What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us by Laura van Den Berg

Author:Laura van Den Berg [Berg, Laura van Den]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: prose_contemporary
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 2008-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

the rain season

From the only window in my concrete one-room house, I watch a woman drag a pointed stick through the black dirt. I know what she is drawing — the same thing the villagers have been sketching in the ground for the past week, when rumors of disappearances in the forest began to spread. In the mornings, I go out to buy fish and yams and step over their creations: creatures shaped like elephants or hippopotamuses with long tails and claws. Sometimes a horn juts out of the forehead, sometimes not. The month is May, the peak of the rain season. Every afternoon, water rushes over the drawings. Still the woman outside continues, kneeling and hunched, opening the earth with the tip of her stick. She is drawing a legend.

There are only two seasons in the Congo: the dry season and the wet season. The heat is constant, the humidity unrelenting. I never slept naked before coming here, not even with my husband, but now I undress every night before burrowing underneath the white sheets. I sleep little and when I do, I dream of ash, gray mountains that collapse into rivers and flood the streets and seep underneath my door, filling my house with a dark fog. I am sure this has something to do with the fire.

The parish sent me to Africa in December. Father Hughes was reluctant at first, as I had no prior missionary experience and rarely attended Mass with my husband, but, as it would turn out, he was unable to enlist another volunteer for this part of the world. I taught children English and basic arithmetic until the school closed two weeks ago because of the riots and fighting. Elections are approaching, rebel groups wrestling for power. In a recent demonstration, a UN worker and two civilians were killed. I have not been in touch with Father Hughes, despite his requests for updates. I do not know how much longer the parish will continue to send money.

The woman rises, her knees caked with dirt. She strides away, gripping the stick like a spear, her arm flexed as though she’s preparing to hurl it into the distance. When she’s gone, I go outside and examine the drawing, my shadow long and flat against the ground. Her creature is larger than the other renderings I’ve seen, although it lacks the horn. The villagers call it mokele-mbembe, or “one who stops the flow of rivers.” Drawing the monster is supposed to keep it from leaving Lake Tele, which lies several miles beyond the lush perimeter of the jungle.

Expeditions to Lake Tele have unearthed little in the way of evidence. Many years ago, a biologist and an animal trader discovered massive footprints and broad paths of flattened grass. They even photographed mokele-mbembe emerging from the lake, or so the story goes. But after leaving the forest, they boarded a train bound for the southern part of the region and there was an accident. The biologist and animal trader were killed when their car overturned, and the camera was destroyed.

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