The Boy Who Stole the Leopard's Spots Page 3

  However, one could not run a diamond-mining operation, even of the alluvial sort, without many hundreds of African workers and, of course, servants to manage the affairs of home because life was so very difficult in the Belgian Congo. And, just as in Europe, the lower class and the upper class did not live side by side, for the two classes shared nothing in common. This was no mean prejudice, merely a statement of facts. After all, a family just in from the bush who squatted behind their house for their personal needs, a mother who went topless, plus a father who slaughtered pigs in front of his door—such a family would not feel comfortable living next door to a housewife who practiced Chopin for three hours every afternoon and who wrote long, poetic letters in ancient Greek to her brother in a monastery back home in Flanders.

  Besides, since the Almighty had placed a river at the Belgians’ disposal, like a giant moat, and the Divine had seen fit to fill it with hippopotamuses and crocodiles, and then to cap it off with a dangerous waterfall—well, one would certainly be remiss not to take advantage of it, wouldn’t one? So at the loss of much human life—most of it African, and thus regrettable, but not altogether tragic—the infamous Belle Vue Bridge was built. And directly adjacent to the waterfall, too, if you can imagine that!

  Ooh la la, did this ever put Belle Vue on the map! The little town prospered, especially after the Second World War, when the Consortium, the company that owned the mine, built a combination grocery and dry goods store for its employees. No longer did the Consortium’s employees need to drive more than a hundred miles over a single dirt track through bush that led through territory inhabited by headhunters. Not only that, but the Belle Vue store supplied milk and cheese flown in via Cessna, and store employees even began baking croissants and bread—sold fresh every morning.

  When in 1950 the residents of Belle Vue saw the construction of a clubhouse, with a restaurant, and swimming pool, just for them, they were practically delirious with happiness. Some folks even spoke of retiring to Belle Vue when their productive years were over. Why not? Except for one month a year—the month preceding the big rains—the climate was livable. And anyway, what did Europe have to offer now, except the possibility of more war? (Europe was always at war, was it not?)

  It should go without saying that both the store and the clubhouse were for full-blooded whites only. Light-skinned mulattoes and Asians needed to check in with management immediately upon entering the premises, unless they were on business for a white. Just as long as everyone knew their place, it was an easygoing world, one in which nobody wanted trouble.

  Shortly after the amenities went in, the Belgians graciously, and inexplicably, announced that they would share them with all whites in the area. Thus it was that the Missionary Rest House was built in record time, high on a cliff top, just above the bridge and the falls. As the missionaries were Protestants, and the Belgians were predominantly Roman Catholic, the Missionary Rest House was built on the African side of the Kasai River, on the “native” side.

  Some might say—perhaps herself included—that Madame Cabochon was the femme fatale of the town of Belle Vue. However, Amanda Brown was currently the only female in residence at the Missionary Rest House on the native side of the river—fatale or otherwise. That was because October was the suicide month. No one, not even a lowly, self-sacrificing missionary, wanted to waste his, or her, precious few days of vacation on these, the most miserable days of the year. For three months straight, not a drop of rain had fallen, but now, every day for a month, the clouds had piled higher and higher, like a cotton candy staircase to heaven. At any moment these towering, even majestic, structures could turn jet black and rain would dump down upon the hills—not in buckets, but in barrels.

  But in the meantime, the air was so thick with moisture that even the slightest bit of exertion set one to gasping like a fish out of water, although only a very few whites saw the irony in that. The Europeans, who were Catholics and not prigs like the Protestants, swore vehemently at the high humidity while they still had the energy. One common denominator was that everyone, regardless of their religious persuasion, sweated a great deal. Eventually, somewhere in the colony, a person of light skin succumbed to the punishing climate and committed suicide.

  One Sunday morning during the suicide month, Amanda Brown left the relative coolness of her cement block house to investigate the commotion she heard behind one of her outbuildings. Laughter, that’s what it was, but the fact that she could hear it above the roar of the waterfall—now that spoke to trouble. Upon rounding the corner of her woodshed, Amanda felt immensely relieved to see that the chief instigator of all the noise was none other than her housekeeper, Cripple.

  Africans in this part of the Congo, Amanda had soon learned, were most often given names that referred to some aspect of their birth, birth order, or physical appearance. Upon first meeting her, one might think that Cripple, with her bent and twisted body, would hardly qualify as a good housekeeper, but Amanda had never before in her life encountered a mind that sharp, or a personality quite so wily. Amanda would let the cook and head housekeeper, whose name was Protruding Navel, do the heavy lifting; Cripple would serve as her entrée into the mind of the native.

  But this, this—whatever it was—was going too far! What was this? Amanda asked the same question of Cripple and was ignored. Angry now, Amanda stepped right up to her employee, who was seated on an overturned washtub, which had been placed on top of an even larger tub. Still unnoticed, Amanda clapped her hands directly in front of Cripple’s eyes.

  “Cripple, answer me!” Amanda spoke in Tshiluba, which was the local trade language and, as such, was spoken by all the Africans living in Belle Vue.

  The tiny woman was capable of emitting enormous sighs. “These are my customers, Mamu.”

  “Customers?” Amanda practically shouted. “You have nothing to sell.”

  Cripple gently pushed the white woman’s hands away and began to sway as if she might suddenly be dizzy. “Mamu, as you well know, I am swollen large with child. Those enormous white hands of yours have a most unpleasant odor—worse even than that of a jackal that has been dead for three days. At any moment we both might experience a great unpleasantness over which I will have no control.”

  The gathering—there were over twenty villagers waiting in a queue, and even more standing around just to watch—erupted in laughter. Smelly hands, they mocked. Worse than a jackal that has been dead for three days! Why not just two days? Why not four? Surely a white woman’s hands smelled as bad as all that, for they were undeniably a loathsome people.

  “Cripple,” Amanda said, trying hard to focus only on the woman seated atop a washtub throne. “You must tell all these people to go home—at once! It is Sunday, the Lord’s Day, and I will not have you desecrate it with this heathen business of yours. Whatever it is.”

  “But, Mamu—”

  “Must there always be a ‘but,’ Cripple?”

  “Eyo, Mamu, but only because I loathe injustice.”

  “As do I.” The American sighed, just not nearly as loudly as Cripple had. “Okay, you may state your case.”

  “It is only that I am a heathen, Mamu. In my healing business I make no mention of your Lord or his special day. So you see, it is impossible, therefore, for me to desecrate that which you hold sacred.”

  “Nevertheless, this land belongs to the mission; I cannot have you mumbling secret incantations and communing with the spirits of the dead. My holy book—the Protestant Bible—is very clear about this being wrong.”

  Cripple was of two minds; the human side of her wanted to laugh uproariously at Mamu’s insane suggestion. After all, communing with the dead was the last thing that Cripple would ever want to do—that even came after kissing the thin, wormlike lips of a white man. What about the other side of Cripple’s mind? It was all business. Keeping Mamu happy was what really mattered if Cripple was going to support herself and the failure
she called Their Death (whom she also called Husband).

  “Cripple,” Mamu said sternly, “I said to tell these people to go home.”

  As can be expected, the crowd that had gathered exclaimed among themselves and talked excitedly. But Cripple’s cheeks burned with shame, and for the first time she regretted her relationship with the young American missionary. Amanda Brown, hostess of the Missionary Rest House, had been always a fair and kind employer. In fact, Cripple had fallen into the trap of thinking that the white woman was her friend. Now this.

  Cripple thought of standing, but her dignity bade her to remain seated. “You may dock my last week’s wages, Mamu, because I quit my job—beginning yesterday.”

  The white mamu smiled—just a bit around the corners of her mouth. “Quit? You seemed to be happy in my employ. I am afraid I do not understand.”

  “These people pay me what they can, Mamu. Sometimes it is a few francs, sometimes a piece of fruit, and sometimes nothing. Truly, it is all nothing compared to what you pay me. But I have a stomach,” Cripple said, referring to the child that stirred within her, “and the stomach asks that I remain seated for much of the day. That is why I have decided to quit this most desirable position of being your humble servant.”

  “In that case I understand,” Mamu said.

  It was Cripple’s turn to smile, for she was both pleased with the outcome of their conversation and she had a business proposition. Before Their Death was fired from his job at the post office, he had learned from Monsieur Dupree that Europeans always conducted their business with smiles and handshakes. No doubt Americans, who shared the same unnatural physical attributes, expressed themselves in a similar manner.

  “Mamu Ugly Eyes,” she said, for that was this white woman’s name, “is it not the case that Protruding Navel works like a slave washing your clothes in these very tubs on the day before your Sabbath?”

  To be sure, that remark was followed by a great deal of laughter and poor Mamu’s unnatural complexion turned from white to red. “Kah! He does not work like a slave!”

  “Nevertheless, for the rest of the week these tubs remain unused, nasha?”

  “E. But—”

  “Then why not rent them, and this space, to me? I will pay you real Congo francs, not bananas or eggs.”

  Amanda, who was only twenty-three, took her first posting as a missionary seriously. True, her job was to run a guesthouse, but during the oppressive heat of the suicide month, the rooms remained empty. Meanwhile, here was an opportunity to show Christian charity to a self-proclaimed heathen, and possibly even in the long run she might be able to convert Cripple. Still, there was a certain protocol to follow and boundaries to be set.

  Amanda gestured at Cripple’s customers. “This is a place for missionaries to come and rest; it is not a place for crowds to gather. What is wrong with your own compound, Cripple?”

  “Kah! There are so many children, chickens, and goats running about in my family compound that even an intelligent woman like yourself would find it impossible to think. Mamu, how then must a much less clever woman, such as you see before you, be expected to solve the problems of these poor people who have great need.”

  Amanda bit her lip as she remembered to think twice before speaking. “And you can solve their problems?”

  “Observe, please, Mamu.” Cripple clapped her hands and nodded at two men who stood at the head of the line. “The man on the woman’s-hand side is a Mupende, and the man on the man’s-hand side is also a Mupende.”

  “They look very much alike,” Amanda commented, half to herself. “Are they twins?”

  “Aiyee!” Cripple said, and the crowd also reacted in a shocked manner. The once orderly queue was now cluster of murmuring anxious people, all of whom seemed poised to run.

  “What did I say wrong?” Amanda asked.

  Then Cripple remembered that there were times when she had to treat the white woman as if she were a child. In many aspects the whites were children, totally ignorant of how to behave once they set foot in the workers’ village, that part of Belle Vue where the Africans were forced to live.

  “Mamu,” Cripple said, speaking with more patience than she had earlier, “they cannot be twins, because the Bapende do not allow such an evil thing to happen.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “Eh, so I will explain. If a Mupende woman should give birth to more than one child, the infants are lain on a rack in the sun. The same sort of rack that is used for drying manioc roots. Then the parents wait until all the infants are dead but one. Only then may the mother take the live infant to her bosom.”

  “But that is horrible!”

  “Tch! Mamu, would you rather have an evil spirit masquerading as a child and perhaps causing the deaths of many villagers before its presence is discovered and then destroyed?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then we are in agreement; it is better to let the child containing the evil spirit die a natural death so that everyone may live a happy life afterward.”

  “But—”

  “Do not be so argumentative, Mamu,” said Cripple, who was losing patience again. “Believe me, it is not a natural thing to give birth to more than one baby at a time. This is the something that goats do—and dogs, surely, and pigs, but not people. If this was the natural order of things, then women would give birth to twins all the time. So you see, Mamu, again you are wrong. This is why you must think twice before you speak.”

  Amanda’s cheeks burned; she felt like she’d been slapped. As fond as she was of the quick-witted little women with the enormous ego, she hated that admonishment. Both her mother and her mother’s mother were forever telling her the same thing. And why? It wasn’t like she never stopped to think.

  “Mamu, are you listening?” Cripple said.

  “Eyo.”

  “Now look at these men again. One can tell that they are members of the Bapende tribe merely by looking at their teeth, which have been filed to disgusting points. It is common knowledge, Mamu, that these savages are cannibals, and therefore are in need of your salvation. Would you turn them away, and by doing so, condemn them to your hell?”

  “Enough of this nonsense, Cripple! Let us see how you settle this dispute—whatever it is—before you start preaching to me.”

  Cripple took a deep breath. “Mupende man,” she said. “What is your name?”

  “Surely my name is of no importance to you; I have not come here to be your friend.”

  You should have heard the bystanders laugh at the young man’s impudence! Or were they laughing at Cripple? Either way, such behavior was quite unacceptable; after all, Cripple was both his elder and a possessor of special powers.

  “He is afraid to give you his name,” said the other fellow involved in the case, the one on the hand of the woman. “This one fears that if you know his name, you will be able to place a curse upon him.”

  “That is not so!” cried the young man. “My name is Lazarus Chigger Mite. There, mock me if you will!”

  But no one dared.

  “Lazarus Chigger Mite,” said Cripple thoughtfully. “That is a powerful name, for in the village the mites are plentiful. Does possessing this name offer your feet protection from this terrible scourge?”

  Chigger Mite held out his left foot, the foot of the woman’s side. Cripple saw that it was remarkably smooth and showed no sign of infestation.

  “Yala! Your name has served you well.”

  “Yes, and perhaps I owe some of this good fortune to my god Jehovah, and his mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary. I am a true Christian, you see, a Roman Catholic, not a Protestant, like the mamu for whom you work.” Chigger Mite used the appropriate Tshiluba terms for religious references, of course, for he too was fluent in that language.

  Cripple was careful to roll her eyes discreetly. “Please, just tell me your side
of the story.”

  “It is very simple, O great wise woman. Just this morning, while hunting in the forest along the stream that runs nearest the village, I came across—and killed—the largest of all rock pythons.”

  Cripple smiled and help up a hand signaling Chigger Mite to stop. “I am curious,” she said. “How large is this snake?”

  “Truly, truly, Mamu, it is the largest of all snakes, for I do not exaggerate. Do you see that bush with the yellow flowers?”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “If the head of the snake is here, then the tail of this fearful monster extends all the way until it reaches that other bush over there—the one with red flowers?”

  There were many gasps, as might be expected from a crowd that large. Even the white mamu expressed great surprise, and no doubt she had seen many strange things where she came from.

  “Where is this snake now?”

  “But wise woman,” the second man complained loudly, “you have yet to even ask my name.”

  “Tch! In that case, tell me your name—but hurry, for I wish to see this snake.”

  “Mamu, my name is Jonathan Pimple. I am a true Christian, a Protestant like yourself.”

  Before Cripple could protest and proudly proclaim her heathenness yet again, the man named Chigger Mite chimed in. “Mamu, it is the Roman Catholics who are the true Christians. For ours is the same faith practiced by Jesus and his mother.”

  At this the white mamu stepped forward. Her face was red, which is a clear sign that a mukelenge is angry or that you have surprised her on the toilet.

  “Jesus and his mother were not Roman Catholics,” she said. “They were Jews. When Jesus was alive, there were no Catholics and no Protestants, either.”

  “Are you sure, Mamu?” Jonathan Pimple said. “For I have seen Jesus’s idol, and that of his mother, in Chigger Mite’s church.”