The French press as well as the Belgian revealed various facts over the course of the next two days, with details of the massacre in the Bebenbeleke hospitaclass="underline" in an attempt on the life of tribal chief Turu Mbulaka, a respected, hated, slandered, acclaimed and feared figure throughout the entire region, seven people had died: five from the chief’s entourage, a nurse and the hospital’s director, Doctor Eugen Müss, known for his thirty years of labour on behalf of the sick in that corner of the world, of Beleke and Kikongo. The continuity of the hospital he himself had founded in the 1950s was called into question … and just like that, as if it were a last minute, trivial addition, the news report’s final phrases said that in response to the beastly attack against Turu Mbulaka there had been riots in Yumbu-Yumbu that had caused a dozen deaths between supporters and detractors of this highly controversial figure, half warlord, half despot, direct product of the decolonialisation process led by Belgium.
Three hundred and forty-three kilometres north of the hotel where Adrià was spending his hours dreaming that Sara would come see him and ask him to start over, and he would say how did you know I was in this hotel, and she, well because I got in touch with the detective you used to find out where I was; but since she didn’t come he didn’t go down for breakfast or for dinner, and he didn’t shave or anything, because he just wanted to die and so he couldn’t stop crying; three hundred and forty-three kilometres from Adrià’s pain, the trembling hands that held a copy of the Gazet van Antwerpen dropped it. The newspaper fell onto the table, beside a cup of lime blossom tea. In front of the television that was broadcasting the same news. The man pushed aside the newspaper, which fell to the floor, and looked at his hands. They were trembling uncontrollably. He covered his face and he started to cry in a way he hadn’t for the last thirty years. Hell is always ready to enter any nook of our souls.
In the evening, the second channel of the VRT mentioned it, although it focused more on the personality of the hospital’s founder. And they announced that at ten pm they would show the documentary the VRT had made of him a couple of years earlier, about his refusal to accept the King Baudouin Prize because it didn’t come with a grant for the upkeep of the Bebenbeleke hospital. And because he was unwilling to travel to Brussels to receive any award because he was needed at the hospital more than anywhere else.
At ten that night, a trembling hand pressed the button to turn on the ramshackle television set. An aggrieved sigh was heard. On the screen were the opening credits of 60 Minutes and immediately afterwards images, obviously shot clandestinely, of Doctor Müss walking along the hospital’s porch, passing a green bench without the slightest trace of blood, and saying to someone that there was no need to do any feature story about anything; that he had a lot of work in that hospital and couldn’t get distracted.
‘A feature story could be very beneficial for you,’ the voice of Randy Oosterhoff, slightly agitated as he walked backwards focusing the hidden camera on the doctor.
‘If you’d like to make a donation, the hospital would be very grateful.’ He pointed behind him, ‘We have a vaccination session today and it makes for a very difficult day.’
‘We can wait.’
‘Please.’
Then came the title: Bebenbeleke. And next, views of the hospital’s precarious facilities, the nurses hard at work, barely lifting their heads, bustling about, imbued with that almost inhuman dedication to their tasks. And in the background, Doctor Müss. A voice was explaining that Doctor Müss, originally from a village in the Baltic, had set himself up thirty years ago in Bebenbeleke on a wing and a prayer and had, stone by stone, built that hospital that now meets, albeit insufficiently, the health needs of the vast Kwilu region.
The man with the trembling hand got up and went over to turn off the television. He knew that documentary by heart. He sighed.
They had shown it for the first time two years ago. He, who watched little television, happened to have it on at that moment. He could perfectly remember that what caught his eye was that dynamic, very journalistic introduction, with Doctor Müss walking towards some emergency, telling the journalists that he didn’t have time to devote to things that weren’t …
‘I know him,’ the man with the trembling hands had said.
He watched the documentary assiduously. The name Bebenbeleke didn’t ring a bell with him, nor did Beleke or Kikongo. It was the face, the doctor’s face … A face associated with pain, with his great, singular pain, but he didn’t know how. And he was overcome with the excruciating memory of his women and girls, of little Trude, my lost Truu, of Amelietje accusing him with her eyes of not having done anything, he who had to save them all, and his mother-in-law who kept coughing as she gripped her violin, and my Berta with Juliet in her arms, and all the horror in the world. And what did seeing that doctor’s face have to do with all that pain. Towards the end of the documentary, which he forced himself to watch, he found out that, in that region of endemic politic instability, Bebenbeleke was the only hospital for hundreds of kilometres. Bebenbeleke. And a doctor with a face that hurt him. Then, as the end credits were running, he remembered where and how he had met Doctor Müss; Brother Müss, the Trappist monk with the sweet gaze.
The alarm went off when the father prior received the report on Brother Robert, in a whisper, from a worried nurse brother who said I don’t know what to do, forty-nine kilos, Father, and he’s thin as a rail, and he’s lost the gleam in his eyes. I …
‘He’s never had any gleam in his eyes,’ the father prior rashly remarked, quickly thinking that he should be more charitable towards a brother in the community.
‘I just don’t know what more I can do. He barely tastes the meat and fish soup for the ill. It goes to waste.’
‘And his vow of obedience?’
‘He tries, but can’t. It’s as if he’s lost the will to live. Or as if he was in a rush to … God forgive me if I must say what I think.’