Alain Mabanckou - Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty

Papa Wemba is singing now, with a musician I don’t know very well. I’ve seen his photo somewhere. Who is he again?

‘That’s Koffi Olomidé, he lives in France,’ Maximilien tells me, as though he’s guessed I was going to ask him that.

When my five minutes are up, Maximilien takes my place, and describes everything. He tells me about the bass guitar, the backing guitar, the guitar solo. He says the big deep voice we can hear above all the other voices is a singer called Espérant Kisangani, alias ‘Djenga K’. Maximilien would like to be able to sing like him, to play guitar solo better than Rigo Star and Bogo Wendé, Papa Wemba’s two guitarists. When did he learn those two names, names I don’t even know, and I’m bigger than him? And he’s dancing while he talks, dancing really well, all without taking his eye from the hole. His head sways to the right, his backside swings to the left. Then the same thing the other way round. He swings out his right leg, and shakes it when the drummer bangs out a quick rhythm. He does the same thing with his left foot, then he shakes his arm, as though he’s imitating a bird in the sky. And when he dances like that, the whole line behind him starts dancing like him and imitating his moves.

I turn round to see how the other boys are dancing. That’s when I notice that some girls have arrived in really short skirts, hair in braids, lipstick, and pointed shoes, like the high heels that grown-up women wear. They’re with well-dressed boys who dance with them, with their head on their chest, even though they don’t have big breasts like the women dancing in the bar.

Every five minutes, Maximilien and I swap over. When it’s me looking through the hole, Maximilien yells in my ear: ‘You mustn’t keep still, you have to dance, or people will think you don’t know how to dance and they’ll make fun of us. Go on, move! Put your head on one side and move your body the other way. Imagine you’re a turkey, a dancing turkey! It’s the new dance they call Turkey Cuckoo .’

So I try to imagine I’m a dancing turkey. Maximilien sniggers because he can see I don’t know how to dance the Turkey Cuckoo . I keep moving my head up and down instead of from side to side.

‘Michel, you’re meant to be a turkey, not a lizard. The Lizard Cuckoo was last year’s dance! That’s old fashioned now!’

The other boys are sulking a bit because we’ve been cleverer than them and split our twenty minutes into four. Every time my brother and I swap over they all shout: ‘Plot! Plot! Plot! Cheats! Cheats! Cheats!’

Donatien looks at his watch and steps forward to move us away from the wall: ‘Come on then you two, time’s up now, off you go, let the others have a turn!’

Maximilien takes my hand, ‘Let’s go home, we’ve seen everything. In any case, it’ll be mayhem in a minute, the musicians will be too tired, they’ll have smoked their dope and they’ll start playing rubbish.’

Our parents are very cross, even Yaya Gaston, who still has a cut over his wound from the fight.

Maman Martine says, ‘Where were you then? Don’t you know the thugs from the Grand Marché come and hang round here on concert days?’

We stare at the ground and she goes on, ‘Since you’d disappeared, we finished all your food, so there’ll be nothing for you to eat tonight! That will teach you!’

Maximilien murmurs in my ear: ‘Don’t you worry, I thought about that. We’ll take the money that’s left in my money box and go and buy some big dumplings and soup from Mama Mfoa in the street opposite the bar called Credit Gone West, that’s open 24/7. Believe me, her soup is so good, you won’t mind missing the sardines the others had tonight, besides, we had them for lunch anyway!’

This morning my big brother Marius and my little sister Mbombie are getting ready to go into town. They are going to get their vaccinations against tetanus and sleeping sickness. Until now, those two have always said: No, we won’t have our vaccinations. But this time they can’t say no: a boy from our quartier died yesterday from sleeping sickness, and in the evening Papa Roger reminded everyone, ‘Tomorrow morning, all those who haven’t had their vaccinations must go to see the Chinese doctors at the Congo-Malembé hospital! When I get back from work I will check your arms to see you’ve got marks from the injections. You must have tetanus jabs too.’

While Marius and Mbombie are crossing the yard, Maman Martine says to them, ‘Wait, take little Félicienne to see the Chinese doctors too.’

I say to myself: ‘Let them take her, I don’t want her pissing on me again when I pick her up. When the Chinese doctors give her her jab at the hospital she’ll yell so loud you’ll hear it all over town.’

Maximilien, Ginette and I had our vaccinations last year, so we stay at home. We help Maman Martine sweep the yard and do the washing up and take out the big rubbish bin at the back of the house and put it in the road for when the refuse lorry comes. Sometimes the lorry doesn’t come by for a month or more. That’s why there are great piles of rubbish in the middle of some streets, and the cars have to drive round them.

…..

Maximilien is running like a mad man. He comes up to me, his brow drenched in sweat.

‘Get your breath back,’ I say.

‘No, I haven’t time. It’s too dreadful!’

‘What’s too dreadful?’

He glances back at the street.

‘Don’t you see what’s happening out there? Look who it is, waiting opposite! It’s him, the giant Tarzan who came to beat you up the other day. He’s still there, I don’t want you to fight with him! He’s stronger than you, he’s a great big giant! I’ll give him my money if he’ll leave you alone.’

‘Take a deep breath, Maximilien. That’s my friend, he’s called Lounès, and he’s come to see me because we haven’t seen each other for a few days now. He’s not a giant. He’s just tall like big brother Marius.’

‘Yeah, but he wants a fight.’

‘No, he just wants to see me.’

I leave him standing there, and I go out into the street. I find Lounès and we walk together as far as the river Tchinouka.

There are no fishermen today. The river’s calm. You can just hear a few birds, hidden in the trees.

‘It’s weird, there’ve been no planes for the last few days,’ Lounès says.

‘Perhaps they’ve changed routes. Because we’ve been staring at them. Or they’re hiding in the clouds.’

Suddenly he changes the subject. ‘Did you find that key to your mother’s belly?’

‘No.’

‘You really have to find it.’

‘I’m still looking. I will find it.’

‘So it was you that locked it?’

‘…’

‘Where have you put the key?’

‘Little Pepper’s looking after it for me and…’

‘Who’s Little Pepper?’

‘Someone who talks to people you can’t see. We went looking for the key together because he’d lost it in the bin and…’

‘Someone who goes looking through bins is usually called a vagabond. Is this Little Pepper a bit mad, by any chance?’

‘Oh no, he’s a philosopher, he has all these ideas other people can’t have. That’s what philosophers do.’

‘He’s just mad, then, let’s face it, like Athena and Mango.’

‘No, he’s a philosopher!’

‘Let’s both go and see him, and ask him to give the key back!’

‘I can’t today…’

‘Why not?’

‘At lunchtime I have to go with Maman Martine to the Bloc 55 quartier , and after that I have to go home with my father, Maman Pauline’s getting back from Brazzaville.’

At last a plane goes overhead, but it’s way up in the sky. Usually it seems like the planes are passing just a few centimetres above the roofs of the houses in our quartier , and the dogs start barking, and the little children go running into their mothers’ arms.