Fiston Mujila - Tram 83

Requiem and Lucien carried on downing their beers, exchanging glances, brief phrases, hollow laughs. They had nothing, or nearly nothing left to chat about after ten years of estrangement. They avoided mentioning Jacqueline. Weird, all the same. Lucien, once so talkative, stumbled over his words. Every now and then, he pulled a notebook from his satchel. Wrote up Tram 83 and its girls with elastic breasts. Wrote up the stink of the diggers mad for rear-entry sex. Wrote up the madness of the suicidals. Wrote up the anxiety of the tourists. Wrote up the over-zealous greetings of the baby-chicks.

“Do you have the time?”

Wrote up the jazzmen, the Nigerian jazzmen, hailing from Ogbomosho.

Lucien pushed himself desperately to converse.

“What do you do in your spare time?”

“You remember our first performance, the room full to bursting?”

Requiem remained evasive, reticent, and churlish.

“My past holds no interest for me.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“Maybe.”

“Time flies.”

“I like money.”

“You work hard, as far as I can see.”

“You’re stepping on my turf.”

“You …”

“I don’t like this jazz.”

“I’m just scribbling a text.”

“The New World, the baby-chicks eat by the sweat of their breasts.”

“I’m happy to see you again.”

“You’re getting on my nerves.”

In the meantime, he assessed the curves patrolling the sector. Steatopygia remained the epitome of beauty. All the honeys swore by Brazilian buttocks alone. You had to have those buttocks, or nothing. They would desperately slug a particular soy-based drink, take pills, and swallow food intended for pigs in order to increase the area of their rumps. The results left much to be desired: buttocks shaped like pineapples, avocados, balloons, or baseballs; one buttock excessively more pronounced than the other; oblique, square, or rectangular buttocks; buttocks that pedaled all by themselves, and so on. A young lady came up to them. They debated in Morse, about the price no doubt. The young lady drifted off toward the restrooms. Requiem stood up and followed the prey. The restrooms at Tram 83 were mixed, and were not categorized by sex or by the provenance of the tourists. They lacked lighting, the better to facilitate the dance of bodies. Requiem and the girl entered the cave, and exited faces streaked with sweat. The young woman hurriedly pulled up the zipper of her skin-tight jeans, while Requiem took a phone call, told them to “take the car and collect the merchandise, asshole!”

“Tip …”

“Do you have the time?”

“What do you do in your spare time?”

“The New World …”

“Doggy-style, I can even suck you off.”

“I love to give head.”

A tourist scooted into the Tram, half drunk.

“See that guy there, I’ve got him in my pocket,” said Requiem, looking the man up and down. “It’s always useful to hold on to the pictures of someone. I’ve had his pictures for two years now, and for those two years he’s been my slave. He’d even suck my cock if I wanted.”

“What pictures?”

“I’ll explain. What’s more, I’ll manage to get yours too.”

The tourist headed over to Requiem and Lucien as soon as he saw them, and greeted the pair with considerable effusion.

“Stuff your bellies, eat your fill, drink as much as you like, tell them to put it on my tab. I’m just going to let the owner know.”

Requiem burst out laughing.

Lucien, his nerves in disarray, was seized by a pain in his abdomen. The train journey had wrecked him. He forced himself to remain upright so as not to displease Requiem, who was in no mood to chat. They left the premises as the angelus rang. Outside, nothing but high society. Two beauties suggested a deal. “We can get you hot!” Lucien stammered, professing exhaustion. Requiem recommended a medicinal potion. Requiem sweet-talked the girls, who were already demanding a down payment for the time lost “in pointless debate, given that you want to go with us.” Requiem mollified Lucien, who continued to gripe. Requiem took command of the situation.

“The New World, New Mexico, the contemporary era …”

“I’m married.”

“There’s no such thing as a faithful man.”

“But Requiem …”

“I don’t wish to be rude.”

“Think of Jacqueline …”

“She can find a man to bone.”

One of the two girls: “We give good head.”

A boy ran up to them, carrying a container. They got themselves some peanuts, lemons, and kebabs, as well as kola nuts and other aphrodisiacs. In the distance, between two melancholic calls of “Do you have the time?”, the imprecations of the diggers, a fatwa, hurled from a minaret, demanding the summary execution of the proprietor of Tram 83, a slot machine out in the open, run by a bunch of Mozambicans, the throbbing of old jalopies, the monologues of a Kalashnikov, the mournful and nostalgic lamentations of a bitch in heat.

“Do you have the time?”

AT REQUIEM’S PLACE WITH THE SINGLE-MAMAS AND THEIR MASSIVE-MELON-BREASTS.

Requiem lived in Vampiretown, a bourgeois neighborhood that stood on the road leading from the station to the town center. The apartment he rented was quite spacious for a modern day bachelor. Vampiretown dated from the colonial period. Built to demarcate the area, using sturdy materials and terra cotta tiles, its wide boulevards lined with flame trees, pines, and frangipanis. The first Europeans to settle here died from the effects

“You guys live alone?”

“Yes!”

“We give good head.”

of the dodgy sanitary and weather conditions, as they were wont to do. The place had to be adapted at all costs: build suitable walls, fight the feeling of exile and uprooting that adversely affected their “transactions,” guffawed Requiem, he who bore the blood of a Russian shipowner come to seek his fortune in the scorching tropics. The Tram 83 gossip of July 1972 speculated upon his Slavic origins. The Tram 83 gossip of February 1982 speculated upon his Vietnamese origins. The Tram 83 gossip of September 1992 speculated upon his Comorian origins. According to legend, a foundry was established to

“Call me Astrid. I can’t live without caresses.”

“Émilienne, I’m as free as the ocean.”

“Requiem …”

“Talk, I’m listening.”

extract copper ingots. And it wasn’t far from this venture that they chose to site the new town. The foundry workers lodged in the surrounding area. Administrative offices, banking, postal services, all sprang up around twelve miles away. They … In the beginning the stone, and the stone, the railroads, and the railroads, and the arrival of men of diverse nationalities speaking the same dialect of sex and coltan. Drunk on sex and easy money, perverts they were, born adventurers, capable of trying any lead as long as it paid, as long as it earned them money and sex, and even more money!

“I’m not going to screw. I’m fucked for tonight.”

“That’s a sleazy joke.”

Round about the years 1910–1920, the segregation between the Europeans and Africans translated into urban planning. The newcomers, shouldering their universities, schools, hospitals, and churches, were careful to stay in town,

“The Far West?”

“Why?”

“We are of the railroad civilization …”

“What is it with my breasts?!”

obliging the others, natives of their species, to live in the suburbs. The only ones to penetrate the closed circles were a few musicians, their repertoire spiced with gospel from Southern Africa, places like Northern Rhodesia or Nyasaland. Same for the lackeys and a few right-hand men. For reasons that were more or less vague.