Alain Mabanckou: Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty

Caroline and I used to go to school together, at Trois-Martyrs, but now she’s at a different place, in the Chic quartier . The reason she’s not at the same school as me now is because her father had a row with the headmaster.

I really miss those days when she’d come strolling down the Avenue of Independence, and meet me outside our house. We avoided the tarmacked roads because our parents said it was too dangerous, because none of the cars had brakes and the drivers drank corn spirit before they set off. We specially avoided the crossroads at Block 55, where someone got knocked down by a car at least once a month. In our quartier people blamed Ousmane, a shopkeeper from Senegal, just opposite the crossroads. Apparently he had this magic mirror that fooled the poor pedestrians, so they thought the cars were a long way off, like a kilometre away, when in fact it was more like a few metres, and bam! they ran them over, just as they started crossing. It looked like Ousmane had loads of customers, more than the other shops, because people died right outside his shop. We’d go round behind his shop, without even looking at it. Because we were scared of Ousmane’s magic mirror. Sometimes I’d be behind Caroline and she’d turn round and take my hand and give me a shake and tell me to get a move on because the devils in the magic mirror always caught children who lagged behind.

‘Michel, don’t look in Ousmane’s shop! Close your eyes!’

I walked fast. I didn’t want to vanish while she wasn’t looking. Our school was an old building painted green, yellow and red. When we finally got to the playground we had to separate. Caroline went into Madame Diamoneka’s class, and I went into Monsieur Malonga’s. My hand was damp because Caroline had been holding it tight all the way.

Around five in the evening we’d come home together. She’d drop me outside our house, then carry on home. I’d stay outside, watching her go. Soon she’d be just a little shape way off in the crowd. And in I’d go, happy.

My best friend, Lounès — who’s Caroline’s brother — liked walking to school alone. Was that because he didn’t want to walk alongside his sister? I think it was to show he was older than us. That he was in class with the big kids. Now he’s at middle school where you learn even harder things than you do at primary. And since he’s at Trois-Glorieuses, that’s where I want to go after primary school. If I went anywhere else I’d have to make new friends. I like Lounès, and I think he likes me too.

Caroline and Lounès’s father limps with his left leg, and people snigger when he walks by. It’s not nice to laugh at Monsieur Mutombo, it’s not like he said to God: I’d like to have a limp all my life please. He was born like that, and when he was a little boy and he tried to walk, his left leg was shorter than his right, or maybe his right leg was longer than his left.

In a way, Monsieur Mutombo could get rid of his limp if he wanted, all he has to do is wear Salamander shoes, they have these heels that are so high, a pygmy could wear them and look like an American sky-scraper. But I don’t think that’s a solution, since the right leg would still go on up higher and the left leg, the sick one, couldn’t match it. Unless if he cut off a bit of the sole of the right shoe, but then everyone would laugh at him because his shoes wouldn’t be the same height. The only thing to do is to ask God on his dying day to send him back with normal legs, because once God’s made a human being and sends him down to our world, that’s it, he won’t go back on his decision, otherwise people would stop respecting him. Besides, that would mean God could get it wrong, like the rest of us. Which has never been known to happen.

Monsieur Mutombo’s a very honest man. Papa Roger says so, and he’s his friend. He looks after Lounès and Caroline really well. He takes them to the Rex, where they’ve already seen films like Demolition Man, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Ten Commandments, Samson and Delilah, Jaws, Star Wars and lots of Indian films.

When Monsieur Mutombo comes to visit my father on Sundays, they go out to a bar in the Avenue of Independence. They drink palm wine, they talk in our ethnic language, bembé. If they stay too long at the bar Maman Pauline says to me: ‘Michel, look at you, sitting around like an idiot while your father and Monsieur Mutombo are out at a bar! You get up now, and go and see if they’re buying drinks for the local girls, and kissing them on the lips!’

I set off like a rocket, and arrive, panting, at the bar. I find Monsieur Mutombo and my father drinking, and playing draughts.

Papa Roger’s surprised to see me. ‘What are you doing here, Michel? Children aren’t allowed in bars!’

‘Maman told me to come and see if you were buying drinks for the local girls and putting your lips on theirs…’

And the two men part, laughing. I go home with my father, who’s a bit drunk. I hold his hand and he tells me things I don’t understand. Maybe when you’ve had a few drinks you can talk to invisible people who’ve been trapped inside the bottle by the people who brew it, that people who never drink can’t see.

Another Sunday, my father goes to see Monsieur Mutombo, and again they go off to drink in one of the local bars, to talk in bembé, and chat with the invisible people in the bottles, and this time it’s Lounès who goes to tell them that Madame Mutombo has asked her to come and check if they’re buying drinks for girls, and kissing them on the mouth.

Monsieur Mutombo is the best tailor in the whole town. He makes school uniforms for almost all the children round here. Some parents from other quartiers bring material for him to make up into uniforms for their children. He’s not short of customers in his workshop, particularly after the summer holidays, when he’s always behind because people wait till the last minute — often just three days before school starts — then come with their fabric and tell him to do it fast.

I like going to his workshop, with some fabric for my father over my shoulder, and watching him work with it, because he knows my father’s not just anybody, that he’s someone you can sit down and have a glass of palm wine or red wine with in a bar in the Avenue of Independence.

And you’d be amazed, if you saw the suit Monsieur Mutombo made, you’d think it was straight off the peg from Europe, except it’s not cut from a single piece and there isn’t that nice smell you get from Europe, and the Whites are so clever, they won’t tell us their secret so that we’ll carry on liking their clothes and wanting to wear them here, even though they’re more expensive.

The day I said to my mother that Madame Mutombo was a great fat woman, like a pregnant female hippopotamus, she boxed my ears and told me that if a woman’s big it means she has a big heart, and that the heart of someone who loves other people is always big. That made me think of Jeremy’s mother, he’s in my class, and I don’t like him because he’s too clever, he always comes second, after Adriano, the Angolan. Jeremy’s mother is very fat and very horrid, and she’s rude about all the other mothers in the neighbourhood.

My mother knew what I was thinking. She said, ‘True, not all big women have a heart as big as Madame Mutombo’s. I know you’re thinking of Jeremy’s mother, but that’s different.’

When Madame Mutombo comes to see Maman Pauline, she brings us doughnuts and ginger root juice. I don’t like her doughnuts, they’re too oily. I don’t like her ginger root juice because it burns the back of your throat and you end up in the toilet, pushing for an hour, with nothing coming out.

But Maman Pauline scolds me. ‘Michel, you just eat those doughnuts, now, and drink your ginger root juice. If someone gives you a goat, you don’t complain that it’s got a hole in its tooth!’