What language is he speaking? His native Shi which Dieudonne also happens to speak. So what he's doing — or thinks he's doing — with a little improvisation, and a dash of French where he needs it — he's using a language that nobody overhearing them could possibly understand — except I can.
So I'm coming after him. I'm right in there with them. I'm coming after him so hard that when I press my eyes tight shut I can see him with my virtual eye. When Haj skips away, and Dieudonne trudges after him, spluttering his half cough, Salvo the top interpreter is there beside them with his headphones and his notepad. When Haj skips back, Dieudonne stands motionless — and so do I. Up another step, and Haj leaps onto the grass, and so do I. And Haj knows I'm there. I know he knows. He's playing Grandmother's Footsteps with me, and I'm playing them with him. He's leading the zebra a proper dance, and the zebra is returning the compliment, up and down the steps and all around.
What he can't know is how primitive our sound system is. He's modern man and I don't mind betting he's a techno-freak into the bargain. He thinks we've got the whole range of the Chat Room's state-of-the-art toys: directional, laser, satellite, you name it, but we haven't. And this isn't the Chat Room, Haj. And Spider's mikes are static, even if you and I and Dieudonne aren't. And Spider's system is good old-fashioned closed cable with no spillage and this zebra loves it.
It's one on one. It's Haj versus Salvo, mano à mano, with Dieudonne as the innocent bystander. It's Haj's Shi and Haj's tap-dancing and Haj's lunging and ducking versus Salvo's thieving ears. Haj's crocs are rapping like clogs on cobble. He's pirouetting, his voice goes up and down and all around, a bit of Shi, a bit of Kinyarwanda, then a bit of French argot to complicate the mix. I'm stealing sound from three separate mikes and three separate languages in one sentence and reception is as chaotic as the man. I'm dancing too, if only in my head. I'm up there on the stone steps duelling sabre to sabre with Haj, and every time he lets me catch my breath I'm passing hastily compressed renderings up the wire to Sam while my left hand pins down my notepad and the pencil in my right hand skips across the page to Haj's tune.
No need to shout, Brian dear. We're hearing you very nicely.
The take is nine minutes long, which is two-thirds of the recess. The zebra will never steal better sound in his life.
• • •
Haj: How sick are you anyway? (staccato of crocs, up a couple of steps, down three, stop. Abrupt silence) Very sick? (No answer. Another staccato. Returns) Wives too? Kids? (Is Dieudonne nodding? Apparently yes) Holy shit. How long have you got? (No answer) Know where you picked it up?
Dieudonne: From a girl. What do you think?
Haj: When?
Dieudonne: Ninety-eight.
Haj: The war of ninety-eight?
Dieudonne: What else?
Haj: Fighting against the Rwandans? (another apparent nod) You were fighting Rwandans and fucking for the one true Democratic Republic of Congo? Holy Jesus! Has anyone thanked you yet?
Dieudonne: For catching the plague?
Haj: For fighting another useless war, man. (dancing up and down the steps) Shit. Damn, (more low-key expletives) This no-name Syndicate wants your arse, know that? (garbled) The Banyamulenge have got the best warriors, discipline, motivation, the best minerals . . . gold and coltan on the plateau . . . and you don't even mine them, you love your fucking cows too much!
Dieudonne: (through his coughs, dead calm) Then we shall dictate terms. We shall go to the Mwangaza and say: first you must give us all you have promised, or we will not fight for you. We will fight against you. We will say that.
Haj: The Mwangaza? You think the Mwangaza is running this thing? What a hero he is! What — a — world-class — enlightened . . . What a selfless friend of the poor! That guy owns the poorest ten-million-dollar villa in Spain you ever saw. Ask my dad . . . plasma television screens in every toilet . . . (violent tattoo of crocs, speech very garbled, then clears. Softly, in counterpoint to din that preceded it) Dieudonne. Pay attention to me. You're a good man. I love you.
Dieudonne: (unintelligible)
Haj: You will not die. I do not want you to die. Okay? Deal? Not you, not the Banyamulenge. Not again. Not of war, not of hunger, not of after-war, not of the plague. If you've got to die at all, die of beer. Promise?
Dieudonne: (grim laugh) Beer and anti-retrovirals.
Haj: I mean, I do not want any fucker to die anywhere in the Congo for a very long time, except quietly and peacefully, of beer. You're sweating like a whore. Sit down.
Reception improves. Anton reports via Sam that Dieudonne has settled on a stone bench under a beech tree beneath the gazebo. Haj is jiggling round him in a radius of eight to ten feet. But I am there beside them.
Haj: ... the Rwandans are stronger than we are, know that? . . . stronger than the . . . Banyamulenge, stronger than the Mai Mai knuckle-draggers (making ape noises) . . . stronger than the whole of. . . Kivu put together . . . Okay? Admit it.
Dieudonne: It is possible.
Haj: It's a fucking certainty and you know it. Listen to me (returns to Dieudonne and speaks intensely close to his ear — twenty-twenty reception, presumably from mike in overhead branches of beech tree) ... I love my father. I'm an African. I honour him. You got a father still? . . . Okay, so that means you honour his spirit. You talk to his spirit, you obey his spirit, you're guided by it. Mine's alive, okay? Three wives and all the hookers he can eat. Owns a slice of Goma and fifty-one per cent of me, and the Rwandans are stealing his business, or he thinks they are.
Anton reports via Sam that Haj keeps darting behind the beech tree and reappearing. The in-and-out reception confirms.
Haj: Couple of months ago he calls me in, okay? . . . solemn occasion, humph, humph . . . office, not home . . . doesn't want his .. . wives listening at the fucking keyhole . . . tells me about this great New Deal for Kivu he's involved in, how his old pal the Mwangaza is going to get in ahead of elections which are a recipe for civil war, throw out everybody he doesn't like and make everybody he likes rich, and the People rich too, because he's got this fine philanthropic Syndicate behind him, and they've got all this money, and these good intentions, and the guns, and the ammunition. Sounds great, I tell him. Sounds just like King Leopold when he came to Congo. Which naturally drove him ape. So I wait till he cools down, which is next day . . . (breaks up, returns) . . . meantime something bad. Really bad ... I consult some very evil people I know ... in Kinshasa . . . guys my dad would kill me for knowing, guys it pays to be polite to if you don't want to wake up dead in the morning . . . (very garbled now). . . what they told me, these guys? . . . under a pledge of total secrecy which I am now dishonouring? Kinshasa is part of the deal. Kinshasa has a piece of the action . . . the absolute worst piece . . .
Perfect sound. Sam advises that Haj and Dieudonne are sitting side by side on the bench with a mike six feet above them and no breeze to disturb it.
Haj: So I go back to my dad and I say to him: Father, I love you and I am grateful that you paid for me to grow a fucking brain, and I respect your good motives regarding the Mwangaza and the Eastern Congo. Therefore allow me to tell you that on the basis of my professional expertise as a problem-solver that you are a very serious arsehole on two counts. You and the Mwangaza have in my estimation undersold yourselves to this no-balls Syndicate by approximately one thousand per cent. Count Two, and forgive my impertinence, but who needs another fucking war? You and I are totally dependent on Rwanda for our trade. They send our goods out into the world for us. For everybody except the Congolese, this would be the basis of a profitable and friendly trading partnership. It would not be a reason for slaughtering each other's wives and children, or installing a geriatric, untried leader who, however much you love him, is pledged to kicking everything that smells of Rwanda out of Congo. Do I tell him about my bad friends in Kinshasa? Do I fuck. But I do tell him about my good friend Marius, a fat Dutch fucker I happened to study with in Paris.
Reception temporari
ly ceases. Sam's team reports the couple making slow progress over grass on the other side of the gazebo. Reception very poor.
Haj: . . . forty years old . . . (two seconds garbled) . . . mountain of institutional money . . . African [?] vice president of. . . (seven seconds garbled) ... So I told my dad . . . (four seconds garbled) listened to me . . . told me I was the biggest failure of his life . . . disgrace to our ancestors . . . then asked me where could he find this Marius so that he could . . . tell him how sealing the Rwandan border with Congo was the only sane solution to the world's problems, which is how my dad talks when he doesn't want you to know he's changing his mind.
Shriek of metal, sigh of foam cushions, clarity restored. Sam reports that the two men are seated in a wind shelter looking out to sea. Haj's voice is urgent, almost reckless.
Haj: So my dad gets in his plane and goes to see Marius in Nairobi. Luc likes Nairobi. Knows a great hooker there. And he likes Marius. Smokes a couple of cigars with him. And Marius likes Luc. And Marius tells him what an arsehole he is. “You are everything your pissant of a son says you are. A wise, fine man. And you and your Mwangaza want to throw the Rwandans out of Kivu so that they can no longer exploit you, which is a great idea except for one thing. Are you seriously suggesting they won't come and kick the living shit out of you, pay back with interest what you took away from them? Isn't that what they do every time? So why not be realty smart and do the unthinkable for once in your life? Instead of throwing the Rwandans out, look at yourself in the mirror, put on your biggest smile, and act like you love them? You're in business with them whether you like it or not, so try liking it. Then maybe my company will stake you or buy you out, and we'll get some bright young guys like your pissant son on board, make sweet with Kinshasa, and instead of three million people dying we'll get some peaceful coexistence going.”
Dieudonne: (after long thought) Is your father in alliance with this man?
Haj: He's Luc, for fuck's sake. Best poker player in Goma. But you know what? The fat Dutch fucker was right. Because when the Rwandans do come back, who are they going to bring with them? The whole fucking catastrophe. Like last time round, but worse. The Angolans, the Zimbabweans and anybody else who hates our guts and wants what we've got. And when that happens, forget the peace process, forget international pressure, forget the elections, because you poor Banyamulenge bastards are going to die like flies, which is what you do best. But not me. I'll be back in Paris, laughing my head off.
Stay exactly where you are, Brian dear. Help is on its way to you now.
“That Pitman's, old boy? Looks more like a roll of barbed wire to me.” Maxie is leaning over me, Bogey-style, his hands on the arms of my hot-seat as he peers at what Mr Anderson likes to call my Babylonian cuneiform. Spider has disappeared, sent packing by Maxie. Philip in pink shirt and red braces is standing in the doorway leading to the corridor. I feel dirty and don't know why. It's as if I'd made love to Penelope after she's come back from one of her weekend seminars.
“My home brew, Skipper,” I reply. “A bit of speedwriting, a bit of shorthand, and a large chunk of me” — which is what I say to all my clients, because if there's one thing I've learned, it's never let them think your notebook is a document of record or you'll end up in court or worse.
“Read it for us again, old boy, will you.”
I read it again to them as ordered. In English, from my notes as before, omitting no detail however slight, et cetera. Maxie and Philip are annoying me, although I'm careful not to let it show. I've already told them that without Mr Anderson's sophisticated sound-enhancer we could go on all night, but that doesn't deter them, oh no. They need to listen to the actual sound on my headphones, which strikes me as rather irrational, given that neither of them speaks a word of my below-the-line languages. The passage they are obsessing about is the seven garbled seconds just after the first reference to the big cigar-smoking Dutchman, and if I can't make head or tail of it, why on earth should they suppose they can?
I hand Philip my headphones, thinking they might like an ear each, but Philip hogs them both. He hears it once, he hears it three times. And each time he hears it, he gives Maxie this knowing nod. Then he hands Maxie the headphones and orders me to play the passage yet again and finally Maxie gives him a knowing nod back, which only confirms what I've been suspecting all along: they know what they're listening for and they haven't told me. And there is nothing makes a top interpreter look sillier, and more useless, than not being fully briefed by his employers. Furthermore it's my tape, not theirs. It's my trophy. It was me who wrested it from Haj's grasp, not them, I fought Haj for it, it was our duel.
“Great stuff, old boy,” Maxie assures me.
“My pleasure, Skipper,” I reply, which is only polite. But what I'm thinking is: don't pat me on the back, thank you, I don't need it, not even from you.
“Totally brilliant,” Philip purrs.
Then both of them have gone, though I only hear the one pair of footsteps bounding up the cellar stairs because Philip is this soundless consultant, and I wouldn't be surprised if he had no shadow either.
• • •
For what seems a long time after their departure, I did nothing. I took off my headset, wiped my face with my handkerchief, put my headset back on and, having sat with my chin in my fist for a while, played myself the seven-second splurge for the nth time. What had Maxie and Philip heard that I wasn't to be trusted with? I slow-motioned, I fast-forwarded, and I was none the wiser: three to four beats with a at the beginning, a three-or four-syllable word with -ere or -aire at the end, and I could think of a dozen words straight off with an ending that would fit: debonnaire, legionnaire, militaire, any air you liked to play. And after it, a splurge ak, such as attaque.
I removed my headset yet again, buried my face in my hands and whispered into the darkness. My actual words elude me to this day. To say I had feelings of actual betrayal is premature. The most I will admit to is a sense of dismay creeping over me, the origins of which I was determined not to examine. In the anticlimactic aftermath of my single combat with Haj, I was wiped out and flat on the deck. I even wondered whether our duel was a fantasy I had cooked up in my imagination, until I remembered how surveillance-conscious Haj had been from the moment he arrived in the guest suite. I was not, however — contrary to anything Penelope's bosom friend Paula would maintain — in denial. I hadn't even begun to work out what it was I was denying. If I had a sense of letting anyone down, it was turned inward. I had let me down, which is how I described my condition over the ether to Hannah, in what I now regard as the lowest point in my graph of that momentous day. Sam? It's me. Brian. What's cooking? Nothing is cooking. Sam is not at her post. I was counting on a bit of womanly sympathy, but all I'm hearing over my headset is background male chatter. She hasn't even bothered to switch her mike off, which I consider somewhat careless and insecure. I glance at Aunt Imelda's watch. The recess is running into overtime. Haj's inconclusive account of his father's flirtation with a rival outfit run by a fat Dutch fucker who smokes cigars seems to have put the cat among the pigeons in a big way. Serves him right for calling me zebra. Spider still hasn't come back from wherever he went. There's too much about the geography of this house that nobody tells me. Like where the ops room is. Or where Anton's surveillance team keeps its lookouts. Where Jasper is hiding away. Where Benny is. But I don't need to know, do I? I'm just the interpreter. Everybody needs to know except me.
I glance at the Underground plan. Haj and Dieudonne have split up. Poor Dieudonne, all alone in the guest suite. Probably having a quick pray. Haj has taken himself back to the gazebo, the scene of his supposed triumph. If only he knew! I imagine him staring out to sea with his goggle eyes, congratulating himself on having queered the Mwangaza's pitch for him. Franco's pinlight is out. Still closeted with the Mwangaza in the royal apartments, presumably. Out of bounds. Archive purposes only. I need sound. I don't like the accusing voices that are starting to raise themselves inside
my head, Hannah's foremost. I'm not here to be criticised. I did my best for my employers. What was I supposed to do? Pretend I hadn't heard Haj say what he said? Keep it to myself? I'm here to do a job and be paid for it. Cash. Even if it's a pittance compared with what they're paying Jasper. I'm an interpreter. They talk, I render. I don't stop rendering people when they say wrong things. I don't censor, edit, revise or invent, not the way certain of my colleagues do. I give it straight. If I didn't, I wouldn't be Mr Anderson's favourite son. I wouldn't be a genius in my field.
Legal or commercial, civil or military: I render everybody equally and impartially, regardless of colour, race and creed.
I'm the bridge, Amen and out.
I try Sam again. Still away from her post. The background male babble in the ops room has stopped. Instead, thanks to Sam's carelessness, I hear Philip. Moreover, he is talking clearly enough for me to hear what he's saying. Who he's talking to is anybody's guess, and his voice is coming off at least one wall before it reaches Sam's mike, but that doesn't affect my hearing. I'm on such a low-high after my duel with Haj that if a fly coughed into my headset I could tell you its age and sex. The surprise is that Philip's voice is so different from the high-gloss version I associate with him that for the opening bars I'm actually chary of identifying him. He is talking to Mark, and to judge by Philip's imperious tone, Mark is an underling: