Deep inside I was thinking, ‘What’s going to happen when his wife gets home?’
~ ~ ~
What is it that Mabélé’s got that I haven’t, that makes Caroline love him, not me? I wouldn’t mind fighting it out with him, to get him to leave her alone. I can imagine how it would go: I’d be Ali and he’d be Foreman. I’d fly like a butterfly, and sting like a bee, Mabélé couldn’t even land a punch on me, you can’t hit what you can’t see. I’d be too fast for him, I’d rise up into the air, and there goes his fist — missed! Mabélé would stay with his feet planted flat on the ground like a builder’s trowel. And by then Lounès will have taught me the katas of Maître John and I’ll have lift-off, like in the films of Bruce Lee.
The first time I saw Mabélé at the Tata-Luboko football ground I said to myself: ‘Call that a boy? Is Caroline blind or what? Can’t she see I’m better looking than him? Can’t she see Mabélé’s knees are like misshapen yams growing in the Mayombe forest? Can’t she see that when he’s standing up he looks like a turkey with his neck wobbling about the whole time?’
True, I haven’t got any muscles yet, but that will come, and then I’ll be even better looking than I am now. What’s she looking for, anyway? Doesn’t she realise if she has her two children with Mabélé their children will be as ugly as their father? Ok, maybe their children will be clever but they’ll still be ugly, there’s no way round it.
Caroline must love Mabélé for some other reason. He must be able to sweet talk her, like a grown up. Grown up people know how to talk to women and make them laugh and show their teeth and their tongue, because whatever it is they’re hearing interests them. I’m not very interesting when I talk. To be interesting you have to have things to say, things that women like to hear. But what kind of things? Mabélé’s just a cheat, he goes and finds things in books by Marcel Pagnol and comes and bewitches Caroline by whispering them in her ear. There’s no point trying to charm Caroline with Arthur’s poems. I think, for example, I should try and get her attention by hiding a guinea fowl feather in my pocket, then when I see her, I could tickle her in the ear with the end of the feather. I’m sure that would make her laugh, and then she’d think I was more interesting than Mabélé.
Another thing I could do to interest Caroline would be to do what Louis de Funès does in Le Gendarme et les Extra-terrestres, a film Lounès really loves — he’s seen it three times already. He says in this film the extra-terrestrials change shape, so they look just like policemen and everyone else looks so similar, no one knows who’s an extra-terrestrial and who’s a human being. I could turn myself into Mabélé so Caroline thinks it’s her beloved Mabélé beside her, when in fact it’s me, Michel, I just look like Mabélé. And when I turn back into myself — because I’m actually better looking than Mabélé, Caroline will crack up laughing. It could really work, because Lounès says this actor Louis de Funès makes everyone laugh — girls, boys, children, old people, animals etc., and I don’t want to make everyone laugh, only Caroline.
When my mother’s in love she feels like her heart is in her stomach. I’ve never felt that in my whole life. My heart is virtually immobile. Even if I jump, it stays exactly where it is. When I asked Lounès if he’d ever felt his heart in his stomach he thought I was mad.
‘Can your heart fall into your stomach?’
I didn’t want to say that’s what happens when you’re in love. I’ve never seen Lounès chatting up girls. Usually it’s the girls that chat him up, and he acts like he wishes they wouldn’t, or like he hasn’t noticed. And when he acts like he wishes they wouldn’t, or he hasn’t noticed, that’s when the girls all run after him. And he comes to me and says proudly, ‘You see that girl? She’s been after me for ages but I’m going to leave her to be unhappy for a bit, then when I do go and talk to her she’ll be all over me!’
I wouldn’t dare act like that in front of Caroline, if I act like I’m not interested in her and leave her to be unhappy for a bit, she’ll just say, ‘You’ve only yourself to blame, Mabélé loves me, and he doesn’t make me unhappy like you do!’
~ ~ ~
Our school is this old red-brick building with a roof that’s going to fall in if they don’t fix it in the next few months, maybe even in the next two or three weeks. The parents have meetings every month about mending the roof. Papa Roger won’t go to the meetings any more. He thinks people just go along to talk big and say nothing, in French, so everyone will think they’ve been to France, like Uncle René, when they haven’t. At the end they vote to decide the date of the next meeting. And they’ll come back again to talk big in French while the school roof continues to get worse and worse. Also, there are some bad people who’ve stolen the wood for the windows to take home for firewood. When it rains, the water comes into the classroom, and we have to move all the desks into one corner so as not to get wet. That’s why we come to school with our waterproofs and why our schoolbooks are covered in plastic. There’s already the water that comes in through the roof, and if it’s going to come in through the windows as well it won’t be a school any more it’ll be a swimming pool, like in the houses of the capitalists in the town centre, who buy all their food at Printania.
The reason it smells bad in our classroom is because the pupils wet themselves while the teacher’s whipping them. If you talk too much, the teacher tells you to get up and go and kneel down on the platform with your arms folded, in front of all your classmates. The teacher goes on with the lesson while you stay there thinking: What’s going to happen after the lesson, when he comes over to me? So you cry in advance. Which is actually a waste of tears, because it’s afterwards you should be crying, once you’ve been whacked. And when you cry in advance, everyone hears you. And because they can hear you it means you’re disturbing them when they’re meant to be copying out the lesson. So you just make things worse for yourself. The teacher turns to look at you, he’s very cross now. He goes to find a brick outside. He tells you to hold it high above your head and not move till the end of the lesson. If you drop the brick he gives you double punishment. You have to make really sure it doesn’t fall, even if it weighs more than you do. You start sweating, snot comes out of your nose. And since you don’t want to be snotty, you sniff it in, and it makes a strange noise like a ravenous chameleon swallowing insects. The teacher turns round again, and he’s even angrier than last time because you’re making a noise like a chameleon swallowing insects. He tells Adriano the Angolan to step up on the platform. Our top pupil’s very pleased because he already knows what’s going to happen.
The teacher says, ‘Adriano, recite the speech given by the immortal Marien Ngouabi on the 31st December 1969, the day our brave Congolese Workers’ Party was formed.’
Adriano stands to attention. He looks up in the air, and starts to talk like the immortal Marien Ngouabi, the same voice we use in our Revolutionary theatre class.
Adriano yells, ‘Pioneers!’
The class replies, ‘We serve!!!’
Adriano: ‘All for the people!’