Read Online Jimfish by Christopher Hope - Free Book Online Page B

Jimfish understood his very special relationship with the Mother Continent – something his compatriots too often failed to grasp.
    â€˜A very wise choice. I have my toques specially made for me in Paris, using only the fur of leopards I myself have shot. As principal protector of the royal beasts of Africa I can assure you that the leopard selected to become my headgear counts itself lucky to crown an intellect of such distinction.’
    Jimfish was impressed by the other’s unassailable certainty, as well as his remarkable ability to adapt to all circumstances, even if this left him a trifle uneasy. It was a flexibility he had seen in the men who executed Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu on Christmas Day, and who turned overnight from cowering flunkeys into incendiary revolutionaries. How he wished he might achieve a smidgeon of their adaptability or feel even a tenth of their revolutionary rage.
    His found his deficiencies in both these qualities very distressing. Surely he had seen enough cruelty and heartbreak in the time since fleeing Port Pallid, moments before Sergeant Arlow could shoot him? He had been present at the massacres in Matabeleland led by General Jesus; endured the loss of his lovely Lunamiel, cruelly blown to bits as she said her prayers; watched helplessly as Ivan the Russian murdered the good Jagdish at Chernobyl; and he had looked on helplessly as his mentor Soviet Malala was executed by a drunken firing squad in the doomed city of Pripyat.
    But now he was home once again. It was Boxing Day, the New Year and a new decade of the Nineties lay ahead, and Jimfish made it his New Year’s resolution to try harder than ever to burn with the fury that fired thelumpenproletariat to a happy landing on the right side of history.
    In a giant, open-topped limousine, flanked by motorcycle outriders and Horse Guards – splendid in uniforms based on those worn by Napoleon’s cavalry – the Great Leopard and his friend progressed from the spanking-new airport, where the runways had been specially lengthened to allow the Concorde to land, into a town called Gbadolite. Chanting crowds lined the route and Marshal Mobutu translated the praise song they repeated: ‘One party, one country, one father – Mobutu!’ He waved his wooden sceptre to acknowledge the cheers.
    Almost everyone in the town was related to Seso Seko Mobutu, he told Jimfish proudly, and they all adored him.
    â€˜I am bound to my people by pure love. But what good is love if it doesn’t take very concrete forms? It is as simple as that, you will find.’
    Simple was not at all what Jimfish found.
    What had been a tiny village was now a thriving city of thousands. His friend pointed out the German-run hospital, the new sawmill, the factories, the impressive dam to supply hydroelectric power, the experimental breeding farm stocked with thoroughbred English cows and Swiss goats, the Coca-Cola plant, and, last but not least, the Central Bank of Zaire, where printing presses worked day and night to produce bushels of banknotes adorned with the image of the leader in his leopard-skin hat.
    Gbadolite was his home town, and ‘Home for a king,’ the marshal explained, ‘is where your palace stands.’
    Ahead loomed a colossal palace ringed by a high fence.Sentries saluted as the limousine swept through the gates of gold and drew up at the main door, which was bracketed by enormous pink marble columns and guarded by four life-size white marble lions. In the palace gardens stood towering sculptures of elephants, lions and buffaloes, while peacocks wandered at will among pools, fountains and waterfalls.
    Jimfish was lost in admiration. ‘It is a palace in the forest!’
    Marshal Mobutu nodded. ‘It’s known as Versailles in the Jungle. I have a second one nearby, a pagoda, built for me by the Chinese. And somewhere’ – he made a vague gesture towards the thick green bush that