Bernardo Atxaga - Seven Houses in France

Lalande Biran was telling Richardson about Ferdinand Lassalle. He was a great journalist, the winner of the Prix Globe no less.

‘He’s just the man to present Europe with a favourable image of us. That’s why I’m taking such care over the details of the visit.’

Richardson covered his face with both hands.

‘This is how I’ll be posing if he tries to take my photo. I gave my wife the slip years ago, but if she sees me in the newspaper, she could easily turn up in Yangambi. And I’m certainly not having that, gentlemen. Certainly not.’

This time, they all laughed, Van Thiegel loudest of all.

‘Tomorrow, gentlemen, I will go and hunt that antelope with which we intend to impress our guests. I’ll ask Chrysostome to come with me,’ Lalande Biran announced.

‘May I come too, Biran?’ asked Richardson. ‘As you know, we old men need our exercise.’

‘I’ll stay here,’ said Van Thiegel, ‘and start organising the clean-up. It’s not going to be easy getting things spick and span, mind, especially not in the African quarter. There are too many animals there to make it entirely presentable.’

His mind had split in two again, and both halves contained the same image: Christine Saliat de Meilhan in a wet bathing suit on the beach at Biarritz.

‘Excuse me, Captain, but tomorrow is Thursday,’ Donatien put in.

Lalande Biran looked at him with his blue-gold eyes.

‘I mean that Chrysostome has to come with me to find a girl,’ he explained. ‘ JevedirqueCriomedoallermoipourcherunefille .’

‘You’ll have to go alone,’ replied Lalande Biran. ‘I need Chrysostome to accompany me on the antelope hunt.’

‘Of course,’ said Donatien, but his Adam’s apple disagreed and suddenly vanished beneath his collar.

Van Thiegel raised his arm, like someone demanding the floor at a crowded meeting.

‘Speaking of Chrysostome, Biran, there’s something I’ve been meaning to say. That poofter has been washing the young girls and so on for a while now, but I haven’t seen any difference in him. We ought to change tactics.’

Donatien shook his head. They were quite wrong. Chrysostome was very different. He felt like telling them about what he had seen from the porch, but he was angry with the Captain now and disinclined to give him that information. Why didn’t he invite him to go hunting? Why did he choose to send him off to find a girl without Chrysostome’s help? It was partly his own fault, for talking too much. The idea of including antelope on the menu had been his, but it was also partly Livo’s fault. Livo really liked antelope meat, and Donatien was tired of hearing him go on about it. Whenever Donatien took him the mice he caught in the storeroom, Livo always said: ‘I’d prefer an antelope’ — ‘ Je préférais une antilope .’

‘We have far more urgent matters to deal with at the moment,’ said Lalande Biran to Van Thiegel, ‘like preparing a warm welcome for our visitors and taking the Virgin to Samanga.’

‘Yes, Samanga’s an excellent spot for that sculpture,’ said Richardson.

‘I’m just worried that some rebel might have seen it on the beach,’ Van Thiegel commented. He wanted to free himself of that image of Christine, which had taken root in both parts of his mind, keeping him from concentrating on the conversation. ‘If they have, they’ll be expecting something to happen. And of course if they find out a journalist is coming, they’ll probably plan an attack. It would be great publicity for them.’

‘Yes, I’m nervous about that too, and getting more nervous,’ said Donatien.

He hadn’t been into the jungle to look for girls for weeks now and it suddenly seemed to him incredible that he once used to visit the mugini accompanied by only four askaris .

‘If I may, Captain, I’ll go and tidy your bedroom,’ he said and left the office, forgetting to salute.

He didn’t, however, go into the bedroom, but went straight out into the garden. There was no sign of smoke or drumming from the jungle, only the occasional shriek from the monkeys, nothing more. The monkeys weren’t very bright and screamed at the slightest thing, whereas the rebels crouched silently in the darkness under the trees and the undergrowth, watching.

AS SOON AS they had crossed over to the opposite bank, Donatien and the four askaris set off in the direction of the larger mugini , following a path that neither the undergrowth nor the trees had managed to erase completely. They had barely gone two hundred yards when the shrill cry of a monkey broke the silence and a flock of birds took noisy flight. The four askaris were immediately on the alert.

‘Who is it?’ asked Donatien.

The four askaris raised their rifles. Donatien stood behind them. Again they heard noises, this time the sound of voices.

‘ Je crois que ce sont des enfants ,’ said one askari , lowering his rifle slightly: ‘I think they’re children.’ They all listened hard and agreed that he was right. They were light, young voices.

Out of the undergrowth emerged three girls of eight or nine and a very tall girl of about fifteen, so light-skinned that she didn’t appear to come from that part of Africa. They were speaking gaily, as if telling each other amusing stories. The tall girl stopped abruptly, and the younger girls walked on, immersed in their conversation.

Donatien opened his eyes very wide. The tall, light-skinned girl was wearing earrings. Green earrings. They looked like emeralds. He raised his rifle and fired.

The tall girl screamed, and a monkey echoed her scream. All four girls broke into a run and vanished into the dense vegetation. Donatien roared, his throat almost bursting:

‘Get that girl!’

He plunged into the jungle, along with the other men. A few yards ahead of him, the girl’s head appeared above the bushes, and on that head was an ear and in that ear glittered an emerald. Donatien fired again.

The head bobbing above the bushes suddenly veered into a darker part of the jungle, and Donatien followed. Sometimes he would lose sight of her for a few seconds, then he would catch the green glint of an emerald, sometimes once, sometimes twice, and would quicken his pace, ducking now and then to avoid the lianas. The tall girl was a good runner, much faster than him. He cursed himself for being such a bad marksman. If he had even a fraction of Chrysostome’s skill, those earrings would now be in his pocket.

The glints of green grew more numerous, as if he had before him twenty heads and forty earrings, and he slowed his pace. The signs continued to multiply. Soon there were fifty heads and a hundred earrings, and a moment later, a hundred heads and two hundred earrings.

He came to a complete halt, breathing hard. Before him lay thousands of glittering green lights. They were not emerald earrings, however, but the tiny round leaves of a plant. Some distance away, a monkey shrieked. He looked around him and couldn’t recognise the trees. They weren’t mahogany trees or teak, they weren’t draped in long lianas like the rubber trees from which they extracted the sap. He was lost.

He called out to the askaris , but the only answer came from the monkeys. He raised his rifle to fire again, because he still had ten cartridges, but stopped. Lalande Biran would forgive him the two cartridges he had spent and even the ten still in the magazine, because he wasn’t particularly strict about ammunition, but if he fired again, would the askaris come to his aid, or was it more likely that the rebels would make an appearance to find out what was going on? When they saw him there completely alone, they would fall on him and drag him off to their lair. Then they would chop off his limbs with a machete or beat him about the face until he was blind. Van Thiegel had told the younger officers that if ever they found themselves in that situation, it would be best to give themselves a relatively pleasant death by shooting themselves in the mouth.