Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty (20 page)

Out of all the girls who are crazy about Yaya Gaston, my favourite is Geneviève. She doesn't stare at me with big, mean eyes. She doesn't ask me to go and take a walk outside so she can do rude things with my big brother. No, she asks me to stay with her, she asks me what I've been learning at school, what I like doing best, and what I want to do when I'm older, when I'm twenty. And I rattle on and on, I'm chattier than a whole family of sparrows, that's all I do, just talk. I tell Geneviève that I want
to be this, that I want to be that and that I want to be this and that both at the same time, if possible. I want to do everything. I want to be a movie actor so I can kiss the actresses in Indian movies; I want to be President of the Republic so I can make long speeches at the Revolution Stadium, and write a book all about how bravely I faced the enemies of the Nation; I want to be a taxi driver so I don't have to walk on the hot tarmac at midday; I want to be the director of the Pointe-Noire port so I can get free stuff that comes from Europe; I want to be a vet, but I don't want to be a farmer because Uncle René wants me to be a farmer. I also want to write poems for Caroline. I tell her this, and she smiles and says life is too short to do all those things. You have to choose just a few, and above all, do them well.

When I'm with Geneviève my heart beats really fast. I want to be in her arms, to smell her perfume. She's not very tall, which is a good thing, because Lounès says a woman shouldn't be tall, or no one will want to marry her. If her husband's smaller than her, he'd be embarrassed to walk by her side.

Gaston calls Geneviève ‘My Black Beauty' because her skin is very dark. She doesn't straighten her hair with white people's products like the other local girls, she combs it so it stands out in a big ‘Afro', and you want to touch it. It looks like a black American woman's. She always wears white, which means she's someone who takes care her clothes aren't dirty.

Sometimes I think the reason Yaya Gaston loves her must be her eyes. When she looks at you, you want to give her everything, even a house with an upstairs or a huge piece of beef, even when you've been really hungry for two days. I've never seen eyes that colour before. They're like a calm, green river, with bright little diamonds sparkling round the edges.

.....

I love it when I'm with Geneviève and we're walking down the street. I hold my head high and walk like a big boy, so people will respect me. When a car comes up behind us it's me that says to Geneviève, ‘Look out, there's a blue Peugeot 504 coming up behind us!'

She laughs, we stand aside, the car goes past and we continue on our way. We walk for a long time, in silence. I know that she's not talking because she's thinking about lots of things, she feels low because of the other girls who've slept in Yaya Gaston's studio.

We're still walking. Now we're at the road that runs parallel to the Avenue Félix-Eboué. Suddenly she turns her back to me, as though she were going to go back the way we've come. I stop too, and I see her wiping away tears. I ask her why she's crying, she says she's not crying, she's just got a bug in her eye. I offer to blow in her eye to get the bug out.

‘It's ok thanks, it's gone now.'

I know they're tears, she's crying because Yaya Gaston makes her unhappy.

Why don't the other girls who stay over in the studio all have bugs in their eyes? It must mean they don't love Yaya Gaston. If you love someone and you're unhappy because they're behaving badly, it must make a bug fly into your eye so it starts watering.

We set off again. I think about Geneviève being unhappy, about the other girls who say she's too black, too small, that she doesn't know how to cook, etc. And as I put myself in Geneviève's shoes, I find I've got a bug in my eye too. I turn my back on her, like I'm going back the way we've come, but it's too late, she's seen.

She stands still and asks, ‘Do you want me to blow in your eye to get the bug out?'

And remembering her reply, I murmur, ‘Thanks, but it's ok, it's gone now.'

And we both laugh. I never want to be apart from her. I never want her to let go of my hand. I never want to go back to Yaya Gaston's studio. I feel good with her. I squeeze her hand tight. She squeezes mine. I'm sure I feel like I love her, does she love me too? I'm in love with her. I want to tell her, right now. But how? She might laugh at me.

I tell her anyway: ‘Geneviève, my heart is falling into my stomach, I want to marry you.'

She isn't at all surprised and asks with a little smile, ‘Why do you want to marry me?'

‘Because I don't want you to go on being unhappy. I don't want bugs to keep getting in your eye.'

She touches my head, I look into her eyes: her green river has more and more diamonds sparkling round the edges. I dream I could be one of those diamonds. The biggest one of all. I shine brighter than all the other diamonds and I make sure the river always stays green.

‘Michel, you're not grown up yet, you can't marry me…'

‘I'll be grown up one day!'

‘Then I'll be like an old lady to you.'

‘No, you could never be an old lady, and I…'

‘Michel, you already have a girlfriend, you told me last time. What's her name again?'

‘Caroline.'

‘She's the one you must marry, you're the same age and…'

‘We got divorced.'

‘Already?'

‘It was her idea, not mine.'

‘Why?'

‘She's going to marry Mabélé and they're going to have a red five-seater car and two children and a little white dog…'

‘Do you want me to talk to Caroline?'

‘No, I'm too useless. I can't play football, and anyway, I haven't read Marcel Pagnol yet, the one who writes about the four castles Mabélé's going to buy for Caroline.'

We arrive at the Senegali's shop, opposite the bar called Le Relais. We go inside and Geneviève buys me two Kojak lollies.

We get back to the house, the other girls have left. They've left their things in a mess everywhere. Geneviève's going to be spending the night with Yaya Gaston and she sorts out the mess in the studio.

First of all the three of us eat, then I go to say goodnight to Maman Martine, and my sisters and brothers, in the main house. Papa Roger's reading the newspaper in the bedroom, I hear him cough. Deep down I know he's missing the radio cassette player back in the other house. He'd like to be listening to the Voice of America, Roger Guy Folly, the one who reports on the Shah of Iran. And he'd like to be listening to the singer with the moustache weeping for his tree, his alter ego. But that's our secret, in the other house. I'm not allowed to say, not even to Yaya Gaston, that we've got a radio cassette player that can record what people say.

Yaya Gaston and Geneviève sleep in the bed, and I sleep on a little mattress on the floor. There's a black sheet hung between the walls to separate us. It cuts the studio in half, but they've got more space than I have. And when there's a light behind the sheet wall, I can see their silhouettes blend into one, and move together, like I'm watching a film in black and white. I
hear little noises, like a little cat crying because its mother's left it all alone in the street. But it's Geneviève's voice. Why is she laughing now, though, instead of crying for help?

Before I close my eyes, I think hard about my two sisters in heaven. My Sister Star and my Sister No-name. Is it night in paradise, or is it always sunny there? I ask them to watch over Maman Pauline, who's all alone in the bush and will be alone again in Brazzaville surrounded by bad people who look at women in tight trousers.

Maman Martine's got white hair growing on the sides. She realises I've seen them, that I'm thinking she's older than Maman Pauline, who is probably her younger sister, but really much younger, her daughter maybe. But I'm thinking something else: would she possibly agree to have a seed from my mother's insides and keep it in her insides, so that Maman Pauline's children wouldn't go straight to heaven without coming down to earth? If she'd do that, Maman Pauline would stop being unhappy, there'd be another child in our house, because Maman Martine's children don't go straight up to heaven as soon as they arrive. Also, if Maman Martine agrees to my plan, we could keep it secret, we would tell people that the little seed really came from her insides. One day I must talk to Papa Roger about it, because I don't really think this doctor can sort things out inside my mother, even if he's white and white people never get anything wrong. At the same time, I'm sure there must be loads of women like Maman Pauline, loads of women looking for a child the whole time, and who can't have one and never will, even if they're cared for by white doctors.

We're sitting outside the front door. Maman Martine is scaling the fish we're going to eat this evening when everyone's here. It doesn't matter if it's not beef and beans. I eat everything here, and I pretend I like everything. I can be fussy with Maman Pauline
but not with Maman Martine, it would really upset her.

At home there's only Mbombie, Maximilien and little Félicienne, who's just pissed on me when I was being really kind and giving her her bottle. I don't know where the other children have gone. Yaya Gaston left early this morning for the port, and Papa Roger won't get back till sundown. My other brothers and sisters ought to be here too, because it's the end-of-year holiday.

Seeing I can't stop looking at the white bits in her hair, Maman Martine says, ‘Ah yes, I'm not young like your mother Pauline, now. She must be the same age as one of my little sisters, the youngest, she's just twenty-seven, she still lives in Kinkosso.'

She looks up at the sky, murmuring, as though she's talking to someone else. She begins to talk, and she tells me how she grew up in Kinkosso and that to get to the village from the district of Bouenza you have to go in an Isuzu truck which takes four or five days. You go through other villages, across bridges that are just two trees laid side by side from one bank of the river to the other, so the trucks can pass. The only time they ever replace the trees is when there's an accident, and lots of people die. That's where she and Papa Roger met.

I like the way Maman Martine's voice sounds when she tells the story about her and Papa Roger. Somehow she puts a bit of magic into it. I sort of believe her, but sometimes it sounds a bit like one of those stories from the time when animals and men could talk to each other about how to live together in peace.

When Maman Martine talks about when she met Papa Roger, she has a smile that lights up her whole face, and smoothes out the little lines – she looks young again, like Maman Pauline. Her face is all smooth, her skin is like a baby's, her eyes shine and you forget about her grey hair. I imagine her
as a young girl, turning boys' heads. Somehow she manages to forget I'm there, and to imagine it's someone different listening to her, her eyes are somewhere above my head, not focussed on me directly. She's talking to someone who doesn't exist, and I think: That often happens, it happens all the time, grown ups are all like that, they're always talking to people from their past. I'm still too little to have a past, that's why I can't talk to myself, pretending to talk to someone invisible.

Maman Martine doesn't realise that for a little while now her lips have been moving, her head gently swaying, her eyes growing moist, as though she's about to cry. Sometimes she misses a few scales on the fish in her hands and I point out to her that there are still some scales left on the fish, that we might choke when we come to eat it.

She speaks very quietly. ‘Roger was a real little heart throb! I can see him now, as he was that year, back then in the village they still called him Prince Roger.'

Then she suddenly gives me a look as if to say she's finished talking to the people from the past, now she's talking to a real person. And that's when I learn that aged twenty, Papa Roger was the best dancer in the Bouenza. In Ndounga, his home village, he was respected. When the rhythm of the tam-tams really got going he could actually rise off the ground and dance in mid-air while the crowd applauded and the women looked on adoringly, including the ones who were already married. When it came to dancing no one could get a win over him, or even a draw. He was famous then, and that was how he got his nickname ‘Prince Roger'. When there was a burial in that part of the country, they summoned him urgently, like calling a doctor when you're sick. He'd turn up with his group of dancers – there were ten of them, all strong and handsome – and they
danced all through the night, so that the deceased would not be sad on their journey to the other world, where the road doesn't run straight, and there is no music, no dance.

The year he met Maman Martine, Papa Roger had been asked to go and dance in the village of Kinkosso, whose chief had died, aged one hundred and ten. Everyone, from all the villages in the region, had come to his funeral, because it wasn't every day someone died aged one hundred and ten. When he got to Kinkosso, Prince Roger announced to the villagers, who were showering him with presents, ‘This evening I will dance more then ten centimetres off the ground because it's our grandfather's grandfather who's died.'

The old sorcerers of the village threatened to make
gris-gris
against it, because they didn't want the other villages in the Bouenza to think Prince Roger was the best dancer in the whole world. The old sorcerers knew the secret of the levitation dance but ever since its invention, no one had seen a human being dance ten centimetres off the ground.

Prince Roger insisted: ‘No one's going to stop me paying my respects to our grandfathers! I
will
dance ten centimetres off the ground!'

The old people went a long way off from the village and held a big meeting against the rude young man who was poking fun at them. They nearly started fighting among themselves in the meeting. They all accused each other of inviting that rude Prince Roger. But in the end they reached agreement: they must make sure that the stranger's dance went no higher than ten centimetres off the ground.