Alain Mabanckou - Broken Glass

as he had told me himself many years ago, the Stubborn Snail first got the idea for opening a bar when he was in Douala, in the downtown district of New-Bell where he saw The Cathedral, the Cameroonian bar that had never closed its doors since the day it first opened, and the Stubborn Snail turned into a pillar of salt and settled in, ordered a bottle of Flag, a man came up and introduced himself, saying he had been the boss right from the start, they called him Steppenwolf, he said, and according to the Stubborn Snail the guy looked like something on the road to extinction, an Egyptian mummy, nothing mattered but his bar, even brushing his teeth or shaving the cactus stubble on his chin was a waste of time, he chewed kola nut, smoked moldy tobacco, it was as though he moved about on some kind of magic carpet, like you get in fairy tales, so the Stubborn Snail asked him about a thousand and one questions, to which he willingly replied, and the Stubborn Snail realized that the Cameroonian had managed to keep his bar permanently open thanks to a loyal team of staff, rigorous management, and personal commitment, he was there at The Cathedral in person, every morning and evening, and his employees, seeing him turn up regular as clockwork, decided The Cathedral was truly a place of worship, with morning and evening prayers and since, as you might expect, Steppenwolf had his lair just opposite, so you couldn’t even mention the devil without seeing the flash of his tail, and slept with one eye open, he could tell you exactly the number of people in the bar, who was drinking, who wasn’t, the names of those who were just there chatting and not buying, he knew exactly the number of bottles of wine sold, just by keeping an ear out from his bolt-hole and in the middle of the night he’d wake up and walk across Shit Alley to see off some troublemaker, telling him this was a bar and not a boxing ring for Mohammed Ali fans from Zaire, he drew attention to the customer’s charter scratched onto a plank of Gabon wood facing you as you came into the bar, you couldn’t fail to see it, which declared, among other things, the customer’s rights — to order any drink he chose, without fear of contradiction by the bartender, to keep a half bottle behind the bar for the next day, to receive a free bottle for every ten days uninterrupted presence — as well as his obligations, which included not to fight, to vomit strictly in Shit Alley only and not inside the bar, to acknowledge that he entered the bar of his own free will and not because Steppenwolf forced him, to refrain from insulting the staff and to pay for his drink as soon as it was served

throughout his stay in New-Bell, the boss sat around in this bar, closely observing the behavior of the clients and the staff, chatting with Steppenwolf, who had quickly become a friend, at which point he rushed back home, full of enthusiasm for this unusual enterprise, determined to replicate the New-Bell model, but he needed cash, words won’t make a dream come true, the Stubborn Snail was determined, he emptied his piggy bank, borrowed money wherever he could, everyone laughed at him when he talked about his plan, said it was like trying to find out how to slip through customs with a salmon in your luggage, but he gradually got it off the ground, with four tables and a counter less than two meters long, then eight tables, because a lot of people came, then forty tables and a terrace outside, because people were lining up waiting to be served, it was the talk of the town, news quickly spread by word of mouth, particularly since everyone knew that the Stubborn Snail was always above board, paid his taxes on time without quibbling, paid for his license, for this permit and that permit, had produced all the necessary paperwork, including his baptism certificate, his proof of vaccination against polio, yellow fever, beriberi, sleeping sickness, multiple sclerosis, his license to drive a wheelbarrow and a bicycle, he had been subjected to rigorous inspections not applicable to bars which close at midnight, on Sundays, bank holidays, for the funerals of close friends or relatives, or at the drop of a hat, they had threatened to make him go bust, soon, they said, they’d be calling his bar-that-was The Titanic, they swore he’d be eating boiled potatoes, become a beggar, one of God’s bits of wood, sleeping in a barrel, like a certain ancient philosopher, and still the Stubborn Snail stood firm, determined as a chess player, and the years went by in dubious battle, till his envious opponents got bored of nitpicking, he resisted the confederacy of dunces, and the other barkeepers all called him names — witch doctor, Houdini, Al Capone, Angoualima, the twelve-fingered assassin, local Lebanese, wandering Jew, and particularly, capitalist, which you’ll understand is a serious insult round here if I tell you it’s worse than insulting your mother’s cunt, or your sister’s cunt, or the cunt of your aunt, maternal or paternal, and it’s thanks to the President and General of the Armies that we hate capitalists, you call anyone anything in this country, except a capitalist, it can justify the duty of violence, it can justify a good fistfight between social classes, a deadly settling of scores, because a capitalist in these parts is the devil incarnate, he has a fat belly, he smokes Cuban cigars, he drives round in a Mercedes, he’s bald, selfishly rich, is involved in all manner of shady deals, in the exploitation of men by men, women by women, women by men, and men by women, sometimes even the exploitation of men by animals, since plenty of people round here are paid simply to feed, tend, and exercise the capitalists’ animals, so they called our bartender a capitalist, but he let it pass, though it was a terrible insult, the Stubborn Snail resisted, he hid in his own snail spit, like a true gastropod and it all blew over, the hurricanes, the tornadoes and the cyclones all subsided, the Stubborn Snail bent but he did not break, which was partly thanks to those of us who supported him from the start, because without us he’d have spent the first few months after the opening of the bar dozing behind the counter, he had no loyal staff at the beginning, so he had to get his dishonest cousins to help him out, and they pilfered his paltry takings at first cock’s crow, so he’d wake up in the morning to a half-empty till and a mountain of empty wine bottles polished off by the customers, and he quickly realized he mustn’t mix family and business, he’d have to hire some responsible, hard-working people, and he was lucky enough to come across two incorruptible guys, simple, good-hearted men, let’s say one of them was called Mompéro, he had been an undertaker, he never cracks a smile unless he absolutely has to, you shouldn’t even try to tell him a joke, he thinks laughter’s unnatural in the human species, and don’t even try asking him for credit “you pay up here and now or I kick you out the door,” that’s what Mompéro will say, I’ve never seen him argue a point, and I mean never , he’s got a face of stone, eyebrows like a circumflex, lips like a sink plunger, muscles like a wrestler, they even say that once when he was really angry, he took a whack at a fruit tree though the fruit tree had done nothing, and every single leaf of this innocent tree just fell to the ground, and they also say that when he’s angry, really angry that is, you have to get him to drink two liters of palm oil and a cupful of boa fat, and chew on two kilos of onions, just don’t pick a fight with him, that’s what everyone says, or you’ll come off badly, very badly, and the other bartender, his name’s Dengaki, he used to keep goal for the Bembe team, more skillful with a knife than a butcher-turned-serial killer, he can catch a bottle in mid-air, is nice sometimes, but not that nice, sometimes his colleague Mompéro has to put him in his place, and tell him there’s no point getting in a tangle with the clients, or taking liberties with them, and whenever there is a problem, Mompéro’s the one who flexes his muscles, while Dengaki first plays the diplomat plenipotentiary then threatens to get out the pocketknife hidden in the pocket of his pants, so these two guys have been there since the bar opened, they love their job, no doubt about that, when one works the day shift, the other does the night shift, they take it in turns, sometimes Mompéro works a whole week of days and Dengaki a whole week of nights, they’ve never disagreed on that front, it’s a well-oiled machine that’s run for years, so Credit Gone West is open all hours, and people are happy, they don’t have to clock watch, they’re not worrying about last orders from some bartender eager to get home, a bartender who comes along shouting that they’re closing in a few minutes’ time, “empty your glasses and get off home you bunch of hopeless drunks, go back to your wives and children and try to get down a good bowl of fish soup to sober yourselves up!”