Stringer by Anjan Sundaram Read Free Book Online Page A

buttoned to the top so it pinched the skin on his neck. Corinthian gave sermons at the Bozene Evangelical Church, and Nana often nudged Jose as if to say, “See what a benediction my family is to this house.” Corinthian had no place of his own, as I understood, so he spent his days at the church, a tall brown building at the street’s entrance, and shuttled between families grateful to harbor a man of God.
    â€œHe was eating my hair cream,” Nana said. One could sense the merriment in her vindication. “Just see and you’ll know, Corinthian. You know these boys.”
    The child seemed unsure of what the fuss was about. He smiled stupidly and appeared to enjoy the attention—he looked at us one by one, as if someone might give him a candy.
    Corinthian kneeled to the level of the boy’s face and quietly asked if the child wished to confess. All at once the small face contorted. The smile vanished. And the boy recoiled and looked around the house as if he was trapped. His mouth opened inertly, speechless. Nana nodded. “That’s right.” And in a sweet voice she said, “Come now. Uncle Corinthian wants to help you.” With wide eyes, a terrified expression, the boy concentrated on Corinthian.
    In Kinshasa troublesome children often confessed. The evangelists recommended it on the radio, and Nana faithfully listened—the noise expelled all peace from the house. The sermons were screamed and replete with warning: “The devil is among us, we must protect our infants and our families!” “To go to heaven we must climb, but the path to hell is a slippery slide!” The pastor would wheeze hallelujahs. His anger would seem unending. And at the end he would call for the faithful and their families—especially the troubled souls—to be purified.
    There was a trick in this, for the signs of the troubled soul need not manifest in the soul itself. They could appear in the parents, in an aunt or uncle, even in distant family. A misfortune—ofwhich there was no shortage—could therefore be imputed to almost anyone in the family. The only way to certify a person’s purity was by ecclesiastical examination.
    When a mother brought her child before a pastor it often marked a rupture within her family, but also in her society and in the child’s life. Many children on Kinshasa’s streets had been seen by a pastor—sometimes even in a famous church. The stories surfaced only years later, in radio reports and from the city’s few orphanages. Courageous children related how the pastors had beaten them, deprived them of food, water and sleep and psychologically manipulated them until they had confessed to working for the devil. Once the evil was confirmed, with the community’s approval, the child was beaten more by the family—so as to render the rupture complete—and then usually intoxicated, trussed like an animal and left in a place far from home. The child knew not to return.
    Of course, the treatment could also be less cruel. It depended on the gravity of the mother’s accusations and the depth of the family’s misfortune. But the exorcisms happened all the time, in the ville and in the cité and on Bozene; even in the best households.
    If Nana had acted from an impassioned desire to prove a point—or from some past anguish—she succeeded in ridding herself of the boy as well. He bolted off, startling Corinthian, into the sunlit street. Never again did he come asking for sugar. Nana seemed satisfied: “You see?” Corinthian claimed to be concerned for the child. But he refused to let me witness his exorcisms. He first said they happened too late, then that I was a nonbeliever, and finally that my presence would need approval from America.
    And ever since, when the sopranos begin each night, I wonder for whom they sing.

4
    T he following weekend I made a brief trip outside the capital. Before coming to