Tram 83 (6 page)
Authors: Fiston Mwanza Mujila
The image of his friend, Porte de Clignancourt, flitted through Lucien's brain a second time: “I've got the Festival des Francophonies en Limousin, the Tarmac and other Paris theaters, the contacts in Brazil. And what about you? Are you enjoying yourself with this guy shooting questions at you?”
He sighed.
“Do you have the time?”
A band from the Amazon, composed of Indians, readied themselves to go on stage. The interrogation continued. The man was surely someone influential. He wanted to know everything and was not to be offended. Who knows, perhaps his future Good
Samaritan? Good intentions can be found even in the lion's den. Each answer stirred his curiosity further.
“Married?”
“⦔
“Divorced?”
“No.”
“What line of work are you in?”
He hesitated to go on.
“I hold a bachelor's degree in history.”
The interlocutor slammed his glass down on the table and erupted into laughter. As if that weren't enough, he got out of his chair, took a few steps, asked the musicians to lower their voices, and pointed his finger at Lucien:
“Dear friends, you're not going to believe me: this man you see is a historian!”
General hilarity.
The whole Tram as one:
“Didn't you give a shit, or what!”
Then as a scattered choir:
“And you earn a living doing history?”
“Look what can happen by dint of imitating the tourists!”
“You study girls too, or just history?”
“You're an embarrassment to us, with your wallowing in art history!”
“I'll throw myself onto the tracks if dad insists I study history and stuff,” exclaimed a kid, barely ten years old, who was with his father.
He returned to his table and half mouthed an apology at Lucien,
who still didn't understand what had just befallen him.
“I couldn't help it. I just didn't imagine there were any brainy people left in the City-State. This country's been knocked flat, it's all got to be rebuilt: roads, schools, hospitals, the station, even men. We need doctors, mechanics, carpenters, and garbage collectors, but certainly not dreamers!”
“Do you have the time?”
The music had resumed with even greater intensity. Lucien had lost the courage to give the man who had just humiliated him a withering look. He did, however, wish to get himself off the hook.
“You can't do anything about a passion. But I'm not just a historian. I'm also a writer.”
A guy at a neighboring table butted in:
“Writer or historian, same difference.”
“I'm in writing, he insisted.”
“Writing. Writing. Writing.”
His interlocutor pronounced this word in a guttural voice. He remained circumspect, as if victim of an apparition. Lucien remained on his guard, for fear of being made a fool of a second time.
“I'm a writer but ⦔
“Young man, you are looking at Ferdinand Malingeau, director of Joy Train Publications.”
Lucien was speechless. He felt a kind of relief. The busgirls and the waitresses balked at bringing them their blasted beer, which, by the way, remained in the mixed facilities â
RULE NUMBER
94: reality of life, when you drink, you piss, and when you piss, it remains your beer in your toilet. Lucien recalled Requiem's
“I prefer to piss at home.” He wanted to order a beer but not a single pair of eyes fell on him. It required the direct intervention of Joy Train Publications to resolve the situation. Finally, the first beer. The busgirl came over, vexed. Slammed the drink down. Stood back, bottle-opener in hand. Several seconds. Made up her mind, and opened the merchandise. A single verse:
“Tip!”
Lucien took out a bill.
“Here.”
She snatched the money and turned her back without a word. The traffic grew thicker. Our Indian friends, performing an anthem against global warming, child labor in the mines, deforestation, and the poaching of tilapia, pythons, piranhas, and white rhinoceroses, sowed panic among the common people. The women dissolved into tears. The men â tourists and other dropouts taken unawares by the sad saga of existence â shook their heads in repentance.
Lucien swiveled his head in the hope of glimpsing Requiem.
“How long you been in the writing game?”
“Do you have the time?”
“Ten years.”
“What or who do you write about? Got a target audience? Expectations? How many copies? Any literary prizes? What genre?”
He felt trapped. Questions shooting from all sides. He hadn't even taken a sip!
“Anything you're working on?”
He had to answer in the hope of getting published by Joy Train.
“Let's just say a stage-tale that considers this country from a
historical perspective.
The Africa of Possibility: Lumumba, the Fall of an Angel, or the Pestle-Mortar Years
. It is highly likely that this text will be performed in Europe. Characters include Che Guevara, Sékou Touré, Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Lumumba, Martin Luther King, CeauÅescu, not forgetting the dissident General.”
The publisher ordered a glass of rum and some ice cubes. Comings and goings to the restrooms: single-mamas, baby-chicks, students, office workers, tourists, musicians, Pentecostal preachers, jugglers, ex-convicts â¦
“I'm no communist. I don't buy it. I know Lumumba is an emblematic figure of the independence of Congo-Zaire, but I feel that instead of Lumumba it's best to depict our own heroes, such as a resistance fighter who paid the price for this city, instead of getting bogged down in the history of Congo-Zaire. And as for âThe Congo for the Congolese,' leave that part of history to the dramatists of this country! Here, as in the Back-Country, there are surely men who have left a mark on their era. Leave these great men to their dignified repose! Turn your mind to texts that talk of railroads, mines, or I don't know what.”
“Let me explain ⦔
“Otherwise you restrict yourself to churning out an essay instead of blending genres.”
“I trained as a historian. I think, unless I am mistaken, that literature deserves pride of place in the shaping of history. It is by way of literature that I can reestablish the truth. I intend to piece together the memory of a country that exists only on paper. To fantasize about the City-State and the Back-Country with a view to exploring collective memory. Historical characters are
my waymarks. But baby-chicks, diggers, famished students, tourists, and ⦔
“I'm familiar with that view of things. We've already had enough of squalor, poverty, syphilis, and violence in African literature. Look around us. There are beautiful girls, good-looking men, Brazza Beer, good music. Doesn't all that inspire you? I'm concerned for the future of African literature in general. The main character in the African novel is always single, neurotic, perverse, depressive, childless, homeless, and overburdened with debt. Here, we live, we fuck, we're happy. There needs to be fucking in African literature too!”
Lucien made the most of his interlocutor's fervor to guzzle his first suds. As he raised his glass, he noticed the two girls from yesterday who were eyeing them up from afar. He attempted a friendly gesture, poor thing. The single-mamas took the gesture for a code, and came down to them without waiting to be asked twice.
“I'm interested in your stage-tale.”
The Amazonians left by the back door, having been begged by the busgirls, the diggers, the Pentecostal preachers, and the rest of the audience, who'd just wiped away their crocodile tears, to vacate the stage.
“You're a handsome pair. Good evening, for starters.”
The two girls got settled. A rap group set to blazing up the joint. The rappers, a cantankerous and disreputable bunch of ex-students, ex-rebels, and ex-diggers, screamed, barked, moaned, haggled, and jabbered.
“I'm going to organize a rehearsed reading. Joy Train Publications is honored to present ⦠what was the name of your stage-tale again?”
“
The Africa of Possibility: Lumumba, the Fall of an Angel, or the Pestle-Mortar Years.
”
“On this magnificent evening, Joy Train Publications are deeply honored and truly pleased to give you Lucien, a contemporary author whose work teaches us to overcome walls, train tracks, wars, and oceans, and which we shall publish one of these fine days.”
“You know ⦔
“I am Swiss, by my father and mother. Anyhow, you'd have found out sooner or later. I prefer to tell you this before any collaboration. To avoid possible confusion. All these whites you see here are not necessarily Swiss.”
Dreamily, craning his neck forward slightly, the man continued, in a hoarse voice like someone in a restroom stall who doesn't want to be disturbed:
“Some are even more African than you people. I mean to say, they love Africa.”
The pair of young ladies glared at each other, as did the busgirls and the waitresses. They possessed the same desires, the same powers, the same liberations, the same ardors, the same jealousies. The far-fetched rumors knocking about Transition Street, Sovereign National Conference Street, and Democratization Street confirmed the hypotheses according to which many men perished in the clashes of 1990, while others joined the military. Result: more women than men, over whom the girls with eggplant-breasts, the busgirls, and the waitresses fought tooth and nail.
“Do you have the time?”
The publisher questioned. The publisher recounted. The publisher explained. Lucien, who already saw himself on the shelves
of a library, didn't even sip his beer. He got out his notebook, wrote his rubbish.
“How did you guess I'm not from around here?”
“Very easily. Evening, sir. May I sit here? And then the tip you gave the girl. In here, you just plump your ass down. Period!”
“You seem absorbed by your interview!”
“These girls friends of yours?”
They introduced themselves, brusquely.
The rappers continued their ranting.
“Do you have the time?”
The chitchat continued for quite a while. The two girls, who pulled all sorts of faces, quieted down. “Hot water always cools in the end,” as Requiem said, quoting a Zairian musician.
RULE NUMBER
17: don't lose your nerve in front of our girls, they've got no alternative but to grovel; the latest statistics confirm what we all know: there are more girls than us, fancy footwork, fancy footwork, fancy footwork. Malingeau bowed out with the carnival. Every Saturday, the Brazilian tourists improvised a carnival that visited the liveliest spots of the City-State.
“I love the carnival! Monday, same time, to talk about your reading, and doubtless the publication.”
“Do you have the time?”
Meanwhile, the musicians of the International Congo Society, with their dreadlocks, polished shoes, colorful suits, mechanical gestures, and broken French. Lucien stayed with the girls, discussing love, the songs hummed by the guys whose backs buckled as they built the railroads, baby-chicks, miners trapped by cave-ins, easy money, New Mexico, Los Angeles, Dallas, Philadelphia,
Brooklyn, Lagos ⦠His tiredness, his nausea, his worries had disappeared. The publisher embodied hope, the start of something. The two single-mamas congratulated him on his show that was now in sight. Astrid escorted a feller who had bawled his eyes out as the Amazonians moaned on. He and Ãmilienne crossed the train tracks, all loved up, and made their way along the main road to Vampiretown, groping each other as they went. If bliss had a name, it would be called Tram 83.
STRATEGY MEANS RESOLVING A GIVEN SITUATION INTELLIGENTLY
.
Out front of the building, a salsa atmosphere reigned. Young women in bloom badmouthing Christelle. Kids playing hopscotch. Teenage boys recounting their first sexual experiences in whispered tones. Dogs, cats, chickens, wandering goats. There is nothing bad whatsoever about relentlessly pursuing a baby-chick or playing hopscotch or chatting between buddies. But doing it at three in the morning denotes amateurism for people supposed to wake at four so as not to miss the one and only train that crosses the City-State. He walked past them with the girl. They haughtily expected a greeting from him. There's no age for arrogance. Lucien blurted out “morning” and “evening” to several, but they did not reply. Lucien had hardly been expecting a warm welcome. If he'd made the first move, it was merely as a formality. But the kids sulked because they'd detected from his nonchalance that he wasn't from around here. They couldn't tolerate a guy showing up at the building with girls, when half the building's population
was composed of girls waiting â like one waits for Christ, pointed out Requiem â for a gentleman suitor.
Light in the apartment. Requiem was already back. He lay, convulsing, on the couch, complaining of awful pains in his abdomen. He groaned, voice hoarse from getting plastered or from arguing with the diggers he employed. Between two grimaces, Requiem, known as The Negus, looked Ãmilienne up and down.