Black with White Stripes

I heard a scratch at the window screen of my bedroom and, when I looked up, I saw Mamadou’s grinning face pressed against it. He never came to the front door because Mother didn’t like him. She’d never said as much, but Mamadou and I both sensed it.

“Pierre,” he whispered. “Are you coming? We don’t have much time.”

I looked through the mesh, past Mamadou, and saw a sky too dark for this time of day. How had I not noticed? I dropped my Tintin magazine and raced down the corridor towards the back door, hoping we wouldn’t be too late.

When I entered the kitchen, I overheard Mother shout at Fortuné, our cook. “How many times do I have to tell you? If you don’t boil the potatoes properly, the texture of the croquettes will be too grainy.”

Fortuné, in his immaculately white uniform and toque, stared at the floor. There was a smile on his face, but it was a smile of shame. All Congolese did it. When life treated you bad, what else could you do?

Father had said Fortuné was a godsend. He used to work for one of the directors of the Belgian Mining Union of Upper Katanga. Originally from Simpoka, a small village on the Zambian border, Fortuné had learned to make excellent soufflés and gratins, and his coq au vin was probably one of the best in the Belgian Congo. “What’s more,” Mother had said, “It’s rare to find a boy who doesn’t smell.”

As with our previous cooks, the peace didn’t last. Mother soon found things to criticise. I felt sorry for Fortuné—it wasn’t his fault Mother wasn’t happy in Africa.

“And where do you think you’re going?” Mother asked when she noticed me trying to slip past.

“Out to play.”

“But Pierre, it’s going to rain.”

“I know—don’t worry, Mother!” I shouted, making a dash for it.

“Pierre!” she yelled. “Pierre! Don’t be late for supper.” By the tone of her voice, I knew that was a threat.

I grabbed my bike and ran toward the banana grove where Mamadou waited in his beige shorts and shirt. Once, these clothes had colour. Now they had taken on the hue of the river in which they were washed. It made Mamadou look like a child of the earth.

“You escaped?” He laughed as he grabbed the handlebars of his bike—or rather his father’s bike, because Mamadou wasn’t rich enough to have his own. He placed his foot on the pedal and cycled away standing up. He was too short to reach the saddle.

I followed and we headed up the driveway until we hit the main road, red like copper. Then we veered right towards the forest, where the storm clouds had gathered. Hanging low above the canopy, they fired warning shots of lightning, followed by the war-drum sound of thunder.

As we approached the forest, the air cooled and the sky turned dark. The weaver birds shrieked and hid in the nests they had finished just in time for the rainy season. Then the first drops hit our faces: the signal had been given.

“Now!” I yelled as loud as I could. It sounded like a battle cry, but we beat a hasty retreat. Mamadou and I did a U-turn and pedalled back as if our lives depended on it—standing and leaning forward on our bikes to make them go faster.

We went in and out of potholes, circumvented treacherous stones. The storm was on our heels, like cavalry—getting louder every second, breathing down our necks. We didn’t dare to look back. All around, the plants swayed and folded under the heavy gusts of wind.

“Come on!” Mamadou shouted when we spotted the gate of my house. “We can do it!” Our legs were burning, but we gave it a final push. Never before had we beaten the rains and returned home without getting drenched. Could we do it this time?

Then the heavy drops hit my back, like bullets from an automatic rifle. Mamadou screamed as the rain struck him too—but it wasn’t the scream of a soldier falling in battle. It was an outburst of joy as the first showers captured and soaked us after months of dry season.

We raised our heads and opened our mouths to capture the water. The potholes filled with orange mud, and we cycled through them to make splashes that reached up to our chins. The air smelled of wet dust.

When we reached my house, the downpour was so heavy we could barely see a few meters ahead. We were sopping wet and covered in dirt. Our clothes clung to our skin and weighed a ton. If Mother had seen me then, she would have killed me.

“Let’s take a shower.” Mamadou snickered, and I laughed too, because I knew what he meant. At the back of the garage, the gutter was broken, and the rain flowed down the roof like a waterfall.

We stripped down to our underwear and danced under the heavy cascade of water. Then we hugged and looked at each other, smiling. Our faces nearly touched. Mamadou smelled of the earth. By embracing him, I became the earth.

The race had made us hungry and, when the storm eased, we headed to the back of the garden where the false rubber trees grew. When it rains in Katanga, it isn’t just water that falls from the skies. Caterpillars do, too, like manna from heaven. Their tiny legs can’t get a grip on the slippery leaves, so they drop to the ground.

“You’re not going to eat that, are you?” I asked, the first time I saw him pick one up.

“In your country, you eat snails,” he replied as he squeezed the little red head between his fingers, pulled it off, and popped the green body into his mouth. I retched when I tried. But it’s an acquired taste. The texture’s smooth and creamy; the flavour nutty.

Mamadou and I grabbed a banana leaf each and folded it into a cone, like those we use in Belgium for eating chips. Then we filled them with wriggling caterpillars and sat down on a stone to savour them, as we watched the late afternoon sun pierce the dark clouds and cover the wet lawn and trees with a thin film of gold.

~

Near the equator, the sun sets at 6 pm every day. So it was getting dark when I tried to slip in through the kitchen door. The power had gone due to the heavy rains and a few kerosene lamps lit parts of the house, giving it a fairy-tale appearance.

Fortuné was in the kitchen, using the scarce light to put the final touches to the dinner. Blue flames danced on the gas stove, and it smelled of boiling oil. “Bonsoir, Monsieur Pierre,” he said as I walked past. “We will eat in half an hour. Your father is here.”

In the living room, I could hear the crackle and whistle of the longwave radio bringing the news of the day. “Joseph Kasa-Vubu of the Alliance of Bakongo asked for immediate independence from Belgium.”

Father sat in his leather armchair, puffing on his pipe. Only half his face was lit by the kerosene lamp and the smoke he exhaled rose in elegant twirls. “Bloody Van Bilsen,” he muttered over the static of the radio. “Had to put silly ideas in their heads.”

I tried to take advantage of the darkness and the hissing of the radio to sneak past Father. But I stumbled over his briefcase, which he had put down by the wall.

“Pierre?” he called.

“Yes, Father,” I answered, frozen in the shadows.

“Come here for a second, Pierre.”

I stepped forward into the glow of the kerosene lamp to reveal my wet, muddy clothes. But Father didn’t notice them. He switched off the radio and the sound of crickets invaded the room. He looked at me, but his thoughts were elsewhere. Then he asked, “What’s that around your ankle, Pierre?”

I looked down at the chain of leaves Mamadou had tied around it. He had said it was to stop the insect bites from getting infected. His father was a nganga, a healer, so who was I to question what he did? But Father had different ideas about these things.

~

At the plantation, many of the workers visited Mamadou’s father when they were sick. It drove Father mad, and he wished they would go to the doctor in Elisabethville instead. “Their ailments have obvious causes,” Father would say. “If they just got diagnosed and treated right, they would be back at work in no time.” Instead, they were off sick for weeks and, oftentimes, they died.

When Father pointed this out to his workers, they defended the nganga. “It isn’t his fault,” they would say. “There are many evil sorcerers out there, and their witchcraft is strong.”

One day, Father had had enough. He went to see the nganga in the village and, because I sometimes showed signs of believing in divination and traditional medicine, he took me along. He wanted to demonstrate that all this was just some hocus-pocus. He had a plan—I knew it because he had that invincible air about him. He asked Fortuné to come too, as a witness.

At the village, Mamadou greeted us and took us to his family hut. His father, the nganga, was busy but, given the standing Father had as manager of the plantation, we were let in, nonetheless.

The hut was cool and dark. It smelled of straw and the earthen floor was neatly swept. On one side, a woman swayed and moaned, her eyes closed. She wasn’t well and it looked to me like she was possessed by spirits. A thin, worried man in red trousers—likely her husband—had his arm around her in support.

“See?” Father whispered in my ear. “How can the nganga tell what’s wrong if he doesn’t even look at her?”

Mamadou’s father sat some distance from the woman, his eyes fixed on a bench-like sculpture with angular, human-like features. He hovered a small wooden peg above it, back and forth, seeking the cause of the woman’s complaints.

This act of divination went on for some time and the nganga had an intense look of concentration on his face. Meanwhile, the woman wailed, her husband tried to console her, and Father smiled enigmatically.

Just when the backward and forward motion had started lulling me to sleep, the nganga’s hand stopped above the stomach of the figure. The man in red trousers leant forward on his arms and stared at the nganga with open mouth. Father’s eyes narrowed and Fortuné shifted his weight from one foot to the other. But Mamadou’s father kept us waiting a little longer, sitting with his eyes closed.

When he finally spoke, he addressed the couple in Turumbu, the local language. I had picked up some basic vocabulary from Mamadou and could make out the words “stomach” and “poison” followed by “medicine.”

The woman let out a high-pitched shriek and then cried with relief, collapsing in her husband’s arms. The skinny man laughed and thanked the nganga over and over again. Then he helped his wife up and out of the hut.

The nganga rearranged the instruments in front of him and reached for a bowl of groundnuts which he peeled with his teeth, spitting out the empty shells into his free hand. When he had eaten a dozen or so, he tossed the waste back into the bowl and put it down. Then he looked at Father and said, “Good morning, Monsieur Léonard. What can I do for you?”

Father, still standing, towered over the nganga. “Good day,” he said. “That was quite a performance. I was wondering whether you could help me too. You see, I haven’t been feeling well lately.”

I looked at Father in surprise because he hadn’t mentioned this to me. My eyes shifted from Father to the nganga. The two men were sizing each other up.

Then it dawned on me that this was part of Father’s plan: he wanted to trick the nganga into diagnosing a non-existent illness, which would prove that all of this was just an elaborate circus. Fortuné would make the story go round the village and then the workers might finally listen.

But the nganga still had something up his sleeve. He smiled a toothless smile and his eyes shone with pleasure. “I am sorry,” he said to Father, “but my powers don’t work on the White man.”

I caught Mamadou’s eye, and we struggled not to laugh.

~

“Pierre,” Father said. “Please take that bracelet off your ankle. It’s useless.”

Before I had a chance to obey, Mother entered the room. “Supper is—” she said, then noticed me and the state I was in. “My God, Pierre, look at you! Go get cleaned immediately and put on some fresh clothes. Supper is almost ready.”

I felt my way down the dark corridor towards the bathroom, where I lit a candle. Careful not to break it, I removed the bracelet and hid it under the sink—just in case I might need it again. Then I opened the tap and watched the water snake on the chipped enamel surface of the tub and into the drain.

My shadow jerked in the flickering light of the flame and, outside, it started raining again. There were no other noises, no movement. I liked it when the electricity went out, because the world shrunk to a size I could take in.

When I returned to the dining room, the table was lit by a silver candelabra placed on top of the lace tablecloth we had bought in Bruges. Night had fallen and the rest of the room was shrouded in blackness.

Fortuné entered carrying the dishes, and Mother served us. She couldn’t resist. “You see, Fortuné, the croquettes are all grainy,” she said, partly to chastise him, but mainly to apologise to Father.

“I know, Madame,” Fortuné said, not smiling this time. “I promise it won’t happen again.” And he left the room, head hanging low.

My parents ate in silence, the cutlery scraping against the china plates. The rain had picked up now—heavy, torrential rain of the kind only found in Africa. I could hear it beating on the leaves of the plants outside. The sewer gurgled loudly, gagging on the volume of water it had to drink.

“Aren’t you hungry?” Father asked, when he noticed I hadn’t touched my food. I couldn’t tell him it was because I had eaten too many caterpillars.

“I’m not feeling well,” I lied, taking a bite of my chicken.

“I warned you not to go out and play in the rain,” Mother said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you caught a cold.”

The thunder rumbled, loud and threatening, rolling over the plain.

“Pierre,” Father said. “Your mother and I have been talking. There’s something we need to tell you.” I panicked because I knew they didn’t like me playing with Mamadou. I readied a defence.

“We have decided that it is best for you, best for the family, if we all moved back to Belgium.”

The living room lit up with a sudden flash of lightning, followed by the crack of thunder. The storm was right above us now.

“No,” I murmured.

Father continued, “You may have heard about the unrest. The Bakongo think they can rule by themselves. It’s a mistake—time will tell. But unfortunately, I think it is no longer safe for us to stay here.”

“And anyway,” Mother added, “I’ve always said this is no place to bring up a child.”

“No!” I shouted. “No! I’m not coming! I’m not going to that country of yours.”

I got up from the table and ran out into the rain, where the night was thick and wet. It swaddled me, like a womb. “Mamadou!” I yelled through my tears. “Mamadou!” But of course he couldn’t hear me. I fell onto my knees and dug my fingers into the red earth, where they stuck like shallow roots.

~

Some would say we were lucky to get out in time. The Alliance of Bakongo did well at the elections. Unrest spread and there were riots and looting. People died. I remember King Baudouin of Belgium saying on the radio, "It is our firm intention, without undue procrastination, but without fatal haste, to lead the Congolese forward to independence in prosperity and peace." A year later, the Congo was independent.

“Now watch the country go down the drain,” Father said, bitter about all he had lost. He sat in his armchair in our apartment in Brussels, smoking his pipe and shaking the ice cubes in his glass of whiskey. But Mother was happy that I finally had a proper life and attended a proper school.

The rains in Belgium were nothing like those in the Congo. They were not big and dramatic, just miserable and light. It wasn’t possible to race from them, because they were permanent and all around—always there to remind you of the misery of life. And, besides, I no longer had anyone to race with. I had no friends.

At school, I was contrary. Mother would frequently be called in to see my teachers.

“Your son has an attitude problem,” one of them said. Mother smiled, like Fortuné used to—not because it was funny, but out of embarrassment. “He always needs to have the last word. He has no respect for authority.”

“I’m sorry,” Mother said, looking at the ground. “What did he do this time?”

“We were talking about the function of stripes in zebras,” the teacher said. “So I described the zebra as white with black stripes. But your son interrupted and insisted it was black with white stripes. He would not concede. I had no choice but to send him to the principal.”

When Mother asked me about it at home, I said, “It depends on how you see the world.”

Meanwhile, I grew thin and gaunt. I had regular headaches and I lost energy. Mother worried and took me to the doctor. “An undetected African illness perhaps?”

They put stethoscopes to my chest, needles in my skin. They looked into my eyes and analysed my faeces and urine. They stared right through me with x-rays. But they found nothing.

It’s obvious, I thought to myself, because they’re looking in the wrong place. The illness was not inside me—it was all around. It was caused by my surroundings. Any nganga would have known that.

For a while, Mamadou and I exchanged letters. He wrote in neat and elegant cursive. His words flowed in long, sophisticated sentences. I didn’t recognise the boy who smelled of earth. He’d been given a scholarship to study in Elisabethville, now called Lubumbashi.

Mamadou never mentioned Lumumba or Mobutu, or the secessionist struggles in Katanga. He became interested in traditional medicine. His letters described in detail the afflictions of people coming to see his father and the treatments they received.

“When I grow up, I want to be a healer,” Mamadou wrote. “And I also want to come to Europe and learn about the White man’s medicine.”

I wrote back to him and said he wouldn’t like it in Europe. But Mamadou replied, “How do you know? You liked it here, so why would I not like it there?” I didn’t know how to explain, so I said it just wasn’t the same. In his last letter to me, Mamadou wrote, “Ah, so the White man always knows?”

The day we left the Congo, I had filled a glass jar with red earth from our garden and smuggled it onto the plane. I kept it in my nightstand in Brussels and, on days when I felt sad, I would remove the metal lid and smell the earth. It reminded me of Mamadou and the life I once had.

After reading that last letter from Mamadou, I took the jar to the park behind our building and emptied its contents on the ground. The red earth clashed with the grey mud of the park, and I wanted it to disappear. I stamped on it again and again, but it would not go away. So I got down on all fours and rubbed the ground with my hands. No matter what I did, the bright colour would not fade. I started crying and then I screamed, “Mamadou!” But of course he couldn’t hear me.