Tram 83 (22 page)

8:15. 10:30. 11:15. Malingeau still hadn't showed his face. He turned up around three in the morning. The Diva welcomed him with a song crooned partially in Armenian. Applause followed applause. Lucien went unnoticed in the crush created by the arrival of the Tram's new darling and the mass of bodyguards.

“Foreplay is for tourists. We like to eat straightaway.”

Dressed all in white, Malingeau mounted the podium erected in his honor and greeted the assembled company in an African language. Ten minutes of applause, interspersed with hearty shouts of “Ferdinand Malingeau! Ferdinand Malingeau!”

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!”

31.

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:

“You, go home, sleep.”

With considerable nonchalance, he handed the magazine to
the honey doing her makeup just to his left. She opened it, leafed through the ten pages of the magazine, most of which were covered with photographs of tourists, and screamed as if stung by a bee:

“The General!”

The whole Tram, with the exception of the for-profit tourists, rushed the podium, a contorted mass, arms outstretched like the possessed in a deliverance session. Requiem began to hurl copies of the magazine into the crowd. He wasn't even able to complete his task. He was violently shoved, squashed by the crowd trying desperately to swag the loot. Taking advantage of the ruckus, everyone wanting to leave, everyone wanting to enter the Tram, he crawled all the way to the bar, where the publisher abided — flabbergasted by the turn of events — and stuck a knife in his leg.

32.

A MAN'S CREDIBILITY DEPENDS ON THE POWER OF HIS UNDERBELLY
.

Upon his return, the dissident General flew into a terrible rage. Lucien had had a dig at him in his stage-tale. In the final scene, entitled “Taking of the Citadel,” the character of the dissident General met his death after Lumumba had given him a sound thrashing. The words that concluded the book

              
an empty-body

              
a thingy-body

              
a trashy-body

              
a doggy-body

              
the headless-body

              
of a farmyard General

              
lying in the sludge

              
in a state of advanced deterioration!

were on everyone's lips. The baby-chicks even used it to accost
potential clients, the waitresses and busgirls to demand their tip, the diggers to taunt the students, and the jazz musicians to warm up the Tram.

The two nude photographs of him published by the Negus had sent him into a state of apoplexy. According to the busgirl with the fat lips, he broke off diplomatic relations with Bolivia, Uganda, and Azerbaijan that very day, and shot at his bodyguards with live rounds. All conversations in the Tram were no longer about the General's slender body, his bamboo-like frame, but his tiny pecker.

“Do you have the time?”

The inhabitants of the City-State had seized the opportunity to make fun of him. The mob hissed fortuitous comparisons between his penis and a matchstick. At the Tram, several nights had been spent debating how a man with no penis, or rather with such a tiny tool, could get a baby-chick going.

The strong man of the City-State, known for his interminable speeches, delivered the shortest oration in the world.

“I am closing all the mines in the City-State until further notice, and I have given orders for Tram 83, this hotspot of criminality, debauchery, and perversity, to be demolished this very afternoon.”

It was incredible what was happening. What would the City-State be like without Tram 83? Demolishing Tram 83 was like razing the Eiffel Tower or Rio's Christ the Redeemer, decapitating the memory of the City-State, depriving an entire people of their leisure. The Tram embodied national unity and cohesion, despite the deep-rooted subdivisions. No one in the City-State, except Lucien, could stand to go a week without dropping into Tram 83. Even the patients packed into Saint Giles Hospital had excursions
to the Tram arranged for them. The dissident General was going mad. Demolishing the Tram spelled unemployment not only for the waitresses and busgirls (including the one with the fat lips and dutiful-Negro patter), but all the young ladies of Avignon too.

As soon as the announcement of the Tram's destruction was heard, the inhabitants of the City-State headed for Tram 83. For several reasons, of course: some — “Do you have the time?” — to lure potential clients, others to protest against the prohibition on excavating, still others to block the imminent destruction of Tram 83, for the Tram was the only thing that really belonged to them.

“Foreplay is all the fashion. We demand it too.”

There was a dissidence within the Dissidence. A hundred mercenaries broke away from their leader and switched camps with arms and ammunition. For two months, the baby-chicks, the musicians, the dandy
sapeurs
, the suicidals, the diggers, the tourists of all nationalities combined — in short, the whole of the City-State — ate, drank, pissed, idled, and shat in Tram 83 and its vicinity. The dissident General at the head of his rebellion failed on three occasions to take Tram 83.