Years prior, someone had fashioned large palms into a sort-of ceiling fan that now lazily twirled the air, as one encourages a cosmo to adhere.
“If we can’t bring civilization to the Congo, can we bring dry cleaning?” Guillaume was wringing out a handkerchief dense with freshly wiped sweat out onto the thatched floor. He was a sweaty fellow home in France as well, of course, but what really mattered to him was a sense of decorum. There was no decorum working a receptionist job on pittance wages with a barely recovering hop-head, or whatever he called himself.
Bastien, his office mate, watched his cigarette slowly turn cherry red from the air puffed by the fan. He stubbed it out before it roach-ified in his shaky hand. “Well, the Nazis just killed our bosses, so unless you got a PCE supply, which I would’ve already liked to have known about, you’re dead on arrival, like everyone else here bub.”
“Not everyone. While you were out last night, likely rubbing yourself with benzedrine cream, a telegraph came in from London. A speech by de Gaulle, saying he isn’t dead yet. Or if he is, they’re shipping the corpse to Brazzaville for a voodoo midwife to bring him back. Then we’ll all kill some Nazis. Maybe we should put up some ribbons.”
A runner entered briefly to deliver mid-morning coffee. Guillaume allowed himself a moment to hold the coffee in his hands. He felt a phantom warmth where his ring finger was missing. Something had happened, a year ago, while patrolling a work crew building the railroad from Brazzaville to Pointe Noire and that finger and another were left behind. Guillaume has found himself firmly seated behind a desk since then, with ample runners for coffee or inks.
“Coming here to sit in the office, write memos, and take a bath with some tanned blondies more like it. De Gaulle and cronies are military wash-outs now, just like me. I would care more, but look how I treat wash-outs like me.” A wry smile alluded to the bloodshot-chic that characterized Bastien’s wardrobe and air. It was well-known in thoughtful corners of Brazzaville that Bastien was shipped on a south-bound train after being caught strung-out in the boot camp barracks. Unfortunately, both for Bastien and the governorship of French Equatorial Africa, pills were a second currency among the enlightened race under the southern sun.
Guillaume questioned him with the uncanny earnest of a cub scout, “You don’t want to kill a Nazi or two?”
“I’ll wait for my orders. Besides, half the whites here love the Nazis, where would we start?”
“They’re lost souls who gave up on our country before crossing over. African flight attendants forget to hand out mints before landing.”
“You’re far too kind. Any white face in this town has some African back they made a million dollars on, no one’s in a rush to stop the fascists and start the accounting.”
Guillaume grimaced. He’d been here too long. Memories of rocky beaches and midnight miss the name of the street he grew up on had faded to the ether. Home was a feeling lost in the Atlantic, and a panzer just sunk it.
“Do you think the Africans will help us fight the Germans?”
“With a gun to their back, maybe. Guillaume, we are little more than a bulging, malignant tick taking what we can while the world burns. You don’t think they all realize France is dying? That the boot is slipping from their neck? Our job isn’t to kill Nazis. Our job is to steady the boot.”
“Nazis or Congolaise, it’s not even my job to shoot. I’m just the messenger.”
A small siren indicated a telegram for Bastien. The miniature flashing of the machinery glimmered across the lacquered walls and framed maps, reflecting the signal inwards.
A forgotten relative he’d once convinced to move to Pointe Noire had passed away. Bastien had originally been her palliative specialist, but the dense fugue that comes from opioids began to cloud this regal too dramatically. By the end of her life, she had completely embraced the healthcare of Kongo people. A photograph of this relative, attended with herbs and palms by 5 black bodies, circulated among the French delegation of the family, to small laughter.
Guillaume absorbed the synthetic horn of the telegram. In his focus, he often was able to examine sense outside himself. This time, he reflected on the horn’s echo, which called throughout the many halls and rooms of their assigned government building, glancing of linoleum flooring. No bodies were there to insulate the sound before it returned to them, except for the janitor, a hard-working African on loan from Kinshasa. The rebound attached an echo to Guillaume’s bones.
After Bastien finished relaying the message, Guillaume pulled him from the outside world. “I haven’t lived in France for more than 20 years, yet I fear a world without it. Like suddenly my anchor could no longer scratch the ocean floor.”
“The world is France to me. Every night I go home from a long day of civilizing, take an assortment of pills prescribed by a convicted felon, and take a hot bath. I did much the same in Paris, and I’ll do the same here until I die of some unknown disease.” Bastien took this moment to re-ignite the half-dead butt of his cigarette.
“You need a domestic to run your bath here. I thought I’d feel more free here, but I need someone for everything, to translate, to exchange currency, to cook. I’m paid to leech.”
“It makes me feel like I’m floating across a great mass of bodies, my flesh passing from hand to hand. My domestic vacuums when I’m high. And I always say to him, How do you vacuum a dirt floor? And do you know what he says?”
“I don’t care.”
“He says, That’s why you need me. This dirt floor was disgusting before I got here.” Bastien paused a beat, waiting for a laugh that didn’t come. “Anyways, I liked the spirit, so I gave him Bastille day.”
“What does a Congolaise domestic do with Bastille Day?”
“Well, they’ll have their own independence day soon enough, best to be prepared. Mine stole a weekend's worth of amphetamines from my medicine cabinet and I never saw him again.”
“Maybe they are learning from us after all. Maybe he can return the favor when De Gaulle conscripts half a million Africans to take back France.”
At that moment a telegram came in. Guillaume pressed the receiver flush against his ear and transcribed with dark focus.
From the desk of Felix Eboue, Governor General of French Equatorial Africa. France reborn! We are the lifeblood, on which the new France will form. Each one of us a doula. War brought the darkened brow of a weary new mother; as loyal attendants we will heal the mother and nurse the babe to term. In Brazzaville, prepare rooms for the general and friends. Elsewhere, finish your beer.
The boss’ boss’ boss in Africa, Felix Eboue had written to rally the troops. The two of them turgidly reviewed the message. Europe’s dirty art of war and devastation found the prodigal children preparing a new world. Guillaume copied down Bastien’s transcription, and the two of them took off into a spidering flurry of communication. The local police station, the embassy, the ports, union leaders floated through the electronic waves.
Bastien loosened his tie, allowing the wet breeze from the window to crest his body. “Already, I feel this colony collapsing in on us.”
Guillaume gazed out the window, crimping his hat in an anxious left, from finger to finger. The square was hurried with bodies. Men ropey with muscles. Children playing tricks. Women sashaying to the rhythm of communion. People attending to their own lives.
“We all have been waiting to be guided back. Whether we follow the troops or are guided out by the Africans.”
“Guided.” Bastien chuckled. “The only thing that has kept our limbs attached to our bodies was the machine gun posted on half the city's rooftops. They need those for the front lines.”
That night, Guillaume walked home under the cover of paranoia. Shadows concealed shadow figures. Upon shutting the clasp on his apartment’s door, he begged his maid to concoct him a stiff drink, which she did: three parts rum, two parts tea, one part brown sugar, one and a half pills. She spent her night calling her boyfriend from the bathroom. Guillaume faded away, sip by sip. He was found the next morning by his butler, asleep in the chair, eyes dreaming at the westbound Congo River.