Dinaw Mengestu - The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears

“The poems,” he said, “are like the Commedia , except there is no heaven. They begin in hell, they come out for just a moment, and then they return.”

Once, in his underfurnished and oversize studio, he read to me the last few lines of the first section, the one that ended with the departure of Belgium from the Congo and the rise of Lumumba as prime minister. The scene was his equivalent of Dante’s “Some of the beautiful things that heaven bears.”

We have come this far, to find we have even further to go

The last traces of a permanent twilight have faded and given way

To what we hope is nothing short of a permanent dawn.

“Those lines still need some work,” he said. “I haven’t quite captured the mood I want. I want the reader of this poem to know what it felt like to be in the Congo in nineteen sixty. It was more than just a new beginning. It was a brand-new world. It was like everyone in the country became a new mother and father at the same time. But I can’t say that. Can I? No. I need something more subtle, less direct, but without losing any of the feeling.”

As far as I know, Joseph is still working on those three lines two years later. Occasionally, when drunk, he brings them back up again.

“I think I’ve got them now, Stephanos. They came to me last night like a line from heaven:

Let us stop. Let us begin again.

Let us clean the blood from the rubber fields

And do what we promised to do.”

Each incarnation has had a different theme and point of departure. One version of those lines was directed toward King Leopold. Another was told in the voice of a mutilated plantation worker staring at his severed hands lying in a basket already full of hands. And yet another was in the voice of an orphaned child witnessing the birth of a new nation. The last version he read to me was the sparest of them all. It simply went:

Patrice.

Are we ready?

The problem, Joseph said, was that he wanted to tell the entire history of the Congo, from the rubber plantations to the first coup. “Nothing can be left out,” he said. “The poem must be able to contain it all. Anything short of that is a failure.”

Those early lines of poetry gave Joseph just enough romanticism to make it through his years at the Capitol Hotel, and now the Colonial Grill, but they were losing their power. Now, when he talks about the restaurant, it’s exclusively as a joke or sarcastic comment. He refers to it as the Colony. He talks about it only when he’s sitting back comfortably in a chair, his legs crossed, preferably with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

“It was terrible at the Colony today. Absolutely terrible. The natives went crazy. We ran out of the risotto. The women were tearing off their pearls. The men were spitting in their wine. We almost had to teargas the place.”

It’s only a few minutes after five o’clock by the time I reach the restaurant, and already it’s crowded. The Colonial Grill hasn’t changed at all since I last saw it. I used to walk past it every day when I worked at the Capitol Hotel. Joseph and I would sometimes take our lunch break together, and when we did, we would walk past the restaurant and stare in through the huge glass windows that wrapped around the sides of the building and exposed it to everyone who stood or drove by the corner it sat on. Our translucent reflections were shot back to us as we watched the finely dressed men and women inside sip their water. Occasionally we mimicked the conversations that we imagined were going on inside.

“You know, Stephanos,” Joseph would say, “this steak is rather dry for my taste.”

“You don’t say, Joseph. I was just thinking the same thing.”

“This place is not what it used to be.”

“No. You’re quite right. But what can you do? The whole country is going to hell.”

“Not just the country, Stephanos. The whole world is falling apart around us.”

I spot Joseph from outside as he rushes back to the kitchen with another order waiting on his lips. I’ve never seen him fully dressed for work. Whenever he comes to the store, he always takes off his shirt and bow tie in exchange for the Michigan sweatshirt he wears on all but the warmest days.

On his way back to a table with three elderly white women situated around it, Joseph catches me staring at him through the windows. Our eyes meet, and for a few seconds neither one of us moves. He stands there frozen in the middle of a busy restaurant designed to look like a nineteenth-century English dining room, complete with enormous crystals chandeliers and red velvet drapes swooping in the corners of every window, while I’m fixed to my own stretch of the sidewalk, framed by the glass office towers behind me. We’re both aware of the rush and noise surrounding us. Behind me is a line of cars waiting for the light to change and a steady flow of people walking to and from their offices, while surrounding him are tables full of people ordering their food and scraping clean their plates. Another waiter nearly collides with Joseph as he rushes by with his arm stacked with empty coffee cups and dessert plates. We could be old lovers reuniting the way we stare at each other, but instead we’re two old friends who’ve known each other for years and yet can’t seem to make sense of the image staring back from only a few yards away. Joseph barely looks anything like the man I know. It’s not just the tuxedo that changes him, it’s the context and the expression on his face. Despite what he may have said in the past, I’ve always known that he has never wanted Kenneth or me to set foot inside that restaurant while he was working there. I had never guessed that perhaps it was even too much just to see him. He tries to smile at me but the look comes across as forced. It’s a grimace, not a smile, the type of expression you would give to someone whose offensive remark you try to go along with.

Another waiter deliberately nudges Joseph gently on the shoulder as he passes. He sets off for the table that had been his original destination, but he never takes his eyes off me and I never take mine off him. There is no denying anymore who we are and what we’ve become. I give him a simple wave good-bye just as he approaches the table of women, who are all looking at him, somewhat confused. He nods his head once toward me and then turns to the women. I watch him for just a second longer before rounding the corner and disappearing from his sight.

There are fewer than twenty blocks now separating the Colonial Grill from my store in Logan Circle. I know these blocks as intimately as I know any other streets in this city. While so much has changed, these twenty blocks have remained obstinately the same. So, this is the city that I’ve made my life and home. It seems important now to think of it in that way. To consider it not in fragments or pieces, but as a unified whole. As a capital city, it doesn’t seem like much. Sixty-eight square miles, shaped roughly like a diamond, divided into four quadrants, erected out of what was once mainly swampland. Its resemblance to Addis, if not always in substance, then at least in form, has always been striking to me. As a city, Addis wasn’t much larger. Ninety square miles, most of which was a vast urban slum built around the fringes of a few important city centers. The two cities share a penchant for circular parks and long diagonal roads that meander and wind up in confusion along the edges. Even the late-afternoon light seems to hit D.C. the same way. Right now it’s a soft, startling pinkish hue folded into a few large clouds building up along the western horizon. In two more hours, it will dissolve into long, dark red tendrils of light that will stretch across the sky, and this day will have finally ended.