So I’m very sorry I laughed the last time, that I didn’t realise Longombé’s mother’s a brave lady, as brave as Maman Pauline or Maman Martine. Longombé comes back into the workshop and looks at me with red eyes, like an angry crocodile. Monsieur Mutombo tells him to hurry up and do my father’s trousers. He’s going to deliberately cut them too short and when my father puts them on he’ll look like a hare wearing trousers in Tales of the Bush and the Forest that they read to us in the infant school.
~ ~ ~
Uncle René’s house is the prettiest in Rue Comapon. My uncle always worries because it’s so nice, and you can see it shining in the distance as you approach, that the local proletariats, who live in the clapboard houses, will break into his property at any moment and steal all his wealth. That’s why his plot has secure fencing all round it, with barbed wire on top. Anyone who thinks: I’ll just go and rob Monsieur René’s house because he’s rich, will hurt himself on the barbed wire, and bleed and scream like babies when they first come into the world, the ones that know already that they’re going to have big problems in their lives, and that they’d have been better off staying in their mother’s belly, or going straight to heaven without stopping off on earth, like My Sister Star and My Sister No-name. Also, it’s not just barbed wire protecting Uncle René’s plot, there’s a great big iron gate as well. That’s where everyone goes in. The other iron gate is at the back of the house — the entrance to the garage — which my uncle opens with a remote control.
When you arrive at Uncle René’s house, first of all you ring the bell and wait in the street, then the houseboy comes to peer at you through a little hole that’s so well hidden that you’d never think anyone was looking at you. If you look suspicious, if you look like a trouble maker from the Grand Marché, the houseboy won’t open the door to you. If you won’t go away he puts Miguel onto you, who, my uncle says, is the fiercest dog in the neighbourhood, not to say the whole town, and why not the entire Congo. When Miguel’s excited he tries to bite his own shadow. The reason he’s so fierce is that the houseboy gives him corn spirit to drink. Once he’s had a glass of that he goes really quiet for a few seconds then he starts turning circles, chasing his own tail, but he can’t catch it because when he turns left it goes right, and when he goes right it goes left. Then he gets really mad that he can’t catch it, so he barks and rolls on the ground. The houseboy calms him down, puts a chain round his neck and ties him up to the foot of the sour sap tree in the yard. Miguel goes on barking, he’s so angry his spit dribbles from his mouth the whole time.
Uncle René’s put a sign on the gate in big letters that says:
BEWARE FEROCIOUS DOG 24/7.
When I see ‘24/7’ I think: So when is Miguel ever NOT ‘ferocious’? Does he ever sleep? I do a quick sum in my head. Given that there are 365 days in the year — sometimes 366 — and a day lasts 24 hours, and an hour lasts 60 minutes, and a minute lasts 60 seconds, and a second is divided into sixty degrees, calculate in seconds the length of time during which a dog which is ‘ferocious’ 24/7 is ferocious over a period of five and a half years…
So there I am, at the entrance to Uncle René’s house. At Christmas I have to visit Uncle René with the truck and plastic rake and shovel he gave me a few days earlier. I play mostly with Kevin, who’s eleven, and Sebastien who’s nine. You can’t play with Edwige, who’s fifteen, and is always telling us off when we run around in the house, and climb on her father’s armchairs without taking our shoes off.
I didn’t want to come to Uncle René’s house today, but Maman Pauline said her brother would be cross if I didn’t go to see him; he’d think we resented the fact that he was richer than us. And besides, I do have his family name. Maman Pauline told me to go and take a shower, to scrub under my armpits, my backside and where I pee. I don’t like it when she says that. Does any normal person ever have a shower without washing under their armpits, their backside and where they pee? If you don’t wash there, why take a shower at all?
‘When you were a baby and I washed those bits, you always cried,’ she reminds me.
I gave them a good scrub. After that she picked out a pair of blue underpants, some black shorts, a nice white shirt, a black bow tie and rubber sandals. She put my truck and my plastic rake and shovel in a bag.
It was nearly midday, and it was already very hot, even in the shade. Just outside the door to our plot, Maman Pauline warned me, ‘Don’t get lost on the way. You go down the Avenue of Independence, turn right, then carry on till you get to the Savon quartier then you turn into the Rue Comapon. Watch out for cars and only cross the road when there’s a grown up crossing. Walk directly behind them. Behave yourself, don’t fall out with Kevin and Sebastien. I’ll be here when you get back this evening, your father too.’
I nearly asked her why she’s telling me where Uncle René’s house is, when I know how to get there. I said nothing though, and set off walking down the Avenue of Independence.
I felt a bit scared when I got to Uncle René’s gate. I was thinking: Is Miguel properly tied up to the sour sap tree? The reason I wondered that was because I’ve known that dog since he was a tiny little baby, but my uncle says that dog years and human years aren’t the same thing. A dog’s childhood is really short, they grow up much faster than humans. When a dog’s six months old he’d be ten if he was a person. When a dog’s one year old, he’d be fifteen if he was a person. When a dog’s five years old he’d be thirty-six if he was a person. Now, Miguel is five and a half years old. If he was a human being he would be forty-six years old now, and that makes him an old man compared to me even though I knew him when he was really small, and gave him his milk, which he really liked. So I don’t like the way he barks at me when I come to Uncle René’s house like I’m some kind of evil spirit come to steal my uncle’s riches.
The boy has seen it’s me ringing the bell, and he opens the gate. He looks me up and down as though he’s thinking: What’s young Michel with his ridiculous bow tie got hidden in his bag then?
Miguel’s barking at the back of the house, but he’s firmly tied up. First I see Kevin, who’s as thin as a reed, with his little head on top of a long neck, like a half-starved giraffe. We’re outside the front door and Sebastien’s just behind him. We say hello, and shake hands.
I go into the day room, I see they’ve got their toys out. Kevin’s got a bicycle. Sebastien’s been given a car that works with batteries and he’s explaining to me that he can play with it without touching it. I don’t believe him. He shows me a machine which controls his car, it’s small with little buttons: ‘That button’s to switch it on. That one makes it go straight. That one makes it turn left. That one’s to turn right. That one’s to make it turn round and come back. And that one’s to make it stop, and to turn off the engine, but you have to press it twice, or the car won’t understand what you want it to do. Here, try and switch it on and see what happens.’
Just as I’m about to press the start button someone behind us yells: ‘STOP! STOP! STOP!’
It’s Edwige, who’s just come out of the shower. Her hair’s still wet. She looks really tall, but she’s got spots all over her face, like someone with shrapnel in the World War. The last time I saw her she didn’t have that. But it’s true, I haven’t seen her for ages.
‘What are you doing? Papa says you’re not to touch those presents now! Honestly! Who said you could open them anyway? You’d better put all that away! And stop jumping on that chair with your shoes on!’