Pandora in the Congo by Albert Sanchez Pinol

Author:Albert Sanchez Pinol [Albert Sánchez Piñol]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: IGP-003CBL
ISBN: 9781847675767
Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: 2008-09-24T04:00:00+00:00

I was becoming too absorbed in the book. I could recognise the symptoms: excessive sympathy towards Garvey, a shift in the narrative objectivity in favour of his interests. I thought it would do me good to have an injection of divergent opinions to counteract it.

The main originator of the accusations against Marcus was Roger Casement, the British Consul to the Congo at the time of the events. I had already spoken with the Duke of Craver, and I didn’t see any reason why I shouldn’t pay a visit to Casement.

At the offices of the diplomatic service they told me which hotel he was staying at. They also told me that he was heading to a new consular destination that very day. I was lucky to have caught him. At the hotel I asked for Mr Casement. The receptionist pointed me to the stairs.

‘There he is. He was just leaving the hotel. All this luggage is his and they’re taking it to the port,’ she said, referring to the thirty or forty suitcases scattered on the ground around the reception desk.

But Casement was very understanding with me. He was so energetic that he instantly struck me as a pleasant man. He was one of those people that as soon as you meet them you think, ‘I would pay to have him as my friend.’

‘Marcus Garvey? The murderer of the Craver brothers? Of course I remember him,’ he told me. ‘I can only offer you five minutes. I’m on my way to Montevideo … if the U-boats allow it. Unfortunately, the boat won’t wait for me. And there are no other boats to Uruguay today.’

He spoke with me right there, at one of the tables in the hotel lobby. His eyebrows were as thick as his beard and he looked as if he had practised ten different sports in his youth.

‘Perhaps this will surprise you, but I work for Marcus Garvey’s lawyer,’ I began, deciding to be frank.

‘Well, I think you’ve got the wrong man. What do you hope to get out of me?’

‘Just the truth. Each day I have fewer doubts about Garvey’s innocence.’

‘Have no doubt. Garvey is guilty, guilty as sin.’

In other circumstances I would have beaten around the bush before getting to the heart of the matter. But as we were pressed for time I said, with a certain vehemence, ‘Mr Casement, I admit that my feelings are not based entirely on rational evidence, but I find it hard to believe that Marcus Garvey killed the Craver brothers.’

Casement drew his body forward. He touched my knee with two fingers.

‘Mr Thomson: there are places where God has written the word “no”. And Marcus Garvey is not innocent. He simply isn’t. No. Perhaps you would like him to be, but he’s not. No, no and no. Have I repeated the word “no” enough times?’

A young man brought Casement an apple juice. He drank it in one gulp. Then he spoke: ‘The autumn of 1912 was terribly muggy and more tiresome than ever.

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