Fiston Mujila - Tram 83

She gave no answer. She simply set about haranguing her troops, her waitresses, and busgirls who were slowing in their service of the successions of bottles.

Those girls are the same everywhere, he thought, authoritarian, stubborn as mules, notoriously insubordinate through and through, with their fat lips. As proof, out the corner of his eye he saw them scrutinizing him and collapsing into fits of hysterical laughter and other unprecedented inanities.

“Do you have the time?”

“I’ve got a cheeky side, fun yet perverse, you interested?”

“I’m inexhaustible and capable of every position.”

“I know every page of the Kama Sutra.”

The poesies and litanies of a few post-baby-chicks with hair like wooded savannah come to seek their fortune.

“You’re handsome, I feel like warming you up.”

“I’ve got a silicone bust.”

“Your mouth is like the Eiffel Tower’s gaze.”

“I dream of Venice, take me far away from here.”

They left The Guerilla at one in the morning, direction: home.

“You can stay at mine, if you like.”

“Do you live with anyone?”

“No, it’s you I’m interested in. Aren’t you thinking of living with me?”

“I don’t know.”

They arrived at the house and Lucien refused to share her room. So he accepted, without objection, to spend his nights on a mattress in the little kitchen overrun by cockroaches.

There are people who don’t know how to make the most of their existence. A woman is absolutely sure you’re the man of her dreams, she follows you, whispers words of love to you, showers you with affection, yet you refuse to respond to her advances, as if you were the handsomest man in the world when you’re nothing more than a brat. You prefer cockroaches to Émilienne’s stunning body. Requiem wasn’t wrong when he stated with considerable humanism that certain people live with a brain dating from the 13th century.

Similarly, you show up in the City-State buck naked. The General calls and makes you a deal: “Write your texts in my honor and I will guarantee both your financial and your material comfort.” And you retort: “I don’t give in to blackmail, I am a writer, not a griot in the service of the king.” What a way of thinking!

Same thing in the Back-Country: you’re in quite some difficulty, you’re being threatened morning till night, you’re on the verge of beggary. “Compose your patriotic poetries, and we’ll let you lead a quiet life. We’ll give you a position at the university and a host of other privileges.” But you throw it back in their faces. You could be lucky enough to possess beautiful bodies, beautiful women, apartments in Europe, but you throw it back in their faces. Life is yours for the taking, and you throw it back in their faces.

Complete pandemonium ensued when he set foot in The Guerilla. The waitresses and busgirls dashed in all directions. He was received with great fanfare by the baby-chicks, waitresses, busgirls, and a handful of digger-students desperate for leadership. Émilienne had already seen to it that their liaison was public knowledge, that he was the man of her dreams.

Russian cigarettes, red wine, two plates of goat kebabs followed by grilled fish with spinach. The musicians, prancing to the beat of a rumba, yelled mabangas , shout-outs, far and wide: “Great Oilman, Boss of Bosses, Man of His Time, Papa Love, Man On The Ball.” Everyone thought that the place was his and that Émilienne was simply some chick he’d picked up. A logic reinforced by the strong rumors in this direction that were flying around. He ate sulkily and spent the whole evening daydreaming, as unmoved by the choreographies of the musicians from the Belgian Congo as he was by the kind attentions of the busgirls. He wrote: “They enjoy themselves and extend the probability of their descent into hell, which will be preceded by some small glory, once their pleasures have bled them dry.”

At two in the morning, Émilienne gave instructions to the young woman who stood in for her whenever she went home to get some rest.

“Come on, Lucien.”

They left to the applause of the waitresses and musicians who no doubt wished to earn a little credit.

They walked down Market Street.

“They take me for your husband. I really don’t like that at all.”

Lucien, Lucien, Lucien, why these Tintin-in-Sudan machinations?

“I mean really …”

“Tell them I’m not your fella.”

“I mean really …”

“I don’t know what to say to their chitter-chatter.”

“I mean really …”

“You know …”

“I mean really …”

But Émilienne wouldn’t let it go, hoping he’d change his mind.

“Listen, Lucien, can you walk me to 12 rue des Eucalyptus?”

“What for?”

“I’ve got another business there and it’s been over a week, she hasn’t come to tell me what’s what, the woman who works for me. I try to get hold of her, the phone just rings and rings.”

Lucien, proudly:

“See you back home, you know the way, don’t you?”

“Please …”

They turned onto a dark, narrow street. Émilienne feigned a stumble. He leapt forward but the girl spun round and pressed her lips to those of our friend, the writer.

“You crazy or what!”

He pushed her away.

“I didn’t mean to do it. And what if I did?”

12 rue des Eucalyptus.

Young girls barely twelve years old out front of a house painted in the colors of the municipality — blue, red, green, and orange — shrieked and scampered back into the yard.

“What are you doing out here?” cried Émilienne, almost in tears.

They hurried inside. And came face-to-face with a woman dressed all in burgundy. She shrieked too, then pulled herself together:

“Good evening, Madame.”

“Why do you no longer come see me? Why aren’t the girls in their rooms?”

“I’ve been a little sick, but I was just telling myself I’d come tell you how things are.”

“Wait for me here,” she said to the playwright.

Lucien stood there amid the chaos, while the two women rushed off down the corridors.

“Where are the girls?”

“Why?”

“I want to see all the girls.”

The lady in burgundy called out to the girls, who came running with much bowing and scraping and proffering of apologies. Lucien entered the premises. An oval room. Eight doors. Émilienne and the burgundy lady on a long greenish-blue sofa, opposite nearly naked girls stuffed into colorful yet skimpy outfits and other get-ups peculiar to the activities of a bawdyhouse.

After close to two hours of confabulation, they went on their way again. But before they raised anchor, the baby-chicks, who thought that Lucien was a client and who wanted to prove to Émilienne that they knew how to lay the ground, came running with their long, slow smiles somewhere between furtive yet amorous wink and nonchalant pout — doubtless to give free rein to their bodies stimulated by the experience of their profession. For the first time since his arrival in the City-State, he felt a desire to stretch his body over one of these gems, but hastily stood up and left.

Lucien took himself a bit too seriously. Life is short and you need to know how to live it to the full. Is it a crime to nick a miner-prospector-tourist’s wallet? Where’s the harm in stealing a tourist’s dog and eating it for the family meal, with onions and red wine attached? It won’t be the end of the world, the dog or the wallet, given that he excavates at a rate of maybe three thousand tons of copper a day. Three thousand tons of copper for his Doberman that you recycle because you are hungry and he’s got everything: money, women, and prestige. Three thousand tons of copper or cobalt for five hundred dollars. Fleecing a tourist who’s excavating is an act of self-defense, a practice handed down from father to son in both the Back-Country and the labyrinthine mines of the City-State. But Lucien will tell you: “It’s wrong, my conscience reproaches me for it.” The gall.