African Psycho

by Alain Mabanckou

  “You’ve heard correctly: it’s over, this show! I no longer want to hear this old fart of a professor whose breath stinks when he opens his mouth to pronounce my name. What is this? Who do you think I am? So now his Italian school is going to explain what I, me, am doing?”

  “No, mister Angoualima. What’s more, these were examples the professor drew from white criminals, whereas you, mister Angoualima, you are not white and…”

  “The show is over! You may have saved your shit journalist’s head, but as far as your testicles and your thing are concerned, it’s not all in the bag yet, you see what I mean, journalist of my ass? I hope you’ve had children already. I’m hanging up!”

  There was an icy silence on the air.

  Outside I saw people running as one herd from their plots of land, hanging on to their transistor radios. In a matter of seconds, my intervention had gone all around the city, the country and the country over there, and I was convinced that Angoualima was listening to me.

  When the end theme music of Listeners Speak Out came on, I could not hold back a victorious cry. I wondered where this temerity and self-assured speaking manner had come from. I was more than inspired that night.

  All the national press and even that of the country over there spoke about my phone call, but it was the real Angoualima who benefited from it.

  To this day, whenever this episode is evoked in the press or mentioned as part of our national radio’s collection of howlers, my phone prowess is credited to the real Angoualima. And given that no one in the country has ever heard my idol’s voice, people believe that his timbre is the one I achieved that Sunday by wrapping the telephone receiver in part of my shirt…

  Why didn’t the Great Master react to all this with the quickness he is known for? He never gave any additional news of himself. I wasn’t going to keep shadowing him all my life.

  In truth, I was becoming increasingly convinced that a page of our criminal history was being turned.

  What followed would prove me right.

  Angoualima was forgotten for at least two years, until the day when the national press and that of the country over there received an audio tape with these obscene words, “I shit on society,” along with a letter in which my Great Master described where his body could be found after his suicide.

  People first thought it a practical joke, a trap. Our television and that of the country over there, which had dispatched correspondents, thus tread very carefully toward the wharf, not far from the wild coast, and to their amazement discovered the body of a small man, lying down, arms crossed, eyes shut. He had six fingers on each hand and a harelip. His skull bulged in the back and his eyebrows were bushy. He had scars on his face and an old ram’s goatee. The former members of the ICA recognized in him the dirty individual who had shown up several times in their office, back in the day.

  Before dying, my idol had drawn a circle around himself, as if to explain that the loop had been looped, that the snake had bitten its tail…

  Such is the image our country and the country over there have kept of my idol Angoualima, the man with twelve fingers.

  His photographs are still being sold clandestinely. The police don’t think twice about locking up those who buy them or take part in this distasteful trade. The members of the musical group the Brothers The-Same-People-Always-Get-To-Eat-In-This-Shitty-Country all spent time in prison after their hit, which was produced in Europe but banned in our country and which young people could listen to thanks to Intercontinental Radio…

  The Girl in White

  1.

  I still have in my possession the short news item from the newspaper The Street Is Dying relating my most recent deed against the girl in white, some three months ago. I would like to present my reasons for this failure, which annoys me to this day.

  A nurse at Adolphe-Cissé Hospital was assaulted by a sex maniac upon her return home from work. A complaint was filed at the police station of the He-Who-Drinks-Water-Is-An-Idiot neighborhood.

  I am aware that the amateurism I demonstrated deserves blame. The day after the deed, I didn’t let myself be overcome by despair, certain as I was that the radio was going to talk about it. Although Angoualima, very much in spite of himself, could have once again benefited from this action without having perpetrated it, he was dead, so it stood to reason that people would be talking about the advent of a new outlaw in our city. It was obvious, I had no doubt about it.

  I told myself that there would finally be a report about the event, around midnight or one in the morning, to fill the empty hours during which listeners’ ears are saturated with traditional music from the Pygmies of the former Oubangui-Chari.

  Alas, it wasn’t to be!

  Disconcerted, I was about to fall asleep when a journalist, in a voice that was both nasal and throaty, started mumbling endless death announcements. People who for the most part had died “after a long illness.” Parents who asked their relatives in the backcountry to hurry up and take the first train to be present for the burial…

  In my workshop, I was, as usual, yelling “Oh, shit!” nonstop. This swear word calms me down, gives me the illusion that I am master of each situation, and allows me to reconnect with my vulgarity, which makes me feel most comfortable. You should always have a few magic words like oh, shit—otherwise, how could you get by, huh? What would it have cost them, these radio hosts and journalists, to talk about my crime that night? Did they want something more convincing? Had morals changed or something? I couldn’t understand anything anymore.

  I’m not the type who gets discouraged—oh no, definitely not. Another radio station was bound to talk about it, I told myself. I know that death announcements guarantee you’ll have listeners but, come on, there are limits! Extolling in this manner people who’ve found nothing better to do than to croak “after a long illness,” as if there were no other ways to die! It’s a waste, and that’s not all there is to life. This situation sickens me, personally. When I think that people like me sweat blood to do their jobs and take risks, and then no one gives us the least bit of play in the media! The victim always gets the lion’s share, and that’s unfair! I agree with whoever said you have to “let the dead bury the dead.” We’re told about such-and-such family regretfully announcing the death of so-and-so, and that a requiem mass will be held on February 24 in the chapel of He-Who-Drinks-Water-Is-An-Idiot, etc. It’s all bluff. That’s not the point. Oh, shit!

  Me, I really wish that, one day, these announcements dwelled a little on the real reasons behind an individual’s death instead of covering him with a shroud of modesty, even if he was just a poor redneck. On that day, we would see whether he really “died after a long illness.”

  Who are they kidding?

  Therefore, being stubborn, I looked for other stations, but came upon what I had discovered previously: radio silence. I came out of my shop, where, beside myself, I was hitting the mallet hard against the damaged cars. I paced around the plot before finally coming into the house. I took a half-full bottle of beer out of the refrigerator and turned on the television. I sat down on the sofa bed. As if by chance, a long documentary about predatory animals was on. A lion was dismembering an antelope. A boa was working doggedly at swallowing a stag and was caught in his own trap as his prey’s antlers made his task impossible. As a result, the documentary’s narrator concluded, this big snake was going to die with his loot in his mouth, his appetite had been bigger than his stomach. Dryly, the narrator reminded viewers, “Before you climb up a tree, make sure you will be able to come down.”

  Was this documentary some sort of omen for me? I am not an animal. I am not a boa. Boas don’t think, I am sure of that. They are driven by instinct. Me, I have always added reason to my actions. I can climb up a tree and come down with ease…

  Okay. I have to put things in perspective as far as this failed job is concerned so that I don’t compare it to the feats of the Great Master Angoualima. Don’t imagine that I am a good-for-nothing,
even if I can barely take credit for only a few infractions that, at worst, had I been arrested, would have gotten me into the district court of summary jurisdiction, where my hearing would have taken place after the hearings for rooster and papaya thieves.

  So The Street Is Dying had dubbed me a “sex maniac”! What would the person who wrote this laconic and offensive text know about that? Personally, deep down, I wanted to kill this girl in white, and the rape was just a cherry on the cake, a little bit like when Angoualima was in the white aide cadres’ residences. I was finally getting the opportunity to play in the big leagues and to no longer be content with the kid whose right eye I had pierced and the notary–real estate agent whose skull I had smashed all those years before. I had a golden opportunity to kill my first hooker. It was through The Street Is Dying that I learned the next day that she wasn’t a hooker, but a nurse at Adolphe-Cissé Hospital.

  Why indeed did I have designs on her? I had to start my project of cleaning up the He-Who-Drinks-Water-Is-An-Idiot district somewhere. My ambition would surely frighten those long in the trade, and Angoualima and his twelve fingers would turn in his grave. They would argue that such an initiative doesn’t take place upon exiting a watering hole and that, in order to succeed, your balls need to be in the right place.

  With hindsight, I tell myself that I had too much gin that night. That was negligent on my part. Drinking always makes you lose focus. This particular liquor arouses intense sexual desire in me. Consequently, the rape came first and the murder was relegated to second place.

  As a matter of fact, stepping out of the bar called Take And Drink, This is The Cup of My Blood, I found myself at the very heart of the He-Who-Drinks-Water-Is-An-Idiot district, in the hope of finding a hot little mama and laying the first stone in my public health campaign. I walked along One-Hundred-Francs-Only Street, with its shanties made of wood planks and mountains of refuse just outside the lots. The night was dark, very dark, after a sultry day the likes of which we hadn’t had for a long time in the city. I had given up on working in my shop and spent the day in various watering holes. Nevertheless, there came a time when you had to go back home and stop fattening up all these shopkeepers who congratulated themselves on a day when throats were dry throughout the city. My instinct told me this night wouldn’t be like the others. My hands were swelling and I felt my veins were going to burst if I didn’t do something, experience some great shock that would calm me down. I had to walk, breathe in some air. That’s what I did.

  At the corner of One-Hundred-Francs-Only and Daddy-Happiness-That’s-Me Streets, in spite of the opaque darkness and thanks to her white clothing, I made out the silhouette of a woman, tall, straight, her purse tucked under her armpit. I said to myself: “Hey, hey, she’s a new one, this one—let’s get closer and take a look!” I noticed that her behind was really what I call, perhaps by professional idiosyncrasy, a frame loaded with goodies. It’s clear that girls who don’t have enough goodies on their frames don’t hold any interest for me, and I wouldn’t waste my time gratifying them with death. They can just wait to die after a long illness, as they say on the radio, and be part of the death announcements in the morning and at night. For me, when I want to have sex with a whore, it’s the frame that’s gotten things started. And when there’s none, it’s no use wasting your energy: you can be sure that, in bed, the girl will remain supine, as motionless as a wood plank, and will be counting the stars…

  I know this street like the back of my hand and can even explain why, today, it’s called One-Hundred-Francs-Only. It’s because, in the old days, it was the girls from our city who ruled the sidewalks. And when I say sidewalks, I mean all the sidewalks and thoroughfares of the He-Who-Drinks-Water-Is-An-Idiot district. No foreigner could haul her half-naked legs in these parts without incurring our girls’ wrath. One must admit in these foreigners’ defense that, with our girls, the cost of a trick wasn’t within every wallet’s reach. Our own girls have a certain way of taking themselves seriously and of thinking their thing is Ali Baba’s cave. They even want to be chatted up so they can convince themselves they’re not whores in the generally accepted sense.

  Where are we going?

  In fact, the main street was called At-Least-Six-Hundred-Francs in the old days, before the girls who came from the country over there invaded it and caused a price drop for paid ejaculations, bringing it down, God help me, to one hundred francs only instead of at least six hundred francs! Well then, that spelled early retirement for our Amazons and the things they took for Ali Baba’s cave. For one hundred francs only, even pedicab drivers could bring their things out to thaw. Capitulating in the face of the stamina demonstrated in nail fights by the girls from the country over there, our girls all emigrated to the center of town because over there, apparently, whites don’t have time to discuss price. Besides, they set such a high price themselves that even the greatest haggler among our Amazons loses her Lingala*…

  So it is that I know where each hole in the He-Who-Drinks-Water-Is-An-Idiot neighborhood leads, and into which plot I should slip to get to the central thoroughfare that is One-Hundred-Francs-Only Street, formerly At-Least-Six-Hundred-Francs Street, where the hookers who came from the country over there rule as immovable divas.

  The story of our neighborhood’s name, He-Who-Drinks-Water-Is-An-Idiot, is completely different. In one of our languages, Bembé, people say: Ba nwa mamb’ biwulu. Along with the army of prostitutes at every intersection, it is in this neighborhood that one counts the greatest number of watering holes. The population swears by beer, red wine or palm wine only. Drunkenness contests are held often. People empty a bottle of palm wine by holding it between their teeth, without the help of their hands. In these conditions, he who drinks water really is an idiot. The song by Zao, “Everyone calls me a drunkard,” is an anthem people break into here and there:

  Everyone calls me a drunkard

  Me I’m not a drunkard

  Me Ya kopa me I don’t provoke anyone

  Red wine has reddened my eyes

  I am only waiting for death

  Palm wine has reddened my lips

  I am only waiting for a fight

  …

  Waï, me I’m having my drink

  Waï, why are you provoking me

  Waï, me I’m having my drink

  Waï, me I don’t want a fight

  Waï, me I’m having my drink

  Waï, me I don’t want to box

  Waï, me I’m having a drink

  Why are you against me…

  If this woman in white I had glimpsed in the semidarkness was a streetwalker, as I believed, she had to be new to the neighborhood. So she had finished her work and was waiting for a taxi. However, at this time of day, you have to be prepared to wait for more than forty-five minutes before you can secure a means of transportation. Taxicabs prefer the center of town, where rides are more lucrative and clients less grumpy. Meters are mandatory in the center of town, whereas in working-class districts clients and cab drivers insult each other until they eventually settle on a price, each remaining convinced that the other one screwed him…

  I got closer to the girl and told her I was an unlicensed cab driver. This doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone in our town, where taxis that aren’t real taxis are more plentiful.

  She made as if she were going. Well, shit, I exclaimed, where was she going to run to in this dark night, where you couldn’t see past your own nose? And what’s more, was she aware that I knew this neighborhood and that, even without Angoualima’s legendary shoes, I could run in the direction opposite to hers and catch up with her in a flash just a few streets away?

  Good. She understood that fleeing would be no use. There she was, defying me with her tall stature. Indeed, I came up to her shoulders. Her gaze filled with mistrust, she asked me where my vehicle was. I pointed toward a direction in the darkness.

  “Ah, no, I’m not going over there. Bring your taxi over here!”

  “But, mada
me, we people have to juggle to earn a living. What if the police were hiding somewhere?”

  “That’s really not my problem!”

  “Madame, you yourself must understand, I haven’t gotten a ride since this morning and I have to feed a wife and five children…”

  I pretended to be tearing up. She hesitated a few seconds, made up her mind, and held her purse tightly under her armpit.

  “Okay, let’s go fast. I’m very much in a hurry as you see me here.”

  “Very well, let’s go,” I said, finding it difficult to mask my euphoria.

  I congratulated myself on playing my part well. I hadn’t drawn too near, so she had not perceived the alcohol that made my head spin a little. She was right behind me, two or three steps away. I tried to walk without staggering, and that wasn’t easy with several glasses of gin in my blood. It must have been ten or ten-thirty at night. A smell of rot from the stream that cuts our city in two was floating in the light nocturnal breeze.

  I quickened my pace, the girl did too, and I heard her women’s heels crush the rubble behind me. Deep down, I was now hesitating and didn’t know which alley to take.

  I silenced the thoughts that were going through my head because the moment you must act, especially at night, is no time to act like a philosopher of the Enlightenment.

  However, some questions came back to me. How could she have swallowed my story? Did I look like a cab driver, me, the sheet-iron and auto-body professional? When had this girl begun to invade our sidewalks, here in He-Who-Drinks-Water-Is-An-Idiot? Why was she ending her work at this hour if she knew she didn’t have a car or a deal with a pimp with wheels, like the other girls did?

  Me, a cab driver? You could die laughing! It’s true that gypsy cab drivers are so poorly put together that it’s easy to establish a general picture of them. They look like any flashy neighborhood interloper. They don’t wash and they stink of sweat. They have these cars: I can’t even begin to tell you. You have to be a genius just to get them to start.