Выбрать главу

‘I haven’t got a key!’

‘Michel, that fetisher can’t lie, he was fetisher to the President of the Republic!’

‘Well, he’s just told his first lie then!’

‘Listen, give me that key and I’ll give it to my mama, and she’ll give it to yours.’

Since he’s so insistent, and I’ve run out of answers, I agree.

‘Ok, I’ll give it to you.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. I’ve hidden it somewhere, the fetisher’s right.’

~ ~ ~

I’m in my parents’ bedroom. Arthur’s smiling at me. I want to talk to him, to tell him everything’s getting on top of me. But instead I tell him I don’t like riding bikes, I don’t know how to pedal, I’m probably going to fall off and hurt myself. I also tell him I’d rather have a car like Sebastien’s, a car you can control from a distance. I’ll go left, then I’ll go right, then I’ll go straight on for a bit, then do a U-turn. If I meet people who don’t have a car walking along in the midday sun, I’ll give them a lift home in mine. No, I won’t have an accident because I’ll always drive slowly and I’ll stop at the stop sign, or when people are crossing the road, especially old people and children. The others will just have to watch out because I’ll have priority, and if I run them over that’s their lookout.

I also tell Arthur I haven’t got the key, it’s not me that locked the door to my mother’s belly. I try to think back, but there’s nothing there, there is no key. If I had hidden it somewhere I’d definitely remember. So how come everyone’s accusing me?

I have the feeling Arthur’s saying: ‘Michel, calm down, let them say what they want, and just admit it was you that locked the door to your mother’s belly, you’ve got the key there somewhere, and if they still go on bothering you the whole time, pack your things and go and take a break in Egypt, to help the Shah recover from cancer. He’ll be pleased to make your acquaintance. Yes, tell all those who accuse you that you do have the key, that you’ve hidden it somewhere. It won’t cost you anything. You’ll make your mother even more miserable if you don’t listen to your friend Lounès.’

‘What shall I do then?’ I ask Arthur out loud.

He smiles at me again, and seems to be saying very quietly, ‘Go and look for any old key in a rubbish bin, somewhere you’re bound to find one. Give it to Lounès and he’ll give it to his mother and she’ll give it to Maman Pauline. After that you can go off to Egypt. I’ll give you some addresses of friends of mine there, you won’t be alone.’

‘Arthur, what’s “the hand that guides the quill”?’

He doesn’t reply. I think maybe he doesn’t like being asked about his book. He just wants to help me.

‘And what’s “the hand that guides the plough”? How much money did you leave behind in Egypt?’

He’s not going to answer that. He’s not smiling now. He’s just a picture on the book cover now, but earlier he was almost alive, like me, I could hear his heart beating.

~ ~ ~

When I got to Maman Martine’s house this morning, Papa Roger had already set off into town. He even works on Saturdays because that’s the day when lots of people arrive at the hotel. The evening before, my mother had a long chat with Maman Martine. She told her she was going off into the bush, and then to Brazzaville for four days. She’d left a bit of money for Maman Martine, who refused it at first. But my mother insisted, so Maman Martine eventually accepted: ‘We’ll make a nice dish of beef with beans.’

Maman Pauline stroked my hair. When she put her arms around me I thought I might start to levitate! Then she let me go, and looked at me tearfully. She turned around, I saw her walk away, get into a taxi and wave from a distance. I knew she was thinking about the key to her belly. But she didn’t know I knew about it now, and I’d already begun looking in dustbins in our neighbourhood, as Arthur had advised. And I really didn’t want her to know. I still haven’t found anything, I’ll go on looking, and I’ll find the key for her before she gets back if possible. After that I’ll go and have a rest in Egypt, I’m so tired.

Yaya Gaston says: ‘Geneviève’s coming this evening. There won’t be any other girls besides her.’

I’m so happy I want to laugh out loud, but if I laugh he’ll ask me why I’m laughing like that. So I just act like it’s normal that Geneviève’s coming this evening, and no one else. I know Genviève’s talked to Yaya Gaston, and that he knows now that I don’t like the other girls, who make a lot of noise and talk about things that even us children find silly.

I think about what I’ll say to Geneviève when she comes. I’ll definitely talk to her about the business with the key to my mother’s belly. I’ll tell her the story about the madman I met when I was just beginning to look. Then she’ll know that I’ve been wandering about all over the Trois-Cents, and I haven’t found a single key lying on the ground. I emptied out the bins, but I only found old needles, broken glass, carcasses of dead dogs with maggots wriggling around in their eyes, old cooking pots with rotting food at the bottom, bottles full of urine and lots of things besides. No keys. What if I stole a key from one of the Lebanese or Senegalese shops? No, I can’t take a brand new key to give to Lounès. A key that you’ve had hidden for a long time has to be quite old looking with rusty bits. When I came across an old lock in a bin over by the Savon quartier, I said to myself, ‘If there’s a lock in this bin the key can’t be far away, it must be in this bin too.’ So I turned over all the rubbish with a bit of wood. I poked around angrily in its belly, muttering, ‘There’s a key hidden in this rubbish, and I’m going to find it! I’m going to find it! I’m going to find it!’

Seeing me rooting around and talking to myself, a madman looking for food a few metres away burst out laughing. He said the world had really changed, that people were going mad in childhood now. In his day only grown ups were mad, not children.

‘How long have you been mad, little one?’ he asked me.

I was about to run off.

‘No, don’t be afraid. I don’t eat people yet, though I may start to if I don’t find anything in these rubbish bins.’

I told him I wasn’t mad like him, I was looking for the key to my mother’s belly, I’m just a normal boy, I go to Trois-Martyrs school, I’m an average pupil, very hard-working, and maybe I’ll get my School Certificate and go to Trois-Glorieuses secondary school. Then I’ll be with Lounès, I’ll joy ride the workers’ train like Jean-Paul Belmondo in Fear Over the City.

He laughed again, and rolled round in the rubbish like a child playing in the sand on the Côte Sauvage.

‘So you’re not mad, little one, but you’re rooting around in the rubbish with me, and I’m mad?’

I don’t know what came over me. I said in a little voice: ‘You’re not bad, otherwise you’d have told me to clear off from your bin. So you must be mad, but only a bit, just a tiny bit. And maybe you’re not actually mad, it’s just that people think you are.’

He’d stopped rummaging now, he looked troubled. Close up I could see his big pink lips moving about, his red eyes like two peppers. His square jaw and the little moustache with a few white hairs.

He came up close to me: ‘I’m going to help you, little one. Together we’ll manage to find the key!’

So we both start sifting through the rubbish. We chatted, like two school friends.

He comes over to me: ‘You look on the left, I’ll look on the right.’

While we were looking through, he asked me over and over: ‘Found anything?’