Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty

by Alain Mabanckou

  ‘I don’t want us to get divorced, Caroline…’

  ‘Well you’re just a horrible little boy, so that’s too bad!’

  ‘I know, but I was a bit cross because you did my mother’s braids and that’s why she went out that Sunday, but it’s over now, I’m not angry now…’

  ‘It’s too late! I’ve already promised Mabélé he can be my husband and buy me the red five-seater car.’

  Now that really got me. That damn Mabélé really annoys me. I go on the attack.

  ‘I’m going to tell my uncle not to sell you that car! He won’t let you have it, he’s my uncle and he’s the only person who sells cars in this town!’

  ‘If you tell your uncle that I won’t braid your mother’s hair, and she’ll be ugly then, like Jérémie’s mother!’

  She looks me straight in the eye to see if I’m worried about her not doing Maman Pauline’s hair any more. But I’m actually quite pleased. Suits me fine, at least if my mother’s hair isn’t braided she’ll stop going out and I can stay with her on Sundays.

  But Caroline’s realised what I’m thinking and she adds: ‘And besides, if you tell your uncle not to sell us the red five-seater car, I’ll never speak to you again, ever again, and we’ll go and order our car somewhere else and you and I will be deadly enemies! And if I see you in the street I’ll spit on the ground!’

  She fumbles in the pocket of her dress and takes out a piece of paper, which she unfolds and passes to me. It’s a page torn out of the Redoute catalogue. There’s a photo of a girl and a boy in front of a red five-seater car. They’re about our age, but white. The girl has a white dress and a red hat and shoes. The boys are all dressed in black with a white shirt and a bow tie. They look like they’ve just got married and the photographer’s just said: stand over there and I’ll take your picture.

  I look at the picture again, close up. Caroline’s guessed what I’m looking for. ‘The white dog’s not in the picture. He’s at home with their two children.’

  That makes me want to laugh because I’ve already looked through La Redoute at Monsieur Mutombo’s workshop. He copies the European clothes out of it. The customers choose their style in the catalogue, then Monsieur Mutombo tells them if it’s possible to make it, how much it will cost and how long it will take. Now I know they don’t sell cars at La Redoute. But I don’t want to annoy Caroline, I want to carry on talking to her because I love her. Because I want to have two children with her. So I need to find a good reason why she should leave this Mabélé.

  ‘Lounès said Mabélé’s ugly, he’s not even as good looking as me! Your children are going to be ugly like Mabélé, if you had them with me they’d be attractive.’

  ‘That’s not true! Mabélé is intelligent and he’s two years older than us!’

  ‘Yeah, and what else has he got that I haven’t?’

  ‘He’s read lots of books.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Which books has he read then?’

  ‘Marcel Pagnol.’

  ‘Who’s Marcel Pagnol?’

  ‘See, you don’t even know! He writes books about his mother and his father and their four castles. And Mabélé says he’s going to buy me a beautiful castle like the one in the books by Marcel Pagnol.’

  ‘Can’t you tell he’s lying? A book about castles, that’s a book for capitalists who exploit the proletariat!’

  ‘Well then, while you’re busy slagging off Mabélé and Marcel Pagnol, what have you read?’

  I don’t answer. I try to think of the books we’ve read in class, but they’re just little extracts in the primer we have, and in the book by the President of our Republic. If I mention the book by the President of the Republic, Caroline’s going to laugh at me. So I think hard about the reading book we have in class, with its extracts, and I say: ‘I’ve read the fables of La Fontaine!’

  ‘Yes, but it’s the animals that talk in those stories, I’ve recited those in class too. Marcel Pagnol has real people, who live in real castles!’

  I think about Papa Roger’s books in the bedroom. I’ve never looked inside them, they’re still waiting for when my father retires. I don’t even know a single title.

  ‘And anyway, Mabélé writes me poems every day, in his poems I have bright blue eyes and really long blond hair like the dolls little girls have in Europe. You never wrote me any poems. You didn’t love me! You’re a bad husband, now stop answering back, I’m going now, yes I am, I’m off!’

  And she walks away and I shout, ‘Come back, come back Caroline!’

  She can’t hear me. She’s already gone. She’s not going to the market, she’s going home. So she did come to see me. No other reason, I say to myself.

  My father’s shouting, ‘No! It can’t be true! It’s unbelievable! They can’t do this to me! What have I done to deserve it?’

  Maman Pauline, who was outside, comes running back into the house. Her wrap’s almost slipped off her waist and she snatches at it hastily.

  ‘What is it, Roger?’

  ‘They’ve overthrown the Shah of Iran!’

  My mother shouts angrily, ‘Is there really nothing else to listen to on the radio? Besides, he’s not even one of ours! That radio’s going to drive you nuts!’

  My father fiddles with the aerial as though he’s not sure the information he’s just heard can be true. Sometimes the sound cuts out; Papa Roger moves about, stands by the window, as though the news comes into the house that way, and if we close the window there’ll be no more radio. He tries each corner of the dining room and I follow him like a shadow.

  Whenever the radio starts crackling, I realise how far America is from our little country. But then I realise Radio Congo crackles too, and it makes me want to say to my father, ‘Let’s sit down again, we’ll hear better that way, if we sit at the table, like we do when we’re eating our meat and beans.’

  Papa Roger’s standing by the window and I’m behind him. He turns round, and bends down, so the radio’s just level with my ears. The American, Roger Guy Folly, is talking about Iran. He explains where it is, what language they speak, a language we don’t speak here. I hear names I can’t pronounce, and places I’ve never heard of. Papa Roger tells us again that Iran is far far away, in Western Asia, and the capital’s called Teheran. And when I ask him if the Iranians have the same money as us, he says no.

  ‘So how do they buy food at the market if they don’t have our money?’ my mother asks.

  ‘With their own money.’

  I think there must be another reason why Iran doesn’t want to use our money – because the Iranians don’t want to have to look at our President’s head on every one of our notes and coins. In Iran they have a revolutionary leader, like us, and it must be his head on the notes and coins. They are our brothers because we have a revolutionary leader, like them. All leaders are brothers, so we must help this brother of ours.

  Looking at my mother, Papa Roger tells us that the shah who’s been overthrown isn’t an animal, he’s a man, even if in our folk stories the animals are like kings, ruling the earth, and men must respect them, and tip their hats when they walk by.

  ‘The shah’s a man, ok, an important man, but the new top leader in Iran is another Iranian, the Ayatollah Khomeyni. There’s ingratitude for you! He’s been totally straight with Ayatollah Khomeyni, he even pardoned him when he was out to undermine the revolution which was there to give women the vote! What’s going to happen there now, eh? Now Khomeyni’s trying to get hold of the great man, and fling him in prison. What sort of a world do we live in?’

  Papa Roger looks at us, and shrugs, because he knows our sadness is not the same as his sadness. It’s the first time we’ve ever heard of the Shah and Ayatollah Khomeyni.

  When Maman Pauline asks us to sit down at table, my father comes away from the window, looking disappointed. He goes outside, and takes the radio with him. My mother signals at me not to follow him.

  ‘You sit down, let him get on with his Iranians, we’ll eat.’


  From where I am I can see my father sitting under the mango tree, his hands on his head and the radio cassette player on the ground. From a distance we hear the words of ‘Sitting by my tree’. And when the singer gets to the bit about ‘alter ego’ and ‘saligaud’, I stop eating and think to myself, ‘my father’s thinking about his own alter ego’s problems with its saligauds’.

  My parents are arguing on the other side of the wall between their room and mine.

  I hear my mother say, ‘It’s not fair! If God wanted me only to have one child, why couldn’t he at least give me a daughter instead of a son? Look at the Mutombos, they’re lucky: they’ve got Lounès and Caroline, a boy and a girl!’

  She starts to cry, and when she cries it’s as though her tears were coming from my eyes, not hers. And I think too: It’s not fair that Maman Pauline had a boy instead of a girl. And it makes me want to dress up as a girl, talk like a girl, walk like a girl, pee like a girl. Perhaps then my mother will only be half as unhappy. It’s not easy to copy what girls do and hide the fact that you’re a boy. People will just say, ‘You’re not a girl, you’re a boy disguised as a girl.’ And they’ll throw stones at you in the street like a mangy dog. And they’ll say, ‘If you think you’re a girl, what did you do about that thing between your legs, did you change that into a girl’s thing too?’

  No, better stop thinking like that, since it’s not my fault I’m not a girl.

  I go on listening to what they’re saying behind the wall. Papa Roger’s explaining that the reason children turn up in my mother’s womb but don’t make it out into the world is because they get lost somewhere along the way. So, instead of arriving here below they go directly to heaven, which is not the best way of making people on earth happy.

  Maman Pauline reminds my father that before me she had two daughters in two and a half years, and both died the same way: they came out of her womb ok, they cried, then they just closed their eyes for ever. And by the time someone checked to see they were breathing, it was too late – they’d already gone.

  When Maman Pauline reminds Papa Roger about this, I listen carefully. I want to know, after all this time, what those two sisters of mine were called. No, she doesn’t say their names, she says ‘my two daughters’ or ‘my two queens’. Am I like them? I think I must be, because I look very like Maman Pauline and I can’t imagine my two sisters not looking like my mother but like some horrible policeman from Mouyondzi.

  So what can my sisters have seen the day they arrived on earth, that made them want to turn round and go back to heaven quite so soon? Did the nurses who helped them out have red globules? I can understand one of the sisters leaving, but why, when the next one was due out, a year and a half later, did she do the same thing? What’s going on up there in heaven, why do some children head straight on up there as fast as they can? One way I have of cheering myself up is to imagine my sisters are stars and perhaps they talk to me without my even knowing. Now, when night falls, I always look for two stars close to one another. And there always are, if you look hard enough. Since I don’t know my sisters’ names, I’ve decided to call my big sister ‘Sister Star’. I haven’t got a name for the other one. I keep looking, I keep trying, but I still can’t think of one. Until I think of something pretty I’m going to call her ‘Sister No-name’.

  I’m hiding under my sheet, trying not to move around, because every time I move I feel like the mosquito net’s going to fall down on top of me. I’ve got my ears open. I don’t want to miss what’s being said behind that wall. Papa Roger’s talking now. He’s speaking very quietly, and I can hardly hear him. So I come out from under my sheet and pull the mosquito net to one side and get out of bed and stand next to the wall.

  Papa Roger’s trying to comfort my mother.

  ‘It’ll be ok, we’ll have more children, I promise…’

  ‘Lots more?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Roger, I want daughters, even just one, I don’t want boys, I’ve already got one and—’

  ‘That’s not up to us, Pauline. Let’s ask the Lord for a child, to start off with, let’s not worry if it’s a boy or a girl.’

  My mother falls silent. Papa Roger goes on talking. He says that the children he had with Maman Martine are my mother’s children too, and my brothers and sisters. He adds that he’s never made any distinction between them and me. It’s true, when I go to Maman Martine’s, she treats me as though I’d come out of her own belly. Besides, my brothers and sisters are very fond of me. Papa Roger also says that I love little Maximi-lien, that’s it’s touching to see little Félicienne weeing all over me, and that Marius talks to me a lot, Mbombie respects me, Ginette looks out for me, Georgette is a true big sister to me, and Yaya Gaston, big brother to all of us, always wants me to sleep with him in his studio.

  Whatever he says, Maman Pauline insists that she wants to have children from her own belly because if I fall out with my sisters and brothers from the other house they’ll probably remind me that I’m not their blood brother, and they’ll say it deliberately to upset me.

  ‘Roger, are you blind and deaf? You know people round here are saying you’re not Michel’s real father, that your children with Martine are not his real brothers and sisters, and that they’re not my children! Now stop talking to me like I’m an idiot!’

  At this my father starts to get angry. He talks so loud you’d think he was actually in my bedroom.

  ‘That’s just stupid talk, Pauline! Stupid! Are we going to spend our lives worrying about the local gossip? We don’t give a damn about them, don’t do their dirty washing for them! You mustn’t listen to them, I love you and nobody’s going to come between us, d’you hear?’

  ‘Yes, but did you know, at the Grand Marché the other sellers say the only reason I have lots of customers is because I’m a witch and I can’t have children?’

  ‘Pauline, listen, we’ll go to see a doctor, and you’ll see, we’ll sort it out!’

  ‘We’ve already seen doctors, that’s all we’ve been doing for the past few years, I’m sick of it! Is there a single doctor in this town we haven’t seen since we’ve been together?’

  ‘I’ve just been recommended a new doctor, he…’

  ‘I don’t want to go to another Congolese doctor! He’ll only tell everyone our business and people will go on laughing at me!’

  ‘It’s a white doctor, everyone knows he’s the best in town, and he’s new…’

  There’s a silence. I think to myself, Maman Pauline’s going to say yes.

  My father continues, ‘Anyway, those gossips down at the Grand Marché are idiots! People should mind their own business! I’m going to show them I’m not a nobody! Next month I’ll give you some money, you can set up a business away from here. You can go into the bush, to Las Bandas, and buy bunches of bananas there. Then you can load them onto a train and take them to Brazzaville to sell. They say that’s where business is best at the moment.’

  This set my alarm bells ringing. Maman Pauline would be away at least one week a month. I feel like banging on the wall, to tell my parents I don’t want this, they must ask my opinion too. There are three of us in this house, they shouldn’t take decisions without consulting me. The people in Brazzaville will kill my mother. Brazzaville’s too far away. That’s where the President of the Republic lives, who runs this country. You have to sleep two whole days on the train, almost, to get there. What’s Papa Roger thinking of?

  They carry on halfway through the night. I think of Maman Pauline going once a month to Brazzaville. I turn this whole question of her wanting children at any price round and round in my head. What can a doctor do, even a white one, if the children inside a woman choose to go straight to heaven without stopping off on earth? Does any man, white, black, yellow or red, really have the power to change God’s plan? Wouldn’t it be better just to go and pray really hard at the church of Saint-Jean-Bosco even if the prayers there do go on too long?

  My parents have switched the li
ght out now, and are talking very quietly. My mother was crying earlier, but now she’s laughing and my father says, ‘Hush, don’t laugh so loud. Michel can hear us.’

  ‘No, he’ll be fast asleep by now. I know him.’

  One day when I’m older, I’ll take you far away

  To where the crabs walk on the sand of the Côte Sauvage.

  Our little girl will wear red shoes

  Shiny red shoes and a white dress

  With yellow flowers

  Like you

  Our son will wear a hat

  I want to wear a hat too

  One day when I’m older.

  I’ll take our daughter by the hand,

  Her right hand,

  We’ll call her Pauline like my mother

  You’ll take our son by the hand,

  His left hand,

  We’ll call him Roger like my father.

  Our little white dog will stay in the car,

  A fine red car, with room for five,

  We’ll call him Miguel, like my uncle’s dog

  But he won’t be fierce,

  He’ll be a nice dog,

  And eat at table with us.

  I promise you this, I’ll read all the books

  by Marcel Proust

  One day when I’m older.

  But I won’t build a castle for you

  It’ll just be a little house, a pretty house of wood,

  Like Maman Pauline’s and Papa Roger’s.

  Castles are too big,

  I might lose my dreams in a castle,

  Then they’ll call me a capitalist

  And I don’t want that, I don’t want their red globules

  If I do, my sisters might not know me

  They might show me the door when I get to Heaven…

  Michel

  Lounès says: ‘You missed something yesterday, I looked everywhere for you.’

  It’s about Jérémie’s mother, a horrible woman, who goes round insulting all the local mothers. This time it seems she’s had a row with her husband. It all started inside their house, in front of their children, and ended up in the street with people all round them, like a football match at the Tata Lubuko stadium. Lounès tries to imitate Jérémie’s mother’s voice for me, talking rudely to her husband and yelling in front of everyone, ‘You asshole, you idiot, you useless bugger! Call yourself a husband, do you? You can’t even do right by me in bed these days, not like a real man! I’ve done everything, I have, I’ve tried everything, and you never managed anything, just went on sleeping, snoring your head off! Impotent bastard! What are you, a husband, or a post, not even a post for electricity, like the ones in the Avenue of Independence! No woman could put up with that! Just you wait and see, things are going to change from now on! It’s time for a revolution, I’m going to find a good-looking young man around here and that fine young man’s going to give me such a good seeing to of an evening, by the time you get round to touching me I’ll be snoring my head off like you! You think I’m only good for having children, do you? Bastard!’