Tram 83 (15 page)
Authors: Fiston Mwanza Mujila
“Once in Paris,” he said, “I was staying with a woman friend on Rue du Château, libraries and supermarkets for dogs from end to end. One Christmas afternoon, we went out for a jaunt on the Champs-Ãlysées. Imagine my sorrow: men, women, and children accompanied by their dogs. âI can't bear to watch this spectacle any more. I need a little attention and love, and you just throw all that overboard!' Seeing my distress, my friend got all bogged down in explanations: âIt's hard to make you understand what I want to say to you.
We are sensitive to these domestic animals who imbue our daily lives with a certain order in the exactitude of our comfort, given that we subject ourselves willingly to their ways of being and that we react to the ambiguity of our primordial identity.'”
Lucien stopped, wanted to double back.
“Evening, sirs.”
They advanced toward him. The dogs chuckled.
There were around twenty of them.
“What do you want with me?”
Lucien quivered with fear.
One of them, most likely their leader:
“Where you from?”
“Please ⦔
The dogs continued to chuckle.
“I came accompanied by some friends and then ⦔
Six in the morning. It was nearly daybreak.
“If you want us to spare your life, tell us where you've stashed the merchandise.”
Two dogs padded forward, began sniffing at his legs.
They came closer, pulling out their arsenal of daggers, knives, bayonets, slingshots, screwdrivers.
He dumped in his pants.
Letter of the Apostles, chapter 5.
Ecclesiastes 1, verses 1 to 9.
The weapons were now over his head.
“They left with the merchandise.”
He thought of his friend, Porte de Clignancourt, striving body and soul to get him staged in Europe and Brazil.
“You having a laugh or what?”
Lucien knew there exist four kinds of desperado: 1) Those who live and sleep at the market, beggars and pickpockets, less harmful. 2) Those who hang about the station and sleep inside the locomotives, semi-harmful. 3) Those who stroll about the Tram, harmful. 4) And finally, those who operate in the mines, extremely harmful.
They are either demobilized soldiers, or adolescents from families stuck in a downward spiral, fleeing famine and other drudgeries such as “Today, it's your turn to feed the family, shift your ass and go fetch us some palm oil, salted fish, cassava flour, and matches,” or else defrocked students.
Their age, according to the seasons and the frequency of trains at the station whose metal structure: eight to thirty. At thirty-one years old, they become suicidals or city highwaymen who'll slit your throat once night has barely fallen.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I returned just to get this notebook.”
“We'll see about that.”
“Please, for pity's sake ⦔
“Take off your kicks!”
He took off his kicks.
“Hand over your belt!”
He handed over his belt.
“Show us your dick!”
He showed them his tackle.
“Not bad ⦔
The dogs â¦
“For pity's sake ⦔
“You look like an intellectual.”
The dogs continued to chuckle.
“Please ⦔
“First of all recite
Mr. Seguin's Goat
.”
He recited the first half of
Mr. Seguin's Goat
.
They roared with laughter.
“Uncle Seguin, old Seguin ⦔
They roared with laughter.
The dogs â¦
“Take that.”
He took â¦
“Follow us.”
Ephesians 10.
The dogs continued to chuckle â¦
They tore out the first few pages of the notebook. They slipped in a few hemp leaves. They fashioned long cigars. They smoked one after another.
They discussed what they could do with this intellectual errand boy of minor diggers with rotten armpits.
“A pickaxe straight to the head.”
“He's already dead.”
“The bastard.”
The dogs continued to chuckle â¦
Luke 2:17.
They exited by the large gate. The dogs continued to chuckle â¦
Ephesians 10.
It was nearly day, a tiny sun on the horizon. The dogs continued to chuckle â¦
They took Highway 2.
The dogs continued to chuckle â¦
The dogs continued to chuckle â¦
The dogs continued to chuckle â¦
A few passersby stopped and quickly left again, for fear of reprisals.
“Interfere, and they'll bash your face in.”
The dogs continued to chuckle â¦
They handed out the worst abuse to anyone who meddled in their business.
8:37
A.M
.
The dogs â¦
Revelation 30.
The dogs â¦
He dumped again.
Revelation 15.
The dogs continued to chuckle â¦
VIENNA CONSERVATOIRE
.
They strolled with Lucien through all the streets of the City-State. The dogs continued to chuckle â¦
“Please ⦔
“Shall we give him to the mercenaries?”
They decided to hand him in at the nearest police station.
The police officers in civilian dress loudly acclaimed this patriotic act.
The chief of police, while peeling the bananas he wolfed down:
“We are here to ensure the law is upheld. This uncivic individual deserves a good hiding!”
The dogs â¦
“Sir, the cigarettes.”
He gave them a pack.
“Buck up, little brothers.”
“Please, my notebook.”
The head honcho hesitated, pulled out the notebook, and from it ripped a few pages he shoved down his work boots.
“Catch, you uncivic thing!”
The dogs continued to chuckle â¦
They hung around in the police station compound, sharing out the smokes. The chief of police dragged poor Lucien by the collar all the way to his office. There were a few shirtless police officers in the corridors, polishing rifles and bayonets.
“Sit over there.”
Lucien sat. A ramshackle office. Several plastic chairs.
A portable radio sat prominently on a coffee table. Behind the police chief, there was an old, gigantic, black-and-white poster of the Beatles. In a corner, a garbage bag full of paperwork.
Walls yellowed with age. Ceilings, ditto. Floor, same. No window, just a fan propped up by a stick.
“What day are we?”
“Monday, sir.”
The chief of police wiped his face with his left forearm.
“You look like a nice guy, pity you're cursed. Every Monday, we remove our tenants to the Penitentiary Center.”
“You mean to say you're going to transfer me to the central prison?”
“Affirmative!”
The chief of police rummaged in his files, and pulled out several forms.
“State your identity!”
“Please ⦔
“We're short on time.”
He stated his identity.
“Your family's going to have a tough job springing you from here.
We're keeping a close eye on you all following the latest escapes. The locks have been strengthened.”
Lucien shook with fear.
“Can I see that notebook?”
Lucien complied.
The chief of police flicked through it rapidly, looking surprised.
“Is it you who's distributing those leaflets?”
All the little towns and villages in the City-State lived at the pace of the leaflets the students circulated to proclaim their indignation. They were written in a scornful, threatening tone, like ultimatums:
IF YOU DO NOT RESTORE RUNNING WATER AND ELECTRICAL POWER, WE SHALL BURN THE TRACKS, THE TRAINS, THE CHURCHES, AND THE COPPER MINES. IF THE DISSIDENT GENERAL PERSISTS, WE SHALL BURN THE CENTRAL PRISON, THE POLICE STATIONS, AND HIS SEVENTH WIFE'S HOUSE.
“I'm not a student, and anyway it's just a diary, nothing more.”
He thought at length about his ranting friend, Porte de Clignancourt: “Lucien, what are you up to! All the blacks the world over are waiting desperately for you to complete this text. Chop-chop with your stage-tale, Lucien! The diaspora has run out of patience. Lucien. We blacks of France are waiting for your work to redeem us.”
The chief of police stood up, and switched on his portable radio.
“Do you know Harry Belafonte?”
“Please, sir, I've done nothing wrong.”
He lit a cigarette.
“âDo not allow anyone to stride about the Polygon of Hope Mine,' the very words of the Dissidence. I am merely carrying out the orders of my superiors. You would act the same way in my place. We are working under difficult conditions. You should make the task easier for us. Everyone says they're innocent. Unfortunately, I can do nothing for you.”
“Sir ⦔
He changed the frequency of his radio, different shows, horse race results.
“Gilberto ⦠Gilberto ⦠Gilberto!”
He called for the soldier supposed to be standing honor guard outside his door. Gilberto didn't reply. He scribbled some numbers at random on a scrap of paper.
“Can you do me a favor?”
“Sir.”
“I'm betting on a horse race at Vincennes. The horses have been playing tricks on us the last few months. I've picked in order number 9, number 15, number 6, number 21, number 7. I'm hesitating between number 16, number 35, and number 9, what do you think?”
“Choose number 16.”
Laughter from the chief of police, who was sweating like a pork chop on a plate.
“You might be right, I was also thinking of number 16. But why 16?”
“I was born on the 16th of May 1953.”
“My wife was also born on a 16th. My ex, I mean.”
He looked at him closely, and raised his arms to heaven like an explorer discovering a lost civilization.
“Just a vodka and ten pesos and I'll let you leave.”
“I don't have a penny, and even if I did, I hate informing, corruption.”
Lucien didn't back down â what a guy! You have the chance to be let off, but stubbornly you continue to wallow in theories without legs or backbones. What future is there for a fella like that, a real chickenshit! If it was Requiem, he would negotiate his release without seeking unnecessary complication. Lucien, what a nutcase. All the Tram's baby-chicks fantasized about him. They adored him, wanted to flirt with him, venerated him, enticed him. They stated, loud and clear, that he was the kindest man on earth. They were at his feet, imploring him: “Take us to your bed, we've never fucked an intellectual, let alone a writer.” But Lucien, beyond shame, took refuge in his texts, cloistered himself in his literature, quit the Tram when it was barely 10
P.M.
, refused to dance with the busgirl with fat lips who never took her eyes off him, while the rest of us daydreamed about such popularity among womankind. All these incongruities annoyed Requiem, for whom “Lucien,” to quote him, “is an insult to virility.”
Ever since an ethnologist had made a trip to Europe with a baby-chick, all the Tram girls pursued those few intellectuals who loafed about the City-State. They told anyone who'd listen that they too would find themselves an intellectual and that they'd go away with him â far from the Tram, far from the City-State, far from us â to Prague, Odessa, Zagreb, Budapest, Belgrade. That they would marry in great style, give birth to very beautiful children,
then return to the Tram to ridicule the diggers, boycott the busgirl with fat lips, and get their revenge on the tourists who had felt up their breasts without paying the check. In bed, and even in the Tram's mixed restrooms, they subtly modified the chronology of the foreplay when the client proved to be an intellectual. “Stroke my navel first and, while we're at it, tell me about the Second World War. Teach me mathematics.”
The chief of police spoke without letup, argued, furnished his own view of the City-State, recalled his exploits during one of the many wars of liberation, criticized the Americans, and entangled Lucien in his contradictions.
“If you don't make a gesture, what are my children going to eat?”