Night falls. It is my third in the depths of the Congo, and again a painful one. There is no thunderstorm this time, and I catch sight of a thin young crescent moon to the west. Songololo lies wrapped in a deceptive tranquillity, the air utterly still. Yet it is far from silent: the night hums and shrieks with strange sounds, the cries of creatures I cannot place, whether harmless like the vast bats I glimpsed earlier, or deadly, like the jungle leopard. Oddly, the commander tells us that the most dangerous beast one might meet in this country is not the lion, capable of tearing a man apart in a single minute, but the hippopotamus. I have seen them in the zoo back home and they seemed placid, even comical. Yet for all their lazy look by day, they erupt at night when they leave the rivers to feed in the forest, attacking with unimaginable ferocity anything that crosses their path. Their stubby legs and bulk deceive, as they run faster than any man, and their gaping jaws could snap a body clean in two. If I already feel uneasy in daylight, I feel no desire at all to step outside now to trace the source of those squeals and cries. In this pitch-dark night it would be a useless exercise anyway.
Mwinda is not here tonight. She is with Louis, who demanded her company for himself. That great son of a bitch! And this man was supposed to be my friend? How wrong I was about him. He knew how much she meant to me, and still he asked for her outright, certain that I could never protest without betraying my feelings of sympathy and compassion for her. Bastard! Why does he do this? To give me a lesson? To teach me that here in the Congo only the law of the strongest counts, and that the moment you show weakness you are lost? But it was not him who was forced to cut off that poor wretch’s hand. It was me! Since our arrival he has slithered about in the shadows like some servile worm, never attracting the commander’s eye. He is not the engineer, he is merely a soldier and he behaves as such, wallowing in the diabolical pleasures of humiliation and rape.
Slowly, I begin to understand why the black men do not flee, though no chain binds them, or why they accept the cruellest orders with such resignation. Their wives and daughters are the ransom here. The Arabs, to force men into labour, always relied on chains, the whip and the threat of cruel death. They were brutal but direct. The Belgian tactic is more insidious and a thousand times more effective. Officially, slavery is abolished. Such a noble pretence to flaunt in international relations. Of course, the English and the Germans, who sanctioned the Congo Free State under King Leopold’s crown, follow the developments with great interest and certainly not out of purely humanitarian concern. Yet once a slave has been worked too long, he cares little for life; he may even welcome death, however cruel, as release. What man, though, could willingly accept being the cause of his wife’s or daughter’s death? In the meantime, those wives and daughters serve as pastimes for the masters. Perhaps in the end the chains were more merciful.
So I refuse another girl, and dismiss the soldiers with a feigned illness. I am alone, while the others vent themselves on the poor black women, just as on the night before. Captain Roger is at it again in the next room, giving himself over entirely. Slaps, blows, insults, cries of despair... his chamber fills this side of the barracks with horror. But I no longer hear it. My ear is fixed instead on the sounds from the room opposite mine, where Louis has taken poor Mwinda. In truth, there is almost nothing to hear and that silence unsettles me. At least when you hear pleading, when you hear desperate screams, you know what is happening. Now there is only stillness in Louis’ chamber, though it is hard to be certain with the racket to my right. I know it is better to forget, to lie down and sleep. However much I pity Mwinda, there is nothing I can do to save her without branding myself as the outcast, the untouchable of the group. And she is but one of dozens of sex-slaves in this miserable Songololo. One among the thousands in this country.
I stretch out on my cot and close my eyes.
Aaarghhh!!! Uh! Aaarghhh!!! There, you filthy whore!!! Take this!!!
No… I must forget… I am not here… I do not exist in this place… I see my dearest Marieke, stretching out her hand to lift me into a dream where everything is painted in rose.
Ah! How foul you are! You wretched slut!!!
The screams drift away on the river of my subconscious. Soon I shall be at peace. For the first time since my arrival in Congo, I allow my exhaustion to overwhelm me. The slow river between the silent trees. The mist swallows me, and suddenly all is absolute darkness. I feel nothing.
I open my eyes. That is the very problem: I hear nothing from Louis’s room. A morbid curiosity grips me in its iron fist; I rise and press my ear against the wall that divides my chamber from the corridor. Too many scattered sounds drift from all directions, and I cannot be sure whether I have truly overheard anything at all. I am on the verge of madness. I realise that if I continue like this, I shall be my own undoing, for I allow Mwinda to dwell in my mind far more than she should. In truth, she should occupy no place in my thoughts at all. She is but one of so many and there is nothing I can change of her fate, especially since I am hopelessly in love with Marieke. Yet she refuses to be banished from my thoughts. I worry for her. Look at me here, seated on my bunk with my ear pressed to the wall like some immature schoolboy. Could it be that I feel… a certain jealousy?
No! Impossible! I must get a hold of myself! I lie down again and shut my eyes. I must forget. Leave me in peace!
Once more I am in the canoe on the languid river, drifting through mist and towering silent trees, their crowns bowed over the water. I row towards the sunset, there in the distance where the river meets a horizon of creamy light. Above me floats a single white cloud, etched against the dark-blue sky, drifting northward. It is made of slender strands, as if painted there by the delicate stroke of a brush. My eyes follow it as it drifts over the treetops, driven by a breeze I cannot feel. Here on the river there is no sentiment, no emotion. There is only… peace.
‘Aaaaeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!’
Suddenly, a devastating female scream tears at my soul. It does not come from the adjoining room. It comes from the other side of the corridor!
Another scream, equally harrowing.
Yes! I am certain now! It comes from Louis’s room! No… it cannot be…
And I wonder which is worse: to hear nothing and thus know nothing, or to hear these desperate cries that confirm something dreadful is happening to Mwinda.
I leap to my feet and press my ear against the door, pretending I might hear better there. But there is nothing more. Two screams, and then silence? No, this is impossible. Something vile is unfolding, and it is not because Mwinda is silent that Louis has ceased. Perhaps he is covering her mouth with his hand? Oh, how I loathe this uncertainty! Or rather, how I loathe when others lay their filthy hands upon my Mwinda.
Mine!
I grasp the handle and turn it. Dare I step into the corridor? I am certain it is empty since soldiers are forbidden in the officers’ quarters except to deliver or fetch gifts. But what if someone sees me there, eavesdropping at Louis’s door? How should I escape such disgrace?
Unlikely. They are all too absorbed with their girls to notice anything beyond their own rooms. Even a cannon shot would not stir them.
I open the door. The corridor is dark and deserted, just as I thought, the blackened walls lit only by a single oil lamp halfway down the barracks. Heavy sighs, pleading voices, cries and screams echo from every direction, swelling the macabre atmosphere. Yes, this truly is the gateway to Hell, the long descent into the molten abyss, with that pitiful oil lamp as the only flicker of hope. The corridor begins to sway, its edges blur…
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