The Headhunter's Daughter (10 page)

The OP forced himself to savor the long dirt drive that skirted the gorge on the African side of the falls on its way to the Missionary Rest House. How lucky the missionaries were to have originally received this lease from the crown, and then to have just recently had it renewed for the next one hundred years. As everyone knew, this was the Protestant missionaries’ reward for doing such a good job of establishing elementary schools in the villages surrounding Belle Vue.

The OP was not a religious man, although like most Belgians of Walloon extraction he was at least nominally Catholic, but as a mining official, much like a government official, he held himself above the missionary wars for the souls of the people. Still, he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of envy every time he drove up to the rest house.

The view up here was unsurpassed in all of Kasai Province. Should King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola decide to visit their colony one last time before turning it over to the natives, the OP would do his best to strike a deal with the young missionary who ran the rest house. If he was successful, Their Majesties would never forget their visit to Belle Vue, or the man who had arranged it.

“Pierre,” the OP said, as they pulled to a stop in the circular drive just outside the front verandah. “Do you think she has my coloring?”

Chapter Ten

M
onsieur OP, the girl has been living in the sun for the past thirteen years; forgive me, but she has the coloring of a peasant. However, I have been reflecting on her features and there is, I think, a great deal of similarity in the profile. Also, you both have blue eyes, do you not?”

“Don’t ask me, you idiot,” snapped the OP. “I have yet to see the child!”

“Well, sir,” Pierre said, struggling mightily not to call the OP an idiot in return—or worse, “the truth is, I’m not sure what color
your
eyes are.”

“Ah,” the OP said, “now we’re getting somewhere. The problem lies in the fact that you’ve been unable to look me in the eyes ever since that day when my wife’s killer climbed down from the gallows as a free woman. Isn’t that the case?”

“Screw yourself,” Pierre said. “Look, I haven’t told
anyone
your secret—not even the woman with whom I wish to be involved, the woman who has willingly agreed to play a huge role in this girl’s rehabilitation. So don’t be giving me any crap about the Muluba woman, Cripple, being responsible for your wife’s untimely demise. We both know it was probably suicide. Leave it at that.”

The OP grunted, but mercifully did leave it at that.

“
Voila!
” Pierre said with a good deal of relief, now that they had finally arrived. “Here we are. And there they all are; gathered around that massive round table that is said to once have hosted Prince Albert.”

“Do you see her?” the OP said. His voice came out as a squeak, despite the fact that he was supposedly still a virile man, not yet fifty years old.

August 24, 1945

The war in Europe was finally over—although just barely. But the riches of the Congo had been left intact, were still there for the taking. Heilewid had given birth to a beautiful baby girl just three months earlier, in Luluaburg. She was home now with him in their villa overlooking the river and they were managing just fine—thanks to the help of a very experienced
baba
.

Last Born Child had come highly recommended by a Belgian family in Luluaburg that Heilewid had met during the last few weeks of her pregnancy. Because Heilewid had suffered three miscarriages by going into premature labor prior to this pregnancy, her doctor had strongly advised her to stay near a hospital during the last trimester. What surprised the OP was how fond his wife became of this other Belgian family, given that they were Walloons. After all, she was a card-carrying Fleming who despised Walloons, regarded them all as racist snobs—her husband excluded.

To have Heilewid so fired up about this family and their fantastic
baba
—this ancient crone of a woman called Last Born Child—well, that was like Christmas, his birthday, Easter, and Armistice Day all rolled into one. That’s how hard it was to please Heilewid now that he’d gotten her to join him in Africa—never mind that by doing so he might have been responsible for saving her life during the war. Although her culture was Flemish and her ancestors had lived in Antwerp for generations, Heilewid’s maternal grandmother was Jewish.

On August 24, 1945, when the OP rose early from his bed because he couldn’t wait to hold his infant daughter in his arms on that cool late-dry-season morning, the war in Europe may have been over, but the two young parents in the middle-of-nowhere Africa were about to experience unbearable grief. “Carnage of the heart,” he told his priest, in the last confession he would ever make.

As for Heilewid, it was the day she began her long, solitary descent into hell.

Ugly Eyes gazed at the faces of whites seated around the table as if seeing them for the first time. Last night she had been so tired, so stressed, that now she could not remember if any of them were the same people—except for the young white woman who also went by the name of Ugly Eyes. As for the others, it was true, what Mother and Iron Sliver often said, before dissolving into fits of laughter: “
Which is uglier, the white man or the belly of a toad? Ha, must you ask?
”

The old white man was particularly ugly—and toad-like. He was corpulent, his puffy body giving him the impression of having no neck. And although he wore the obligatory white cork helmet, even under cover of the verandah roof, he was deeply tanned everywhere except for under his shirt. Ugly Eyes knew this, because she watched him lean forward to shovel the food from his plate, watched the shirt gap just enough to expose the pasty white skin covered with moles.

Were the other two women his wives? She didn’t think so. One appeared much older, but how was she to know for sure? For one thing, the woman hid her breasts, as if she were ashamed of them! And even though this woman’s face bore more wrinkles than Ugly Eyes had ever seen on a live human being, she appeared to be in possession of all of her teeth. Father would very much appreciate a skull like hers from which to drink his palm wine; the teeth in the top jaw would add such a festive decoration.

The other woman was fat, like the man who was possibly her husband, except that she had a neck and there was both fear and curiosity in her eyes. Sometimes one, then the other, of the emotions would take over, so that her movements were abrupt and unpredictable, much like those of a cat.

Ugly Eyes had had a cat once; Father had traded three of his own arrows for it from a traveling Mushilele from the much larger village of Badi-Banga. The cat was supposed to hunt the rats in the thatch roofs of the village huts, but it preferred the much easier prey of domestic chicks and ducklings. Later everyone agreed that getting another cat just to eat rats would not be the best use of Father’s much sought-after arrows.

But there was also a girl at the table—maybe not a whole lot older than Ugly Eyes. Of course Ugly Eyes couldn’t even speak one word of this girl’s language, but she understood her perfectly. The girl’s eyes were half closed and her arms were crossed in front of her chest. Her pale thin lips were extended and every now and then she parted them just enough to emit little puffs of air. “Go away,” she was saying, just as clear as if she were speaking Bushilele. “I do not want you here. You do not belong here! This is my village; not yours!”

Fortunately, Ugly Eyes was able to say quite a bit in this girl’s language as well. She let her eyes settle on this girl’s pale face, and then closed them halfway for a millisecond. After that she smiled slowly before looking away and never looking back.

Judging by the anger she heard in the girl’s voice a moment later, Ugly Eyes knew that she’d guessed right; Ugly Eyes was indeed fluent in at least one language spoken by the whites.

Mastermind smiled. Yes, thirteen years had passed since the plan had been put in place, and something had gone terribly wrong, but
perhaps
it was not too late to salvage something. There are no guarantees when committing a crime of this magnitude; no guarantees at all—except, perhaps, for an eternity spent in hell. Well, that was a risk that came with the trade. The
trade
—ha! This was the only crime that Mastermind had ever committed. Would ever commit for that matter. Frankly, a life of crime was more work than Mastermind had bargained for.

What a fool the OP was for expecting another reaction. Of course the girl wouldn’t show a hint of recognition. Why should she? There was no reason for him to assume that she was his daughter, except that she was
approximately
the same age. But she wasn’t even found in the same territory, amongst the same dominant tribe.

It really was ridiculous to think that somehow a three-month-old infant could disappear from her cradle in Belle Vue and then pop up in a remote Bashilele village thirteen years later. This was either something for the anthropology books, or it was a fairy tale, but it couldn’t be happening to him. It could not be his child.

And she had just proved it. Had it been his, there would have been at least a spark in her eyes—a glimmer that reminded him of Heilewid. But these eyes regarded him with the same impersonal cautiousness with which a lizard would look upon him. He wasn’t sure, but was that the tip of her tongue flicking through the space where her two front teeth ought to be?
Mon Dieu!
Was she trying to seduce him?

“She doesn’t speak anything intelligible,” Mr. Gorman said in perfect, unaccented Flemish.

The OP nearly fell backward in his chair. He was a Walloon, and French was his mother tongue, not Flemish. Still, he was a Belgian, and had been forced to learn Flemish in school. That, and the fact that he had been married to a Jewish woman from Antwerp, who had grown up speaking Flemish—all these things combined made the OP a fair judge of Flemish accents. If it were not for the fact that he knew—or thought he knew—that Mr. Gorman was an American, he would have assumed by just this one sentence that the man was a native-born Fleming.

“Where did you learn to speak like that?” the OP demanded.

“As you know, sir,” Mr. Gorman said, continuing on in Flemish, “we missionaries are required to spend six months in Belgium studying French before coming out to the colony. As the colony is ruled by two ethnic groups, I elected to learn Flemish as well.”

“And your French, monsieur? How is that?”

“Passable, I hope,” Mr. Gorman said, switching to that language. “I wish I’d had more time in your lovely country, but alas, there was a war brewing, and I did not wish to get caught up in it.”

“Incredible!” the OP exclaimed. “And yet you do not speak Bushilele?” he asked, switching to English, so that everyone at the breakfast table could understand.

“No, monsieur. Our mission considers it a minority language. I speak only Tshiluba, Kipende, Tshokwe, Lingala, Kituba, and Swahili.”

“You have tried all these languages on her, I presume?”

Meanwhile, the girl in question was sitting an arm’s reach away, just as still as a golden honey-covered statue.

“Yes, a few words of each. She showed no reaction, monsieur.”

“Of course not,” Dorcas said. “The poor thing is scared to death.”

“Nonsense,” Mr. Gorman said. “She looks fine to me. Mother,” he said to his wife, “how does she look to you?”

“She looks almost normal,” Mrs. Gorman said, “except for those awful tribal markings on her face. It’s a good thing they just got started and did just one on each cheek.”

“I think that a plastic surgeon could take care of that,” Mademoiselle Amanda Brown said quickly.

“A
what
, dear?”

“She means a movie-star doctor,” the Gormans’ daughter said. “Geez, Mama, don’t you know anything?”

As much as the OP disliked all three of the Gormans, he felt a twinge of pity for the mother. Children showed their parents no respect these days. It was as if in facing up to the atrocities of the war, today’s youth had not only lost their innocence, but their manners as well.

“Don’t worry about her hair, sir,” the mademoiselle said. “After breakfast I plan to undo the cornrows and wash it—with
real
shampoo. That is, if she’ll let me. So far she hasn’t allowed me to touch her.”

“I like them corn things,” the teenager said. “Makes her look like a native, and ain’t that what she is? Ooh boy, can’t you just smell her? I can hardly eat my breakfast.”

“Peaches!” Mrs. Gorman said with surprising sharpness.

“If she were my child,” Dorcas Middleton said, “I’d send her to her room.”

“But Peaches isn’t your child,” Mrs. Gorman said softly. “You chose not to have children, remember? And oh, how you’ve made me suffer for my decision to have one—just one. ‘You’re not devoting enough time to the Lord’s work,’ you said. You must have said that a million times.”

“To be fair,” Mr. Gorman said, “she’s backed off in recent years.”

Apparently, Mrs. Gorman had managed to work herself into a state of tears over this issue. “That’s only because the mission board finally separated us; now that we’re serving on different mission stations I don’t feel quite as picked on.”

“May God guard my tongue from speaking evil,” Dorcas Middleton said. Now she too had tears in her eyes.

“Well,” the OP said, “you Americans certainly know how to—what is the word—
upset
, maybe, a welcome party.”

“I think the word is
upstage
,” the mademoiselle said. She smiled at Pierre, and the little shit smiled back, which annoyed the OP immensely. So much for hoping that his friend was no longer infatuated by the nubile young woman from the American South.

It wasn’t that the OP disliked the mademoiselle—it was nothing personal, at least—but she still employed that woman, Cripple, who’d been implicated in the death of Senor Nunez, manager of the Consortium company store. Yes, Cripple had been vindicated, but—in a very strange,
deus ex machina
sort of way. From here on out the OP would just as soon have no further dealings with Cripple—or her American employer.

It was a very strange breakfast, with insubstantial foods by and large, although a ball of
bidia
—manioc mush—was provided, seemingly for Ugly Eyes’ benefit. Only the young male
Bula Matadi
ate from it; he cut a large slab and put it on his very own plate first. Imagine that, each person having their own plate! What riches the white man possessed, and to think that someday they would all belong to the Bashilele.