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

arse at us.
    â€˜Don’t look back, it brings bad luck!’ Gaston cried.
    Anyway, once Papa Roger heard about our visit from Célestine, he began to visit her less often, particularly since we started hiding out near by in the hope of catching him going into the house of the woman we considered a witch, who had cast a spell on our father.
    A month went by and the ‘affair’ of the third wife was closed. Papa Roger returned to coming home on time, sitting in a corner to read the weekly magazines from Europe, and exclaiming at the idiot French for forgetting to mention our country, because it was only tiny…

Death at his heels
    I never felt I really knew Papa Roger very well, partly because he told me nothing about his own parents. I didn’t know whether they were alive, or had passed on into the next world. Nor had I ever set foot in Ndounga, his native village. This didn’t bother me, as I cultivated a visceral hatred for anything connected to any paternal branch, my natural father having cleared off when my mother needed him. To me Papa Roger was father and grandfather, the perfect paternal rootstock, resistant to wind and weather, bringing forth fruit in every season. So I had given up desperately trying to find out about my paternal forebears.
    I owe it to Papa Roger that my childhood was scented with the sweet smell of green apples. This was the fruit he brought home for me every week from the Victory Palace Hotel. In our town it was a great treat to eat an apple. For us it was one of the most exotic fruits to come from the colder regions. As I bit into it, I felt I was sprouting wings that would carry me far away. I’d sniff the fruit first, with my eyes closed, then munch it greedily, as though I was worried someone would suddenly come and ask me for a bite and spoil my pleasure in crunching it down to the last little pip, since no one had ever taught me how to eat an apple. Papa Roger stood there in front of me, smiling. He knew he could get me to do anything he wanted by simply giving me an apple. I’d suddenly turn into the most talkative boy on earth, even though I was by nature rather reserved. My mother realised the havoc an apple could wreak in my behaviour. She’d fly into one of her rages, usually at my expense, which to this very day tarnishes my pleasure in that delicious smell:
    â€˜There you go again, telling your father all sorts when you’ve eaten an apple! I’ll start to think they’re alcoholic, and have to ban them!!’
    â€˜I didn’t do anything!’
    â€˜I see, so why did you tell him I went out with someone this afternoon, then? Don’t come asking me to get your supper tonight! Let that be a lesson to you!’
    It was true, I had been rather indiscreet that day, whispering to my father that a slim, tall man had dropped by our house, talked with my mother, after which the two of them had gone to a local bar for a drink. At this my father flew into a rage and yelled at my mother:
    â€˜I thought so! It’s that guy Marcel, isn’t it? You said it was all over between you and that imbecile! More fool me!’
    My father refused to sit down at table with us that day, and shut himself up in the bedroom. Marcel was someone Maman Pauline had met around the same time she met my father, but she must have made the choice she did because Marcel was a seasoned womaniser who believed women fell at his feet because he had a great body. According to my mother, nothing happened between them. She took a fistful of earth in her right hand, scattered it in the air, which meant, in our tradition, that she swore she had told me the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth; you couldn’t mess around with this custom, it had been used by our tribe since the dawn of time. Anyone who swore like this when in fact they’d been lying got a terrible headache the next day, and sometimes had to stay in bed for days on end. First they