While Marius and Mbombie are crossing the yard, Maman Martine says to them, ‘Wait, take little Félicienne to see the Chinese doctors too.’
I say to myself: ‘Let them take her, I don’t want her pissing on me again when I pick her up. When the Chinese doctors give her her jab at the hospital she’ll yell so loud you’ll hear it all over town.’
Maximilien, Ginette and I had our vaccinations last year, so we stay at home. We help Maman Martine sweep the yard and do the washing up and take out the big rubbish bin at the back of the house and put it in the road for when the refuse lorry comes. Sometimes the lorry doesn’t come by for a month or more. That’s why there are great piles of rubbish in the middle of some streets, and the cars have to drive round them.
…..
Maximilien is running like a mad man. He comes up to me, his brow drenched in sweat.
‘Get your breath back,’ I say.
‘No, I haven’t time. It’s too dreadful!’
‘What’s too dreadful?’
He glances back at the street.
‘Don’t you see what’s happening out there? Look who it is, waiting opposite! It’s him, the giant Tarzan who came to beat you up the other day. He’s still there, I don’t want you to fight with him! He’s stronger than you, he’s a great big giant! I’ll give him my money if he’ll leave you alone.’
‘Take a deep breath, Maximilien. That’s my friend, he’s called Lounès, and he’s come to see me because we haven’t seen each other for a few days now. He’s not a giant. He’s just tall like big brother Marius.’
‘Yeah, but he wants a fight.’
‘No, he just wants to see me.’
I leave him standing there, and I go out into the street. I find Lounès and we walk together as far as the river Tchinouka.
There are no fishermen today. The river’s calm. You can just hear a few birds, hidden in the trees.
‘It’s weird, there’ve been no planes for the last few days,’ Lounès says.
‘Perhaps they’ve changed routes. Because we’ve been staring at them. Or they’re hiding in the clouds.’
Suddenly he changes the subject. ‘Did you find that key to your mother’s belly?’
‘No.’
‘You really have to find it.’
‘I’m still looking. I will find it.’
‘So it was you that locked it?’
‘…’
‘Where have you put the key?’
‘Little Pepper’s looking after it for me and…’
‘Who’s Little Pepper?’
‘Someone who talks to people you can’t see. We went looking for the key together because he’d lost it in the bin and…’
‘Someone who goes looking through bins is usually called a vagabond. Is this Little Pepper a bit mad, by any chance?’
‘Oh no, he’s a philosopher, he has all these ideas other people can’t have. That’s what philosophers do.’
‘He’s just mad, then, let’s face it, like Athena and Mango.’
‘No, he’s a philosopher!’
‘Let’s both go and see him, and ask him to give the key back!’
‘I can’t today…’
‘Why not?’
‘At lunchtime I have to go with Maman Martine to the Bloc 55 quartier, and after that I have to go home with my father, Maman Pauline’s getting back from Brazzaville.’
At last a plane goes overhead, but it’s way up in the sky. Usually it seems like the planes are passing just a few centimetres above the roofs of the houses in our quartier, and the dogs start barking, and the little children go running into their mothers’ arms.
I say to Lounès, ‘That’s a strange plane, don’t you think?’
‘Why?’
‘It’s like the front bit’s bent downwards, like it was going to fall on top of us.’
‘That’s just because we’re lying down.’
‘No, something bad’s going to happen, I can feel it. It’s strange that no planes have gone over since we’ve been lying here. And it looks like it’s got to land really urgently somewhere.’
‘So where do you think it’s going to land?’
‘In Egypt. The capital of Egypt is Cairo.’
~ ~ ~
The Shah of Iran has died. In Egypt.
Papa Roger is angry, you’d think it was someone in our family who’d died. Maman Pauline is still tired from her long trip and isn’t listening, so my father turns to me and explains that the great man is going to be missed by the whole world. I already know everything he’s saying. But since he’s sad, because after all, the person who’s died is someone he loved, he tells me once again about Egypt, Anouar el-Sadat and how he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Menahem Begin, about Morocco, King Hassan II, Mexico, the Bahamas, Panama, etc. Each time he mentions one of these countries, I imagine a plane flying over our town and I think: The capital of Egypt is Cairo, the capital of Morocco is Rabat, the capital of Mexico is Mexico City, the capital of the Bahamas is Nassau, the capital of Panama is Panama City, etc.
‘The Shah had had cancer for many years,’ Papa Roger says again. ‘He had lost his homeland, and when that happens to someone they get homeland cancer, and no doctor can treat that, except by helping the sick person live longer. When you lose your homeland you can’t tell night from day, you’re haunted by memories of what you’ve left behind, and if you’re not in good health, your illness gets worse. And that’s the kind of cancer that killed the Shah.’
While he’s telling me all this, I see Arthur’s face again, in my mind. I would like to go and tell him the bad news, but I remember that I’m never allowed in my parents’ bedroom when they’re at home. Only if my father says: ‘Michel, go and fetch my wallet from the bedroom, I’ve left it on top of the books.’ Or if my mother says: ‘Michel, go and fetch that pair of red shoes from under the bed. And bring the earrings I left on your father’s books.’ Then I can go into my parents’ room. And when I do go, I stay for a long time, because I try and get a quick look at Arthur. Sometimes it’s me that goes to fetch the radio cassette, and if I forget the cassette of the singer with the moustache, Papa Roger says: ‘Michel, the Georges Brassens cassette isn’t in here, quick, go and get it.’ I really like that, because I know I will see Arthur’s beloved face, with his angelic smile, for the second time that evening. But one evening they don’t send me into their room, I don’t like it, I feel sad then, even when my father makes jokes about people he’s met with Monsieur Mutombo in the local bars. My mother laughs at his jokes, but I don’t, I don’t get hysterics, like I do whenever I’m in Monsieur Mutombo’s workshop and Longombé’s mother turns up at the door asking her son for money. I sleep badly, and I can’t stop thinking about Arthur. When I go to bed I tell My Sister Star and My Sister No-name everything. I don’t feel the mosquitoes biting me, I don’t even hear them because they bite my body, not my soul; my soul has already left the house, and gone to another world. Even if they do bite me, I’ve been vaccinated against malaria, I’m not going to die of that.
The Shah has been buried in Egypt, not in Iran. Once again, it’s the Egyptians who’ve given him a decent burial, even though he wasn’t their president. No other head of state, in the whole of the rest of the world, has had the courage to come and pay his last respects. And once again I wonder if Ayatollah Khomeyni is perhaps the most powerful man on earth now, because all the other presidents are afraid of him.
Roger Guy Folly said that the president of the Americans, called Richard Nixon, went to the Shah’s funeral, and criticised the other world presidents because they were too scared to turn up too. All that’s just a smokescreen. Words thrown to the winds. Why wait till someone dies to say that kind of thing? He irritates me, that Richard Nixon. He should have helped the Shah ages ago. He should have been criticising the presidents back then, instead of making a song and dance now. When people intervene when it’s too late, Uncle René says they’re ‘calling the doctor after someone’s died.’ Richard Nixon’s scolding isn’t going to bring the late Shah happiness in the next world. I’m sure when he meets God personally he’ll tell him the names of all the presidents who failed to face up to their responsibilities.