Alain Mabanckou - Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty

We’ll call him Roger like my father.

Our little white dog will stay in the car ,

A fine red car, with room for five ,

We’ll call him Miguel, like my uncle’s dog

But he won’t be fierce ,

He’ll be a nice dog ,

And eat at table with us.

I promise you this, I’ll read all the books

by Marcel Proust

One day when I’m older.

But I won’t build a castle for you

It’ll just be a little house, a pretty house of wood ,

Like Maman Pauline’s and Papa Roger’s.

Castles are too big ,

I might lose my dreams in a castle ,

Then they’ll call me a capitalist

And I don’t want that, I don’t want their red globules

If I do, my sisters might not know me

They might show me the door when I get to Heaven…

Michel

Lounès says: ‘You missed something yesterday, I looked everywhere for you.’

It’s about Jérémie’s mother, a horrible woman, who goes round insulting all the local mothers. This time it seems she’s had a row with her husband. It all started inside their house, in front of their children, and ended up in the street with people all round them, like a football match at the Tata Lubuko stadium. Lounès tries to imitate Jérémie’s mother’s voice for me, talking rudely to her husband and yelling in front of everyone, ‘You asshole, you idiot, you useless bugger! Call yourself a husband, do you? You can’t even do right by me in bed these days, not like a real man! I’ve done everything, I have, I’ve tried everything, and you never managed anything, just went on sleeping, snoring your head off! Impotent bastard! What are you, a husband, or a post, not even a post for electricity, like the ones in the Avenue of Independence! No woman could put up with that! Just you wait and see, things are going to change from now on! It’s time for a revolution, I’m going to find a good-looking young man around here and that fine young man’s going to give me such a good seeing to of an evening, by the time you get round to touching me I’ll be snoring my head off like you! You think I’m only good for having children, do you? Bastard!’

I laugh, but only to please him. I went and whistled three times outside their house today, so we could go down to the river together. I want to show him something, not listen to what this woman I don’t even like’s been saying, when she’s already been rude to Maman Pauline because her business is doing too well. So I let Lounès get to the end of his impression of her. I laugh again when he adds that Jérémie’s mother was wearing a red pagne tight across her behind and lifted her pagne high up her thighs. She asked the crowd if anyone wanted to give her a seeing to till she was too tired to move. Some of the men whistled and shouted, ‘Me! Me! I’ll give you a seeing to!’

Lounès noticed I wasn’t laughing as much now.

‘You wanted to tell me something, Michel…’

At this I get my piece of paper out of my pocket and hold it out to him.

‘Can you give that to Caroline?’

He takes the piece of paper and starts reading what I’ve written. My heart’s all shaken up. I close my eyes for a few minutes. When I open them again I see his face, it’s like a mask. He says nothing. He starts reading again. Can’t he read my writing?

‘Michel, this isn’t a poem! It’s fine, but it’s not a poem. In a poem the end of every line has to sound the same. Listen, I’ll recite you a real poem, you’ll see, at the end of every line you hear the same sounds:’

My baby, sleeping close to me, all pink and fresh ,

So like a tiny drowsy Jesus in his crèche;

Your sleep so free of care, so calm, so full of love

You do not hear the bird who sings far from the light.

But I breathed in the heavy sweetness of the night

And the sombre mysteries of the world above.

I take back my piece of paper and put it back in my pocket. I haven’t read the poem he’s just recited in class. He says it’s by Victor Hugo, for his daughter. When he says that it makes me think of the photo of Victor Hugo on the wall at my uncle’s house.

We don’t mention my poem, though I want to know if he thinks it’s good or bad. We listen to the grass singing in the wind and it makes us sleepy.

Lounès stands up and says he has to go to karate club. It’s just started, over in Savon, run by someone called Maître John.

‘I have to be there on the dot of five o’clock.’

‘Who’s this Maître John?’

‘He’s this really strong man, he flies through the air, like in the Bruce Lee films. He’s a black belt, sixth degree. As soon as I learn how to fly like that, I’ll teach you.’

He can see I’m still feeling sad, so before we say goodbye, he touches my right shoulder and says, ‘I really want to help you, but Caroline’s gone to stay at my mother’s sister’s house, over in the Fouks quartier . I don’t know when she’s coming back. Anyway, it’ll give you time to get your poem right.’

The American, Roger Guy Folly announces that the president of Uganda — called Idi Amin Dada — has just fled his own country because his neighbours in Tanzania have marched into the capital, called Kampala. The Tanzanians were angry because the Ugandan military had invaded Tanzania, supposedly to get rid of the Ugandans who were making trouble for Idi Amin Dada.

When I hear Papa Roger say that name, ‘Idi Amin Dada’, I howl with laughter. He looks at me very sternly, like I’ve committed a sin. ‘Careful, Michel, it’s no laughing matter! This is a serious business. Are you aware this president has killed over three hundred thousand people? And not just Ugandans, he’s been killing foreigners too, for the past eight years he’s been in power. He doesn’t just kill, kill and kill again, he eats people too, he cuts their heads off, and their private parts too, like meat at the Grand Marché.’

That does make me stop laughing at the name of the Ugandan president, even though I still think it’s funny to be called ‘Dada’, like the dog that lives near us, with a wiggly tail and one eye that waters all the time.

My father turned down the radio so he could explain to us that Idi Amin Dada was a monster, worse than a dragon, and ate people with spicy pepper and salt. I’m amazed to hear that in fact he couldn’t read very well, when he was almost two metres high. Why didn’t he take the time to go to school like everyone else? Ok, you’re going to say Maman Pauline can’t really read or write either, but she’s never killed anyone and she speaks French well, you can still speak a language even if you don’t know how to read or write it. Otherwise, how come we manage to speak all our languages — like lingala, munukutuba, bembé, lari, mbochi or vili — without learning to read or write? It’s not my mother’s fault she didn’t go to school when she was little, like I do. Maman Pauline told me that when she was little, people were so stupid they said school wasn’t good for women, it would make them argue with their husbands about everything, and make them refuse to obey when their husbands ordered them about. If a woman goes to school, they’d say, she’s finished, she’ll end up talking French like those big cheeses over in France, saying NO every five minutes, like white women, who manage to shout at their husbands without getting wallopped. Even if Maman Pauline never went to school, she’s still more intelligent than Idi Amin Dada, who killed over three hundred thousand people and ate some of them with salt and spicy pepper. Why didn’t they catch him, instead of letting him escape and hide away in a Muslim country? My father reels off the names of the countries in question: Libya (capital, Tripoli), Saudi Arabia (capital, Riyad). Saudi Arabia gave the criminal a quiet little house with people to prepare his food, when there are people who’ve never killed over three hundred thousand people dying of hunger on this continent. Is that normal? Do you have to go out and kill over three hundred thousand people to get free housing in a Muslim country or what? And they give him pocket money every month, like he’s some good pupil who’s done well at school, when he never even went to one.