On rounding a bend, however, I was brought up short by the sight of more crocodiles than I could have reasonably expected. Less than ten yards from where I stood, a wide, flat spur of tawny rock extended out from the Mogado side of the bank some twenty-five feet over the river, and upon it, slithering atop one another, stacked almost to the height of a man, were dozens of crocs, perhaps more than a hundred, hissing, snapping, exposing their ghastly discolored teeth, groping with their clawed feet for purchase; a great humping mass of gray-green scales and turreted eyes and dead-white mouths. I backed off a few paces, daunted by the closeness of so many predators, and by the strangeness of the scene. Not that it was entirely strange. During droughts, it sometimes happens that crocodiles will crowd together like this, pressing against each other in order to snare whatever moisture might have collected on the hides of their fellows; but in this instance, the drought had passed, and there was abundant water available. As I watched, one of the crocs dropped off the pile and went with a heavy splash into the murky water. Instead of making its way back up onto the rock, which I would have expected, it allowed itself to be carried off downstream, barely submerged, letting the current take it sideways, rolling it over partway to expose its pale, slimed belly, as if the thing were dead or moribund. Soon other crocs followed suit. This behavior was strange, indeed. I could think of no reason for it, except perhaps that toxic chemicals were responsible.
Before long, several dozen crocodiles had gone into the water—the narrows just beyond the bend was thronged with bodies, but once past that point, the current picked up speed and scattered them out across the breadth of the river, carrying them along more smoothly, so it appeared they were all arrowing toward the same destination, like an amphibious hunting pack. The scene was disturbing, unsettling, and not simply because I had no good explanation for it. I could not, you see, accept that it had a rational explanation; there was about the crocs’ actions a quality of purposefulness, of surreal functionality, that caused me to think I was witnessing something to which rationality as I knew it did not apply. Though I had been trained as an academic, I was not the sort to be troubled by slight shifts in the alignment of reality—my personal life had been fraught with lapses into substance abuse and depression and various other altered states. But this particular shift seemed to embody a powerful, unfathomable value that outstripped my experience, and I was shaken by it.
I had lost my taste for native beer, but not my thirst, and I hurried back to the hotel, where I immersed myself in a large whiskey, and in the illusion of Europe granted by the beveled mirror behind the bar, with its deep reflection of dark wood, candlelit tables, and plush red carpeting. Two whiskeys more, and the potential threat posed by afflicted crocodiles receded into a blurry inconsequentiality.
The barman, a slender, dignified East Indian named Dillip, with pomaded gray hair, and a crimson sash accenting his white shirt and trousers, was watching television at the end of the counter: a news program from Kinshasa. Bodies were being hauled from a river. I asked him if this footage related to the ferry disaster reported in the morning headlines.
“No, sah. Somebody just kill these boys and throw them in the Kilombo.” He shook his head ruefully. “Mobutu.”
Mobutu, I reminded him, was dead.
“Even dead, he make trouble for this place. Many people along the river were not his friend. They try to assassinate him.” He started to unload cutlery from a dishwasher. “You see, sah, at the end Mobutu was crazy from his cancer and the drugs. He does many crazy things. One thing, he tell his sorcerer to lay a curse upon the river. And now every town, every village along the Kilombo is poisoned by it.”
“Poisoned?”
“Yes, sah. They say the sorcerer take a scrap of Mobutu’s spirit and send into the river. Now nothing good can happen here.” He made a gesture of regret. “Nothing good can happen anywhere. You see, the Kilombo it flows into the ocean. And since the ocean goes everywhere, Mobutu’s curse have poisoned all the waters.”
Despite the woeful character of this information, he imparted it with the air of a man glad to be helpful to a stranger, as if warning of a dangerous stretch of road ahead. Thus do most Africans, be they black or white or any shade in between, approach the subject of sorcery—it is a simple conversational resource, no more extraordinary than talk of politics and the weather; and as is the case with those topics, though the news concerning sorcerous activity is generally bad, it’s simply a fact of life, and nothing to get upset about.
I was about to ask Dillip more about Mobutu’s relationship with the region, but Rawley chose that moment to put in an appearance. The next few minutes were occupied by a backslapping embrace and an exchange of crude pleasantries. And following that, I filled him in on my interview with Buma.
“So you think he’s a talented thespian.” Rawley had a sip of beer. “I must admit that was my impression at first. And perhaps first impressions are the most accurate in this instance. The longer I spoke with him, the more persuaded I was that something else was going on. Magic. Sorcery. That’s why I wanted your opinion. Being born here makes me somewhat susceptible to these old frauds.”
He didn’t seem convinced of this, however.
“I want to talk to him again, if only to watch him work,” I said.
“Yes, yes… absolutely. Talk to him as often as you like.” Rawley gazed at his reflection in the mirror. On the face of things, he looked the same as always, but now I noticed that his trousers and polo shirt were rumpled, and his hair had been hastily combed—a far cry from his normal pathological neatness. Dark puffy half moons under his eyes gave evidence of sleeplessness, and his ruddy tan was undercut by the sort of pallor that comes with illness or overwork.
“Fuck me,” he said wearily, as if he’d heard my thoughts. “This business is sending me round my twist.” He signaled Dillip, pointed to my empty glass, and held up two fingers. “I’m getting it from both ends. Kinshasa wants me to prosecute, but the locals are terrified that if I do, Buma’s minions will slaughter them in their beds.”
“Buma has minions?”
“He’s never mentioned any. But then, as you yourself observed, he conveys a certain menace.” The whiskeys arrived, and Rawley knocked back half of his; he lit a cigarette, leaned back and regarded me fondly. “I’m glad you’re here, Michael. I really needed someone to get pissed with.”
“Then it’s not my vast wisdom you were interested in.”
He laughed. “Strictly a ruse.”
An accomplished drinker, Rawley knew how to pace himself for a long evening. Though I had a head start, I slowed my own pace and fell into his rhythm of sips and swallows, and before long we had achieved a relatively equal level of inebriation. Other patrons entered the bar. A distinguished, white-haired African gentleman in a dark blue suit sat alone at a corner table, sipping a brightly colored drink decorated with a tiny paper parasol, and staring into the middle distance. His face betrayed no expression, but I imagined I could hear the memory tunes playing in his head. A young French couple—fieldworkers with a relief agency—littered the opposite end of the bar with government forms and talked earnestly. Two bearded thirtyish men in jeans and T-shirts took a table by the door; they downed beer after beer in rapid succession, their mule-like laughter at odds with the atmosphere of colonial decorum. Germans, probably.