Entr'acte

While the world's statesmen hotly debated its fate in the U.N., the Congo sprawled in the equator's heat, torpid and listless. The riotous chaos and killing had mostly stopped. In its place was a vapid, restless calm.

The Congolese are supposed to hate the Belgians, but daily a wizened black appeared at the big statue of King Albert to tend the flowers and clean away the scraps of paper; no mob had thought to topple Albert or the big figure of Leopold II that stands before the Parliament building. Leopoldville has no visible revenue, but somehow the lights functioned, the garbage was collected and the water ran normally. Government departments were hardly functioning, but to the utter amazement of Manhattan financiers, a check arrived at Dillon. Read & Co.'s Wall Street offices from the Congo's Central Bank paying in full the $393,750 interest due Oct. 1 on Congo bonds.

Scotch & Politics. Lopoldville had the look of a foreigners' town; Indonesian captains and Swedish colonels strolled the sidewalks, putting their U.N. salaries into snail, pate and wine dinners at the few remaining good restaurants or into the mass-produced ivory "handicraft" souvenirs spread on the sidewalks by tall Hausa hawkers from the north. Influence peddlers, spies and quick-money operators were flocking in from abroad; an American opened the "Afro-Negro Bar," where U.N. officials, newsmen and merchants crowded in to drink Scotch and argue politics amid the din at the bar while a Nigerian band played Dixieland jazz in the next room.

The Congo's political Hydra still had three heads: Colonel Joseph Mobutu, Joseph Kasavubu and Patrice Lumumba. But each now seemed to have lost even the vigor for plotting one another's doom. All had their squads of gun-toting guards, but the most strenuous weapon any dared to use was the press conference; in one day harassed reporters covered five. Now and then, one or the other summoned energy for a daring stroke, then subsided quietly. Colonel Mobutu, complaining of fever and frazzled nerves, seemed mainly content to send occasional squads of his troops through the streets to remind everyone of the "neutrality" that he had imposed on all the others.

"Hear, Hear." Erratic Patrice Lumumba emerged from the Premier's residence only long enough to attend a 9 p.m. "luncheon" put on by the diplomats from Guinea, who still wistfully hoped to propel him back to power. Looking dour and wan, he declaimed his standard piece: the Soviet Union was the only nation interested in peace; he had asked the U.S. for help but was told to get it from the U.N. "I did not understand this comedy," he cried. But now everything was clear: the U.S. wanted a monopoly on Katanga's uranium, and big American interests wanted to extend their concessions to exploit Congolese raw materials.* Ghana's representatives cried "hear, hear." But when it was all over. Lumumba went forlornly home and did not emerge for days.

The truth was that even Lumumba's closest backers in Parliament, the men from his own Eastern Province, were abandoning his lurching bandwagon. Ten of them called a press conference to denounce their former leader. Releasing a document reportedly signed by 29 of the province's 34 legislators, they announced: "We now take back our parliamentary support of Lumumba." On the heels of this came word that Minister of Sport Maurice Mpolo, one of Lumumba's cronies, had quit. Rumors spread that Lumumba was in a psychiatrist's care, and these were hardly squelched by an announcement from the "Premier's office" of the formation of a new "Cabinet" containing two of Lumumba's bitterest foes, Jean Bolikango and Albert Kalonji. Neither, it turned out. had been consulted, and would not consider serving with Lumumba if he had been.

The Tranquil Colonel. It seemed a good moment for Colonel Mobutu either to arrest Lumumba or to call Parliament together and legally put an end to the troublemaking Premier and his claims of legislative majority. But tranquil Mobutu seemed in no hurry. "Why should I get worried about him?" he asked visitors. "I'll just leave him neutralized in that house."

Wearily watching the languorous proceedings from a sixth-floor office in a lofty Leopoldville apartment building was the U.N.'s head man in the Congo, able Rajeshwar Dayal, 51, whose frustrating task was to deal with a government that does not even exist. Dayal was handpicked by Dag Hammarskjold seven weeks ago to relieve Ralph Bunche after Dayal's brilliant negotiation of India's Indus River pact with Pakistan. Dayal is never far from the job. sleeping just down the hall, where aides can and frequently do awaken him with urgent problems.

An Indian aristocrat with 20 years of background in India's exacting elite civil service, Dayal has the Oriental patience to deal with his daily exasperations. Last week his officials produced an imaginative public works scheme that will keep 4,600 Congolese employed for two months, discussed it with Mobutu's ruling high commissioners. As usual, they could come to no final decision even on so clearly practical a project.

But most of the time Dayal's men cannot even find Congolese to discuss such things with. "We deal from day to day with whomever we can find." sighs Dayal, adding optimistically, "I believe it will all get sorted out, because it must."

* Katanga's uranium deposits, once valuable, have been in disuse for several years since discovery of richer lodes elsewhere; U.S. investors have never been involved heavily in Congo projects, have shown little inclination to be involved in risky Congo ventures since the start of the crisis. Biggest single U.S. investment is the Ryan and Guggenheim groups' 25% share in Forminierc, the rich Kasai industrial-diamond producer. The Rockefeller brothers have roughly $3,000,000 tied up in Congolese mining and textile production. Total U.S. share of all Congo investment: between 1% and 2%.

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