Fiston Mujila - Tram 83

“I’ve not devoted much energy to your manuscript. I’ve read the first half, which I find impressive inasmuch as your twenty characters wander endlessly about this building for reasons that are not always mentionable. I appreciate the language they use to confront each other, the crudeness of the words, the humor.”

“Tip …”

“You are a brilliant wordsmith. A writer, that’s obvious. Your characters fill the space extremely well. I can see them on a stage, perhaps even here at the Tram, over there on the podium.

He pointed at the area occupied by the Russian brass band.

“If I understand correctly, you’re going to publish me?”

“What are you trying to do? Get me horny?”

“Getting drunk on wine feels like a con. Two little glasses and you lose your head. Beer, now that’s a heavenly way to get wasted.”

“Take me to Bratislava and make me your dream queen!”

Their neighbors’ tittle-tattle interfered with their conversation.

“Not so fast, Lucien! I want you to rework the text from scratch. Twenty characters, that’s too much for your stage-tale.”

Lucien looked at him, expressionless.

“I need a text with ten characters, tops. Reduce the twenty to ten and I’ll publish this little gem.”

“Do you have the time?”

“Do you think it’s possible what you’re asking of me?”

“Hands off my tits! What are you trying to do? Blackmail me?”

“Sleeping with two baby-chicks is suicide. They guzzle your calories in the course of a night.”

“You are the master of your text, you simply have to transfer the load from the ten characters you cut to the others.”

Outside, a gunshot.

“Do you have the time?”

“I am keeping my twenty characters, sir.”

Outside, the students screaming vendetta.

“Do you have the time?”

“In that case, find yourself another publisher!”

“Man is born a one-armed bandit.”

“Do you have the time?

Outside, diggers, imprecations, anthems of the Second Republic, chronicle of a leadership conflict. He seized his text from Malingeau’s hands almost by force.

“I will reduce the characters, watch out you don’t …”

“Listen, Lucien, in the meantime, do me a short story, fifteen hundred words on the ambitions of the dissident General.”

“Would sir like some company?”

“Why the dissident General and not the train tracks or even the mines?”

“Tip …”

“Take me far away from the Tram, to Sarajevo.”

“We drink the water of the poor, we do: beer! Leave the fizzy wine and the whiskey to the for-profit tourists.”

“See, my booty’s not fake, how could it be? I’m Brazilian.”

“Tip!”

“Do you have the time?”

They stayed talking. Lucien left at 10 P.M., disappointed by the new deadline.

Late that night, Requiem turned up with a baby-chick. They took their place opposite Malingeau.

“Hi Requiem.”

The Negus remained impassive.

“You look in good shape,” remarked the publisher.

He ignored him for at least twenty minutes, preferring to play with the breasts of the young lady. Malingeau stood up to leave. Requiem spoke sharply to him:

“I’ve changed my mind. You don’t owe five thousand dollars but ten thousand to acquire the authorization to publish Lucien’s writings.”

“C’mon, you’re tapped in the head! In five months’ time I will publish Lucien’s stage-tale and I will hold a grand book launch.”

“If you persist, I’ll persist too!”

“You’re wasting my time.”

The publisher was leaving when the Negus shouted after him:

“If you publish regardless, I’ll publish your pictures!”

Malingeau retraced his steps.

“What pictures?”

“You know Christelle?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The girl who screwed you last Sunday.”

“Leave my private life out of all this!”

“She works for me.”

“…”

“She fucked and photographed you. You dare to publish Lucien’s writings, I’ll publish the pictures, all those photos on which you appear without a stitch, stark naked,” Requiem added, bursting into laughter.

Malingeau thought with his penis. A more aware man would not have chanced dallying with another baby-chick after what had happened to him. Two days before Christelle and the Negus played this trick on him, he’d had a quite terrifying encounter. The crowded Tram left much to be desired. Each time the atmosphere cranked up a notch, the word was that the residents of the nearby cemeteries had arrived, to get soaked, smoke a joint, rub their bodies against ours, snack on a dog cutlet, and dance a few steps. He met a baby-chick in the mixed facilities. He invited her to drink some red wine.

“Perhaps she belongs to a wealthy family,” he told himself.

“Come along, let’s go to my place, I’ll give you a good massage,” the girl said. They took his beige limousine.

They arrived at the girl’s place, a two-storey house, with sentries, bodyguards, lampposts, and German shepherds. They made love until five in the morning. They fell asleep entwined. When he awoke, the girl was gone and he found himself bare naked on a crummy bed in a derelict hovel close to the Cabu Bridge. He dressed quickly, jumped into his limousine, third gear. He arrived at the Tram. Some people outside, girls, girls, girls. He entered the Tram, blurted out his tale.

“The girl’s name?” they asked him.

“Georgette Luise de Sonfina, she wore a long periwinkle blue dress and gave off a scent of jasmine.”

The answer they gave froze him to the spot. The baby-chick in question was the daughter of a tourist who’d lived in the 19th century. She had died some eighty years ago, of a cerebral hemorrhage. She had even been buried in the clothes the publisher described, and the same jasmine perfume.

Malingeau attempted to argue but the Negus stuck to his guns.

“You publish that guy, I’ll publish your nudity.”

Not knowing how to proceed, he sat his fat ass down, and lit a cigarette. Requiem continued playing accordion with the young lady’s massive-melon-breasts as if nothing had happened.

THE COLLECTOR OF NUDES.

Requiem possessed nude photographs of some two hundred and fifty tourists. They were completely at his feet. They bought him drinks, paid money into his account each month, revered him almost. Irked by this perpetual blackmail, one tourist pressed charges for threatening behavior and defamation. Overnight, Requiem published the pictures of the tourist in his birthday suit in the gossip rags of the City-State. Cherry on the cake, he persuaded the girl to accuse the tourist of rape. The poor tourist pleaded mutual consent, a complete waste of time. Age is a malleable thing in a country whose citizens have been without ID cards since at least the time of Noah, the prophet Ezekiel, and sister Abigail. The young woman was already an adult at the time of the incident. But there was money at stake. Who doesn’t like money? The court, which was corrupt to the core, had found a cash cow. The tourist was ruined, threatened with prison, and made to pay a fine. His popularity ever waning, the dissident General sent the tourist back to his own country, hoping to win the favor of his people. The for-profit tourists protested for several weeks. They were powerless and incapable of rendering the Negus harmless. They could not eliminate him physically. That might have provoked uncontrollable riots and looting, and they would be requested to pack up and leave or else flee like in the days following independence. The worst profanation a for-profit tourist could allow himself was to touch a single hair on Requiem’s head.