The Lights of Pointe-Noire by Alain Mabanckou Read Free Book Online

other hand, was more ‘with it’ – indeed, rather too much so for some people’s tastes, going out when she felt like it, and walking into a bar full of men without any of the bowing and scraping they considered their due. She did this by way of provocation, and if you pointed it out she would reply:
    â€˜If they’re so respectable, what are they doing hanging out in a bar while their wives are at home? Looking for other women?’
    Her independence came from the groundnut and banana business she ran at the Grand Marché, and even more so from what she considered the great achievement of her life: the purchase of a plot of land in Pointe-Noire, in the Voungou district. My father didn’t like her being autonomous, it made him feel, in his words, ‘useless’. A woman shouldn’t ‘wear the trousers’ in a relationship, or acquire possessions in her own name, these were the prerogatives of the husband, who also had the right to marry as many other women as he chose.
    Much later – I must already have been at the lycée – Papa Roger started seeing another woman, one he intended to take as a third ‘rival’. Usually he was the most punctual man on earth, but now he started coming home late to my mother’s house, or to Maman Martine’s, and making up excuses, contradicting himself, arousing the suspicion of his two ‘official’ wives. He’d tell Maman Martine he was a bit late because he’d stopped off at my mother’s house. Then the next day, when he was meant to be sleeping at our house, he would argue that he had to go to Maman Martine’s on some urgent business, which he didn’t go into.
    He couldn’t play this game for much longer than a few weeks. Maman Martine got wind of the affair through one of her friends, and alerted my mother:
    â€˜I think Roger’s seeing Célestine… he hasn’t laid a finger on me for weeks, we’re like strangers in bed. I know him, there’s a woman on the scene.’
    â€˜No! Célestine? Can’t he do better than that?’
    Maman Martine, already half resigned to it, said meekly:
    â€˜Well, it doesn’t matter much to me, I’m out of the running, I said goodbye to my youth a while back. But what’s this Célestine got that you haven’t? You’re young, you’re beautiful, you work hard, you and I have never fallen out! That Roger! He’ll never change! Well, I’m just going to tell him to keep his hands off me till he’s stopped seeing another woman on the side!’
    My mother would have gone to the stake to prove my father’s innocence. She was convinced it was only gossip, put about by jealous neighbours. But over the next few weeks my father’s alibis grew less and less convincing, and my mother cornered him and demanded the truth.
    Papa Roger raised his voice:
    â€˜Why are you and Martine spying on me? She won’t let me sleep when I’m at her house, you won’t let me breathe at yours, where am I meant to sleep? Tell me that!’
    â€˜Go and sleep at Célestine’s! You might as well, I’m not sharing my bed with you! Aren’t two wives enough for you? You do nothing but snore when you are here! What am I meant to do? Find myself a lover?’
    â€˜Fine, if that’s the way it is, I’m going out to get some air!’
    â€˜You do that! You go and find her!’
    â€˜That’s enough, Pauline! Every day it’s the same in this house! Is it because it’s your house? If it was my house would you dare talk to me like that? I’m fed up with it, and if it carries on, I’m going home!’
    I sometimes got the feeling in my mother’s house that my father felt a bit like the lodger, since she was the one who had not only purchased the land but also built the house, which Papa Roger now visited every other day, alternating with his own home, a four-roomed