Tram 83 (18 page)

The Negus, insolently, while lighting a cigarette:

“Bitch!”

“Are you a little shy?”

“Want to dance with me?”

The Diva is like a witch. When she looks at you, not only are you unable to tolerate her gaze but you also feel like she's acquainted with your life, that she's more acquainted with it than you, that she knows how you'll answer, with which baby-chick you slept last night, where and at what time you defecated, for which tourist you're digging. It feels like she's even influencing your answers.

“It's just that I'm a little tired.”

She persisted:

“Humor me, Lucien.”

“Bitch.”

“Please …”

“Bitch.”

For several minutes we remained with the smoke and rage of the Negus, the cowardice and indifference of Lucien writing his nonsense, the beauty and uneasiness of the Railroad Diva, inhaling despair and things impossible to express.

“The bitch.”

Suddenly, screams from inside the Tram, mixed with crying. We rushed inside.

A press of people all about and within the mixed restrooms.

The bodies of two young baby-chicks lay on the wooden floor, pale and lifeless. Two diggers taking advantage or attempting desperately to give mouth-to-mouth. The tourists with their telephones alerting ambulances that came no more, the waitresses requesting their tips, the musicians continuing to play, the baby-chicks quarreling over a tourist.

“Do you have the time?”

“You look like my ex-boyfriend.”

“Give me five shillings.”

“Come, and I'll teach you some tales for grownups.”

“With or without rubbers.”

“Take me to Warsaw.”

“I've got a silicone bust.”

“I'm not like the others who peddle counterfeit feelings. With me, you'll never forget it!”

The rumors. Three versions: 1) They were knocked up, they had taken pills to abort, the perpetrators of these knockings-up were second-rate tourists. 2) They had taken a deadly poison to say no to the existence they were condemned to lead. 3) They had gone to see a soothsayer to acquire the gift of enticement
and he had instructed them not to sample any dog kebabs; yet the entire Tram had seen them snacking on dog, washed down with tequila and tropical vodka. Account favored by the mercenaries who carried away the bodies while chairs, trash bags, shovels, picks, tables, and bottles flew. Psalms 12:45. And yet the night had started well! Injured by a projectile, Lucien under a table, in his notebook, wrote: “Nebulous bodies drift through the dust of their toilet-less lives.”

25.

DIVA: A LOCOMOTIVE LIFE, A REBEL AGAINST THE GALES OF HISTORY AS WELL AS THE GEOGRAPHY OF LOSS. NIGHT OF ALCOHOL: THE DIVA IS A WOMAN WHO GIVES MEN OF MANY NATIONALITIES THE CHANCE TO LEAVE THEIR BODIES FOR THE SPACE OF A TREMOLO
.

She bore a curious resemblance to Maria Callas, in her face as much as in her performance and vocal range. Her captivating voice drove the tourists to inextinguishable raptures. Her hairstyle. The tremolo of her laugh and her warmth for the audience. Her eyes that flickered as if she were delving into the pasts, the rackets, the cave-ins, the raids on the Polygon, the long and slow desires to consecrate cults and monuments to the Merovingians and other lecheries: desire to fuck in the dark, transgression raised to the rank of the noblest virtues, transactions and other partnership agreements sealed between two vodkas, merchandise, kebabs that in a certain era were called still lives, secondhand fish dating from the 1990s and shifted from one cold room to another, from one country to another, from one continent to another before winding
up in the grubby bar-restaurant-brothels of the City-State, despite the Dissidence declaring it a beacon of national reconstruction and the fight against famine, a revolution of modernity, and so on and so forth.

She had arrived in the City-State almost by chance. She thought she'd reach Nigeria, with the hope of working in a large hotel in Lagos, as she liked to recall in the introduction to each show, but fate had decided otherwise. She'd realized she could only survive in this hardboiled town thanks to her vocal cords, and had attempted the impossible, with such dedication that she made it through. At the start of her career, she was the laughing stock of the Tram — Little Red Riding Hood they called her. Then came the recorded sounds, then her cheery songs, which conferred a certain happiness, then a certain international recognition. What was her ancestry? Her face, Asia — so Thailand, Cambodia, or even India, maybe Pakistan. How did she manage to speak forty-eight languages including Romanian, Etruscan, German, Russian, Wolof, Polish, and Amazigh? Something of the gypsy, or baroness, about her, a sort of fallen bourgeoisie, or pleb seeking modernity, with the appearance of a peacock to crown it all.

The tourists who meddled in her genealogy attempted to win her favor with their beers, luxury cars, villas, mines.

“You are radiant in that lush green dress! Would Madame, or is it Mademoiselle, like to keep us company?”

“Most kind.”

She tactfully declined their offers. Diva! The Diva, the Diva! yelled the Tram, the whole of Tram 83, as one, then as a scattered choir.

No girl in living memory had achieved as much success as this young woman. Fights broke out before and after each concert. Everyone claimed she came from their country of origin. Everyone swore she was their sister. Every man wanted to end up in her bed.

26.

LUCIEN AND MALINGEAU: A USELESSLY IDIOTIC PAIR
.

You can bet Lucien was the only person not to feel the weight of the crisis caused by the dissident General. Each time his erection failed him, the General closed the mines. He could deprive us of excavating for two weeks whenever he was incapable of satisfying the baby-chicks in his teeming harem. His caprices affected the boozing at the Tram. Sour faces all round: the waitresses and the busgirls, the baby-chicks, the mercenaries, the slim-jims, the desperados, the second-rate tourists.

A spoiled child, fed and lodged by Requiem, what else did he have to do but produce those lines that annoyed us so, as he filled his notebooks with them, even though the situation smelled of trouble? Passing a train disgorging its load, he ran into Mortal Combat, who had merchandise to deliver and greeted him.

“Evening, sir.”

“I'm no sir.”

“What you up to?”

“I like to meld with the sounds of our trains. A health walk.”

“Ah! Well
we
don't go walking without purpose. We dig, we delve, no downtime for us! It even depresses me that individuals who are supposed to be busy indulge in this activity that offers nothing in return!”

He raised his eyebrows.

“I'll leave you to your daydreaming.”

“Where you off to?”

“To the Tram. A beer. Maybe a session with a baby-chick.”

Lucien stopped to write. By which time Mortal Combat had crossed the rails.

“Wait for me.”

He caught up to him, out of breath.

“I've got a work session at the Tram, with my publisher.”

“Got a cigarette?”

“No.”

He took out his notebook.

“Wait up, just one paragraph.”

“You don't smoke, you don't screw, you don't eat dog, you don't raid the Polygon, you don't deliver merchandise, you flee the girls, you don't take liquor, I wonder what you do in life!”

Instead of getting annoyed, retaliating, jumping on Mortal Combat, he simply gave a little smile. What a man!

“Do you have the time?”

“What do you want? Haven't you heard about this crisis!”

In front of the Tram, they were waylaid by a bevy of girls, full makeup, dressed like the circus.

“Clear off!”

Lucien stopped to apologize for what he felt were far too
harsh words to be directed at these young people. Mortal Combat stopped too and shoved him with his shoulder.

“I can understand why Requiem takes you for a space alien.”

They went in.

The Tram was so full that the customers spilled out down the railroad line. The Diva was performing Piaf over her endless prerecorded sounds. Which pleased Lucien, who blurted out his idea, even before taking a seat:

“We are planning a duet.”

The publisher sighed.

“This girl has nothing to teach you.”

“It's just an idea, nothing more!”

“Her crocodile voice disgusts me.”

He didn't eat dog, the publisher. He ordered some for Lucien. But the writer canceled it.

“I'd prefer a bottle of beer. Not hungry enough.”

Back in the day, one hundred and ninety-three dogs a week were slaughtered in the sector of Hope Mine alone. A period when the American organization Save The Dogs In Africa estimated that thirty-two percent of dog was eaten in Vampiretown, forty-five percent in the Carbonades district, and twenty-three in South Camp.

They had come with German shepherds trained to understand and carry out everything they were told, in order to spread awareness of the dog issue, forgetting that, with a few exceptions, all the meat in the City-State came from dead dog and horse. It was said that these German shepherds could count from one to ten, that they walked on two legs, that they whispered lullabies, that they
could switch on a television, that they knew how to make coffee, that they could read, and write. The same sources intimated having glimpsed them with their masters in the quarries for business dealings. The tourists from the American organization Save The Dogs In Africa were crazy about the Tram.

Requiem arrived with a flag of an Eastern European country.

The busgirls brought the drinks.

“Tip.”

We learned that one night some baby-chicks who had been conspiring with the diggers had spiked the Americans' drinks with particular roots that send you to sleep, and once they'd been rendered incapable of lifting so much as their little finger, the girls grabbed the keys to their apartment, their clothes, their cell phones, their dogs — in short, the kidneys with mushrooms that twenty-four hours later were being eaten at the Singapore club-restaurant and for a brothel breakfast at the Exquisite Pleasures of the Lonely Griots, on platform 17 of the station whose metal structure was essentially … Without greeting us, the Negus stuck his fingers roughened by a life of debauchery into his neighbor's dish. Mortal Combat joked that his fingers merited a prize of some sort: they had entered every place a finger could intervene …

“Not too cooked.”

The Americans lodged complaints that went unheeded. How can you identify three baby-chicks in a town that has a thousand? There was talk of diplomatic relations getting all fouled up if the criminals weren't found.

They kicked up a huge fuss, before taking a train for the Back-Country, where they arrived without luggage; a stunt pulled,
so it was said, by the same diggers, who were surely digesting those German shepherds with mushrooms, followed by a vodka and a round of pleasures of the underbelly at the closest Paradise cathouse, masterfully managed by Mother Eugenia, Christelle's paternal aunt.

“How are my characters getting on?”

“Not bad. I have succeeded in reducing them by half.”

He handed his publisher a manuscript, which he flipped through as quickly as possible.

“I can see ten characters here; what the hell are the eight others doing? I told you to turn out a text with two characters!”

Laughter from Requiem.

“But, sir, the last time I saw you with my text, remember what you told me: reduce the twenty characters to ten and I'll publish you! It's what I've attempted by removing a good chunk of the story.”

“Listen, Lucien …”

“But, sir …”

He gingerly leafed through the first few pages.

“Remember, sir …”

“You there,” said the Negus to the publisher, “I came for the affair in question.”

A horde of baby-chicks.

“Gentlemen, need some company, to make you forget your women who lack initiative and creativity …”

At Tram 83, it was impossible to converse without being interrupted! What with the crisis and the confrontations that saw us rowing with each other, the baby-chicks had become more
aggressive and demanding, going as far as tugging you by the shirt. “And what are we going to eat if you insist on keeping to your little selves?”

“Go away!”

“Give us a hundred.”

“Do you have the time?”

A busgirl arrived with Requiem's bottle.

Lucien took out his notebook, wrote: “They vitriolically demand their rights and obligations, these girls, but beyond their wrath, you feel they don't care about the future, that they live a life of luxury: the proof is in the branded clothes they slip into, and their lips, gilded like a joy to entice our own. I wonder how they get by. The crisis lingers. They complain but end up drinking, playing poker, laughing, singing, vaunting their silicone breasts, scolding the second-rate tourists despite the latter's animosity. Does a more dressed-up poverty exist, or is poverty a supreme joy in disguise?”