Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty

by Alain Mabanckou

  ‘The Shah had had cancer for many years,’ Papa Roger says again. ‘He had lost his homeland, and when that happens to someone they get homeland cancer, and no doctor can treat that, except by helping the sick person live longer. When you lose your homeland you can’t tell night from day, you’re haunted by memories of what you’ve left behind, and if you’re not in good health, your illness gets worse. And that’s the kind of cancer that killed the Shah.’

  While he’s telling me all this, I see Arthur’s face again, in my mind. I would like to go and tell him the bad news, but I remember that I’m never allowed in my parents’ bedroom when they’re at home. Only if my father says: ‘Michel, go and fetch my wallet from the bedroom, I’ve left it on top of the books.’ Or if my mother says: ‘Michel, go and fetch that pair of red shoes from under the bed. And bring the earrings I left on your father’s books.’ Then I can go into my parents’ room. And when I do go, I stay for a long time, because I try and get a quick look at Arthur. Sometimes it’s me that goes to fetch the radio cassette, and if I forget the cassette of the singer with the moustache, Papa Roger says: ‘Michel, the Georges Brassens cassette isn’t in here, quick, go and get it.’ I really like that, because I know I will see Arthur’s beloved face, with his angelic smile, for the second time that evening. But one evening they don’t send me into their room, I don’t like it, I feel sad then, even when my father makes jokes about people he’s met with Monsieur Mutombo in the local bars. My mother laughs at his jokes, but I don’t, I don’t get hysterics, like I do whenever I’m in Monsieur Mutombo’s workshop and Longombé’s mother turns up at the door asking her son for money. I sleep badly, and I can’t stop thinking about Arthur. When I go to bed I tell My Sister Star and My Sister No-name everything. I don’t feel the mosquitoes biting me, I don’t even hear them because they bite my body, not my soul; my soul has already left the house, and gone to another world. Even if they do bite me, I’ve been vaccinated against malaria, I’m not going to die of that.

  The Shah has been buried in Egypt, not in Iran. Once again, it’s the Egyptians who’ve given him a decent burial, even though he wasn’t their president. No other head of state, in the whole of the rest of the world, has had the courage to come and pay his last respects. And once again I wonder if Ayatollah Khomeyni is perhaps the most powerful man on earth now, because all the other presidents are afraid of him.

  Roger Guy Folly said that the president of the Americans, called Richard Nixon, went to the Shah’s funeral, and criticised the other world presidents because they were too scared to turn up too. All that’s just a smokescreen. Words thrown to the winds. Why wait till someone dies to say that kind of thing? He irritates me, that Richard Nixon. He should have helped the Shah ages ago. He should have been criticising the presidents back then, instead of making a song and dance now. When people intervene when it’s too late, Uncle René says they’re ‘calling the doctor after someone’s died.’ Richard Nixon’s scolding isn’t going to bring the late Shah happiness in the next world. I’m sure when he meets God personally he’ll tell him the names of all the presidents who failed to face up to their responsibilities.

  I’ve got heaps of presents now. It’s as though I’ve caught up on everything I’ve never had, since I was born. If you saw them you’d think there must be lots of children living in our house, when in fact there aren’t. Bags of marbles. Plastic soldiers with complicated weapons that run off batteries. French castles that are really difficult to put together. Ambulances with paramedics dressed in red and orange. Footballs, rugby balls, hand balls. A Superman, and lots of other things besides that I sometimes forget all about, then when I find them again I think: When did my mum and dad give me that?

  There’s hardly any room left to put it all. Some days my parents don’t tell me they’ve brought me presents, they put them straight under my bed, and when I go and look for a football or a handball, to go and play with Lounès and some other boys from round here, I find them, and shout for joy, you’d think I’d just got my Primary School Certificate, which I haven’t. If I find the key to my mother’s belly, will they still go on giving me presents?

  My favourite toy is, of course, the car like Sebastien’s, which my parents bought me a few days ago. They said it wasn’t easy to find because Christmas was ages ago. They looked in all the shops in town, and there was just one car like it left, at Printania.

  On Sundays I go into our yard and press all the command buttons on my car. It turns left, it turns right, then does a U-turn, it goes straight on then comes right back to my feet. Then I press the red button and it stops, and the engine goes off.

  At first my parents wanted to buy two of these cars, but I said: ‘No, first wait till this one breaks down. Besides, if it does break down I’ll call Sebastien, he’ll know how to repair it, because he’s had a car like this for ages.’

  That made them laugh, but not me.

  When I play with my car, Maman Pauline and Papa Roger sometimes stand behind me, like they want to be children again, and play with me. They get down on their hands and knees and watch my car go all the way to the end of our yard and then come back to my feet. They cheer and I’m very happy that my car interests them so much. On the other hand, I know they are too big, really, to be down on their knees, crawling about in the dust. Grown-ups only get down on their knees to pray. So I think that if my father and mother are getting down on their knees it’s not because they want to play with me, it’s not because they like my car, it’s just because they want something from me. They want the key.

  They can see I’m happy playing, so they ask me: ‘Do you like your car, Michel?’

  I’m concentrating very hard because I don’t want my car to bang into the mango tree or to go outside, where someone could steal it, so I just nod, and say nothing.

  Then Papa Roger leans over to me: ‘Michel, you need to think about us too, now. You need to think about making us happy, because we love you, and we aren’t your enemies. We’ll never be your enemies. We’ve given you lots of presents already. Just think, none of the children in our quartier, not in this town, even, have got the things you’ve got. Now you think about us, make us happy. Do you understand?’

  I just act like I don’t understand, and go on playing. Until Maman Pauline and Papa Roger tell me directly that I’m the cause of their misery, I’ll act like I know nothing, and understand nothing, and am waiting for them to spell it out.

  This Sunday Lounès and I have been playing with my car on the big football pitch in the Savon quartier. We don’t even feel the late afternoon heat. He came and whistled for me outside the house and said: ‘We need to run your car in properly, or it will never go very fast. Let’s go to the football pitch in Savon, there’s no match there this Sunday.’

  The two of us are trying to see how fast my car can go and how many minutes, or hours it will run for. As soon as it sets off we start shouting as though it was a race between two cars when in fact there’s only one. That’s when I realise my parents were right to want to give me two cars. We could have had a real race between Lounès and me. I don’t want to ask Sebastien to have a race with me, because then he’ll know I’ve got the same toy as him and he’ll be jealous of me.

  The car’s already done several runs out and back. Suddenly we hear a strange noise as though I’d pressed on the stop button.

  I yell: ‘It’s broken down! We’ll have to take it to my cousin’s!’

  Then, remembering that I don’t want Sebastien to see my car, I press the start button again and again to make sure it really has broken down. It won’t move. Panicking, I pick it up and turn it over. Maybe it’s because of the dust. So I blow on it.

  ‘Don’t bother doing that, it’s not broken, the batteries are dead,’ says Lounès.

  So I run over to the little bag I’ve brought with me, put the car away, and get out the football: ‘It doesn’t matter if the car doesn’t work, let’s play football. We’ll play penalties, since there’s only two of
us, you go and stand in goal over there, and I’ll go first.’

  Lounès doesn’t move. He just stands there in the middle of the pitch like a pillar, looking at me.

  ‘Why don’t you go and stand in goal?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t want to, Michel. Here we are, just playing around, while your mother’s back there feeling miserable. That’s not right, is it? You need to think about her now. You need to find that key…’

  This really annoys me, though usually I never get annoyed with him, because I know that if we have a fight he’ll win, with his muscles, and his height, and his advanced katas that he learns in Maître John’s club.

  I go back and put my ball away and pick up my bag to leave the football ground. He runs after me: ‘Wait, Michel. I just want Maman Pauline to stop being unhappy, that’s all.’

  We walk fast now, not speaking. We get to their house first.

  ‘You coming in to say hi to my parents?’

  ‘No. Another day.’

  ‘Come on, you’ll be glad you did. Caroline’s there…’

  I don’t answer, just hold out my hand. He takes it, holds it for a while, and then says: ‘Off you go then, and don’t forget to change the batteries in your car, if that’s what you really care about.’

  These days my dreams take me far far away. I’m not just Michel these days, the little guy you see running round the quartier, or walking about in a khaki shirt, blue shorts and a pair of plastic sandals. I wear polyester trousers, linen jackets, white cotton shirts with a bow tie. I wear a hat, too, like the child in that film The Kid that Lounès has told me about, doing his imitation of Charlie Chaplin. But I’m older than the boy who gets left in a car by his mother and goes to live with Charlie Chaplin till his mother comes back rich and takes him back and thanks the adoptive father. Yes, I’m a bit bigger than him, I’m the way I’d like to be when I’m twenty.

  In my dreams I walk with my head held high, my shoulders back, people respect me, they greet me, they raise their hats when I walk by, and speak other languages, not just ours. I speak very correctly, you’d think I was born in whatever country I’m in, though it took me only seconds to get here, when in fact it would take a day, or maybe two, to get here by plane. Maybe I’m speaking Chinese because earlier in the day Lounès and I were talking about the Chinese who built the Congo-Malembé hospital in the Trois-Cents quartier. Maybe I’m speaking Arabic because I heard Monsieur Mutombo talking about Algeria. Maybe I’m speaking some Indian language because Lounès told me about an Indian film where there was a prince and princess being mean to a poor peasant.

  .....

  Every night it’s the same: before I close my eyes I think about far away countries. Once I’m asleep, I meet people who come from there and we get talking. They never ask where I’m from because in these dreams everyone is just the same, that’s how come I can speak any language on earth, when in fact it takes years to learn them. I fall asleep smiling because I know I can touch the sun and the moon and the stars. Life seems easy. But when I wake up I feel sad because I can’t speak a single word of any of the languages I knew really well in my dream. I’ve forgotten everything, everything’s been wiped out. It all seems so far, far away.

  ‘I’ve come to see Gorgeous Arthur.’

  I’m a bit jealous because I was hoping Caroline was going to say it was me she’d come to see. I wish I hadn’t told her about Arthur. Now she’ll think about him all the time, and she won’t look at me any more. But then I think, Arthur’s just a picture on the cover of one of my father’s books, and I calm down because a picture can’t take someone’s wife from them. And anyway, Arthur’s dead.

  We go inside, and I think I mustn’t show her the radio cassette player. But I’d really like to. If she sees that I’ll get lots of points over Mabélé. He’s never shown her anything like that, and he can only talk about things that don’t really exist.

  I come out of my parents’ bedroom with A Season in Hell. I’ve turned it over so Caroline can’t see Arthur’s picture.

  ‘Close your eyes.’

  She puts her hand over her face. Her fingers aren’t closed up properly, she can see what I’m going to show her.

  ‘You’re cheating. Cover your eyes with both hands!’

  She puts one hand on top of the other. Now she can’t see anything. I come up to her and whisper in her ear, ‘Now you can open your eyes, here’s Arthur!’

  At first she says nothing, then she snatches the book out of my hands. She touches Arthur’s face with the index finger of her right hand, she sniffs at the book as though it was something to eat. She runs another finger over Arthur’s hair and eyes. Finally, she opens the page I’ve marked and begins to read:

  I abominate all trades. Professionals and workers, serfs to a man! Despicable. The hand that guides the quill is a match for the hand that guides the plough – What a century for hands! – I’ll never get my hand in. And besides, there’s no end to ‘service’. The beggar’s honesty distresses me. Criminals disgust me – men without balls. Myself I’m intact; it’s all the same to me.

  ‘What’s “the hand that guides the quill”? What’s “the hand that guides the plough”?’ she asks.

  That startles me because she’s asking exactly the same questions I asked the first time I touched the book.

  She’s stopped reading now, she’s waiting for my answers. I can’t tell her I don’t know or she’ll laugh at me and think I don’t know Arthur very well.

  ‘Well, the “hand that guides the quill” is a hand with feathers, it’s the hand of a white sorcerer who dresses up as a bird at night and snatches children and takes them to hell for a season. That’s why it’s called A Season in Hell.’

  She takes another look at Arthur, as if she’s really frightened of him now. She puts the book down on the table: ‘And aren’t you scared the feathered hand is going to take you down to hell too?’

  ‘No. Arthur will protect me.’

  ‘What about “the hand that guides the plough”?’

  ‘It’s the hand that guides the plough in a field, the hand of a farmer, and my uncle says, you should never put the plough before the ox.’

  Can she tell I don’t actually know what it means? I speak calmly, without hesitation. And under her admiring gaze, I feel cool air entering my lungs. I know I’ve just scored a thousand points against Mabélé. That Mabélé’s of no account now. I’m so happy, I take the book from her, and go and put it back in my parents’ room.

  I come back into the living room with the radio cassette player. The cassette is already inside the machine. I press ‘play’. The singer with the moustache starts weeping about his tree. When the song gets to the bit about alter ego and saligaud, I start to explain to Caroline what it means but she goes: ‘Hush! Keep quiet!’

  She listens, swaying her head. The song’s finished now, I press on ‘RWD’ and it starts again.

  Caroline stands up: ‘Dance with me!’

  ‘No, you can’t dance to this sort of song, and…’

  ‘I want to dance with you to this song! Come on!’

  I’m standing facing her, but I leave a big gap between us.

  ‘Are you frightened of me? Don’t you know how to dance, or what? Come here, and hold me tight!’

  I hold her really tight, and we move slowly. She’s closed her eyes and it’s as though she’s not in the house with me any more, she’s flying, far far away, further than Egypt. I close my eyes too, so I can fly in my thoughts as well, and I think of the concert I saw at the Joli Soir with Maximilien. I see the woman dancing in the very short skirt, her backside blocking the hole in the wall, her long legs, her great big breasts almost hanging out. My heart’s beating really fast now. I put my head on Caroline’s chest like a baby that’s drunk up its bottle and falls fast asleep. Now, Caroline doesn’t have big breasts yet like the woman I saw dancing. I can feel some little breasts though. I imagine that in a few years they will grow as big as a pair of ripe papayas.

 
While we’re dancing and our two bodies are like just one body, she puts her mouth right next to my ear: ‘Michel, you’re still my husband, and I want to live in the big castle inside your heart.’

  Her words make my heart race. I’m floating like a kite in the sky. I’ve never felt this happy, not even eating meat and beans. I never want this moment to stop. I want it to last till the end of time. I feel Caroline’s hand touching my hair, her mouth close to my ear. I close my eyes again, till the moment I hear her say very quietly: ‘Michel, where is the key to Maman Pauline’s belly?’

  I open my eyes, I stop dancing and I pull away from her. I lunge towards the radio cassette player on the table, and I press on the button that says ‘STOP’. I can feel anger rising in me, I’m almost shaking with it, but Caroline stays very calm, and goes on: ‘I’m your wife, and I don’t love Mabélé. Do you understand that? But if you don’t give your mother that key we’ll get divorced again, and next time I’ll go and live with Mabélé for real.’

  She arranges her hair, looks at herself in the mirror and picks up her little bag.

  She’s already at the door when she says: ‘I’m speaking plainly to you because you’re my husband. Married couples shouldn’t have secrets. They’re meant to tell each other everything. And I’m afraid of you now, because if you can hide the key to your own mother’s belly, the first child we have is bound to close up my belly and hide the key somewhere like you did. And then I won’t have two children with you, like I want, I’ll be an unhappy woman like Maman Pauline. Don’t you see?’

  ‘Have you found the key?’

  ‘Hey, calm down, Michel, my boy…’

  ‘I want that key – today!’

  ‘To start with, you never say “I want”. It’s rude.’

  I sit down, like him, with my back against the cemetery wall.

  Little Pepper’s lit a cigarette, his face disappears behind the smoke. When he coughs it sounds like the engine of an old truck that won’t start.