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 everyone, you know!’