“What might happen?” I ask him.
He shakes his head and breaks into a derisive laugh reminiscent of the Leader’s. He laughs long enough that he starts coughing. As if they’d rehearsed it, Kumbum starts coughing too. Their coughs—one dry, one with a trace of phlegm at the end—go on until Lusaka runs to his wife’s kitchen and returns with two cups of water. The driver drinks all of his; Kumbum takes a sip when Lusaka brings the cup to his lips.
“What Tonka is trying to tell you,” Kumbum says, panting at every word, “is that when you get to Bézam, no matter what you say there, people will just laugh at you.”
“We’re not stupid,” Lusaka says. “We know Bézam is where evil has built its house and where it raises its children. But we also know that good men live there, it’s impossible for it not to be so. We’re simply asking you to direct us to a few of them.”
“Do you not understand the words coming out of his mouth?” the driver shouts. “Are you deaf? Listen: there are no upright men in Bézam. No one there cares whether your children live or die. How else can we say it so you’ll understand?”
“You’re telling us that everyone in Bézam is a bad person?” Manga says.
“I’m telling you that you can go to Bézam and lie on your belly and crawl from one end of it to the other and cry all the tears you have in your eyes and nothing will change for you. The big men will take the gifts you bring, and they’ll say thank you and they’ll give the meat to their cooks to prepare. While they’re eating it, they won’t even remember why you gifted them the food in the first place. Your children will continue dying until there are no more children left. These men right here in this room”—he gestures to the three Pexton men—“they’re all you’re going to get from Pexton.”
I turn to Lusaka. He’s looking at Kumbum, trying to decipher whether he agrees with what the driver has just said.
“How do you know all this?” Lusaka asks the driver. “Why are you so sure?”
The driver perks up as if he’s been waiting for years to pontificate on this topic.
“You think you’re the only ones suffering?” he says. “Villages and towns all over this country are suffering for one reason or another. You have no clean water. The village over there has soldiers raping its daughters. That other village has some other corporation cutting down its trees; the soil is eroding away. Or maybe precious stones were found under their land, and soldiers arrived with a government decree to secure the area and in the process killed people because…Do they need a reason? My wife—her ancestral village, it’s not far from mine, in Bikonobang District—the government says they want the entire village for some project about protecting animals, everyone in the village needs to pack up their things and go find somewhere else to live. What do you think the people there can do about that? Nothing. Dozens of them travel to Bézam and cry and beg for help—you know what happens? They’re told to go home and wait, help is on the way. So they go home and wait. And wait. Sometimes they return to Bézam, countless times. But nothing’s going to change. Not for them. Not for you. You can go build a new country if you don’t like this one; the people who own this country, they like it just the way it is.”
I look at the driver but I can’t figure out why he’s saying the things he’s saying. Is it spite? Is it anger? Is he inflamed that we dare dream of a new life when he has resigned himself to the belief that an idyllic future is not the birthright of the likes of him and us? He must be convinced he’ll never be more than a driver, a small man who picks up scraps of food falling off the plates of big men. His father must have shown him how to pick up scraps; soon he’ll teach his son how to do the same—smile, nod, take whatever they give you, thank them profusely, ask no questions, let them know they own the air you breathe.
“There is one thing you can do,” Kumbum says.
“What can they do besides make more room for graves?” the driver asks.
“Help me sit up,” Kumbum says, grabbing my arm. Given his condition, I wonder if it’s time to unbind his hands, but I banish the thought—we have everything to lose if my attempt to show mercy leaves us outwitted.
When Kumbum winces in pain, Lusaka dashes out and returns with a pillow, which he puts against the wall for the sick man to lean on.
“I have a nephew,” Kumbum says, looking at me. “He can help you.”