Tram 83 (21 page)

Same thing in the Back-Country: you're in quite some difficulty, you're being threatened morning till night, you're on the verge of beggary. “Compose your patriotic poetries, and we'll let you lead a quiet life. We'll give you a position at the university and a host of other privileges.” But you throw it back in their faces. You could be lucky enough to possess beautiful bodies, beautiful women, apartments in Europe, but you throw it back in their faces. Life is yours for the taking, and you throw it back in their faces.

Complete pandemonium ensued when he set foot in The Guerilla. The waitresses and busgirls dashed in all directions. He was received with great fanfare by the baby-chicks, waitresses, busgirls, and a handful of digger-students desperate for leadership. Émilienne had already seen to it that their liaison was public knowledge, that he was the man of her dreams.

Russian cigarettes, red wine, two plates of goat kebabs followed by grilled fish with spinach. The musicians, prancing to the beat of
a rumba, yelled
mabangas
, shout-outs, far and wide: “Great Oilman, Boss of Bosses, Man of His Time, Papa Love, Man On The Ball.” Everyone thought that the place was his and that Émilienne was simply some chick he'd picked up. A logic reinforced by the strong rumors in this direction that were flying around. He ate sulkily and spent the whole evening daydreaming, as unmoved by the choreographies of the musicians from the Belgian Congo as he was by the kind attentions of the busgirls. He wrote: “They enjoy themselves and extend the probability of their descent into hell, which will be preceded by some small glory, once their pleasures have bled them dry.”

At two in the morning, Émilienne gave instructions to the young woman who stood in for her whenever she went home to get some rest.

“Come on, Lucien.”

They left to the applause of the waitresses and musicians who no doubt wished to earn a little credit.

They walked down Market Street.

“They take me for your husband. I really don't like that at all.”

Lucien, Lucien, Lucien, why these Tintin-in-Sudan machinations?

“I mean really …”

“Tell them I'm not your fella.”

“I mean really …”

“I don't know what to say to their chitter-chatter.”

“I mean really …”

“You know …”

“I mean really …”

But Émilienne wouldn't let it go, hoping he'd change his mind.

“Listen, Lucien, can you walk me to 12 rue des Eucalyptus?”

“What for?”

“I've got another business there and it's been over a week, she hasn't come to tell me what's what, the woman who works for me. I try to get hold of her, the phone just rings and rings.”

Lucien, proudly:

“See you back home, you know the way, don't you?”

“Please …”

They turned onto a dark, narrow street. Émilienne feigned a stumble. He leapt forward but the girl spun round and pressed her lips to those of our friend, the writer.

“You crazy or what!”

He pushed her away.

“I didn't mean to do it. And what if I did?”

12 rue des Eucalyptus.

Young girls barely twelve years old out front of a house painted in the colors of the municipality — blue, red, green, and orange — shrieked and scampered back into the yard.

“What are you doing out here?” cried Émilienne, almost in tears.

They hurried inside. And came face-to-face with a woman dressed all in burgundy. She shrieked too, then pulled herself together:

“Good evening, Madame.”

“Why do you no longer come see me? Why aren't the girls in their rooms?”

“I've been a little sick, but I was just telling myself I'd come tell you how things are.”

“Wait for me here,” she said to the playwright.

Lucien stood there amid the chaos, while the two women rushed off down the corridors.

“Where are the girls?”

“Why?”

“I want to see all the girls.”

The lady in burgundy called out to the girls, who came running with much bowing and scraping and proffering of apologies . Lucien entered the premises. An oval room. Eight doors. Émilienne and the burgundy lady on a long greenish-blue sofa, opposite nearly naked girls stuffed into colorful yet skimpy outfits and other get-ups peculiar to the activities of a bawdyhouse.

After close to two hours of confabulation, they went on their way again. But before they raised anchor, the baby-chicks, who thought that Lucien was a client and who wanted to prove to Émilienne that they knew how to lay the ground, came running with their long, slow smiles somewhere between furtive yet amorous wink and nonchalant pout—doubtless to give free rein to their bodies stimulated by the experience of their profession. For the first time since his arrival in the City-State, he felt a desire to stretch his body over one of these gems, but hastily stood up and left.

Lucien took himself a bit too seriously. Life is short and you need to know how to live it to the full. Is it a crime to nick a miner-prospector-tourist's wallet? Where's the harm in stealing a tourist's dog and eating it for the family meal, with onions and red wine attached? It won't be the end of the world, the dog or the wallet, given that he excavates at a rate of maybe three
thousand tons of copper a day. Three thousand tons of copper for his Doberman that you recycle because you are hungry and he's got everything: money, women, and prestige. Three thousand tons of copper or cobalt for five hundred dollars. Fleecing a tourist who's excavating is an act of self-defense, a practice handed down from father to son in both the Back-Country and the labyrinthine mines of the City-State. But Lucien will tell you: “It's wrong, my conscience reproaches me for it.” The gall.

“Why do you do that, Émilienne?”

“I don't understand.”

“What's got into you to colonize these young girls? Don't you think they deserve better than to be sold for a pittance?”

“What?”

“They're minors. Elsewhere, you'd go to prison.”

Angered by these statistics, Émilienne lost her temper.

“You got any work to give them?”

“These girls are still kids.”

“Age is not a factor! Even the dissident General knows this.”

“Listen …”

“I defy anyone to prove me wrong!”

“You're mistaken.”

She took advantage of the occasion to thumb her nose at all Lucien's singular theories, even calling him impotent.

They arrived at her place at four in the morning. Lucien went into the kitchen and packed his bags, or rather his imitation-leather satchel and his computer.

“I have nothing against you but I think I need to leave for the sake of my conscience.”

“Where to?”

Lucien's mannerisms grated. Someone retrieves you like a garbage bag and you want to spoil the party for a question of conscience! What the hell is your conscience doing in a story that you don't need to be a writer to understand? You're nothing and you want to act like a big shot. What ingratitude! A guy shows up at a woman's place and she gives him food, drink, clothing, and pocket money, but he gets up one fine morning with a question of conscience! To cap it all, you still want to pass yourself off as a whipping boy.

“Listen, Lucien, I'm sorry about before. I lost my temper. Listen.”

“No. I don't want to live off dirty money.”

She even begged him.

“I'm so sorry.”

“I can't live off the bodies of those little girls!”

Lucien, what a clown! If you don't want to live off the bodies of those little girls then earn money yourself, stand on your own two feet, go rescue all the decrepit-single-mamas on earth, build schools for former-baby-chicks, start an NGO, find them work.

“I'm sorry.”

“You should have told me.”

Lucien, what you forget is that she has always loved you and that she has suffered for you. It's annoying to come across individuals like that, with no conscience, ungrateful to the bone. She knelt, weeping, in front of the door to prevent him leaving, but he made it all the same, shoving her out the way.

He left behind him the clothes, the phone, the money — in
short, everything she'd given him.

Why do you keep trying to exceed the limit of tolerability? What kind of man are you? Is the reality of life not sufficient for your conscience? Must you deprive yourself of the pleasures of the underbelly to be a writer? What idiocy to want to pass yourself off as a hero? Ultimately, what exactly is the conscience of a writer who won't open his eyes?

30.

THE RETURN OF THE ANIMAL-MAN
.

Malingeau hadn't been seen at the Tram for several months. Gossip started by the waitresses and the busgirls, propagated by the single-mama-post-baby-chicks, and then relayed by the secondhand tourists, circulated throughout the City-State: he was suffering from an incurable disease. Some baby-chicks even maintained that he'd been flown home to Switzerland in critical condition. Requiem couldn't help ordering rounds for the entire Tram. For the Negus, one thing was sure: Malingeau was no longer of this world. Every evening at the Tram he demonstrated, like a proper parrot, the extent to which this demise was a relief not only for the whole Tram but also for the whole City-State. As soon as he showed up, he took Malingeau's table and imitated him to the letter. This caused hilarity among the head baby-chicks and the secondhand tourists.

Good things never last, so they say. One Saturday like any other, around 5
P.M.
, a rumor began to spread along Peace Boulevard, Constitution Street, and Stanley Road, before spilling into the
Tram: Ferdinand Malingeau was very much alive, and had left Geneva, crossed the border of the City-State this morning, and would surely come to Tram 83 this evening.

It was a custom among the for-profit tourists that whenever they returned from their own countries, they would buy five or six rounds for everyone in the course of the night. Which drove even the craziest who hung out on the Main Square to venture into Tram 83.

As the sun sank ever lower, the rumors grew and took the shape of truth. Firstly through the machinations of the for-profit tourists. It was a whole ritual. Upon the return of one of their own from a long trip, they took themselves along to Tram 83 from 5
P.M.
to welcome them, bearing orchids, elegantly turned-out, well dressed, well groomed, and well perfumed like Papa Wemba the year he recorded
Viva la Musica
. They came with their wives and their children. They sponsored the music of the day, meaning that which suited their taste. They gave the Tram's owner a pot of cash so that an improvised band, composed almost exclusively of for-profit tourists, could play for the occasion. Songs from their own countries, sometimes even into the small hours. It was a beautiful thing to be involved in such concerts. Each tourist could request a song of their choice and the band would play it there and then. The European tourists would cry on these occasions. They requested songs that reminded them of their youth, that time forever lost. And the usual nostalgia that arises whenever one finds oneself an exile hit them full in the face.

To avoid an unnecessary crush, the Tram's owner would choose the evening's participants on the fly. Everyone agreed on the quota.
It was conceived in such a way that all social strata of the City-State would be represented. For example, they might take ten baby-chicks, ten-post-baby-chicks, ten students, ten mercenaries, ten diggers, ten Chinese tourists, and, finally, ten slim-jims. The remaining seats were reserved for the direct beneficiaries, the for-profit tourists and their families. That was another thing about Tram 83. You could arrange an evening and handpick the guests of your choice. You simply had to fork out the required pot of cash and kick everyone out, including the for-profit tourists, unless the latter bought out the same evening with a larger pot of cash than your own. But for lowly folk like us, booking the Tram for an evening was beyond our means. We couldn't allow ourselves such eccentricities.

Around the 1930s, an enormously wealthy tourist liked to hand over the pot of cash and entertain just five or six of his friends. Today's tourists are kinder in this regard. Just imagine, the whole of Tram 83 outside simply because an individual and his buddies want to drink their beer in comfort. Not knowing what the hell to do with themselves, the Tram regulars would hang around eating dog kebabs, or leave to go finish the night at the Cuba Club, known for its fifty-four types of salsa. You arrive, and the waitresses or busgirls hand you two menu cards, one for the grub and another for the salsa.

It is highly possible that nobody went off to work that evening. Even the mercenaries forsook the mines to gratify us with their presence. Who could miss such an event? Everyone flocked to the Tram, on foot, by bicycle, on motorbikes, or in beat-up cars. The crowd stretched as far as the station whose unfinished metal structure …