« As he walks Brussels streets at night, he thinks he recognizes the great man. He walks faster but the apparition vanishes. A block further, he can see him again. He turns round and round. He can hear a medley of voices in his head... He can hear one of the voices above the cacophony repeating what have we made of ourselves ? What have we made of ourselves ? What have we made of ourselves ?

And the ghost reappears. He is here... then he vanishes again and reappears like a huge firefly. Is it a lighthouse in the dark ? They are just a few steps apart. He tries to move one step. His feet refuse to move. The light breezes is falling. His heart is pounding. His clothes are wet with sweat... He stinks the fear...

The cool breeze that comes out of the nostrils of the moon licks his back. He turns round, scratches his back, then his buttocks. Here is the ghost coming to meet him. His feet are glued to the ground. He takes a deep breath, arranges his words, raises his bowed head.

He drops to the ground cooled by a majestic river Congo of tears. His bottom goes bang against the tar like a hundred kilos of deep frozen Belgian ham. Please come back... I’ll be your Congo, our Congo, he says weeping.

Too late. He is alone under the dark sky. The moon sways unconcerned and displays a brightly seductive smile in the sky. Such a whore ! The moon wrapped in the overbearing beauty of Congo ! Suddenly the great wandering spirit comes back... and stares at him. He no longer trembles... He looks at himself, in the mirror of his eyes that mockingly reflect the bruised grandeur of Congo.

The murderers of January 17th 1961 haven’t been able to erase the vivid confidence that brightens his forehead...

Why is it that one of us has no tomb, no burial place ? He is at last convinced that someone is missing in his ancestral lineage...

Now he is weeping. His heart is bleeding. He is alone in his inconsolable desolate solitude. What has become of his country ? Is it this drifting fragment of a collapsing ultimate dream on which whores with murderous machets and old soldiers with massively destructive sex organs wipe their buttocks.

Tears can’t stop flowing from his laterite eyes. His lips tremble. He feels like screaming so loudly that he would wake up the sun in the middle of the night.

Alas ! The ghost has gone. Come back ! Come back, he screams to the face of the silent night. Come and answer my essential question... Where are you, Congo of all sorrows, where are you ? »

Translated by Françoise Balogun