The Catastrophist: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

station—Inès hates the extravagance of this but Houthhoofd’s house is ten kilometers out of town. The lulling rumble of the cataracts at Livingstone Falls gets louder as we proceed.

    A servant opens the gates to the walled villa. To our right is a clay tennis court. Madeleine is one of the players. She wears a short white dress and her limbs are long and strong and tanned.
    At the back of the house a wide garden inclines gently down to the river, where a pair of speedboats pull girls on water-skis. Away to our left on the far bank the long, low profile of Léopoldville stretches out. Directly opposite, perhaps a mile distant, is a cluster of dusty brick buildings with tin roofs—some black quarter or other, no one seems sure of its name.
    There are about sixty guests standing around in small groups with drinks in their hands; there is a swimming pool and a gazebo.
    A fat, soft, goitrous-throated man with bulging eyes approaches us. Inès introduces me to Bernard Houthhoofd. Our host signals to a houseboy, one of a dozen or so lined up and waiting—almost straining—for summons. He brings us drinks from the little wooden bar by the shade of a mango tree.
    “Did you hear about the disturbances last night?” Houthhoofd asks Inès.
    “We were there, we saw it.”
    “The Force Publique must be firmer next time.”
    “They can be as firm as they like,” Inès replies, “it won’t do any good. There are a hundred thousand Europeans who don’t want independence and fourteen million blacks who do. The outcome is inevitable.”
    Houthhoofd grins tolerantly.
    “There are other numbers that matter,” he says equably.
    “What are they?” I ask.
    “Money,” he says, his grin widening.
    There is nothing ostentatious about Bernard Houthhoofd’s dress or appearance, but still he has the look of a very rich man: it is in his self-possession and his manners—courtly yet at the same time somehow ominous. His smiling gaze is full of cool appraisals. He is the lord in his castle. We chat politely for a few minutes before he excuses himself.
    De Scheut is playing croquet with another man and a boy and a girl in their early teens. They are healthy, shining, handsome children and they call de Scheut
papa.
Inès and I gaze at them and say nothing. My chest tightens momentarily. We cannot speak about this subject. I am again on the bus traveling up Kentish Town Road as Inès walks damp-footed through the gray snow after her appointment with the doctor. I had avoided going back to the flat that afternoon, avoided being there when she got home, for I knew from her expression, from the way she was walking, from the size of her, what she had been told. She cried, of course, but not for long. Inès bears misfortune bravely and I assured her it made no difference to me. At the time I believed this; now I am not so sure. What will the absence of children mean for us? For different reasons—hers to do with politics, mine with doubt—we have so far refused the disciplines and dreams of a conventional life together. We have never spoken seriously of marriage, we have never looked for an ideal home. But both of us feel the tug of domesticity, are aware of what it gives as much as what it takes away, and at moments like this, looking at de Scheut’s children, our thoughts cannot but help turn to what we know we shall never have. Two tattered African grays perch forlornly in their small cage, looking out at nothing.
    We fall in with a group of guests by the gazebo. They seem well meaning, polite, even a little diffident. They ask for our impressions, advise on health precautions, recommend restaurants and sights to see. We should take the steamer to Stanleyville. We should go to Goma, a nice city with a pleasant climate. From there we can explore the Virunga national park. We should climb the Ruwenzori mountains.
    As the conversation broadens I begin to pick up the miscellaneous little navigational tips the newcomer anywhere requires for