Chapter Fifteen ?

 

 

 

Our activism quickly transformed the African Women's Congress from an ambitious startup into a dangerous player. International foundations were the first to sound the alarm; they saw our voluntary repatriation programs as a competitor siphoning off grants.

Clergymen then took up arms. An influential Pentecostal pastor, Reverend Kesey, saw his flock dwindle and declared full-blown war on Vera. He publicly accused her of secretly promoting a voodoo cult—one that was allegedly officially banned in the EU.

But Vera refused to compromise. Instead, she attacked the major geopolitical predators, harshly criticizing China for draining the continent's resources and openly condemning Russia for fueling military conflicts in the Sahel and Mali. We were making far too many enemies.

One day, we decided to take a short break and headed to the famous Dutch Afsluitdijk dam. It was a beautiful Saturday. A steady, iodine-infused wind blew in from the North Sea, and cumulus clouds floated like caravels across the pale blue sky. The landscape practically begged for a canvas, and once again I regretted not becoming an artist.

Leaving Amsterdam through the IJ-tunnel, we found ourselves in a touristy, almost fairytale Netherlands. The pavement on the A7 highway was flawless. Familiar windmills, the neat, toy-like houses of local farmers, and green meadows dotted with grazing cows flashed past on either side of the road. We popped into Zaanstad to buy some real Dutch cheese—the famous Catharina Hoeve cheese farm is located right next to the town, where tourists can watch the cheesemaking process for free. And then we continued on.

Vera was at the wheel today. She drove our Cadillac with the ease and grace of the famous French racing driver Michèle Mouton, overtaking heavy Volvo, Scania, MAN, and Mercedes-Benz trucks on the curves. I remembered how some hapless race director—probably a misogynist and a fool—saw Michèle in her brand-new Antonelli overalls and declared, "The only helmet a woman should wear is a salon hair dryer."

"Well, yes, of course, you're lying, Lyonya, as always, just to sound clever," my Brain immediately signaled sarcastically. He had no mouth, but he synchronized directly with the AI reality generator through his quantum channels. "Toto Roche blurted out that nonsense back in 1958, addressing Maria Teresa de Filippis. And 'Antonelli' is actually the gear of a young Italian F1 driver you looked up online! But go ahead; keep making things up—Vera likes the mess inside your head..."

But what the hell does it matter? The main thing is that Michèle went on to win four World Rally Championship rounds with the Audi team, finished as runner-up for the 1982 season, and in 1985 won the grueling Pikes Peak Hill Climb, among many other victories...When you love a woman, you see only the best in her and embrace her entirely with your heart—her face, her body, her scent—as absolute perfection.

Knowing that I can't stand it when a woman smells like a perfume hell, Vera used exclusively natural cleansers: strawberry or mint soaps, alongside gels and creams made solely from herbs and royal jelly. They don't emit the foul odor produced in chemical labs at the same factories that synthesize isoprene and sarin. Moreover, all Vera had to do in the morning was wash her face with clean, cold water, and it would immediately become as youthful as that of a fourteen-year-old nymph.

"Oh, here comes the heavy artillery," Brain buzzed in the back of my mind again, sending a sarcastic impulse into the higher realms. "He brought up Nabokov, lumped rubber isoprene and combat-grade sarin into the same bottle with Chanel... Lyonya, sarin doesn't actually have a smell in its pure form; any military man will tell you that! And as for the fourteen-year-old nymphet—be careful on the curves, or Vera might just yank the Cadillac's steering wheel, and your nymphet will turn into your own nurse in the trauma unit!"

Meanwhile, Vera once again deployed her ability to fold and unfold space like a household rug. Instead of taking just over an hour, we spent only thirty minutes on the road to the famous Dutch Afsluitdijk dam.

The car slowed to a smooth halt. We stepped onto the dam's crest and stood transfixed, captivated by the vast freshwater lake Ijsselmeer. Vera was momentarily speechless upon seeing this grand structure, reclaimed from the stormy, salty bay.

She recalled a recent dinner with Lucas van Janson, the captain and innkeeper of an Amsterdam schooner-hotel, and their conversation about the courageous people who had been at war with the ocean for centuries. Having now seen the scale of it with her own eyes, she felt an even deeper respect for the Dutch.

"You know, Vera, around the same time they were building this dam, in my former homeland, the Soviet Union, they were undertaking a massive construction project—the White Sea-Baltic Canal," I said, peering into the bluish distance. "And that two-hundred-twenty-seven-kilometer route was built in just one year and nine months, if the official figures are to be believed..."

“Impressive,” she said, surprised by the pace of the construction.

“Yes, but to be fair, out of the canal’s entire length, only forty-eight kilometers were man-made. The rest consisted of natural lakes and rivers.”

 “But still, it’s a monumental project, and the timeframe seems incredible.”

“Especially when you consider that around a hundred thousand GULAG prisoners built it," I added.

“Why prisoners?” Vera asked, her brow furrowing.

“Because political prisoners were the cheapest slave labor in the USSR.”

“Okay, I’m tired of this talk,” Vera said, her irritation clearly growing. “After all, we came here to relax, not to debate politics. Besides, I want to take a boat ride on this lake.”

Silently, dissatisfied with each other, we went into Makkum—an ancient Frisian town on the shores of the artificial IJsselmeer lake, a mecca for European windsurfers. As said to us by Captain Janson, the local marina offered excellent boat rentals for a boat trip.

A small motor-sailor, as it turned out, already seemed to be waiting for us at the dock. Having paid a hundred euros through Boataround, Vera-Virginia and I set sail. The lake was completely calm, the water surface seemed motionless, and we were in no hurry to start the engine—our vessel drifted lazily, barely rocking on the smooth water.

"Let's go," said my dear Captain Mason, heading to the bow of our "soapbox"—as yachtsmen ironically call the typical plastic pleasure boats. Hidden below deck was a compact cabin compartment, perfect for hiding from prying eyes. We happily took advantage of this opportunity, planning to make love.

Before I'd even had a chance to kiss her, the air shook with a sharp, unnatural bang. The sound came from the stern: our Yamaha outboard motor had instantly turned into a heap of smoking, twisted scrap metal. But that was only the beginning. At the same moment, the steel rigging snapped with a loud crack—the cables holding the mast in place seemed to have been severed by a direct blow. The heavy mast, along with its unfurled sail, crashed to the deck, nearly crushing us to pieces. Instinctively, I grabbed Vera and pinned her beneath me, shielding her with my body.  

Fortunately, the durable plastic of the wheelhouse withstood the impact of the rigging, and we escaped with only minor bruises and a fright. The vessel completely lost power and began to slowly sink by the stern. However, those were not dozing on the shore either. An orange boat from the Royal Netherlands Life Saving Society was already speeding toward us from the Makkum marina.

A small, maneuverable vessel with the large KNRM sign drew close to our crippled vessel. The sullen Dutch sailors helped Vera and me aboard the rescue boat, anxiously examining the telltale thermal damage to the snapped shrouds. They clearly understood: normal engines don't explode like that.

A pale-faced representative of the charter company was already meeting us at the dock. He apologized profusely, offered huge financial compensation, and arranged an immediate transfer to the hotel, not yet knowing what lay behind this "accident."

"No journalists, no police. Let's get out of here, quickly!" I heard Vera's hoarse voice.

We passed the bewildered officials, leaving the crowd of curious onlookers gathered on the pier perplexed.

Only once we were inside our Cadillac did we begin to come to our senses. Vera leaned back in the seat, closing her eyes, her shoulders still trembling slightly.

I turned on the climate control, but at that moment a sharp, icy wind blew in from the North Sea through the half-open window. It brought with it a clear, painfully sobering realization: this wasn't a coincidence or a breakdown of the old Yamaha. This was a warning. A real, brutal warning.

Instinctively glancing in the rearview mirror, I smiled crookedly. In the backseat of the Cadillac, in the dim light, sat the ghost of my grandfather Stepan.   He looked at me with his eternally narrowed eyes, filled with a stern, trench-like wisdom. The ghost grandfather didn't move his lips, but I clearly heard what he wanted to say: "Yes, grandson... Someone up there must have been angry with you. It seems you were too vocal in your criticism of the Chinese and Russians, who are now meddling in the affairs of your Africa..."

I closed my eyes and shook my head, and the reflection in the mirror vanished. Only the empty leather seats remained. No, I was not convinced that the intelligence services of specific countries were behind this explosion—it's impossible to prove such a thing to an ordinary person. But in the world of high politics, billions and influence over an entire continent are at stake. The life of one of the founders of the Congress of African Women was worth no more than the rent of that motor-sailing boat. You never know.

Vera started the powerful engine, put it in gear, stepped on the gas. And we propelled ourselves away from Makkum. The Cadillac devoured kilometer after kilometer. And soon we returned to Amsterdam, to our cozy, hospitable ark.

 There, we packed up our things, which we didn't have much of, and said goodbye to Captain Lucas van Janson.

"Don't think ill of me!" the old sea dog said, seeing us off. And a gleam of elfin light appeared in his eyes. Vera approached him, hugged him, and kissed him on the cheek

"Well, Captain Vera, in Amsterdam we've planted a seed of doubt in the souls of migrants and refugees from Africa. Let them think about it; let them decide for themselves where the cheese tastes better, in their homeland or in the Dutch mousetrap."

"Yes, Lyonya," Vera nervously adjusted the rearview mirror. "To  Brussels?"

“Step on it, Verochka. Great things await us there.”

 

The Cadillac devoured kilometer after kilometer. Summer was melting outside. Tourists squeezed past us at gas stations, dousing themselves in half a bucket of deodorant in the sweltering heat, turning the surrounding air into a hell of perfume, enough to suffocate a regiment of infantry.

Usually, after filling the tank with gas, I gasped and returned to the car to bury my nose in Vera's shoulder—she smelled of clean grass, morning coolness, and mint. A true salvation.

The Cadillac rocked gently on the Brussels cobblestones, alien and all too noticeable among the gray government buildings. Monumental facades floated past the window—frozen grandeur built on blood, tears, and Congo rubber.

Vera gripped the steering wheel tighter, her fingers turning slightly white. Suddenly, the street parted, and the Palace of Justice rose above the city like a gray mountain. Its cyclopean, oppressive scale took her breath away. What perverse, absolute pride had overcome Leopold II to build this courthouse, larger than St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican?

The Cadillac seemed like an insignificant insect beneath this colossus. The cruelest irony lay in the word "Justice," carved in stone: the palace of justice, erected on the bones of an entire continent, silently justified every atrocity of the crown. These gray, silent walls seemed to scream that here, in the very heart of the empire, a single human life was worth nothing.

I looked at these cyclopean walls and thought how similar all these arbiters of fate were in their hubris. Leopold surely aspired to be the next Caesar or Napoleon, trying to outdo Rome and Paris, lest he lose face compared to the other monarchs of Europe. He aimed for eternity—and ended up in the dirt. Moreover, in the most terrible, sticky mud, mixed with Congolese blood, which cannot be washed off either from his monument or from these granite facades.

The capital of Belgium had no intention of lulling us to sleep, like Amsterdam. It waited. Somewhere ahead, near the Place du Trône, the dull, rhythmic hum of the crowd could already be heard—the beating heart of a city about to tear itself apart from its own past.

After free, sleepy Amsterdam with its secret gardens, we find ourselves in the cold, gray millstones of European bureaucracy, where the colonial past is literally encased in granite and bronze. The Belgian capital only pretended to be sleepy and prosperous. Beneath the glossy façade of European bureaucracy, dangerous undercurrents swirled. The city had become a melting pot, where the most polarized forces collided: grant-eaters and parasites of multiculturalism, promising to save the world immediately after the tranche; fanatics of the new digital faith, hoping for artificial intelligence as a panacea for all ills; and, of course, ghosts of the past. Here, ardent monarchists—adorers of King Leopold II, the "builder" who once turned Congo into a bloody personal slave factory—came face to face with Congolese revanchists and supporters of the late Marshal Mobutu, who ate his country to the bone. This cocktail was generously seasoned on top by left-wing politicians, who diligently cultivated in the local population a collective sense of guilt towards the Third World on the part of the West.

There was a hint of a storm in the air. It would only take one spark—for example, an attempt to demolish the equestrian statue of Congo's executioner, Leopold II—for Brussels to descend into a street war between the authorities and the marginalized. And this explosion threatened more than just the image of the European capital.

Arriving at Brussels' Place du Trône, Vera drove straight up to the pedestal of the monument to the bloody king. She got out of the car and stepped onto the lawn, parched by the summer heat but still springy.

Speakers were already standing there, addressing the assembled crowd. Each received their share of applause from a populace determined to tear down and obliterate a monument that shamed not just one nation, but all of Western civilization. The crowd shifted impatiently, clutching picks and crowbars, their fists clenched. They awaited the signal to unleash their energy on the destruction of sculptor Thomas Vinçotte's creation.

The last speaker was a leftist Maoist politician, unleashing all his revolutionary fervor on the bronze head of King Leopold, his hand raised to initiate the righteous vandalism.

At that exact moment, Vera stepped forward swiftly, like the heroine from Eugène Delacroix's painting Liberty Leading the People. Her eyes exuded a soft power; the left strap of her dress slipped down her shoulder, revealing a rounded breast of a rich, dark eggplant hue, while her right hand was raised upward, palm open.

Stopping the crowd in their tracks with a classic gesture, she demanded their attention, her voice calm but firm: "Madmen, what has clouded your minds? Who drove you to this futile act—to destroy a worthless monument to a worthless ruler! It's not just the Congo; all of Africa demands revenge, from Cape Ben Sika in the north to Cape Agulhas in the south. And this revenge must be expressed not in the destruction of metal idols or symbols of inordinate pride, but in demands for reparations and indemnities for all the years of colonial oppression!"

Her words hit the mark. Realizing the futility of their half-baked vandalism, several men—both young and old—threw down their tools and began to disperse.

Suddenly, a group of weed-addled thugs in torn jeans, leather vests, and heavy chains separated from the crowd and advanced on Vera. One of the leaders, swinging a chain over his head,

“Belgian whore, don't you dare interfere with justice!"

"Attention, Lenya! Quantum radar is detecting an act of vandalism!" my Brain screamed shrilly. "Leopold was certainly a despot in the Congo, but if they tear down this historical monument, Belgium will lose some of its charm. Save the monument, you misfits!"

I didn't waste a second. Jumping out of the Cadillac with a heavy adjustable wrench at the ready, I launched into a tirade, mixing choice curses, broken French, and Frisian, instantly paralyzing the crowd.

While they were trying to figure out who this madman was and why he was defending their late king in an incomprehensible dialect, Vera got behind the wheel and abruptly turned the Cadillac, causing the tires to squeal deafeningly. The element of surprise worked perfectly: the activists scattered in terror, convinced that a Russian intervention had begun. Leopold remained standing on his pedestal, looking down at us with mild surprise.