I get ready, counting in my head, ONE, TWO, THREE! Then I shoot off like a rocket.
I don’t look over my shoulder, I just run, run, run. I run so fast that when I get back to our lot I go running past it and fall into the yard of the neighbour, Monsieur Vinou, the old soak without a pistol, unlike Paul Verlaine. He shouts abuse at me, calls me a thief, little gangster etc. I jump over the barbed wire between the two lots, and I’m home, drenched in sweat.
I take a look out of the window: Mabélé is standing outside our house. This time he shakes his clenched fist three times in the air and leaves. I think: When he does that it means he’ll get me next time, next time I won’t escape like I did today.
~ ~ ~
I’m cross with the Mexicans. They didn’t want the Shah back in their country after his operation in America, so now the poor ex-president is in Panama. It’s not right.
Papa Roger can’t tell us where Panama is. He just says it’s close to Costa Rica and Colombia — a country which plays football as well as Mexico, but hasn’t hosted the World Cup yet like Mexico. Still, it’s good that Panama have welcomed the Shah. He must be very tired and he needs rest.
My joy is short-lived, though. Because my father also tells us that the Panamanians have been influenced by the Ayatollah Khomeyni and want to send the Shah back to Iran. When I heard this I felt like roaring with rage, but I made myself calm down because Maman Pauline gave me a cross look. She thinks I encourage my father in this business of the Shah looking for a country to take him in.
The radio’s playing up today. Sometimes the sound cuts out for a few minutes at a time. My father thinks it’s the government doing that to prevent us being informed about what’s going on in the world and make sure we go on believing the immortal Marien Ngouabi was assassinated by Imperialism and its local lackeys. Why is the government so determined to talk about this assassination as though it hadn’t been involved in the death of our Immortal itself?
The sound’s come back on the radio, and I hear the American journalist say a very complicated word I’ve never heard before: extradition. It’s very hard to pronounce, you have to pretend you’re about to sneeze then clear your throat. I look at my father, he’s leaning towards me, he says that extradition is when you capture someone in one country and send him back to where he came from so he can be tried. Lots of countries all over the world have signed an agreement to catch people they’re looking for like the Shah and send them back to their country of origin for trial.
Papa Roger is furious: ‘It’s shocking that Panama are sending the Shah back to Iran! You never know what might happen there. Thankfully the Egyptian president has asked him to come back to Egypt, where he’ll be safe! But for the Shah it’s back to square one. What choice does he have? He has to go back to Egypt! His cancer is getting worse all the time. I’m sure they deliberately messed up the operation in the States. I hope at least he won’t die in Egypt like an abandoned dog.’
~ ~ ~
Papa Roger and Maman Pauline are out, so I can secretly go and get the book by the young man with the face of an angel. It’s almost like he smiles at me slightly more each day, as though he’s pleased to see me. I’ve left him on his own for too long. When I look at his photo it’s like meeting up with a friend. I’d like to tell him all about Mabélé, who wanted to smash my face in the other day, even though he’s the one who’s pinched my girl and talks to her about that annoying Marcel Pagnol guy and his castles.
I’d like to talk to him about Lounès too, how we’re always together, he’s my friend, we love each other like brothers, we tell each other everything, but I’m not going to tell Lounès that Mabélé nearly beat me up, or he’ll try and get back at him with his advanced katas that Maître John teaches him. I just don’t like fighting, that’s why I’m not going to go to Lounès’ karate club with him.
Arthur doesn’t speak, he just goes on smiling at me. What do I know about him, apart from the thing about the ‘hand that guides the quill’ and the ‘hand that guides the plough’? Who is he?
They do actually tell you more about him at the beginning of the book in a part called the ‘Introduction’. It says there that Arthur came to our continent, and traded in ivory, gold and coffee. That means he liked trading, like Maman Pauline and Madame Mutombo. It says that sometimes he liked to party with beautiful African women. Who wouldn’t like partying with beautiful African women? I don’t quite understand why they make out he was really bored when he was travelling when in fact he was partying with beautiful African women. A bit further on I find out that Arthur made money — perhaps even a lot of money — with his business and that he deposited this money in a bank in Egypt.
Egypt? This piece of information startles me because that’s where the Shah is now, suffering from cancer. It’s odd to go and hide your money in a place where people who have been driven out of their own country have gone for a rest, to help them get over the cancer of extradition.
Oh no, I can’t imagine Arthur selling arms like they say he did in this book. Arms are for killing people, for waging world war. The person who sells arms is as guilty as the person who uses them. Why was he selling arms when he himself had almost been killed by his friend who only missed because he was so drunk?
Still, that’s not the thing that really bothers me. What makes me really sad is when I discover that he was ill and in the end they had to cut his leg off, or it would have rotted. They just went chop! And took it off. After that he had a worse limp than Monsieur Mutombo. After that, instead of a leg he had a stump of wood. After that he got really sick, towards the end of his all too short life. That makes me think of the Shah, who’s sick with cancer. Arthur had cancer, like the Shah, and Arthur’s cancer ate up his leg so badly that it came all the way up to his right arm. Cancer’s always like that, it gets worse and worse, and ends up slowly killing you. That’s what Papa Roger said when he was talking about the Shah, not about Arthur; I’m sure he doesn’t know the young man with the face of an angel had the same illness as the Shah. He can’t know that yet, he’ll only know when he’s retired and opens the pages of this book I’m holding now.
Further on still I read that Arthur never stayed long in one place. He was always on the move. He wasn’t like the Shah, who couldn’t find a country that would have him. He did it for the adventure. He loved it. The reason the Shah moves about is so the Ayatollah Khomeyni doesn’t catch up with him. But Arthur moved about so his past wouldn’t catch up with him. Even when he was dying in France, he said to his sister that he’d like to go off exploring to Egypt. Egypt again! I begin to wonder about this country with all those pyramids and mummies. Is Egypt the best place to die, perhaps? Even so, I don’t understand Arthur’s behaviour: you get back home to France, and then instead of dying there, you want to go back to Egypt! Fortunately he did die in France. And was buried there. In his native land. If the Shah dies he might not be able to be buried in Iran. That’s why I pray for him, and not for Arthur, who rests in peace, in his native land.
~ ~ ~
Last year, when the teacher gave me my school report, I said to myself: ‘If I show it to Papa Roger, he’ll tell Maman Pauline what’s going on, they’ll see that the teacher has written things about my behaviour, that I behaved badly, and then they’ll shout at me, like two people beating the same drum, on and on.’