The Lights of Pointe-Noire Read online

His real name is Alphonse Bikindou, but we call him by his nickname, though no one knows what it means or where it comes from: Grand Poupy.

  I meet him this afternoon at my mother’s place and it seems his face has not a wrinkle, and that he’ll stay exactly as I’ve always known him till the day he dies: quite small, a prominent forehead, narrow eyes sparkling with intelligence and cunning. He now has a thin moustache, and to take myself back to when I was a kid, only slightly younger than him, I try to ignore his facial hair, which puts a barrier between us. He is my mother’s cousin, and moved to Pointe-Noire from the country in the late 1970s, to live with us and go to the lycée. The very first day I saw him, I was captivated by his deep voice and his way of articulating almost every word separately. I started secondary school just as he started at the lycée, and we’d get up in the morning and put on our school uniforms, him all in khaki, with long trousers, me in a sky-blue shirt and dark blue shorts, and a red ‘pioneers of the Congolese Revolution’ kerchief round my neck. I always lagged behind him, and every now and then he would turn round, so I’d have to hurry to catch him up. I could never manage it, his little legs had a kind of almost mechanical strength despite the way the road seemed to get steeper and steeper, so that we would overtake other pupils sitting exhausted by the wayside. A bit farther on, at the junction of the Avenue Jean-Felix-Tchicaya and the rue Jacques-Opangault, where we went our separate ways, he would act the big brother – he was no longer a minor – and tell me to mind the traffic and hand me a twenty-five CFA franc coin:

  ‘Buy yourself some fritters and mash at break. Watch the big kids don’t steal your money.’

  As he walked off, I’d stand and watch him for a moment, making his way down to the far end of the avenue to where the Karl Marx lycée stood. After a few minutes he was no more than a tiny speck, absorbed into the crowd of students. Then off I went to the Trois Glorieuses secondary school. I arrived just in time for the raising of the flag in the schoolyard, when we all sang the national anthem, which we were made to learn by heart:

  Arise, brave country,

  Who, in three glorious days,

  Seized the flag and raised it

  for a Congo, new and free

  That never more will stumble

  And no more be afraid.

  Our chains we have burst open,

  Now freely we will work

  We are one sovereign nation.

  If my foes do slay me,

  Before my hour has come,

  Brave comrade, take my gun;

  And if a bullet hits my heart

  Our sisters all will fearless rise,

  Hills, river, too, with all their might

  Will repel the invader.

  Today our land is born anew,

  And all in value equal,

  No leader but the people,

  Who alone has chosen

  To stand in dignity.

  Grand Poupy favoured white shirts and terylene trousers, which he ironed energetically every weekend. He cut his own hair, in the style of the Afro-American actors of the 1970s, whose posters we fought over on the Avenue of Independence, where they were laid out for sale on the ground outside the Rex, the Duo and the Roy.

  The layout of the interior of our three-room house changed with the arrival of my mother’s cousin. By now it was a really tight squeeze, with my aunts Sabine Bouanga and N’Soni in one room, and my parents in the other. Any other member of the family who happened to turn up had to find a corner in the living room to lay down a mat, without getting too close to where Uncle Mompéro had set up his bed and would not be moved. Grand Poupy’s arrival would upset my routine. I no longer slept with my uncle, and chose instead to share the mat with the latest arrival, listen to him relate amorous escapades, which of course always ended with victory for him and the surrender of his lady-love, as long as Uncle Mompéro didn’t complain and tell us to shut up. Grand Poupy would lower his voice, while my uncle ranted from his bed:

  ‘I can hear you, Poupy, you’re keeping me awake! If you don’t shut up I’ll wake up the boy’s mother and you can explain yourself to her! Ever since you got here you’ve been filling his head with your lies! Has anyone ever seen these girls you’re always boasting about?’

  At this point Grand Poupy would whisper to me:

  ‘Let’s go to sleep, I’ll tell you the rest tomorrow. Uncle Mompéro doesn’t know Grand Poupy, ladies’ man extraordinaire!’

  On days when there was no school, he would suggest we take a walk in the neighbourhood:

  ‘I’ll show you how to approach a girl, just watch what I do! As soon as I see a girl, I’ll go up and talk to her. There’s one sign that’s always a giveaway: if I put my hand on her right shoulder and she doesn’t remove it, things are looking good…’

  We were standing at an intersection about two hundred yards from the house, a strategic spot from which we could see most of the girls in the Vongou neighbourhood pass by. They were on their way to market, some dressed in multicoloured pagnes, others in tight-fitting trousers, with tops that bordered on indecent. If my mother’s cousin liked the look of one of them, he would turn up the collar of his shirt, smooth his Afro with the palm of his hand, and quickly spray some perfume under his armpits, behind his ears and even inside his mouth:

  ‘Don’t move, I’m coming back!’

  He’d set off after the girl, imitating almost to the point of caricature the manner of Aldo Maccione, who he’d seen in L’Aventure c’est l’aventure.

  I watched from a distance as Grand Poupy hitched up his trousers, smiling his broadest smile and finally placing his hand on the girl’s right shoulder. He would turn back to me and wink. Seeing his conquest didn’t shake off his hand, I decided Grand Poupy must be right, he was an ace, and his technique was infallible. What would have happened if the young lady had removed his hand? I had complete faith in his ability to come up with a response. He’d probably already encountered more difficult cases, and knew instinctively which girls he could target and be sure of success. So, I decided, he wouldn’t risk it if he thought there was a chance he’d be rejected. Why, for instance, did he tend to go for the ugly ones, when a real beauty might be passing just a few centimetres away, flashing us her most provocative smile? If I ventured to question him on this matter, he would say, with an air of great experience:

  ‘A smile isn’t enough, you have to wait till she touches her hair, and especially till she looks down at the ground. Did she do that, the beauty who went by a couple of minutes ago?’

  ‘No…’

  ‘Well then, that’s why I didn’t waste my energy! I’m telling you, the pretty ones are only interested in the boys who don’t notice them. They want to be seen, that’s what they’re aiming for. And another thing, if you meet two girls together, an ugly one with a pretty one, I mean, start with the ugly one, and the pretty one will start flirting with you the next day, just as a challenge to the other one. I call it the billiard technique: to get to a ball and pocket it you need to hit another one, and fortunately it’s possible to hit two birds with one stone, because both balls could end up in the same pocket, or in two different holes! But that takes experience, and you’re still a beginner…’

  ‘And if both of them are pretty, which ball do you aim for?’

  ‘Impossible! There’ll always be one prettier than the other, there’s no such thing as a draw in beauty, or in ugliness either!’

  Sometimes, when he wasn’t looking, I’d open the notebook where he wrote down the girls’ names, with some of them marked ‘to simmer’.

  Intrigued, I plunged in one evening:

  ‘So what does it mean, to simmer?’

  Grand Poupy gave a start, and his face expressed grave disappointment:

  ‘So, how long have you been looking through my private things?’

  He had raised his voice, and just as I began to feel tears pricking my eyes, he spoke more softly, to console me:

  ‘No point snivelling now… What’s done is do
ne. Don’t do it again. I’ll tell you what “leave to simmer” means…’

  He took out the notebook from his satchel and opened it:

  ‘On the left-hand page I write out the names of the girls I’ve already been out with, and the right-hand page is for the ones I’m still working on. Some of them are the tricky ones I’ve already tried it with, I’ve kissed them on the lips, but they put on an act, they don’t want me to go any farther. So I pretend I’m not interested in them, like I haven’t got time for them, I let them simmer, like a dish you cook over a low heat in a pot. It pays off eventually because in the end those are the girls that come running after me! And I’m back in charge!’

  I wasn’t honest with my mother’s cousin, I continued to read his notebook without him knowing. I discovered it wasn’t just the names of his sweethearts he wrote down. He also recorded his memories of Sibiti, the place he came from. I remember long passages without a single crossing out, in which he described the adventures of a certain Chelos, to whom the writing was addressed. They all began the same way:

  ‘My dear, true friend, dear Chelos, As the moon is my witness, I am sending you another story from my little backwater of Sibiti…’

  I wondered whether this Chelos person really existed or was just a product of his mischievous imagination. Grand Poupy wrote at night, when everyone else was asleep. He lit a candle, opened a school exercise book, took a ballpoint pen and covered the empty pages with black ink at breathtaking speed. The stories were mostly bawdy, particularly the one about a woman called Massika, and her lover, Bosco. Massika had assured Bosco that her husband was away at a funeral in a neighbouring village. He wouldn’t be back till the end of the morning of the following day. So, that evening, Bosco turned up and sat down to eat with Massika. The two love pigeons got drunk on palm wine and laughed together like hyenas. In the middle of the night they disappeared into the bedroom and began making love when suddenly there was a loud knocking at the door. Massika couldn’t think who it might be at that hour of the night. She must either open the door or do nothing and wait for the night visitor to go away. But he knocked louder and louder, and began shouting Massika’s name, till she realised it must be her man standing out there.

  ‘Come and open the door, I can’t find my key!’

  ‘I thought you went to the wake?’

  ‘I’ll explain later, first open the door.’

  Bosco just had time to slip under the bed as the door opened and the man of the house put down his bag in the main room. He complained his feet were sore, and asked his wife to go and boil some water for him. When she came back and set a steaming bucket down before her husband he picked it up without a word, slipped into the bedroom with it and emptied it out under the bed. Bosco, who was stark naked, burst out of his hiding place, pushed past the husband, got as far as the main room and plunged out of the front door, followed by the adulterous wife. The two vanished in the darkness while in the distance you could hear the barking of dogs, who must have been having a laugh at their expense, two humans, dressed like Adam and Eve…

  The truth was, Grand Poupy dreamed of being a writer…

  Here’s Grand Poupy now. We embrace. Behind him I see a woman whose face is vaguely familiar. I hold out my hand to her tentatively, and my mother’s cousin looks almost shocked:

  ‘You’re going to shake her hand? Won’t you kiss her? Why so formal? Don’t you recognise her?’

  I take another look. The woman smiles at me. I can see in her face, she’s a bit disappointed. She’s come to my mother’s plot, where Grand Poupy and I have arranged to meet, specially to see me. It was actually my mother’s cousin who insisted she come today because she hadn’t been able to make it to the family reunion, she was babysitting.

  ‘Go on, kiss her, it’s Alphonsine!’

  I start at the name. Memories flood back, and Grand Poupy’s teasing smile and Alphonsine’s now beaming face make me realise how stupid I’ve been. I can see her now as she was back then, braiding my mother’s hair. I was too shy to come out of this hut, because I was in love with her. Grand Poupy bombarded me with advice, told me just to jump in and swim, wrote out what I had to say to her when we met. I was so paralysed by Alphonsine, face to face with her, I went to pieces, and started to stammer. She was troubled, too, and would run off when I finally managed to put Grand Poupy’s tips into practice, placing my hand on her shoulder. I sent her poems, letters which he read and corrected, and which even so received no reply. In this passionate, one-way correspondence I described her eyes, shimmering, yet moist, her fair skin, like clay fashioned by an archangel who had leaned over her cradle without her parents knowing. These letters were delivered personally by my mother’s cousin. At least, that’s what he swore when got back, with a smile on his lips, jeering at my cowardice. Alphonsine was well ready for me, he claimed, I had better hurry up or some scoundrel would come and put a spoke in the wheels.

  ‘You’ll have only yourself to blame!’ he warned.

  I advanced at a tortoise-like pace in this relationship, to which I attributed all my adolescent angst. As far as I recall I never managed to be with Alphonsine and say anything coherent for more than about ten minutes. In my late teens I was living in Brazzaville and she was back in Pointe-Noire. We lost track of each other, resigned to a platonic relationship, without even a little kiss.

  And here she is now right in front of me, a grown-up lady, with two children standing up straight behind her. Grand Poupy smiles impishly. Finally he cracks and bursts out laughing:

  ‘See, my boy, Alphonsine is one of the family now, I went a different way about it: I married her myself, and we’ve got children. So, they are your nephews, you must look after them as if they were your own children. We live in M’Paka, on the outskirts of town. One of our daughters, the oldest, is studying in Morocco…’

  I burst out laughing too, and say:

  ‘Who’s the sly one, eh, Grand Poupy! There you were, pretending to give me advice, and all the time you were putting your own case!’

  Alphonsine avoids my eye.

  ‘Hey, Grand Poupy, Alphonsine’s looking at the ground, she’s touching her hair, what does that mean, then?’

  Another peal of laughter from my cousin.

  ‘Little rascal! You haven’t forgotten, then!’

  As we make our way to my mother’s castle, I ask him:

  ‘What happened to your friend Chelos? You know, if you’ve still got those manuscripts, I can help you find a publisher in France and…’

  ‘Forget it, my boy, I don’t have that tapeworm in my gut that writers have, that eats away at their insides every day. Writing’s hard, but what’s even harder is knowing you’ll never be a writer, living with the idea you might have left something marvellous behind when you go. I love to read what you publish, you’ve become what I would have liked to be: a public storyteller. I don’t know what you’ll scribble down after this meeting, but with you I know to expect the worst, you got me perfectly in Black Bazaar… And when the kids here read it, they think I can still help them with chat-up lines!…’

  My uncle

  Uncle Mompéro is considered the ‘doyen’ of the family, since my mother passed on. He takes his role seriously, and no one would dare challenge his status. From the doorway of the solid built house – the one on which Maman Pauline had started the work, which was carried on and completed by my cousins – he watches the comings and goings in the yard. It is not unusual to hear him raise his voice, demand silence, or tick off the kids who are squabbling. Whenever a car goes past the house, he leaps out of his easy chair, checking that the little ones are safe. Equally, a noisy crowd will arouse his curiosity at once, shaking him from his torpor, to intervene if necessary. I saw all this today when I was chatting with my cousin Kihouari: he crept up on us, appeared in the doorway, then went back off into the main room to wait for me to come and see him once I had finished with the others…

  Each time a stranger arrives on our plot he thinks it
’s going to be bad news, and brutally poses the same question:

  ‘Who’s dead this time?’

  The visitor will notice his air of worry and despair, no doubt because of all the sisters and brothers who’ve departed over the last twenty years: Uncle Albert, Aunt Sabine, Maman Pauline, Aunt Dorothée and Uncle René.

  I’m facing him, and he knows I have no bad news to bring him. He wears a circumspect smile I find deeply touching, with his face only very slightly marked with expression lines between his eyebrows and his forehead. I suspect him of having cut his hair specially to look ‘tidy’ in front of me. Even his black shoes are spotless, as though he didn’t touch the ground when he walked. He’s sporting a fine white shirt with wide beige stripes.

  My mother never got to grow any grey hairs. But looking at my uncle I can imagine roughly what her scalp would have looked like if she had lived to be over sixty, like him. I am sure she wouldn’t have been one of those old ladies who spend the day sitting out in front of their houses. She’d still be on the go, selling her peanuts at the Grand Marché, where lots of elderly women still ply this trade, some of them dozing behind their stalls. If Maman Pauline saw me turn up here now, she would fling herself at me, with a huge smile that would make me believe she could get the better of time itself. That’s the impression Uncle Mompéro would like to give me too, today. He’ll say nothing of his state of health, which is declining, or of everything he’s endured these last twenty-three years, during which we have been out of touch. Now, Grand Poupy had already mentioned to me that our uncle wasn’t well, that he had undergone an operation for appendicitis, that the moment I turned my back he would suddenly age, facing the sawing pain of his poorly treated illness. I was astonished and protested that my uncle appeared to be in good health. Grand Poupy had at once grown serious:

  ‘When he heard you were coming back to Pointe-Noire, he put his illness to one side, to put a brave face on it. He’s like your mother, when she was hospitalised at Adolphe-Sicé, she ordered us to tell you nothing till she was dead. Uncle Mompéro isn’t in such good shape as you think, he won’t tell you, but don’t ask him, or he’ll never forgive us…’