Fofo called out from the little galley kitchen, saying the groundnut oil had been used up—there was only palm oil. I don’t care for palm oil and think that eggs fried in it are inedible. I told him to hard-boil the eggs; there was kerosene in the portable stove we’d bought to replace the stolen gas cooker. And above all not to dawdle! We had to be out of the house in half an hour at the latest. This time, we wouldn’t let ourselves be taken by surprise.
I went over to my bed. I knelt, bent down, and pulled out the large metal trunk we kept hidden beneath it. I opened it. Inside were three dead cockroaches and their dung. How had they gotten into a closed trunk? A mystery. Quickly I cleaned it out and started filling it with the important things we had to save at all costs. The choice was difficult, even though I’d devoted much thought to it since the last round of looting. I began with the big cardboard folder that contained all of our official documents: birth certificates, my parents’ marriage license, report cards, diplomas. Then I put in my textbooks, and Fofo’s as well. I wished I could take with me the large Encyclopedia of Space that I’d received as a school prize the previous year, but it was too heavy and bulky. As for the photo of Papa and Mama holding hands, I slipped it into the little purse where I’d also stored our money. In situations like this, I would keep the purse tucked inside my dress, my pants, or my pagne while carrying a decoy—a larger bag—which I wore openly, slung bandolier-style across my front, making sure it always contained a few coins and bits of cheap jewelry. A ruse like that can save your life. Then I filled up the trunk with Mama’s three superwax pagnes, my two prettiest dresses, and my new pair of shoes. I asked Fofo to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything that was important to him. At last, I went to wake Mama.
I approached her bedside, averting my eyes from her face, and put my hand on her forehead. I called to her softly, as if nothing were wrong. She opened her eyes and smiled at me.
Visibly happy but with a touch of regret, she said: “Oh, Lao, I was having the most wonderful dream! I was strolling by myself through the city zoo, and I stopped to watch some little girls who were playing ndzango. They were skipping about, clapping their hands, laughing—”
“Mama, listen, you can tell me about your dream later. We have to leave now.”
Quickly I told her that the government troops, those who had ransacked our house the last time, were fleeing the city, while the rebel troops were entering it at that very moment, which meant that another round of looting would begin shortly. Her eyes grew wide with shock, fear, rage, and determination. She made me tell her again whether it was the government soldiers or the rebels who were fleeing. I repeated that those who had been the government forces were now the rebels, and those who had been the rebels were now the government forces. She knew as well as I did that for us it made no difference. All of the warring factions claimed to be fighting in the name of the people, so it was up to the people to pay the expenses of both those who were winning and those who were losing. And we, of course, were “the people.”
After hearing what I had to say, she once again became the mother she’d always been before losing her legs—the tower of strength who ran the household, sold goods at the market, fixed our meals, saw to our clothes, our health, and our schooling, while Papa spent long hours away from home, pushing wheelbarrows full of cement and sand, mixing mortar, hauling bricks, and climbing walls so that he could bring home the money to support us. She sat up straight on the bed and berated me for not waking her as soon as I’d heard the news on the radio. I explained that I’d taken care of the most important things—the wheelbarrow, the trunk, Fofo’s breakfast—and that there was no time to lose. This calmed her. She I pointed out two or three other things to be placed in the trunk (“and above all don’t forget to add your father’s photo”), then quickly began to wash and dress.
I called to Fofo to come and help me carry the trunk to the hole we’d dug. It was heavy, but the two of us managed to move it. We then slipped two ropes underneath it (I’d learned this technique from watching Papa’s coffin being lowered into his grave), but before we could maneuver it into the hole, Mama began calling to us and waving the hurricane lamp. She was trying to come toward us by hitching along on her backside with a halting, crablike movement. She was holding some of Papa’s tools—his level, his T-square, his folding ruler. If I hadn’t had firsthand experience with looting, which in our country always marked the arrival of victorious or fleeing troops, I would have laughed out loud and told her that nobody would ever dream of taking those old tools—a T-square whose right angles had been warped by the tropical rain and sun, a level whose little glass window was so dirty you could barely see the air bubble inside, and a ruler that splayed out like a fan when you tried to fold it. But in our country there was no longer any logic: soldiers destroyed for the sake of destroying, killed for the sake of killing, stole for the sake of stealing—even the most improbable objects. And then, suddenly and unexpectedly, a wave of affection surged up from the depths of my being, and my body began to vibrate in synchrony with those instruments. Those old mason’s tools had not only fed us and clothed us and enabled us to buy medicines that had kept us healthy up to that point, but they had also given me a certain advantage over my fellow students. They had provided me with a quick, thorough grasp of the concrete reality that lay behind abstract concepts; and, conversely, they taught me the way in which concrete, real things could engender abstract, conceptual forms. Thanks to that T-square, I had seen and comprehended the reality of a right angle, which we’d learned about in geometry class. Thanks to that level and its air bubble, I had easily been able to conceive of an inclined plane or a perfect, frictionless surface on which a ball could roll indefinitely. And last but not least, thanks to that folding ruler—which Papa had me fold and refold, that ruler with which he’d measured everything measurable in the world around him—my dream had been born: my dream of graduating from high school and becoming an engineer, so that I could construct buildings even bigger than the ones Papa had built. I took the tools from Mama and put them in the trunk.
Using the shovel and hoe, we buried our treasure—everything that was most precious to us in the world, apart from our lives.
The sky was beginning to brighten in the east. Dawn would soon come, and at any moment the troops would descend on the city. It was time to leave.
Chapter Four
Johnny, Known as Matiti Mabé
Before we hit the road in preparation for the attack, Giap, like a true leader, assigned each of us a share of the gear. In addition to my own weapons, a load that already felt like a sack of stones, he told me to carry the rocket launcher, which was almost twice my size and weighed a ton. “Okay, the rocket launcher—today it’s your turn, Lufua Liwa,” he said. Hold on a minute! Just as he was no longer Pili Pili, I was no longer Lufua Liwa but Matiti Mabé. I realized I hadn’t told him my new name. At this point, everyone had a stake in knowing it and remembering it, even him. I looked him in the eye and said: “Matiti Mabé. My name is now Matiti Mabé!” He laughed. The others, seeing him laugh, began to laugh, too. “Poison Weed—like grass? Like a lawn? Okay, I’ll call you Turf.” The others laughed some more. I was boiling with rage. I thought of killing Giap, and I imagined my hand reaching stealthily for my AK-47. But my quick mind realized that he’d already attached his bullet-shield fetish to his biceps. This fetish, at its weakest, could transform bullets into clumps of wet dirt, and at maximum power could make the slugs ricochet off his body and whiz back to strike whoever had fired them. At such times, only a blade could penetrate his body and kill him. I thought of the knife I had in my belt. I would leap on him like a panther and stab him in the heart! But no, I kept my cool—not because I was scared at the sight of his well-muscled chest, but because I understood he hadn’t meant any harm by what he’d said. Since he wasn’t very bright, he didn’t know that grass isn’t a poisonous weed. Goats eat grass, soccer players love to play on grass, and poor people cushion their beds with it
because they don’t have enough money to buy foam mattresses. He couldn’t know that. So I said to Giap for his edification, without losing my temper, that grass wasn’t a deadly weed like me. Ignoring what I’d said, he repeated: “Turf, for tonight’s attack, you’ll be the one to carry the rocket launcher.” Well, okay, I’d let Giap call me Turf—but the others had better call me Matiti Mabé. Wherever I tread, the grass is dead! If they didn’t, they’d be goddamn sorry.
But there was no way I was going to carry the rocket launcher. He could damn well get Idi Amin to lug it. Idi Amin was always bragging that he was stronger than me, and it was true the guy was a fucking ox. I’d once seen him lift a refrigerator all by himself and put it in the truck we’d requisitioned to haul loot from a Mauritanian-owned shop—while three of us were struggling to lift a freezer. Of course, he’d kept the fridge for himself; no one had dared to argue with him about this, except me. Normally, we had to divvy up what we looted. He’d gotten mad and started cursing me. I’d appealed to Major Rambo, who was our leader at that point. He hadn’t wanted to reprimand Idi Amin; maybe he was afraid of him, I don’t know. Instead he’d started bawling me out, and Giap—who in those days was still calling himself Pili Pili and whom I’d looked to for support—hadn’t even taken my side. On the contrary, he’d started laughing, with his big stupid guffaw. Only Gator, who was my buddy and who respected my intelligence, had backed me up. Well, now I was Matiti Mabé and I was going to let it be known that I was already carrying a shitload of weapons in my gear. Once again, I wanted to look Giap straight in the eye and tell him there was no way I was going to haul that rocket launcher and he could damn well get Idi Amin to do it. But once again I saw the fetish on his upper arm—that fetish in its little bag of tanned saliva-brown leather, dyed with chewed and spit-out kola nuts. It not only protected him against bullets; it also filled his head with rage and made him as vicious as a gorilla. When he was wearing it, he didn’t listen to anyone, wasn’t afraid of anything, could climb a coconut tree in a split second—and you’d be crazy to try talking sense to him at such times. An intelligent man knows you’ve got to pick your battles; only women and weaklings act any old way and argue over trivial stuff. As for me, I was no weakling and was the smartest of the group. Not only had I made him leader, but it was thanks to me that he was called Giap. He owed everything to me. So I thought it would be better if I took the rocket launcher without griping and without losing my cool. That was how I’d impress him—and not only him but the whole unit, including Idi Amin. I’d show them that I, too, had muscles—biceps, pectorals, abdominals, quadriceps. Giap would understand he could count on me, and the others would understand they had to reckon with me. So I lifted the rocket launcher without protest and heaved it onto my shoulder. We set off. Dusk was falling.
I don’t know whether we’d attacked at some arbitrary time or whether Giap had received precise instructions, but in any case we were the first to arrive in front of the compound that housed the radio and TV stations. I fired my first rocket at one of the two armored vehicles that flanked the entrance. It practically exploded, and the other one caught fire as well. The enemy soldiers got off a few rounds, then took to their heels. Gator turned his flamethrower on the panicked men—transformed them into human torches shrieking with pain and writhing on the ground. It was pretty funny. They squealed like stuck pigs.
We advanced on the buildings. Giap led the way. Whatever else he might be, when it came to the crunch he was a true leader. If he were ever killed in battle, and even if I were the one who killed him in order to become the new commander, I would always maintain that he was the bravest of the brave. The manager of the radio station came out, along with a few journalists. They held their hands high in the air to show they were unarmed and to signal, too, that they were merely civilians, poor wage slaves who were just doing their job, and that they were surrendering. Giap went for the manager, grabbed him by the chin and the top of his head; there was a crack! and the manager went down. Wow! I’d seen that trick in Mission Cobra II, but I never knew Giap could do it. The guy was a fucking giant! I’d have to learn the technique, if only to use it on Idi Amin. The other journalists threw themselves on their knees, pleading for mercy, begging us to spare their lives. I didn’t bother to listen. Two or three of us emptied our clips into them at the same time. They shouldn’t have spread propaganda for the previous government and its leader, enemies of the people and of democracy, a genocidal regime with contempt for human rights. I think that’s what we’d been told to say. They shouldn’t have treated us like rebels and bandits. I put a new cartridge in my gun and continued walking toward the buildings on my right.
I found myself standing before a double door labeled STUDIO B, with a red light above it. The light was on. I emptied my cartridge at the lock and gave the door a kick. The wings of the door burst open and I rocketed into the room, Kalashnikov at the ready, a grenade in my other hand, and . . . Shit! I almost blasted myself to Kingdom Come when I dropped the grenade out of sheer surprise. Thank God I hadn’t pulled the pin. But as surprises go, this one was a whopper. Tanya Toyo! Yeah, in the flesh. I won’t lie to you: I’ve always admired that woman from afar—her beauty, her eyes, her lips, her everything. My finger immediately relaxed on the trigger. Quickly I bent down to pick up the grenade, and I looked at her. To see if she remembered me. If she recognized Matiti Mabé, I’d spare her life even if she didn’t ask me to. We’d met and had a conversation two or three years before. Of course, back then I hadn’t been Matiti Mabé, or even Lufua Liwa. I’d been only twelve or thirteen. But so what? If I remembered that unforgettable encounter, she ought to remember it too.
She had come to the market in our district to buy a twenty-kilo sack of rice from a Malian shopkeeper. I’d been in the middle of cleaning the gutter for that same merchant (a job paying five hundred CFA francs), when, raising my head to toss a shovelful of muck onto the pavement, I’d seen her come out of the little shop. I’d recognized her right away.
Who wouldn’t have recognized Tanya Toyo—“TT,” our star journalist and celebrated television news anchor? The most stylish and elegant woman in our country, who, according to rumor, was often invited to Paris, Rome, New York, and Ouagadougou by Pierre Cardin, Paco Rabanne, and Chris Seydou for fashion shows. The woman who would have been crowned Miss Universe on the spot, if she’d deigned to enter the competition. It was even said that the president of the republic (the one who’d been ousted from power a few minutes ago, when we entered the city), a man whose fly was famous because it opened all by itself for every beautiful woman who wiggled her ass and wore a bra, would often invite her to his palace by inventing phony interviews, just so he could have the pleasure of looking at her. Rumor also had it that the president’s wife was insanely jealous of her . . .
And there I was, watching her come out of that shop.
“You, boy! Come take this sack of rice and put it in the trunk of my car.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered promptly.
Unfortunately for me, it had rained that day, which meant that my shorts, my legs, my arms were all wet and covered with mud. As I stepped onto the edge of the concrete sidewalk, one of my plastic sandals remained behind in the gutter, stuck in the mire. I had to come out of the gutter in my bare feet to carry the sack. She was waiting for me near the open trunk of her car—one of those big Japanese 4×4’s that you couldn’t have bought even with ten years’ salary but that all of the politicians and military brass in our country owned. The sack on my back made me stoop a bit, since twenty kilos was no feather, but I managed to carry it because I was already big for my age. I trembled as I approached her, because of her beauty, because of that form-fitting silk blouse. I trembled because of her tight pants, which shamed my mud-covered shorts; because of her high-heeled shoes, which mocked my bare feet; because of her perfume, which my gutter-smell overpowered. But I trembled above all because there before me stood Tanya Toyo, TT, in the flesh—that dream woman fallen from
heaven, who was projected into every home in the country on our television screens.
“Thank you,” she’d said, and had tossed three hundred-franc coins into my open palm, which I’d hurriedly withdrawn for fear of soiling her fingers, with their polished red nails.
And now before me stood TT, in the flesh, surprised, scared, unsure whether this was reality or a dream. She was holding the pages of the news bulletins she was preparing to read on the air. Closeted in the soundproof studio with two technicians, she hadn’t known that the building was being attacked.
I ran my fingers through my hair, to give myself a quick sprucing up; I told the two technicians to get down on their knees; I smiled my handsomest smile; and I gazed at her ardently, the way a man gazes at a woman. A woman you love, not the sort of woman you take prisoner and then hop on, just like that. Still, she was afraid—that was obvious. She was trembling. But I had no intention of harming her. She was my star; I was her fan.
“Remember me, TT?”
“N-n-no,” she stammered, shaking her head.
It was then that I saw how beautiful she really was. Three years before, when we’d met at the Malian shop, my fondest dream was that she’d take me in her arms and comfort me like a big sister. Because at the age of twelve you think of a beautiful woman as being like a mother, the only difference being that the beautiful woman is nicer and you can tell secrets to her that you’d never share with your mother. Now I was no longer a kid; at almost sixteen, I was a man. I knew what you could do with a chick, what you ought to do with a beautiful chick, even a chick two or three times older than you, like TT.
Johnny Mad Dog Page 2