaned over the rail, nearly into my window, and handed me a pellet of chewing gum. “Here. Keep yourself busy.”

When we made our rendezvous that night, it was like a magic trick. During a rain, the men in the back of the general’s pickup had covered themselves with a dark plastic tarp. They whipped the tarp off. Michael had vanished.

Our escort were three US infantry Nissan pickups, just like our general’s, only olive rather than white.

As Davidia and I boarded, one of the youngsters who’d guarded us said to me, “Newada Mountain.”

“Yes?”

“I am from there. I am Kakwa.”

“Yes?”

“Your friend is there.”

“Michael? My African friend?”

“Yes. He left to Newada Mountain.”

“Oh!” I said — getting it for the first time—“New Water Mountain.”

As for lately, Tina: no activity to report. I’ve spent the day in idleness, in limbo, in hope. I’ve made a proposal, and wheels may be turning. We just might forge an arrangement. In any case, they haven’t said no, and they’ve given me a day off. I can use one — my head still spins, and I slept very little last night, and before that I had no appetite for dinner, as my lunch was interrupted when this American, wow, a genuine asshole — attached to NIIA I suppose, but he withheld identification — dropped out of the sky.