African Psycho

by Alain Mabanckou

  It was a Sunday afternoon.

  I was seated in a corner of the packed establishment, my gaze a bit distracted. My dish of chicken in peanut sauce was being served at the precise moment I saw Germaine heading toward the cashier’s desk. She was talking with the proprietress. It even looked like an argument, for the two women seemed not to agree about something. The proprietress opened an old notebook and showed it to Germaine, who shook her head no. The proprietress closed the notebook and Germaine walked back toward the customers. That’s when I finally saw her face. What intrigued me was her somber gaze. She must have had serious problems.

  Anyhow, how was this any of my business? So I averted my eyes and focused on cutting the chicken leg that, truth be told, I was finding skinny and tough.

  Before I had time to swallow the first bite, Germaine was in front of me.

  “Don’t you have a cigarette?” she asked me, addressing me casually from the get-go.

  To me, her question seemed inane, as my pack of Camels was on the table. I stared at her, this time up close: tall, lightly dressed with her miniskirt and see-through white top, hair pulled back, a round face with dimpled cheeks, and small eyes, deep but dulled by the anxiety that filled her at that moment. I told myself that she was probably one of these whores from the country over there who come to our country in their canoes and whom the shopkeepers of the He-Who-Drinks-Water-Is-An-Idiot district use during the day to incite clients to empty their wallets. I am not criticizing this practice, as I have also occasionally benefited from it. When such was the case, and before Germaine came to live with me, I would find myself with one of these girls at home. But I always took her to my workshop, among the scrap metal on which Germaine was to heap abuse later.

  “Help yourself,” I answered that day, offering my pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

  “You’re eating alone?” she continued.

  I was now sure she was a whore at night and worked for the restaurant during the day. Why stand on ceremony?

  “Take a seat and order what you want,” I offered.

  “Well, I mean…”

  “Take a seat, Germaine.”

  “How come you know my first name?”

  “It’s written on the small chain you’re wearing around your neck!”

  “Ah yes, that’s true…”

  She pulled up a chair and sat down across from me. Open Air’s proprietress, who was keeping a close watch on the scene, immediately sent two of her stork-necked waitresses to prowl around us. They were as excited as flies. Germaine ordered the same dish as mine, with a beer.

  “You have great worries, you do,” I told her.

  “Are you a marabout or something?”

  “It shows on your face. Is it because of this restaurant’s proprietress?”

  “No.”

  “Still, I heard you raise your voices a moment ago!”

  “It’s not serious, I’m not going to tell everyone my problems.”

  Her gaze plunged down into her plate.

  “I’m not everyone,” I shot back. “I can be a good friend, and perhaps I can help you…”

  “I don’t even know your name!”

  “Angoualima…”

  “What???”

  “My name is Angoualima…”

  “No kidding!”

  She burst out laughing and finally started eating, then looked me straight in the eyes.

  “You joke like that all the time or what?”

  “From time to time. It’s good to laugh, don’t you think?”

  “Thank God, Angoualima’s dead! In the old days, this head of yours, we would pick it up by the seaside with a Cuban cigar!”

  “No, this was just for laughs,” I replied.

  “So what’s your name?”

  “My name is Grégoire Nakobomayo, you can call me Greg.”

  “Greg… Greg… Greg… hmmm… doesn’t ring a bell. Do you live in the neighborhood?”

  “You could say that. But tell me about your worries instead. I have no appetite when I see a beautiful woman in an awkward position. It is indeed because of the proprietress, wasn’t it?”

  “I told you it’s not, she has nothing to do with that.”

  “So what is it?”

  After a moment of silence, she glanced toward the cashier’s desk, where the proprietress was busy toting up her register once again while mumbling mean things.

  “I’m in deep shit here as you see me.”

  “That, for one thing, is easy to see.”

  “I’ve lost everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “Yes. All my stuff was stolen in the studio we rent with three other girlfriends. I think they’re the ones behind the job.”

  “What do they have against you?”

  “Oh, the usual! It’s our own little war between girls, you know.”

  “My apologies, but I don’t understand. What war?”

  “I really don’t feel like talking about this.”

  “You’re wrong not to trust me. Let yourself go, perhaps God is sending me and…”

  “So you believe in God?”

  “Of course. I was baptized some…”

  “Okay, what do you want me to tell you? It’s jealousy. It happens, you know? I’m not from here, I’m from the country over there originally. What’s more, I have real clients, whites who come from the center of town to pick me up in their cars, and this kind of stuff, it makes them jealous, my girlfriends. We’ve been fighting a lot lately, and yesterday, when I came home, my stuff wasn’t there, I had money, dollars I got from an American, everything’s gone! That’s what I was explaining to the proprietress at the cashier’s desk. Now while I’m waiting I’m in a hotel, but I’m going to get my revenge, I’m going to prove to them who I am. I haven’t crossed the Mayi River in a canoe to let any old nobody bug the shit out of me. I am here because I didn’t get the opportunity to do anything other than what I’m doing. I don’t have any parents to rely on, so the little I make, I make in this manner. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have told you all that…”

  “And the proprietress, I saw she was showing you a notebook and that you…”

  “That’s something else. We have things together, and she’s always screwing me. But it’s nothing, this stuff.”

  “She can hear you, she’s looking in our direction…”

  “I don’t give a damn.”

  “If you’re in deep shit, can I pay your hotel for tonight?”

  “No way! I didn’t come over for this. I still have my pride, I do. Anyway, that’s not how it works!”

  “I only want to do it because I want to help you.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I’m like that, I like to help my brethren, without any agenda in mind.”

  “So you’re married?”

  “No, why? Do I look like a married man?”

  She stared at me. My rectangular head seemed heavier than usual. I read in her gaze that I wasn’t handsome. She must have concluded that it was my ugliness that dissuaded women from living under the same roof as I did. Just in time, as she realized I guessed her thoughts, she caught herself.

  “You want to help me!”

  “Yes, and I’m not kidding.”

  “Tell me, what man is going to pay a hotel room for a hostess and not sleep with her?”

  “I sincerely want to help you.”

  “We might as well go to your place, we do our business, you pay me, and that way I won’t look like a beggar.”

  “Is this how you go about it with everybody, then?”

  “No, you look kind and generous. I’m not out to make a profit like the girls from He-Who-Drinks-Water-Is-An-Idiot. Are we going or not?”

  I wasn’t expecting events to turn in my favor. I was now looking at Germaine as an ideal prey. I wasn’t prepared to take a girl home, and none until then had entered this secret garden I had built with my own hands…

  I didn’t have any car on hand that day. We walked and
chatted about everything and nothing, and Germaine was surprised to see how I cut through streets to arrive near the neighborhood’s last dwellings quickly.

  “Whoa, you sure know this neighborhood well!”

  “I was born here and I grew up here. My house is the one across the street, where you can see the bamboo gate.”

  I pushed the gate.

  “What’s that behind these iron sheets?”

  “It’s my workshop, I do sheet-iron and auto-body work, you want to see?”

  “If you want.”

  We headed toward the shed and I removed the two bricks that hold the workshop’s door closed. We went in after I turned on the light.

  “My God, what a mess! And you work in here?”

  “Well, yes I do!” I said, hiding my irritation, for she was criticizing my place of work, therefore she was criticizing me, and I took this as an insult, which reminded me of the chaos of centuries past.

  “How in hell do you manage to work in here?”

  “I can find my way around. Here are two cars I’ve been fixing up lately. I took everything apart. This scrap heap nearby, it’s car doors I salvage from the junkyard, they may come in handy. Here is the furnace. Watch out for the grease on the floor. Behind there are other things…”

  After the brief visit to my workshop, I led her into the house. I felt as if I were stripping myself naked, allowing a person who was heavy with sins to come soil my holy place.

  I turned on the living-room light.

  “I built this house myself with my own hands. There are two bedrooms. This one is mine. The other one is in case I’d be hosting friends.”

  “So you are a mason as well?”

  “Let’s say I dabble a little in everything.”

  “Your place is nice! There are no photos! You have relatives, don’t you? I mean parents, cousins…”

  “It’s a long story, I won’t bore you with that.”

  She put her purse on the floor and settled in the sofa bed.

  I went into my bedroom for a moment, telling her to help herself to a drink. The fridge was full, I had shopped for groceries the day before. A little bit of everything. Beef, fruit, milk.

  I heard the noise of the beer bottle when she opened it. I made the bed quickly, everything was a mess. I hid Angoualima’s photos under the mattress. Like many inhabitants, I’d bought them clandestinely. You could see my idol dead on the sand of the wild coast in the middle of a circle…

  When I came back into the living room, she had turned on the television and was touching up her makeup with the help of a small mirror.

  “I’m going to pay you now,” I said, searching my pockets.

  We hadn’t done anything. She felt offended, her face became somber just like when I saw her in front of the Open Air cashier’s desk.

  “What’s this? Who am I? I’m not taking your money!”

  She brought her purse to her knees as if she were about to go.

  “You did say that we would do our business, I’d pay you, and we’d be even, no?”

  “It was a manner of speaking.”

  “Really?”

  “I don’t know how to explain it, but I feel good with you. You’re kind, generous and I don’t understand why you don’t have a woman at home who loves you.”

  I very nearly answered that at the restaurant she’d thought I wasn’t living with a woman because I was ugly. I sat down by her side, satisfied with how things were unfolding. Then we watched television and, around the middle of the night, when beer was starting to make her delirious to the point where she was laughing like a fool, I showed her where the shower was. She was still talking while I was wishing for silence.

  She got up, lurched, laughed like a hyena with an itch, and opened her bag. She had everything inside…

  After her shower, she reappeared, more beautiful in silk pajamas. She was more lucid, but still in the grip of her insipid laughter.

  It was my turn in the shower.

  Inside, her shampoo, Dop With Eggs, gave out a fresh scent. On a shelf near the mirror, she had left her toothbrush, her Diamond Enamel toothpaste, her skin moisturizing lotion and other toiletries that I was discovering for the first time.

  Was this a sign that she now felt at home?

  I could no longer hear the television.

  When I came out of the shower, Germaine was no longer in the living room. I found her in the bedroom, stark naked, lying on her stomach, her behind drawn with a compass reigniting my desire in a fraction of a second. Tonight, I told myself, Germaine is mine, mine alone, as the whites in our town say…

  Everything went really fast. To this day I still can’t believe it. Germaine came to my house every day, very late at night. She cooked, tidied up the mess I left in the house. And me, I waited to have my meal with her, even though my eyes were heavy with sleep. She kept on saying that I was a good guy, that she didn’t believe in men anymore except for me, that it had been a long time since she’d felt in love that strongly, that she was now attached to me, that even if I wasn’t handsome, my humane qualities made me so, that she couldn’t accept any money from me, that she thought about me all the time, that I made love well while the others fucked her, blah, blah. blah…

  Me, for my part, I wished to tell her to come live with me because it suited me. But you had to be patient. Not precipitate matters. So I waited until it came from her. That she herself decided to come live under my roof. She told me in confidence that she liked flowers, surprises, kind words and all these useless things that allow cretins in suits to go in circles around a young lady instead of simply saying:“What do you say, are we doing it or not?”

  In any case, thanks to Germaine I learned that the roses that these cretins in suits give women weren’t always pink, that they could be white, red, purple, yellow and who knows what other color. Personally, I don’t give a shit about flowers. However, you’ve got to make sacrifices, pretend, play the game. I faked being moved, smelling the fragrance of the roses. And so, what can I say, I would pick flowers near the “Seine” and when she arrived at night she cooed thank yous, kissed me everywhere like a bitch licking its master…

  One day, to my great surprise, Germaine came with a bigger bag than usual and announced that she was going to live with me, that she was going to stop whoring, that she wanted to give me all her love, that she wanted me to cover her with all the flowers that exist on earth. It was moving to see her overexcited in front of the man that I am, a man who since his birth has had to put up with a rectangular head.

  Without any humility, on that day I told myself that I was truly handsome and that I hadn’t realized it. Germaine talked a lot, as if to justify her decision to settle in my place. Then she sat on the sofa and burst into tears. I came to be by her side. I told her I was delighted with her decision but that, on the other hand, I didn’t agree with her stopping her daily work. I launched into my refrain according to which whores, like ambulance drivers, like notaries, like real estate agents, like sheet-iron and auto-body workers paid their taxes, therefore were not engaged in a shameful activity. She was persuaded. She said she would continue her craft as old as the world, but part-time, just to make me happy, and that she would no longer put her clients’ things in her mouth, which she used to kiss me. And she kissed me. Before we made love, I imagined her as a corpse at my feet. I felt in a state of deep bliss. Germaine was sleeping like a little angel, and me, I was looking at her. Talking to myself, a smile at the corner of my mouth, I told myself I would fatten her up for two weeks, three maximum, so that she’d be in very good health on the day of my deed…

  I will assert right now that she ate well at my house during the four weeks of our life together. Good eats, good beer and even desserts she chose herself in the center of town, in the big Printania supermarket…

  Another day has dawned.

  I do not see time go by anymore. That’s how it is. When you have a project, you’re surprised by sunsets and sunrises.

 
Two days I’ve been going around in circles! Am I ready? Have I acquired the determination that characterizes a person who accomplishes an important deed? I no longer have a choice. I am face-to-face with myself. I can’t go back. Nothing can stop me.

  It so happens now that today is December 29. The end of the year is only two days away…

  Yes, I know now how she must die. Why look very far? I’m going to cut her up, then boil her in a big pot thanks to my furnace, and go eat certain parts of her body on the Great Master Angoualima’s grave. No one’s ever done that in our city. This is the gift I am saving up for my idol. I can already see the stupefaction in our city, our entire country and the country over there.

  Germaine must thus die before December 31 so I can prepare and diversify my NewYear’s Eve menus.

  I am ready for this deed. It will take place tonight as soon as she comes home…

  The Murder

  1.

  Today, December 29, I am in a state of anxiety. When I move around the living room or the bedroom, objects fall on the floor behind me because I tell myself that nothing can be lying about randomly in the house and everything that’s here must have a close relationship with the setting for the deed I am about to commit…

  I don’t have the strength to work, and what’s more all these banged-up vehicles are getting on my nerves. I don’t want to do anything, I want to focus, breathe for a long while, and think about the way things are going to unfold here, this very night.

  I imagine a car stopping in front of my plot, a door opening and closing, Germaine pushing the bamboo gate, and I hear her footsteps, the noise the key makes when she inserts it in the lock. I imagine she’s expecting to find flowers, candles, she’s hoping to hear sweet nothings. I imagine she’ll want to cook very late, she’ll open the fridge to drink several beers, she’ll laugh like a hyena with an itch, she’ll tell me her stories from the sidewalks of He-Who-Drinks-Water-Is-An-Idiot, she’ll bring me news of the old fart with his thing breaking down who’s the head of a corporation, the wad of bank notes he waves up in the air so she makes him feel good with her mouth, this old executive who pretends girls in Heads-Of-Negroes Street do it better and if that’s the way it’s going to be he’s going to pay half-price.