Alain Mabanckou - The Lights of Pointe-Noire

‘Come on! Be my guest!’

I go over to the stranger and sit down opposite him.

‘I know you’re thinking we don’t know each other. But I know you! You’re a writer, I’ve seen you sometimes on the TV! All these people sitting eating here are ignoramuses, they don’t know who you are! But you’re looking at someone who actually follows the news!’

‘Maybe you were expecting someone who…’

‘I belong here, I invite who I like. Two days ago I had lunch with a white journalist, yesterday with a colonel in the army, and this evening I’m with a writer! A word of advice: don’t have the boar today, I’ve been told it’s not fresh…’

He waves a hand in the direction of the waitress. She brings us two Primus beers and takes the tops off, her face expressionless, as though put out by the presence of this stranger. She goes back to the counter while my host eyes up her rear:

‘I’ve got the file on that girl, and it’s closed. She can sulk at me if she likes, I’ve already slept with her… Did you see the arse on her?’

I look round and nod.

‘This country’s changed, my writer friend…’

The stranger notices me looking at the scar that cuts his face in two, and touches it with his hand.

‘Yes, I know, it comes from the war, the oil, I mean…’

He looks over at the customers sitting behind us, then at those sitting opposite us, to make sure they’re not listening, then goes on:

‘God gave us oil, even though we’re only a little country with less than three million people. Why did he put all the oil in the south, instead of giving a bit to the north, so everyone would at least have a slice of the cake and we could stop fighting each other? But you know, I’m not complaining; when I think of some countries and the mess they’re in and they don’t have a single drop of oil, in the ground or out at sea!’

He raises his glass, empties it in one, and fills it again:

‘Oil equals power! Where there’s a war, there’s oil. Otherwise, tell me this, why don’t countries fight over water? Imagine a country without water, would its people survive? Oil has screwed everything up between the north and the south. And like the fuckwits we are, we’ve had a civil war over it!’

The waitress comes back to take our orders. I avoid the boar and go for the antelope with peanut butter. The stranger hesitates for a moment, then opts for the salted fish with mushrooms and glances again at the waitress’s rear as she moves away:

‘D’you see that? When I think I’ve had my leg over that and now she’s playing up! Ah well, it was a bad idea anyway, the girl doesn’t move in bed like she should, she makes you do all the hard work… what was I saying before that?’

‘The civil war over oil…’

‘Ah, yes, the war was all about getting control of the oil, to sell it in secret and buy villas in Europe! The oil here doesn’t belong to the people, it belongs to the President of the Republic and his family. I won’t name names because the walls here have ears like rabbits… The problem is that the president works with the French. The one who got overthrown didn’t want to work with the French any more, he wanted to work with the Americans. So the French helped their friend, so he could stay in power, but the Americans didn’t protect the new president, who was democratically elected. The Americans aren’t stupid, they know they can go and make war somewhere else — in Iraq, for example — and get lots more oil than they would here. Why would they fight for a little country that has less oil than Iraq?’

Two women dressed in very short skirts enter the restaurant. High-heeled shoes. Heavy make-up. They walk across the room as if they’re in some fashion show, and stop at the counter.

Suddenly the stranger addresses me as ‘ tu’ , like an intimate friend.

‘See that? They’re on the prowl! They’re tarts from the Three-Hundreds, but Pontenegrins, not from Zaire — those girls hardly ever come here! The war destroyed everything, now you have to do what you can to get by! What was I saying a minute ago?’

‘The war, the French, the Americans…’

‘Yes, we had a civil war here, you must know that, it was in the papers all over the world. The north of the country fighting the south. The northerners were in power, they didn’t want to let go of the oil. I’m telling you, it was bad, the civil war. Weapons came in from everywhere. The northerners asked for help from the Angolans and the French, who came and invaded the south. The people in the south ran off into the bush to hide. We were dying of hunger, and from the mosquitoes, and other tropical illnesses. Some got eaten by crocodiles or lions. There was war on Earth and in Heaven too, believe me…’

He notices some of the customers are listening to us. He draws his chair closer to me and whispers:

‘We saw military planes skim the tops of the forests. The people who ran off into the bush were called “refugees”. The international community said we must help them, give them food, even if you can eat anything in the bush, like the Pygmies. But the Pygmies, they’re a joke, I don’t like them, they’re too small and their stomachs don’t get hungry every day like us big guys do, normal people, I mean. Pygmies are bastards who can go without eating or drinking for months on end, while people our size need to eat every day. Isn’t that unfair? Who do they think they are, these Pygmies, going without food like that? And what do they do all day, hiding out there in the bush? They don’t even know TV exists, that every single person has a mobile phone, and that for a long journey you take a train, or a plane! I don’t like them at all, but you have to make do…’

The stranger’s beginning to look a little weepy, as though on the verge of tears. He looks at the bottle for a moment, then continues:

‘Mr Writer-man, you have no idea what went on in this God-awful country. It was dreadful! The newspapers didn’t tell the truth, because the newspapers are written by — who? By spies, by which I mean, the French! When did the French ever tell the truth? They always lie! I saw the war with my own eyes, I was there, I was in the group of refugees. Sometimes the women gave birth in the bush because, between you and me, babies still get born even when there’s oil and war in a country. The worst of it was, people went on making love even when people were falling like flies in the war. I expect you’ll be wondering: why didn’t they wait for the end of the war, to make love? Oh no, if you waited for the end of the war, people would forget how to make love, by the time the whole dirty war ended we’d be making love with animals! Nothing new there, though: throughout the history of the world, people have made love even in times of cholera…’

The waitress places our food on the table, just as my stomach starts to rumble. I’m hardly listening to my stranger now, just gobbling up my spicy dish, with my face just a few centimetres from my plate.

He peers after the two prostitutes who are just passing our table again:

‘New girls, you can tell! The one with the lighter skin’s not bad, eh? Look how she walks, like a freshwater fish!’

I don’t react, and he suddenly adopts an affected voice, almost as though he’s bragging:

‘Oh, I was a refugee too, you know. Things got worse and worse for us, me and the rest of them, out in the bush. One day we heard three helicopters approaching. The rumour went round that they were from the international community. In fact they were helicopters from the French company that was extracting our oil. We thought they must be coming at last to get us out of this dreadful situation. So we came out of hiding like mice when they’ve just realised the cat who’s been terrorising them actually has no claws and no teeth. We started shouting for joy. Dancing. Cheering. Kissing each other. We shouted: “Long live France! Long live France! Long live France!” Some people were so excited they shouted, like idiots: “Long live America! Long live America! Long live America!” Perhaps because the Americans are the ones who liberate people. Even the French, didn’t the Americans liberate them during the Second World War? Actually we didn’t give a damn if it was the French or the Americans, we were just happy someone had come to liberate us. We thought: at last, we’ll be able to make love in proper beds, children will get born on the maternity wards, not beside the river, as they have up till now. War is over! Long live peace! And the helicopters were coming towards us, like this…’