These were days of rare intensity and harmony, worthy, almost, of the age of Napoleon, but, after a week, the number of pupils had dwindled by half, then there were only fifty, then twenty. After a month, there was no one left. The shooting classes had come to an end.
‘It’s not your fault,’ said Donatien, looking over Chrysostome’s head at the empty firing range. ‘The Captain wants us all to be like Napoleon, but that’s not easy. If we had a woman like Josephine waiting for us in bed, we might manage it, but we, alas, live in Yangambi.’
This was Donatien’s third or fourth attempt to get a smile out of Chrysostome — in vain. He received only this laconic reply:
‘It doesn’t matter. Some are born good marksmen and some aren’t. Like everything else, it’s in God’s hands.’
Carrying his rifle, Chrysostome set off briskly towards the Place du Grand Palmier. Donatien caught up with him and, deciding to change the subject, began instead to talk about Christmas. He couldn’t wait, he said. Captain Lalande Biran spared no effort in ensuring that his men were happy at such a special time of year. He laid on veritable banquets at which one could eat one’s fill of goat’s meat and the finest fish from the river, and in the card games at the Club, you could even lay bets of up to one hundred francs, rather than the usual ten. The best thing, though, was that, from then on, it rained much less and there was almost no mud. That’s why he liked Christmas and New Year. Plus it was the only time he ever received a letter.
They entered the palisade and the Place du Grand Palmier. Donatien pointed to Government House: ‘The Captain receives letters from Paris or Brussels almost every week. I don’t. I only get them at Christmas. Although Richardson has it worse. No one ever writes to Richardson, not even at Christmas.’
There was a set of pigeon-holes for the officers’ correspondence at the entrance to the Club Royal, and on some weeks, Donatien had seen a letter for Chrysostome there, always from Britancourt and always, to judge by the writing, from the same person. The problem was that the person only put the name of the village in the return address and so there was no way of knowing who had sent it, his mother, his girlfriend, a friend. Donatien wanted to know.
Chrysostome failed to take the bait, saying: ‘Christmas Day is a great day. A celebration of the birth of Jesus, who was conceived by Our Lady, the Virgin Mary and born in Bethlehem.’
He showed Donatien the medal on its blue ribbon, but said nothing about the family or friends he had left behind in Britancourt.
It was evening, and the palm trees lining the road that led down to the river were like drawings made in India ink; the sky was a sheet of greenish glass, the river Congo was the pressed skin of a snake, and the Lomami, a silver rope. On the beach by the river, a group of officers were enjoying a last cigarette before supper and the smoke from the club chimneys carried on it the smell of grilled fish.
III
IN YANGAMBI, IT was said that the cartridges for the Albini-Braendlin rifle were the most prized jewels in Africa, and that on the boats going up and down the river Congo, you were more likely to come across a diamond than a cartridge. It was also said, with less exaggeration, that King Léopold himself kept a count of the cartridges and required his representatives in Léopoldville to justify the use of each and every one, stating when, where and how it had been used. And so, after the Christmas meal, when Captain Lalande Biran named Chrysostome ‘Soldier of the Year’ and presented him with the prize of a box of one hundred cartridges, the seventeen white officers and ten African servants waiting on them could not suppress a sigh — of envy in some cases and astonishment in others.
‘Gentlemen, I give you the Hero of the Year!’ exclaimed Lalande Biran, inviting Chrysostome to take the floor.
‘I started out with twelve cartridges,’ said Chrysostome. ‘And before coming here tonight, I had only four left. Now I have one hundred and four.’
Not a muscle in his face moved, and instead of looking at his comrades or at the beautiful, beaming serving-woman standing next to him, he was gazing into the distance, at the river and the jungle.
Van Thiegel whispered to Lalande Biran: ‘I don’t know why you bother trying to please him, the man wants nothing whatever to do with us.’
Chrysostome’s attitude was not, however, due to arrogance or to feelings of scorn or indifference for his colleagues. At least, not entirely. The truth is that, like many heroes, like the great Achilles himself, Chrysostome had a weak point that prevented him from enjoying his enviable position and explained the tense look on his face. Put briefly and plainly, Chrysostome harboured a terrible fear. It wasn’t the fear of the Congolese rebels felt by the other officers in the Force Publique, nor a fear of lions, cheetahs, crocodiles or black mambas. Nor was he a man easily cowed by natural dangers, as he had demonstrated when they had gone to offer military aid to the post at Kisangani, where he had been seen standing at the very edge of the Stanley Falls, serenely firing at the enemy, as if God himself were whispering in his ear: ‘Fire away, Chrysostome. No poisoned arrow will harm you. You will, of course, have to die some day, but not here.’
Put him near a woman, though, and all that determination and energy melted away. There lay his Achilles heel.
His fear stemmed from an incident that had occurred when he was twelve years old. One day, while playing with friends on the outskirts of the village of Britancourt, he saw a man emerge from the dark mouth of a cave. At first, Chrysostome took the figure for a resurrected corpse, and thought that the suppurating wounds on the man’s face came from having been dead for some time; then, influenced by one of his companions, he thought it must be Jesus himself, in emulation of the recent apparition of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes. Before he was able to reach any conclusion, however, the man started shouting: ‘I still belong to the land of the living, that is my greatest sorrow. If only God would take me to him!’
Chrysostome and his friends asked what had happened to him.
‘I sinned against the sixth commandment,’ answered the man. ‘I was a handsome, blue-eyed man and had my pick of the women, but in the end, they proved to be my undoing.’
His words echoed in the mouth of the cave, and the pestilent stench of his body wafted to them on the breeze.
Later on, at home, he learned that the man in the cave was suffering from an illness called syphilis, and from that moment on, Chrysostome ceased to think of women as mirror images of his mother, still less of the Virgin Mary, and thought of them instead only as the creatures responsible for the unfortunate fate met by that stinking, ulcer-ridden man. The months passed, and the parish priest placed around Chrysostome’s neck a blue ribbon, the very one he was wearing when he arrived in Yangambi. The ribbon represented his purity of heart, a purity as intense as his fear of women.
In normal circumstances, his fear — or his purity of heart — would have worked in his favour in Yangambi, because it saved him from having to go into the jungle in search of women, as the other officers did, and thus from contracting syphilis or some other contagious disease. That same purity should have benefited other aspects of his life, as well as the sexual, leaving him, for example, with plenty of free time; instead, it began to work against him as soon as he became ‘Soldier of the Year’ and the privileged recipient of one hundred cartridges — one hundred golden jewels — that he kept stored away in his hut. We are none of us safe when surrounded by the envious, by snakes, especially when, as with Achilles, we have a vulnerable heel.