Read Online Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty by Alain Mabanckou - Free Book Online Page A

Saturdays. The minute I see all those suits and new wraps I know it must be Saturday. They all do it: come Saturday, they’re out there in their fine clothes from morning to the late afternoon, then in the evening they’re off to cruise the bars in the Avenue of Independence. They go dancing all night, and some of them sleep from Sunday to Monday midday and forget to go to work. The priest at Saint-Jean-Bosco complains his church is empty these days. How can you expect people to get up for church on a Sunday morning if they’ve been out partying from six in the evening till six in the morning and only found their way back home again by some small miracle?
    It’s not too hot. The sky above me is calm and blue. When a plane goes by, I think of Caroline, even though I’m still cross with her. Now every time I think of my wife I have to think of a red car with five seats. And our two children, a girl and a boy. Not forgetting the little white dog.
    While I’m busy imagining my life with Caroline, someone comes up behind me and touches my shoulder. It’s Lounès.
    He laughs and asks if he frightened me.
    â€˜Not at all,’ I say.
    He likes creeping up on me. He’s brought some boiled sweets,two for himself and one for me. He gives me mine as soon as he creeps in. My father’s sleeping at Maman Martine’s today and my mother’s still at the Grand Marché selling peanuts with Madame Mutombo, so there’s no need to worry.
    Lounès sits where I sit when I eat with my parents. I sit in my father’s place. I’ve left the door open. From where I’m sitting I can watch what’s happening outside.
    Lounès looks at a new photo my mother’s put on the dresser. It was taken only a few days ago when we went to buy me some new Spring Court shoes at Printania, where they sell apples, grapes, and lots of fruit brought over from Europe. On the way home we stopped in a bar on the Avenue of Independence. A photographer came in with his camera, and forced my parents to have a picture taken.
    â€˜Look at you all! All so handsome, the three of you, it’ll be a marvellous photo! I promise you, if you don’t look good, I won’t charge you.’
    My mother said no because it’s wrong to waste money. But my father listened to the photographer’s pitch, about how he fed his ten children with his camera, and he hadn’t had a single client in the last month. He showed us a great gash on his tibia.
    â€˜See that? I haven’t even got the money to buy drink, or Mercurochrome. And I’ve got two cousins and two uncles just turned up from the village and it’s up to me to feed them. There’s another problem too, I rent the house where we live, and the owner…’
    â€˜All right, all right, take the photo!’ my father said. My mother frowned and gave my father a dirty look. He added: ‘I’m paying. Michel, come and stand between your mother and me.’
    So now the photo’s there on the dresser. Sometimes I look at it for a few minutes and I’m happy I’m standing there between my parents. I know my mouth’s hanging open, that’s the photographer’s fault. He told us to smile at the little bird that popped out of his camera. I wasn’t going to smile till I’d seen what kind of bird it was: what colour, where it came out, if it flew, if it could sing like real birds that don’t hide inside cameras. I was standing there waiting for the bird with my mouth hanging open, but it wasn’t a bird came out, it was a light, which startled me. And another thing: I had no time to button up my shirt. You can see my chest, it’s a bit flat still, I’m too small to have muscles like Blek le Roc. My mother’s got a scarf wrapped round her head and a glass of beer at her lips. My father’s leaning slightly towards me, as though he’d like to protect me from the enemies of the