The stranger’s beginning to look a little weepy, as though on the verge of tears. He looks at the bottle for a moment, then continues:
‘Mr Writer-man, you have no idea what went on in this God-awful country. It was dreadful! The newspapers didn’t tell the truth, because the newspapers are written by – who? By spies, by which I mean, the French! When did the French ever tell the truth? They always lie! I saw the war with my own eyes, I was there, I was in the group of refugees. Sometimes the women gave birth in the bush because, between you and me, babies still get born even when there’s oil and war in a country. The worst of it was, people went on making love even when people were falling like flies in the war. I expect you’ll be wondering: why didn’t they wait for the end of the war, to make love? Oh no, if you waited for the end of the war, people would forget how to make love, by the time the whole dirty war ended we’d be making love with animals! Nothing new there, though: throughout the history of the world, people have made love even in times of cholera…’
The waitress places our food on the table, just as my stomach starts to rumble. I’m hardly listening to my stranger now, just gobbling up my spicy dish, with my face just a few centimetres from my plate.
He peers after the two prostitutes who are just passing our table again:
‘New girls, you can tell! The one with the lighter skin’s not bad, eh? Look how she walks, like a freshwater fish!’
I don’t react, and he suddenly adopts an affected voice, almost as though he’s bragging:
‘Oh, I was a refugee too, you know. Things got worse and worse for us, me and the rest of them, out in the bush. One day we heard three helicopters approaching. The rumour went round that they were from the international community. In fact they were helicopters from the French company that was extracting our oil. We thought they must be coming at last to get us out of this dreadful situation. So we came out of hiding like mice when they’ve just realised the cat who’s been terrorising them actually has no claws and no teeth. We started shouting for joy. Dancing. Cheering. Kissing each other. We shouted: “Long live France! Long live France! Long live France!” Some people were so excited they shouted, like idiots: “Long live America! Long live America! Long live America!” Perhaps because the Americans are the ones who liberate people. Even the French, didn’t the Americans liberate them during the Second World War? Actually we didn’t give a damn if it was the French or the Americans, we were just happy someone had come to liberate us. We thought: at last, we’ll be able to make love in proper beds, children will get born on the maternity wards, not beside the river, as they have up till now. War is over! Long live peace! And the helicopters were coming towards us, like this…’
He imitates the flight of a helicopter with his arms, and the boss stares at us from behind the bar. My stranger realises this, and lowers his voice:
‘Mr Writer-man, believe me, the helicopters were hovering right over our heads now, only a few metres away. We thought: they’re going to throw us sacks of rice and sugar, bread and meat, which is what usually happens. We were all jostling to be first to lunge at the food. The oldest said we should let the women and children go first. And d’you know what happened? We saw the doors of the helicopters open, and it was the Angolans inside. Not the French! Not the Americans! The Angolans aimed their guns at us and opened fire, just like that! Even the birds were flying up in all directions, they couldn’t work out what the hell was going on either! All you could hear was gunfire, everywhere. People were falling, getting back on their feet, running, plunging into the river, sinking into the swamp. The soldiers chucked tear bombs at us, they mowed us down with machine guns. And the oldest among the refugees were shouting: “Take cover! It’s an ambush!”’
The customers sitting behind us heard him shouting ‘Take cover! It’s an ambush!’, but the stranger carried on regardless, caught up in his own tale:
‘Oh yes, I was a lucky bastard, I was. I ran like the devil. I never once looked back. I went into a cave and stayed there for days, like in prehistoric times. The country was under the control of the president from the north, thanks to his Angolan allies. Which meant the war was over, since now the old president was back in power, having kicked out the one the people had elected. They told us to come out of our caves, because it was a time for national unity and the president from the north was there for the whole country, not just for the northerners. Gradually people began to leave the bush and return to their homes. When I got back home, my beard was so long it touched the floor. When I walked I looked like a zombie who had lost his way back to his tomb. I had almost totally lost my bearings, because there are no streets or avenues in the forest, like here. You can’t say: “go straight on then take the next street you come to”, oh no! In the forest you just go past trees, mountains and streams that could lead anywhere, and you sleep wherever you’re sure there are no wild animals or Pygmy cannibals…’
Our neighbours at the table behind are more and more shocked. They’ve heard every word the man’s said. They get up to leave. The war hero stops for a moment as though worried they might come and have it out with him, they might be northerners.
‘Liar! Found another sucker to listen to you, have you?’ one of them yells, shaking his fist at the stranger.
And turning to me, the same customer says:
‘Monsieur, make sure this little mythomaniac pays for his own meal. He’s like the fox in La Fontaine’s fable: he lives off whoever listens to him! He’s done it with others, he’ll do it with you! He’ll tell you he was a refugee, he was in the bush, but did anyone actually see him there? He’s just a jerk, taking advantage of people who don’t know him! He’s never been in a civil war, except maybe in his own sick head!’
I expect the stranger to come back with an aggressive answer, but he just sits there, speechless, his chin sunk into his chest while the group walks past our table and out of the restaurant.
The stranger empties his glass straight off, then continues:
‘Did you see the way that northerner talks to me, because I’m a southerner? So he thinks I wasn’t in the war, does he? Great! And he thinks I can’t pay my own bill? Honestly! I’m going to pay it, just to show you what hypocrites these northerners are, how they go round stirring up trouble! They’re all the same! Just because they’re in power, they expect us all to keep silent! Well, I won’t be silenced, I will go on speaking the truth till the whole world knows what’s going on in this country! They killed us, all us lari people, there was a genocide, everywhere around the region of Pool!’
Realising I haven’t said a word up till now, he asks:
‘Anyway, what are you doing here, in this country that’s been ruined by the northerners?’
‘Doing some book events, seeing my family, writing…’
‘Hold on, hold on a minute, I should have asked you this first, because it really matters; are you from the north or the south?’
‘Why does it matter?’
‘OK, I’ll put it differently; did President Sassou Nguesso pay your ticket and put you up here?’
‘You said you wouldn’t name names!’
‘I don’t care! Answer my question, Mr Writer: did Sassou invite you?’
‘No, the French did, and…’
‘Same thing! What you don’t realise is, the president gave money to the French, and they used the money to pay for your visit! I know everything! And I’m certain you’re one of the Sassou clan!’
‘I admire you for your certainty, but that’s a pretty hasty assumption you’re making there!’
‘What do you mean, “hasty assumption”? I know everything! Were you in the war, then, like I was? Where were you when we were dying like cowboys? I was out there in the bush, and Sassou Nguesso was shooting at us with his Angolan and his French friends!’
He knows if he carries on like this I will get up and leave. He tones it down:
‘I apologise, my dear writer, I do tend to fly off the handle, but that’s all becau
se of the war… What do I care, in the end, if you’re from the north or the south? What I really wanted to tell you was, I eventually came out of the bush because the war was finished and the northerners were back in power. The country seemed calm again. We started to live again. We went to bars, to the sea, wherever. Bit by bit we forgot what had happened to us. Five years later, we finally had some elections, and the northern president, the one with support from the French and the Angolans, got licked! We jumped for joy. He practically got hounded out of the country and he went off to live in exile, in France. Now our leader’s a southerner. And since he was angry with the French for supporting the northerner, he let the Americans exploit our oil. And the French didn’t like that, because after all, they’re our colonisers! So every day the French went to visit the ex-president from the north in his residence in Paris. They promised him they’d make sure he got back into power. But we couldn’t see how a northerner could become president of our country again. Our country was crawling with Americans. They tried to teach us to speak English, but that didn’t work because the French passed on their terrible accent to us during colonial rule. We told the Americans they could do what they liked with our oil, we weren’t going to learn their weird English, where you talk through your nose, like you’ve got flu. They didn’t care, they signed contracts with the president from the south, and he signed away, and didn’t realise he was actually selling them all the oil we already had, and any we might find in the future.’
Five people in military uniform come in and sit at the back. The stranger looks at them for a few seconds. He lowers his voice, knowing that if he talks loudly now we’ll both end up in prison.
‘Five years later we had new elections. The president from the south said he would stand a second time. But the ex-president from the north quickly came back from France to stand in the election too, with the support of the French. Unfortunately the elections never took place. The southern president claimed that the conditions for proceeding to the vote had not been met, and overran his mandate. The ex-president from the north said elections must be held. And that’s how we got into a second civil war, which the president from the south lost, and that’s how the northerners come to be back in power…’
I finished eating a while ago, and my head is buzzing with stories of civil war and my host’s hate-filled abuse of his sworn enemies: the northerners. It’s hard to get a word in, the stranger is so sure he knows everything, all conversation has to revolve entirely round him. My bottle of beer is still full.
‘Aren’t you drinking your beer?’
‘I won’t, thanks.’
He calls for the waitress and hands her the bottle.
‘Keep it cold, I’ll drink it myself tomorrow!’
He looks at his watch and exclaims:
‘Time flies! I’m sorry, I have to go to a mass at La Source du Salut in the Fouks district. Do you want to come with me? That’s where I pick girls up, at mass! You pretend to pray, and you go game-hunting while no one’s looking! Come with me!’
‘No thanks, I have to go and rest, I’ve got a busy day tomorrow, at my old lycée…’
He asks for the bill, and the waitress quickly brings it over. He fumbles in the inside pockets of his jacket, then of his trousers:
‘Shit! My wallet! Someone’s stolen my wallet! It’s those northerners, they stole it!’
‘But they came nowhere near us…’
‘I know these northerners, they can rob you long distance! Listen, brother, can you pay today, and I’ll buy you lunch later in the week?’
The waitress and the boss are standing behind the bar, and they snigger when they see me take out the money and place it on the table.
I leave the restaurant while the stranger, following behind, whispers:
‘Come by tomorrow, I’ll be here. Did you see those two prostitutes earlier? I’ll book them for both of us. You can have the one with the lighter skin, I don’t mind taking the dark one, it’s OK. I’ll pay, don’t worry…’
Dead poets society
Towards the end of the morning I’m standing outside the lycée where I spent three years of secondary school from 1981 to 1984. Of the visits I had lined up during this stay, this one was underlined in red in my notebook, along with my mother’s house and the Cinema Rex. Probably because in my mind there was an indissoluble link between these three places. I went to my mother’s house several times, for the sake of my roots and members of my family. I wanted to see the Cinema Rex – or what remained of it – for the collective fantasy we experienced there, the roar of the crowd, which still resonates in me.
I pass through the gates to the lycée, hoping to relive the moment when my spirit ventured far from our native land, in search of universal knowledge, through world history, the geography of far-flung countries, the convoluted grammar of mathematics, the phenomena of the natural sciences and the exploration of the imagination via literature.
My heart feels weighed down by a surge of inconsolable apprehension, exactly the feeling I had all those years ago when I turned my back on collège, on short trousers and plastic sandals, and first set foot in this place, dressed in a beige shirt and trousers, the school uniform of the day, with proper town shoes which my mother had polished the night before, before explaining how I should walk to avoid wearing them out too soon, since they had to last the whole of this school year and, perhaps, into the next.
I remember how I felt, in this lycée, as though I had been parachuted into a different world, like a nervous little fledgling, lost among other species of flying creatures whose wings are already properly formed. I generally took shelter under the shade of the coconut trees in the quadrangle, while waiting for the bell to ring for the end of break.
In class, for the first few weeks, convinced that I wasn’t as good as my classmates, I would go and sit at the back of the room, until one day the teacher of chemistry – a subject I dreaded – told me to go and sit in the front row because, he said, being tall, I could help him by holding up the test tubes to show the others when we were doing practical work. I had just turned sixteen and, unlike some other pupils of my age, who were starting to gang up on their parents, my own adolescent crisis expressed itself in a voice which whispered that lycée would prise me away from my family, because it was at lycée that they started to pick out the pupils who would leave one day, to go far from their country, never to return. This feeling was heightened by the presence of the Atlantic Ocean just behind the school campus, and the wind blowing in the coconut trees in the quadrangle. The constant presence of the sea, of Polish seamen with their crude tattoos, the Beninese fishermen, excited by a good catch, and the albatrosses startled by the height of the waves and the ships at anchor in the port with their worn-out sails gradually drew me away from the town. Deep down I dreamed of leaving, though I didn’t know where, or how, or when. I wanted to be a loner in a crowd, invisible, when in fact I stood head and shoulders above my classmates, so that I got teased for having been kept behind a year, when in fact I was one of the youngest.
Sometimes, to get away from the gibes, I would go down to the seashore for an hour, before lessons, and wander along the shore, barefoot. After walking for a few minutes, I’d turn round and go back, trying to place my feet in the footprints I had left on the way. I knew that the pupils who came by later would panic at the idea that a sea monster, half man, half beast, was wandering about, with feet that had toes at front and back, to shake off anyone minded to track him. They would all run off screaming at the tops of their voices, while I sat there in my corner, stifling hysterical laughter…
Written over the highest building in the school campus is an inscription that surprises me: Lycée Victor-Augagneur. Even though my memories are muddled with the emotion of being back here twenty-eight years on, I’m still sure it wasn’t called that back when I was here. So the town’s very first lycée has reverted to the name it had in the 1950s, in honour of Jean-Victor Augagneur, a doctor by training, mayor and e
lected member for Lyon, then governor of Madagascar, who went on to occupy various ministerial posts in the Third French Republic, before being appointed governor general of French Equatorial Africa (FEA) in 1919. The name of this man, clearly visible on the main building, looks out over the Atlantic Ocean. How many passers-by notice it, and bother to ask themselves who this individual might have been? For many, the building has been here all their lives, maybe even with these capital letters cemented up high on its façade. I allow myself to wonder what lies behind the ‘exhumation’ of this French colonel whose name is presumably virtually unknown in his own country, whatever positions he may have held. Admittedly the city of Lyon paid him homage in the 1930s by calling a road not far from the general hospital, in the 3rd arrondissement, after him, but that wouldn’t account for his name being as widely known as someone like Jules Ferry, that iconic figure in the creation of mandatory, secular state education, as well as an ardent defender of French colonisation.
Here he stands, and here he’ll stay, Victor Augagneur, rescued from purgatory without fanfare or drum roll, by the people of Pointe-Noire. Here, as elsewhere in this country, the political authorities seem to believe that we can only reclaim our past – and thereby our dignity as a nation which has been independent since 15 August 1960 – by reinstating things from the past. Regardless of what their symbolic weight might be. Victor Augagneur has thus been added to the list of well-known French people who have survived the nationalist policy of our country. In Brazzaville we have, among others, la Case de Gaulle, and various streets named in honour of French soldiers and politicians: Jean Bart, François Joseph Amédée Lamy, Henri Moll, Félix Éboué, Jules Grévy, etc. The ‘Marchand’ stadium is dedicated to Jean-Baptiste Marchand, former officer of the Senegalese riflemen, head of the exploratory expedition known as ‘Mission Congo-Nile’, the aim of which was to reach the Nile ahead of the British and set up a new protectorate in the south of Egypt. The expedition failed when confronted with the overwhelming strength of the British army. And lastly, in Pointe-Noire, the Adolphe-Sicé hospital, where my cousin Bienvenüe is right now, owes its name to a military doctor, Marie Eugène Adolphe Sicé, a descendant of a governor of the colonies, and who, after having served in the colonial infantry, went to French Equatorial Africa, where, from 1927, he was director of the Pasteur Institute in Brazzaville.
The Lights of Pointe-Noire Page 14
