Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty (32 page)

‘I've come to see Gorgeous Arthur.'

I'm a bit jealous because I was hoping Caroline was going to say it was me she'd come to see. I wish I hadn't told her about Arthur. Now she'll think about him all the time, and she won't look at me any more. But then I think, Arthur's just a picture on the cover of one of my father's books, and I calm down because a picture can't take someone's wife from them. And anyway, Arthur's dead.

We go inside, and I think I mustn't show her the radio cassette player. But I'd really like to. If she sees that I'll get lots of points over Mabélé. He's never shown her anything like that, and he can only talk about things that don't really exist.

I come out of my parents' bedroom with
A Season in Hell
. I've turned it over so Caroline can't see Arthur's picture.

‘Close your eyes.'

She puts her hand over her face. Her fingers aren't closed up properly, she can see what I'm going to show her.

‘You're cheating. Cover your eyes with both hands!'

She puts one hand on top of the other. Now she can't see anything. I come up to her and whisper in her ear, ‘Now you can open your eyes, here's Arthur!'

At first she says nothing, then she snatches the book out of my hands. She touches Arthur's face with the index finger of her right hand, she sniffs at the book as though it was something to
eat. She runs another finger over Arthur's hair and eyes. Finally, she opens the page I've marked and begins to read:

I abominate all trades. Professionals and workers, serfs to a man! Despicable. The hand that guides the quill is a match for the hand that guides the plough – What a century for hands! – I'll never get my hand in. And besides, there's no end to ‘service'. The beggar's honesty distresses me. Criminals disgust me – men without balls. Myself I'm intact; it's all the same to me.

‘What's “the hand that guides the quill”? What's “the hand that guides the plough”?' she asks.

That startles me because she's asking exactly the same questions I asked the first time I touched the book.

She's stopped reading now, she's waiting for my answers. I can't tell her I don't know or she'll laugh at me and think I don't know Arthur very well.

‘Well, the “hand that guides the quill” is a hand with feathers, it's the hand of a white sorcerer who dresses up as a bird at night and snatches children and takes them to hell for a season. That's why it's called
A Season in Hell
.'

She takes another look at Arthur, as if she's really frightened of him now. She puts the book down on the table: ‘And aren't you scared the feathered hand is going to take you down to hell too?'

‘No. Arthur will protect me.'

‘What about “the hand that guides the plough”?'

‘It's the hand that guides the plough in a field, the hand of a farmer, and my uncle says, you should never put the plough before the ox.'

Can she tell I don't actually know what it means? I speak
calmly, without hesitation. And under her admiring gaze, I feel cool air entering my lungs. I know I've just scored a thousand points against Mabélé. That Mabélé's of no account now. I'm so happy, I take the book from her, and go and put it back in my parents' room.

I come back into the living room with the radio cassette player. The cassette is already inside the machine. I press ‘play'. The singer with the moustache starts weeping about his tree. When the song gets to the bit about
alter ego
and
saligaud
, I start to explain to Caroline what it means but she goes: ‘Hush! Keep quiet!'

She listens, swaying her head. The song's finished now, I press on ‘RWD' and it starts again.

Caroline stands up: ‘Dance with me!'

‘No, you can't dance to this sort of song, and…'

‘I want to dance with you to this song! Come on!'

I'm standing facing her, but I leave a big gap between us.

‘Are you frightened of me? Don't you know how to dance, or what? Come here, and hold me tight!'

I hold her really tight, and we move slowly. She's closed her eyes and it's as though she's not in the house with me any more, she's flying, far far away, further than Egypt. I close my eyes too, so I can fly in my thoughts as well, and I think of the concert I saw at the Joli Soir with Maximilien. I see the woman dancing in the very short skirt, her backside blocking the hole in the wall, her long legs, her great big breasts almost hanging out. My heart's beating really fast now. I put my head on Caroline's chest like a baby that's drunk up its bottle and falls fast asleep. Now, Caroline doesn't have big breasts yet like the woman I saw dancing. I can feel some little breasts though. I imagine that in
a few years they will grow as big as a pair of ripe papayas.

While we're dancing and our two bodies are like just one body, she puts her mouth right next to my ear: ‘Michel, you're still my husband, and I want to live in the big castle inside your heart.'

Her words make my heart race. I'm floating like a kite in the sky. I've never felt this happy, not even eating meat and beans. I never want this moment to stop. I want it to last till the end of time. I feel Caroline's hand touching my hair, her mouth close to my ear. I close my eyes again, till the moment I hear her say very quietly: ‘Michel, where is the key to Maman Pauline's belly?'

I open my eyes, I stop dancing and I pull away from her. I lunge towards the radio cassette player on the table, and I press on the button that says ‘STOP'. I can feel anger rising in me, I'm almost shaking with it, but Caroline stays very calm, and goes on: ‘I'm your wife, and I don't love Mabélé. Do you understand that? But if you don't give your mother that key we'll get divorced again, and next time I'll go and live with Mabélé for real.'

She arranges her hair, looks at herself in the mirror and picks up her little bag.

She's already at the door when she says: ‘I'm speaking plainly to you because you're my husband. Married couples shouldn't have secrets. They're meant to tell each other everything. And I'm afraid of you now, because if you can hide the key to your own mother's belly, the first child we have is bound to close up my belly and hide the key somewhere like you did. And then I won't have two children with you, like I want, I'll be an unhappy woman like Maman Pauline. Don't you see?'

‘Have you found the key?'

‘Hey, calm down, Michel, my boy…'

‘I want that key – today!'

‘To start with, you never say “I want”. It's rude.'

I sit down, like him, with my back against the cemetery wall.

Little Pepper's lit a cigarette, his face disappears behind the smoke. When he coughs it sounds like the engine of an old truck that won't start.

He starts talking, in his broken voice: ‘Last time I told you how my Grandfather Massengo died because my greedy uncle killed the cockerel for the New Year feast. Well now, after that I had to leave the village and come and live here in Pointe-Noire in one of the houses my grandfather had left. I lived with my other uncle, who died when I was twenty-five. This uncle's name was Matété, he suffered from amnesia, an illness that ends up with you losing your memory. I'd lost both my father and mother, and he was all I had. When he died I was devastated because the two of us had lived together with no one else, and he wasn't married, he had no children. I identified too closely with him, and I noticed I lost my memory too, just after he died. I was convinced he had passed his amnesia on to me, instead of taking it with him up to heaven, where my mother, who was already up there, would have blown on his brow and healed him. But it seems that the dead have to arrive in heaven
with their hair all tidy, sweetly scented, men in a three piece suit, women in a white dress, and above all, in good health, and that's why the illnesses stay in the cemetery and then go and live in one of the descendant's bodies when the soul of the person who's died finally starts climbing the stairway to heaven. I was that poor descendant. Are you still with me, Michel?'

‘Yes, I'm with you…'

‘Now since I'd become amnesiac too, I'd forgotten to go to my job at the Maritime Company where I was a manager. It was me that took on the newly qualified staff. Only I'd stopped going altogether and when my work colleagues got worried and came knocking at my door all the time to try and get me to see sense, I threw pepper water in their faces. I didn't recognise them, and I thought they were garden gnomes come to trample my poor little spinach plants, when the only thing I had left to do was cultivate my garden in a corner of the plot my uncle had inherited from my grandfather and I'd inherited from my uncle. I could put up with anything, but not people coming and treading on my poor little spinach plants, that I loved watering. I told all my woes to those poor little spinach plants whenever grief overcame me and I thought of my mother, my father, and especially uncle Matété who probably still hadn't recovered his memory even up in heaven. Those poor little spinach plants were my whole existence: I'd jump out of bed early and check no gnomes had been in the garden, jumping off the trucks of the Maritime Company; I'd take a pick, a hoe, a spade, a rake and a watering can, that I filled up with water from the river Tchinouka. Then I'd dig the soil, scattering seeds, whistling. Sometimes I'd spend the whole day just sitting in my vegetable garden, hoping to catch sight of my poor little spinach plants growing. I was afraid they'd pop up without me knowing. My
neighbour, Maloba Pamba-Pamba started to get worried, and came to see me one day, with a pitying look on his face: “Little Pepper, you've been sitting in your garden since this morning, and not once have I seen you adopt the noble gesture of the seed-sower! What's going on?” I replied: “I'm watching my poor little spinach plants grow.” He was astonished: “You're watching your spinach plants grow?” I almost lost my temper: “There's one thing I'd really like to understand: why do those poor little spinach plants of mine only grow when my back is turned? Does that not seem unacceptable to you?” He looked at me in some surprise: “Yes, that is unacceptable, Little Pepper.” I added: “It's not ok, I'd even say it was ungrateful of them, myself! After all, who is it waters the poor little spinach plants? Who looks after them? Who pulls out the weeds that stop them growing? They can't do this to me! I'm not leaving this garden until my poor little spinach plants are prepared to grow here and now, before my very eyes!” My neighbour, Maloba Pamba-Pamba murmured: “My dear Little Pepper, I am going to be frank with you: I think you need help. Things were bad before, but now they are desperate…”'

Little Pepper stops speaking, and when he looks at me I know he's wondering if I understand what he's saying. But since he has told me not to interrupt, I keep quiet. I act like I'm in class and the teacher's explaining something new. But I'd really like to say to Little Pepper: ‘Give me the key. I want to set everything straight today, and go to Egypt, and I'd like to grow up, too.' But I mustn't order him about because he's a grown up, even if in his head everything's bouncing around, like marbles bumping into each other, all those screws that have been loose ever since his uncle died. If I go on asking for the key, and don't listen to him first, he'll get really cross and then I'll be going
home empty-handed. Now, if I don't get that key today, I'll have to go and look through the bins again, tomorrow and the day after, and perhaps for the whole of the rest of my life, spend my whole life looking through the bins around here. I don't want a life like that. So I listen to him. He has to stop some time.

‘But no, Michel, dear boy, now when I wandered down by the banks of the river Tchinouka, it was not for pleasure. It was the amnesia. I'd forget to stop at my own place, I'd carry on and on till I got to the river, convinced that I could walk on water, like Jesus. And when I tried to get across the river that runs through our
quartier
, even if I shouted three times over “
alea iacta est!
”, I'd still hesitate for a moment, because whatever it might look like, I don't actually have the courage of a Roman general about to face up to Pompey the Great. Even when you lose your memory, there's a red line you don't step over. Amnesiac, yes. A living coward, yes. A dead hero, no. So I didn't risk walking on the water, I hesitated, I told myself maybe it was too cold, or too polluted by the excrement of certain members of the local population who made out it didn't matter if they did their business in the water, because world experts had proved that running water had no bacteria in it. My neighbour, Maloba Pamba-Pamba looked all over the
quartier
for me, to take me to a fetisher. Which was extremely decent of him. But he never got as far as the river, where I stayed for hours, wondering what I had come looking for in the dark hours of the night, braving the street dogs and the gangsters from the Grand-Marché, dividing their spoils and threatening each other with screwdrivers. I talked away to myself, I made wild gestures in the air, I laughed with the shadows of the night, with people all around me, and ended up scolding the frogs who were all yelling angrily at me. Amnesia also made me walk strangely. I'd wander off to the
left, then to the right, I'd come back several times to the place where I'd started, but not recognise it. And since I was going round and round in circles, like a snail caught in his own slime, I had to find a way, some little thing, not too complicated, a little trick to stop me getting dizzy: I'd draw a cross of Lorraine to show where I'd already walked, so as not to come back the same way again a few minutes later. So suddenly, all the little streets in the Trois-Cents
quartier
, in Savon and Comapon were marked with dozens and dozens of crosses of Lorraine. Whenever I saw one on the ground I'd exclaim: “Aha! There's a cross of Lorraine here! So I must have been past here already, I'd better go a different way where there aren't any crosses of Lorraine!” And off I'd go somewhere else, but then some young jokers started drawing crosses of Lorraine all over the place. I'd find them in places where I'd never set foot in my life. I got more and more lost, because it really wasn't easy to tell my crosses from those of the hoaxers, who had an undoubted gift for winding me up. So I stopped drawing crosses and spent my time instead rubbing them out, when I didn't just stay at home cultivating my garden. At that point people decided I really was crazy and I went along with it. I forgot I had a house, I was convinced that the streets and the bins of this town belonged to me, that they were in fact where I lived. And since they were where I lived, I made my home in the streets and in the bins… That's how I live now, outside, free, far from the wicked. What else can I do? Go round shouting that my last remaining shred of lucidity still outshines that of normal men? No, I've no time for that now, I'm exhausted, I've had it with all that. I like my life, I'm just going to sit and wait for my very last day, when I climb the stairway to heaven…'