Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty

by Alain Mabanckou

  It was one very hot Sunday afternoon. The Grand Marché was pretty empty. She looked up and saw a man in front of her table, not very tall, well-combed hair, a well-ironed shirt and a briefcase in his left hand. At first she thought it was one of those bad men who sometimes come round asking the stallholders to pay a fee to the town hall, or else there’ll be no table for them the next day at the market. When you come across a bad man, you always feel a bit afraid, but in this case she felt her legs trembling, as though her heart was about to fall into her stomach – she says that’s what happens when she’s in love. The man with the briefcase bought lots of peanuts and my mother guessed straightaway that anyone who buys peanuts like there’s no tomorrow must have a large family to feed. No one can eat all that themselves. So she added lots of extra peanuts, and even reduced the price.

  After that, the man with the briefcase turned up regularly at my mother’s table. He stopped buying peanuts from anyone else, and if she wasn’t there he left and came back the next day, which really annoyed the other stallholders, who now spread a rumour that Maman Pauline hid Bembé gris-gris under the table to snare clients, and that her peanuts were prepared overnight by the spirits, who put a bit of salt on them. They said the moment you tasted one of my mother’s peanuts you were done for, you’d be condemned to return forever to her table, like it was the Congolese National Lottery, which you can never win unless you’re part of the President’s family.

  When Maman Pauline got to her table she found the ground all around it was wet, and there was a strong smell of fish. In fact, it was the other stallholders who threw seawater on the ground so customers wouldn’t stop at my mother’s stand. I couldn’t understand why anyone would be afraid of seawater, and Maman Pauline explained that there are lots of spirits in the sea, including the spirits of our ancestors, who are angry because they were captured and taken into slavery on the white men’s plantations, and whipped from dawn till dusk. So that’s why seawater is salty, from the sweat of our ancestors and their anger, which makes the waves.

  My mother found it quite funny that people threw seawater under her table, as though the spirits were going to waste their precious time on a little peanut stall when there are more important things in this world. The customers still came, including the man with the briefcase. But Maman Pauline could tell this man didn’t just come to buy peanuts. He had something else in mind, he had his eye on that place where men like looking at women and imagining things I’ll like imagining too, when I’m twenty. Now it wasn’t the man with the briefcase’s fault because Maman Pauline did wear bright orange, shiny trousers stretched tight across her behind. Men just couldn’t take their eyes off it, it was too good to miss. When she walked in the streets of Pointe-Noire men would turn round and whistle, but she pretended not to notice and just went on her way to the Grand Marché.

  When my mother had finished serving him, the man with the briefcase would linger by her table, talking and talking. And little by little his banter did the trick, because my mother enjoyed listening to him. He finally saw me in the flesh one day when Maman Pauline put me in a big aluminium basin with bedding in, because prams were too expensive and I hated being carried on her back in a sling, the way women in our country carry their children in the street. The man with the briefcase leaned over the basin, pulled aside the bedding hiding my face and asked how old I was. Maman Pauline told him I was only five and a half months. He looked at me in silence for a few minutes, then began pulling faces, to make me laugh. He remarked how like my mother I looked, and that I wasn’t crying, even though the Grand Marché was full of noise and people shouting. Maman Pauline swears at that moment I smiled at the man. And, again according to her, what my smile meant was: Maman, this is your man, you stick with him, I want this man as my father, my true father, a man who smiles like that isn’t going to abandon us; besides, he’s not a policeman, he’s not going to threaten you with a gun, like in the films.

  My mother and the man with the briefcase would go and drink in the bars at the Grand Marché. They hid away like that for months and months. Sometimes they took me with them, when there was no one to look after me. I went on smiling at the nice kind man, whenever he leaned over to look at me, and pull faces. After a year and a half they’d had enough of playing hide-and-seek as we call it in the playground at Trois-Martyrs. The man with the briefcase came to introduce himself to Uncle René one afternoon. He said his name was Roger Kimangou and he worked in the town centre at the Hotel Victory Palace. He explained that he was a responsible man and would do whatever was necessary for Maman Pauline to become his wife.

  My uncle said in a quiet aside to Maman Pauline, ‘I don’t like this man, he’s too short, it doesn’t feel right.’

  Maman Pauline replied, ‘The President of the Republic is short, but he defeated an army of wicked men, single-handedly! And people love him, including you, you belong to his party.’

  They couldn’t get into much of an argument in front of the man with the briefcase, particularly as he had a demi-john of palm wine and a white cockerel with him. The custom of our people is, if you want a woman, you have to give presents to her big brother. After that, even if you don’t go to the Mairie with the woman to sign papers, it doesn’t matter. Our ancestors are stronger than any papers, you can’t tear the ancestors up when you fall out of love and stand round fighting in the street like deadly enemies.

  Uncle René accepted the demi-john of palm wine and the white cockerel. He asked the man with the briefcase why he wanted to take a second wife, when he already had one, who he’d had lots of children with. Maman Pauline flared up at this and said she was leaving my uncle’s house and not coming back. The man with the briefcase stopped her, he spoke calmly and told my uncle again that he loved my mother, he loved me too, that Maman Pauline was a good woman and he would treat her exactly equal with his first wife. He would split his salary in two: some for his first wife and some for Maman Pauline. His first wife knew all about it. He raised his right hand and swore on the name of his father and mother, both deceased.

  At this my uncle said, ‘Brother-in-law, let us drink! All this discussion has parched our throats!’

  Before drinking the palm wine they poured a little of it on the ground so our ancestors could have a drop too, otherwise there’d be hell to pay because you mustn’t do anything behind your protectors’ back. And they spent the afternoon discussing Karl Marx, Engels, Lenin and the immortal Marien Ngouabi and drinking palm wine.

  When the man with the briefcase was about to leave, my uncle went round back of the house with him. ‘I don’t want my little sister going to live in the same house as your first wife. If that happens, I will never set foot there.’

  The man with the briefcase found us a house on the Avenue of Independence, not far from the house of his first wife. He bought the house for us. So it belongs to us, he always said he’d bought it with me in mind. That’s why, if you read what’s written on the papers for our house, you’ll see my name.

  As soon as I see Papa Roger coming, I’m like a different boy. I want to feel his arms around me, stay with him and hear him speak to me, feel his hands on my head. Sometimes I go and wait for him at the bus stop for Vicky’s Photo Studio. When I see a little man in a brown suit getting off the bus, walking very quickly, with a briefcase in his left hand, looking straight ahead, I run towards him, like the world 100 metres champion. He lets me carry his briefcase, I take it in my left hand and I lift my chin up, walking like a grown up. I want everyone who sees us to know he’s my real father. We stop at a bar, he buys a bottle of red wine, beer and lemonade. And we continue happily on our way home. I put his briefcase in the bedroom while he takes off his shoes and suit and changes his clothes, then comes and sits down in the living room. He tells my mother a few funny stories before we sit down to eat. He tells us what’s happened at the Victory Palace Hotel. He tells us lots of Whites arrived this morning. One of them is a Monsieur Montoir, who’s very nice to him. He talked a
lot with this Monsieur Montoir, who’s come from Paris, with his wife and their only child, Zachary. And little Zachary talks like a big boy, even though he’s only my age. He can see I’m getting jealous of Zachary, so he tries to make me feel better. ‘Michel, you talk like a big boy too. I’m sure if you meet Zachary you’ll be great friends.’

  While he’s talking to us, I watch his face carefully, his black eyes shining with the light from the storm lamp, and I say to myself, he’s got a lot of white globules, he’ll go straight to Paradise, somewhere close to God. Papa Roger’s a handsome man, perhaps the most handsome of all the papas in our town – and when I’m big I want to be handsome like him and take off my shoes and my suit and change my clothes and come and sit down in the living room and tell Caroline some funny stories before we sit down at the table with our two children.

  I look at Papa Roger again, and I think, ‘Why does he love my mother and me? He must work so hard, for our house and Maman Martine’s. I say Maman Martine because I don’t like saying ‘stepmother’, like they do round here when they talk about your father’s other wife. A stepmother is a kind of witch you get in stories of the bush and the forest. A stepmother is forever cursing the child of the other woman, and her husband. Maman Martine’s not a stepmother. She’s my mother too.

  Papa Roger always gets up at five in the morning to go and catch the bus at the Vicky’s Photo Studio stop. The bus takes him to the town centre and drops him outside the Hotel Victory Palace, the big white building behind Printania, the shop where white people buy their apples. That’s why when my father brings me home a nice green apple I eat it really slowly, thinking about all those people in our quartier who never get to eat apples. Before I take a bite, I hold it up to my nostrils. I think how far it’s travelled, and how, when I eat it, I’m transported far from our little country, to other, bigger countries, where they speak languages I don’t understand yet, but will do one day soon. And then I feel suddenly calm, I feel as though I’m going to live to over a hundred, like my maternal grandfather, Grégoire Moukila, that there will be an end to all the problems in this little country of ours, because the smaller a country, the bigger its problems and everyday life’s impossible. I don’t want all the problems of the big countries coming here and making life even more impossible than it is now because we’re already too small. Sometimes when Papa Roger brings me some apples, I suddenly find myself in the middle of a great wood, in Europe, full of apple trees, and I can feel snow falling and see little snowmen grinning at me because they know my name’s Michel. I lie down under one of these apple trees, on the banks of a river, it’s not cold, though, not like in a European country, and I dream that I’m growing bigger.

  The Victory Palace Hotel belongs to some French people. Papa Roger writes down the names of the people who arrive, and the people who leave. He’s been the receptionist there for over twenty-five years; he knows his job, otherwise he wouldn’t still be there. He has a telephone in front of him, the keys of all the rooms of the hotel behind him. You can’t get into a room in this hotel unless Papa Roger gives you the key. To work at the reception desk you have to be able to speak French because most people who come for their holidays are French. And not only that: you have to be able to make the clients laugh. Papa Roger always thinks of something to make the Whites laugh because, he says, it’s so cold over there in Europe, people don’t laugh much. Their face muscles are frozen. And if they’ve had a good laugh they give my father some money the day they leave. The more generous ones, like Monsieur Montoir, give things like the tape recorder and a cassette of the singer with the moustache.

  Before he tells his jokes to the Whites, my father tries them out at home. He tells us to sit down and listen to him. He promises we’ll be doubled-up laughing because the jokes in question are extremely funny, he himself finds them very funny. He takes out a piece of paper from his pocket and reads out loud.

  ‘Listen to this one: one dry season, a workman’s told to dig a hole by the river bank. He says, “I can’t work between a croc and a hard place!”’

  No one laughs, but he’s doubled up.

  He goes on, ‘When President Georges Pompidou was annoyed, he’d shout, “That’s the least of my woollies!”’

  No one laughs, but he’s doubled up.

  He goes on, ‘A man goes to the dentist for a bridge, but it’s too expensive. He gets up and walks out, saying “Oh no, that’s a bridge too far!”’

  No one laughs, but he’s doubled up.

  He adds, a little disappointed by our reaction, ‘If you want to find out about your family tree, consult a gynaecologist!’

  Still no one laughs. We watch him wipe away his tears, he looks back at us, and we start laughing for the very reason that he couldn’t make us laugh. He puts his piece of paper back in his pocket. Maybe the Whites will laugh when he tells them his jokes, but we couldn’t work out when we were supposed to.

  Uncle René’s always criticising my father’s work. He thinks Papa Roger’s office isn’t a real office, just a place where the hotel guests come to pick up their room key. He also thinks my father has no power, compared to him, since he’s the administrative and financial director of the CFAO. He thinks when the bosses of the Hotel Victory Palace talk to my father he looks at the floor and says ‘yes boss, yes boss!’ He thinks that’s how black people used to reply to their white bosses before our countries got independence. My uncle says a receptionist in a hotel is just like a Boy working for the Whites, that it’s shameful.

  So what? As far as I see, everyone’s someone’s boy. Even Uncle René’s someone’s boy because there’s always someone higher up who says, ‘Do this, don’t do that.’ The only person who’s not someone’s boy is the President of our Republic. And even then I’m not sure because our President isn’t as powerful as the presidents of countries like the United States of America, the USSR or France. Put him in front of presidents like that, and our President curls up small, like he’s their boy, suddenly he’s the receptionist and they call all the shots. When the Americans, the Russians and the French speak, our President looks down at the floor, too, and answers ‘at your service, boss!’ And if our President refuses, if he’s stubborn and disrespectful towards the Americans, the Russians and the French, they can bombard our country in a single day, blast us off the map of the world or give our land, our oil, our river, our Atlantic ocean to Zaire, who would be only too happy to accept.

  So Uncle René’s the receptionist at the Hotel Victory Palace. What’s wrong with that? Jobs are like hoops. You have to jump through them. I don’t know where I heard that – I think it’s what Monsieur Mutombo says when parents come and shout at him in his workshop because he’s late with the school uniforms because he’s always going on about Algeria. They insult him, tell him he’s rubbish, and that’s when he says jobs are like hoops. You have to jump through them. Everyone laughs then, because he’s talking about people jumping through hoops when he’s got a limp.

  In fact my uncle doesn’t realise that Papa Roger is a very intelligent man, who knows what’s going on all over the world. He stayed at school right up to his Certificate of Primary Studies, which is like having a diploma that lets you go to a French university and study with the Whites. Also, Papa Roger always reads the newspapers he finds at work. The Whites leave them at reception when they’ve finished reading them over their coffee. They also leave books. My father takes them and brings them home and says to us, ‘Don’t you touch my books, now, I’ll read them when I’m retired.’

  Caroline walks past our house. My heart starts pounding. I’m happy, I leave the house, I run towards her. I’m out of breath, as though I’d been running for an hour and she doesn’t wait for me to get my breath back.

  ‘Why are you running like that? I haven’t come to see you!’

  ‘But you’re here, outside our house, and I thought…’

  ‘You thought what? Am I not allowed to walk past your house then? The Avenue of Independence is open to eve
ryone, you know!’

  She makes out she’s going to the market, but I don’t believe her. You don’t set out to market like that. She hasn’t got a basket with her. What’s she going to put her shopping in?

  I tell her to come on inside with me.

  ‘Come on, my parents are out. We’ll be alone in the house and…’

  ‘No, I don’t want to!’

  I look her up and down. She’s got nice new red shoes on. I like her white dress with yellow flowers.

  ‘That’s a lovely dress…’

  ‘Don’t you try smooth talking me! You leave my dress out of this, I’m not wearing it for you! You think I’d put on a dress for you?’

  ‘Listen, stop talking like that and come inside with me.’

  ‘What for? It’s all over between you and me!’

  ‘I want to show you something. You’ll see, it’s really amazing and…’

  ‘No. There’s nothing amazing in your house!’

  She looks at me as though she doesn’t know me, as if I was her enemy.

  ‘So you’re still cross with me?’

  ‘Yes I am. We’re not married any more, we’re divorced! I’m never having two children, a white dog and a red five-seater car with you!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘’Cause I’m marrying someone else.’

  ‘Oh, right, I see. And would it by any chance be a boy called Mabélé you’re thinking of marrying?’

  She’s astonished. ‘You’re not meant to know that! Anyway, who told you his name?’

  ‘Lounès…’

  ‘He’s not meant to tell you his name! I was meant to tell you myself, today, not him!’

  ‘So you did come to see me…’

  ‘No, I’m going to the market!’

  Deep down inside, I think: ‘I have to calm her down and calm myself down too. If we both get angry we’ll end up getting divorced for real. And she’s angrier than I am, so I’d better stay calm.’