Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty

by Alain Mabanckou

  ‘Shush! Don’t talk so loud, Maman will hear what we’re planning.’

  ‘How are you going to do it?’

  ‘I know someone.’

  ‘And where does this someone live?’

  ‘Give me your bread first.’

  ‘No, I’m hungry too!’

  ‘Ok, we’ll split it. We’ll cut your bread in two, but you give me the big bit because it’s thanks to me you’re going to see Papa Wemba this evening.’

  I draw away from him and start to nibble at my bread. He watches me like a dog trying to work out the size of the bone his master’s grinding. I get almost halfway through my piece of bread, and I think: What if Maximilien’s right?

  Just as I decide to give him the rest of my bread Maman Martine makes me jump. ‘Michel, what are you doing?’

  ‘He’s not hungry,’ says Maximilien.

  ‘You be quiet, greedy, I’m not asking you. Michel can answer for himself!’

  Maximilien winks at me, and I help him out: ‘Yeah, Maman, I’ve had enough and I want to give Maximilien my bit. He didn’t ask me.’

  My little brother swallows the bread in a few seconds, then whispers, ‘Thank you! Really! You and me, we’ll go and see Papa Wemba this evening!’

  It’s half past five in the evening. Maximilien comes to find me, looking very pleased.

  ‘Let’s go, or we’ll be the last in the queue.’

  ‘What queue?’

  ‘No questions. Just follow me.’

  We leave the house in secret and make our way to the Joli Soir. I think: How is he going to get us into this bar for grown ups? The way he walks, he’s like an adult.

  We arrive at the Joli Soir, but we walk straight past.

  ‘Where are we going? Where are you taking me? The bar’s back there!’

  ‘Just follow me. You’ll see.’

  We turn down the street that runs behind the bar. Now we’re on a bit of land where there are at least ten or so people between my age and Maximilien’s. They are already lined up in front of a wall. It’s taken me a moment to realise that the Joli Soir is just the other side of the wall, which smelled of piss, because that’s where lots of the customers go to piss the beer they’ve drunk inside the bar.

  A boy who looks older than me, but is about Lounès’s age, comes up to Maximilien and asks him, ‘Where’s the money?’

  Maximilien takes some coins out of his pocket and says, ‘Here, there’s twenty-five CFA francs for my big brother and twenty-five francs for me, which makes a total of fifty francs.’

  The boy counts the money and nods his head: ‘Go and stand in line with the others, you’re eleventh and twelfth.’

  We go and line up, and see other boys arriving, like rats coming out of a hole. They each pay twenty-five francs and line up behind us.

  Already, I’m getting worried: ‘How are we meant to get into the bar?’

  ‘Don’t be in such a hurry. You’ll see.’

  The queue is now really long, like at the cinema Rex when there’s an Indian film. A bit further down on the same scrap of land, behind us, I notice a big yard and a house that’s lit with a Petromax lamp. On the terrace an old man and an old woman are eating in silence, almost like ghosts.

  ‘Maximilien, who are those old people?’

  ‘They’re Donatien’s papa and maman.’

  ‘Donatien?’

  ‘That’s the name of the boy who took the money back there.’

  ‘And his parents are ok with that?’

  ‘No, Donatien will give them the money. That’s how it works when there are concerts at the Joli Soir.’

  ‘Hang on a minute, where did you find the money you gave Donatien?’

  He replies calmly: ‘When I get sent to buy things from Amin’s or Bassène’s, sometimes I say I’ve lost the change. It’s not true though, I keep it in a box I’ve buried at the back of the house. And when there’s a concert I take the money, I pay, and that way I get to see all the concerts. I’ve already seen Franco Luambo Makiadi and his group the All-Mighty Ok Jazz, I’ve seen Tabu Ley and his band Afrisa, I’ve seen Lily Madeira, the singer with a hump, and I’ve even seen the Cuban and Angolan orchestras!’

  ‘But why do you waste your money on these concerts instead of spending it on sweets?’

  ‘Because one day, when I’m grown up, I want to be a musician like Papa Wemba. I want to make it big like him. I want to play solo guitar because the guitar’s what you hear most. If I only eat sweets and never go to concerts I’ll never become a musician.’

  Behind the wall we can hear guitars, drums and voices shouting: ‘Mike 1, testing’, ‘Mike 2, testing’, ‘Mike 3, testing’.

  The queue starts to get restless, people begin to squabble, Donatien calms everyone down: ‘The concert hasn’t started yet, you’d better all keep still or I’ll give you your money back and you can get out of line and go home!’

  The concert’s just started. Donatien runs towards the wall of the Joli Soir and pushes aside the boy at the front of the line. He lifts a piece of plasterboard away from the wall and I see there’s a little hole between two bricks.

  ‘That’s how we’re going to see Papa Wemba, through that hole,’ Maximilien says to me.

  ‘What? It’s tiny!’

  ‘Yes, but you can still see what’s happening in the bar! Just look through one eye and you’ll see really well. Believe me. If you get tired with one eye, you change to the other.’

  He presses his lips to my ear and whispers, ‘See those ten boys ahead of us in the queue? They won’t see anything of Papa Wemba!’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘They’re new, those boys, you can tell. They don’t know that the band leader never comes on first, he’ll turn up later because he’s the most important musician. So those boys will only see Papa Wemba’s other musicians because after ten minutes Donatien will ask them to make way for the others. And since we’re eleventh and twelfth we’ll get to the hole just when Papa Wemba’s about to take up the mike.’

  He’s very clever, our Maximilien. How does he know this stuff, when if he’s at home and you ask him something he acts like he’s really stupid, and we all make fun of him? When I think how he mistook Lounès for a giant who’d come to beat me up, it baffles me. Totally.

  We’ve been standing in line for over an hour when Donatien comes and signals to us. It’s our turn to go up to the hole.

  Maximilien tells me, ‘You get ten minutes, I get ten minutes, that’s a total of twenty minutes between us. But we’ll split the twenty minutes in four: you look for five minutes, then I’ll look for five minutes, that way each of us gets two goes. And while you’re looking, you tell me what’s happening, and when I’m looking I’ll tell you, ok?’

  ‘Ok.’

  ‘Right, you go first.’

  I lean forward. Even though the hole is small, you can easily see what’s going on in the bar because Papa Wemba is directly opposite, and his band is behind him.

  I describe what I can see to Maximilien. I tell him, Papa Wemba’s arrived, he’s dressed in black leather from head to toe, he’s just picked up the mike, he’s singing with his eyes closed and he’s already sweating all over. There are couples dancing, clinging onto each other, tightly packed together. They move up and down, from one end of the dance floor to the other. When they’re dancing opposite me I can see them. But when they move to the left, or to the right, I can’t, even when I swivel my eyes like a chameleon. Some of the couples get in my way, they dance too close to my eye. One woman’s backside is so huge, it’s like a second wall in my face. I need to find a long piece of wire and prick the great fat backside of the woman stopping me getting a good view of Papa Wemba. On the other hand, I don’t want to prick it because the backside in question is moving to the rhythm of the music and it makes me want to dance. When the drummer hits his instrument really hard, the woman’s backside bounces like a grain of sweetcorn in a pan of hot oil. And it makes me want to laugh, I didn’t know you could dan
ce like a grain of sweetcorn that’s been flung into boiling oil. There’s a man over at the back there holding on too tight to a woman in a really short skirt. He’s put his head in between this woman’s breasts and closed his eyes, like a baby that’s just finished its bottle and has fallen into a deep sleep. Every time the woman breathes the man’s head moves to the rhythm of the music and it makes me start to dance too, imagining it’s me with my head between the breasts of the woman with the short skirt, that I’ve got my eyes closed and am fast asleep on the woman’s chest, like a baby that’s just drunk up it’s bottle. That woman could be my mother, so I shouldn’t be thinking things like that. I should be trying to imagine she’s a girl of my own age. So I think about Caroline’s chest. Caroline doesn’t have breasts like the woman’s yet, but perhaps they’ll be that big when she’s twenty.

  Papa Wemba is singing now, with a musician I don’t know very well. I’ve seen his photo somewhere. Who is he again?

  ‘That’s Koffi Olomidé, he lives in France,’ Maximilien tells me, as though he’s guessed I was going to ask him that.

  When my five minutes are up, Maximilien takes my place, and describes everything. He tells me about the bass guitar, the backing guitar, the guitar solo. He says the big deep voice we can hear above all the other voices is a singer called Espérant Kisangani, alias ‘Djenga K’. Maximilien would like to be able to sing like him, to play guitar solo better than Rigo Star and Bogo Wendé, Papa Wemba’s two guitarists. When did he learn those two names, names I don’t even know, and I’m bigger than him? And he’s dancing while he talks, dancing really well, all without taking his eye from the hole. His head sways to the right, his backside swings to the left. Then the same thing the other way round. He swings out his right leg, and shakes it when the drummer bangs out a quick rhythm. He does the same thing with his left foot, then he shakes his arm, as though he’s imitating a bird in the sky. And when he dances like that, the whole line behind him starts dancing like him and imitating his moves.

  I turn round to see how the other boys are dancing. That’s when I notice that some girls have arrived in really short skirts, hair in braids, lipstick, and pointed shoes, like the high heels that grown-up women wear. They’re with well-dressed boys who dance with them, with their head on their chest, even though they don’t have big breasts like the women dancing in the bar.

  Every five minutes, Maximilien and I swap over. When it’s me looking through the hole, Maximilien yells in my ear: ‘You mustn’t keep still, you have to dance, or people will think you don’t know how to dance and they’ll make fun of us. Go on, move! Put your head on one side and move your body the other way. Imagine you’re a turkey, a dancing turkey! It’s the new dance they call Turkey Cuckoo.’

  So I try to imagine I’m a dancing turkey. Maximilien sniggers because he can see I don’t know how to dance the Turkey Cuckoo. I keep moving my head up and down instead of from side to side.

  ‘Michel, you’re meant to be a turkey, not a lizard. The Lizard Cuckoo was last year’s dance! That’s old fashioned now!’

  The other boys are sulking a bit because we’ve been cleverer than them and split our twenty minutes into four. Every time my brother and I swap over they all shout: ‘Plot! Plot! Plot! Cheats! Cheats! Cheats!’

  Donatien looks at his watch and steps forward to move us away from the wall: ‘Come on then you two, time’s up now, off you go, let the others have a turn!’

  Maximilien takes my hand, ‘Let’s go home, we’ve seen everything. In any case, it’ll be mayhem in a minute, the musicians will be too tired, they’ll have smoked their dope and they’ll start playing rubbish.’

  Our parents are very cross, even Yaya Gaston, who still has a cut over his wound from the fight.

  Maman Martine says, ‘Where were you then? Don’t you know the thugs from the Grand Marché come and hang round here on concert days?’

  We stare at the ground and she goes on, ‘Since you’d disappeared, we finished all your food, so there’ll be nothing for you to eat tonight! That will teach you!’

  Maximilien murmurs in my ear: ‘Don’t you worry, I thought about that. We’ll take the money that’s left in my money box and go and buy some big dumplings and soup from Mama Mfoa in the street opposite the bar called Credit Gone West, that’s open 24/7. Believe me, her soup is so good, you won’t mind missing the sardines the others had tonight, besides, we had them for lunch anyway!’

  This morning my big brother Marius and my little sister Mbombie are getting ready to go into town. They are going to get their vaccinations against tetanus and sleeping sickness. Until now, those two have always said: No, we won’t have our vaccinations. But this time they can’t say no: a boy from our quartier died yesterday from sleeping sickness, and in the evening Papa Roger reminded everyone, ‘Tomorrow morning, all those who haven’t had their vaccinations must go to see the Chinese doctors at the Congo-Malembé hospital! When I get back from work I will check your arms to see you’ve got marks from the injections. You must have tetanus jabs too.’

  While Marius and Mbombie are crossing the yard, Maman Martine says to them, ‘Wait, take little Félicienne to see the Chinese doctors too.’

  I say to myself: ‘Let them take her, I don’t want her pissing on me again when I pick her up. When the Chinese doctors give her her jab at the hospital she’ll yell so loud you’ll hear it all over town.’

  Maximilien, Ginette and I had our vaccinations last year, so we stay at home. We help Maman Martine sweep the yard and do the washing up and take out the big rubbish bin at the back of the house and put it in the road for when the refuse lorry comes. Sometimes the lorry doesn’t come by for a month or more. That’s why there are great piles of rubbish in the middle of some streets, and the cars have to drive round them.

  .....

  Maximilien is running like a mad man. He comes up to me, his brow drenched in sweat.

  ‘Get your breath back,’ I say.

  ‘No, I haven’t time. It’s too dreadful!’

  ‘What’s too dreadful?’

  He glances back at the street.

  ‘Don’t you see what’s happening out there? Look who it is, waiting opposite! It’s him, the giant Tarzan who came to beat you up the other day. He’s still there, I don’t want you to fight with him! He’s stronger than you, he’s a great big giant! I’ll give him my money if he’ll leave you alone.’

  ‘Take a deep breath, Maximilien. That’s my friend, he’s called Lounès, and he’s come to see me because we haven’t seen each other for a few days now. He’s not a giant. He’s just tall like big brother Marius.’

  ‘Yeah, but he wants a fight.’

  ‘No, he just wants to see me.’

  I leave him standing there, and I go out into the street. I find Lounès and we walk together as far as the river Tchinouka.

  There are no fishermen today. The river’s calm. You can just hear a few birds, hidden in the trees.

  ‘It’s weird, there’ve been no planes for the last few days,’ Lounès says.

  ‘Perhaps they’ve changed routes. Because we’ve been staring at them. Or they’re hiding in the clouds.’

  Suddenly he changes the subject. ‘Did you find that key to your mother’s belly?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You really have to find it.’

  ‘I’m still looking. I will find it.’

  ‘So it was you that locked it?’

  ‘…’

  ‘Where have you put the key?’

  ‘Little Pepper’s looking after it for me and…’

  ‘Who’s Little Pepper?’

  ‘Someone who talks to people you can’t see. We went looking for the key together because he’d lost it in the bin and…’

  ‘Someone who goes looking through bins is usually called a vagabond. Is this Little Pepper a bit mad, by any chance?’

  ‘Oh no, he’s a philosopher, he has all these ideas other people can’t have. That’s what philosophers do.’

  ‘
He’s just mad, then, let’s face it, like Athena and Mango.’

  ‘No, he’s a philosopher!’

  ‘Let’s both go and see him, and ask him to give the key back!’

  ‘I can’t today…’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘At lunchtime I have to go with Maman Martine to the Bloc 55 quartier, and after that I have to go home with my father, Maman Pauline’s getting back from Brazzaville.’

  At last a plane goes overhead, but it’s way up in the sky. Usually it seems like the planes are passing just a few centimetres above the roofs of the houses in our quartier, and the dogs start barking, and the little children go running into their mothers’ arms.

  I say to Lounès, ‘That’s a strange plane, don’t you think?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s like the front bit’s bent downwards, like it was going to fall on top of us.’

  ‘That’s just because we’re lying down.’

  ‘No, something bad’s going to happen, I can feel it. It’s strange that no planes have gone over since we’ve been lying here. And it looks like it’s got to land really urgently somewhere.’

  ‘So where do you think it’s going to land?’

  ‘In Egypt. The capital of Egypt is Cairo.’

  The Shah of Iran has died. In Egypt.

  Papa Roger is angry, you’d think it was someone in our family who’d died. Maman Pauline is still tired from her long trip and isn’t listening, so my father turns to me and explains that the great man is going to be missed by the whole world. I already know everything he’s saying. But since he’s sad, because after all, the person who’s died is someone he loved, he tells me once again about Egypt, Anouar el-Sadat and how he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Menahem Begin, about Morocco, King Hassan II, Mexico, the Bahamas, Panama, etc. Each time he mentions one of these countries, I imagine a plane flying over our town and I think: The capital of Egypt is Cairo, the capital of Morocco is Rabat, the capital of Mexico is Mexico City, the capital of the Bahamas is Nassau, the capital of Panama is Panama City, etc.