Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty (2 page)

Then there's the photo of Karl Marx and Engels. It seems you're not meant to split these two old guys up, they're like twins. They've both got big beards, they both think the same thing at the same time, and sometimes they write down both their thoughts in a big book together. It's thanks to them people now know what communism is. My uncle says it was Marx and Engels who showed that the history of the world was actually just the history of people in their different classes, for example, slaves and masters, landowners and landless peasants and so on. So, some people are on top in this world, and some are on the bottom and suffer because the ones on top exploit the ones at the bottom. But because things have changed a lot and the ones on top try to hide the fact that they're exploiting the ones at the bottom, Karl Marx and Engels think we should all be quite clear that the differences still exist, and that nowadays there are two big classes at odds with each other, engaged in a ruthless struggle: the bourgeoisie and the proletariats. It's easy to tell them apart in the street: the bourgeois have big bellies because they eat what the proletarians produce and the proletarians or the starving masses are all skinny because the bourgeois only leave them crumbs to eat, just enough so they can come to work the next day. And Uncle René says this is what you call the exploitation of man by his fellow man.

My uncle has also hung on the wall a photo of our Immortal, comrade president Marien Ngouabi, and one of Victor Hugo, who wrote lots of poems that we recite at school.

Generally speaking, an Immortal is someone like Spiderman, Blek le Roc, Tintin or Superman, who never dies. I don't understand why we have to say that comrade president
Marien Ngouabi is immortal when everyone knows he's dead, that he's buried in the cemetery at Etatolo, in the north of the country, a cemetery which is guarded seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, all because there are people who want to go and make their
gris-gris
on his grave so they can become immortal too.

Anyway, there you go, we have to call our ex-president ‘The Immortal', even though he's no longer alive. If anyone's got a problem with that, the government will deal with them, they'll be thrown in prison and given a trial once the Revolution has got rid of the capitalists and the means of production at last belong to the wretched of the Earth, to the starving masses who struggle night and day, all because of this business with the classes of Karl Marx and Engels.

Maman Pauline knows I'm very frightened of Uncle René, and she exploits it. If I don't want to go to bed at night without her coming in to kiss me goodnight she reminds me that if I don't go to bed her brother will think that I'm just a little capitalist who won't sleep because he wants a kiss from his mummy first, like those capitalists' children who live in the centre of town or in Europe, especially in France. He'll forget I'm his nephew and give me a good hiding. That shuts me up pretty quickly, and Maman Pauline leans over and just touches me on the head, but she doesn't give me a kiss like in the books we read in class that take place in Europe, especially in France. That's when I tell myself that not everything you read in books is true, and you shouldn't always believe what you read.

Sometimes I can't get to sleep, though not always because I'm waiting for my mother's goodnight kiss, sometimes just because the mosquito net bothers me. Once I'm inside it I feel as though I'm breathing in the same air as the evening before, and then I start sweating so much you'd think I'd wet the bed, which I haven't.

The mosquitoes in our
quartier
are strange, they just love sweat, it means they can really stick to your skin and take their time about sucking your blood till five in the morning. Also, when I'm inside the mosquito net, I look like a corpse, the mosquitoes buzzing round me are like people weeping because I've just died.

I told Papa Roger this. I did, I told him I'm like a little corpse when I'm inside my mosquito net, and one day, if they're not careful, I'll really die in there, and I'll never be seen on this earth again, because I'll have gone up on high to join my two big sisters, who I've never known because they were in too much of a hurry to go straight up to heaven. I was in tears myself as I told him that, imagining myself as a tiny little corpse in a tiny little white coffin surrounded by people crying pointlessly, since if you're dead you're not coming back, except Jesus who can work miracles, and resuscitate, as though death, for him, was just a little afternoon siesta.

It worried Papa Roger that I was starting to talk about death like that at my age. He told me children never die, God watches
over them at night while they're sleeping and He gives them lots of air to breathe so they don't suffocate in their sleep. So I asked him why God hadn't put lots of air in the lungs of my two big sisters. He looked at me kindly. ‘I'll see to it, I'll take off the mosquito net.'

But it was weeks and weeks before he did anything about it. He finally took my mosquito net off yesterday, when he got home from work. He'd been to buy some Flytox from someone in the Avenue of Independence. Usually any self-respecting mosquito who hears the word Flytox buzzes off quickly, rather than die a slow, stupid death.

Papa Roger put this stuff all over my room, so the smell would last longer. Now the mosquitoes in our
quartier
are no fools, you can't trick them that easily, particularly since you can see the picture of a dying mosquito on the Flytox packet. Is it likely they'll commit suicide instead of fighting for your last drop of blood? They wait till the smell wears off, then they come right back and bite you all over because they're angry with you now for waging war on them. When in fact they're just like you, they want to live as long as they can.

So, even if you pump your house full of Flytox, you should never claim victory too soon. The mosquitoes will always win in the end, and then they'll go and tell all the other mosquitoes in town that in fact you can get round the product after all. Mosquitoes aren't like us, they never keep secrets, they spend the whole night chatting, as though they'd nothing else to do. And since they're the same ones as in the Trois-Cents
quartier
, and they've seen you spraying Flytox in your house, first of all they go to the neighbours' houses, where they don't have it and then when they've finished there they come back to your room to see if it still smells of Flytox. Some mosquitoes are
even used to it, and explain to their mates how to protect themselves against it. They say, ‘Watch out for those guys, it stinks of Flytox in their house; if you don't want to die, take cover for now in a wardrobe or a cooking pot or a pair of shoes or some clothes'. And they'll wait till you turn down the light on the storm lantern. They're pleased because they can see you're scared of them. If you're really scared, it means you've got lots of nice warm blood to feed them on over the winter, and you didn't want them to find out. If one of them comes looking for a fight and you try to squash it with your hands or a bit of wood, the others then turn up with their sisters and their cousins and their aunts and bite you all over. One little group makes the noise, the others attack. They take turns. The ones making the noise aren't always the ones that attack, and the ones attacking wait behind them in a circle. There you are, all on your own, you've only got two hands, you can't see what's happening behind you, you can't protect yourself, they're a well-trained army out for revenge because you've tried to wipe them out with your Flytox. You're itching all over, you've got mosquitoes up your nose, mosquitoes in your ears, and they're all biting away and laughing their heads off.

And that's why I woke up this morning covered in red spots. If I sniff my arms, they still smell of Flytox. A really angry mosquito – the leader, perhaps – bit me just above my eye, it's so swollen, you'd think the devil had thrown me an invisible punch. Maman Pauline put some boa grease on it and said, to cheer me up, ‘Never mind, Michel, your eye will be better by sunset. Boa grease, that's what they used on me when I was little. Tonight we'll put back the mosquito net your father took off. That Flytox the Lebanese sell is rubbish. And he knows it.'

When Caroline looks at me, I feel like the best-looking guy in the world. We're the same age, but she knows all there is to know about us boys. Maman Pauline says she's very
advanced
. I don't know what that means. Maybe it's because Caroline acts like a real lady. Even at her age she wears lipstick and she braids almost every woman's hair in our neighbourhood, including my mother's. Caroline listens to what the fine ladies say about men, and she can't wait to be like the women she goes shopping with in the Grand Marché. Maman Pauline says Caroline knows how to make a dish of beans and manioc leaves, which a lot of grown-up people still can't do. She is really very
advanced
.

Caroline's parents and mine are friends. They live at the far end of the Avenue of Independence, just before the road that leads to the Savon
quartier
, where Uncle René lives. It's a short walk from their house to ours, ours is the one painted green and white halfway down the same avenue, opposite Yeza, the joiner, who makes loads of coffins and lines them up in front of his lot, so people can come and choose.

Caroline and I used to go to school together, at Trois-Martyrs, but now she's at a different place, in the Chic
quartier
. The reason she's not at the same school as me now is because her father had a row with the headmaster.

I really miss those days when she'd come strolling down the Avenue of Independence, and meet me outside our house.
We avoided the tarmacked roads because our parents said it was too dangerous, because none of the cars had brakes and the drivers drank corn spirit before they set off. We specially avoided the crossroads at Block 55, where someone got knocked down by a car at least once a month. In our
quartier
people blamed Ousmane, a shopkeeper from Senegal, just opposite the crossroads. Apparently he had this magic mirror that fooled the poor pedestrians, so they thought the cars were a long way off, like a kilometre away, when in fact it was more like a few metres, and bam! they ran them over, just as they started crossing. It looked like Ousmane had loads of customers, more than the other shops, because people died right outside his shop. We'd go round behind his shop, without even looking at it. Because we were scared of Ousmane's magic mirror. Sometimes I'd be behind Caroline and she'd turn round and take my hand and give me a shake and tell me to get a move on because the devils in the magic mirror always caught children who lagged behind.

‘Michel, don't look in Ousmane's shop! Close your eyes!'

I walked fast. I didn't want to vanish while she wasn't looking. Our school was an old building painted green, yellow and red. When we finally got to the playground we had to separate. Caroline went into Madame Diamoneka's class, and I went into Monsieur Malonga's. My hand was damp because Caroline had been holding it tight all the way.

Around five in the evening we'd come home together. She'd drop me outside our house, then carry on home. I'd stay outside, watching her go. Soon she'd be just a little shape way off in the crowd. And in I'd go, happy.

My best friend, Lounès – who's Caroline's brother – liked walking to school alone. Was that because he didn't want to
walk alongside his sister? I think it was to show he was older than us. That he was in class with the big kids. Now he's at middle school where you learn even harder things than you do at primary. And since he's at Trois-Glorieuses, that's where I want to go after primary school. If I went anywhere else I'd have to make new friends. I like Lounès, and I think he likes me too.

Caroline and Lounès's father limps with his left leg, and people snigger when he walks by. It's not nice to laugh at Monsieur Mutombo, it's not like he said to God: I'd like to have a limp all my life please. He was born like that, and when he was a little boy and he tried to walk, his left leg was shorter than his right, or maybe his right leg was longer than his left.

In a way, Monsieur Mutombo could get rid of his limp if he wanted, all he has to do is wear Salamander shoes, they have these heels that are so high, a pygmy could wear them and look like an American sky-scraper. But I don't think that's a solution, since the right leg would still go on up higher and the left leg, the sick one, couldn't match it. Unless if he cut off a bit of the sole of the right shoe, but then everyone would laugh at him because his shoes wouldn't be the same height. The only thing to do is to ask God on his dying day to send him back with normal legs, because once God's made a human being and sends him down to our world, that's it, he won't go back on his decision, otherwise people would stop respecting him. Besides, that would mean God could get it wrong, like the rest of us. Which has never been known to happen.

Monsieur Mutombo's a very honest man. Papa Roger says so, and he's his friend. He looks after Lounès and Caroline really well. He takes them to the Rex, where they've already seen films like
Demolition Man
,
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
,
Ten
Commandments
,
Samson and Delilah
,
Jaws
,
Star Wars
and lots of Indian films.

When Monsieur Mutombo comes to visit my father on Sundays, they go out to a bar in the Avenue of Independence. They drink palm wine, they talk in our ethnic language, bembé. If they stay too long at the bar Maman Pauline says to me: ‘Michel, look at you, sitting around like an idiot while your father and Monsieur Mutombo are out at a bar! You get up now, and go and see if they're buying drinks for the local girls, and kissing them on the lips!'

I set off like a rocket, and arrive, panting, at the bar. I find Monsieur Mutombo and my father drinking, and playing draughts.