Alain Mabanckou - Broken Glass

yesterday, at four in the morning, I walked along the banks of the river Tchinouka, the water was dirty grey and silent, I counted several animal carcasses, thrown in the water by the bank dwellers, I talked to myself at length, I expect people thought I was mad, a lost soul who saw windmills at every turn and pitched himself into epic conflict with them, “I don’t care,” I thought to myself, and I went on talking away to myself, and memories began to float back to me, as in a rising of the ashes, and I thought I really hate this river, it’s a lagoon of death, the cause of all my grief, the reason for my anger, my irritation, I would love to get back at this river, to tell it to give back my mother’s soul, which it swallowed up one day, a day of deepest silence, but I don’t want to talk about that chapter of my life just now, I’ll come to it a bit later, I don’t want to start crying now, and as these were the dog days, it was their season, I saw some dogs mating, I picked up a stone and threw it toward them, and the dogs barked loudly and angrily, then fled, calling me every rude name they could think of, loser, scum, rogue, pathetic biped, and I said “I don’t care, I don’t understand your canine patois, you go ahead and bark if you’re angry, it doesn’t bother me,” and I pursued my famished road, I thought I must sit down for a moment, then I folded my legs beneath me like a gazelle who kneels down to weep, in fact I was dizzy with hunger, I could feel a hard knot moving about in my stomach, I started to spew up clots of wine, but “I don’t care,” I said, and while I was at it I had a shit at the foot of a mango tree, though the poor tree had done nothing, and just at that moment some bank dweller who happened to be passing said “poor bugger, sad old fuck of yesteryear, polluter of public spaces, shitting at the foot of a tree at your age, have you got no shame?” and I said out loud “I don’t care, the sad old fuck of yesteryear says fuck off yourself!” and the bank dweller was furious and added “don’t you speak to me like that you old pisshead, fuck off and die then, shithead!” so I said again, out loud, “I don’t care, you’ll die before I do, the cemeteries round here are stuffed full of young idiots like you!” and the bank dweller said threateningly “pick up your shit or I’ll throw you in the river,” and he was serious about it, and I didn’t want to meet my death by drowning over some silly shit at the foot of a mango tree, and as it was actually my shit I began to pick it up, and the bank dweller said “what are you doing, old man, you can’t go picking up your own poop with your bare hands, you should do it with the end of a stick, for Christ’s sake” but I ignored him, because actually there’s nothing sickening about picking up your own shit, it’s other people’s shit that’s revolting, so I plunged my hands into my excrement, and the bank dweller threw up and scarpered, revolted by this scatological scene, and I began to laugh and laugh and laugh

my wanderings brought me at the stroke of five in the morning to Credit Gone West, I was still haunted by the image of Alice’s thin, bandy legs, and of her prehistoric shack, and then I recalled the scene with me picking up the shit with my bare hands instead of using the end of a stick, so that when I got here at five in the morning I still stank of shit, and I dozed for a while on a stool at the bar and was woken up by the smell of coffee Dengaki had made for me, he said it was from the boss, and I glanced upstairs and there was still a light on in the Stubborn Snail’s room, and I accepted the coffee, though they don’t serve coffee here, the boss must have made it himself upstairs and had it sent down, I started on a bottle of red, it was the beginning of a new day, but a day unlike any other, I said to myself

it’s around one or two in the afternoon when I notice that never-ending pain in the neck, the Printer, is back at Credit Gone West, I don’t know why I call him a pain in the neck, since up till now he’d made a fairly favorable impression, but only fools never change their minds, so anyway, the Printer had finished his long walk over on the Côte Sauvage and was happy as anything, seemed so excited you’d think they’d just elected him president of Senegal, I’ve never seen him on such good form, so what’s going on, ah, now I see, that’s what it was, now I see why he’s in such a good mood, I understand now, it’s because he’s got hold of a copy of Paris Match and he’s proud of it, he’s showing off, he’s ecstatic, and he’s trying to explain to everyone else about these two French artists who are having a hard time because they’re a famous couple, it seems, and he says it’s there in black-and-white in the magazine, he tells us how these two artists are being pestered by the kind of people who hide out in the shrubbery with their cameras and hope to catch a glimpse of the tits and asses of famous divas, and some people are listening to the Printer, some people are actually listening, as you might listen to the guru who’s having sex with the wife of the Pampers guy, and since there’s no stopping him once he’s started he’s now telling everyone yet again about his French experience, how he “did” France, and how white Céline was the author of his decline, his Dark Empire, he’s not mad, he tells them, far from it, but Céline actually slept with his Caribbean son, he tells them all about that, and people look at him pityingly, and one guy actually tells him straight out he should have married an African woman in France, not a white woman, and things would have been less complicated and they could have sorted it all out back home with a few Rwandan machetes, but the Printer replies that African women in France are a tight-assed lot, stuck-up, affected, unreliable, he can’t stand all that, they think an awful lot of themselves, those girls do, they want you to grovel at their feet, what’s more, says the Printer, they’re all materialistic, they check out your car, your house, your bank account, your shares on the stock market, you have to pay for their ridiculous hairdos that cost a fortune, you have to pay the rent for their box rooms in the Sixteenth Arrondissement, because that’s the only arrondissement in Paris these little madams will live in, even if they have to shack up in cellars somewhere, you end up paying for this, that, and the next thing, that’s why they hang out on street corners, why they live off benefits, and grow old in the pursuit of their vanity, that’s why they sleep with white men three times their age, that’s why they sometimes fall into prostitution, because it’s easier to turn your body into a piece of merchandise than your brain into an instrument of reflection, and people started laughing, and the Printer was pleased with his effect on his audience, “listen, I’m no racist,” he said, and went on to issue a whole string of extremely dubious prejudices, slagging off the black girls in Paris, calling them every name under the sun, and the Congolese girls, by the way, he said, were not even worth mentioning, they were way dependent, and like to think they’re intellectuals, there is no worse than the Cameroonians who are so materialistic and greedy that they are called the Came ruin ians, he said the Nigerian girls spend the whole time fighting each other for a place on the rue Saint-Denis, he says the Gabonese are a whole different story, they’re just crab ugly, the Ivory Coast girls are incredible, slags and slappers who go round wiggling their asses all day, and the people at Credit Gone West think it’s hilarious and the Printer reminds them once again that of course he doesn’t belong here in this bar, and the others listen to him respectfully, they agree with him, and they pass around Paris Match , and the Printer reminds them that he used to be in charge of a team, with real whites in it, not the whites you see here, chewing manioc and drinking Beninese beer, but real French whites, and he stresses that they were the people who printed Paris Match , and I thought to myself, this guy’s a real weirdo, it’s about time he changed the record