Stringer Read Free

a living selling cell phone credit. Two old telephones sat on his countertop, which was made of scrap wood. He sometimes talked about replacing the kiosk, but it seemed to have made its place: long use had formed depressions in the gravel, at the edge of the open gutter, where Anderson sat outstretched, surveying the street. This was his territory. He was a respected member of the Opposition Debout, an outspoken political movement headquartered in Victoire. He was also my antenna to Radio Trottoir, the underground news network.
    â€œSo you met the president,” he said to me.
    I put a finger to my lips. Not so loud around the opposition! “He wouldn’t see me.”
    â€œBut that’s good, my friend! That’s good!” Anderson raised his voice. “You are one of us. No use meeting those clowns.”
    â€œBut the clowns have the power. And the news.”
    â€œYou want news? Just wait a little. My friend, this country is going to blow up.”
    â€œIf the country explodes you procure phone cards for me, eh? Ten dollars won’t do anymore.”
    â€œWhen this country explodes you take care, my friend. We’ll kill all the foreigners and burn this city.” His phone beeped. “Let’s talk later”—he winked and flashed me a thumbs-up—“Don’t worry, you’re one of us!” And I picked up my fan-in-a-box and made the short march home, feeling sick.
    I entered a grid of obscure and ruined streets that stretched away from Victoire, and I followed a group of children playing soccer. The ragged ball, of plastic and string, rolled toward where I lived, on Avenue Bozene. I passed a boy doing his schoolwork, and men huddled over low tables crowded with one-liter beer bottles. Inside gated compounds women chattered, slapping their plastic slippers against their heels. Cracked walls rose from the ground, smelling of moss and crowned with glass shards. The ball fell into a gutter; a boy reached in with his hands and threw the ball in the air; sewage scattered from above. The game passed in front of my compound, which carried no name, just the number 32.
    My house was a one-story structure with dirty white walls ringed by blue paint at the bottom. An iron gate led into the courtyard, and first I passed the landlord’s identical dwelling before, at the back of the plot and near a set of toilets, coming to our metal-grill door.
    I stepped in and tried to smile. Nothing had changed. The bulbs waned, the cistern hissed, Bébé Rhéma slept in her crib and Jose and Nana sat at the table, napkins tucked in. The living room was long and divided into two areas: close to the door was the dining table, near some low cupboards against a wall. At the far end was a television surrounded by khaki sofas. The plot was connected to water and electricity, and also had a septic tank. These were the important things, and they made our house nearly middle-class. (In Congo there was no middle class: there were the sprawling bungalows and the serviced apartments, with their maids and armed guards, and there was this.) I rented a room from Jose and Nana, themselves renters.
    Jose’s eyes were droopy, and he stooped over his plate. He was a mild man who worked in the city tax department and wore only designer shirts, mostly secondhand. He was over fifty but had married only two years earlier. Nana was a housewife, though she had a certificate as a nurse and was constantly saying shewould soon return to a clinic: it was one of her frustrations. She was tall and heavy boned, and her short-sleeved blouse amplified the thickness of her arms (she had swelled after marriage, as the wedding photographs on the mantelpiece showed). “You are late,” she said, and then squealed: “What a beautiful fan!”
    I had wanted to be alone that evening, but I did not expect it to happen—there was, it seemed, always someone around in the house; always some