The Soccer War by Ryszard Kapuściński Read Free Book Online Page A

church porch, a theatre and a school, a dive and a rally, a bordello and a party cell.
    You have to take account of the bars and Lumumba understood this perfectly. He also stops in for a beer. Patrice doesn’t like to keep quiet. He feels that he has something to say and he wants to get it out. Patrice is an inspired speaker, a genius. He begins with casual conversations in the bar. Nobody knows him here: a strange face. He’s not a Bangal or a Bakong. What’s more, he doesn’t back any of the tribes. There’s only one Congo,this stranger says. The Congo is a great subject, you can talk about it endlessly without repeating yourself. Such things are good listening. And the bar starts to listen. For the first time the bar falls silent, hushes, settles down. It pricks up its ears, ruminates, compares viewpoints. Our country is enormous, Patrice explains. It is rich and beautiful. It could be a superpower if the Belgians would leave. How can we oppose the Belgians? With unity. The Bangals should stop letting snakes into the huts of the Bakongos. That only leads to quarrels and not to
Fraternité
. You don’t have freedom and your women don’t even have enough to buy a bunch of bananas. This isn’t life.
    Patrice speaks simply. You have to speak simply to these people. He knows them. He too came from the village, he knows these people without timetables, shaken and disoriented, off the tracks, looking for some sort of support in the incomprehensible new world of the city, looking for some oar to grab hold of, for a chance to catch their breath before plunging back into this whirl of faces, into the confusion of the market, into everyday drudgery. When you talk to these people you can see how everything in their heads is tangled up in the most fantastic way. Refrigerators and poisoned arrows, de Gaulle and Ferhat Abbas, fear of the witch-doctor and wonder at the Sputnik. When the Belgians sent their expeditionary force to the Congo, they ordered the infantrymen to change into paratroopers’ uniforms. I kept wracking my brains—why were they all paratroopers? Then it dawned on me: because paratroopers are feared here. In Africa they fear anybody who drops out of the sky. If somebody drops from the sky, he’s not just anybody. There’s something in it, and it’s better not to go too deeply into such things.
    Patrice is a son of his people. He too can be naive andmystical at times, he too has a predisposition to jump from one extreme to another, from explosions of happiness to mute despair. Lumumba is a fascinating character because he is extraordinarily complex. Nothing about the man submits to definition. Every formulation is too tight. Restless, a chaotic enthusiast, a sentimental poet, an ambitious politician, an animated soul, amazingly tough and submissive at the same time, confident until the very end that he is right, deaf to the words of others, enraptured—by his own splendid voice.
    Lumumba enchants the bars. From the very moment he walks in. He conquers them totally. Patrice always speaks with conviction, and people want to be convinced. They want to discover some new faith, because the tribal faith has become shaky. We used to say, ‘Comrade, don’t just agitate among us, give us something we can feel.’ Lumumba knows how to give the bars something they can feel. He teaches, demonstrates, proves. The people say yes and applaud.
Il a raison
, they shout—
‘He’s right!’
And today in the Congo, when his name is mentioned, they repeat the same thing with melancholy reflection:
Oui, il avait raison
. Yes, he was right.

T HE P ARTY C HAIRMEN
    There were three of them. They always walked together, as three, and drove around together, as three, in a big, dusty Chevrolet. The car stopped in front of the hotel, the doors slammed, and we could hear three pairs of feet coming up the stairs. They knocked, entered our room and sat down in the armchairs. If three people go around together in Poland, you don’t