Tram 83 (7 page)

“Your day?”

“Good. Very good, actually. I met a publisher.”

“A publisher?”

“A certain Ferdinand Malingeau.”

“That bastard!”

“You know him?”

“Maybe.”

Lucien and Émilienne wanted to enter the bedroom. But Requiem was finagling. By dint of climbing aboard those wretched trains, man becomes an animal, thinking only of satisfying the pleasures of the underbelly.

“Hey, Lucien.”

Requiem writhed about for a good while longer, his eyes fixed on the little haversack that never left him. To his great despair, Lucien knew nothing about either the contents or the precise significance of the hunting-bag. “This bag is a fragmentation bomb,” sniggered the Negus. In his moments of hysteria, the Negus was fond of saying that his haversack imbued him with the power to reinvent the system. He wasn't going to stop, now that things were going so well. That would be to misjudge him. He made some fortuitous comparisons with Moses' staff. The baby-chicks said that
Requiem's haversack was stuffed with pictures of naked tourists.

“Can you go get me a can of beer? My head's killing me.”

He rolled his eyes shriveled up by the dust that covered Hope Mine.

“Which beer?”

“Any.”

Lucien went out.

He had no idea what the Negus was up to. The elevators had stopped working. He tore down the stairs, braved the wild-eyed gaze of the young women from the building who were commiserating with Christelle and cursing those bastards who brought girls back to the building even though the building was swarming with girls of all ages, found a store, climbed back up the stairs, not without difficulty since he had to shake off Christelle, whom he ran into in the stairwell and who spun him a tired tale.

“You know you have your own particular way of viewing life.”

“See you tomorrow.”

“Do you love me?”

He had to be rid of her as quickly as possible.

“Maybe.”

He sensed something bad. A long feeling of fear and sadness. Perhaps Requiem was breathing his last. He reached his terminus, exhausted by the errand. Requiem had underestimated his adversary. He said he'd take fifteen minutes, but Lucien had done the essential in a few fractions of a second. He pushed open the door. Nobody in the living room. He heard a sort of noise drifting from the bedroom. He walked to the door, put his ear right up to the doorframe then looked through the keyhole. Requiem and
Émilienne, inverted on the bed, which was creaking in a decrescendo. Lucien went back out with the beer, poured it down the stairs, cursed the day he was born, and set off down a little street at random, alone and feeble.

8.

UNFAIR COMPETITION: YOUR NEIGHBOR SELLS DOUGHNUTS; YOU ALSO START SELLING DOUGHNUTS; YOU EVEN DABBLE WITH BLACK MAGIC TO NAB ALL HIS CUSTOMERS
.

Two days after the incident, Lucien came across Émilienne, who was waiting for him with open arms as if nothing had happened.

“Why?”

“I thought you'd intercepted the signals.”

“You shouldn't have given in.”

“You left me alone with him.”

“Well, you're not my wife, after all.”

They sat down. The dozing waitresses began to put on their makeup.

Unfair competition.

9.

TRAM 83: BY DAY AS BY NIGHT, ETERNAL IN ITS SPLENDOR OF A PARADISE GOING TO HELL IN A HANDCART, WITH THE CRUMMIEST CUSTOMERS AND THOSE WHO CHUCK THEIR FORTUNE OUT THE WINDOW, SYMBOL OF A SOCIETY IN PERFECT HARMONY, INTERMIXED, INTERMINGLED, CARTE BLANCHE TO MENDELIAN CROSSBREEDING, FORCED INFATUATIONS, PREMATURE EJACULATIONS
.

The reading-appearance called “Prophecies from Before Dawn” was set for a Saturday night around eleven. The guy entrusted with raising awareness of the benefits of literature entrusted it to another guy who entrusted it to another guy who entrusted it to another — suffice to say, it was the shoddiest sort of awareness-raising. The audience, who had not received the lowdown on this event, took Tram 83 by storm as was their custom.

The evening commenced gloomily, following the cave-in of an underground gallery in a diamond mine. The news spread by word of mouth. Everyone knew the diggers who'd just been engulfed by the earth. All fifteen of them would end their day, which started
with the crow of the cock, the angelus bell, or the fatwa from the minaret opposite, by rushing aboard the train, snubbing the students, and fetching up at the Tram, where they would clink glasses, entice the single-mamas, head off in foursomes to make love in the mixed facilities, sweat like pigs, burst into laughter, insult the busgirls, dance the polka, peddle bad news around, converse with the tourists, smoke ganja, masturbate openly, buy everyone a round, battle each other at Russian roulette, bark out songs their grandfathers and great-grandfathers would strike up while digging out the same mines, carting around pneumonia and other yet-to-be-classified diseases, share dog kebabs, start fights, have a go at the musicians, and split the same way they showed up, dirty, irascible, cocky, ebullient, and contemptuous. They spread havoc but were cherished all the same. The rumors grew increasingly confused, giving way to an indescribable muddle. According to reliable sources, they'd been searching through gravel, found a concentrated diamond deposit, and followed the beast without covering their asses. It had happened late morning. Six bodies had been retrieved from the rubble, including that of Boubacar, Boubacar who threatened to hang himself each time his mother forbade him to head down the hole. Boubacar had escaped more than eight cave-ins. The last but one earned him the nickname Lazarus. According to the talk in Tram 83, Boubacar had emerged unscathed from a cave-in that had taken a huge number of human lives. The same talk related how he had apparently eaten the raw flesh of his colleagues who had died on the spot. They'd been entombed for four days and four nights, and Lazarus was the only one to emerge from the filth. One hundred and fifty-six people
perished, including the baby-chicks and slim-jims who'd gone down to lend a hand. Baby-chicks are girls aged twelve to fifteen who prostitute themselves in the quarries, walk in single file, and don't hesitate to band together and alert the soldiers should a customer refuse to pay the agreed rate. The slim-jims are barely adolescent boys who toil as casual laborers: extracting, carrying, and washing the gravel to separate out the diamond crystals.

It was the month of December. This explained everything, as cave-ins quintupled as Christmas approached. “The witch doctors set traps to get meat to gorge on and blood to guzzle during the end-of-year festivities,” summarized the Negus, his hand down his pants. The fifteen deceased were operating fraudulently in the Polygon of Hope Mine. The dissident General didn't authorize anyone to excavate except for tourists, his biological family, and his closest associates. He had proclaimed himself “Father of the Nation.” He rejoiced at these cave-ins, which he blamed on divine sanction against us his children who transgressed the word of the “Father.” Truth be told, the whole of the City-State rejoiced when the earth devoured. Cave-ins cause considerable damage but allow the stone to grow, whispered the sages of Tram 83. In the days following a cave-in, the stones could be gathered everywhere, from the Tram to the station whose metal structure… and from the brothels to the Cuba Club.

Outside, baby-chick poetry.

“You are my prince charming, I feel like cuddling you, I'm super horny, randy as hell, take me by the arm and let's travel far away from here, to Perugia, I want to see Nantes, that old slaving port, for I'm your slave, chain me up for life, take me by the arms,
let's go, I want to see the port of Marseille …”

The tension ratcheted up every ten minutes. Bottles were deflowered by the dozen to drown the bitterness and disgust at living in a rotten world. The single-mamas positioned themselves to get a good view of the clients. The students tackled the latest news by the light of Marx and Engels.

“Do you have the time?”

The waitresses and the busgirls demanded their tips with the penknives they dug out of their brassieres. The slim-jims and the baby-chicks lent their services. Comings and goings throughout the Tram.

An overexcited Pentecostal preacher announced the construction of a railroad that would link the City-State with Northern Ireland and serve to transport the stones and many other types of merchandise. All conversations ended with train tracks and the discovery of a mineral deposit. The tourists suggested a peaceful march. Everyone invented a kinship with the deceased. The fact that it was they who had attempted to burn down the Tram on three occasions was quite forgotten.

“Foreplay depends on the tourist, in my view. Is he good-looking? Does he have money? Does he buy rounds of beer for his friends? Does he eat dog cutlets?”

The audience expected nothing but music. But the guy entrusted with soothing the doubts of this overly capricious clientele was himself finding it hard to stomach a reading at Tram 83. To entertain the raging crowd, he summoned a band to perform a few deep-frozen classics from the Cuban revolution. The audience learned that he himself had traveled from Cuba to fight alongside
the Ethiopian army during the Ogaden War. The final song rattled on about the Cuban-Ethiopian offensive of early February 1977, followed by a second, unexpected offensive in which the musicians and he had taken part. The audience learned that after these hostilities, they had stayed a while in Somalia, a country they had attacked two years earlier. And then the rush triggered by the mines had driven them to cram aboard the first train departing for the City-State.

Lucien arrived a quarter of an hour before the show, and entered via the back door, fear knotting his stomach. “They are not here to savor your poetry.” — He received a faceful of advice courtesy of the Tram's owner — “Emotions are running very high at the moment, you know, what with the cave-ins. They'll be looking to drag you onto the rails. Prepare yourself for the worst. Our only concern is that they fuck and get drunk like they're used to. You're on your own.” Jammed into in a brightly colored jacket, the publisher chortled his cheeriest laugh. It was his first reading since he'd arrived here from a speck of land in the pacific oceans, they whispered in the mixed restrooms. His right hand resting on Lucien's shoulder, he rambled on about his passion for the trains serving the City-State.

The minutes crumbled away. The bards of the Revolution (who were resigning themselves to not leaving the stage) started playing their same repertoire all over again. The audience, who knew every song by heart, showed their enthusiasm. Requiem, sandwiched between two baby-chicks, cheered the resistance. The publisher, the police officers dispatched for the occasion, and Lucien himself, who promised to read just a quarter of the text, debated endlessly.
Following the cave-in, suggestions that the city be put to the sack fed every conversation. The comings and goings to the facilities increased significantly. The single-mama-chicks cast their nets and hooks into the crowd. The waitresses, the busgirls, and a few single-mamas too sure of themselves glowered at each other.

“Foreplay is not essential.”

“I don't like banks. That's just my opinion.”

“Do you have the time?”

Meanwhile, he feverishly scribbled a few lines in his notebook: “They think only of satisfying their belly and their underbelly. The dogs bark, the trains loaded with gold bars move on. They'll wake up one morning and realize the City-State no longer exists. The City-State will be a distant memory, the vestige of a … Even now, the City-State exists only in name. The heavens belong to the higher deities and the earth to the tourists and the dissident General as they excavate without breaking a sweat. What will they do when they no longer have their country and their minerals that sprout like wild mushrooms?”

It was not until two in the morning that they succeeded in convincing the assembled company of the necessity of literature in a nightclub.

“Do you have the time?”

The publisher introduced the event, championing this writer he had discovered in “the wreckage of this city that is losing its greenery when it would be better off opting for a behavior worthy of a modern city. Lucien is a supremely talented author. For the sake of the future, your future, back this man, invest in him.”

Lucien stepped forward to take the floor. He remembered his
last time on stage: Back-Country, applause. That show had later cost him a seventeen-month suspended sentence, with a two-year ban on practicing a profession, for aggravated assault, breaching national security, and planned and systematic incitement to revolt. He extracted his texts from a portfolio. He took a serious stance. He opened the ball after having requested a minute's silence in memory of the victims. He was trembling like a dead leaf. He emphasized certain words, raised his voice. He hadn't counted on the audience trying to trip him up. One minute too many, one sentence out of place, and he'd find out what they were made of. Which wasn't long in happening, as the imprecations began to rend the heavens.

The whole Tram as one:

“Get off, Lucien!”

Then as a scattered choir: