Broken Glass

by Alain Mabanckou

  I know my chicken’s going to go cold, I know I should eat, but I must just say a few words about my life, to do with Diabolica, so, in the beginning, she used to come and haul me out of the bar and take me home, but the minute she’d gone to bed I’d come back again, and the next day she’d start sniveling and saying we no longer spent any time together, our life together was becoming unbearable, and I always came home at first crow of the cock who sits in the top of the mango tree on our compound, and on some occasions I actually slept at the foot of the mango tree, to be woken by the warm, diarrheal droppings of the cock who sits in its branches to announce the dawning of a new day, and so when Diabolica opened the door in the morning she would find me outside in a pool of my own urine, my blackish, liquid excrement, and would dissolve into tears, call the neighbors in the hope of shaming me into changing my ways, and I told the neighbors to bugger off, I wanted nothing to do with them, and asserted my right to privacy, and one of these neighbors, the one I hated most, said “when someone disturbs everyone around him like that, he forfeits his right to privacy, one man’s freedom ends where the next man’s begins” he liked to think of himself as some kind of Enlightenment philosopher, we had even almost come to blows because he was always trying to prove to me that he had more general culture than me, well, be that as it may, one day, at the end of the small hours, Diabolica said loud and clear that enough was enough, there was a limit to her patience, she was not going to spend her entire life looking after a walking corpse like me I caused her nothing but misery, and she also said I was nothing but a merchant of tears, I was trampling on the tapestry of her present time and therefore it was clear, I must make my choice, once and for all, I must choose between her and alcohol, a most Cornelian dilemma, so I said yes to alcohol, and she began weeping in the evenings, when I didn’t come home or I slept beneath the mango tree in our compound, and she discussed it with our neighbor, the Enlightenment philosopher, who said it was as if I were dead, as if I were a phantom of the opera, as if I were the serial killer with a stick and Diabolica went along with this bargain-basement philosophizing, and added that she would have preferred me to die a quick and sudden death, rather than this death on credit, which was far harder for her, she would have preferred me to die, so that she could at last recover some of her freedom, she said she was sick of the way local people looked at her, people were laughing at her, even the dogs barked as she went by, though it wasn’t her who drank, she swore that if it continued she would throw herself into the river Tchinouka, and I tried to comfort her, I found some cast-iron arguments, for example, I said, seriously and solemnly, that it was better to drink than to smoke but she immediately countered by saying that drinking and smoking were tobacco from the same pipe, water from the same tap, therefore you shouldn’t drink, and therefore you shouldn’t smoke, otherwise you’d be off to the next world in an open coffin, and again I laughed, I couldn’t see I was doing any harm by drinking, and besides, I’d never hit Diabolica, she was the one who pushed me about, and yelled at me when she was angry, that’s what used to happen, and yet I was, and remain, a passive, not an aggressive drinker, she knew perfectly well that I understood what was meant by nonviolence, that my favorite poster was the one that shows King looking at the picture of Ghandi, there’s no better proof than that that I’m a supporter of nonviolence, you won’t find me attacking the second sex, why would I want to do that, and then I asked her “have I ever beaten you, have I ever attacked someone in the street, has anyone ever come round here complaining about me, never, and I’m not going to suddenly start hitting people tomorrow, you can call me anything, home bird or fly-by-night, dismiss me as an approximate man, demean me in front of others, I don’t give a damn, each of us arrives on this earth with his own burden to bear, you can’t push me down any lower than that, I know what I’m doing even if I drink, go ahead and make a black-and-white song and dance about it, I don’t care,” that’s what I said every time, I swear on the grave of my mother who drowned in the dirty water of the Tchinouka

  and Diabolica would explain to anyone who cared to listen that I was possessed, bewitched by the devil, that I was captive to a tenacious creature with a long pointed tail, a creature who charmed me with eyes like volcanoes, and she explained that I was the plaything of this demon, that the words of my lips were the words of Satan, explaining the earth to the good Lord, and since I know nothing about that kind of thing, and believed only the evidence of my own eyes, one day she pronounced, urbi et orbi, that she would give me one last chance, that I had to take it, there would be no further reprieves or probation, she said “drinking’s all very well, but you shouldn’t pollute the lives of those who don’t, what’s going on here, d’you think I’m going to spend my whole life like this,” in fact, she added, alcohol did more damage to those who don’t drink than to those who do, and when I drank it was as though she drank, so she was twice as drunk as I was, in fact it was our philosopher neighbor who had doused her in all these crazy ideas, which she’d then taken seriously, and the neighbor said that Diabolica was a “rebound victim,” at which point the neighbor started to get seriously on my nerves, and I laughed at the idea of this kind of fancy thinking coming from someone who hadn’t even studied medicine in Paris, what’s more, there are some doctors who smoke like firefighters, which is a bit rich, so how could what I drink end up in her stomach, and make her drunk, as if she were the one who’d been drinking, God’s no fool, after all, each of us is separately made, there isn’t some invisible link running from one person’s stomach to the next, each of us swallows his own pint, into his own small intestine, his own pancreas, my bile is my bile, and his bile is his, that’s all there is to it, and that’s what I told Diabolica and our neighbor, the Enlightenment philosopher, but it was the last chance my wife was giving me, I was waiting to see what she’d do when I refused to yield to her demands, and she said “I’m not kidding when I say this is the last chance I’m giving you, it’ll end badly, this business, you mark my words,” and I just laughed and said “promises, promises,” and went on boozing, tipping back the red wine, decapitating, eviscerating those poor bottles of Sovinco, forgetting I’d ever been married, that Diabolica was my wife, and one day some neighbors who had converted to Islam came to drag me out of Credit Gone West to tell me my wife had been bitten by a snake, I told them I wasn’t married and that no black child was interested, these days, in the story of the visiting snake, and I heard the Muslim neighbors murmuring that it would have been better if Allah had removed me from this life, that I was no longer worthy of it, they said I was reduced to a mere shadow, a specter without a grave, now those Muslim neighbors were right, my wife had actually been bitten by one of those black snakes that swarm around Trois-Cents, as though they had been driven out of the wooded savanna, even the snakes had joined the rural exodus, and had all made a beeline for Diabolica, but I didn’t really give a fuck, my thoughts were elsewhere, and perhaps it was the incident of the black snake which screwed everything up and pushed Diabolica to make a move

  and so, one hot, sunny day, my wife’s family turned up at our house, she held a little ethnic council of war, with me as the topic of their byzantine discussion, the one and only Broken Glass, they discussed me from every angle, and issued an edict, and condemned me in absentia because I didn’t turn up at their tribunal, it was as though I’d sensed in advance that they had set a trap for me, I’d followed my instincts and left the house the previous day, and that’s how I narrowly escaped the clutches of these reactionaries, these champions of the rights of man, these killjoys, sons of chaos, sons of hatred, but I reckoned without the vigilance and rancor of Diabolica, who knew just where to find me, and she dragged the family welcoming committee out into the street, down the Avenue of Independence, even the people in the street thought they must be part of the strike by the battú, the poor people of Trois-Cents, because it has to be said, my ex-parents-in-law are a band of vagrants and vagabonds, real hillbillies, their clothes all grub
by and worn, which is not surprising, they’re poor up-country mujiks, who think only of tilling the land or watching out for the rainy season, and such is their greed, they’d sell a dead man’s soul to the first bidder, they don’t know how to behave, they’ve never learned to eat at the table, or use a fork, or a spoon, or a table knife, they spend their whole low-down existence hunting ground squirrels, fishing for catfish, and you can’t begin to talk about culture with them, because, as the singer with a mustache says, their brains are scarcely bigger than thimbles, so, these cavemen came to drag me away from my lofty preoccupations at Credit Gone West, and read out the conviction reached in my absence, they had decided to take me to a healer, a witch doctor, or rather, a sorcerer named Zero Fault, to get him to drive out the tenacious devil dwelling within me, and break me of the habit of worshipping under the sun of Satan, and we had to go to his place, to the house of that idiot they called Zero Fault, but I wasn’t afraid, I really wanted to piss them off, so I said “just leave me alone, I’m not bothering anyone, just sitting there drinking my own drink, why is everyone against me, I don’t want to go to see Zero Fault” and all the good people in my wife’s family said in chorus “you have to come with us, Broken Glass, you’ve got no choice, we’re taking you there, even if we have to do it in a wheelbarrow,” and I replied, howling like a hyena caught in a wolf trap, “no, no, no I’d rather die than come with you to Zero Fault’s,” and since there were quite a few of them, they caught hold of me, jostled me, threatened me, pinned me down, and I was shouting, “shame on you, ye of little faith, you can’t do anything to me, who ever heard of mending a Broken Glass” and they jammed me into a ridiculous wheelbarrow and the whole district was laughing at this outrageous scene, because they were treating me like a sack of cement, and I was insulting Zero Fault all the way along my way of the cross while my wife was still going on about the black snake who’d bitten her and I asked her which black snake that was, “the snake of Satan, you made it come, I’ve never been bitten by a black snake in my life” she cried, and I went on saying “black snake, really black snake, and how come you saw it in the night if it was black?” and she almost tipped up the wheelbarrow, but her aunt calmed her down, saying “take it easy, niece, Zero Fault will take care of him in a little while, we’ll soon see whether the devil and the good Lord can sup together without either one using a long spoon”

  they dragged me inside Zero Fault’s house, I was humming to myself, I forget what, but who knows why the caged bird sings, I was probably humming the Song of Solomon, the wheelbarrow was jolting about, almost tipping over, miraculously I didn’t fall out, and people were taking it in turns to push it, they were really pissed with me because I was burping all the time and threatening to pee and shit, and eventually we arrived at the top of a hill, before Zero Fault’s old shack, on the opposite bank of the river Tchinouka, and the sorcerer, who had seen us coming from a distance, said “miscreants, take off your shitty shoes, rid yourselves of evil thoughts, this is my home, the kingdom of our ancestors” and the whole cortege promptly complied, as though the words came from the Holy Spirit incarnate, my wife took off my little shoes manu militari, and they threw my little shoes into a corner, I said to my wife “don’t forget my little shoes” and they gave gifts to Zero Fault, who was cooing thanks in C major, though they came out sharp, the guy was so louche, and I saw at once that Zero Fault was very far from being a real healer, he was like the one who’d wanted to make the judge rich, the one I mentioned at the start of this second section, whose name was Mouyeké, and Zero Fault was nothing like a real sorcerer either, because I do actually know how to recognize a real sorcerer, and he wasn’t even a gentleman crook, he was the Confidence Man, and I challenged him, I said to Confidence Man, “if you’re a real healer, if you really are genuine, as you say, tell me my birth date and birthplace, in front of all these witnesses, tell me about my family tree, give us some proof of your esoteric knowledge” and my parents-in-law, these mujiks who could sell a dead man’s soul, these battú, these men and women peasants all looked at me in horror and shouted at me, baying for my blood, and told me to stop playing the fool or divine retribution would come down upon me while Zero Fault was getting in touch with the ancestors, they pushed me up against the wall and, cheeky as ever, I went on “yeah, ’cause the real sorcerers from Loubloulou, my native village, can tell you where and when you were born, you can’t do that, I know you can’t, and you know you can’t,” the atmosphere was starting to get really strained, and my wife said to me “Broken Glass, could you just zip your big mouth a minute and let Zero Fault do his work,” but I didn’t stop, I banged another nail into my own coffin by saying to the people present “that guy is a first-rate imposter, he’s not a real sorcerer, he’s not a real healer, he just wants to fleece you, like all the confidence men in this country want to fleece honorable citizens, he’s the devil, not me, let me tell you, vade retro me, Satana,” my wife’s family all began shouting insults at me, while I went on reciting my heresies and my wife cried “shut up now Broken Glass, why are you talking like that to a man feared by the entire district, are you mad or what” and I laughed, and gave the con man the finger, I spat on the ground, and my father-in-law said “I must say, your husband is no longer the man I knew” and then my mother-in-law said “ by God’s grace may our ancestors forgive us for the ravings of my son-in-law, I never knew Satan could put such blasphemy in the mouth of one of God’s creatures,” and the brother-in-law said “he’s no creature of God, he’s the Antichrist in person” and all the mujiks and the ostrogoths and peasant men and peasant women began saying much the same thing, and my wife spoke up again, because she wanted to set the record straight, and she said “Broken Glass, I demand that you apologize this instant to Zero Fault and to the ancestors, who look down upon us as we speak, it’s your fault they’re not getting through ” and Zero Fault, who was pretending to be meditating, finally spoke, with a sigh, saying “madame, I thank you for these words of wisdom, but you must understand that the devil is inside your husband’s body, those are the words of the demon, I promise you that we will drive out the devil from his body, believe me, I’m not called Zero Fault for nothing, and as you all know, I’ve fought much greater spirits than that” and I carried on ranting, shouting “stop talking rubbish, you low-down liar, you low-down criminal, low-down dream seller, low-down man with seven names or so, low-down bully boy, low-down charlatan, low-down conjuror without talent, low-down profiteer, low-down capitalist, vade retro me, Satana,” I said all that and Zero Fault suddenly became angry and lost control and showed his yellowest smile and bared his old charred stumps, which was just what I was hoping for, I wanted him to lose his temper, and he said “call me a capitalist, do you, you dare to call me a capitalist, am I a capitalist, d’you think, you say those blasphemous words once more in front of the ancestors and I’ll smash your face in,” that’s what he was shouting, and I just carried on, I said “yeah, you’re a low-down capitalist, a real low-down capitalist, you’re into the exploitation of your fellow man, vade retro me, Satana” and he got angrier still and said to my wife “listen madame, I can’t work like this, your husband does not respect me, he doesn’t respect the ancestors, he dares to call me a capitalist, I can go along with a devil who tells me vade retro me, Satana, but I won’t be called a capitalist, do I go round exploiting the poor, d’you think, do I love profit, d’you think, am I into the exploitation of my fellow man, d’you think, I’m Zero Fault himself, I am, you can ask anyone, they’ll tell you I’ve restored the eyes of the blind, the legs of the lame, the voices of the dumb and the ovaries of sterile women, the erections of men who couldn’t get it up, even in the morning, when his piss usually makes any man’s thing stand up, and did you know, by the way, that I helped the mayor of this town get reelected for life, not to mention the students and their exam results, the administrative posts I’ve secured for people who never even went to school, or the way I got the wife of the prefect of the region
to go back to her husband, I’m not called Zero Fault for nothing, did you know that when the Adolphe-Cisse Hospital abandons all hope, I’m the one who goes in to help the poor cripples, so when I come across imbeciles like this one, like your husband here, trying to tarnish my legendary reputation, and desecrate the masks of the ancestors here on my wall, I tell myself this world is seriously screwed, that through him the Antichrist is with us here below, this man’s place is in the asylum, so would you kindly take that piece of rubbish home with you, hell, what’s going on here, get out, I said, I refuse to help this man, he has no respect for me, get out of this holy place before I put a curse on you,” and I began laughing again like a coyote belting out some Mississippi gospel, or a mountain wolf having a shot at a baroque concerto, and I said to my wife “don’t forget my little shoes” and my wife’s family put me back in the wheelbarrow because they were afraid Zero Fault would put a curse on them, because they were afraid that the curse might mean the family offspring would have snouts or pigs’ tails or trotters, so that’s how they brought me home again and how they came to think of me as an idiot, but happily I managed to escape the criminal clutches of Zero Fault, vade retro me, Satana