Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty by Alain Mabanckou Page B

left and came back the next day, which really annoyed the other stallholders, who now spread a rumour that Maman Pauline hid Bembé
gris-gris
under the table to snare clients, and that her peanuts were prepared overnight by the spirits, who put a bit of salt on them. They said the moment you tasted one of my mother’s peanuts you were done for, you’d be condemned to return forever to her table, like it was the Congolese National Lottery, which you can never win unless you’re part of the President’s family.
    When Maman Pauline got to her table she found the ground all around it was wet, and there was a strong smell of fish. In fact, it was the other stallholders who threw seawater on theground so customers wouldn’t stop at my mother’s stand. I couldn’t understand why anyone would be afraid of seawater, and Maman Pauline explained that there are lots of spirits in the sea, including the spirits of our ancestors, who are angry because they were captured and taken into slavery on the white men’s plantations, and whipped from dawn till dusk. So that’s why seawater is salty, from the sweat of our ancestors and their anger, which makes the waves.
    My mother found it quite funny that people threw seawater under her table, as though the spirits were going to waste their precious time on a little peanut stall when there are more important things in this world. The customers still came, including the man with the briefcase. But Maman Pauline could tell this man didn’t just come to buy peanuts. He had something else in mind, he had his eye on that place where men like looking at women and imagining things I’ll like imagining too, when I’m twenty. Now it wasn’t the man with the briefcase’s fault because Maman Pauline did wear bright orange, shiny trousers stretched tight across her behind. Men just couldn’t take their eyes off it, it was too good to miss. When she walked in the streets of Pointe-Noire men would turn round and whistle, but she pretended not to notice and just went on her way to the Grand Marché.
    When my mother had finished serving him, the man with the briefcase would linger by her table, talking and talking. And little by little his banter did the trick, because my mother enjoyed listening to him. He finally saw me in the flesh one day when Maman Pauline put me in a big aluminium basin with bedding in, because prams were too expensive and I hated being carried on her back in a sling, the way women in our country carry theirchildren in the street. The man with the briefcase leaned over the basin, pulled aside the bedding hiding my face and asked how old I was. Maman Pauline told him I was only five and a half months. He looked at me in silence for a few minutes, then began pulling faces, to make me laugh. He remarked how like my mother I looked, and that I wasn’t crying, even though the Grand Marché was full of noise and people shouting. Maman Pauline swears at that moment I smiled at the man. And, again according to her, what my smile meant was: Maman, this is your man, you stick with him, I want this man as my father, my true father, a man who smiles like that isn’t going to abandon us; besides, he’s not a policeman, he’s not going to threaten you with a gun, like in the films.
    My mother and the man with the briefcase would go and drink in the bars at the Grand Marché. They hid away like that for months and months. Sometimes they took me with them, when there was no one to look after me. I went on smiling at the nice kind man, whenever he leaned over to look at me, and pull faces. After a year and a half they’d had enough of playing hide-and-seek as we call it in the playground at Trois-Martyrs. The man with the briefcase came to introduce himself to Uncle René one afternoon. He said his name was Roger Kimangou and he worked in the town centre at the Hotel Victory Palace. He explained that he was a