Tram 83 (13 page)

Requiem was the opposite of Lucien, who irritated the whole of the Tram with his waffling, a hypocrite scribbling on scraps of paper instead of telling us the truth to our faces, and lazy regarding the girls. He tired us out, Lucien did. He was too much! What's
the point of playing the intellectual all the time if the equation must remain the same? The roads that lead to truth and honesty are cut by flooding, filth, dog turds, lies, and blackouts, but why did he obstinately maintain his belief that a better world was possible? Why did he strive to reduce humanity to the dreams and quotations he gleaned on the pages of his texts? It's called cowardice, perhaps even amnesia, or indeed a combination of the two. The world is beyond redemption, as Requiem put it. But supposing … Putting aside our personal feelings, perhaps Lucien was right. Let's think about it. What would we do if we found ourselves in the shoes of this
poète maudit
? Requiem's answer: “The tragedy is already written, we merely preface it. So let us preface.”

The Tram operated twenty-four-seven. They hung out there touching up titties, smoking, and drinking until around two in the afternoon. Lucien, who couldn't stand it anymore, left the bunch earlier. He had concocted an explosive cocktail: wine + vodka + lemonade + whiskey brought in from Beach Ngobila.

“Do you have the time?”

Incapable of walking, Requiem let Lucien return to the flat on his own. He vomited, reeled … A desperado saw him back home in exchange for a few coins.

Ideas to nourish his texts abounded. How, for example, to halve the characters of his theater piece without trashing the plot? Why not structure the text into two major movements, The Burnt Mornings and The Weeping Willows, to avoid losing historical credibility? Deep within himself, he hefted the monologue Lenin would deliver when told that Napoleon had left for Saint Helena accompanied by Mao Zedong. He tried to write in his notebook
by any means. Waste of effort. His head spun. His limbs gave way. He remembered his wedding day. He rolled about on his miserable bed like someone suffering from syphilis. 4:10
P.M
. He eventually fell asleep somehow.

Immediately a series of nightmares. Nightmare 1: a locomotive crammed full of minerals makes an infernal drone as it leaves platform 18 for horizons unknown. Nightmare 2: his grandfather asks him to jump into the first boxcar, otherwise “you'll die like a homeless dog for wanting to hang on to a town that is no longer suited to you.” Nightmare 3: dissident rebels confront striking students allied with diggers beneath a hail of stones not far from the Tram. Nightmare 4: child-soldiers ransack the shops of the City-State. Nightmare 5: soldiers pursue single-mamas, crackling, trucks, screams, firing into the air. Nightmare 6: suicidals break into the bank belonging to the tourist owner of the sheds opposite Hope Mine. Nightmare 7: a rape, some temple forecourt. Nightmare 8: a rape, Fanatics Avenue. Nightmare 9: a rape, platform 7. Nightmare 10: a gang rape, blowjobs, and pitched brawls, Boulevard …

He woke up around ten in the evening. Hurried. A cold shower.

Past eleven, just time to read his texts, then a phone call from Paris, Métro Clignancourt.

“Where are you at with your piece on Lumumba? I'm killing myself to get the necessary contacts.”

Lucien tried to reassure him.

“Be patient, a few commas and I'll send you the text.”

His friend also wanted him to write an article about Abderrahmane Sissako's latest film. Lucien paused, before deciding.

“No, I don't have enough time.”

He remembered having watched it just before he left for the City-State.

“Please!”

Lucien rejected the request. But his friend stuck to his guns.

“You know, the film was hailed by the international critics at Cannes.”

“But.”

Lucien reluctantly agreed.

He found it a real job to get the first lines down on paper. He identified with the main character, a certain Abdallah who shows up in a small town to await his departure for Europe and who is obliged to live in isolation since he's separated from the inhabitants by a language he doesn't understand.

He got down to the task. Impossible to continue the article. The verbs slipped from his fingers. The prepositions lay in wait then skipped out on him. The subordinate clauses screamed their independence. The adjectives frowned and took to the rails of oblivion.

A phone call.

“Requiem, my merchandise is sacred!”

A feeling of guilt overcame him. He shouldn't have left the Back-Country, he told himself, what a foolish thing I've done! He could have stayed and ceased his misadventures with
littérature engagée
, or had his palm greased — there is no lack of opportunities for potential seasonal writers: for each political regime, you produce your literature.

You write an epic poem about the hairstyle of the president's wife, they give you a house; a monologue rehashing the dreams of the Minister of Divination, Clairvoyance, and Prophecies, they
buy you a trip to Venice; a novel about the president's childhood, they appoint you Minister of Agriculture and Bovine Farming. Too late! He gathered chance snippets of sentences and arrived at a parturition he hastened to send off. His computer boycotted the transposition of the document to PDF. He bustled about. Bad luck, blackout! He'd forgotten that it was a Thursday, that the power had to meet the needs of a small local mining firm, that all the residents knew this, and that they had zero right to make the protests that, incidentally, were prohibited across the entire national territory. An idea came to him: maybe light a candle and start another text? Yes. Where to begin? He wrote a series of arabesques that he tried to read aloud. At twelve o'clock, the Negus turned up with three baby-chicks barely twelve years old.

“Take one, if you like, help yourself.”

Lucien got up.

“And what's your name?” (One of the three, with promising breasts.)

Lucien picked up his jacket.

“Give me five dollars.”

Lucien left in a visceral rage.

19.

RELIGION OF THE STONE: WE DON'T KNOW THE WEATHER FORECAST, WE ARE THE WEATHER FORECAST, NOT TO MENTION THAT WE DEVISE OUR OWN SOLAR SYSTEM. THE SUN RISES AT THE NORTHERN STATION AND SETS AT THE TRAM BETWEEN TWO GRAPEFRUIT-BREASTS. WE ARE THE CLOUD PRINCES OF GUILE AND RESOURCEFULNESS, THE SONS OF THE EARTH AND OF THE RAILROAD. IT'S THE NEW WORLD HERE. YOU DON'T FUCK, WE FUCK YOU. YOU DON'T EAT, WE EAT YOU. YOU DON'T WRECK, WE WRECK YOU. IT'S THE NEW WORLD HERE. IT'S EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF, AND SHIT FOR ALL. IT'S THE JUNGLE
.

No running water these last two weeks for patriotic reasons, apologized the dissident General: “You know it's difficult to resolve all the problems at once, the mines don't yield what they used to, and if you're without water and electricity, it goes to show how much those rascals in the Back-Country have brought the country to its knees, indeed that is the reason why we decided to take up arms, to sort the situation out ourselves, don't hold it against us, we'll
regain our prestige, but one bit of good news: I am thinking of reopening Mine 15 so the students can work at night to supplement their expenses, they've demanded far too many study grants, too bad for those patriots in a hurry to get straight down to it …”

It was with a heavy step that Lucien rejoined the bunch out front of the Tram. Requiem was keen he join the group at all costs. The more there are of you, the more you can deal with assaults. The more there are of you, the more you can seize the initiative to attack. The more there are of you, the more sacks you can carry away. Unlike other mining sites that were chock-full of diamonds, or cobalt, or copper, or bronze, and nothing else, Hope Mine produced all of the above minerals. The region was so rich in deposits that a legend had grown up — and it happens to be true — recounting how the inhabitants of the City-State dug up their gardens, their houses, their living rooms, their bathrooms, their bedrooms, and even the cemetery. Yes, in the cemetery, funerals would sometimes turn festive following the chance discovery of a high-grade stone. They even dug at the station whose metal structure recalled the 1885s, particularly at night, sometimes even with the collusion of the local mayor, who wielded a pickax in his own offices, and busily scoured public buildings from top to bottom. It was said that in a single day dozens of sacks of heterogenite were carted off from huts and other makeshift camps. With such eroded, tampered foundations, houses threatened to collapse at the slightest rain. Will you consent to starve to death when there's silver, copper, barium, tin, or coal lying quietly under your feet? From the area around Hope Mine to as far as the east side of Vampiretown, the city took on the appearance of an archaeological site.
Even the goats and wheelbarrows smelled of the cobalt quarries. The fact remains that the City-State, focus of so many desires, was losing its northern suburbs, bought for a pittance by traders with foreign capital, tourists with multiple nationalities, cousins and nieces of the dissident General, the resurrected of the Second Republic.

To avoid lugging their loads too far, the diamond diggers preferred to wash and sift their sacks of gravel a few sheds away, beside a little river, taking only the diamonds or low-grade dust away with them. The more enterprising ones, audacious and mercenary, slung the sacks over their shoulders, or even hired slim-jims and other desperados, then braved the carjackers and crossed the City-State in search of trading houses run by tourists. There were also the itinerant trading posts, people like Requiem who, with their perfect knowledge of the system, offloaded their products anytime, anywhere.

Only Mortal Combat spoke to Lucien. The others disparaged him.

“Two-bit intellectual.”

In Mortal Combat's family, the taste for mines and railroads was passed down from generation to generation. His great-grandfather had helped to build the first railroad and had also worked as a miner. His grandfather, a train driver by trade, spent his evenings kicking around the quarries like most of his contemporaries. It was nearly a religion at the time, after the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, mines and railroads, baby-chicks and single-mamas, Tram 83, salsa and rumba, blues, Negro-spirituals, and jazz to please for-profit tourists. His father, likewise: train driver and part-time digger. His sister ran a few baby-chicks and a two-star greasy spoon
a hundred yards from the former Coal Mine. His sixth wife traded merchandise. His younger brother, who was studying fine art in Strasbourg, was bringing shame on the country, so the word went. It brought his fellow students and his teachers to tears: the poor guy drew only train tracks, locomotives, diggers with their pickaxes, and the nocturnal dances of inveterate baby-chicks. His other brothers practiced various mining and railroad-related trades, such as welder, driver's gopher, or hawker on platform 15.

Requiem dallied with Mortal Combat's grandmother, who worked as a professional witch doctor. She helped all the inhabitants improve their chances of stumbling upon a deposit as long as they practiced the missionary position with her. It was said that the entire Tram, including the for-profit tourists, had practiced the missionary position with her. Her name cropped up in all conversations concerning black magic. She acted as a turntable between the visible world and the invisible world. The tourists queued up to see her. Russian, English, Italian, Canadian, ex-Zairian, Japanese, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, etc. She enabled them to communicate with the dead but also to increase their chances of finding the right stone. And so one saw them, in single file, jostling, shoving, capering, and insulting each other from noon to midnight, each desperately waiting his turn. Thanks to the convex glasses she placed under their faces, they were able to have a little chat with their grandfathers and great-grandfathers, even their ancestors who'd died during the very first expeditions. She told fortunes, healed broken hearts, advised them of potential deposits, predicted world events, including Obama's victory in the US presidential elections, the Pentecost Martyrs, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the
collapse of the Soviet Union, the attacks by Somali pirates and their pursuit by the world's navies, Ribéry's transfer to Bayern Munich, Zidane's headbutt, the death of Jonas Savimbi …

They reached their destination at thirty-five after midnight. The scouts went ahead and returned without further delay. In the meantime, he got out his notebook and scrawled: “What will they do with their teeth when there's no more grass to graze? Man proposes, God disposes. What will they do when the jujube trees grow shears? Will they eat those very shears?”

Meanwhile, Requiem recounted one of his many flings with a pre-nubile girl. They entered the facilities step by step. There was a smell of scorched earth. According to the radio, the Voice of the Tram perhaps, the desperados swore they'd torch any human being entering the facilities, because one of their girlfriends had been caught red-handed sucking off a horde of student-miners. The problem was that they were hated by the whole of the City-State, following their succession of infamies, and they knew it.

Requiem, who was overwhelmed by inebriation, held forth. He even forgot where he'd stashed the weapons. His eight fellow-travelers, the eight beatitudes, begged the Negus to shut up. He harped on about what he called his cult film,
The Sicilian Clan
, directed by Henri Verneuil. They succeeded in pinpointing the place, and digging up the instruments. 12:52
A.M
. They entered the caves. Requiem undressed hastily, urinated without delay, and turned around them six times reciting incantations.