Tram 83 (17 page)

Lucien, in his notebook, scrawled: “The single-mama-chicks, heaving breasts and tragic thighs, entice the for-profit tourists, and make these sleepwalking migrations their credo.”

24.

LOCOMOTIVE LITERATURE …

Lucien was keen to talk with the Diva. He invited her to sample some kebabs at their table. She suggested they go sit outside. Which delighted the Negus, since it was customary to establish a causal relationship between the kebabs and the dog in its raw state. Requiem was not alone in nurturing such ideas. Equation: the more of the slaughter you witness, the more your appetite increases.

Many customers preferred to see the dog they were to eat have its throat cut in their presence. They drank. They smoked. They fueled their infatuations in the mixed facilities of the Tram. They chatted. They got up to go check on the cooking procedures. The various comings and goings were facilitated by such proximity.

“Do you have the time?”

Requiem placed his order without consulting his table companions.

“Dog thigh with mustard. Appetizers: four grilled rats, no salt.”

“I hate foreplay.”

The chef and his acolytes arrived at dusk with the cooking utensils and the animals stocked on two trolleys, trussed up like bundles of sticks, wire through the muzzles, various tins. They did their work some ten yards from the main entrance. The liturgy always followed the same chronology: either the animal was thrown into a vat of boiling water still trussed or it was stunned with an iron bar or it was hung in such a way that it died slowly while the skin was artistically removed, apparently to be used to make shoes in the cold countries of Europe. What a boon, this proximity, poetics of distance!

Lucien addressed the Diva hanging on Requiem's every word as he prattled about his exploits and his keenness to up sticks.

“I am at present contemplating the concept of ‘locomotive literature,' inspired by your talented self.”

The Diva smiled:

“Come, you can be straight with me.”

“I would really like to work with you.”

Requiem gave a little cough.

“Go on.”

Lucien took out a scrap of paper and prepared to read.

Requiem, who didn't want Lucien to speak, gave him a hard look then lost himself in his movie ramblings.

“You seen Jean Gabin in
Pasha
? How that guy fills the screen! He reminds me of Lino Ventura in
The Great Spy Chase
except that …”

Lucien felt offended.

“Good evening.”

He got up to leave, but the Diva caught him by the sleeve of
his jacket and apologized. He regained his composure and carried on with his little locomotive tales.

“Locomotive literature or train literature or tram literature or rail literature or railroad literature or literature of the iron road, my writing displays similarities with the railroads that depart from the station that is essentially an unfinished metal structure, gutted by artillery, train tracks, and locomotives that call to mind the railroad built by Stanley. I discovered this one night, as I was taking a stroll on platform 10. You had a show, and your voice, long like the rain, reached me, impelled me to reflect, to faint, to explode, to curse myself, to come apart at the seams, in front of everyone.”

Requiem, interfering:

“That old Ventura, you gotta see him in his final film!”

Lucien:

“I realize that in my sentences I desperately seek the breaths of life that those trains have, the trains from here. The poise, the pride, the fury of a rabid dog, the dilapidation, and the rust they bear. I seek in my sentences the romance they exhibit and haul about. Anyway, I've had a weakness for railroads for a while now. I sought man, I found train. (Laughter) If it was up to me alone, I would spend my whole life in stations, savoring the passengers' voices, their comings and goings, the gliding, grating, droning of the boxcars, the atmospheres and ambiences peculiar to our brother diggers and students hungry for solitude.”

Requiem, losing his composure:

“That old Lino Ventura, you gotta see him in his final film!”

The Diva, so beautiful:

“I use recorded sounds that reflect my own. I was born on
a train, so my adopted mother told me. Train tracks, the road, train tracks, exile, you see what I mean? I have never been a talented singer. It was the sight of the station that drove me to seek the relics buried beneath my skin. Initially to satisfy my belly, for I required red wine, hams, and pieces of bread at all cost. Later there grew in me a kind of rage to devise my own genealogy.”

Requiem continued to talk, laughing away to scramble the conversation.

“
Maledetto Ferragosto
, his final …”

The Diva, hanging on:

“What do you want with me?”

Lucien, as if in a cloud:

“I plan to read and perform my texts over recorded railroad sounds, your recorded sounds. It will be a question of finding a creative space, me and my texts, you and your voice.”

The Diva:

“You don't say.”

Requiem, scared that Lucien would steal the show from him, weighed into the discussion:

“Whenever I step into a boxcar, I still see my grandfather and his forebears making poor guys like me work under a blazing sun. The iron roads appall me, the disgust you feel after having gone with a baby-chick who explains during the act that she is in this no man's land of existence because her life equates to the fifteenth commandment: you will eat by the sweat of your thighs — stay horny and persevere!”

Everyone knew that Requiem disliked any talk of the history of humanity, so to speak, since it reminded him of the many tales
regarding his origins. His childhood friends, with the exception of Lucien, harped on about how his mother came from Angola, how his father was a Greek ship-owner, and how his grandfather apparently lost his life during the construction of the railroad. He never tolerated allusions being made to his childhood. He became aggressive, abusive, called the diggers as witnesses, swore to teach you to mind your tongue.

He had opposed the Authenticity movement by renouncing his surname. In short, as he said himself, “To be rid of a veil that stops you peacefully enjoying your beer.” But why this complex?

The poem he had declaimed at the National University, as a manifesto for the ideology of rupture with the umbilical cord, had been written by Lucien. That day, the Law lecture hall was jam-packed with students carrying banners, yelling “Authenticity! Authenticity!” as Requiem reeled off his “Requiem For A Dead City:”

              
I am done with roots that bind me to lost forebears

              
in the bush and other cesspits of History.

              
I care little for a past that halts halfway.

              
May they leave me free to live the urgency of my fate!

              
May they leave me free to devise my solar system!

              
Who ever said I owe them a recompense come month's end?

              
I am malaria,

              
I am the tree that obscures the forest,

              
I shall not yield my fruits before the dry season.

              
Be free of it?

              
I revoke the blood tie.

              
I fell my family tree!

              
Enough of begging for a path now obsolete!

              
Requiem for insolence.

              
Requiem for a life with no preamble.

Was Requiem not ultimately Lucien's double? Distanced, thousands of miles from each other, by dramas, fissures, and follies, how did they manage to live under the same roof? Some wagging tongues were abrupt in their appraisal. They are children of the same father, whether they like it or not.

Lucien:

“These recorded sounds are historical monuments, works of literature, poems, tragedies. Through the rust and other elements, you can feel history, the history of peoples, the memory of migration.”

Requiem (running out of steam):

“Listen, Lucien …”

The Diva (joyously):

“I think your idea is brilliant!”

Requiem (almost angry):

“Lucien, can you do me a favor? Go call me that baby-chick, over there!”

Lucien held out.

“Just to read bits of my texts over the recorded sounds, your recorded sounds, which invite me into true debauchery, the debauchery of the mind, which has nothing to do (he stared hard at the Negus and emphasized the words) with your descents into vileness that drive me to ecstatic revolt.”

Requiem, disoriented:

“Lucien, can we talk about something else?”

The Diva grasped the Negus's ploy.

“Can you come over here?”

They stepped aside to converse. Requiem seized the opportunity to drink the soup and beer they had left. To appease his ire, he instructed the services of a baby-chick. They hurried toward the mixed facilities.

Lucien stirred us to jealousy. He annoyed us. All the girls held him in high regard. The waitresses and the busgirls whispered that he was a good sort. The mother superior lusted after him. The tourists wanted him to work with them at all costs, and paid his checks.

They came back from the facilities, sweating and laughing, the baby-chick with her crumpled little skirt.

“I feel relieved.”

Lucien and the Diva returned after nearly an hour of conversation.

Requiem let rip at his friend:

“What were you getting up to with our famous Diva?”

The Diva, ironically, to show her mettle:

“I love that! Come dance with your famous Diva.”

Inside the Tram, there was salsa.

“No thanks. I can't dance.”

How's it possible a guy that age could have difficulty jiving to beautiful music like this? And what's more, with such a supreme and beautiful creature as the Diva? What shame we felt! Unheard of since the history of humanity began! You're acting like we were in the Bible but we're not. The Negus stared at him. Anger and desolation in his gaze.

Requiem raised his voice:

“Come here! Come dance with me, or I'll smash your face in!”

The Diva spat on the ground:

“I won't sully myself.”

Requiem, insolent:

“Bitch!”

Lucien, lost in his texts: “So whenever I write, it feels like my age is reduced by half, or even fifteen, seventeen, perhaps thirty-five years. It feels like I am returned to the belly of my mother and therefore have no one to answer to. I forget, in turn, my ragged clothes and my tuberculosis and my setbacks and my old pairs of shoes.”

Be clear, dear Lucien, what does “returned to the belly” mean? Sink into depression? Refuse to munch the lovely dog kebabs with chopped pistachios? Flee the events that befall you? Not raid the Polygon? Live by sponging off others? That's crazy behavior, Lucien. You're lying. You've never been yourself since you trod the ground of the City-State! You've never been yourself since always!

He hiccupped and continued: “I write therefore I come … But unfortunately, my orgies are never eternal! My conscience always rouses me, disturbs me, tells me ‘Return to your text.' This is, I think, the most difficult stage in the chronology of a text, to return to it and this time not with the euphoria of a maize beer or even the attitude proper to a night of transgression, but with the honesty and probity of an honest family man.

“This is the moment you realize that the text is without onions, that the soup is excessive, that the carrots aren't cooked, that the lack of spices considerably affects the advent of a good cuisine.
You realize that a major extract is cheating, that such and such a sentence has stinging eyes, that the subordinate clauses are plundering the serenity of the rhythm, that the characters are wrecking their fate and dicing with depression, that the title lacks charm or, in the worst cases, that the story, shall we say the plot, shall we say the framework of the text, doesn't hold up and that the text must either be redone or else fed to the dogs and other scavengers of the Second Republic who, after having breakfasted, lunched, suppered, siesta'd, dined, and barbecued, wait, tongues hanging out, for the manna which shall fall from this heaven they have vilified, a musical score of madness.”