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6

THE CHURCH OF THE ALBINO PROPHET

The traffic was dense, the thoroughfares particularly crowded with hulking trucks—Frankenstein vehicles resurrected over and over, assembled from an army of fallen Lazaruses, their pieces bolted, hammered, wired in place. The sky was, after all, white with the haze of unmitigated exhaust, and the big trucks, as they struggled to accelerate, left dark fog banks through which we drove.

My dream returned, the blinding mist, the gravity of the vast current palpable in the night. The Congo River ran flush with Kinshasa, replenished by hundreds of tributaries—a watery labyrinth spanning the equator and draining an eighth of the African continent. And here, right before the river pummeled down to the sea, it separated two national capitals that had once been part of the Kongo Empire: the Republic of Congo’s Brazzaville, a city of two million, and the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Kinshasa—eleven million strong: labyrinths within labyrinths. But this river wasn’t the phantom waterway from my dream the night before. That was another, almost as big, maybe even mistier, from my childhood.

Oméga was explaining that if a white street girl had been possessed by a white demon, she would eventually find her way to a famed prophète who knew how to do battle with such demons, since he’d been born under the spell of one.

“His story is unlike that of any other pastor. He’s un albinos. Such people are common in Africa—more so than elsewhere—and yet there’s no more unfortunate thing here. Some witch doctors say that their flesh is magic and eating it will heal you or give you good fortune. Others say that the albino is a source of evil and albinism is contagious. Albino children are sometimes sold. Even adults can be captured and their body parts used for ceremonies.”

He sighed, with the faint, resigned smile of one considering life’s absurd cruelty.

“I’ve never really understood, but so many people die of starvation that I suppose it doesn’t take much of an excuse to eat something—whether a Pygmy or an albino. Maybe many Africans know that our sun will burn albinos—that they’re not made to survive here—so we simply can’t bear the thought of wasting fresh meat.”

He laughed, as if he’d been leading up to this joke all along, and slapped his knee, but as soon as I joined in, he stopped.

“That’s how your people see us, isn’t it?” he asked.

“How?” I said, a laugh still on my lips, turned, no doubt, into a grimace.

He studied me a moment longer before chuckling, as if his question were the joke. He turned his palm up, lifting it slightly, the motion evocative of a shrug.

“Regardless,” he said, “this prophète—you can’t imagine his faith. His family throws him out during the war. He lives in the street but is not eaten. He is cross-eyed yet learns to read. He studies the Bible. He finds a home in churches and he preaches. He does battle with the demons afflicting him and overcomes the evil of his birth. Rising victorious, he prays to cure others, and his followers enjoy health and abundance.”

“He’s a friend of yours?” I asked, feeling guarded and somewhat shaken.

“Ah, no. We’re competitors.”

Our Land Rover swerved off the road, down a dusty side street, and another, between low, crumbling walls and deep gutters, and again, into a small lot before the immense concrete carcass of a church—an unfinished hull: unadorned, rain streaked, like the broken temple of a martial god eroding into dust.

The sermon was already underway. The hall was long, with coarse concrete pillars and flimsy, multicolored plastic chairs, and at the end, on a wooden platform overhung with blue tarpaulins, the colorless pastor invoked the space above him, in which motes blinked through shafts of light between the rusting metal sheets of the partial roof. The congregation cried out and flayed the air with their arms, as if demons swarmed about their heads like moths.

We found a space amid the standing bodies that were less crowded than they’d appeared from a distance, easily outnumbered by the plastic chairs. The albino pastor was preaching, and Oméga stood close and whispered.

“Keep an eye out. The girl might be here or might come in.”

I glanced around. Crouched against a wall in a dark corner was a dusty child. Another rested on the floor beneath an exposed staircase. Neither were white.

“Street children often sleep in churches,” he told me. “This creates a symbiotic relationship. The pastor can cast out their demons and prove that he has l’onction—unction, power, grease—”

“So he’s greased with the spirit,” I said.

“Exactly!” Oméga’s eyes widened with pleasure.

“And do you have l’onction?”

“Do I ever! But even I haven’t exorcised a white demon. That would bring quite the audience. He would gain followers. So we must be subtle. We do not mention the girl until we have an audience. He may be afraid that we’ll take her away. Oh, and don’t tell anyone that I’m a pastor.”

“Okay. Don’t tell them I’m a journalist.”

“I’ll say that I’m your translator.”

The chalky walls and pillars were decorated only with the whorls of the warped plywood forms into which the concrete had been poured, except for a few places where photocopied images showed the prophète healing white people.

“Should we say that I’ve come from America to be healed?”

“Don’t mock. I have similar photos in my church. I got some recently on my last trip to Chicago. Healing mundele shows power.”

“Sorry,” I said. “But isn’t that kind of racist?”

“No, it’s the opposite of racism, since the healer must walk through the hordes of oppressive and hateful whites to lay his hands on them and bring them peace. How can you deny the love and power in that?”

“I can’t,” I said, feeling utterly stupid.

“And you really have no fear of God?” he asked, exasperated.

“No. I don’t.” I shrugged apologetically.

“So would—I fear even saying this—would you spit on the face of Jesus?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Out of respect for believers.”

“And if no one would ever know?”

“I still wouldn’t. Because I would have no reason to.”

“If someone put a gun to your head and shouted, ‘Spit!’”

“Yes. I would.”

“Would you be afraid?”

I thought about it as I tried to make out what the albino pastor was doing beyond the thicket of waving arms.

“I’d be uncomfortable, maybe,” I said.

“And why?”

“Because I’ve been trained to fear deep inside of me.”

“So you’ve been trained to have some seed of faith?”

“I’ve been brainwashed like most humans.”

“How do you know that it’s training, that it’s not a seed of true faith, as is written in Ecclesiastes—a gift from God?”

“I can’t prove it one way or the other, but I believe society trains us.”

“You believe,” he said, his whisper rising a little with irritation, “but you do not know. So you would not go spitting and pissing all over God’s great works—on church steps, on statues of Jesus, on crosses and on holy men?”

“That probably wouldn’t be the best use of my time.”

“Yes. You simply do not want to admit that there is a grain of faith in you. That you fear deep within yourself that there are other forces in the world. Be careful, because those who do not believe end up in suffering they cannot explain.”

“I believe we all suffer in ways we can’t explain.”

Our whispered debate had drawn scowls from members of the congregation, and I asked Oméga, “Isn’t it rude to speak during the sermon?”

He made a dismissive gesture and said, “The style here is so histrionic. It annoys me. And the way they pray—flapping about like injured birds—they look as if they’re trying to wave God down as he drives past on the highway.”

The preacher had left the platform, and people were praying in hushed voices now, standing or sitting, or touching each other, clutching hands and rocking. The mass seemed to be ending in a sort of quiet time.

“You should tell the prophet that you are the girl’s uncle,” Oméga said. “That will keep things simple. You have come to bring her home to America and you would like to pay him to cast out her demons before you go. He can’t refuse that. And if you really want to play the part, have him lay hands on you too. I doubt you’ll regret it.”

Congregants were lining up to meet with their prophète—a term that I was beginning to think wasn’t so rare. He’d withdrawn behind a crimson tapestry guarded by a thin young woman in a silvery sparkling dress and matching head wrap. Each time she pulled back the heavy cloth to let in the faithful, I glimpsed a hallway of exposed concrete.