Black Moses

by Alain Mabanckou

  The twins’ Bembé and Téké friends made the cats pay dearly for insisting on living with men, and that day at sunset the great black tom made his way to the sea, not to quench his thirst, but to relieve himself and hide his excrement and pee, which since ancient times his species have been ashamed to leave in the light of day, while dogs were happy to spread their shit at every crossroads, so much so that the mayor, François Makélé, was obliged to put up signs asking their owners to pick it up, or face a fine.

  The black tom’s big mistake was to always defecate in the same small patch. On that day, then, instead of concentrating on the business before him, his ears and tail stood up on end as he sniffed the pervasive smell of peanut butter on the air. Unable to believe his eyes, or his nostrils, he turned, licking his jowls, and looked over to where we stood, a few dozen feet away from him. He examined the aluminium pot, probably astonished to find it on his little patch. He thought it must have been placed there by the inhabitants so people would stop fouling the place and instead put their rubbish in the bin provided. He also thought that whatever was in a bin naturally belonged to the first animal who came along, and wasn’t going to let himself be beaten to it by the horde of emaciated dogs that invaded the Côte Sauvage because in the poor districts of town they were reduced by shortages to eating plastic bags, cockroaches, or on good days, rotting poultry which they had to share with various reptiles, who were dangerous in direct proportion to their levels of hunger.

  With a determined leap, the black tom cat found itself inside the aluminium pot, and a short sharp noise could be heard as the lid closed instantly over him.

  I still didn’t understand what was happening. It’s just a game, I thought, to reassure myself. Now the twins were applauding, shouting, kissing the Tékés, and the Tékés were shouting too, and kissing the twins in return, and when they all tried to kiss me, I quickly stepped back, because the reality of the situation had dawned on me. I broke away from the group and began running like a rocket towards the pot to rescue the animal, which was hurling itself about like ten cats in a pot, not one. The twins lurched after my breeches, one of them cut me down, the other immobilised me and landed a punch in my guts. I shut my eyes in pain, and just as I was about to open them, what felt like a hammer blow landed on my nose. It was the one-legged stammerer who was hitting me with the bit of flesh he had left in place of his amputated leg.

  As blood spurted from my nostrils, the one-legged stammerer was yelling at me:

  ‘Grosso… grosso… grosso… Grosso modo doesn’t mean maybe, it means approximately!’

  The twins dragged me along the ground to the place where the cat was held captive and struggling like a devil.

  ‘See this bucket?’ Songi-Songi asked me.

  ‘D’you know what’s in it?’ Tala-Tala added. ‘It’s our food for tonight! For the last three days we’ve returned empty-handed from the backstreets of Pointe-Noire. The competition has been getting so much tougher since the elections, you have to do what you can to get by!’

  The one-legged stammerer pushed his face into mine:

  ‘And… and… and you can be the one to boil it and carve it up!’

  Behind the twins and the Tékés, I noticed the silhouettes of the three strange men we called ‘The Three Mosquiteers’, because they draped themselves in mosquito nets from dawn to dusk, convinced that the mosquitoes of the Côte Sauvage were only targeting them.

  The Three Mosquiteers? There were four of them actually, if you counted their accomplice, the one-legged stammerer, though he didn’t cover himself with a mosquito net like the others. Since his other leg was missing, the stammerer couldn’t use one of his arms to arrange the mosquito net as it was busy compensating for the absence of his left leg. If he had had the full complement of limbs, he’d have done as the other three Mosquiteers did. That was the evening I realised that we in fact had four Mosquiteers with us, and the fourth, the one-legged stammerer, the youngest and most hot-headed of them, was only fourteen years old…

  After the episode with the black cat, I practically stopped sleeping. I kept seeing the look on the creature’s face, hearing it meow in despair. I made enquiries of St Francis of a Titty, who was busy drawing a giant breast in the sand, but he gave me a cold reception:

  ‘Watch out for my breast! If you walk on it I’ll take your eye out!’

  ‘Actually, I just wanted to ask you about…’

  ‘I know, I know… the cat they ate, it won’t leave you alone, right? Listen, you’ve been eating dog and cat meat for several weeks now…’

  ‘But I didn’t realise!’

  ‘We Tékés say: “Never look a goat in the eyes when you eat it – it’s sure to look human!” You tried to save the animal, they forced you to prepare it for eating, you got used to its face, and now it’s getting to you…’

  ‘Why doesn’t the cat haunt the Three Mosquiteers, why is it after me, when I was the one that tried to get it out of the bucket?’

  ‘Because you were more cruel than the Three Mosquiteers…’

  ‘That’s not true!’

  ‘Well then, why did you eat a cat you tried to save? The Three Mosquiteers didn’t force you to eat it, I saw you take second helpings!’

  Confused, I didn’t answer. He turned his back on me, muttering:

  ‘Now, stop bothering me, let me finish my breast before the sun goes down… In any case, that cat was a public health hazard, he was getting bigger and bigger, he was going feral, and if he’d gone the whole way and actually turned into a panther, like they do in the villages, he’d have been eating us before we knew where we were…’

  I did not intend to spend the rest of my days as a member of this band of cripples, that seemed to expand every week, every month, so that there were some people I didn’t even know, and others with whom I constantly argued, in an attempt to assert my authority, since everyone seemed to think they were the twins’ deputy, and they never said anything to confirm my position. It was worse than the famous court of the King Makoko, where the monarch just went on snoring while the Batékés partied. The twins had grown distant, sometimes I didn’t see them for a whole week. They had stopped working, entrusting certain important missions to new faces who would stick out their tongues and taunt me…

  I began to feel almost nostalgic for my former life, and I was overwhelmed with sadness whenever I thought about my childhood friend. Yes, I wondered what had become of Bonaventure and why he had refused to come with me. We would have been together now. We would have explored the highways and byways of Pointe-Noire. He’d ask those infuriating questions of his, disingenuous but somehow profound. We would celebrate our coming-of-age in two and half years’ time.

  I drove these thoughts from my mind because I also felt I had been selfish, only thinking about myself, that I should have managed to talk my best friend round, or, failing that, stayed with him – which would have been more logical.

  What had happened to the other characters in Loango? Was Dieudonné Ngoulmoumako still Director, or had repeated inspections by the Ministry for Family and Childhood led to his imprisonment? Was Old Koukouba still happily urinating normally, now that the twins had healed his chronic infection?

  No, I was done with looking behind me. I had to think about myself now, and immerse myself in my freedom, as I roamed like a wild dog through a town that seemed to crush everything and everyone. But I had to survive, and would devote my energy to that, for after three years spent learning the secrets of this labyrinthine conurbation, I now explored its roughest districts all alone – Bloc-55, Mouyondzi, Comapon, Mbota, Voungou, Mongo-Kamba.

  In the course of these aimless meanderings I found myself back in the Three Hundreds, where I met a woman who would change the course of my life. For better or worse, depending on how you looked at it…

  IT WAS A SUNDAY AFTERNOON. I was hanging around in the Three Hundreds, not far from the Cinéma Rex, when I ran into a small lady dressed all in red with a white scarf and carrying
several shopping bags, just about to cross the Avenue of Independence. Some men playing chequers on the pavement outside the shop run by a Syrian whistled at her, probably because of the way she deliberately wiggled her rear, now up and down, now left to right. It was her way of thumbing her nose at these rude people making indecent remarks as she went by.

  I hurried over and offered my assistance. She seemed surprised, probably because the local teenagers didn’t do such things. She was worried I might run off with some of her bags, though, and kept turning round every couple of steps to check. To reassure her I drew level with her and we walked along side by side, so anyone passing would have thought I was her boy.

  We entered some vast grounds with a big main house and a separate little apartment. Ten girls, each more beautiful than the last, gathered round her and took the bags, which they started to unpack.

  ‘Don’t grill the fish too long, girls. And don’t overcook the plantains like you did last time. That was disgusting!’

  Then, pointing to me, she said to the girls:

  ‘This little chap here helped me carry the shopping without even being asked. Pretty unusual, wouldn’t you say?’

  They all looked me up and down. I was wearing flip-flops attached with wire, a faded pair of shorts and a long-sleeved shirt with holes at the elbows. While I was wondering if I should go on standing there like an idiot or leave, though I felt in good company, the woman I’d helped asked me:

  ‘Anyway, what’s your name?’

  ‘Little Pepper…’

  She looked surprised:

  ‘What kind of a name is that? You must have a real name, like everyone else?’

  When I didn’t react she sighed: ‘Never mind, we’ll call you that! My name is Maman Fiat 500!’

  She took out a ten thousand CAF franc note and held it out to me.

  ‘Here, Little Pepper, that’s for you, buy yourself a shirt and a pair of shorts, what you’re wearing looks like you live in a cave, for God’s sake!’

  The girls burst out laughing, but Maman Fiat 500 frowned:

  ‘Hey, no laughing, OK? It’s the first time since I’ve lived in this town that any boy in the Three Hundreds has been so kind to me.’

  Timidly, I mumbled, ‘I’m not actually from the Three Hundreds, I was just passing through and…’

  ‘Oh well that explains it!’ she interrupted. ‘If you were from round here, I’d have been surprised if you’d carried shopping for the brothel girls, as they call us – people would give you very strange looks…’

  Then stroking my head, she added:

  ‘Come back when you want, treat it like home, isn’t that right, girls?’

  ‘Come back when you want, treat it like home,’ the girls all echoed in chorus, which made me think of Papa Moupelo’s catechism classes, but I banished those images and walked away, without turning round, knowing their eyes were still upon me.

  It was the first time in my life I’d been alone with so many women…

  That evening, around the crackling fire and the dodgy meat that I wasn’t going to eat this time, I told the twins the story of my escapade in the Three Hundreds.

  ‘So, you’re saying a tart gave you ten thousand CFA, right?’ said Songi-Songi in amazement.

  ‘Usually other people give them money!’ said Tala-Tala, amusingly. ‘Show us the note then!’

  I took it out of the pocket of my shorts and Songi-Songi at once snatched it from me, twisting my fingers.

  ‘You haven’t paid your subs for two weeks!’

  I felt this was a bit unfair, as they had been absent from the Côte Sauvage for these two weeks. And ever since their return they’d been taking in subscriptions from the gang members. I parted with my ten thousand CFA francs without demur…

  AFTER THIS, I WENT every afternoon to visit Maman Fiat 500 and her ‘girls’, as she affectionately called them. I stayed in her yard for hours at a time, and was happy whenever she sent me off to buy drinks for her clients, or contraceptive pills, French letters or medicine for period pains.

  One day, when we were eating together in her apartment, I revealed to her, without being asked, that contrary to what she and the girls still believed, I wasn’t just another teenager off the streets of Pointe-Noire but had run away from the Loango orphanage almost three years ago now. I confessed my real name was Tokumisa Nzambe po Mose yamoyindo abotami namboka ya Bakoko.

  She almost choked on her mouthful of manioc:

  ‘What idiot lumbered you with a pretentious name like that?’

  I told her about Papa Moupelo and the dance of the Pygmies of Zaire. I unconsciously did the movements to the dance as I told her how Papa Moupelo used to do it. Maman Fiat 500 nodded her head at this, and began to move her shoulders and, catching me off-guard, sprang up and started shaking her hips, lifting her arms high above her head, emitting a deep-throated cry and then freezing like a statue, with her wide eyes fixed upon me! That she was nimble of foot should not have surprised me, considering she too was from Zaire, like Papa Moupelo, probably of the same ethnic descent, so it was natural she should dance the dance of the Pygmies, rather better, I must say, than Papa Moupelo. She danced it with grace and subtlety. Perhaps because she closed her eyes, enabling me to admire her body in movement, the perfect ‘O’ of her rear, as though swiftly drawn with a compass, the chest with its two large, ripe fruits that anyone would have longed to pick and bite into.

  I talked to her, too, about the socialist scientific Revolution that had come knocking at the doors of the orphanage and brought about the sudden end of an era. She looked grim as I described Sabine Niangui, her maternal kindness, and the way she cared for me up to the moment she disappeared. The thought of Old Koukouba and his painful urinary infection also touched her. My voice suddenly grew louder, with an edge of contempt, as I recalled Dieudonné Ngoulmoumako and his nephews, the corridor wardens.

  Maman Fiat 500 looked at me so directly, I gradually lowered my voice and withdrew into myself, eventually falling silent. A few tears trickled down my cheeks. She wiped them away with the edge of her pagne and then she too began to speak.

  As she did so it became clear she was a born storyteller, modulating her voice as though to summon up my emotions:

  ‘You know, Little Pepper, all the men who’ve had me in bed have offered to live with me, to leave their wives and children. They’ve promised me castles, Mercedes, and goodness knows what else, but I know pleasure makes people say things they regret in years to come. That’s one thing that never changes, men will say anything when they’re in your arms. Let me tell you now, this body of mine has been touched by the filthiest cart-pullers as well as by the top officials in my own country, and in this country too. This business is my life, it’s what I know how to do best, little one, and it’s what has brought me here to this country. The day I can’t do it anymore, I’ll pack my bags and return quietly to my native land, back to my village of Bandundu, where I’ll work the soil and watch the cycle of the seasons. I never had children, my seven brothers all left Kinshasa. Three of them live in Brussels in the Matongé district, and married white women; two of them manage to make a living in Angola, in the food trade, and the last two wander about the metro in Paris busking illegally, or so I’ve gathered from people back here on holiday. It’s as if there’s a wall between us, in their eyes I’m just the black sheep of the family. I never hear from any of them, perhaps because they resent me for following in our mother’s footsteps…

  She paused, as though to check I wasn’t shocked by these revelations.

  ‘Was it really her fault? Only God can judge our acts, Little Pepper. Does anyone ever stop and wonder how a woman comes to sell her charms? Do they think it’s an activity you choose like any other, like becoming a hairdresser, or a carpenter? A woman isn’t born a tart, she becomes one. There comes a day, you look in the mirror, there’s nowhere to go, your back’s to the wall. So you cross the line, you offer your body to a passerby, with an empty smile, because you hav
e to seduce the client, like in any business. You tell yourself, you may debase your body tonight, but tomorrow you’ll wash it clean, and restore its purity. So you wash it once with bleach, you wash it twice with alcohol, then you stop washing altogether, you accept your acts as your own, because no water on earth ever gave anyone back their purity. If it could, surely with all the streams and rivers and seas and oceans there are on earth, all men and women here below would be pure and innocent. I simply followed the destiny God saw fit to give me, even if all anyone sees in me is the madam who controls the girls she’s brought over from her own country. My father abandoned us when I was a child, and my mother brought me up to this trade, which she plied herself till the end of her days. Thanks to her we had a roof over our heads, my seven brothers and I. While the girls in our village were playing with their dolls, my mother was already explaining to me how to hold on to a man: cooking and sex, she said, the rest is an illusion, including beauty. A beautiful woman who can’t cook and yawns in bed will soon find herself supplanted by an ugly woman who can make a good dish of saka-saka and give her lover a great time.’

  In time I learned that Maman Fiat 500, properly known as Maya Lokito, got her name because when she was working in Zaire she had a small vehicle, a genuine, white Fiat 500. She was proud of her car, one of the rare models made in the 1950s, which remained fashionable until well into the 1970s, designed by an Italian, a certain Dante Giocoas, she told me. It was a gift from one of her most illustrious clients, an opponent of the President of Zaire’s regime. Said opponent, Wabongo-Wabongo III, lived in Brussels and was so mad for her, he’d visit her four times a night whenever he was staying in Brazzaville, our capital city, and had only to cross the River Congo on the sly to see Maman Fiat 500 in Kinshasa.