I wanted to see my big brother again. I had done the right thing, I said to myself, in arranging to meet him in our father’s house, because we wouldn’t have been able to talk calmly with him in the excited state he’d been in that evening. But clearly he hadn’t waited for the rendezvous and had been watching out for me together with Georgette, near my mother’s house, from inside the bar, hoping they might see me.
I had never been very close to Georgette. She was always out with her friends, always running off somewhere, despite Papa Roger’s fury. Constantly in conflict with Maman Martine, and sometimes with Yaya Gaston too, who we were meant to respect as the oldest of the family, Georgette had been a ‘trendy’ young woman. The way she dressed was on the verge of indecent, at a time when the young people of Pointe-Noire were attracted to the SAPE, the Society of Ambience-Makers and People of Elegance. Her lovers were ‘Parisians’, young men who came over from France to show off their over-the-top outfits during the dry season. Their skin had been whitened with products made from hydroquinone, and they had paunches — for them, a sign of elegance, since a rounded belly held up your belt and trousers more effectively than a flat one. The arrival of these young gods in Pointe-Noire stirred up trouble in families. The young girls lost their heads and turned rebellious, spending whole nights following the Parisians from bar to bar.
Seeing my sister again now, I realised at once that the ambush had been her idea, and that she had taken advantage of Yaya Gaston’s drink problem. He was just going along with her.
The waiter places a beer in front of me.
‘Drink it while it’s cold,’ advises Georgette, who seems to have calmed down a bit.
I do as she says, and she adds triumphantly:
‘We knew you’d come and hang around your mother’s plot, that’s why we’ve been sitting here since late this morning! You always loved your mother more than your father!’
A young man of around thirty sits down at our table. Noticing my surprise, Georgette introduces him:
‘This is Papa Roger’s cousin, so he’s your cousin too. I told him to come by. He’ll take the money you could have given Papa Roger if he’d still been alive…’
Yaya Gaston nods his agreement:
‘Don’t worry, little brother, just give him fifty thousand CFA francs or a bit more and he’ll be happy!’
Georgette leaps off her stooclass="underline"
‘What? Fifty thousand CFA francs? Gaston, do you know what you’re saying? Is that kind of money going to bring Papa Roger back to us? What about me, then, how much would he give me? The same?’
Yaya Gaston says hastily:
‘Calm down, sister, I’m sure our little brother won’t give you less than a hundred thousand CFA francs! You know how generous he is!’
‘No way! I won’t be made fun of! I’m not accepting a little sum of money after he’s been abroad all these years, never seeing us! Not once, since he left, did he ever send us a single money order! I need a million CFA francs! We buried our father, we spent money and he sent us nothing! Do you think I’ll accept one hundred thousand CFA francs? Never! And if he gives me one hundred thousand CFA francs, I’ll chuck them in the gutter, so there!’
I do a quick calculation: I’ve only got thirty thousand CFA francs in my pocket, far less than the staggering amount expected by my sister, whom I like less and less by the minute. I’ve stopped looking her in the eye; as far as I’m concerned she’s a stranger to me now. All she talks about is money, not a word about the memory of our father. Basically, I’m supposed to reimburse the cost of Papa Roger’s funeral. I wonder why my maternal family didn’t take the same attitude, since I didn’t attend Maman Pauline’s funeral, and they never presented me with a bill. I try to control my irritation.
The so-called cousin of my father glances at my shoes from time to time. When he finally breaks his silence he says:
‘Will you leave me those shoes?’
Yaya Gaston looks down at my Campers, really practical in this heat.
‘Give me your shoes, little brother, not him. Papa’s cousin can buy himself some with the money you give him…’
The so-called cousin looks at my jeans and white shirt. Before he even opens his mouth, Yaya Gaston gets in ahead of him:
‘The shirt and jeans are taken! I’m having them. And my little brother can give me his suit as well, the one he was wearing at his talk…’
I can’t think how to get out of this trap now. I need to find an excuse to leave.
I try asking:
‘Are we still meeting at Papa’s house?’
‘Of course!’ responds Georgette. ‘We’ve told everyone, and they’re all impatient for their share, but you have to give me mine now, because I don’t want to get mixed up with the others when they all start fighting over it.’
‘I haven’t got anything on me, I didn’t expect to find you here and…’
Yaya Gaston stops me: ‘Listen, little brother, even if you only have twenty or thirty thousand CFA francs, give me that, for my fare. You can give us the rest when we have the reunion at the house.’
Georgette disagrees:
‘Gaston, could you just shut up for once? Are you listening to what I’m saying? Are you looking for problems, or what?’
‘He just needs to come an hour early, you go and sit in a bistro and he gives you the money!’ suggests the ‘cousin’.
Yaya Gaston backs him up. ‘That’s not a bad idea.’
Georgette’s looking for a counter-argument, but she needs time. She decides to call a ceasefire.
‘OK, we’ll do that! For now just give us twenty or thirty thousand CFA francs for our transport.’
From where we are now, to my father’s house, the cost of transport would be less than one thousand CFA francs. I’m tired of bargaining, and I dig into the pocket of my trousers. I manage to pull out a couple of notes and I put down twenty thousand CFA francs on the table. Georgette pockets them while the other two don’t even blink. That leaves me with ten thousand CFA francs for my own fare home and a meal at Chez Gaspard.
As I get to my feet I know already that I won’t be going to the family reunion, that I won’t see Yaya Gaston again before I leave Pointe-Noire, because of Georgette.
I walk out of the bar while they’re splitting up the twenty thousand CFA francs. They’ve already forgotten I exist, I can hear Georgette yelling at the other two:
‘No! I’m taking twelve thousand, you two can split the other eight!’
Two-faced woman
My cousin Bienvenüe has been admitted to the Adolphe-Sicé hospital. Her twin brother Gilbert rang to tell me a few minutes ago.
‘You’re staying not far from the hospital, you could drop by and see her, she’d like that,’ he insisted.