Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty

by Alain Mabanckou

  So I’m walking along and thinking about nice things, not my poor feet. I’m thinking of Caroline. I’m thinking of the red five-seater car. I’m thinking about the little white dog. I’m thinking about the radio cassette player. I’m thinking about the book of Arthur’s poems and his angel face. And it works.

  Now I’m outside Diadhou’s shop. And who do I see inside? Oh no, I don’t believe it! I want to turn round and go home. It’s Mabélé inside the shop, and he’s waiting while Diadhou butters his slice of bread. It’s the first time I’ve seen him close up. My heart falls into my stomach. I think: So when you’re frightened it’s like being in love, your heart falls into your stomach.

  Mabélé turns round and sees me too. Now what do I do? I’ve no idea. I go up to the counter and stand behind him. I keep about a metre’s distance between us. If he throws a punch at me, it won’t reach me, I’ll just step back a few centimetres.

  Mabélé acts like he hasn’t seen me. He watches while the Senegalese goes on buttering his bread. After a while Diadhou hands him his bread, he pays and turns round to leave the shop. He walks past me, shoulders me out of the way and says quietly, ‘Asshole, I’ll wait for you outside. Let’s see who’s tougher, you or me. And when I’ve smashed your face in, Caroline won’t even look at you again!’

  He leaves the shop. I can see him outside, gobbling up his bread. I’m so frightened I forget what I’m doing here.

  ‘What do you want, Michel?’

  I don’t answer, just look out at the road. Diadhou asks me again, ‘What do you want? Have you got a problem outside, or what?’

  The Senegalese has just noticed Mabélé outside waving his fist, and can see he’s waiting to beat me up.

  Diadhou shouts from behind his counter, ‘Hey, you out there! You get away from my shop. I don’t want fighting outside my shop. I don’t suppose your parents are paying for my license, are they?’

  Mabélé’s gone, and I remember now that I’ve come to buy some sugar for my mother. I pay, and tiptoe towards the door. I stand there looking up and down the street. I sense Mabélé’s hiding somewhere. I can’t see anyone. Perhaps he’s behind a tree or behind the cars parked on the avenue.

  I get ready, counting in my head, ONE, TWO, THREE! Then I shoot off like a rocket.

  I don’t look over my shoulder, I just run, run, run. I run so fast that when I get back to our lot I go running past it and fall into the yard of the neighbour, Monsieur Vinou, the old soak without a pistol, unlike Paul Verlaine. He shouts abuse at me, calls me a thief, little gangster etc. I jump over the barbed wire between the two lots, and I’m home, drenched in sweat.

  I take a look out of the window: Mabélé is standing outside our house. This time he shakes his clenched fist three times in the air and leaves. I think: When he does that it means he’ll get me next time, next time I won’t escape like I did today.

  I’m cross with the Mexicans. They didn’t want the Shah back in their country after his operation in America, so now the poor ex-president is in Panama. It’s not right.

  Papa Roger can’t tell us where Panama is. He just says it’s close to Costa Rica and Colombia – a country which plays football as well as Mexico, but hasn’t hosted the World Cup yet like Mexico. Still, it’s good that Panama have welcomed the Shah. He must be very tired and he needs rest.

  My joy is short-lived, though. Because my father also tells us that the Panamanians have been influenced by the Ayatollah Khomeyni and want to send the Shah back to Iran. When I heard this I felt like roaring with rage, but I made myself calm down because Maman Pauline gave me a cross look. She thinks I encourage my father in this business of the Shah looking for a country to take him in.

  The radio’s playing up today. Sometimes the sound cuts out for a few minutes at a time. My father thinks it’s the government doing that to prevent us being informed about what’s going on in the world and make sure we go on believing the immortal Marien Ngouabi was assassinated by Imperialism and its local lackeys. Why is the government so determined to talk about this assassination as though it hadn’t been involved in the death of our Immortal itself?

  The sound’s come back on the radio, and I hear the American journalist say a very complicated word I’ve never heard before: extradition. It’s very hard to pronounce, you have to pretend you’re about to sneeze then clear your throat. I look at my father, he’s leaning towards me, he says that extradition is when you capture someone in one country and send him back to where he came from so he can be tried. Lots of countries all over the world have signed an agreement to catch people they’re looking for like the Shah and send them back to their country of origin for trial.

  Papa Roger is furious: ‘It’s shocking that Panama are sending the Shah back to Iran! You never know what might happen there. Thankfully the Egyptian president has asked him to come back to Egypt, where he’ll be safe! But for the Shah it’s back to square one. What choice does he have? He has to go back to Egypt! His cancer is getting worse all the time. I’m sure they deliberately messed up the operation in the States. I hope at least he won’t die in Egypt like an abandoned dog.’

  Papa Roger and Maman Pauline are out, so I can secretly go and get the book by the young man with the face of an angel. It’s almost like he smiles at me slightly more each day, as though he’s pleased to see me. I’ve left him on his own for too long. When I look at his photo it’s like meeting up with a friend. I’d like to tell him all about Mabélé, who wanted to smash my face in the other day, even though he’s the one who’s pinched my girl and talks to her about that annoying Marcel Pagnol guy and his castles.

  I’d like to talk to him about Lounès too, how we’re always together, he’s my friend, we love each other like brothers, we tell each other everything, but I’m not going to tell Lounès that Mabélé nearly beat me up, or he’ll try and get back at him with his advanced katas that Maître John teaches him. I just don’t like fighting, that’s why I’m not going to go to Lounès’ karate club with him.

  Arthur doesn’t speak, he just goes on smiling at me. What do I know about him, apart from the thing about the ‘hand that guides the quill’ and the ‘hand that guides the plough’? Who is he?

  They do actually tell you more about him at the beginning of the book in a part called the ‘Introduction’. It says there that Arthur came to our continent, and traded in ivory, gold and coffee. That means he liked trading, like Maman Pauline and Madame Mutombo. It says that sometimes he liked to party with beautiful African women. Who wouldn’t like partying with beautiful African women? I don’t quite understand why they make out he was really bored when he was travelling when in fact he was partying with beautiful African women. A bit further on I find out that Arthur made money – perhaps even a lot of money – with his business and that he deposited this money in a bank in Egypt.

  Egypt? This piece of information startles me because that’s where the Shah is now, suffering from cancer. It’s odd to go and hide your money in a place where people who have been driven out of their own country have gone for a rest, to help them get over the cancer of extradition.

  Oh no, I can’t imagine Arthur selling arms like they say he did in this book. Arms are for killing people, for waging world war. The person who sells arms is as guilty as the person who uses them. Why was he selling arms when he himself had almost been killed by his friend who only missed because he was so drunk?

  Still, that’s not the thing that really bothers me. What makes me really sad is when I discover that he was ill and in the end they had to cut his leg off, or it would have rotted. They just went chop! And took it off. After that he had a worse limp than Monsieur Mutombo. After that, instead of a leg he had a stump of wood. After that he got really sick, towards the end of his all too short life. That makes me think of the Shah, who’s sick with cancer. Arthur had cancer, like the Shah, and Arthur’s cancer ate up his leg so badly that it came all the way up to his right arm. Cancer’s always like that, it gets worse and worse, and end
s up slowly killing you. That’s what Papa Roger said when he was talking about the Shah, not about Arthur; I’m sure he doesn’t know the young man with the face of an angel had the same illness as the Shah. He can’t know that yet, he’ll only know when he’s retired and opens the pages of this book I’m holding now.

  Further on still I read that Arthur never stayed long in one place. He was always on the move. He wasn’t like the Shah, who couldn’t find a country that would have him. He did it for the adventure. He loved it. The reason the Shah moves about is so the Ayatollah Khomeyni doesn’t catch up with him. But Arthur moved about so his past wouldn’t catch up with him. Even when he was dying in France, he said to his sister that he’d like to go off exploring to Egypt. Egypt again! I begin to wonder about this country with all those pyramids and mummies. Is Egypt the best place to die, perhaps? Even so, I don’t understand Arthur’s behaviour: you get back home to France, and then instead of dying there, you want to go back to Egypt! Fortunately he did die in France. And was buried there. In his native land. If the Shah dies he might not be able to be buried in Iran. That’s why I pray for him, and not for Arthur, who rests in peace, in his native land.

  Last year, when the teacher gave me my school report, I said to myself: ‘If I show it to Papa Roger, he’ll tell Maman Pauline what’s going on, they’ll see that the teacher has written things about my behaviour, that I behaved badly, and then they’ll shout at me, like two people beating the same drum, on and on.’

  I put the report in a plastic bag and hid it in an abandoned house not far from where we live. No one goes there, except rats and dogs. Because of them I decided to dig a hole and bury the report. Then I went back home, like a nice good boy who’s come top of the class. Every day I was terrified they’d ask me: Michel, where’s your report?

  The first week, Papa Roger was worried because he hadn’t seen my report, though my brothers and sisters at Maman Martine’s had all shown him theirs. I told my father that the teacher hadn’t finished filling them in yet. The second week, I said the same thing. The third week, I lied and said everyone else had had their reports but they’d forgotten mine.

  Papa Roger was not pleased.

  ‘I shall go and tell your teacher that’s no way to treat my son!’

  And off he went to the school. He didn’t go to work that morning, he considered it was too serious a matter.

  We were in class when I saw my father peering through the window. The teacher went out to see him, they stood outside talking for a few minutes. Then the teacher came back into the classroom and pointed his finger at me.

  ‘Michel, stand up!’

  I stood up, while my classmates behind me all murmured, ‘It’s a serious matter! A serious matter! A serious matter!’

  As I was looking at the floor, the teacher lifted my head up.

  ‘Now then, Michel, just repeat what you said to your father! Is it not the case that I gave you your report over three weeks ago?’

  I lowered my head again.

  ‘Repeat what you said to your father!’

  My classmates, who’d heard the teacher’s voice, jostled each other at the window to see what was happening.

  This time it was Papa Roger who lifted my head up.

  ‘Right let’s go. I want to see this report today! Go and get your school bag!’

  I went back into class and collected my things while my classmates went on muttering, ‘It’s a serious matter! A serious matter! A serious matter!’

  We walked down the street, me in front, my father behind. After half an hour or so we arrived at the deserted house. As soon as we pushed open the door the dogs started barking in their own complicated language and disappeared through the holes in the wooden slatted walls. Papa Roger put his hands on his hips and glanced around him. Then he turned to me.

  ‘Is this the place? Where’s your report then?’

  I knelt down in a corner of the house and started digging, while my father watched. I went on and on digging. When I felt the plastic bag it was a bit wet, as though bags sweat too, like people. Papa Roger snatched it from my hands and undid the knot. There was the report, inside the bag. When my father started reading it I thought: I’d better run for it, soon he’ll get to the bit where the teacher writes remarks about the pupil’s behaviour.

  I took two steps back, turned around and scarpered, like the rats and dogs living in the deserted house. Every now and then I looked back, but Papa Roger wasn’t behind me. As I ran I was thinking: Pretend I’m Carl Lewis, the black American that Roger Guy Folly’s been talking about. Carl Lewis is still only a student at lycée, but already he can run and jump like an adult, and within two or three years he’ll be the fastest runner in the world.

  I got back to our house, panting. I went straight into my bedroom and hid under the bed, wondering, ‘Will Papa Roger thrash me? If he thrashes me it will be the first time ever since he decided I’m his son too, like the children he had with Maman Martine.’

  ‘Michel, come out of there! I know you’re hiding under the bed!’

  I came out with my face covered in dust and spiders’ webs. I was already starting to cry. I could hear noise outside: it was Maman Pauline coming home from the Grand Marché. Since I was now standing there like a chicken waiting to have its neck wrung on New Year’s Day, my father signalled to me: ‘Sit down there, I need to talk to you. I am not pleased about what you’ve done.’

  I sat down where I sit when we have beef and beans and I peer at the big shiny piece of meat on my father’s plate.

  ‘What is it this time?’ asked Maman Pauline, who had come to stand behind me.

  ‘I’ve found Michel’s school report at last.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘He’d buried it in a deserted house, the one just on the edge of the quartier.’

  My mother sat down while my father opened the report. Impatient, as usual, she said, ‘Well then?’

  ‘Michel has worked well. He’s made the grade, and the teacher has written, “Very assiduous pupil”.’

  Now I was really confused. The reason I’d hidden the report was because I thought ‘Very assiduous pupil’ meant a pupil who behaves badly, who talks all the time in class and is stupid, like Bouzoba.

  So now Papa Roger was congratulating me, and Maman Pauline was starting to prepare my beef and beans. But my thoughts were elsewhere. I had just realised that ‘very assiduous pupil’ meant a very good pupil, who behaves well, who turns up to lessons and listens to what the teacher says.

  Whenever Maman Pauline goes into the bush for her business, like now, I go and stay in my father’s other house along with my seven brothers and sisters: Yaya Gaston is twenty-four, Georgette’s eighteen, Marius is thirteen, Ginette is eleven, Mbombie is nine, Maximilien’s six and Félicienne, the last of all, is two.

  This is my home too, my sisters and brothers never say that Papa Roger’s my foster father, they consider me their real brother.

  Yaya Gaston is the oldest child in the family. Even at twenty-four he already looks like a proper grown-up. He has a little moustache, which he clips, like on the film posters at the Rex cinema. He looks like Papa Roger, except Yaya Gaston is taller. They nickname him ‘the Frenchman’ because he always answers in French, even if you say something to him in munukutuba, lingala or bembé. Also, he only ever wears French clothes. He buys them at the port in Pointe-Noire, where he works in Customs. Sometimes he doesn’t buy his clothes, people give them to him, if they want to collect a big parcel from the customs office without paying anything. He has a big gold bracelet, which he wipes with a cloth dipped in something called Mirror. It stings your eyes like Flytox and smells stronger than wild cat’s piss. Every morning he polishes his bracelet standing outside the door of his little studio, which is on the side of the road, but attached to the main house where the rest of the family lives.

  Georgette is very pretty, everyone’s always telling her, and since she knows already she spends all her time looking at herself in the
mirror, asking her girlfriends what the boys think of her. She puts red lacquer on her nails at the weekend, but she has to take it off during the week because you’re not allowed it at school. Last year when she was seventeen, Papa Roger nearly sent her off to live for good with a young man who often stops outside the house to pick her up and take her for a walk in the dark. This guy’s called Dassin and he acts like the Lady Whistler who had the fight with Yeza the joiner.

  Yaya Gaston got hold of him once and said, ‘Dassin, if you don’t stop hanging round outside our house, if I hear you whistling one more time to get my sister to come out, I’ll smash your face in.’

  Dassin was trembling, there was sweat dripping down his face, because our big brother’s as strong as Tarzan. The whole neighbourhood is scared of him. But Dassin wasn’t born yesterday, or the day before. He’s found another way to confuse us: he sends the kids from round about, he pays them twenty-five CFA francs if they can get our sister Georgette out of the house.

  Papa Roger isn’t a bad man, but this was serious, Dassin had got our sister pregnant. The only reason we never saw the baby was because it went straight to heaven, without ever coming to earth.

  Marius is an old man’s name, that’s what people say around here. Papa Roger likes the footballer Marius Trésor – he’s a black who plays for the French team – so he called one of my brothers after him. Sometimes he gets called Trésor, which he likes. Marius dreams of going to France one day, so he can become a footballer like Marius Trésor who, according to him, is the first black captain of the French team, when there are players like Michel Platini and Didier Six in the team, who really ought to be captains, not him, because after all, you don’t expect to find a black ordering whites around.

  Marius knows how you smuggle your way to Europe. He’s only thirteen, but he already knows that stowaways make their way through Angola where there’s a civil war, and no one has time to keep checks on things when there’s a war. The stowaways get the plane from there to Portugal, then make their way to France. He knows because his best friend, Tago, is Jerry the Parisian’s little brother, and Jerry the Parisian’s a young man who comes back home every dry season and tells us how in France you can get everything without working, including suits and ties. Jerry the Parisian’s a Sapper, so Marius wants to be one too, it was him that told me Sapper stands for Société des ambianceurs et personnes élégantes. Sappers are people who dress really well, that’s all they care about, they walk elegantly and wear expensive clothes made by European tailors, not by Monsieur Mutombo. Maybe that’s why Monsieur Mutombo doesn’t like them and is always criticising them. He says the Sappers are thugs that come from Paris to get our girls pregnant then abandon them and their children and go back and live a comfortable life in Europe.