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 light 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!’
I laugh, but only to please him. I went and whistled three times outside their house today, so we could go down to the river together. I want to show him something, not listen to what this woman I don’t even like’s been saying, when she’s already been rude to Maman Pauline because her business is doing too well. So I let Lounès get to the end of his impression of her. I laugh again when he adds that Jérémie’s mother was wearing a red pagne tight across her behind and lifted her pagne high up her thighs. She asked the crowd if anyone wanted to give her a seeing to till she was too tired to move. Some of the men whistled and shouted, ‘Me! Me! I’ll give you a seeing to!’
Lounès noticed I wasn’t laughing as much now.
‘You wanted to tell me something, Michel…’
At this I get my piece of paper out of my pocket and hold it out to him.
‘Can you give that to Caroline?’
He takes the piece of paper and starts reading what I’ve written. My heart’s all shaken up. I close my eyes for a few minutes. When I open them again I see his face, it’s like a mask. He says nothing. He starts reading again. Can’t he read my writing?
‘Michel, this isn’t a poem! It’s fine, but it’s not a poem. In a poem the end of every line has to sound the same. Listen, I’ll recite you a real poem, you’ll see, at the end of every line you hear the same sounds:’