He stops, considers his words, is reminded of something, starts again.

"Ah, but that Mw.a.n.gaza is a dangerous separatist, you have been told. He has crazy personal ambitions. He wishes to break up our beloved Congo, and feed it piecemeal to the jackals across the border! My friends, I am more loyal to our capital city of Kinshasa than Kinshasa is to itself!" A high note now, but we shall go higher, wait and see. "I am more loyal than Kinshasa's unpaid soldiers who pillage our towns and villages and violate our women! I am so loyal that I want to do Kinshasa's job better than Kinshasa ever did! I want to bring us peace, not war. I want to bring us manna, not starvation! To build us schools and roads and hospitals and give us proper administration instead of ruinous corruption! I want to keep all of Kinshasa's promises. I even want to keep Kinshasa!"

He gives us hope, Salvo.

She is kissing my eyelids, giving me hope. I have my hands round her sculptured head.

Can you not understand what hope means to people of the Eastern Congo?

I love you.

Those poor Congolese souls are so tired of pain they no longer believe in the cure. If the Mw.a.n.gaza can inspire them with hope, everyone will support him. If not, the wars will go on and on and he will be one more bad prophet on their path to h.e.l.l.

Then let's hope he gets his message over to the electorate, I suggest piously.

Salvo, you are a complete romantic. For as long as the present government is in power, any elections will be incompetent and totally corrupt. People who are not bought will vote on ethnic lines, results will be falsified and tensions will increase. First let us have stability and honesty. Then we may have elections. If you had listened to the Mw.a.n.gaza,you would agree.

I'd rather listen to you.

Her lips leave my eyelids and look for more substantial fare.

And I suppose you know that the Monster used to carry a magic stick around with him that was too heavy for any mortal man to I it, except the Monster himself?

No, Hannah, that gem of knowledge escaped me. She is referring to the late and pitiful General Mobutu, supreme ruler and destroyer of Zaire and her only known hate-figure to date.

Well, the Mw.a.n.gaza also has a stick. It goes with him everywhere, just like the Monster's, but it is of a special wood chosen for its lightness. Anyone who believes in the Middle Path may pick it up and discover how easy is the journey to its ranks. And when the Mw.a.n.gaza dies, do you know what will happen to this magic stick?

It will help him walk to Heaven, I suggest drowsily, my head upon her belly.

Don't be facetious, please, Salvo. It will be placed in a beautiful new Museum of Unity to be built on the banks of Lake Kivu, where all may visit it. It will commemorate the day when Kivu became the pride of Congo, united and free.

And here it is. The stick. The very one. It lies before us on the green baize table, a miniature House of Commons mace. The delegates have examined its magic markings, and tested it for lightness in their palms. For old Franco, it is an object of significance but is the significance of the right kind? For Haj it is a piece of merchandise. What materials have they used? Does it work? And we can sell them cheaper. Dieudonne's response is less easily read. Will it bring peace and equality to my people? Will our prophets approve of its powers? If we make war for it, will it protect us from Franco and his kind?

Maxie has skewed his chair to the table so that he can stretch his legs. His eyes are closed, he leans back like an athlete waiting his turn, hands clasped behind his neck. My saviour Philip of the wavy white hair wears the quiet smile of an impresario. He has the eternal English actor's face, I have decided. He could be anything from thirty-five to sixty, and the audience would never know. If Tabizi and the Dolphin are listening to my rendering they show no sign of it. They know the Mw.a.n.gaza's speeches the way I knew Andre's. By contrast I have acquired an unexpected audience in the three delegates. Having been harangued by the Mw.a.n.gaza in Swahili, they have come to rely on my less emotive French replay for a second hearing. Haj the academic listens critically, Dieudonne thoughtfully, meditating upon each precious word. And Franco listens with his fists clenched, ready to strike down the first man who contradicts him.

The Mw.a.n.gaza has ceased to play the demagogue and a.s.sumed the role of a lecturer in economics. I trim my interpreter's sails accordingly. Kivu is being robbed, he informs us sternly. He knows what Kivu is worth and what it isn't being paid. He has the figures at his professional fingertips and waits while I jot them on my notepad. I discreetly smile my thanks. He acknowledges my smile and reels off the names of Rwandan-backed mining companies that are plundering our natural resources. Since most have French names, I do not render them.

"Why do we let them do it?" he demands angrily, voice rising again. "Why do we stand by and watch our enemies grow rich on our mineral wealth, when all we want to do is throw them out?"

He has a map of Kivu. The Dolphin has pegged it to the white board and the Mw.a.n.gaza is standing beside it, a.s.sailing it with his magic stick: clap, smack, as he rattles along, and I rattle along after him from my end of the table, but softly, tempering his words, defusing them a little which in turn causes him to identify me if not as an active member of the resistance, at least as somebody who needs to be won over.

He stops speaking, so I do. He stares directly at me. He has the witch doctor's knack, when staring, of contracting his eye muscles to make himself more visionary and compelling. It's not my eyes he is looking at any more, it's my skin. He studies my face, then in case there's any change, my hands: mid to light tan.

"Mr. Interpreter, sir!"

"Mw.a.n.gaza."

"Come up here, my boy!"

For a caning? To confess my shortcomings to the cla.s.s? Watched by all, I walk down the table until I am standing before him, only to find that I am the taller by a head.

"So which are you, my boy?" very jocular, stabbing a finger first at Maxie and Philip, then at the three black delegates" Are you one of us or one otthemT Under such pressure, I rise to his rhetorical heights. "Mw.a.n.gaza, I am one of both of you!" I cry back in Swahili.

He roars with laughter and renders my words into French for me. Clapping breaks out at both ends of the table, but the Mw.a.n.gaza's booming voice effortlessly bestrides it.

"Gentlemen. This fine young fellow is the symbol of our Middle Path! Let us follow the example of his all-inclusiveness! No, no, no. Stay here, my boy, stay here one moment longer, please."

He means it as an honour, even if it doesn't feel like one. He calls me fine young fellow and stands me beside him while he hammers the map with his magic stick and extols the Eastern Congo's mineral wealth, and I for my part clasp my hands behind my back and render teacher's lines without benefit of a notepad, thereby incidentally providing the conference with an example of my powers of memory.

"Here at Mwenga, gold, my friends! Here at Kamituga: gold, uranium, ca.s.siterite, colt an and don't tell anybody diamonds too. Here at Kabambare, gold, ca.s.siterite and colt an His repet.i.tions are deliberate. "Here colt an ca.s.siterite, and here' the stick lifts, and drifts a little uncertainly in the direction of Lake Albert 'oil, my friends, unmeasured, and perhaps un measurable quant.i.ties of priceless oil. And you know something else? We have a little miracle that is hardly known about at all, though everybody wants it. It is so rare that diamonds are like pebbles in the street by comparison. It is called Kamitugaite, my friends, and it is 56.71 per cent uranium! Well, what on earth could anybody want that for, I wonder?"

He waits for the knowing laughter to rise and fade.

"But who will profit from all these riches, tell me?"

He waits again, smiling up at me while I ask the same question, so I smile too, in my newfound role as teacher's pet.

"Oh the fat cats in Kinshasa will get their pay-off, sure! They will not forgo their thirty pieces of Rwandan silver, oh no! But they won't be spending them on schools and roads and hospitals for Eastern Congo, oh no! In the fine stores of Johannesburg and Nairobi and Cape Town, maybe they will spend them. But not here in Kivu. Oh no!"

Pause again. Smile this time not at me, but at our delegates. Then ask another question.

"Do the people of Kivu get richer every time another truckload of colt an rolls across our borders?"

The magic stick moves inexorably eastward across Lake Kivu.

"When the oil begins to flow into Uganda, will the people of Kivu be better off? My friends, as the oil is drained away, they will grow poorer by the day. Yet these are our mines, my friends, our oil, our wealth, given to us by G.o.d to tend and enjoy in His name! These are not water wells that fill up again with the rains. What the thieves take from us today will not grow again tomorrow, or the day after."

He shakes his head, muttering Oh no several times, as if recalling a grave injustice.

"And who, I wonder, sells these stolen goods at such vast profit, not one cent of which is restored to the rightful owners? The answer, my friends, is known to all of you! It is the racketeers of Rwanda! It is the carpetbaggers of Uganda and Burundi! It is our corrupt government of loquacious fat cats in Kinshasa who sell our birthright to the foreigners, and then tax us for our trouble! Thank you, my boy. Well done, sir. You can sit down now."

I sit down and reflect upon colt an not in real time for I am rendering the Mw.a.n.gaza non-stop, but in the way a news flash rolls along the bottom of a television screen while the main action continues up above. What is colt an It is a highly precious metal once found exclusively in the Eastern Congo, ask my commodity-dealing clients. If you were unwise enough to dismantle your cellphone, you would find an essential speck of it among the debris. For decades the United States has held strategic stockpiles of the stuff, a fact my clients learned to their cost when the Pentagon dumped tons of it on the world market.

Why else does colt an have place of honour in my head? Go back to Christmas in the Year of Our Lord 2000. Play Station 2, the must-have electronic toy for every rich British kid, is in desperately short supply. Middle-cla.s.s parents are wringing their hands, and so is Penelope on the front page of her great newspaper: we set out to name and shame the grinches who stole our Christmas! But her anger is misplaced. The shortage is due not to the incompetence of the manufacturers, but to a tidal wave of genocide which has engulfed the Eastern Congo, thereby causing a temporary interruption in the supply of colt an Did you know that the Mw.a.n.gaza is a professor of our Congolese history, Salvo? He knows every detail of our horror by heart. He knows who killed whom, how many, and on what date, and he is not afraid of the truth, which so many of our cowardly ones are.

And I am one of the cowardly ones, but at this bare green table where I am sitting there is no hiding place. Wherever the Mw.a.n.gaza dares go, I must go too, conscious of every word I render. Two minutes ago he was talking production figures. Now he is talking genocide, and once again he has his figures off pat: how many villages razed, how many inhabitants crucified or hacked to death, suspected witches burned, the gang rapes, the endless back-and-forth of East Congo's internecine slaughter fomented from outside while the international community bickers and I turn off the television if Penelope hasn't turned it off already. And the dying continues even as the Mw.a.n.gaza speaks, and I render. With every month that pa.s.ses, another thirty-eight thousand Congolese die from the ravages of these forgotten wars: "One thousand, two hundred deaths a day, my friends, including Sat.u.r.days and Sundays! That means today and tomorrow, and every day next week."

I glance at the faces of my delegates. They are hangdog. Perhaps it is they for once who are on autopilot and I am not. Who can tell what they are thinking, if they have consented to think at all? They are three more Africans seated at the roadside in the midday heat and n.o.body on earth, perhaps not they themselves, can fathom what is in their heads. But why is the Mw.a.n.gaza telling us all this with time so short? Is it to beat us down? No. It is to embolden us.

"Therefore we are ent.i.tled, my friends! We are twice, three times ent.i.tled! No other nation on earth has suffered such disasters as our beloved Kivu. No other nation is in such desperate need of rebirth! No other nation has a greater right to seize its wealth and lay it at the feet of its afflicted ones, and say: "This is not theirs any more. This, my poor people nous miserables de Kivu!is oursl"'

His magisterial boom could have filled the Albert Hall, but the question in all our hearts is clear enough: if Kivu's wealth has fallen into the wrong hands, and the injustices of history ent.i.tle us to get it back, and Kinshasa is a broken reed, and everything from Kivu is exported eastwards anyway, what do we propose to do about it?

"Take a close look, my friends, at our great nation's politicians and protectors, and what do you see? New policies? Oh yes very new policies, you are right. Quite pristine, I would say. And new political parties to go with them, too. With very poetic names' des noms tres poetiques. "There is so much new democracy in the wh.o.r.e-city of Kinshasa that I am afraid to walk down Boulevard 30 Juin in my old shoes these days!" -cette ville de putains! "So many new political platforms going up, and built of the very best timber too, at your expense. So many beautifully printed, twenty-page manifestos that will bring us peace, money, medicine and universal education by midnight next week at the latest. So many anti-corruption laws that you can't help asking yourself who has been bribed to draft them all."

The laugh is led by the smooth-skinned Dolphin and the rugged Tabizi, and backed by Philip and Maxie. The Enlightener waits sternly while it fades. Where is he leading us? Does he know? With Pere Andre there was never an agenda. With the Mw.a.n.gaza, though I am too slow to sense it, there has been agenda all the way.

"But take a closer look, please, at these brand-new politicians of ours, my friends. Lift up the brims of their hats, please. Let a little good African sun into their hundred-thousand-dollar Mercedes limousines and tell me what you see. New faces full of optimism? Bright young graduates ready to offer up their careers in the service of our Republic? Oh no, my friends, you do not. You see the same old, old faces of the same old, old crooks!"

What has Kinshasa ever achieved for Kivu? he demands to know. Answer, nothing. Where is the peace they preach, the prosperity, the harmony? Where is their inclusive love of country, neighbour, community? He has travelled all Kivu, north and south, and failed to find the smallest evidence of it. He has listened to the People's tales of woe: Yes, we want the Middle Path, Mw.a.n.gaza! We pray for it! We sing for it! We dance for it! But how, oh how, will we obtain it? How indeed? He mimics their pitiful cry. I mimic the Mw.a.n.gaza: "Who will defend us when our enemies send their troops against us, Mw.a.n.gaza? You are a man of peace, Mw.a.n.gaza! You are no longer the great warrior you used to be. Who will organise us and fight with us and teach us to be strong together?"

Am I truly the last person in the room to realise that the answer to the People's prayer was lounging at the head of the table with his scuffed suede boots stuck out in front of him? Evidently I am, for the Mw.a.n.gaza's next words jolt me out of my reverie so fast that Haj swings round and peers at me with his comedian's bubbly eyes.

Wo name, my friends?" the Mw.a.n.gaza is yelling at us indign andy "This strange Syndicate that has dragged us here today has no name? Oh, this is very bad! Where can they have put it? This is all very fishy and mysterious! Maybe we should put on our spectacles and help them look for it! Why on earth should honest folk conceal their names? What have they to hide? Why don't they come out with it straight and say who they are and what they want?"

Start slow, Pere Andre. Start low and slow. You have a long way to rise. But the Mw.a.n.gaza is an old hand.

"Well now, my dear friends," he confides, in a weary tone that makes you want to help him over the stile. "I have spoken to these no-name gentlemen long and hard, I want to tell you." He points at Philip without turning to look at him. "Oh yes. We have had many tough talks together. From the going down of the sun and up again, I would say. Very tough talks indeed, and so they should be. Tell us what you want, Mw.a.n.gaza, the no-names said to me. Tell it without adornment or evasion, please. And then we will tell you what we want. And from this we shall establish whether we can do business, or whether we shall shake hands and say sorry and goodbye, which is normal commercial discourse. So I replied to them in the same coin' absently fondling his gold slave collar, and thereby reminding us that he is not for sale "Gentlemen, it is very well known what I want. Peace, prosperity and inclusiveness for all Kivu. Free elections, but only when stability is established. But peace, gentlemen, it is also well known, does not come of its own accord, and neither does freedom. Peace has enemies. Peace must be won by the sword. For peace to be a reality, we must coordinate our forces, repossess our mines and cities, drive out the foreigners and install an interim government of all Kivu that will lay down the foundations of a true, enduring, democratic welfare state. But how can we do that for ourselves, gentlemen? We are crippled by discord. Our neighbours are more powerful than we are, and more cunning."

He is glowering at Franco and Dieudonne, willing them to draw closer to each other while he continues his commercial discourse with the no-name gentlemen.

' "For our cause to prevail, we need your organisation, gentlemen. We need your equipment and your expertise. Without them, the peace of my beloved Kivu will forever be an illusion." That is what I said to the no-names. Those were my words.

And the no-names, they listened to me carefully, as you would suppose. And finally one speaks for all, and I must not tell you his name even today, but I a.s.sure you he is not in this room although he is a proven lover of our nation. And this is what he says. "What you propose is well and good, Mw.a.n.gaza. We may be men of commerce, but we are not without souls. The risk is high, the cost also. If we support your cause, how can we be sure that at the end of the day we shall not go away with empty pockets and a b.l.o.o.d.y nose?" And we on our side reply, "Those who join our great enterprise will join in its rewards."

His voice drops even lower, but it can afford to. So does mine. I could whisper into my hand and they would hear me.

"The Devil, we are told, has many names, my friends, and by now we Congolese know most of them. But this Syndicate has none. It is not called the Belgian Empire, or the Spanish Empire, or the Portuguese Empire, or the British Empire, or the French Empire, or the Dutch Empire, or the American Empire, or even the Chinese Empire. This Syndicate is called Nothing. It is Nothing Incorporated. No name means no flag. No name will help to make us rich and united, but it will not own us or our people. With no name, Kivu will for the first time own itself. And when that day dawns, we shall go to the fat cats of Kinshasa and we shall say to them: "Good morning, fat cats How are you today? You have all got hangovers as usual, I suppose!"

Not a laugh or a smile. He has us.

"Well, fat cats we have some good news for you. Kivu has freed itself of foreign invaders and exploiters. The good citizens of Bukavu and Goma have risen up against the oppressor and received us with open arms. The surrogate armies of Rwanda have fled and the genocidaires with them. Kivu has taken back its mines and put them into public ownership where they belong. Our means of production, distribution and supply are under one hat, and that is the hat of the people. We no longer export everything to the east. We have found alternative trade routes.

But we are also patriots and we believe in the unity of one Congolese Democratic Republic within the legal borders of our Const.i.tution. So here are our terms, fat cats one, two, three, you can take them or leave them! Because we are not coming to you, fat cats You are coming to us!"

He sits down and closes his eyes. Pere Andre used to do the same. It made the afterglow of his words last longer. My rendering complete, I permit myself a discreet poll of our delegates' reactions. Powerful speeches can bring resentment in their wake. The more an audience has been carried away, the harder it struggles to get back to sh.o.r.e. The fidgety Haj has ceased to fidget, contenting himself with a series of grimaces. The bone-thin Dieudonne has his fingertips pressed to his brow in distracted meditation. Beads of sweat have formed at the fringes of his beard. Old Franco next to him is consulting something on his lap, I suspect a fetish.

Philip breaks the spell. "Well now, who will do us the honour of speaking first?" A meaningful glance at the post-office clock, because time is after all short.

All eyes on Franco, our senior member. He scowls at his great hands. He lifts his head.

"When Mobutu's power failed, the soldiers of the Mau Mau stood in the breach with pan gas arrows and lances to protect our blessed territory," he a.s.serts in slow Swahili. He glares round the table lest anyone should presume to challenge him. No one does. He continues, "The Mau Mau has seen what has been. Now we shall see what comes. G.o.d will protect us."

Next in cla.s.s order comes Dieudonne.

"For the Banyamulenge to remain alive, we must be federalists," he declares, speaking straight at his neighbour Franco. "When you take our cattle, we die. When you kill our sheep, we die. When you take our women, we die. When you take our land, we die. Why can we not own the highlands where we live and toil and pray? Why can we not have our own chieftaincies?

Why must our lives be administered by the chieftaincies of distant tribes who deny us our status and keep us captive to their will?" He turns to the Mw.a.n.gaza. "The Banyamulenge believe in peace as much as you do. But we will never renounce our land."

The Mw.a.n.gaza's eyes remain closed while the sleek-faced Dolphin fields the implied question.

"The Mw.a.n.gaza is also a federalist," he says softly. "The Mw.a.n.gaza does not insist on integration. Under his proposed Const.i.tution, the rights of the Banyamulenge people to their lands and chieftaincies will be recognised."

"And the Mulenge highlands will be declared a territory?"

"They will."

"In the past, Kinshasa has refused to give us this just law."

"The Mw.a.n.gaza is not of the past, but of the future. You will have your just law," the astute Dolphin replies: at which old Franco emits what sounds like a snort of derision, but perhaps he is clearing his throat. In the same moment, Haj jerks himself bolt upright like a jack-in-the-box and rakes the table with his wild, exophthalmic gaze: "So it's a coup, right?" he demands, in the shrill, hectoring French of a Parisian sophisticate. "Peace, prosperity, inclusiveness. But when you strip away the bulls.h.i.t, we're grabbing power. Bukavu today, Goma tomorrow, Rwandans out, screw the UN, and Kinshasa can kiss our a.r.s.es."

A covert glance round the table confirms my suspicion that our conference is suffering from culture shock. It is as if the church elders had been sitting in solemn conclave when this urban heretic barges in from the street and demands to know what they're yacking about.

"I mean do we need all this?" Haj demands, dramatically spreading his open palms. "Goma has its problems, ask my dad. Goma's got the goods, the Rwandans have got the money and the muscle. Tough. But Bukavu isn't Goma. Ever since the soldiers mutinied last year, our Rwandans have kept their heads down in Bukavu. And our town's administrators hate the Rwandans worse than anybody." He flings out his hands, palms upward, in a Gallic gesture of disengagement. "Just asking, that's all."

But Haj is not asking the Mw.a.n.gaza, he's asking me. His bubbly gaze may tour the table or settle respectfully on the great man, but no sooner do I begin to render him than it shoots back to me, and stays on me after the last echo of my voice has died in my ears. I'm expecting the Mw.a.n.gaza to take up the challenge, or failing him, the Dolphin. But once more it's my saviour Philip who sidles in from the wings and gets them off the hook.

"That's today, Haj," he explains, with the tolerance of his years. "It's not yesterday. And if history is anything to go by, it won't be tomorrow, will it? Must the Middle Path wait for post-electoral chaos and the next Rwandan incursion before creating the conditions for a strong and lasting peace? Or does the Mw.a.n.gaza do better to pick his time and place, which is your respected father's view?"

Haj shrugs, stretches out his arms, grins, shakes his head in disbelief. Philip grants him a moment to speak, but the moment is scarcely up before he lifts the hand bell and gives it a little shake, announcing a brief recess while our delegates consider their positions.

9.

I could never have imagined, as I stole down the cellar steps for the first time in my capacity as interpreter-below-the-waterline, that I would have the sensation of walking on air, but such was indeed the case. Haj's boorish intrusion aside, all was unfolding in the best possible manner. When, if ever, had such a voice of reason and moderation echoed across the lakes and jungles of our troubled Congo? When had two more capable professionals Maxie the man of deeds, and Philip the rapier-witted negotiator met together in the cause of an ailing people? What a shove to history we were giving! Even the case-hardened Spider, who on his own admission had not understood a syllable of what he was recording nor, I suspected, the intricacies of our venture was exhilarated by the positive atmosphere to date.

"Sounds like they're getting a real talking-to, if you ask me," he declared in his Welsh singsong, as he clapped the earphones on me, checked my mouthpiece and practically tucked me into my hot-seat. "Bang their heads together and maybe a bit of common sense will fall out, I say."

But of course it was Sam I was waiting to hear: Sam my coordinator, Sam who would tell me which mikes to concentrate on, who would brief and debrief me on a running basis. Had I met Sam? Was he too perchance a sound-thief, another former denizen of the Chat Room, about to step out of the shadows and display his special skills? All the greater my surprise, therefore, when the voice that announced itself in my headphones turned out to be a woman's, and a motherly one at that.

Feeling good, Brian dear?

Never better, Sam. Yourself?

You did awfully well up there. Everyone's raving about you.

Did I detect the merest tingle of a Scottish accent amid these matronly words of comfort?

Where's home for you, Sam? I asked excitedly, because everything was still bright to me from upstairs.

If I said Wandsworth, would that shock you terribly?

Shock me? We're neighbours, for Heaven's sake! I do half my shopping in Wandsworth!

Awkward silence. Too late, I remember once again that I am supposed to live in a post-office box.

Then you and I will pa.s.s as trolleys in the night, Brian dear, Sam replies primly. We'll kick off with all the sevens, if you don't mind. Subjects approaching now.