African Psycho

by Alain Mabanckou

  Tears in my eyes, I ran. In my hand I held a rock, determined to throw it at the first of them to show up.

  My adoptive family taught me tolerance. I was to offer the other cheek to the person who had just slapped me because this was how you did things and there was no debating God’s will, especially when it was written in black and white in the Holy Book.

  I was told that I would become a responsible man, a cultivated man, a fine man, because ignorance plunged human beings further into darkness whereas every concept learned brought them gradually closer to the light. I was then studious, or rather pretended to be. On certain evenings around six, with other kids, I would go to catechism, where a sister made it her business to save us from the error of our ways. Her face bore the scars of her tribe. The sternness lurking behind her gaze kept me from looking her straight in the eye. God inspired fear in me, and the paths that led to Him seemed to me tortuous indeed. I think it was worse than at school. This sister claimed she was “chasing” away our sins and opening us to the real life, the eternal life, for among God’s children there were no distinctions—small, tall, fat, thin, black, white, yellow, red: God couldn’t care less, she said. Yet every month we had to endure a thorough exam, first oral, then written. Down to the last detail, the sister with the scarred face would check whether we were absorbing God’s Word. What surprised me was that she held a long whip and did not hesitate to smack us when our memory failed us repeatedly…

  The People’s School was located a few hundred meters from my adoptive parents’ residence. They would drop me in front of the gate and watch me walk away with a school bag I held with the tips of my fingers. We lined up in front of the classroom and the teacher then called our names to take attendance. With the other kids making fun of my rectangular head, the teacher deemed it preferable for me to sit in the last row. Otherwise, those sitting behind me would throw paper balls that landed atop my shaved scalp…

  School? I was elsewhere, even if I basically knew that with application I would be able to distinguish myself from the other students. I pretended I didn’t understand anything for the mere pleasure of seeing our teacher linger over me and look at my rectangular head with indulgence. Surely he told himself that it was just an empty shell and that, for all his efforts, he couldn’t make it absorb anything that wasn’t there before. Me, I laughed about it on the way home—I was able to solve all these multiplications, divisions and fractions from memory, without using my fingers or little sticks made out of reed like the other students did…

  I was meant to leave this good family as well, but this time around, I will always remember, it was in the most unexpected and tragic manner. At least as far as my “adoptive parents” were concerned…

  I had just turned eleven. Given my unattractive appearance, you might think me three or four years older, no more. This family had an only son who was three years older than I and attended not the People’s School but a private school where the children of European aid cadres would go. Yet the rogue would spend his time outside with the big kids from the working-class districts and use me as a guinea pig for experiments he picked up from the street. Once his parents were gone, and when I refused to indulge his spoiled-child whims, he would whip me to amuse himself. Despite his age, he still wet his bed frequently, and he raised his voice in front of his parents. Whenever they cited me as an example, this only son would sulk all day and resist eating and going to school. To secure a gift his parents refused to buy him, he threatened not to wash for a week and defecate in his bed. The father would capitulate and beg him on his knees…

  So it was that one day he grabbed my shirt collar, pulled me into the bedroom we shared, and told me while waving a stick in the air:

  “Take off your pants. We’re going to do like daddies and mommies! You’re mommy and I’m daddy.”

  I had failed to notice that he had hidden a fake beard under one of our bunk beds. He put on the beard to look like his father and frowned his eyebrows to intimidate me.

  “Hurry up before my daddy and my mommy come back! You’ll see, it’s good and we’ll do it every day!”

  He was erect like a horse under his pants and suspenders. I could not escape: he was standing in front of the door and beating the floor with his stick like bailiffs at court announcing the arrival of a judge and the beginning of a hearing.

  I was trapped. The bedroom now seemed narrow and dark despite a feeble glimmer from an old bulb above our heads. I had to do something to get out of this situation. I don’t know how exactly, but an ingenious idea came to me, a way I could swing things back in my favor. I had to play along, I told myself.

  “You don’t know how to do it!” I said, trying to taunt him.

  “What?What are you saying?You crazy or what?”

  “No, you don’t know how to do it, that’s not the way it’s done.”

  “I do it with the big kids outside!” he replied angrily. “I’m tired of always being the mommy, today I’ll be the daddy, take off your pants, quick!”

  Hands in my pockets, I replied calmly:

  “Usually when daddies and mommies do this, the daddies must always close their eyes when the mommies take off their clothes. And then you have to turn off the light because it’s not good to see when you do that…”

  “How do you know these things, huh? You do this too?” he asked, surprised and disarmed by what I had said.

  “That’s how my daddy and my mommy used to do it, I swear,” I said while raising my right hand.

  “You’re lying, Baldy!”

  “No, I’m not lying…”

  “Yes, you’re lying! My daddy and mommy told me that you’re a picked-up child, and therefore you didn’t see your real daddy and real mommy do that!”

  “I did too!”

  “When, then?” he asked, defiant, raising his stick higher.

  “I was picked up, but only after my daddy and mommy died! I saw them, I swear!”

  “And how did you manage to see them do it?”

  “I hid under their bed.”

  The only son fell silent for a moment. I saw doubt seize him. Resigned and out of arguments, he lowered his stick.

  “Fine,” he said, “you’re right, okay! I’m turning off the light, turning my back and closing my eyes. But I’m counting to five! Take off your pants or I’ll whip you very very hard!”

  He turned off the light. I could still make out his silhouette in the doorway. As soon as his back was turned, I grabbed the stick he used as a whip by surprise. The other end was pointy. He turned around, felt for the switch in the dark. The light came back on, more intense than before. I had only a few fractions of a second to act.

  Thinking of the Zorro comics I stole from the bookstoreon-the-pavement outside the Duo movie theater, I attacked, holding the stick like a spear. Bull’s-eye. Immediately I heard the bad boy scream. “Baldy! Baldy!” He cried for help and groped for a cloth to wipe the abundant gooey liquid that oozed from the eye I had just pierced…

  I left this house and entrenched myself forever in the He-Who-Drinks-Water-Is-An-Idiot neighborhood. In the years that followed, I embarked on an adventure. I became aware that I had to fashion myself by trampling society’s rules. For days and nights at a time, I would hide near the shanties by the stream that cuts our city in two. Amongst the picked-up children, I went almost unnoticed. I had to carve a place for myself, to distinguish myself. But I never begged, thank God. Despair has its limits.

  So I had to keep myself busy, find an activity that allowed me at least to secure a meal every night. I ran errands for old bums who tossed me a few coins. I was deemed obliging, obedient. I didn’t speak much. These old folks didn’t even know my name.

  I no longer returned to town like the other kids who went there to steal apples, croissants and grapes from Score, the shop that catered to our city’s whites and wealthy. I disappeared from sight, sleeping wherever night caught me, and most often under the tables of our district’s little markets. I was at th
e mercy of the street, and later on, the gangs of picked-up children who were slightly older than me adopted me because I was fearless and cold-blooded. The group fed my enthusiasm. We shared the loot even when I hadn’t been in on the job. This was the solidarity of pariahs.

  Little by little, I imposed myself as a leader among picked-up children. People feared me after I told the story of my “adoptive brother’s” pierced eye. That was my argument to intimidate those who believed I needed to show them allegiance because they were my elders.

  From then on the group applauded my plans, and I was among the leaders for every job we thought up.

  I suppose my last adoptive family, about whom I haven’t heard any news in ages, kept the story quiet and refused to lodge a complaint. In these rich circles from the center of town, people are serious about being discreet.

  I may still resent these adoptive families, but I thank them all the same. Don’t get the wrong idea. I too have emotions, like everybody else, and human behavior can sometimes move me to tears. I thank these families because they pulled me out of the darkness of ignorance a little by teaching me how to read and write—in scattered little scraps, certainly, but scraps I was later able to piece together by myself thanks to the books I stole from the bookstore-on-the-pavement, in front of the Duo movie theater. I liked the comic-strip character Blek le Roc very much, with his impressive musculature and Herculean strength. In his adventures, this hero was accompanied by two other characters: Professor Occultis and the young Roddy. The former searched ceaselessly for the philosopher’s stone. He was endowed with uncommon intelligence. His heavy-set physique and elegantly trimmed mustache won me over. The young Roddy was a teenager whose face was peppered with freckles. He was the most fragile of the three heroes. Still, he managed to extricate himself from the most hopelessly entangled situations. I believed these characters were real and lived someplace where they devoted their lives to the defense of freedom, adventure and heroism. I started hating them the day I realized that there was a human being drawing them in France, that it was he who had them run throughout the world, and that their adventures were just a figment of his imagination…

  Zorro and Blek le Roc were not the only comic strips among these books—no. I am not about to cite all those I found fascinating. I can say, however, that the ones I read allowed me to travel, to go far, to see other horizons, and sometimes—such as in La Brute by Guy des Cars—to find out the manner in which criminals accomplish their deeds. I mention this book because I cried at the misfortune of this poor deaf-dumb-blind character unjustly accused of having murdered his spouse with a paper-cutter during a cruise…

  But wait! Don’t get the wrong idea. I also threw myself into reading what people call great literature, I did. To each his own. What I was looking for, personally, was action, fear, which I found above all in pulp literature. People said, however, that in order to be an educated man, you had to immerse yourself in the likes of Proust, Genet, Céline, Rousseau and a great many others of that ilk. How could I possibly buy these books? As a matter of fact, the priests at Saint-Jean-de-Bosco church caught me stealing the prestigious titles of the Pleiade collection a number of times. They prayed for me and asked me to confess. I stopped pinching these books because, after my confession, Father Mathieu lectured me for an hour then handed me, free of charge, a copy of the book I had stolen, accompanied by a pocket Bible.

  It wasn’t shame I felt, but rather the irony of it all, looking at Father Mathieu, with his big glasses, bald spot and scratchy voice…

  3.

  There are uncertainties I would like to address right away: my eclectic upbringing in the host families and the education I received in the street forged in me a disposition that bears some resemblance to mayonnaise gone bad. So it is that I can both hold forth in a language that some would deem correct, studied, and at any moment plunge into the most shocking vulgarity, especially when I start talking to myself before or after my dangerous deeds. At this point, I can no longer stop myself—I string together remarks, sentences, without controlling myself. I know a thing or two about coarse language. It may also be sweetened by the Holy Book readings imposed on me during my youth. You think you can rebel against these things, but a few stigmata remain forever. It can’t be helped…

  Yes, I love vulgarity. I claim it loud and clear. I love it because only it says what we are, without the hideous masks we wear by nature, which turn us into mean beings, hypocrites, ceaselessly running after decency, a quality I couldn’t care less about. I’m not the type who can control himself when someone comes after me in my territory. I’m not asking anything of anybody. All I want is peace and quiet in my native corner. Those inclined to judge me vulgar will be shown not to have understood a thing about my personality. Fundamentally, does this bother me? I have learned not to take people’s opinions into account anymore…

  Time really does go fast.

  A good many years after the heinous crime against my adoptive brother, and despite all the temptation, I had yet to attempt crossing the Mayi River to go live in the country over there, which was said to have been on my idol Angoualima’s itinerary. In truth, imagining that I had to follow the Great Master’s course to the letter, I was a hair’s breadth away from deciding to do just that. But it would have meant forgetting that this neighborhood, He-Who-Drinks-Water-Is-An-Idiot, is my life. It is my territory, a place I will defend until my last breath. Its honor is the reason I am fighting. Its image is dear to my heart. I know the inhabitants of this rat hole have a poor image in this country. But is it their fault? Do the inhabitants themselves sully this neighborhood? It’s easy to point the finger at us, to scapegoat us and do God knows what else. The problem doesn’t lie here.

  I must calm down.

  Still, you must understand: I don’t appreciate it when people come and defile this place. My life is this sordid little patch that the authorities look upon with chagrin and visit only at election time. Yes, this is where I grew up. This is where I happily dragged my skeletal legs and rectangular head. This is where I learned the sheet-iron and auto-body trade in the shops of old folks who graciously took me in until such time as my work became respectable in the eyes of the population. I’d fix the beat-up cars of the leading citizens of He-Who-Drinks-Water-Is-An-Idiot: military men, veterans, ministers’ mistresses and more.

  My plot of land? Let’s talk about it! I bought it with my savings, I swear, God be my witness.

  My house? Please. I built it myself, albeit with the help of a mason friend. And so what? Didn’t I pick up cement bags and handle a trowel by his side? That’s why I always say I built my house with my own hands. Same for the shop just out back.

  Do I have to stress that I have no flowery memories from my youth other than those of the soccer games with rag-balls?

  Yes, I have stolen, but with fewer repercussions than my idol, Angoualima. Was it because I heard people talk about him that I wanted to follow blindly in his tracks? I cannot answer this question. In everything he undertakes, man needs a model, a solid reference. As far as banditry and crime were concerned, who in our country could have held a candle to the Great Master Angoualima? I had no idea then, and have none still. So I bided my time, convinced that there was no rush, that someday things would happen by themselves. I could not commit astounding deeds at that time—my hands were not as large as they are today, capable of choking my potential victims. So I satisfied myself with small thefts here and there. Ambushes I set up for elderly people in the nocturnal confusion of He-Who-Drinks-Water-Is-An-Idiot’s dirty alleys. I snatched their satchels or wallets and ran through the neighborhood that no longer held any secrets for me. I took the money and ripped their IDs or threw them on one of the two banks of the stream that cuts our city in two. The next morning, congratulating myself, I listened to Radio Right Bank’s newsflashes announcing that this woman’s ID or that old man’s invalid card had been recovered…

  Nevertheless, just before I came of age, there were a few auda
cious acts that testified to the fact that I was acquiring more and more experience, and that I was now entitled to a change in status in our city’s underworld. The list of these acts is actually quite long, if I go back to the time when I associated myself with the picked-up children of He-Who-Drinks-Water-Is-An-Idiot. Some have hardly left a significant trace in my memory and there would be no justifying my dwelling on them. The ones that count for me are those I perpetrated alone, to the best of my knowledge and belief, without waiting around for a plan hatched in common, with roles divvied up according to a ringleader’s wishes.

  So then, from this point of view, I can say the most interesting offense in my time as a solitary bandit was without doubt the one I committed in the fancy neighborhood now called the Right Bank district by our current mayor. The victim I had chosen was Master Fernandes Quiroga, a mixed-race whose office as a notary* was located across from the Kassaï roundabout, in the center of town. This man was not just a notary; he was also active as a real estate agent. I can’t begin to tell you how much confusion this engendered. In our country, holding several jobs, even the most incompatible ones, doesn’t bother anyone. Fernandes Quiroga leaned on his clients, and they sold their property under pressure from him, when in fact they had originally come to him to leave this property to their descendents in a will, as is typically done. For our public servant, a notary’s deed was less lucrative than a transaction conducted with his realtor’s cap on.

  Three reasons had led me to resent this respectable man from the center of town.

  To begin with, he drove a new Mercedes with smoked windows, and I felt offended by his success, by the manner in which he showed it off to the rest of the population, which was rotting in extreme indigence. I had never touched the body or the engine of such a prestigious car.

  Should a vehicle of this German make be brought to our shop, it was always my apprenticeship master who took care of it himself. He did not conceal his pride and would try the vehicle out, parading in front of He-Who-Drinks-Water-Is-An-Idiot’s watering holes.