Alain Mabanckou - Black Bazaar

At Château d’Eau you can find the latest musical hits from both Congos. Traffic wardens and police officers grumble and waste their ink raining down fines on cars parked on main thoroughfares classified as “red”. Many of these vehicles have number plates from European countries other than France …

One day I spotted a well made-up woman wearing pyjamas and carpet slippers, even though people said she lived in Creil, a banlieue more than fifty minutes from Paris by train. When she was heckled for her attire that was better suited for bed and shut-eye, she replied that France was a country of liberty, equality and fraternity.

“And anyway, you bunch of ignoramuses, haven’t you noticed the label on my pyjamas is Yves Saint-Laurent? I didn’t buy them for hiding in bed with, they’re for people to see! Before opening your mouths, take a good look at who you’re dealing with!”

I should point out that they don’t just cut hair in Château d’Eau. They don’t just go for cars with foreign number plates. And you won’t just find women in carpet slippers and Yves Saint-Laurent pyjamas. There are street hawkers too, peddling clothes. Their deals are sealed in café toilets, despite the beady-eyed complaints of the local traders. And people play cards, with bank notes passing from hand to hand at such a speed they’d push David Copperfield into early retirement.

It is also where I heard the famous speech by one of my compatriots, nicknamed “The Opinion Leader of Château d’Eau”, and who has the misfortune to be a permanent scapegoat for the police whenever they’re searching the area with a fine-tooth comb.

On this particular day he answered with:

“Officers, if you think that I am an illegal immigrant then you are mistaken! Nothing justifies this stop and search, in as far as I am causing no disturbance of the peace. Moreover, why just me and not the entire neighbourhood? I am not the only person with swarthy looks around here, oh no! You have no right to treat me like this, and I should like to remind you that the Penal Code forbids such public humiliations. I can assure you that I will be writing to the Minister of Justice and to some upstanding people such as your Robert Badinters, your Bernard-Henri Lévys and above all to Professeur Jacquard who takes such matters very seriously! Believe me, this will be discussed on the 8 O’Clock News, and even on Canal Plus. And you’re surprised that Château Rouge is constantly in the national headlines. You flout human rights in a so-called democratic country! The reality is that banana republics aren’t always the ones we think they are. Montesquieu himself, in The Spirit of the Laws , said that …”

The Leader, who was manhandled, made to face the other way and pinned against the wall, was unable to finish his diatribe. The crowd railed against the police while taking the precaution of doing it from the other side of the street.

Once again, The Leader was becoming the hero of the day, his words were repeated in nearby cafés and, later on, in the Marché Dejean at Château Rouge …

As I was opening mydoor I heard someone say hello to me in the corridor. I turned around: it was Mr Hippocratic. What had he been drinking to greet me like that from one day to the next?

Surprised by his change of tune, I said hello back. I went into my studio and switched on the telly: an African president was suspected of having poisoned his opponent. I was instantly reminded of the way in which the President of the big Congo had got rid of his fierce opponent, Moleki Nzela, more than two decades ago. Moleki Nzela was very popular, people said that although living abroad, he was already almost in power because a large European stadium had to be booked whenever he held a meeting. Moleki Nzela’s misfortune most likely boiled down to the fact that he had given a Fiat 500 to the most notorious madam in his country, a woman everybody would call “Mama Fiat 500” from then on. It’s a piece of history that gets told in every street of both Congos. And if it had happened here in Europe, pupils would have long since been studying it at school.

From time to time Moleki Nzela used to come to our small Congo, but this opponent had to do so under cover because our Head of State had links with the Head of State opposite and the two of them would give each other end-of-year presents: hand over my bloody idiot of an opponent who brays to Paris morning, noon and night, and I’ll hand over yours who’s playing it up for Brussels even though he doesn’t have hairy testicles. From one day to the next we found out that Moleki Nzela had been poisoned by the President opposite. Now the people in the street held this against the President, and so the hunt was on for a name that would suit him better than his clown’s glasses. The day after the murder, the people of the big Congo nicknamed their Head of State “The King of Fools”. There was a song to spread this appellation. But it was best not to sing it out loud, for risk of a date with the guillotine. Alas for the President, the song was being whispered on everyone’s lips, and you could hear people whistling in the street, like Brassens, the singer from Sète, that there was little hope of de-throning the King of Fools, and so this sovereign could sleep soundly at night, everybody would have to follow him dutifully, it was possible to topple the Shah of Iran, but there wasn’t much chance of de-throning the King of Fools …

The King of Fools hadn’t annihilated Moleki Nzela because of any political disagreement, no, it was a tale of lust. The President and his opponent were well acquainted with Mama Fiat 500 who ran the biggest pleasure business in the country opposite, right in the centre of the district of Matongé, and she kept the high-ranking personalities for herself because, again according to the singer from Sète, you don’t wiggle your backside in the same way for a hardware-store owner, a sacristan, or a civil servant, let alone a President for life or an implacable opponent. It was a close run thing as to whether the President opposite and his opponent might bump into each other in front of Mama Fiat 500’s door, where each was going to do his business. She knew how to set the timetable, but a traffic jam could mess with all that. Normally the King of Fools would turn up late at night. He came to escape the tantrums of his wife, a real pain in the neck who forced the King of Fools to clean his nails while he was jigging about on top of her even though their whole country, and ours too, knew that she was no Venus.

On the first evening that the King of Fools thought he’d spotted his eternal opponent round at Mama Fiat 500’s, he rubbed his eyes in disbelief and turned round several times to face his four fixers crammed into an ordinary car but armed right up to their dental cavities:

“Shit, did you see what I just saw? That man sneaking out by the secret door, over there, on the other side, can you see him? That’s Moleki Nzela, my bloody idiot of an opponent who spouts a load of rubbish about me from Belgium!”

The henchmen replied with one voice:

“Oh no, Mr President, Moleki Nzela lives in Brussels. He has been banned from entering this country for seventeen years, we have your presidential decree in our glove compartment.”

He glanced at the decree, and recognised his signature:

“That is indeed my signature … But all the same, are you sure it wasn’t him I just saw?”

“Absolutely certain, Mr President! Moleki Nzela, that son of a bitch, is meant to be sick in Brussels and he can’t even pay for his hospital expenses any more, rumour has it that he’d like to call upon your goodwill to honour his bills, which are piling up! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

“Ah, yes, that’s right, I have heard that story, I must just be imagining things! That fool will get nothing out of me, let him croak his last over there in Europe! I’d rather pay for his funeral, it would cost the State less.”