Tram 83 (20 page)

The Diva is eternal. You don't forget her with one or even two baby-chicks. The next day, the desire to hump the opera singer returned, refueling the speculations and the gossip even more intensely. As a counterbalance, the diggers and the second-rate tourists therefore suggested holding a Miss Baby-Chick contest, since the first-rate tourists were threatening to quit coming to
the Tram. The Diva is eternal. Even those who plotted against her are the same who covered the podium with flowers at each of her concerts.

“Where there's beer, there's cheer.”

As a prelude, the Railroad Diva performed “This Life Is Longer Than The Train To Nowhere” over the crescendoing noise of boxcars newly acquired by the dissident General in return for some as yet undisclosed merchandise. The depth of the queen's voice paralyzed us, her delicate features in the half-light, a voice to plunge us into unbearable moods, to fill us with the impulse to run out and jump aboard the first train to nowhere, what depth, what timbre, her voice soared, pirouetted, descended, walked with the paralytics, ripped the vile stench of the rails from the frozen-hearted, the tourists (arm in arm) swore to never recommence their dirty work, the baby-chicks wiped away sobs and tears as they told us they'd be back beneath their father's roof at dawn, the busgirls softened and gave us the fastest service in the world, Malingeau downed his ninth beer, the students buried their hatchet long as their strike, the miners bought bottles of beer for the desperados, everyone in tears, the mist, the sea crashed down, the darkness lifted from every face, the dog meat passed from table to table as in a depiction of the Last Supper, desires rose, certain tourists left their private conversations to shake hands with the diggers who whispered to them with teeth as dirty as the rails of the station whose metal structure … that a new world was coming, the Railroad Diva, beers were passed around, we trembled from head to toe, we dumped in our pants, we masturbated, we climbed on the tables, we banged our head against the walls, we gathered at the doors to the mixed
facilities, that voice, that voice, that voice, it penetrated us, flayed us, trampled us, shredded us, voyage, birth, dream, we thought of those whom the earth had swallowed up, all those whom the trains had taken following a derailment, the bitterness and the eyes riveted on those who'd left to seek new lives across the ocean and who'd never got there betrayed by the waves, that voice, Requiem sniggered arrogantly, Lucien clung to his pen and scrawled joy is a violent dream and you need this violence in your dream to give it flavor, the publisher flung down his glasses, got up, walked back and forth across the Tram, that voice, that voice, that voice, joy is a diminished smile, we experienced a waltz of magic urges, dreams escaping in smoke wreaths from cigarettes, a voice that lacerates you, time had lost all purpose, we were in 2069 or 1735 or 926 or the Paleolithic era, filthy faces, bare feet, wearing loincloths, speaking unknown tongues, that voice, the tourists viewing their past, the diggers yelling that pride would prevent them going to Beach Ngobila and diving into the ocean with vodka and rotten mangoes for provisions, forget your wounds in a chorus of acoustic rails, walk the length of your thoughts and, despite death and the trains that depart and return empty, speak of the cracks within, of joy, joy as a rusty jalopy that carries you to your grave mine where you enter with no hope of leaving, in the beginning was a diva and her freight-train voice, that voice, that voice, that voice, that voice, that voice, that voice, joined by fatwas, angelus bells, the droning of the boxcars on platform 13, that voice, that voice, the Diva, joy means drowning your tears, your failures, your languor in a little music that is simply human, that voice, that voice, that voice …

“Foreplay spoils the fun.”

Lucien began to read a text dealing with the fortuitous meeting between a man and a woman on board a train, common denominator: loss of memory. They fall in love. But how to tell each other this? How to love each other? How to talk of their previous life? Toward the end, while the man tried to fashion a language to say love with the five words he had left (history, tonsillitis, truce, shame, and weld), the Diva, who was playing the role of the woman, against a background of prerecorded sounds, unreeled a song, long and mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, mournful, and at the same time celestial with her voice, bursts of applause and applause and applause …

Within and without the Tram, a convulsion of incompleteness. Within and without the Tram, cries and yelling. Within and without the Tram, the songs and texts of the sacred couple, united by the same momentum, time's wasting, the thirst for archeology, solitude.

29.

FROM DUST YOU WERE TAKEN, TO DUST YOU SHALL RETURN, GENESIS
3:19.

Lucien didn't dig in the mines like ordinary mortals. He preferred to live off his pen or maybe work in a large office all to himself. That was impossible in a jungle like the City-State. All activity revolved around the stone. Everyone depended on it directly or indirectly. We didn't know what the hell else to do except head underground, moles that we were, that we are, that we shall remain. You don't mess with your destiny, the Negus liked to say. It is written: born in the mines and the trains, you shall spend your whole existence swarming about the quarries until the prophecies come to pass. Poverty is hereditary just like power, stupidity, and hemorrhoids. It's even contagious, this locomotive life.

Unable to pay his rent, he decided to contact Émilienne:

“Come over, don't fret, you should have said ages ago that Requiem was making life so difficult for you! Ask anyone to show you the way to The Guerilla, a little bar-restaurant-cinema a few blocks from the station. They call me Aunty Émilienne.”

Had Émilienne really meant it when she'd told him to call
her if he was ever in difficulty? She'd exerted all the pressure she could to get him released. She loved him, showered him with her affection, even reproached him for abiding forever in his shell when she only required a little attention in return.

The Guerilla was a little house, its walls pitted by bullets, relics of the third — sorry, fourth — war of liberation.

Diggers, inside and out, hobo style, dirty, disdainful, laughing like crazy, with their smokes, their picks, their shovels, their spite, and their way of belittling you as if you weren't made of the same flesh. A standing parliament of post-adolescent baby-chicks roaring with laughter.

“Do you have the time?”

Musicians with their guitars, acrobats, tourists, cooks, waitresses, busgirls, students, you'd have thought it was Tram 83 in miniature.

“I'm happy you came.”

“Do you have the time?”

“Foreplay is exhausting.”

She helped him carry his suitcase, steered him toward the counter near to which a table was waiting just for him.

Lucien, egoist, there you are focused on your belly, without even bothering to check if Jacqueline is able to survive, what with all these crashing stock markets that are hitting the headlines.

“Are you well, darling?”

“Yes,” he replied, with an intellectual's arrogance.

A fresh band took their places.

A tourist, perhaps the group's sponsor, introduced them. Two talented guitarists. A saxophonist in his fifties. A drummer, and proud of it, with dreadlocks, piercings, tattoos, and a booming
laugh. Attacking-vocals: two lead singers, four backing singers. The dancers were five baby-chicks, well fleshy, their midriffs exposed. An
atalaku
, or shall we say a shock-emcee. And the bandleader, the high priest, spiffed-up Kasamoto style. They dominated, bewitched, possessed the place, you could feel it. Zairians no doubt, given the zeal with which they beguiled the audience, their dexterity, the way they looked at people, their shouts, their singing, their liveliness. They kicked off the show with two fine rumbas from the 1960s. Followed up with their own repertoire, a contemporary repertoire seasoned with some Coupé-Décalé, revised and corrected, the new
kotazo
dance, also known as the dance of the
mpomba
(meaning strong men, Kinshasa bandits who'll slit your throat at the drop of a hat) accompanied by a type of
ndombolo
called
lopele
(fishtail), throwing some merengue and conga steps into the blend, occasionally summoning to the rescue a remixed
kotazo
called
kotazo 2
— a question of universality no doubt. You can imagine the effect triggered by good music, good dancing, fit guys, great girls, an audience switched-on and captivated 100% — but Lucien (Tintin in Zimbabwe) went on writing his crap as if nothing was happening!

After close to an hour of balladry, a different music began to pound out, right across from The Guerilla. It was, apparently, a different band, different Zairians apparently, who knew full well that their brothers across the way were performing a concert but who, for the sake of provocation, perhaps to prove they were capable of doing the same, began playing good music too. They opened the hostilities with “Débarquement,” lead single off King Kester Emeneya's album
Le Jour le plus long
. In the background
the “pigeon pigeon” dance that was, we learned, a massive hit in Central Africa, particularly the Belgian Congo. The diggers who had previously fought in Zaire, Rwanda, Uganda, and Angola in the ranks of Jonas Savimbi and who knew all these songs and dance steps by heart, prattled on about how they weren't at all surprised that the competition took on such proportions. Same music, same dancing, same vocals, same get-up, same midriffs, same nationality, face to face, body to body.

To a tourist who still didn't manage to grasp the ins and outs of this rivalry, they gave this example: “It's like Bruce Springsteen giving a concert a stone's throw from Johnny Hallyday who's playing another concert but haughtily, not forgetting that Beyoncé, Foo Fighters, Depeche Mode, Manu Chao, Paul Simon, and so on are all playing concerts in the vicinity, and the town turns into a music stand.” In fact, different sorts of music were blasting out in the distance, same shouts, same solos, same instruments, same dances, same midriffs.

“You own all this!”

She nodded her head.

“You didn't tell me you were so rich and powerful.”

Remark with no basis whatsoever. Lucien knew that she stepped out with tourists who excavated, so couldn't he have thought about the matter a little more? Everyone knew that in order to attain a certain legality, to excavate without drawing the wrath of the Dissidence, or to pander to public opinion, certain tourists married and stepped out with an “indigenous” whom they cherished accordingly in due form.

She gave no answer. She simply set about haranguing her troops,
her waitresses, and busgirls who were slowing in their service of the successions of bottles.

Those girls are the same everywhere, he thought, authoritarian, stubborn as mules, notoriously insubordinate through and through, with their fat lips. As proof, out the corner of his eye he saw them scrutinizing him and collapsing into fits of hysterical laughter and other unprecedented inanities.

“Do you have the time?”

“I've got a cheeky side, fun yet perverse, you interested?”

“I'm inexhaustible and capable of every position.”

“I know every page of the Kama Sutra.”

The poesies and litanies of a few post-baby-chicks with hair like wooded savannah come to seek their fortune.

“You're handsome, I feel like warming you up.”

“I've got a silicone bust.”

“Your mouth is like the Eiffel Tower's gaze.”

“I dream of Venice, take me far away from here.”

They left The Guerilla at one in the morning, direction: home.

“You can stay at mine, if you like.”

“Do you live with anyone?”

“No, it's you I'm interested in. Aren't you thinking of living with me?”

“I don't know.”

They arrived at the house and Lucien refused to share her room. So he accepted, without objection, to spend his nights on a mattress in the little kitchen overrun by cockroaches.

There are people who don't know how to make the most of their existence. A woman is absolutely sure you're the man of her
dreams, she follows you, whispers words of love to you, showers you with affection, yet you refuse to respond to her advances, as if you were the handsomest man in the world when you're nothing more than a brat. You prefer cockroaches to Émilienne's stunning body. Requiem wasn't wrong when he stated with considerable humanism that certain people live with a brain dating from the 13th century.

Similarly, you show up in the City-State buck naked. The General calls and makes you a deal: “Write your texts in my honor and I will guarantee both your financial and your material comfort.” And you retort: “I don't give in to blackmail, I am a writer, not a griot in the service of the king.” What a way of thinking!