At the time of my doing the research for a novel set on Bioko Island in the Gulf of Guinea, Mark Thatcher, Simon Mann and Nick Dutoit were plotting a coup in Equatorial Guinea to replace President Obiang and his clan with the emigre government of Severo Moto in the hopes of securing its fabulous oil wealth. This was also the setting for Frederick Forsyth's Dogs of War, his first African mercenary thriller.
I didn't dare travel there, but went to Sao Tome in 2007 as a substitute, just a hundred miles distant, a little further out along the chain of islands that begins with Mt. Cameroon and ends with St. Helena.
You might remember that there was a famous amateur athlete from Equatorial Guinea who was a real blower at the Sydney Olympics. He's a source of inspiration and I've also spent a lot of time thrashing around in the water, most frequently in Budapest at the outdoor pool under the poplars at Dugaly Strand, absolutely nothing like the equatorial soup that is the training ground for Godbless Progress.
Other excerpts about Godbless have appeared in Blatt in Prague and are posted on this blog. Godbless's story intersects with that of another protagonist in the book, Toby, and forms the basis for the novel Pleasure and Progress.
Photo of Jale beach on the south side of Sao Tome, 2007, by Gabó Bartha
Black Beach
Tom Bass
Tom Bass
A carillon chimes through the morning’s haze, languid, blue, scented with ordure and smoke. The bronze bells of Malabo Cathedral slur the notes. It’s six o’clock.
Godbless straps his feet into the blue plastic mesh of his sandals by the door. There’s a bit of tape around one toe. He hits his head against the tin roof when he stands. His knees creak with growing pains. He smiles at the official poster of the president in the family room above a small reliquary with scallops for eyes and a strong belly. Next to his hammock Godbless finds his Speedo suit and goggles in an acrid plastic bag. He tears off two green bananas before he passes outside, a little vitamin K to stop the cramps, the sum of his precisely calculated sporting diet.
His mother already pounds corn in a mortar in front of the house. Thuck-thuck the pestle sounds. Calabashes are scattered in the foreyard around her, rolling like heads when brushed by a chicken or child.
Godbless looks in the mirror above the washbasin next to what passes for a door before he leaves. He doesn’t like it when the hair of his mustache touches his lip. That spot isn’t any good either. He has to drop the bananas to maneuver his fingers into place onto his skin. The muscles gather in his back, his biceps bump against his forearms.
“What you pickin?” Thuck-thuck moves the pestle. “Leave what God gave you alone!”
Godbless gives the whitehead a thrust and the pus splats onto the mirror. “See. I got it.”
“Godbless, wash your hands.”
He soaps up his fingers and washes his face. He re-collects the bananas and unpeels one before he sets off to the beach. “Later, momma.” He backtracks for a blue plastic cup of water.
The plastic bag jostles around his knees. He sweats into the fragments of his cotton T-shirt. After the first corner where Norberto has his shoe repair business, Godbless stops. He takes off his blue sandals and has Norberto staple some of the blue plastic together. Godbless is not going to wear his unscuffed, like-new Nikes, smelling like antibacterial solution and melon today. Norberto’s never seen anything like a Nike. A shoe is something no one would never give up on in Malabo. Shoes dangle around his workbench, twisting on their own accord like strange fruit.
Satisfied that the sandals are good, Godbless passes through the market that forms the entrance to Quartier Los Angeles. He walks slowly past the vendors — mostly women camped out on blankets on the hard mud ground — selling peanuts or yams, banana leaves filled with kola nuts or weeping shea butter, flagons of palm oil or rows of tomatoes. He discovers two francs in his pocket and buys a warm Coke from three women sitting on plastic crates under an umbrella.
“Do you like soup?” one of them asks.
He stares at the bush meat — colobus, guenon, a pangolin — for a moment before he emerges from the commotion on Balboa Street. He sees his uncle Fernando across the street but he’s occupied with someone haggling over his selection of mirrors strung around his neck.
Godbless passes the Hotel Bantu and Hotel Impala. The area around them smells like bleach. He crosses the Avenue of Independence. There is no need to worry about traffic. Traffic is as rare as snow in Malabo. But the police are out in force. They’re directing someone to chalk the mud street. Vote for Theodoro, it reads in a white scrawl. A few barriers have been placed across the intersection. Will there be a political rally? Godbless wonders if he might present his case to the president.
The Atlantic is murmuring in the near distance. Turgid waves strike at the beach. Godbless steps into the black sand where the turtles come at night. He drops his plastic bag next to a post buried in the beach.
He sheds his shirt and commences to stretch — windmills, pushups, bends — limbering his body. He touches his toes and his spine pokes against his skin.
Godbless quickly steps out of his shorts and into his turquoise trunks. He spits in his goggles, slips the blue lenses over his eyes and wades into the sea. He can feel the undertow. The water and sand rush around his knees, pull him out and down the steep short slope that marks the movement of the tide. He knows what to expect and he slips into the salty foam. It bites like fleas.
“Athens 2004,” he says as the foam pinches at his mouth, reciting his vow as he does at every practice. Godbless does not expect a surprise invitation to swim a heat at the Sydney Olympics, part of an initiative to open the sport to new competitors. Nonetheless, the crowd roars acceptance and encouragement in the waves.
Godbless crawls parallel with the shore. He does not pull away from the coast and gather in the view of Malabo at the foot of Mt. Pico, some points emitting smoke, and if he would listen carefully, drums. He’s kicking and swiping, pulling his long body through the water. No coach corrects him. Godbless must divine his own techniques and regimen. Never mind the lines of monofilament and plastic bottles floating somewhere between surface and bottom. He rolls onto his back and cuts the water neatly with his paddles, undulating with the swells.
A large group of kids play on the black beach. They’re doing handsprings over a gradually growing pyramid of tires, specks of child rotating through the air. One after another they run and flip, twist and pike, like jellybeans.
The acrobats are still at it when Godbless emerges from the water. It’s been a battle swimming against the prevailing current. Godbless’s stomach is ripped and his thighs bulge over his knees. His chest is hard and red. He shakes off the water and rubs his feet in the dry sand. He bends into his shorts at a strategic moment. People are combing the beach. Something surely has come to shore. A group confers in a knot under the palms. Godbless sits for a moment, resting. He has no way to calculate his laps so he can only guess how much he’s done for the main set.
He steps from sand to dirt and does not opt make the pleasant diversion along the azaleas underneath the well-placed Hotel Bahia. He has nothing to sell to a tourist or oilman anyway. He picks up the first block, peeling another banana. He moves like a wet noodle, his muscles aching with acid, absorbed with the starchy sweet taste, his soft feet scuffing in the blue plastic.
Should his pinky slip in first when he does the backstroke? Should he rotate his back or keep it stiff when he crawls. Should he lift his head like a prow? When is the best time to breath? How to time his kick for the breaststroke? On Bioko Island no one can answer his technical questions.
He careens aside with an unexpected bump. He collides with a streak of pale blue. His sandal flies off, a strap broken. A policeman sprawls into the dust in front of his colleagues at the barrier erected at the intersection of the Avenue of Independence. Godbless is still standing, masticating. He extends his hand. “I’m sorry, sir,” he says. It’s too late to turn back.
The policeman dusts himself off to the ribald laughter of his colleagues.
Someone from the group, maybe a superior, asks, “Who’s he? Ask him for his papers.”
Godbless, naturally proud of his athletic abilities says, “I’m Godbless Progress — the first swimming Olympian of Equatorial Guinea, sir.” Godbless feels his voice rising in pitch. “I haven’t got papers.”
The response is disbelief. A man may not have papers. But Equatorial Guinea cannot have an Olympic athlete. “Fernando Progress is your uncle, isn’t he?” Godbless can hear his interlocuter but not see him.
“Yes. He sells mirrors in the market. Sometimes batteries.”
“You’re Bubi, eh? Part of the The Bioko Island Self Determination Movement?”
“No, Fernandino.”
“You’ll have to come with us, kid.”
“I don’t understand.” Godbless is bewildered. Have his goggles fogged?
“There’s no point arguing. We took your uncle this morning. We’ve had a good morning here at Barrier Banapa catching traitors. You must know where the others are.” The malice of reprisal colors the words.
Godbless is apprehended, part of the dragnet. No charges are read. He is not cuffed. He is not beaten in public. He is simply lead along the Avenue of Independence to Black Beach Prison by a policeman. For this he is lucky. He walks along the waterfront, past the port, the post office, the cathedral and the yacht club. He does not see his mother or a relative or anyone who can help. Not in La Bamba. Certainly not among the white faces in Pizza Place. Definitely not queuing for Sylvester Stallone at Cinema Marfil.
Black Beach Prison is inside the presidential compound. Godbless must pass through the gates onto the point, a presidential finger pointing out into the bay. Some men and women with broken bones are limping at the perimeter.
Godbless walks underneath the green, purple and white flag of his country. He finds comfort in the words quilted on its surface: Unity, Peace, Justice. There is a trail of blood drips leading from the gates to the entrance to Black Beach Prison. It’s to the right of the presidential palace, sickeningly ornate in the Spanish colonial style, both wings covered with an enormous poster of the boss. The palace hums with the low-volume sound of air-conditioning. Black Beach Prison, however, is hot and noisy. The ocean is just beyond the rocks.
***
A blue face examines Godbless. He empties his plastic bag for inspection. It holds one pair of wet trunks and one pair of goggles. He states his name and occupation.
“Godbless Progress. Olympic swimmer.”
The eyes smile with the declaration. They register distinct cold amusement as he is relieved of his gear.
Godbless is shoved forward. He is banged over both ears sharply and his ears smart and ring. He veers forward and ducks. He steps down, wobbly on his feet. He is led along a wet passageway that smells like feces and blood. He’s glad they didn’t take his sandals. Godbless follows the procedures, steps through the series of doors that incarcerate and divide.
Black Beach Prison opens before him, vast humid circle of cells with a guardroom in its center. Powerful sodium lights valorize the space. Godbless startles. Electricity in the Quartier Los Angeles maybe flows for three hours a week. This is where it is most of the time. Half courts have been painted on the recreation floor for basketball. Godbless is optimistic that he’ll be able to do some sport.
But he is not lead directly to a cell against the circumference of the circle. He is directed to a wet room. There are a series of iron rungs in the wall. It has a patina of pinkish paint and mildew grows higher up. The iron door booms behind him. The bolt slides into the catch.
Two men are waiting for him. They’re so intensely black Godbless can hardly see them.
They both wear suits. They are brothers. The Bingo brothers
“We’re glad you’re with us, Godbless,” says the one, his stentorian voice reverbing in the room.
This is the voice of the president, Teddy, like that on the radio.
Teddy Bingo studies Godbless through his gold-framed spectacles. “We hear you like sport, Godbless. We like sport too — Army, will you help this young man?”
His brother Army Bingo steps forward. Sweat beads on his brow. He asks Godbless to stand against the wall. Godbless does so and his hands are secured behind his back with electric wire. His legs are also tied. Army sheds his gabardine Van Saack jacket and then saps Godbless across the neck with a heavy black cable.
“Ohh!” Godbless cries, “Argh!”
“It’s a mark so no one will forget,” says the president, adjusting his shoulders in his suit, then his real estate.
“He’s going to tell us, brother,” says Army reassuringly.
“Patience, brother. Hit him again.”
Thuck-thuck sounds the cable. It catches Godbless over the jaw and it dislocates. Godbless screams in pain or anger, but the scream is cut short and comes out his nose. No one has hit him like this before. He rolls the dust of a tooth over his tongue. He doesn’t know if he should enjoy or fear.
“You need to help us, Godbless, and we can help you back. You need to tell us what happened to your uncle Fernando. He disappeared today. He’s a very important man.”
“Umm.” Godbless’s speech is garbled by pain. Contusion colors his neck and his carotid is visibly pulsing.
“Are you not going to tell us?”
Army Bingo has already reached for the next implement, two exposed wires. In fact this morning he was browses the catalogs, shopping for new stun-guns, as he’s in charge of new procurements and he wants to write for a sample Tazer. He pulls down Godbless’s shorts. He laughs at the dot of manhood, a sea squirt. “Look, brother.”
“Maybe you can help, Godbless?”
At the thought of help Godbless releases a colon-full of liquid over his legs. Urine then trickles down his thighs. Army furthers Godbless’s distress and empties a bucket of slurry over the prisoner.
“We haven’t even started, you coward.” Army warns him in a hiss. “But watch out for the loafers, eh. Otherwise, it’s over.”
Godbless regroups — two laps, hundred meters, lane seven, freestyle. Split to beat: 48.54 seconds.
On your mark!
Army applies one wire.
Get set!
Then the other.
Go!
And the circuit is complete.
And the starting gun fires.
Godbless rips at the rungs. He can’t pull them out. His genitals are burning. One testicle peeps through the scrotum like an eye. He can’t see. His eyes are closed. He knows the president and his brother don’t really want his answers. Uncle Fernando is here with all the others. The wires move along his penis. He hears it popping. The wires pass over his chest and it sizzles on contact. He coughs blood, teeth and bile. His eyes and breath almost cease. He is one with the water.
“Thank us, Godbless. We didn’t force to swim naked on the ground while we dragged you along like a woman," says Tedddy. "Thank us for that.”
Godbless fades into the silence of their footsteps. The Atlantic is percolating above — water, sand, lava, shell and pebble pinging beautifully like music, like swimmers in the 50-meter pool, bubbles, arms, shouts, breaths.
