Alain Mabanckou - Broken Glass

I come across the Printer every day now, spilling out his story to someone or other, what he calls his ambiguous adventure, though he made out to me I was the only person he’d ever told, I do think there’s something not right in his head, sometimes what he says makes perfect sense, especially in the afternoons, but I really think this story’s scrambled his head

I like chatting with the boss of Credit Gone West, everyone knows he’s not married, and has no children, he thinks all that’s just a burden, that it’s not easy being a married man, too many problems, too much bother, that’s why he often says he’s married for life to Credit Gone West, has been already for many years now, and it’s true that sometimes he’s been seen disappearing upstairs with a woman, often a well-endowed woman, flat-chested women don’t interest him, so yes, sometimes, he’s been seen to shut himself in up there, and then come back down again later all out of breath, a smile on his face, and then we’d all know that the Stubborn Snail just got laid, then suddenly he’d get wildly generous and buy a drink for anyone who asked, sometimes I glimpsed his aged parents, back from Ngolobondo, his native village, the Stubborn Snail and his father are like two peas in a pod, but he never said anything to us about his parents, I know they’re alive, they must be even older and wearier by now, but they chose to go back and live in their village after the whole controversy over the creation of their son’s bar broke out, people who were close to them say they love their only son, and did everything to enable him to go to school and get a job in an office or become a full-time civil servant, but things turned out differently, fate chose otherwise, I don’t mean the Stubborn Snail was a dunce at school, he was at school with the present agriculture minister, Albert Zou Loukia, so no, the boss of Credit Gone West was no dunce at school, far from it, it’s even been said he was brilliant, a quite brilliant pupil, he loved dissertations, geography, arithmetic, all that jazz, and he can still recite whole poems from memory, without a single hesitation, which really blows my mind, I’ve often tried it myself, but I never get beyond two verses, and our boss particularly loves “The Death of the Wolf,” by Alfred de Vigny, he’s always reciting that, and when I hear the last verse it always brings tears to my eyes, you’d think this Alfred de Vigny guy had written the words in advance especially for him, you should hear the Stubborn Snail when he murmurs “groaning, weeping, praying — these are the coward’s way, / With energy and strength face your long and heavy task, / Tread the path which Destiny has called you to, / Then, like me, suffer and die in silence,” he recalls proudly how he got his baccalaureate at the first attempt, he could have studied further, but, alas, without warning his parents, he gave up his studies, which was the thing to do at the time, you had to go abroad and make your mark there, those were the years of the lean cattle back then, high-up people were already finding jobs for their relatives, however incompetent, and the Stubborn Snail began to work his way round Angola, Gabon, and Chad, he had always wanted to be a businessman, answerable to no one, and in the end it was during the trip to Cameroon that he got the idea of setting up his bar, with all the repercussions I described earlier, I won’t go back over all that because even when I’m drunk I hate useless repetition or padding, as used by certain writers known to be first-class drivelers, who serve up the same old stuff in every new book and try to make out they’ve created a world, my eye

“how about you, Broken Glass, how are things with you these days?” the Stubborn Snail asked me a few days ago, not for the first time, “oh, not too bad” I replied, and he said, seriously, Broken Glass, I think what you need is a bit of affection, you should find yourself a nice girlfriend, get laid once in a while, it would really do you good,” “I don’t see the point at my age,” I replied, “I tell you, you need to start over, age has nothing to do with it,” “no, who’d take on a wreck like me, you’d better be kidding, Stubborn Snail,” “I’m not, I’m quite serious, what would you say to Robinette, then, she’s a juicy mouthful, don’t you think?” he went on, “my God, not Robinette, she’s more than a mouthful for me, I’d never manage to swallow her!” I said, and I started laughing, and we both laughed, I’d just remembered Robinette’s last appearance at Credit Gone West, the boss was trying to hitch me up with a real iron lady, I thought he must be joking because Robinette drinks more than I do, she drinks like those barrels of Adelaide wine that the Lebanese sell at the Grand Marché, Robinette drinks and drinks, and never gets drunk, and when she drinks like that she goes to piss behind the bar instead of in the bathroom like everyone else, and when she pisses behind the bar she can urinate nonstop for ten minutes, it just flows and flows as though someone had turned on a public fountain, and it’s not a trick, it’s incredible, but true, men have tried to compete with her at endurance pissing, but have been forced to say farewell to arms, defeated, crushed, wiped out, mocked, rolled in the dust, in cornstarch

the last time Robinette dropped by, she came on to a guy we’d never seen before at Credit Gone West, it began with a direct attack from Robinette, the kind of invisible blow dealt by Muhammed Ali to Sonny Liston in the sixties, when he was defending his world-champion title, “hey you there, strutting about like a barnyard cock, if you can piss longer than me I’ll let you shag me, any time, any place, free of charge, I give you my word” she said, and the guy replied “show off, you don’t know what you’re taking on, I accept your challenge, Robinette, but I’m going to give you a proper going-over when we’re done, I like a fat ass with big tits,” and we all laughed, because the guy was truly a first-class braggart, he had no idea what he was up against, if he’d known the first thing about her he would have thought twice about what he was saying, there we all were, killing ourselves laughing, imagining the fellow’s corpse already, flat out on the ground, and the newcomer’s words certainly irritated Robinette, the inconquerable, the piss queen of the town, of the neighborhood, so she answered “are you mad, or what, my boy, before you start calling me fat, you win your contest, you’re just talking rubbish, no way you’re gonna beat me, not the way I see you standing here, Mr. All Mouth and No Trousers,” “oh yes I am gonna beat you, my fat lady,” says he, “oh no you’re not you jumped-up midget, you gotta be mad to try and beat me at my game, you ask any of these guys here, they’ll tell you who you’re up against” answered Robinette, “I’m no braggart darling, you’ll find I always do what I say I’m gonna do,” he riposted, “you boaster, you, you think just because you talk smart like that you can do just anything you say you can do, I say you can’t do nothing” said Robinette, and from where I was watching, some way off, I thought it must be a joke, that they knew each other already, and we were being treated to a brief scene from Three Suitors, One Husband , some hilarious farce, at any rate, I thought they really must be thick as any two thieves in this town, weird kind of people, but no, it wasn’t a play at all, and the boasting guy was actually putting up a brave show, an unknown on the circuit, unaware of what was waiting round the next river bend, dressed like a man of substance, in his black jacket, white shirt, red tie, and polished shoes, what did he take us for, beggars, bumpkins, in short, a band of workers of the world who wouldn’t unite, and we couldn’t figure how he’d got his hair, which he’d straightened and fastened behind at the neck, to shine so bright in this dry white season, when the August sunshine barely shone through the layer of cloud, but a peacock’s a peacock whatever the season, it still struts and preens in the dry white season, the fact was, even at dead of night, this guy’s hair would still have shone as bright as it shone that day, he must spend hours in front of the mirror, the straightening iron was his fetish, in a country where frizzy hair is the greatest of curses his own straight hair brought him just that little bit closer to the white man, and he smoked a lot, in an elegant way, and he introduced himself to people, saying “for those who don’t know, my first name is Casimir, I am Casimir, the unstoppable, known far and wide, I live the high life, you know, I’ve only stopped off here for a quick drink, that’s all, I’m not an old soak like the rest of you, it’s the high life for me” and I said to myself, “holy shit, who is this guy, shooting his mouth off, does he understand what kind of Vietnam he’s signing himself up for here?” and we all felt pretty antagonistic toward this Casimir, boasting about his high life, and calling us sad old soaks, why didn’t he go somewhere else for a drink, then, with all the high lifers, eh, why turn up here to remind us we were nothing but wretched upstarts, Robinette was right to say he was talking rubbish, I reckoned the guy deserved a good lesson, a bit of proper punishment, and I said to myself “in any case, so be it, the chips are down” else what’s he think he’s doing here, in his fancy get-up, like a lawyer, or an undertaker, or an opera maestro, opera being the pain-in-the-ass sort of music that people living the high life like Casimir like to listen to and applaud, even though they don’t understand a word of it, what kind of music is it that that you can’t even wiggle your butt to, when you can’t even say to the people around you “watch me dance!” what kind of music is it, if it doesn’t make you sweat, and rub at a woman’s love mound, to bring her mind round to the fatal act, but when I used to dance, I mean, when I was still a man like other men, I liked to get myself into the kind of state where I felt like I was floating down into paradise, seeing those drunken angels carry me on their wings, I was a good dancer, when I could put my partner in such a spin she’d collapse in my arms and let me decide how the night proceeded, but I’m not ready just yet to talk about myself in case you think I’m some ego-tripper with his nose stuck fast in his naval, so anyway, Robinette and this guy disappear round the back of Credit Gone West to fight out the war of the end of the world, and out the back of Credit Gone West there’s a sort of culde-sac, the perfect setting for a wide variety of lewd sexual acts, where people come from far and wide to do their dodgy business, and where our two contestants now withdrew to, followed by the rest of us, as eyewitnesses, as voyeurs, really, eager to see Casimir, he of the high life, take his tumble, and learn a little humility at last, and keep his mouth shut in company, we were all on Robinette’s side, cheering her on, applauding her efforts, and so, out the back of Credit Gone West, in a grubby corner stinking of cat’s piss and mad-cow dung, Casimir, he of the high life, slipped off his old man’s jacket and his medal, took off his fluttering tie, carefully folded up his things, put the whole lot down on the ground in a corner, then — ultimate piece of vanity, which really irritated us — checked his face in his polished shoes, who did he think he was then, asshole, why was he peering at himself when his mashed-up fig face was about to get another pounding when Robinette had finished making a fool of him, but there he was, preening away, running his hand over his hair, which he’d smoothed with a straightening iron, and which shone even in the pale August sunlight, we’d never seen a guy so full of himself, so first of all, Robinette took off her bodice wrap, which was not exactly a sight to rival La Reine Margot unhooking her corset, then she lifted her skirt wrap to just below her waist so we could see her great big behind, like a perissodactyl mammal’s, her huge plump thighs like those of a woman in a naive Haitian painting, her calves like bottles of Primus beer, she wore no panties, naughty girl, perhaps because no panties exist large enough to contain her mountainous cheeks, then, after a long, repellent belch, she raised her voice and said “God willing, the truth will be revealed at the first light of dawn, to have and have not, that is what we are about to discover, my friends,”