Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty (18 page)

So when the TO arrives at Savon station, the high school kids are there, waiting to climb up. First of all they check out where the inspectors are. And as soon as the train starts up, they run and cling on to the doors. Within a few seconds there are at least a hundred of them up on top of the carriages. Lounès says it's called train-surfing. Once they're up there, they hang
on tight and duck when they go through a tunnel, like in
Fear Over the City
. The inspectors can't follow them up there because they're scared they'll fall and be killed. Besides, they're already too old, and old people can't train-surf like high school kids. The inspectors get the TO to stop, and call the police. But by the time the police arrive it's too late, the kids have already run off and are walking the rest of the way to school. Tomorrow they'll be back, and they'll train-surf again.

One day I asked Lounès what makes a good train-surfer.

‘First of all – you must be fearless. Jean-Paul Belmondo was never afraid, in any of his films. In
Fear Over the City
it wasn't him that was frightened, it was the city. Train-surfing's easy; you wait till the train sets off, you run for a bit, then you run a bit faster and you grab hold of the door. Then you climb on to the ladders between the trucks and you're up!'

Maman Pauline asked me to go and buy some sugar from Diadhou the Senegalese, who has one of the biggest shops on the Avenue of Independence.

I've only been walking for a few minutes, but it's so hot this Sunday afternoon that my feet are burning. I ignored my mother when she said I should put my sandals on. When you walk barefoot on the tarmac out of the shade it's like walking inside a wood burning stove. Sometimes I stop by the side of the road and shelter under a mango tree to cool my feet, but when I step back onto the tarmac my feet start burning again. So it's better to stay on the tarmac, then your feet get used to the heat and you won't even feel them. You just have to grit your teeth and try to forget you've got feet. It's a bit like when you're desperate for a pee and you're a long way from home. If all you think about is having a pee and how good it will feel when you've had one, the pee is quite likely to burst out suddenly while you're still in the street, and you'll wet your pants. But if you try to forget it for a moment, you can hold on for another few metres.

So I'm walking along and thinking about nice things, not my poor feet. I'm thinking of Caroline. I'm thinking of the red five-seater car. I'm thinking about the little white dog. I'm thinking about the radio cassette player. I'm thinking about the book of Arthur's poems and his angel face. And it works.

Now I'm outside Diadhou's shop. And who do I see inside? Oh
no, I don't believe it! I want to turn round and go home. It's Mabélé inside the shop, and he's waiting while Diadhou butters his slice of bread. It's the first time I've seen him close up. My heart falls into my stomach. I think: So when you're frightened it's like being in love, your heart falls into your stomach.

Mabélé turns round and sees me too. Now what do I do? I've no idea. I go up to the counter and stand behind him. I keep about a metre's distance between us. If he throws a punch at me, it won't reach me, I'll just step back a few centimetres.

Mabélé acts like he hasn't seen me. He watches while the Senegalese goes on buttering his bread. After a while Diadhou hands him his bread, he pays and turns round to leave the shop. He walks past me, shoulders me out of the way and says quietly, ‘Asshole, I'll wait for you outside. Let's see who's tougher, you or me. And when I've smashed your face in, Caroline won't even look at you again!'

He leaves the shop. I can see him outside, gobbling up his bread. I'm so frightened I forget what I'm doing here.

‘What do you want, Michel?'

I don't answer, just look out at the road. Diadhou asks me again, ‘What do you want? Have you got a problem outside, or what?'

The Senegalese has just noticed Mabélé outside waving his fist, and can see he's waiting to beat me up.

Diadhou shouts from behind his counter, ‘Hey, you out there! You get away from my shop. I don't want fighting outside my shop. I don't suppose your parents are paying for my license, are they?'

Mabélé's gone, and I remember now that I've come to buy some sugar for my mother. I pay, and tiptoe towards the door. I stand there looking up and down the street. I sense Mabélé's
hiding somewhere. I can't see anyone. Perhaps he's behind a tree or behind the cars parked on the avenue.

I get ready, counting in my head, ONE, TWO, THREE! Then I shoot off like a rocket.

I don't look over my shoulder, I just run, run, run. I run so fast that when I get back to our lot I go running past it and fall into the yard of the neighbour, Monsieur Vinou, the old soak without a pistol, unlike Paul Verlaine. He shouts abuse at me, calls me a thief, little gangster etc. I jump over the barbed wire between the two lots, and I'm home, drenched in sweat.

I take a look out of the window: Mabélé is standing outside our house. This time he shakes his clenched fist three times in the air and leaves. I think: When he does that it means he'll get me next time, next time I won't escape like I did today.

I'm cross with the Mexicans. They didn't want the Shah back in their country after his operation in America, so now the poor ex-president is in Panama. It's not right.

Papa Roger can't tell us where Panama is. He just says it's close to Costa Rica and Colombia – a country which plays football as well as Mexico, but hasn't hosted the World Cup yet like Mexico. Still, it's good that Panama have welcomed the Shah. He must be very tired and he needs rest.

My joy is short-lived, though. Because my father also tells us that the Panamanians have been influenced by the Ayatollah Khomeyni and want to send the Shah back to Iran. When I heard this I felt like roaring with rage, but I made myself calm down because Maman Pauline gave me a cross look. She thinks I encourage my father in this business of the Shah looking for a country to take him in.

The radio's playing up today. Sometimes the sound cuts out for a few minutes at a time. My father thinks it's the government doing that to prevent us being informed about what's going on in the world and make sure we go on believing the immortal Marien Ngouabi was assassinated by Imperialism and its local lackeys. Why is the government so determined to talk about this assassination as though it hadn't been involved in the death of our Immortal itself?

The sound's come back on the radio, and I hear the
American journalist say a very complicated word I've never heard before:
extradition
. It's very hard to pronounce, you have to pretend you're about to sneeze then clear your throat. I look at my father, he's leaning towards me, he says that
extradition
is when you capture someone in one country and send him back to where he came from so he can be tried. Lots of countries all over the world have signed an agreement to catch people they're looking for like the Shah and send them back to their country of origin for trial.

Papa Roger is furious: ‘It's shocking that Panama are sending the Shah back to Iran! You never know what might happen there. Thankfully the Egyptian president has asked him to come back to Egypt, where he'll be safe! But for the Shah it's back to square one. What choice does he have? He has to go back to Egypt! His cancer is getting worse all the time. I'm sure they deliberately messed up the operation in the States. I hope at least he won't die in Egypt like an abandoned dog.'

Papa Roger and Maman Pauline are out, so I can secretly go and get the book by the young man with the face of an angel. It's almost like he smiles at me slightly more each day, as though he's pleased to see me. I've left him on his own for too long. When I look at his photo it's like meeting up with a friend. I'd like to tell him all about Mabélé, who wanted to smash my face in the other day, even though he's the one who's pinched my girl and talks to her about that annoying Marcel Pagnol guy and his castles.

I'd like to talk to him about Lounès too, how we're always together, he's my friend, we love each other like brothers, we tell each other everything, but I'm not going to tell Lounès that Mabélé nearly beat me up, or he'll try and get back at him with his advanced katas that Maître John teaches him. I just don't like fighting, that's why I'm not going to go to Lounès' karate club with him.

Arthur doesn't speak, he just goes on smiling at me. What do I know about him, apart from the thing about the ‘hand that guides the quill' and the ‘hand that guides the plough'? Who is he?

They do actually tell you more about him at the beginning of the book in a part called the ‘Introduction'. It says there that Arthur came to our continent, and traded in ivory, gold and coffee. That means he liked trading, like Maman Pauline and Madame Mutombo. It says that sometimes he liked to party
with beautiful African women. Who wouldn't like partying with beautiful African women? I don't quite understand why they make out he was really bored when he was travelling when in fact he was partying with beautiful African women. A bit further on I find out that Arthur made money – perhaps even a lot of money – with his business and that he deposited this money in a bank in Egypt.

Egypt? This piece of information startles me because that's where the Shah is now, suffering from cancer. It's odd to go and hide your money in a place where people who have been driven out of their own country have gone for a rest, to help them get over the cancer of extradition.

Oh no, I can't imagine Arthur selling arms like they say he did in this book. Arms are for killing people, for waging world war. The person who sells arms is as guilty as the person who uses them. Why was he selling arms when he himself had almost been killed by his friend who only missed because he was so drunk?

Still, that's not the thing that really bothers me. What makes me really sad is when I discover that he was ill and in the end they had to cut his leg off, or it would have rotted. They just went chop! And took it off. After that he had a worse limp than Monsieur Mutombo. After that, instead of a leg he had a stump of wood. After that he got really sick, towards the end of his all too short life. That makes me think of the Shah, who's sick with cancer. Arthur had cancer, like the Shah, and Arthur's cancer ate up his leg so badly that it came all the way up to his right arm. Cancer's always like that, it gets worse and worse, and ends up slowly killing you. That's what Papa Roger said when he was talking about the Shah, not about Arthur; I'm sure
he doesn't know the young man with the face of an angel had the same illness as the Shah. He can't know that yet, he'll only know when he's retired and opens the pages of this book I'm holding now.

Further on still I read that Arthur never stayed long in one place. He was always on the move. He wasn't like the Shah, who couldn't find a country that would have him. He did it for the adventure. He loved it. The reason the Shah moves about is so the Ayatollah Khomeyni doesn't catch up with him. But Arthur moved about so his past wouldn't catch up with him. Even when he was dying in France, he said to his sister that he'd like to go off exploring to Egypt. Egypt again! I begin to wonder about this country with all those pyramids and mummies. Is Egypt the best place to die, perhaps? Even so, I don't understand Arthur's behaviour: you get back home to France, and then instead of dying there, you want to go back to Egypt! Fortunately he did die in France. And was buried there. In his native land. If the Shah dies he might not be able to be buried in Iran. That's why I pray for him, and not for Arthur, who rests in peace, in his native land.

Last year, when the teacher gave me my school report, I said to myself: ‘If I show it to Papa Roger, he'll tell Maman Pauline what's going on, they'll see that the teacher has written things about my behaviour, that I behaved badly, and then they'll shout at me, like two people beating the same drum, on and on.'

I put the report in a plastic bag and hid it in an abandoned house not far from where we live. No one goes there, except rats and dogs. Because of them I decided to dig a hole and bury the report. Then I went back home, like a nice good boy who's come top of the class. Every day I was terrified they'd ask me: Michel, where's your report?

The first week, Papa Roger was worried because he hadn't seen my report, though my brothers and sisters at Maman Martine's had all shown him theirs. I told my father that the teacher hadn't finished filling them in yet. The second week, I said the same thing. The third week, I lied and said everyone else had had their reports but they'd forgotten mine.

Papa Roger was not pleased.

‘I shall go and tell your teacher that's no way to treat my son!'

And off he went to the school. He didn't go to work that morning, he considered it was too serious a matter.

We were in class when I saw my father peering through the window. The teacher went out to see him, they stood outside
talking for a few minutes. Then the teacher came back into the classroom and pointed his finger at me.

‘Michel, stand up!'

I stood up, while my classmates behind me all murmured, ‘It's a serious matter! A serious matter! A serious matter!'

As I was looking at the floor, the teacher lifted my head up.

‘Now then, Michel, just repeat what you said to your father! Is it not the case that I gave you your report over three weeks ago?'

I lowered my head again.

‘Repeat what you said to your father!'

My classmates, who'd heard the teacher's voice, jostled each other at the window to see what was happening.

This time it was Papa Roger who lifted my head up.

‘Right let's go. I want to see this report today! Go and get your school bag!'