Bernardo Atxaga - Seven Houses in France

Richardson attempted a laugh, but his eyes were closing and he was falling asleep.

‘We’ll talk later,’ said Van Thiegel. He walked off, trying to keep very upright, and disappeared behind a mound.

‘A festive spirit reigns in the camp, and the warriors have been drinking,’ thought Lalande Biran, taking up the thread of his poem. ‘Some drink toasts and others sing, while the older men succumb to sleep. But there’s no peace, no camaraderie, the rivals eye each other coolly …’

Lalande Biran would have liked to slip in a quote at that point. He considered the story of Cain and Abel, but rejected the idea. Toisonet always said that you should never mix poetry and religion.

Van Thiegel returned to the group, walking with apparent ease, but when he bent his knees in order to sit down on the ground, he lost his balance and fell awkwardly, then struggled to his feet, cursing.

Lalande Biran poured cognac into two of the glasses and offered one to Van Thiegel.

‘Come on, Cocó, tell me what’s bothering you. What is all this about Chrysostome? Insinuations will get you nowhere.’

Friction among the men was not unusual, but Lalande Biran normally didn’t take any action until, as Napoleon used to say, ‘swords were about to be unsheathed’. There was no clash of swords as yet between Cocó and Chrysostome, but Cocó’s antipathy was taking on an increasingly aggressive tone.

‘He’s a poofter, Biran. I don’t know about you, but I doubt King Léopold would be amused to know that men like Chrysostome were in the Force Publique.’

Lalande Biran had just raised his glass to his lips and before he had even taken a sip, he gave the same spluttering laugh as Toisonet often did. Van Thiegel stared at him. It wasn’t always easy to understand the Captain’s reactions.

‘He’s obviously not interested in women, that much is clear,’ said Lalande Biran, looking over at Chrysostome. Coincidentally, at that precise moment, Chrysostome turned to look at them, as if he had heard what they were saying. ‘But as for him liking men, that’s another matter. I myself have no reason to believe it. To be frank, having just spent three whole weeks in the jungle with him, day and night, I can assure you that I saw no sign of such a proclivity.’

Chrysostome still had his head turned towards them. He raised one hand and showed them three fingers. Three fingers, three monkeys.

Van Thiegel didn’t understand; he couldn’t tell whose side the Captain was on.

‘Granted, as a marksman, he’s second to none,’ he said. ‘He had a bit of an advantage with that first monkey because I’d already winged it, but not with the other two. They were leaping about like mad things, yet he still managed to hit them.’

Lalande Biran took a sip of cognac. Van Thiegel, who had already emptied his glass, picked up the bottle and poured himself some more.

‘Are you tired, Cocó? Bored with life in Yangambi?’ Lalande Biran asked him.

‘Sometimes,’ answered Van Thiegel cautiously.

‘It’s such a relief to know that next year I’ll be back in Europe. I wouldn’t want to end up like Richardson.’

Van Thiegel looked at him, intrigued. The Captain didn’t often confide his thoughts to him. Then he turned to Richardson, who was sleeping with his mouth open, revealing two gold teeth. Seen from that perspective, he looked older than his years, like a real old man.

Lalande Biran again took up the conversation: ‘He’ll drop down dead in some corner of the jungle one day, and someone will come along and pull out his teeth for the gold.’

‘That’s certainly what Chrysostome would do,’ said Van Thiegel. ‘He loves jewellery — like all inverts. You just have to see the way he shows off his medallions.’

All the negative aspects of Chrysostome were piling up in his head. On the one hand, there was his crisp, clean appearance, with his jewellery always on display; on the other, there was the way Chrysostome had insulted him as soon as he arrived in Yangambi, by beating him in the William Tell competition, and then there were the looks he gave him now and then, which always said the same thing: ‘I don’t know what you were before, but I know what you are now: a second-rate marksman.’ He couldn’t get this out of his mind. He couldn’t forgive him.

These malign thoughts rose up into his mouth like belches, and he felt a need to spew them out. Lalande Biran, however, raised one finger to his lips and told him to be quiet.

‘Calm down, Cocó. We’ll talk about this another time.’

The Captain lay on the ground and placed his white hat over his eyes.

‘Let’s follow the example of our veteran friend here. A little rest will do us good. We still have a dozen or so monkeys to kill.’

Van Thiegel felt disappointed. He knew the Captain was not a man of hasty reactions, but he had hoped for something more from him. A few disapproving words, a promise to take steps. Instead, he had received only empty phrases, which came to nothing.

With his eyes covered by his hat, Lalande Biran returned to his poem. He was determined to pin down his muse, who, at the moment, would offer him only beginnings, but forty beginnings did not make a book. And he had published nothing for over six years.

‘Some drink toasts and others sing, while the older men succumb to sleep. But there’s no peace, no camaraderie, the rivals eye each other coolly …’

He remembered again how long it had been since he had published anything. More than six years. It didn’t seem possible.

‘There can be no peace because each man here harbours a secret, and secrets cause …’

He felt uncomfortable and changed position so that he was lying on his side. Once again, the poem refused to emerge into the light, and he thought it best just to forget about it and ponder the numbers he had seen in the article in Le Soir . Especially the two that represented the rise in the price of mahogany and ivory: 330 and 370.

The two numbers began to change shape in his mind. First, he saw them floating in the air and then, immediately, they were transformed into birds flying over a vast green meadow. ‘ Mon ami , you see that area of flattened grass?’ someone asked, someone he couldn’t see, possibly Toisonet, although it didn’t sound like his voice. Whoever it was, though, was quite right. The grass in the meadow was completely flattened. The voice went on: ‘Well, that represents part of your life, the years spent in Yangambi, a sad, sterile time. That grass will never spring up again; the days wasted in this place will never return.’ He looked at the meadow and saw the shadow of the birds flying over it. Except that they weren’t birds now, but two bats. ‘Yes, bats,’ said the voice. ‘Who are you? Toisonet?’ he asked. ‘No, I am the Other,’ answered the voice, and the two bats flew straight at him, screaming wildly, with the clear intention, or so it seemed to him, of devouring his liver. He lay face down, hunched up, then sprang to his feet. When he opened his eyes, he realised that he was back in Yangambi. The sun was still high, and the day still hot. At the far end of the firing range, the askaris were dragging a monkey over to the white screen.

‘Bad dreams?’ asked Richardson. He was awake now and pouring himself a cognac. ‘You leapt up as if the ground was burning you.’

‘It’s the fault of the cognac. I’m not as used to it as you are,’ said the Captain.

‘In that case, we’ll have to punish it. We’ll imprison it in here.’ Richardson patted his belly and drank his glass down in one.

‘I want to punish it too,’ said Van Thiegel in the same humorous tone as Richardson. He was sitting on the ground, his hat pushed back on his head, and he appeared to be sober, or was, at least, talking more coherently.