The pot for boiling the manioc was waiting in line for the stove, after the diapers, and after that would come the big laundry kettle with the boys’ shirts and our household’s three sheets and two towels. Here in Kinshasa we have a “city kitchen,” with the stove right inside the house, but it’s only a little bottle-gas burner, maddeningly sluggish after my years of cooking over roaring wood fires. A lot of people in la cite do cook with wood, which they have to nibble secretively from each other’s houses at night, like termites.
This was supposed to be a payday for Anatole, and it the school there’s been talk about the supplementaire, meaning the possibility of the government’s starting back payments on the wages they’ve been stealing from all public schools for over a year. This “supplement” is supposed to be a sign of good faith, to forestall a nationwide strike of university students, but some students walked out anyway, and the signs of Mobutu’s faith so far have been expressed with nightsticks. I worry constantly about Anatole. Although I know his capacity for self-restraint in a dangerous moment is uncanny.
Elisabet and I knew there would be no supplement but were still greatly enjoying spending it at tomorrow’s market. “A kilo of fresh eels and two dozen eggs!” I proposed, and she laughed at me. My craving for protein drives me to a singlemindedness she calls my momfele-hungries.
“Better, ten kilos of rice and two bars of soap,” she said, which we do need badly, but I despaired for an imaginary windfall that would bring nothing but more white starch into this house.
“Nothing white,” I declared.
“Brown soap, then,” she offered. “Oh! And some nice pink papier hygienique!” she added fervently, and we both laughed at that pipe dream. The last roll of toilet paper we’d seen, in any color, came from Atlanta.
“At least some beans, Elisabet,” I whined. “Fresh green ones. Mangwami, like we used to have in the country.”
Pascal’s best friend, a hearty girl named Elevee, had wandered in and sat down at the table opposite Elisabet, but was uncharacteristically quiet
“What do you think?” Elisabet prodded her with the blunt end of her knife. “Tell Madame Ngemba she needs a new pagne with some color left in it. Tell her she is disgracing her sons with the washing rag she wears to the market.”
Elevee picked at the short sleeve of her school uniform, evidently not desiring to talk about fashion. Her very black skin looked ashy, and she had the tired slump to her shoulders I recognize in my boys when they’re getting hookworm. I carried the boiled diapers outside, washed my hands carefully with our sliver of soap, and interrupted the afternoon’s procession of cookpots to make Elevee a cup of tea.
Suddenly she reported with a blank face that she was leaving school.
“Oh, Elevee, you can’t,” I said. She’s a smart little girl, though this guarantees nothing, of course.
Elisabet simply asked her, “Why?”
“To work at night with Mother,” she said flatly. Meaning, to work as a prostitute.
“How old are you?” I demanded angrily. “Eleven? Ten? This is a crime, Elevee, you’re a child! There are laws to protect you from that kind of work. It’s horrible, you don’t know. You’ll be scared and hurt and could get terribly sick.”
Elisabet looked at me with dismay. “Mondele, don’t frighten her. They have to have the money.”
Of course that’s true. And of course there are no laws to protect children from prostitution. Elisabet’s daughter, Christiane, I’d guess to be seventeen, and I suspect she sometimes does night work in town, though we can’t talk about it.Whenever we hit rock bottom, Elisabet somehow discovers a little cash in her purse. I wish she wouldn’t. I just stared at Elevee, my son’s little friend with skinned knees and her two braids sticking out like handlebars: a prostitute. It dawned on me that her childishness would increase her value, for a while anyway. That made me want to scream. I shoved the manioc pot onto the stove, slopping water all over everywhere.
I survive here on outrage. Naturally I would. I grew up with my teeth clamped on a faith in the big -white man in power-God, the President, I don’t care who he is, he’d serve justice! Whereas no one here has ever had the faintest cause for such delusions. Sometimes I feel like the only person for miles around who hasn’t given up. Other than Anatole, who expresses his outrage in more productive ways.
We sat without speaking awhile, after Elevee’s announcement.The radio informed us the two American boxers would be paid five million American dollars each, from our treasury, for coming here. And it will cost that much again to provide high security and a festival air for the match. “All the world will respect the name of Zaire,” Mobutu declared in a brief taped interview at the end of the broadcast.
“Respect!” I practically spat on the floor, which would have horrified Elisabet more than the ill-considered use of twenty million dollars.
“Do you know what’s under the floor of that stadium?” I asked.
“No,” Elisabet said firmly, though I’m sure she does know. Hundreds of political prisoners, shackled. It’s one of Mobutu’s most notorious dungeons, and we’re all aware Anatole could end up there, any day. For what he teaches, for his belief in genuine independence, for his loyalty to the secret Parti Lumumbist Unifie, he could be brought down by one well-bribed informant.
“The prisoners might make a lot of noise during the boxing match,” Elevee suggested.
“Not improving the general respectability of Zaire,” I said.
“Likambo te” Elisabet shrugged. “Pascal and Patrice will be very excited. Mondele, just think, Muhammad Ali. He is a hero! Little boys in the streets will cheer for him.”
“No doubt,” I said. “People from the world over will come watch this great event, two black men knocking each other senseless for five million dollars apiece. And they’ll go away never knowing that in all of goddamned Zaire not one public employee outside the goddamned army has been paid in two years.”
For a woman to curse in Lingala is fairly abominable. Elisabet puts up with a lot from me. “Stanleyville,” she commanded, to change the subject.
“Kisangani,” I responded without enthusiasm. Elevee ran off to play “with Pascal, rather than be trapped into this drear exercise.
“Pare National Albert?”
“Pare de la Maiko.”
Neither of us knew or cared if I was right.
I’m learning that Elisabet’s sudden conversational turns are always for a good reason-usually someone’s safety, probably mine. I watch her in the marketplace, too, well aware that no schoolroom has ever taught me as much.The Congolese have an extra sense. A social sense, I would call it. It’s a way of knowing people at a glance, adding up the possibilities for exchange, and it’s as necessary as breathing. Survival is a continuous negotiation, as you have to barter covertly for every service the government pretends to provide, but actually doesn’t. How can I begin to describe the complexities of life here in a country whose leadership sets the standard for absolute corruption? You can’t even have a post office box in Kinshasa; the day after you rent it, the postmaster may sell your box to a higher bidder, who’ll throw your mail in the street as he walks out the door. The postmaster would argue, reasonably, he’s got no other way to support his family-his pay envelope arrives empty each week, with an official printed statement about emergency economic measures. The same argument is made by telephone operators, who’ll place a call outside the country for you only after you specify the location in Kinshasa where you’ll leave I’envdoppe containing your bribe. Same goes for the men who handle visas and passports. To an outsider it looks like chaos. It isn’t. It’s negotiation, infinitely ordered and endless.