Alain Mabanckou - Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty

‘Shush! Don’t talk so loud, Maman will hear what we’re planning.’

‘How are you going to do it?’

‘I know someone.’

‘And where does this someone live?’

‘Give me your bread first.’

‘No, I’m hungry too!’

‘Ok, we’ll split it. We’ll cut your bread in two, but you give me the big bit because it’s thanks to me you’re going to see Papa Wemba this evening.’

I draw away from him and start to nibble at my bread. He watches me like a dog trying to work out the size of the bone his master’s grinding. I get almost halfway through my piece of bread, and I think: What if Maximilien’s right?

Just as I decide to give him the rest of my bread Maman Martine makes me jump. ‘Michel, what are you doing?’

‘He’s not hungry,’ says Maximilien.

‘You be quiet, greedy, I’m not asking you. Michel can answer for himself!’

Maximilien winks at me, and I help him out: ‘Yeah, Maman, I’ve had enough and I want to give Maximilien my bit. He didn’t ask me.’

My little brother swallows the bread in a few seconds, then whispers, ‘Thank you! Really! You and me, we’ll go and see Papa Wemba this evening!’

It’s half past five in the evening. Maximilien comes to find me, looking very pleased.

‘Let’s go, or we’ll be the last in the queue.’

‘What queue?’

‘No questions. Just follow me.’

We leave the house in secret and make our way to the Joli Soir. I think: How is he going to get us into this bar for grown ups? The way he walks, he’s like an adult.

We arrive at the Joli Soir, but we walk straight past.

‘Where are we going? Where are you taking me? The bar’s back there!’

‘Just follow me. You’ll see.’

We turn down the street that runs behind the bar. Now we’re on a bit of land where there are at least ten or so people between my age and Maximilien’s. They are already lined up in front of a wall. It’s taken me a moment to realise that the Joli Soir is just the other side of the wall, which smelled of piss, because that’s where lots of the customers go to piss the beer they’ve drunk inside the bar.

A boy who looks older than me, but is about Lounès’s age, comes up to Maximilien and asks him, ‘Where’s the money?’

Maximilien takes some coins out of his pocket and says, ‘Here, there’s twenty-five CFA francs for my big brother and twenty-five francs for me, which makes a total of fifty francs.’

The boy counts the money and nods his head: ‘Go and stand in line with the others, you’re eleventh and twelfth.’

We go and line up, and see other boys arriving, like rats coming out of a hole. They each pay twenty-five francs and line up behind us.

Already, I’m getting worried: ‘How are we meant to get into the bar?’

‘Don’t be in such a hurry. You’ll see.’

The queue is now really long, like at the cinema Rex when there’s an Indian film. A bit further down on the same scrap of land, behind us, I notice a big yard and a house that’s lit with a Petromax lamp. On the terrace an old man and an old woman are eating in silence, almost like ghosts.

‘Maximilien, who are those old people?’

‘They’re Donatien’s papa and maman.’

‘Donatien?’

‘That’s the name of the boy who took the money back there.’

‘And his parents are ok with that?’

‘No, Donatien will give them the money. That’s how it works when there are concerts at the Joli Soir.’

‘Hang on a minute, where did you find the money you gave Donatien?’

He replies calmly: ‘When I get sent to buy things from Amin’s or Bassène’s, sometimes I say I’ve lost the change. It’s not true though, I keep it in a box I’ve buried at the back of the house. And when there’s a concert I take the money, I pay, and that way I get to see all the concerts. I’ve already seen Franco Luambo Makiadi and his group the All-Mighty Ok Jazz, I’ve seen Tabu Ley and his band Afrisa, I’ve seen Lily Madeira, the singer with a hump, and I’ve even seen the Cuban and Angolan orchestras!’

‘But why do you waste your money on these concerts instead of spending it on sweets?’

‘Because one day, when I’m grown up, I want to be a musician like Papa Wemba. I want to make it big like him. I want to play solo guitar because the guitar’s what you hear most. If I only eat sweets and never go to concerts I’ll never become a musician.’

Behind the wall we can hear guitars, drums and voices shouting: ‘Mike 1, testing’, ‘Mike 2, testing’, ‘Mike 3, testing’.

The queue starts to get restless, people begin to squabble, Donatien calms everyone down: ‘The concert hasn’t started yet, you’d better all keep still or I’ll give you your money back and you can get out of line and go home!’

The concert’s just started. Donatien runs towards the wall of the Joli Soir and pushes aside the boy at the front of the line. He lifts a piece of plasterboard away from the wall and I see there’s a little hole between two bricks.

‘That’s how we’re going to see Papa Wemba, through that hole,’ Maximilien says to me.

‘What? It’s tiny!’

‘Yes, but you can still see what’s happening in the bar! Just look through one eye and you’ll see really well. Believe me. If you get tired with one eye, you change to the other.’

He presses his lips to my ear and whispers, ‘See those ten boys ahead of us in the queue? They won’t see anything of Papa Wemba!’

‘Really?’

‘They’re new, those boys, you can tell. They don’t know that the band leader never comes on first, he’ll turn up later because he’s the most important musician. So those boys will only see Papa Wemba’s other musicians because after ten minutes Donatien will ask them to make way for the others. And since we’re eleventh and twelfth we’ll get to the hole just when Papa Wemba’s about to take up the mike.’

He’s very clever, our Maximilien. How does he know this stuff, when if he’s at home and you ask him something he acts like he’s really stupid, and we all make fun of him? When I think how he mistook Lounès for a giant who’d come to beat me up, it baffles me. Totally.

We’ve been standing in line for over an hour when Donatien comes and signals to us. It’s our turn to go up to the hole.

Maximilien tells me, ‘You get ten minutes, I get ten minutes, that’s a total of twenty minutes between us. But we’ll split the twenty minutes in four: you look for five minutes, then I’ll look for five minutes, that way each of us gets two goes. And while you’re looking, you tell me what’s happening, and when I’m looking I’ll tell you, ok?’

‘Ok.’

‘Right, you go first.’

I lean forward. Even though the hole is small, you can easily see what’s going on in the bar because Papa Wemba is directly opposite, and his band is behind him.

I describe what I can see to Maximilien. I tell him, Papa Wemba’s arrived, he’s dressed in black leather from head to toe, he’s just picked up the mike, he’s singing with his eyes closed and he’s already sweating all over. There are couples dancing, clinging onto each other, tightly packed together. They move up and down, from one end of the dance floor to the other. When they’re dancing opposite me I can see them. But when they move to the left, or to the right, I can’t, even when I swivel my eyes like a chameleon. Some of the couples get in my way, they dance too close to my eye. One woman’s backside is so huge, it’s like a second wall in my face. I need to find a long piece of wire and prick the great fat backside of the woman stopping me getting a good view of Papa Wemba. On the other hand, I don’t want to prick it because the backside in question is moving to the rhythm of the music and it makes me want to dance. When the drummer hits his instrument really hard, the woman’s backside bounces like a grain of sweetcorn in a pan of hot oil. And it makes me want to laugh, I didn’t know you could dance like a grain of sweetcorn that’s been flung into boiling oil. There’s a man over at the back there holding on too tight to a woman in a really short skirt. He’s put his head in between this woman’s breasts and closed his eyes, like a baby that’s just finished its bottle and has fallen into a deep sleep. Every time the woman breathes the man’s head moves to the rhythm of the music and it makes me start to dance too, imagining it’s me with my head between the breasts of the woman with the short skirt, that I’ve got my eyes closed and am fast asleep on the woman’s chest, like a baby that’s just drunk up it’s bottle. That woman could be my mother, so I shouldn’t be thinking things like that. I should be trying to imagine she’s a girl of my own age. So I think about Caroline’s chest. Caroline doesn’t have breasts like the woman’s yet, but perhaps they’ll be that big when she’s twenty.