The Dream of the Celt: A Novel by Mario Vargas Llosa Read Free Book Online Page B

Africa.” Some traders died, overcome by malaria, bitten by snakes, or devoured by wild beasts due to their ignorance of the jungles, and another few fell to the poisoned arrows and spears of natives who dared rebel against these outsiders who had weapons that exploded like thunder or burned like lightning; the colonists explained to them that according to contracts signed by their chiefs, they had to abandon their planting, fishing, hunting, rituals, and routines to become guides, porters, hunters, or harvesters of rubber without any salary at all. A good number of concessionaires, friends and favorites of the Belgian monarch, himself above all, made great fortunes in a very short time.
    By means of the system of concessions, companies spread through the Congo Free State in concentric waves, penetrating deeper and deeper into the immense region bathed by the Middle and Upper Congo and its spider’s web of tributaries. In their respective domains, they enjoyed sovereignty. In addition to being protected by the Force Publique, they counted on their own militias, always headed by some ex-soldier, ex-jailer, ex-convict, or fugitive, some of whom would become famous throughout all of Africa for their savagery. In a few years the Congo became the world’s leading producer of the rubber the civilized world demanded in larger and larger quantities for carriages, automobiles, and trains, in addition to other kinds of transport, apparel, decoration, and irrigation.
    Roger Casement was not fully conscious of any of this in the eight years—1884 to 1892—when, working very hard, suffering from malaria, turning dark in the African sun, becoming covered with scars from the bites, scratches, and gashes of plants and insects, he labored tenaciously to support the commercial and political creation of Leopold II. What he did know about was the appearance and domination in those infinite domains of the symbol of colonization: the chicote whip.
    Who invented that delicate, manageable, and efficacious instrument for rousing, frightening, and punishing indolence, clumsiness, or stupidity in those ebony-colored bipeds who never managed to do things in the way the colonists expected, whether it was working in camp, handing over the manioc ( kwango ), antelope or wild boar meat, and other foodstuffs assigned to each village or family, or the taxes to pay for the public works the government was building? It was said the inventor had been a captain in the Force Publique named M. Chicot, a Belgian in the first wave, a man apparently both practical and imaginative and endowed with sharp powers of observation, for he noticed before anyone else that the extremely tough hide of the hippopotamus could be fashioned into a whip more durable and damaging than those made of equine and feline intestines, a vine-like cord able to produce more burning, blood, scars, and pain than any other scourge, and at the same time light and functional, for curled into a small wooden haft, overseers, orderlies, guards, jailers, and foremen could wrap it around their waist or hang it over their shoulder almost without realizing they were carrying it because it weighed so little. Its mere presence among the members of the Force Publique had an intimidating effect: the eyes of black men, women, and children grew large when they saw it, the whites of their eyes gleamed with terror in their deep-black or blue-black faces, imagining that after any mistake, slip, or failing, the chicote would rip through the air with its unmistakable whistle and fall on their legs, buttocks, and backs, making them shriek.
    One of the first concessionaires in the Congo Free State was the North American Henry Shelton Sanford. He had been Leopold II’s agent and lobbyist to the United States government and a key player in the monarch’s strategy for having the great powers cede him the Congo. In June 1886 he formed the Sanford Exploring Expedition (SEE) to trade in ivory, chewing gum, rubber,