Fiston Mujila - Tram 83

His first words:

“This is the most beautiful day of my life. I really must thank you for your support and for all the love you have shown me. I am happy to be back home with you, to share our everyday existence, for better and for worse.”

Applause, followed by yells of “Ferdinand Malingeau! Ferdinand Malingeau!”

“My news is that I have just published the stage-tale.”

The crowd had long since tossed Lucien onto the garbage heap of history. Nobody remembered his reading that had turned sour. They initially thought that the work in question dealt with the mines and carried Malingeau’s signature.

“… remarkable text, half history, literature in every sense, penned by a local author, I mean Lucien.”

Endless applause, hearty shouts of “Lucien, the writer! Lucien, the writer!”

When they celebrated an event like this, the for-profit tourists took the opportunity to attract the favor of the City-State and settle scores with their opponents by ricochet.

“Do you have the time?”

“I have learned of the announcement of my death and that some of you rejoiced at this! To those people, I say that I will die aged ninety!”

Applause.

“I address a special message to one Requiem. He has made threats against my person, called me every monkey name under the sun, moved heaven and earth to stop the book appearing.”

The crowd became increasingly worked up.

“The text was printed in Switzerland, the French-speaking part, and for those who are not familiar with this country, we’ll be holding geography classes right here at the Tram.”

As he held forth, students unloaded large crates of books from a truck. The baby-chicks took charge of handing out copies, while offering their private services.

“This Requiem, I put a roof over his head, I hired him for my firm, I gave him food and drink. But in return, a nightmare. He spent his entire existence badmouthing me like I was a foreigner, like I wasn’t of this land. If I am not African, what am I then? Did the first man not appear in Africa? Was he not my ancestor, too?”

Burst of applause. Some tourists even began to cry.

“I’m going to let you in on a secret. This Requiem ensnared me through a young woman, as he has many among us. Knowing this bastard as I do, tomorrow or the day after he will publish the pictures this youngster took while I slept. I ask you please, as soon as he dares distribute this filthy rag, take it and tear it up in front of him.”

The crowd hurled fatwas against the Negus. The crowd promised Malingeau they would take care of this villain Requiem personally. The publisher pursued his indictment, almost barking.

“Show yourself, Requiem, if you’re a real man! Get up on this podium, Requiem, if you’ve got any balls! You’re pathetic, Requiem! I have beaten you, I have beaten you!”

Requiem didn’t know where to turn. He couldn’t hold out very long, what with Malingeau talking like the radio, without pause. He raised his voice in the direction of the publisher. The waitresses and the busgirls felt cheated and began to manhandle him. He lashed out at the busgirl with the fat lips. A bunch of diggers surrounded him, dragged him by the collar all the way to the station whose metal structure … and there, some jazz musicians who were mooching about forced him to urinate in his shoes and empty the liquid into his mouth.

He’d not felt this battered and bruised for several years. He made his way painfully back home, locked himself in and wept for a long while. For a person of his status, proud and conceited ever since his first raid on Hope Mine, and revered by all of the City-State, Malingeau’s triumphal return marked the end of a legend. The whole Tram, or rather the whole of the City-State, knew that the Negus was Malingeau’s bête noire.

Malingeau asked the writer to join him on the podium. The baby-chicks didn’t hesitate to vaunt their bodies despite the nature of the event.

“Do you have the time?”

“I’ve got Brazilian buttocks.”

“Take me to Kiev and let’s make love in full sunlight!”

The atmosphere heightened, heightened, heightened …

“I don’t want to hog the microphone. We will hold a launch party to present the book and its author. But now, time for beer and music. Drink till dawn! It’s Malingeau picking up the check!”

There was uproar, preceded by a low, booming yell. The baby-chicks, only half-understanding, cried their eyes out. The diggers, the students, the second-rate tourists, the for-profit tourists, the mercenaries, the slim-jims, everybody, exchanged embraces beneath the frenzied rumba of the Zairian musicians.

Lucien left the Tram just after the publisher’s speech. He wanted to shake off the baby-chicks who were hounding him. For the first time in his life he phoned the Clignancourt guy to tell him his book was coming out. As usual, the Paris friend didn’t let him get a word in edgeways: “I found a job that pays more than I could have hoped. So I can’t waste a second dealing with your texts. What’s more, African literature as such is not exotic anymore. Please, Lucien, if you phone me again, let’s talk of other things, the Kama Sutra, music, beer, but definitely not literature. We’re in the 21st century and you want to live a writer’s life, Lucien!”

SHOULD TRAM 83 BE RAZED TO THE GROUND?

Malingeau sent Requiem a signed copy of the book, just to defy him. The Negus had felt humiliated and betrayed to the quick. His whole gang, even Mortal Combat, nicknamed Loyal of the Loyal, had eaten and drunk Brazza Beer to the glory of Lucien and Ferdinand Malingeau. The Negus didn’t show his face for over a fortnight. He forsook the mines and Tram 83. Spent his days cloistered at a baby-chick’s.

“If you take me to your country, I’ll love you more than myself.”

There are some people you shouldn’t joke with. Requiem was one of them. Not appearing in public places indicated a strategy. He was waiting for life to move on, for the City-State — having reverted to its everyday rhythm of blackouts and cave-ins of underground quarries, of spats between busgirls and baby-chicks who were born yesterday, students and mineworkers, second-rate tourists and for-profit tourists — to forget the Malingeau phenomenon.

Two months later, when he had been comprehensively expunged from the collective memory, Requiem turned up at Tram 83. He had not chosen the date of his reappearance by chance. The dissident General was attending a peace conference in Johannesburg hosted by the South African government. The national soccer team was playing a match against Cameroon. Which meant that a horde of people had flocked to the Tram to watch the broadcast of the sports fixture on a big screen.

Requiem had even slimmed down. Malingeau laughed conspicuously. Tram 83 behaved as if it had never known the Negus. Which is serious when you know that the Tram had only survived the crash of ’92 thanks to the Negus, who had lent its owner some money.

Right after the match, Requiem asked to speak. He was urged to say his piece quickly. The national team had won the game. The Chinese tourists ordered rounds for the whole of Tram 83 with a view to combining business with pleasure.

“Foreplay irritates me. It’s just time chucked out the window.”

Requiem muttered a short sentence:

“I would like to distribute this magazine to anyone who wants it.”

The whole Tram as one:

“Clear off.”

The Chinese tourists:

“We can give you something to eat if it’s hunger that’s made you lose your head.”

The young ladies of Avignon:

“That man, he’ll never understand!”

The busgirl with the fat lips in her colonial-infantry patter: