‘Michel, imagine if God gave the lame back their legs, would they be asking to be driven around? No, they’d want to walk! So thank the Almighty for your legs. He’d be disappointed if you didn’t use them!’
When I get to school, first I buy some doughnuts from the old Beninese lady, Mama Couao, who sells them very cheap to schoolchildren. I also buy some corn soup with the pocket money Maman Pauline or Papa Roger has given me. I sit down on the bricks lying here and there and eat as if there was no tomorrow. If Zéphirin comes up I’ll give him a bit because his parents often punish him by taking away his pocket money because he wouldn’t do the washing-up or got bad marks. After we’ve had our quick snack, I go into the big yard, walk across and enter an old three-storey building on the other side with a roof made of rusted sheet metal. The first years’ classroom is in this building, on the ground floor; the second years’ is on the first floor; the third years’ is on the second floor and the fourth years’ is on the top floor. So you can see who’s had to repeat a year because they stay on the same floor, and you can easily see who’s clever because each year they go up a floor. Once you get to the class on the top floor, the fourth year, you’ve won, because the Karl Marx Lycée is within reach, and one day I’ll go to that school, it’s by the sea, and I’ll like that, because I can watch the white cranes flying above us, moaning as they go.
In the classroom I sit in the row by the wall, next to the window. I sit down at the front desk with Albert Makaya, the son of the headmaster of the school. Louise is behind us, with Etienne and Zéphirin. Through the window I can see everything that’s going on outside. As soon as the birds come and sit in the flame tree in the middle of the yard, I turn my head without thinking. I forget I’m in class, that Monsieur Yoka, our geography teacher, is reciting the complicated names of all our rivers, like the Likouala-Mossaka, the Sangha, the Loufoulakari, the Loudima, the Louessé, etc. It was Monsieur Yoka talking about the rivers that made me drift off even further while I was listening to the birds. I see forests, grasslands, animals of every shape and size. I see the smoke rising off bush fires. I see peasants returning from the fields with sacks filled with yams and roots. It’s tough, their village is up high; they have to climb the hill carrying many kilos on their heads. And I write that in my exercise book, scribbling away, I’m afraid if I don’t write them down, these beautiful things will vanish like smoke, and I’ll forget them. I write about how the smoke meets the sky, but the wind blows the smoke away and the sky turns blue again, and I’m running, Michel is running, and I get to a clearing where Louise is waiting for me in a long white dress, with bluebirds circling her head.
I jump as Monsieur Yoka raps his metal ruler on my desk.
‘Michel, you’re dreaming again!’
Everyone laughs, but they won’t laugh when Monsieur Yoka asks a difficult question and I raise my little hand to give the correct answer and the teacher congratulates me:
‘Well done, daydreamer!’
Unfortunately, just as I start feeling proud, he adds:
‘Tell me, Michel, which little bird whispered the right answer in your ear?’
At this everyone laughs, from the front of the class to the back, even though it was me who smoothly recited that the River Louessé is a large tributary of the Niari with a basin of almost 16,000 square kilometres! They’re all laughing, but do they really get what that means? No. I don’t understand what I’ve just recited either, but because I said exactly what it said in the book I revised from at the weekend, Monsieur Yoka can’t contradict me, he has no choice but to say well done, then to cancel out the ‘well done’ by calling me a daydreamer …
Louise sometimes slips me little notes complimenting me. I never turn around because Etienne and Zéphirin keep an eye on everything, and they’re the first to laugh when I get called a daydreamer. In the end, though, it’s me Monsieur Yoka asks to be the leader when we prepare the presentation for next week. So, the teacher recognises that though I dream about birds, I can still produce the right answers, that they’ve been biding their time in my brain till the moment I wake them up and decide how to use them and generally show some intelligence.
I don’t care if the pupils now call me ‘daydreamer’ in the school yard. They don’t know that one of Louise’s congratulatory notes said, in her beautiful handwriting: My dream boy. She’d drawn two hearts, with a line through them. Which meant that when you’re in love, both hearts are astride the equator, which explains why people who can’t sit astride a horse fall off and hurt themselves …
Monday 21 March 1977
La Chine en colère
‘Michel, wake up!’
I rub my eyes, because I’m seeing Maman Pauline double, I might almost be dreaming.
I’ve slept in my clothes. I don’t know exactly when I fell asleep. Oh no, I do, actually, it was while I was thinking about the little pieces of paper Louise passes me under the desk in class to congratulate me when the others call me daydreamer.
I get out of bed and say to my mother:
‘I have to get washed first because—’
‘No, we mustn’t be late! Use the wash bag I gave you, there’s a flannel in there, you’ll be quicker.’
I go outside with a plastic cup full of water and the wash bag my mother bought me at Printania. Inside there’s a red toothbrush, some Diamond Enamel toothpaste, some Palmolive soap and some cotton buds.
I bet Maman Pauline came running into my room as soon as Papa Roger left the house, already wearing his work clothes for the Victory Palace Hotel, even though he could easily get changed there. He puts on his uniform before he leaves to show off. I don’t blame him, it’s a great uniform: a well-ironed white shirt, a black tie, a jacket and some brown trousers, black braids on the shoulders of the jacket and a fine cap, like the ones worn by the naval captains you see at the port in Pointe-Noire.
By my reckoning my father left the house around five thirty or six o’clock in the morning. Maman Pauline came into my room about thirty minutes later. She waited that long just in case Papa Roger came back because he’d forgotten his wallet or the keys to the house where Maman Martine lives, where he’ll sleep this evening with my brothers and sisters who wouldn’t be my brothers and sisters if we were European because we’re not blood relations and Papa Roger already had a family when he started chatting up Maman Pauline to get her to be his second wife. I’ve already mentioned that I often go to see Maman Martine too, in the Joli-Soir neighbourhood, and she treats me like one of her own children, as though I’d come out of her belly too. She knows how much I love little Maximilien and little Félicienne, who peed all over me. She also knows that Marius and I talk a lot because we’re the same age. When I talk to my little sister Mbombie she keeps a careful eye on me. Ginette is my favourite sister; Georgette, my baby sister, is a bit bossy with me, but it’s just her way of showing she loves me. When I’m at their house I always sleep in Yaya Gaston’s studio, he’s the oldest …
So now I’m relieving myself in the toilet, which isn’t a real toilet, just four bits of sheet metal put together so that nosy people can’t see the shape of us naked from out in the street and make fun of us.
I brush my teeth, then I quickly use the flannel that I’ve poured the rest of the water in my cup on to. I scrub under my armpits and also in the parts I won’t go into detail about here or people will say oh, Michel, he always exaggerates, sometimes he says rude things without meaning to.
I can already hear Maman Pauline calling me, saying it will be my fault if we’re late.
‘Get dressed quickly, and come into the living room, I need your help with something …’
What does she want me to do for her before we leave? I rack my brains, I can’t think. I stop and think some more. I pick out a pair of trousers and a wax-print shirt with a repeating pattern of Marien Ngouabi’s face printed on it. No one can say I don’t love the leader of our revolution. I remember to tie the bit of black cloth round my arm; after all, I paid a h
undred francs to the child criminals who exploit the death of presidents to get rich themselves. Someone would have to be really mean to say anything to me when I’m wearing this outfit, with my bit of black cloth, because when you think about it, even if someone who’s jealous of me saw me, they’d understand that I’m the boy in deepest mourning in the whole of Pointe-Noire, maybe in the whole of the Congo.
It’s the first time I’ve been out in these shoes, the ones the kids at school call La Chine en colère – ‘angry Chinas’. I’d nagged Papa Roger over and over to get him to buy them for me, because everyone was talking about them, and everyone had a pair. When my dad saw me taking them out of the box he shouted:
‘Are those Angry Chinas?’
He told me off, saying it was ridiculous to walk around in things like that. They look like the kind of shoes you’d wear in a retirement home for whites, and even white people would never wear something like that.
‘They looking like dancing shoes! Are you doing ballet, then?’
I disagree, because at school if you don’t have a pair of Angry Chinas they treat you like some country bumpkin, an idiot who doesn’t know how to dress like those swashbuckling types who go off to Paris and come back to the Congo in the long dry season and impress the girls. A craze for these shoes hit our country after everyone saw the film Enter the Dragon, where Bruce Lee wore Angry Chinas, white socks and a black-and-white kung fu uniform. Everyone in all the cinemas of Pointe-Noire cheered, everyone knew Bruce Lee would win in the end, because of his Angry Chinas, his feet moved so fast, if you blinked for just a second you might miss the moment when he throws a kick at the baddy, called O’Hara, who’s twice his size. O’Hara was a serious guy; with one blow he could split a brick. Even though he was smaller, Bruce Lee fended off all his attacks. Thanks to his Angry Chinas he could leap really high in the air with one leg out in front to kick his opponent and the other forming a triangle, to give him strength.
The gangsters of Pointe-Noire all buy Angry Chinas now, they’re good for fighting in and also for running away when you’re being chased by the police. My Angry Chinas are black like the ones Bruce Lee wore in Enter the Dragon, but I’m not going to wear them with white socks because at school the thing to wear is no socks and short trousers, to show your ankles. So I hitch up my trousers and copy the way Bruce Lee uses his legs. I feel really light, as though I’ve nothing on my feet. I love the way it works in real life as well as in films, even here in Pointe-Noire.
I come out of my room, intending to impress Maman Pauline, but in fact it’s the other way around, and she really scares me: she’s sitting there in the middle of the living room, with her back to me, with a wrapper covering her whole body. All I can see is her head, and she’s taken off the headscarf she wore for mourning.
‘Come over here,’ she says.
On the table is her handbag, and next to it, a bar of soap, some scissors and a packet of Gillette razor blades.
‘Shave my head …’
I start to get worried now. I love her hair, and I don’t want her to spoil it. Besides, she’s still got the braids that Célestine did for her not long ago. Usually they last for a couple of months, not a couple of weeks, before you undo them and do something different.
I can’t disobey Maman Pauline this early in the morning, or the whole day will go up in smoke, like a bushfire, starting in our living room and spreading till it reaches a ghastly climax at the Grand Marché, where she’ll yell at me in front of all the traders and customers.
I go behind her, careful not to knock over the bucket of water next to her.
‘What do I have to do, Maman?’
‘It’s easy: first you cut the braids with the scissors, then you put on the foam, then you get a Gillette razor to shave it cleanly, like when Roger shaves his beard. Careful not to cut me!’
I’m still hesitating, because I think maybe she’ll change her mind when she thinks about how ugly she’ll look with her bare skull showing.
‘What are you waiting for, Michel? Do you want to make us late? Come on, hurry up, stop daydreaming!’
I pick up the scissors and go, Chop! Chop! Chop!
Her hair falls all around her. I start to get the hang of it as I go. I do her whole head in under five minutes.
Maman Pauline runs her hand over it.
‘Good! Now wet my head and put the soap on it …’
I cup some water in my hands and pour it on to her head, then I rub the soap.
‘Now the razor! And be careful!’
It’s more difficult with the Gillette razor. I’m trembling a bit. I think of how my mother’s blood will flow if I cut her. I hold my breath, then take a big breath, then I’m off, I tilt her head back slightly, then shave, a little bit at a time, starting at her brow and working back towards the neck. A ball of foam full of hair falls on to the floor, making a noise like a great gob of phlegm from the back of someone’s throat.
My mother doesn’t move, her eyes are closed, she trusts me because so far I haven’t cut her.
Now her head is quite bare, just like a woman in mourning. She has a tiny scar by her neck; I never saw it before today.
‘I cut myself when I was ten and I was going to the fields with Grandma Henriette, in Louboulou. It was raining and I fell on the back of my head. I’ll never know how I managed to fall over like that; I just slipped on a mango stone. I woke up in the pharmacy in the next-door village, Moussanda. Oh well, that’s life …’
She runs her hand over her head again, from the front to the back, where the little scar is.
‘Well done, I think that’s fine! Anyway, my scarf will hide the scar …’
She stands up, takes off the wrap that covered her, while I sweep up around her. She washes her head with water from the bucket. It only takes a few minutes and she goes back into their room.
Ten minutes later she comes out again, dressed in black from head to foot. This time I’m even more surprised:
‘Maman, it’s too much, even the blind will see we’re really in mourning now!’
‘So what? Is this house not in mourning?’
Now she looks me up and down in turn.
‘What’s that you’re wearing? You look like a rickshaw boy from Zaire! What have you got on your feet! Honestly, what’s Roger been giving you?’
‘It’s the fashion at school, they’re called Angry Chinas and—’
‘Angry Chinas! Well, it’s too late to change them now; you’ll have to come as you are!’
As she leans forward to pick her bag up off the table her right foot knocks the bucket of water, which I haven’t cleared away yet. Fortunately she catches the edge of the table and stops herself falling, but her handbag falls instead. Loose coins roll out and scatter all over the living-room floor, with other things like the lock for the tin trunk she keeps her wraps and important papers in. Her little mirror breaks, just next to the pencils she uses to draw in her eyebrows. The notebook where she and Papa Roger write down the names of the traders who owe her money lands on the other side of the room, but as I go to pick it up something surprising catches my eye, just next to the notebook: a large, brand-new knife, which my mother hurriedly stuffs back into her bag …
The Bandas
From north to south and from east to west, all the borders are closed. So no one can get to other countries like Cameroon, Gabon, Zaire or Angola, where many traders buy their goods in bulk to sell back home. The few lorries you do see coming into the Grand Marché are only bringing in beef or mutton, because you don’t need to travel abroad to buy them, we have them here. On the other side they unload fruit and vegetables, brought from Congolese villages near to Cabinda. For the last few days people have had to buy low quality bananas. They don’t come from The Bandas, the village where the best bananas come from, and where Maman Pauline is the only person the peasants will sell to, because she pays cash and doesn’t try to confuse them by saying she’ll pay half up front then settle the rest next time she’s back. S
he doesn’t go down there empty-handed: she offers the peasants packets of cigarettes, toothbrushes, aluminium pots, wraps, salt and sometimes bottles of red wine. The peasants are always pleased to see her, and they give her a warm welcome, as if she was a close family member. I remember going there three times myself. The first time because Maman Pauline wanted to show them she had a child, I was still in primary then; the second time, because the chief of the village hadn’t seen me the first time and was a bit cross with my mother, and the third time was last year, when she was showing me and Papa Roger the plot of land the villagers had just given her. I must say, they really spoiled me, the first time, with heaps of presents: a school bag made from sheepskin, a gris-gris to protect me from being run over by a car on the way to school, and they made me eat some cat brains because they believe it makes you really clever and clears your mind when you have an exam. And there’s more: when I was in The Bandas I had to eat at the house of every peasant who does business with my mother because if I only ate with one of them the others would be sad and say Maman Pauline doesn’t love them, or that she loves some more than others. When you’re in business you should never upset the suppliers, or their sadness will get mixed up with the goods and no one will want to buy them. So my mother said to me:
‘Michel, they’re all going to want you to eat with them, and you mustn’t say no. You can have a bite here and bite there, just don’t eat your fill, and everyone will be happy.’
The Death of Comrade President Page 16