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In the lobby of Kinshasa's Hotel Memling, I sat down and wept. It gets to you sometimes this way - this country - and indeed, this continent.
It is usually not anything obviously awful - not the terrible sight of a starving child in one of the many countries at war, not the heart-stopping fear of a drunken soldier or militia man waving his gun at you. These are the things you come to cope with - or at least convince yourself that you can.
He was beaming in pleasure - at someone who was sharing his love of the music.  |
The people of the Democratic Republic of Congo have known almost nothing but war for the past five years. First a rebellion spread from the east of the country and unseated the long-term dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko. He had brought the country - then known as Zaire - to its knees, through decades of neglect, mismanagement and massive corruption.
After his fall, there were a few months of relative stability under the rebel-turned-president Laurent Kabila. But again war broke out and fighting continues.
Music man
It was a man called Etienne Mputu in the hotel lobby who pierced the armour and prompted my tears. Etienne is a professor of music - a professor with no university.
 Stability soon turned to more fighting under President Kabila
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But he was beaming in pleasure - at someone who was sharing his love of the music.
It isn't just Etienne whose performance is being ignored. His country is suffering in just the same way. No-one is listening to its torment.
After a lovely Moonlight Sonata, Etienne, aged 75, gave me a rather saucy wink and tinkled from his classical repertoire into his show tunes - Strangers in the Night. He giggled at me, determined no doubt that his one fan should not cry in public. Then he beckoned me over to talk.
An Italian professor had taught him to play, Etienne told me, in the years well before independence and Congo's first bloody civil war in the 1960s. Then he had himself taught in the university's music department - but that was closed now. There are no instruments and no students with the money to pay fees.
"So what do you do now?" I asked.
"Oh anything - parties, weddings, christenings - and I give lessons - anywhere," he told me. "But the problem is many people don't have money these days. The prices in Kinshasa have gone up by thousands of per cent since the latest war began - the supply routes from the countryside have been cut by the rebels - so people can barely feed themselves, let alone the piano player.
Keeping up appearances
And, Eteinne sighed - there was another difficulty - there are not many pianos in Congo anymore. Many were destroyed by looters in the 'grand pillages' of the early 1990s - when Kinshasa was picked apart by frenzied mobs of soldiers and civilians - who even stripped wallpaper and electric wiring away.
I could see that Etienne could not be getting much work - his brown trousers were clean but threadbare, his feet which touched the piano pedals as delicately as if they were made of glass were clad in a very old pair of deck shoes. On his wrist was a watch which no longer worked.
 Life is still hard in DR Congo
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But what Etienne Mputu wanted was another pupil. And he had me in his sights. He could come on whatever day, at whatever time, to teach me. We would have to find a piano first though of course, he reminded me.
Etienne's smile collapsed when I explained that I did not live in Kinshasa and I was not able to visit very often. I told him how I had been expelled from his country when it was Zaire - forbidden to return for the "duration of my natural life" according to my expulsion papers. And even the new powers let me in only reluctantly.
But seeing Etienne's face fall, I told him how much I enjoyed being back.
Ah Madam, Etienne sighed, then for you I must play this - a song of the great Nat King Cole. To remind you that you must return - it is called A Sentimental Journey.
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