Johnson Denis - The Laughing Monsters

The feet up above seemed quite still. “Is she asleep?”

“I don’t know what she is. Are you gold, or hydrocarbons?”

“Pardon?”

“Are you with one of the companies? Which particular corporation?”

“None. I’m here looking for a friend of mine, but I haven’t spotted him. Or much of anybody, actually.”

We stood on a patch of brown earth littered with corn husks and cassava peelings. To the west I saw a couple of distant cell towers, lone trees, many huts — all in two dimensions, flat against the sunset. In the other direction, everything was bathed in a somber metallic light, and the two child coffins, ten steps away, seemed uniquely purple, a purple without precedent. Beside them, the two old diggers had nearly disappeared into the earth. I went over and looked. The margin between the twin graves had crumbled to make a single large hole. As they smoothed its sides with their tools, the men sloshed up to their ankles in muddy seepage, maybe the very stuff that had killed the poor tots.

She said, “Usually when somebody dies they do a big wake with a lot of howling and drumming, but they’ve had too many, and now it’s just a chore. The whole region is toxic, thanks to the lust for precious metals. This is the outworking of a spiritual travesty. Are you any kind of believer?”

“No.”

“We’re getting out of here day after tomorrow, and I am Goddamn glad.”

“How are you traveling?”

“Walking, for now. Jim has the Trooper. We’ll make one more swing through the villages, and then back to Lubumbashi. We’ll take a plane from Bunia.”

“Look,” I said, “if I find my friend, we’ll need a ride out of here. I don’t mind paying, and I don’t mind begging.”

“It depends on how many come in the car. Where are you going?”—I said I didn’t know—“Any decent hotel, am I right?”—I said yes — she recommended Bunia. “There’s quite a bit of UN activity there. Peacekeepers and such. It’s a UN town.”

“How far away is Bunia?”

“A couple hundred kilometers. It’s the nearest airstrip. The UN uses it, and some charters.”

“Please, ma’am. Please. We don’t need seats. Put us on the roof. Really. This is Africa.”

She thrilled me by saying, “We’ll probably come right through here day after tomorrow. We’ll do our best to take you aboard. Look for a blue Isuzu Trooper with the top painted white.”

“I’ll be looking for it, believe me.”

“In the meantime, you’ll meet the queen. Maybe they’ll elect you king.”

“Are you laughing at me?”

“After a while,” she said, “everything’s funny.” For one second — I think because of her bright anger — she seemed sexy. She turned to her friends. “Next is Kananga. Only a couple of miles, yes?”

They walked on, four abreast. I watched them get away. Toward the bottom of the hill a flashlight came on, and its spot trembled over the ground … I hadn’t learned the woman’s name or told her mine or even asked if she’d seen anybody like Michael.

The sun had set. The West turned a densely luminous terrifying aubergine. I stood alone beside the queen’s tree. I tried shouting Michael’s name and got no answer. As far as I could tell, the queen slept on undisturbed.

I looked into one or two huts. The people inside them ignored me, even when I called to them.

Then the night came down, and I found this hut empty and came in and sat inside, right here on the dirt floor, and this is where I’ve lived for the last few hours — maybe till I die — probably of thirst. I haven’t had water since noon. Soon I’ll go down and drink from the toxic creek.

[OCT 27 ca. 7AM]

When a woman’s screaming disturbed my dreams I thought nothing of it — there’s always some woman or infant or animal screaming — and I stayed under the darkness in my head as long as possible before I woke up thirsty and frightened in this hut. I’m crouched in a corner. The female screams go on. A sound of hammering or chopping too — not rhythmic, just violent. I have to piss. I need water. A man screams also.

This thirst is murdering me. Give me sewage — I’ll drink it. But I can’t look for the creek now. I’m afraid to leave this hut.

* * *

Davidia. I’ve had a look. It’s Michael out there. Adriko. Our Michael.

* * *

I’m not going out. I’m glad to see him — I came here looking for him — but I won’t make myself known until I have an idea what’s happening.

* * *

I see a lot of villagers sitting on the ground around the coffins and the grave and the dirt piles. Michael argues — battles — with a large woman. He and this screamer are the only ones standing, stalking one another in a circle ten meters wide, keeping the people and the coffins and the double grave between them.

* * *

I’m able to count twenty-nine sitting on the ground. Women wearing long skirts and tops with bold patterns and colors, men in sweaters or large T-shirts with washed-out logos, all of them looking as if they’d rolled in the mud and didn’t care. Two women with children laid across their laps. Both kids naked and bony and sick, eyes open and staring at another world. One woman in a brilliant but filthy wrap and headscarf sits on top of a dirt pile, her legs out straight.

* * *

Michael holds a machete two-handed. Sometimes he raises it above his head as if he means to chop the sun out of the sky. He and the woman scream in some kind of Creole or Lugbara unintelligible to me.

* * *

My guess: the woman is the village queen, La Dolce, down from her tree — I recognize her tennis shoes — and these people have gathered for the funeral of the two dead children, and Michael must have stopped it with his screams and his machete. He and La Dolce howl at each other to the point of strangling on their hatred, but not both at once — it’s back and forth — that is, it seems to proceed as a debate while they orbit around the others.

* * *

She wears a long black skirt and a man’s sleeveless undershirt torn off just below her breasts, which, by their outlines, are narrow and pendulous.

She’s got a buzz-cut Afro on her hippopotamus head, eyes leaping from the sockets and eyelids like birds’ beaks closing over them — her mouth is tiny and round, but it opens to shocking hugeness, displaying many square white teeth. A broad nose like a triangle biscuit smashed onto her face. She’s fat and laughing, hips banging as she struts around, keeping the people and the coffins and the grave between her and Michael.

The hair on Michael’s head is growing back. He tromps around in rubber sandals, blue jeans, a gray hooded sweatshirt, waving the machete with his left hand, slapping his right hand against his chest, where it says HARVARD.

Mainly throughout all this I feel thirsty. I’ve had nothing to drink since yesterday afternoon, and all this drama — and the whole sky, and the earth — and the oceans — seem tiny beside my thirst.

* * *

One minute ago Michael started chopping away with his machete at the woman’s chair, which rests on the ground beside her tree, and she shimmied toward him majestically and plopped herself right down in it, daring him to keep up the destruction and split her in pieces as well.

He’s speaking English—“I’ll destroy this place!”

Now she doesn’t howl, but rather sings of her power, I think, sitting on her throne, and cries out I think Bring me food! Bring me food! until a woman delivers something on a plastic plate and backs away apologizing. La Dolce flings grain into her mouth, it spills all over her bare belly, which even from here I can see is covered with stretch marks. Water now! Bring me water! They hurry to bring her a liter of bottled water — bottled Goddamn water. She anoints her own head from it and sprinkles her face. The drops remain while she says to Michael in English: