Broken Glass

by Alain Mabanckou

  my sufferings were far from over though, because Diabolica was still not happy, so she decided to wean me, imposing a ban on hanky-panky for the next few days, weeks, and months, now I like a bit of that when I’ve had a drink, it’s good when you’ve a had a drink, you feel like you’re flying, like you’re gaining altitude, but Diabolica wanted nothing to do with me, apparently I stank, I was no longer the same man, sometimes I was rather like Satan, and yet I didn’t want to rape her, no way, that’s not the kind of thing I’d do, so I haven’t got my leg over ever since then, and a bit later on, when things were getting worse by the day, Diabolica sat me down at the foot of the mango tree on our compound, she had something important to say to me, but I didn’t want to hear, I said “let me be, I haven’t got my leg over for longer than I can remember, I’m not going to talk unless I get my leg over” and she looked at me pityingly, she started talking in this sad sort of voice, she almost had me crying, saying how I was known to everyone in the district now as a drunk, where I’d once been an excellent primary-school teacher at Trois-Martyrs, she said I no longer read my Frédéric Dard (alias San-Antonio) novels, or my La Fontaine fables, or my Letters from My Windmill, or my Diary of a Country Parson, she said that some of my former pupils still had fond memories of me, that others held positions of national responsibility, had become somebodies in various parts of the administration, and that I had actually been the only teacher in that school who didn’t belt the pupils, that I was an exemplary man, then she recalled how I’d suddenly been sacked from my teaching post, it’s true that was a bleak moment in my existence, but life’s like that, was it really my fault, had I really become incapable of teaching my classes, d ’you suppose, that was their opinion, the hypocrites, I think I’d better talk about that for a bit now, I ought to say a few words about it, even if my bicycle chicken’s been sitting here untouched, growing cold while I’m busy thinking

  when I was still teaching I apparently even used to turn up late for classes whenever I’ d been drinking, and apparently I even used to show my buttocks to the children in anatomy class, and apparently I even used to draw giant sex organs on the board, and apparently I even used to piss in a corner of the classroom, and apparently I even used to pinch my colleagues’ bottoms, male and female, and apparently I even used to offer palm wine round to the pupils, and since there’s no such thing as a little problem in this broken world, the regional inspector was informed of my primal behavior, and the regional prefect was also informed of my drifting year, and the prefect at the time was not a man to allow a matter to fester, he would always lance the boil as soon as it appeared, and so this prefect of doom was completely categorical, completely intractable, completely intransigent, and asked quite simply for me to be transferred, he said, in a voice like that of a prophet reading out God’s commandments from tablets of stone, “send this drunkard out into the bush, I do not want him anywhere in my district, he’s a blight on my campaign against alcohol, I don’t want to lose the forthcoming nominations,” he was determined to get me switched to the bush, and I said no, in no uncertain terms, no way was I spending my days in the bush peering up the rear end of a chicken, and at that point the district commissioner was informed of the matter, now you don’t mess around with a guy over two meters tall, you just do what he says, no discussion, and he agreed with the prefect that I should be parked right out in the bush in among the chickens, and I said no, no, and no again, and at that point the government commissioner was informed, and he was quite a nice guy, he might have been gay, from the way he wiggled his behind like a woman when he walked, and the government commissioner, even though he was quite nice, said the bush was the only answer for people of my stripe, that way I’d only drink palm wine, which, according to him, was less harmful than Sovinco red, and I said, no, no, and no again, and at that point the minister for education was finally informed, and he said “what’s this shambles going on down in Trois-Cents, drunkenness is no excuse for idiocy, and vice versa, switch this old soak to the bush and let’s hear no more about it,” and what happened was it snowballed, the little problem grew into a public row, the bush, or not the bush, that was the question, and all at once the parents began pulling their children out of my classes, and then they wouldn’t give me chalk because apparently I even ate that, or crushed it underfoot, and then they wouldn’t give me pens because apparently I mistook them for thermometers during lessons and stuck them you know where, and then they wouldn’t give me pens or different colored felt-tips because I couldn’t tell one color from another, I could only distinguish the red and the black, and they wouldn’t give me geometry equipment because apparently I could no longer draw a straight line, which is the shortest distance between A and B, and then they wouldn’t give me a map of our country because I still called it by the name it had under royal rule, and I said loud and clear “I don’t care, I don’t need all that to teach anyway, I’ll do it with whatever I’ve got in hand, you can stuff your pens and stuff your chalk and stuff your map of the country too, because this country’s shit, we inherited these borders when the whites carved up their colonial cake in Berlin, so this country doesn’t even exist, it’s just a reserve, where the cattle die of famine”

  and the day came when I turned up in class more than a little drunk, and saw that there was only one pupil sitting at the back of the room, fortunately it was one of my best pupils, and I told him to come forward and sit at the front, he should be proud of his thirst for knowledge, which adorned his angelic brow like a halo, so I began to teach my lesson to this little angel, who looked pityingly at me, because he truly was an angel, with his innocent eyes and understanding gaze, and he stuck with the class, even when his mates failed to show, he sat in the front row, put his things out on the table, his exercise book, his little pocket dictionary, his pencil sharpener, his pencil, his rubber, his pen, and his bottle of water, and I talked to him about plural nouns, it’s true I was hammered, but for what it’s worth I remember saying “my dear boy, thank you so much for coming, this may be the last time I teach in this school, God has sent you to me, I have a feeling you will be an important man, truly important, and that is why I am going to provide you with the basics of written language, I am going to tell you about plural nouns, which are important in life, my boy, the rest comes after, because life is a banal business of singulars and plurals, locked in daily combat, loving, hating, condemned to live together, so open your exercise book and write down what I tell you, remember this, in general the plural of common nouns is formed by adding an s to the end of the word, but watch out because the plural and the singular are the same whenever a word ends in s, x, or z, such as bois, noix, or nez, and later we will look at the plurals of compound nouns such as coffre-fort, basse-cour, or tire-bouchon, and we will also look at the plural of common foreign nouns such as pizza or match” and just at that point I heard a great uproar outside, a large crowd of people had burst their way in, I turned round, and saw ten or more militiamen, who had entered the classroom and were shouting at me, accompanied by the parents of my last remaining pupil, who was crying, because he didn’t want to leave my class, because he wanted to learn the lesson right to the very end, and pursue his education, and not be left in later years, ruing the lost days of childhood, and the militiamen kicked me in the pants and I fought like the very devil, and my pupil was crying and tried to put up a fight to protect me, and I surrendered without a struggle, saying to my little angel, “thank you, little angel, you are better than any of these people casting stones at me, and the reason you are better is because you are the only one who understands me, my cross is heavy, but I shall carry it, uncomplaining, to the bitter end, don’t cry now, we will meet again in paradise” and my little angel made a gesture of affection toward me before wiping away his tears, and that was how I got put in quarantine, with an order not to set foot on the school premises, and I said loud and clear “I don’t care, doesn’t bother me either way” so they suspended me, and I sat around at home for t
wo weeks, then a month, then two months, with no news, and an old lady took over my class, and three or four months later I received a long letter from the administration, which was so badly written I wasted a whole day correcting the grammatical and syntactical errors in it, but in fact what the long letter said was they were offering me another post way up-country, in some far-flung hole where there wasn’t even any electricity, even though, as the negroes of our President and General of the Armies would point out, Lenin had quite clearly said “Communism means Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country”

  it was during this troubled period that Diabolica begged me to accept the last-ditch solution, saying that the bush wasn’t the end of the world, life was cheaper there, you could catch fresh game out the back of your hut, the fish swam gladly into your nets, there the branches of fruit trees were bowed so low that even the garden gnomes complained they had to crouch down as they walked, the bush was good, she argued, there the dead never had to wait in line because there was always room for everyone in the village cemetery, there everyone was friendly, and I said with a naïve air, “oh really, so the bush is great then” and Diabolica sensed that I was revising my position somewhat, and she replied, “Broken Glass, I’ve been trying to tell you that for days now, you just won’t listen, you cling to the town like a baby kangaroo who won’t leave his mother’s pouch,” and I asked in the same breath “then why aren’t people rushing to go there, if it’s so much better than town?” and she said “because they’re idiots, that’s why, but you’re intelligent, you can understand that the bush means life,” and I asked, this time with a worried look, “are you quite sure sending me to the bush wouldn’t have something to do with a punishment, then?” and she said she wasn’t going to spend the whole day arguing about it, this was the best solution, the right one for both of us, she’ll love me, I’ll love her, we’ll live happily together, away from those who spoke ill of me, were jealous of me, and to conclude the discussion, Diabolica added that if I accepted the proposal she would let me drink as much as I wanted, and promised she would even find someone to bring me palm wine, good quality palm wine every morning, so I immediately felt a great sense of relief, Diabolica only wanted what was best for us, I pictured this idyllic life of ours, me with my bottle of palm wine, and that’s why, two days after our fruitful little discussion, part of me thought the bush would be a good idea, while the other part had no wish to leave the town and whispered to me that I was walking into a snare without end, I was really in two minds, to bush or not to bush, that was the question, and during all this time I was thirstier than ever, thirsty for some good Sovinco red, and one day I cracked and went and had a drink, and came home dead drunk as usual, softly singing my favorite song, Die for your Beliefs, at the top of my voice, and I could hear that pipe-smoking singer with the mustache singing as if he was singing just for me, and saying in his deep voice “They were able to convince me, and my cheeky muse, admitted she was wrong, and rallied to their cause, just maintaining a tiny suspicion of doubt,” and yet I also heard the same singer’s warning words, saying “Now if there’s one thing that’s really bitter and upsetting, when you offer up your soul to God, it’s realizing that you took the wrong turning, got hold of the wrong idea” and knowing this song by heart I had no wish to take a wrong turning, or get hold of wrong ideas, ideas which would go out of fashion someday, and what the song taught me was that the people who asked others to die for ideas were the last ones to do so themselves, why didn’t these moralizers go off and live in the bush themselves then, so I refused to go off into exile up-country, because I didn’t want to be a drunk in the bush, and once I had categorically turned down my second chance, the administration seized the opportunity to bar me from public office, they wrote things like “cher monsieur, despite our efforts to reach a consensus regarding your current situation it is clear to us that you remain regrettably and resolutely inflexible, adhering obstinately to your position in a manner which leads us to a decision outlined in the provisions governing our national education, a decision with grave consequences indeed, since it obliges us to terminate your employment, this without possibility of appeal, notwithstanding that we propose you be allowed to consider your position for one week, after which, should you have taken no further action, our decision will become active at midnight of the 27th of May, after which date you will have no right to claim either according to article 7b, paragraph e, or to article 34, paragraph f, as amended in the law of the 18th of March 1977” and I said to myself “I don’t care, I just couldn’t care less, besides, I don’t understand a word of this prose anyway” and I went off to tell my new friend the Stubborn Snail about the whole thing, this was around the time when he had problems with the local populace, because of his new venture, and he gave me quite a talking-to, and then said that such was life, one day things are all okay, the next they’re not, the important thing was to keep standing tall with your nose to the wind, the important thing was to make the best of this avatar of an absurdly warped version of paradise, I’ve forgotten which black African poet put it like that, no doubt some guy whose lines many talentless poets have since managed to copy, poor washed-up epigones

  I must say Diabolica did not understand my penchant for alcohol, she tried to account for it, she put it down to my mother’s death, but what did she know about her death, really, she knew no more than the wagging tongues of Trois-Cents, I preferred her not to mention my mother’s death, it really made me mad, I could even turn aggressive, and I’ve always been in control of my impulses, I’ve never let anger get the better of me, did she ever hear me criticize her mother, with her one eye bigger than the other, did she ever hear me criticize her father, with his clubfoot and his hernia dangling down between his legs, tell me that, but Diabolica didn’t let that bother her, she went on and on about it, waking up my mother’s corpse, disturbing her in her search for eternal rest, death’s not to be played with like that, we need to put things back in context here, and I actually started drinking well before my mother kicked the bucket, even if I have to admit that her disappearance speeded things up somewhat, but it saddened me to hear Diabolica linking my passion for alcohol to the death of my poor mother, and I felt I really mustn’t allow her to draw that particular conclusion, in fact I think I actually consumed rather fewer bottles during the weeks following my mother’s disappearance, it was my way of mourning, a mark of respect I owed her, and I only resumed normal activity once I was sure that my mother’s corpse had rotted away, and her soul had arrived at last in the garden of Eden

  let’s say my mother died by drowning in the dirty water of the river Tchinouka, it wasn’t her fault, it was all very mysterious, and I’m going to just say a few quick things about it so that things are a bit clearer than the water of the river Tchinouka, because it’s important never to confuse one dead person with another, even if the dead all have the same color skin, I mean, just a little word, even if it means my bicycle chicken goes completely cold, I’ll still eat it later, so on the night of her departure for the next world, my mother had a terrible dream, she got up from her bed, eyes closed, mouth wide open, arms stretched out before her as though driven by an invisible force, the shades of the night, and she opened the door of her shack, and went down to the river, hoping to find my father, whom I never knew, it seems he was a highly regarded palm wine tapper in Louboulou, it seems in fact that he had two passions, jazz and palm wine, so those guys like Coltrane, Armstrong, Davis, Monk, Parker, Bechet, and the other negroes who played trumpet and clarinet, he knew all their tunes, which they say were invented in the cotton or coffee fields, to deal with the deep melancholy of their ancestral homeland, and in response, as well, to the whiplashes of their slave-driver masters, who could never understand why the caged bird sang, so anyway, my father was mad for these black men’s tunes, it was even said that he collected 33s and 45s of these guys on their trumpets and clarinets, and they say he died from witchcraft at point-blank range, they say someon
e shot him with a bullet he’d need to have had eyes in the back of his head to avoid, they say he was shot in the back while he slept, because he always slept on his front, even though several sorcerers in Louboulou had warned him not to, and they say it was his uncle who did it, so as to inherit his palm wine tapping tools, not to mention his 33s and 45s of the black men playing their trumpets and clarinets, but the whole story as my mother tried to tell it was too complicated, she wanted to justify her decision to leave the village of Louboulou for the town, she had decided to leave the village where these fine folk lived chiefly to protect me from the witchcraft at point-blank range and from the people who still had it in for my father even though he was dead, and she could see I had my doubts about the story of the nocturnal, mystical gunshot, well, I was less than two years old at the time, and I don’t know if I look like my father, people say I look more like the cowardly wretch who killed my progenitor in cold blood and who inherited my father’s collection of 33s and 45s of the black men playing their trumpets and clarinets, so my mother’s death seemed to me every bit as mysterious as my father’s, and at the time she died, the papers called the good woman’s death, which was just a small news item, a nocturnal accident, and they ran a headline about the body of an old woman being found on the banks of the river Tchinouka, and that’s why whenever I walk by the river I shout abuse at the water, I spit on the ground, I throw stones far, far out, right down into the depths of these vile waters, and rail at the injustice of it all