Fiston Mujila - Tram 83

“On this magnificent evening, Joy Train Publications are deeply honored and truly pleased to give you Lucien, a contemporary author whose work teaches us to overcome walls, train tracks, wars, and oceans, and which we shall publish one of these fine days.”

“You know …”

“I am Swiss, by my father and mother. Anyhow, you’d have found out sooner or later. I prefer to tell you this before any collaboration. To avoid possible confusion. All these whites you see here are not necessarily Swiss.”

Dreamily, craning his neck forward slightly, the man continued, in a hoarse voice like someone in a restroom stall who doesn’t want to be disturbed:

“Some are even more African than you people. I mean to say, they love Africa.”

The pair of young ladies glared at each other, as did the busgirls and the waitresses. They possessed the same desires, the same powers, the same liberations, the same ardors, the same jealousies. The far-fetched rumors knocking about Transition Street, Sovereign National Conference Street, and Democratization Street confirmed the hypotheses according to which many men perished in the clashes of 1990, while others joined the military. Result: more women than men, over whom the girls with eggplant-breasts, the busgirls, and the waitresses fought tooth and nail.

“Do you have the time?”

The publisher questioned. The publisher recounted. The publisher explained. Lucien, who already saw himself on the shelves of a library, didn’t even sip his beer. He got out his notebook, wrote his rubbish.

“How did you guess I’m not from around here?”

“Very easily. Evening, sir. May I sit here? And then the tip you gave the girl. In here, you just plump your ass down. Period!”

“You seem absorbed by your interview!”

“These girls friends of yours?”

They introduced themselves, brusquely.

The rappers continued their ranting.

“Do you have the time?”

The chitchat continued for quite a while. The two girls, who pulled all sorts of faces, quieted down. “Hot water always cools in the end,” as Requiem said, quoting a Zairian musician. RULE NUMBER 17: don’t lose your nerve in front of our girls, they’ve got no alternative but to grovel; the latest statistics confirm what we all know: there are more girls than us, fancy footwork, fancy footwork, fancy footwork. Malingeau bowed out with the carnival. Every Saturday, the Brazilian tourists improvised a carnival that visited the liveliest spots of the City-State.

“I love the carnival! Monday, same time, to talk about your reading, and doubtless the publication.”

“Do you have the time?”

Meanwhile, the musicians of the International Congo Society, with their dreadlocks, polished shoes, colorful suits, mechanical gestures, and broken French. Lucien stayed with the girls, discussing love, the songs hummed by the guys whose backs buckled as they built the railroads, baby-chicks, miners trapped by cave-ins, easy money, New Mexico, Los Angeles, Dallas, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Lagos … His tiredness, his nausea, his worries had disappeared. The publisher embodied hope, the start of something. The two single-mamas congratulated him on his show that was now in sight. Astrid escorted a feller who had bawled his eyes out as the Amazonians moaned on. He and Émilienne crossed the train tracks, all loved up, and made their way along the main road to Vampiretown, groping each other as they went. If bliss had a name, it would be called Tram 83.

STRATEGY MEANS RESOLVING A GIVEN SITUATION INTELLIGENTLY.

Out front of the building, a salsa atmosphere reigned. Young women in bloom badmouthing Christelle. Kids playing hopscotch. Teenage boys recounting their first sexual experiences in whispered tones. Dogs, cats, chickens, wandering goats. There is nothing bad whatsoever about relentlessly pursuing a baby-chick or playing hopscotch or chatting between buddies. But doing it at three in the morning denotes amateurism for people supposed to wake at four so as not to miss the one and only train that crosses the City-State. He walked past them with the girl. They haughtily expected a greeting from him. There’s no age for arrogance. Lucien blurted out “morning” and “evening” to several, but they did not reply. Lucien had hardly been expecting a warm welcome. If he’d made the first move, it was merely as a formality. But the kids sulked because they’d detected from his nonchalance that he wasn’t from around here. They couldn’t tolerate a guy showing up at the building with girls, when half the building’s population was composed of girls waiting — like one waits for Christ, pointed out Requiem — for a gentleman suitor.

Light in the apartment. Requiem was already back. He lay, convulsing, on the couch, complaining of awful pains in his abdomen. He groaned, voice hoarse from getting plastered or from arguing with the diggers he employed. Between two grimaces, Requiem, known as The Negus, looked Émilienne up and down.

“Your day?”

“Good. Very good, actually. I met a publisher.”

“A publisher?”

“A certain Ferdinand Malingeau.”

“That bastard!”

“You know him?”

“Maybe.”

Lucien and Émilienne wanted to enter the bedroom. But Requiem was finagling. By dint of climbing aboard those wretched trains, man becomes an animal, thinking only of satisfying the pleasures of the underbelly.

“Hey, Lucien.”

Requiem writhed about for a good while longer, his eyes fixed on the little haversack that never left him. To his great despair, Lucien knew nothing about either the contents or the precise significance of the hunting-bag. “This bag is a fragmentation bomb,” sniggered the Negus. In his moments of hysteria, the Negus was fond of saying that his haversack imbued him with the power to reinvent the system. He wasn’t going to stop, now that things were going so well. That would be to misjudge him. He made some fortuitous comparisons with Moses’ staff. The baby-chicks said that Requiem’s haversack was stuffed with pictures of naked tourists.

“Can you go get me a can of beer? My head’s killing me.”

He rolled his eyes shriveled up by the dust that covered Hope Mine.

“Which beer?”

“Any.”

Lucien went out.

He had no idea what the Negus was up to. The elevators had stopped working. He tore down the stairs, braved the wild-eyed gaze of the young women from the building who were commiserating with Christelle and cursing those bastards who brought girls back to the building even though the building was swarming with girls of all ages, found a store, climbed back up the stairs, not without difficulty since he had to shake off Christelle, whom he ran into in the stairwell and who spun him a tired tale.

“You know you have your own particular way of viewing life.”

“See you tomorrow.”

“Do you love me?”

He had to be rid of her as quickly as possible.

“Maybe.”

He sensed something bad. A long feeling of fear and sadness. Perhaps Requiem was breathing his last. He reached his terminus, exhausted by the errand. Requiem had underestimated his adversary. He said he’d take fifteen minutes, but Lucien had done the essential in a few fractions of a second. He pushed open the door. Nobody in the living room. He heard a sort of noise drifting from the bedroom. He walked to the door, put his ear right up to the doorframe then looked through the keyhole. Requiem and Émilienne, inverted on the bed, which was creaking in a decrescendo. Lucien went back out with the beer, poured it down the stairs, cursed the day he was born, and set off down a little street at random, alone and feeble.

UNFAIR COMPETITION: YOUR NEIGHBOR SELLS DOUGHNUTS; YOU ALSO START SELLING DOUGHNUTS; YOU EVEN DABBLE WITH BLACK MAGIC TO NAB ALL HIS CUSTOMERS.