Maman Martine said, with a broad smile, ‘And that skinny little girl from Kinkosso was me…’
Then she burst out laughing.
‘Prince Roger, what a gangster! He took my hand, all I said was, my name was Martine, but straight away he answered, “There’s a reason you followed me all this way. You are the future mother of my children. We’ll leave Bouenza, otherwise the old men in your village will be after us for the rest of our lives. We’ll go and live in the town.” And so I followed Prince Roger because I knew he would be the father of my children, too, and that the grandfather of our grandfathers had given me a sign, because I’d never danced the levitation dance before that night and I don’t know what it was that pushed me to step out of the line of women and start out-dancing your father. Destiny, that’s what they call it, it’s destiny.’
She finished scaling the fish and put them on the board. I can see her dusting them with flour and salt.
‘I’ll grill them in a while with palm oil, and I’ll make you a nice little tomato sauce. You’ll see, you’re going to love it.’
Before going to tip the bowl of water mixed with scales and blood into the gutter, she said, ‘I could have been someone different, you know. But perhaps this was the best life I could have had. I only stayed at school till the fourth grade; your father had his lower school certificate, and even studied at the high school in Bouenza till seventh grade. That helped when we came to live here: the Whites wanted people who’d been to school, especially with diplomas, like him. A few weeks after everything that happened in Kinkosso, Prince Roger and I secretly boarded an Isuzu truck bound for Kouilou, making for Pointe-Noire. We needed to leave Bouenza without telling anyone. So we left just like that, each of us with a little bag. I was already pregnant, that father of yours is a real rabbit. I knew our life was going to change, and Prince Roger got a job at the Victory Palace Hotel, just after Yaya Gaston was born. That has to be fate, don’t you think?’
~ ~ ~
My little brother Maximilien’s sweating. He’s been running so fast, someone must have sent him to buy something more than ten kilometres away.
He’s still quite out of breath as he tells me:‘There’s someone looking for you outside. He’s giant, he’s taller than you, he bends over a little bit so people will think he’s a child like us, but really he’s a great big guy like Tarzan! Who is he? Does he want a fight with you? Did you steal his marbles in the playground?’
I don’t answer. It’s Mabélé after me again, he’s come to smash my face in.
While I’m getting ready to leave our house, Maximilien shouts: ‘Michel don’t get into a fight, the giant will win! He’s got these huge muscles!’
I stand by the entrance to our house and look out, but I can’t see anyone. Where can he be hiding then, this giant? Behind the tree opposite? I have a good look, but there’s no one. So I decide to go back inside the house to shout at Maximilien for teasing me. Just as I turn round to go, I hear someone whistling loudly, three times, from the house belonging to Jerry the Parisian’s father.
It’s Lounès. He couldn’t bear us not seeing each other for a few days.
‘So you’re the giant that scared Maximilien! Why don’t you come on inside?’
‘It’s better to talk outside, then we can see the planes go by.’
We go on down to the river Tchinouka. You have to take the road as though you’re making for the Voungou quartier. It’s a new quartier, where, instead of building proper houses, people build houses out of slats. They say that later, when they’ve got lots of money, they’ll break up these houses and build proper, permanent ones. But that’s just lies, because if you’ve got money you don’t mess about, you build a proper house straight away and have done with it. Everyone calls these buildings ‘houses just for now’.
The river Tchinouka divides the Savon quartier, where my father’s house is, and the Voungou quartier where one day he hopes to buy another plot. There are some young boys fishing by the river. I wonder what they find there because there’s more rubbish than fish in that water. People dump their rubbish there, they shit in it, sometimes they throw their old furniture and mattresses into it. No one says to them, ‘Don’t do that, it’s wrong to behave like we were still in pre-history, when man still wasn’t quite sure whether to stay as a monkey or turn into a creature that walks on two limbs and talks with real sounds.’
We lay stretched out in the grass, listening to the water flowing close to our feet.
‘I asked my teacher what saligaud and alter ego meant,’ Lounès says.
‘But there’s no school this week. Where did you meet him?’
‘He came into my father’s workshop to pick up his jacket.’
‘So?’
‘A saligaud is someone dodgy, someone who does bad things, and an alter ego’s like if you were me and I was you. If you’re alter egos it means you can tell each other everything, anything you say, it could have been me that said it, and anything I say could have been said by you.’
‘So the tree of the singer with the moustache is…’
‘Yes, it’s his alter ego. The singer wishes he hadn’t left his tree like a bad person would, when the tree’s his friend.’
After a moment’s silence he goes on, ‘You know what the teacher told my father? Don’t laugh! He told him to buy me a dictionary, then I could find the definition of every French word there is…’
A plane is just going past. Lounès says: ‘Guess where it’s going to land.’
‘Iran. The capital of Iran is Teheran…’
He’s amazed. I don’t usually answer that fast.
‘How did you know that?’
‘The Shah… He’s the ex-president of Iran, and the Ayatollah Khomeyni wants to put him on trial and he’s in Egypt and he’s sick. And the Iranian students want him sent back to Iran and they’ve taken the Americans hostage in a basement of the embassy in Teheran. It’s called extradition. But if the Shah gets sent back there they might kill him!’
I stare at Lounès in silence for a while.
‘Why are you looking at me like that? Have I got a spot on my face or what?’
‘No. But those little hairs there, on your chin… Is that your beard? Have you put beer froth on your chin?’
He touches his chin. ‘Can you see from a distance, then, that I’ve got hair there?’
‘A bit.’
‘It’s not beer froth, it’s hair growing.’
‘You’d better cut it quick, or people will think you’re really old.’
‘No, my father says if I cut it now then bigger hairs will grow back, and they’ll be really hard.’
He closes his eyes. I know he’s thinking. I can tell he’s going to come out with something serious. That’s perhaps why he’s come to see me.
I try and think what could be serious, but I can’t. I mustn’t disturb him, though, I must let him concentrate.