Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty

by Alain Mabanckou

  That plane going overhead is going to land in Cairo, in Egypt. We’re sitting by the river Tchinouka. Lounès knows if he asks me the question about where the plane’s going to land I’ll start talking about Egypt and the Shah, who’s ill again. So instead he says, ‘Your parents are going to buy you lots of presents.’

  I’m so surprised I fall over backwards. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Your mother ran into my mother at a fetisher’s and…’

  I interrupt him: ‘I see, so fetisher Sukissa Tembé’s behind all this?’

  ‘Why, do you know him?’

  ‘No, I don’t know him, but when my mother and father were talking in their room I heard everything. And they mentioned that name.’

  ‘Well your mother and father have already been to see him. My mother was there too, for her lung problem. I couldn’t believe it either, when I heard my mother telling my father about it: the fetisher consulted his fetishes, and the fetishes said that it’s your fault your mother can’t have another child.’

  ‘MINE?’

  ‘Yep, yours. The fetishes say you’re a child by day, but at night you’re a grown-up person, with white hair, and when it’s dark you get out of bed and go and meet up with other old people who don’t like your mother and are plotting against her.’

  ‘And you believe that? He’s a liar, this fetisher!’

  ‘He thinks you’re going to be jealous and unhappy if you have brothers and sisters. So you’ve closed up Maman Pauline’s belly. When children want to come, they find the door shut and they die just this side of it. So you’re the one that has the key to your mother’s belly.’

  ‘That’s not true! It’s not true!’

  ‘So the fetisher said to your parents that they have to give you lots of presents, any presents you want and apologise to you, till you’re ready to give them the key to your mother’s belly. The fetisher can’t do anything for Maman Pauline, she’ll never have another child before she dies, not unless she gets the key.’

  ‘I don’t want their rotten presents!’

  ‘Michel, you have to take them.’

  ‘NO!!’

  ‘Are you glad your mother’s miserable because she’s only got one child? If you die before she does, what will happen to her? Have you thought about that?’

  Another plane goes by.

  ‘Where’s that plane going to land?’ Lounès asks me.

  ‘In Calcutta, India.’

  ‘Really? Not in Egypt?’

  ‘No, it’s going to India. There’s a woman there called Mother Teresa who loves all poor people, and abandoned children. She got given a big present for it: the Nobel Peace Prize.’

  Suddenly Lounès seems sad. When I look at him I can feel that he loves me, he wants to help me, but he also wants to help my parents. He speaks very slowly to me, as though he was almost begging me to do something: ‘Michel, listen to me, tell me where you’ve hidden the key. I won’t tell anyone else about it, I promise.’

  ‘I haven’t got a key.’

  ‘You have, because you’re the one that locked your mother’s belly, the day you were born.’

  ‘I haven’t got a key!’

  ‘Michel, that fetisher can’t lie, he was fetisher to the President of the Republic!’

  ‘Well, he’s just told his first lie then!’

  ‘Listen, give me that key and I’ll give it to my mama, and she’ll give it to yours.’

  Since he’s so insistent, and I’ve run out of answers, I agree.

  ‘Ok, I’ll give it to you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. I’ve hidden it somewhere, the fetisher’s right.’

  I’m in my parents’ bedroom. Arthur’s smiling at me. I want to talk to him, to tell him everything’s getting on top of me. But instead I tell him I don’t like riding bikes, I don’t know how to pedal, I’m probably going to fall off and hurt myself. I also tell him I’d rather have a car like Sebastien’s, a car you can control from a distance. I’ll go left, then I’ll go right, then I’ll go straight on for a bit, then do a U-turn. If I meet people who don’t have a car walking along in the midday sun, I’ll give them a lift home in mine. No, I won’t have an accident because I’ll always drive slowly and I’ll stop at the stop sign, or when people are crossing the road, especially old people and children. The others will just have to watch out because I’ll have priority, and if I run them over that’s their lookout.

  I also tell Arthur I haven’t got the key, it’s not me that locked the door to my mother’s belly. I try to think back, but there’s nothing there, there is no key. If I had hidden it somewhere I’d definitely remember. So how come everyone’s accusing me?

  I have the feeling Arthur’s saying: ‘Michel, calm down, let them say what they want, and just admit it was you that locked the door to your mother’s belly, you’ve got the key there somewhere, and if they still go on bothering you the whole time, pack your things and go and take a break in Egypt, to help the Shah recover from cancer. He’ll be pleased to make your acquaintance. Yes, tell all those who accuse you that you do have the key, that you’ve hidden it somewhere. It won’t cost you anything. You’ll make your mother even more miserable if you don’t listen to your friend Lounès.’

  ‘What shall I do then?’ I ask Arthur out loud.

  He smiles at me again, and seems to be saying very quietly, ‘Go and look for any old key in a rubbish bin, somewhere you’re bound to find one. Give it to Lounès and he’ll give it to his mother and she’ll give it to Maman Pauline. After that you can go off to Egypt. I’ll give you some addresses of friends of mine there, you won’t be alone.’

  ‘Arthur, what’s “the hand that guides the quill”?’

  He doesn’t reply. I think maybe he doesn’t like being asked about his book. He just wants to help me.

  ‘And what’s “the hand that guides the plough”? How much money did you leave behind in Egypt?’

  He’s not going to answer that. He’s not smiling now. He’s just a picture on the book cover now, but earlier he was almost alive, like me, I could hear his heart beating.

  When I got to Maman Martine’s house this morning, Papa Roger had already set off into town. He even works on Saturdays because that’s the day when lots of people arrive at the hotel. The evening before, my mother had a long chat with Maman Martine. She told her she was going off into the bush, and then to Brazzaville for four days. She’d left a bit of money for Maman Martine, who refused it at first. But my mother insisted, so Maman Martine eventually accepted: ‘We’ll make a nice dish of beef with beans.’

  Maman Pauline stroked my hair. When she put her arms around me I thought I might start to levitate! Then she let me go, and looked at me tearfully. She turned around, I saw her walk away, get into a taxi and wave from a distance. I knew she was thinking about the key to her belly. But she didn’t know I knew about it now, and I’d already begun looking in dustbins in our neighbourhood, as Arthur had advised. And I really didn’t want her to know. I still haven’t found anything, I’ll go on looking, and I’ll find the key for her before she gets back if possible. After that I’ll go and have a rest in Egypt, I’m so tired.

  Yaya Gaston says: ‘Geneviève’s coming this evening. There won’t be any other girls besides her.’

  I’m so happy I want to laugh out loud, but if I laugh he’ll ask me why I’m laughing like that. So I just act like it’s normal that Geneviève’s coming this evening, and no one else. I know Genviève’s talked to Yaya Gaston, and that he knows now that I don’t like the other girls, who make a lot of noise and talk about things that even us children find silly.

  I think about what I’ll say to Geneviève when she comes. I’ll definitely talk to her about the business with the key to my mother’s belly. I’ll tell her the story about the madman I met when I was just beginning to look. Then she’ll know that I’ve been wandering about all over the Trois-Cents, and I haven’t found a single key lying on the ground. I emptied out the bins, but I only
found old needles, broken glass, carcasses of dead dogs with maggots wriggling around in their eyes, old cooking pots with rotting food at the bottom, bottles full of urine and lots of things besides. No keys. What if I stole a key from one of the Lebanese or Senegalese shops? No, I can’t take a brand new key to give to Lounès. A key that you’ve had hidden for a long time has to be quite old looking with rusty bits. When I came across an old lock in a bin over by the Savon quartier, I said to myself, ‘If there’s a lock in this bin the key can’t be far away, it must be in this bin too.’ So I turned over all the rubbish with a bit of wood. I poked around angrily in its belly, muttering, ‘There’s a key hidden in this rubbish, and I’m going to find it! I’m going to find it! I’m going to find it!’

  Seeing me rooting around and talking to myself, a madman looking for food a few metres away burst out laughing. He said the world had really changed, that people were going mad in childhood now. In his day only grown ups were mad, not children.

  ‘How long have you been mad, little one?’ he asked me.

  I was about to run off.

  ‘No, don’t be afraid. I don’t eat people yet, though I may start to if I don’t find anything in these rubbish bins.’

  I told him I wasn’t mad like him, I was looking for the key to my mother’s belly, I’m just a normal boy, I go to Trois-Martyrs school, I’m an average pupil, very hard-working, and maybe I’ll get my School Certificate and go to Trois-Glorieuses secondary school. Then I’ll be with Lounès, I’ll joy ride the workers’ train like Jean-Paul Belmondo in Fear Over the City.

  He laughed again, and rolled round in the rubbish like a child playing in the sand on the Côte Sauvage.

  ‘So you’re not mad, little one, but you’re rooting around in the rubbish with me, and I’m mad?’

  I don’t know what came over me. I said in a little voice: ‘You’re not bad, otherwise you’d have told me to clear off from your bin. So you must be mad, but only a bit, just a tiny bit. And maybe you’re not actually mad, it’s just that people think you are.’

  He’d stopped rummaging now, he looked troubled. Close up I could see his big pink lips moving about, his red eyes like two peppers. His square jaw and the little moustache with a few white hairs.

  He came up close to me: ‘I’m going to help you, little one. Together we’ll manage to find the key!’

  So we both start sifting through the rubbish. We chatted, like two school friends.

  He comes over to me: ‘You look on the left, I’ll look on the right.’

  While we were looking through, he asked me over and over: ‘Found anything?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I’m not mad, you know, little one. People think I am but I’m not. I’m a philosopher, I’ve got my diploma in arts and philosophy. D’you know what a philosopher is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I’ll tell you. A philosopher is someone who has lots of ideas that other people never have. That’s why the fools that pass me by in the street think I must be mad. If I was in Europe, people would write down what I say and teach it in school to little white children.’

  He stopped rummaging and threw his head back to look up at the sky. Tears rolled down his cheeks, and I felt a little bug come into my eye too.

  In a loud voice he announced: ‘Round here they call me Little Pepper, probably because of my red eyes. What’s your name then?’

  ‘Michel…’

  ‘Well, Michel, today I want to talk to you, so listen, and don’t interrupt, it’s been a long time since I talked to someone who looks at me like a real person and doesn’t think I’m completely off my head. You’re looking for a key to open a door, I’m looking for one to get out of the place I’ve been shut up in for years. Maybe the same key will free us both. When I was a child like you I loved it when my grandfather told me stories. And there was one story I will never forget. I’d like to tell it to you, to teach you to respect all forms of life, human, animal, mineral.’

  He’d stopped looking, he was sitting down now, with his long hands placed on his legs. I stopped too, and placed my own little hands on my legs.

  ‘Well, Michel, my boy, I’ve always had this feeling that animals looked at me strangely, that they know I’m descended from their master, my grandfather Massengo. When I was a child I used to smile when grandfather taught me that this sheep was related to us, that goat was my maternal aunt, that pigeon was none other than my big brother who drowned in the river Moukoukoulou. I thought it was just nonsense from an old man who was cut off from the world, clinging to his ancestral beliefs. How could an animal be the double of a human being? Back then, Grandfather Massengo warned me: “My boy, you may play with any animal you like, except for that lone cockerel there. That’s all I’m going to say, but believe me, if you truly love me, never touch that cockerel…” Who was my grandfather’s double? It was the old lone cockerel with its crest at half mast. The cockerel was my grandfather, and my grandfather was the cockerel. Man and beast breathed the same air, felt the same pain, shared the same joy. The cockerel’s feathers stood out like a porcupine’s quills. Its thin, arched feet showed he was an animal from another time, he had faced all life’s difficulties and dangers and now watched with indifference the passing seasons, people dying, children being born, marriages in the village. He was not really of this age. I would see this cockerel almost wherever I went, he might almost have been following me. I knew then that Grandfather Massengo was not far away, that he constantly sent his animal double to protect me against bad people in this world. In the evening the cockerel slept on one leg outside the door of our mud hut, with one eye open. During the day he hung around the yard, sheltering under the mango trees when it was hot or it was raining. When he moved around – always waddling because of his great age – all the hens in the village clucked to show their respect. The animal had lost all sense of time and could not tell night from day. Sometimes I had to chase him out of my grandfather’s yard because he was always leaving his stinking droppings in the house. I’d no sooner shooed him out than he’d be back a few minutes later, giving me this look as though mocking my stupidity, my ignorance of the true meaning of things. I was angry too, and went chasing after him into the manioc and maize fields, where he managed to give me the slip. At least then I knew he wasn’t in the yard, that he was lost in the bush somewhere. But when I got back to the village I was amazed to find him already outside the door of my grandfather’s house, with his beak in the air, his wings up high – it was his way of being proud, of showing he wasn’t afraid of anyone in this world. So how had he managed to get back to the village in only a few minutes? Was he faster than me? It was humiliating. Once I picked up a piece of wood off the ground to knock him out. Behind me I heard a deep, angry voice: “What do you think you’re doing?” It was Grandfather Massengo, standing at the door of our hut. I had never seen him in such a rage. He jerked his head. “You come with me, grandson, I think it’s time I had a talk with you about a few things, before it’s too late…” He took my hand and we went round to the back of the hut. He told me to sit down on the ground, while he remained standing. He was suddenly sweating, and his breath came short and fast, as though he had just escaped a grave danger. “So, grandson, you thought you’d kill me with that piece of wood, did you?” And I replied: “No, I want to hit the lone cockerel, not you.” He stroked his little grey beard and sighed: “Same thing! If you hit that cockerel, you’re hitting me. You’ll understand that one day when you’re older, but will I still be here then…?” From that day on I gave up my war against the cockerel. I let him follow me everywhere, and leave his droppings in the hut. Sometimes I fed him and he liked that, because afterwards he’d come and rub himself against me to thank me and I’d stroke his crest till he closed his eyes and went to sleep, but with one eye open. I’d sleep too, beside him, and I was the happiest child alive. Whenever I showed the cockerel respect, fortune shone upon me, so that if I went fishing I’d bring back more fish than all my fr
iends. At the village school I came top in every subject, I was the best pupil in the whole district, with the highest marks in the Primary School Certificate. All I had to do was think about the cockerel, and everything that the other pupils found complicated became as clear as spring water to me. But the world is full and always will be, of people who are envious, people who are starving, of hypocrites and cynics, and those people are the reason Grandfather Massengo is no longer with us. May his soul rest in peace. Yes, he died because of my Uncle Loubaki’s greed. Loubaki, who lived a few hundred metres away from my grandfather, was determined to eat the lone cockerel. At the end of the old year, the family always met to discuss what they would eat on New Year’s Day. It was to be a cockerel from grandfather’s chicken house, the biggest in the whole village. Up until then, the cockerel had survived because he was so intelligent that he understood our language and listened at doors to find out what humans were plotting. At the end of December that wretched year when the cockerel was to leave this world, my Uncle Loubaki said to the rest of the family: “We must eat the lone cockerel, he’s too old, he’s no use to us any more. And besides, he stinks and he spreads disease among all the other birds in the village.” My grandfather, who was present at this meeting, did not react to this. The cockerel, however, had heard everything. He slipped away quietly before dawn and only came back around the fifth of January. Meanwhile, on New Year’s Day, they chose a different cockerel. Then the next year, Uncle Loubaki decided to play a deadly trick on the lone cockerel, who was hanging about eavesdropping on us: “It’s decided, we won’t eat the lone cockerel for the New Year, he’s too old, he stinks, we’ll let him die of old age, why spoil the party with old rubbish like him when there are lots of other cockerels and hens in grandfather’s hen house. That lone cockerel is the ugliest creature on earth. He doesn’t deserve to be eaten. So let’s eat the two chickens we bought last year at the market in Mouyondzi instead.” At that everyone laughed. Everyone applauded the decision. And since the lone cockerel was now quite sure he would be spared the pot once again this New Year, he stayed in the village on the evening of the thirty-first of December. On the first of January, at six in the morning, Uncle Loubaki himself caught him outside grandfather’s door and slit his throat in one sharp movement. The feast was long and joyful. Only grandfather, they noticed, sat alone in his corner. He seemed distanced from our joy, and he began talking to himself about things no one could understand. We all drank to his health and long life, to all he’d done for his family and the village. We wished he might live as long as the prophets in the Bible. He thanked us several times. He accepted all the presents the family gave him. But when he thanked us he was weeping. I saw him turn away to wipe his tears, so no one would see. At the end of that day, the old man withdrew into his room murmuring: “I always thought you loved me in this family, but I’ve been wrong, all my life I’ve been wrong. I wish you all bonne fête, and hope you enjoyed the cockerel.” No one knew then that these would be his last words. On the second of January around ten in the morning, Uncle Loubaki went to knock on grandfather’s door, for usually he was up and about by six. He found him in the living room, lying on the floor, with his arms crossed. Scattered around him were the feathers of the lone cockerel, though we had buried them well the day before, behind the chicken coop, as was usual when one of the family’s chickens was killed. And since that day, young Michel, no one in our family has ever eaten a cockerel. And even when I’m really hungry and I find a chicken thigh in a bin, I still don’t eat it because I might see that old man’s face as I do so, the man I loved more than anyone in the whole world. I think maybe that business drove me mad. When I sleep, I swear, I see headless cockerels in my dreams. I see feathers flying in the wind, and I fly after them, high in the air, till I see the face of Grandfather Massengo, where the sun should be. And if I hear a cock crowing somewhere close by, I run towards it, thinking I am going towards my grandfather.’