Black Moses

by Alain Mabanckou

  Even in our country, Wabongo-Wabongo III had to stay hidden, because our President and the President of Zaire conducted little opponent swaps from time to time.

  The first time the President of Zaire thought he saw Wabongo-Wabongo at Maman Fiat 500’s, he couldn’t believe his eyes. He asked the four aides crammed into an unmarked car with him:

  ‘Did you see what I saw? That guy leaving by the secret door down there, on the other side, do you see him? Isn’t that Wabongo-Wabongo III, the idiot opponent who tells lies about me in Europe?’

  His henchmen answered calmly: ‘No, Mr President, Wabongo-Wabongo III lives in Brussels, he hasn’t been allowed into this country for seventeen years, we have your presidential decree here in the glove box.’

  He glanced at the decree, recognising the signature:

  ‘You’re right, that is my signature… But even so, are you quite sure that wasn’t him I just saw?’

  ‘Absolutely sure, Mr President! We’ve heard Wabongo-Wabongo III, that son of a whore, is sick in Brussels and can’t even afford to pay his hospital bills, they even say he’s trying to appeal to your kindness and get you to pay his mountain of bills! Ha! Ha! Ha!’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s right, I did hear about that, how silly of me! Well, that dumb ass will get nothing from me, he can go ahead and die in Europe! I’d rather pay his funeral bills, it’ll cost the state less money!’

  They laughed heartily, and his aides praised the President’s sense of humour, which, they said, could always be relied on. They also noted what they referred to as the ‘the President’s witty gems’.

  But after a moment the President stopped laughing and came back at them again, as though he’d suddenly been stung by a swamp mosquito:

  ‘Hang, hang on guys, no, no, there’s something not right here… You’re telling me it’s not Wabongo-Wabongo III I’ve just seen? OK, but a man has escaped out the back there, and if it’s not Wabongo-Wabongo III, that lousy opponent of mine, then who is he, you tell me that? Isn’t that what I pay you for?’

  One of the men, the smallest of them, who always had an answer for everything, tried to calm the President:

  ‘Mr President, perhaps I could just point out that there are a lot of girls here…’

  ‘So?’

  ‘It’s their business.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well, there are lots of girls, and lots of men come to see them, and leave by a secret door for privacy, it happens every day…’

  ‘Yes, but there’s only one Maya Lokita in there! Anyway, you’re getting on my nerves, you always have an answer for everything! Hell, that’s why you’re so short!’

  ‘I do apologise, Mr President…’

  ‘I know you’ve got a degree in Political Science from Paris, but don’t think that’s going to impress me.’

  ‘I don’t think that, Mr President…’

  ‘Let me tell you, I was in Indochina with the honourable President Gnassingbé Eyadema.’

  ‘Of course, Mr President.’

  ‘And I’m sick of little men, from tomorrow you’re sacked, you can give back the black Mercedes and your villa! Find me a tall man, preferably without a Political Science degree for God’s sake! It’s not rocket science, what I’m asking for right this moment: I just want to know who that guy is who just left Maya Lokito’s, my Maya Lokito’s, is that crystal clear?’

  Since the short man with an answer to everything just stood there with tears in his eyes and said nothing, the tallest of the four ventured to say:

  ‘Mr President, I don’t have a Political Science degree, and I am taller, I’m one metre ninety-three… With your permission I’d like simply to remind you that your Maya Lokito is the girls’ boss, she’s yours and yours alone, Mr President. She only does it with you, no one else gets to touch her. But she must eat, she must provide for herself as set down in the Constitution, which you yourself drew up with such wisdom and insight, and I quote, still with your permission, the sublime article 15 of our Supreme Law: Citizens, male and female, must make their own living and not expect any help from the Founding Father of the Nation…’

  The President started in surprise:

  ‘That’s very badly written! Are you sure that’s in my Constitution? My one?’

  ‘It’s in your Constitution. Your one, Sir. Moreover, article 17, modified by…’

  ‘All right, all right, spare me your opinion, Mr of No Fixed Diploma! You studied for every single diploma there is in France, you didn’t get a single one, but you’ve still got the nerve to open your mouth and talk about the modification of my Supreme Law, my law? Did I ask for your opinion?’

  ‘No, Mr President…’

  ‘Well then, don’t open your mouth unless what you’ve got to say is better than silence, for God’s sake! I know my law, because it’s my law, and I am the law!’

  ‘Absolutely, Mr President…’

  ‘Let’s get back to serious matters: who is that guy I saw coming out of Maya Lokito’s place, if it isn’t Wabongo-Wabongo III? You do realise, don’t you, he spends his whole time criticising me, in collusion with the whites, who are jealous of our diamonds? And now he dares show his face around here!’

  Another bodyguard timidly stepped up:

  ‘Mr President, if I might just…’

  ‘How tall are you?’

  ‘One metre sixty-three, but I get up to one metre sixty-seven when I wear platform shoes, the ones you get from the Moroccans and Syrians in the town centre…’

  ‘And what did you say about the man who slipped off when he saw us?’

  ‘Well, Maya Lokito’s running a business here, with these girls…’

  ‘And?’

  ‘What I mean is, there are other clients, who come for these other girls…’

  ‘And? I still don’t see the connection!’

  ‘These clients have to pass through Maya Lokito’s private room.’

  ‘And why’s that?’

  ‘To pay for their trick, they don’t pay the girls directly…’

  ‘Hang on, hang on, hang on…You’re not so stupid after all, you’re better than all of them!’

  ‘Thank you, Mr President…’

  ‘In fact, this changes everything!’

  ‘Mr President, we ought really to be more discreet and not wait around here too long, even if our car is unmarked. Either we should leave or you should go in and find your Maya Lokito…’

  ‘You’re right… But how come I never noticed you were so smart till now?’

  ‘Because my colleagues are all taller than me, it’s hard to see me, especially when I’m walking behind them…’

  ‘But why have you been hiding your intelligence and letting these other imbeciles shoot their stinking mouths off?’

  ‘They’re my bosses, Mr President…’

  ‘Well from this moment on, you’re their boss!’

  ‘Thank you, Mr President.’

  ‘I have to go now.’

  ‘Go ahead Mr President, we’ll cover you as usual.’

  A few days later, the President came back again, with the same henchmen, and, seeing the same thing happen again, realised it really was Wabongo-Wabongo III, who had managed to get back into the country over the water, via Angola and Cabinda Province. The four men were first fired for an attempt on the security of the state, then liquidated without trial.

  Four new guard dogs now accompanied the President when he visited Maya Lokito, with the secondary mission of laying a trap for Wabongo-Wabongo III, who was caught the day after the delivery of a Fiat 500, which his opponent had given to Maya Lokito, who from then on would be known as ‘Maman Fiat 500’.

  As Wabongo-Wabongo III was stepping out of Maman Fiat 500’s shack, two henchmen grabbed him, immobilised him and forced him to swallow hemlock.

  ‘At least he will have had a philosopher’s death,’ cracked one of the henchmen.

  It was being said across the water – and the news soon reached us too – that Wabongo-Wabongo
III had died after a long illness in a hospital in Brussels. The President for life, in his infinite goodness, added the communiqué, would pay the funeral costs and elevate this noble son of our country to the rank of hero of the Red Revolution…

  After we’d each made our confession, Maman Fiat 500 served me a dish of manioc leaves with squashed bananas, a speciality of her native Zaire. It was because of this dish, she joked, that there were so many divorces in our country, because only the women from Zaire knew how to make it, and once a married man had tasted it, he would leave his wife for a ‘true woman of Zaire’, she said, with a broad smile.

  That day I slept for the first time in the living room of her apartment, and when I got back to the Côte Sauvage the next day, the twins looked severe. They read me the riot act, but after a moment Tala-Tala calmed down again:

  ‘In fact it would even be good if you spend most of your time there, it would suit us!’

  They explained that if I lived at Maman Fiat 500’s, I could be their spy, their look-out, and I could supply them with the house keys of all the pot-bellied, bald-headed bourgeois from Batignolles, where they had as much electricity and drinking water as you could want. I could also obtain valuable information by listening behind doors when these rich guys were whooping it up at Maman Fiat 500’s. I’d hear them chuckling after a few glasses of Sovinco red, boasting that they’d been to Paris, Rome or Moscow. They owned several houses, they’d add, in all the big towns of our country, and were going to buy a yacht so they could sail at the weekends, their house in Pointe-Noire was the finest in all Batignolles, and their neighbours were European, or close family members of the President of the Republic.

  Under pressure from the twins, I crept into Maman Fiat 500’s apartment and stole her clients’ keys and went to get copies made by the locksmith, Pata Koumi, a couple of blocks away. He’d give me a long hard look, hesitate for a moment, as though sensing I was up to no good. But I had an argument that usually worked: I’d tell him I’d been sent by Maman Fiat 500, and he’d set to it straight away, which gave me some idea of her influence in the neighbourhood, and how much she was trusted. I paid the locksmith with tips I’d been left by these same clients two or three days earlier and the next day I’d go over to the Côte Sauvage and hand the keys to the twins, so they could then get on with organising things.

  The two brothers asked Massassi Kalkilé and Lokouta Elekayo to go and do the recces, which might last weeks, during which they’d play cat and mouse with the owners of these sumptuous buildings. The twins insisted they draw the residences, and as Massassi Kalkilé and Lokouta Elekayo were not necessarily great draftsmen, Songi-Songi would get angry:

  ‘Is that meant to be a house? Where are the doors and windows?’

  So the twins gave them a Polaroid camera which they’d pilfered from La Printania, the supermarket, and explained how it worked by taking photos of some of us.

  ‘Don’t smile, it’s just to try it out, it’s not a real photo!’ they’d tell us.

  So we set our faces rigid, convinced this would make us look like proper gangsters…

  UNLIKE THE TWINS and the other boys on the Côte Sauvage, I could now boast an adoptive mother and a roof over my head, which should have gradually distanced me from my rootless existence. However, as I was in some way cursed, or determined to hold on to a part of my past, I continued to meet up with my acolytes during the few hours when Maman Fiat 500 was busy cuddling her big fat clients. And since she had some every day, I could meet up with the gang and hand over to Songi-Songi and Tala-Tala a portion of the tips I’d earned at Maman Fiat 500’s.

  In the gang, each of us was obliged to contribute to the kitty kept by the twins. It could be this was where things first started to go wrong, because I got the feeling I was contributing more to the group than the others and receiving nothing from it. What did the twins do with all the money that came pouring in? They explained that it would be there to help any one of us if we got into difficulty. What kind of difficulty? It seemed suspicious to me that the twins should suddenly develop a concern for humanity. Now I understood why they ‘worked’ less and less and had taken a bit of a bourgeois turn. Why should they shift themselves when others could do their dirty work for them?

  My suspicions were well-founded. The twins disappeared with the kitty and the whole group broke up, each of us free once more to act alone or just to become a normal teenager.

  But I was angry with Songi-Songi and Tala-Tala.

  I reckoned they’d stolen from me, and ought to give me my money back. I looked all over Pointe-Noire for them, with a knife hidden in the back pocket of my shorts. For over a month I searched the Grand Marché and the Côte Sauvage with a fine-toothed comb and questioned the members of other gangs. No one had seen them around there. But I somehow had the feeling that I’d end up running into them, I’d manage to corner them some day, and demand that they pay me back at once. I cursed myself for not having recognised their deceit, and for having wronged Maman Fiat 500 by stealing her clients’ keys and handing them to people who didn’t deserve it. But such was their charisma that, face to face with them, you dropped your gaze and did whatever they told you. Would I be able to resist?

  I WAS SIXTEEN YEARS OLD and now living at Maman Fiat 500’s. Had the good Lord been willing, I too might have known Cleopatra, beloved of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, and met the sulphurous Messalina, who I’m told prostituted herself in broad daylight, in the streets of Rome, and transformed a corner of the royal palace into a house of worse-than-ill-repute, venue of orgies equal in every way to those held in our own Maman Fiat 500’s kingdom. But it wasn’t the will of the Good Lord that I should enjoy the favours of these illustrious ladies. The girls who worked for Maman Fiat 500 talked to me, however, and confided in me more than they did in their clients.

  I can still see them now, each with the nickname given her by Maman Fiat 500: Féfé ‘Rear entry guaranteed’ Massika, Lucie ‘Volcano fire’ Lembé, Kimpa ‘Magic caress’ Lokwa, Georgette ‘5a.m. Nutella’ Loubondo, Jeanne ‘Crumbly biscuit’ Lobolo, Léonora ‘Instant decapsulation’ Dikamona, Colette ‘Venus of Milo’ Wawa, Kathy ‘Midnight Tornado’ Mobebisi, Pierrette ‘Eleventh Commandment’ Songa, and Mado ‘Spaghetti waist’ Poati. It was with the last of these that I had my first sexual experience, which I won’t go into here, because it was a disaster: I was so anxious and stressed that the moment she touched me down there I felt as though everything was falling from under me, my body dissolving and as though something might suddenly come out of the end of my sex. The worst thing was that afterwards she made fun of me, telling Jeanne ‘Crumbly Biscuit’ Lobolo and Léonora ‘Instant decapsulation’ that I had no control, and that the moment she touched me I was already ‘finished’…

  It’s true, of course, their skin was worn, they wore blonde wigs or red – sometimes green or mauve – but their clients were happy, even so, and, as Maman Fiat 500 said herself, the men felt like they were kissing the queens of the Crazy Horse or the Moulin Rouge in Paris, no pig in shit could have been happier. And so they poured out the filthy details of their ruined marriages to these queenly ladies, snivelling at their feet because their lives no longer formed a perfect four-sided figure with four perfectly equal angles. I listened to them with ears wide open, because they were happy to talk to me, Little Pepper. And I saw it all as from a distance, fascinated by the kisses given by these women, who got married at least twenty times a day to men who were good fathers, whose scooters were tidily parked in a little side street, or more often, in a mean little passage that led down to the River Tchinouka. They were discreet in that way, and often their wives would come and burst the tyres of their Yamahas, or Suzukis, or pour sugar into the petrol tanks of their vehicles. I laughed like a drain in my corner, in Maman Fiat 500’s straw hut.

  I can still see them now, all lined up in a row, these girls with their multi-coloured pagnes, their make-up copied from a fashion magazine, their false nails, their bright, messy lipst
ick that left an indelible kiss on the back of the regulars’ jackets and shirt collars, their fake blue or green eyes that turned reddish at sunset, their cheap ladies’ heels that made them move like a rhino on the run from a poacher, their handbags where they kept condoms and thongs next to Mananas and Joli Soir perfume, along with a traditional pagne.

  I can still see their dirty tricks, four or five men who all turned up at once, each one pushing to go first because he’s got a mohair or alpaca suit from France or Italy, and it was a massacre. Maman Fiat 500 was beside herself, running round in circles, fire-fighting, trying to get the belligerent ones to take a different girl, but everyone wanted Féfé ‘Rear entry guaranteed’ Massika.

  I can still see them now, when they’d given themselves to a man that they trusted, who’d promised to come back the next day at dawn – the famous payment in kind, or quid pro blow, as Maman Fiat 500 called it. And the bastard never came, went a different way round, avoiding the neighbourhood, until the day his domestic supply got cut off after a stupid row about the food in his plate, and then he’d be back with his tail between his legs, his eyes on the floor, and his wife in the wrong and still as plain as the nose on her face. And when the girls saw him coming, they came out of the yard, with their claws sharply drawn, a regiment of harpies, pushing him away, flinging obscenities, before throwing water in his face, full of little chilli peppers, prepared by me, and reminding him that gorillas of his sort belonged in the bush, not here in the Three Hundreds.