Tram 83 by Fiston Mwanza Mujila Page A

grimaces, Requiem, known as The Negus, looked Émilienne up and down.
    â€œYour day?”
    â€œGood. Very good, actually. I met a publisher.”
    â€œA publisher?”
    â€œA certain Ferdinand Malingeau.”
    â€œThat bastard!”
    â€œYou know him?”
    â€œMaybe.”
    Lucien and Émilienne wanted to enter the bedroom. But Requiem was finagling. By dint of climbing aboard those wretched trains, man becomes an animal, thinking only of satisfying the pleasures of the underbelly.
    â€œHey, Lucien.”
    Requiem writhed about for a good while longer, his eyes fixed on the little haversack that never left him. To his great despair, Lucien knew nothing about either the contents or the precise significance of the hunting-bag. “This bag is a fragmentation bomb,” sniggered the Negus. In his moments of hysteria, the Negus was fond of saying that his haversack imbued him with the power to reinvent the system. He wasn’t going to stop, now that things were going so well. That would be to misjudge him. He made some fortuitous comparisons with Moses’ staff. The baby-chicks said thatRequiem’s haversack was stuffed with pictures of naked tourists.
    â€œCan you go get me a can of beer? My head’s killing me.”
    He rolled his eyes shriveled up by the dust that covered Hope Mine.
    â€œWhich beer?”
    â€œAny.”
    Lucien went out.
    He had no idea what the Negus was up to. The elevators had stopped working. He tore down the stairs, braved the wild-eyed gaze of the young women from the building who were commiserating with Christelle and cursing those bastards who brought girls back to the building even though the building was swarming with girls of all ages, found a store, climbed back up the stairs, not without difficulty since he had to shake off Christelle, whom he ran into in the stairwell and who spun him a tired tale.
    â€œYou know you have your own particular way of viewing life.”
    â€œSee you tomorrow.”
    â€œDo you love me?”
    He had to be rid of her as quickly as possible.
    â€œMaybe.”
    He sensed something bad. A long feeling of fear and sadness. Perhaps Requiem was breathing his last. He reached his terminus, exhausted by the errand. Requiem had underestimated his adversary. He said he’d take fifteen minutes, but Lucien had done the essential in a few fractions of a second. He pushed open the door. Nobody in the living room. He heard a sort of noise drifting from the bedroom. He walked to the door, put his ear right up to the doorframe then looked through the keyhole. Requiem andÉmilienne, inverted on the bed, which was creaking in a decrescendo. Lucien went back out with the beer, poured it down the stairs, cursed the day he was born, and set off down a little street at random, alone and feeble.

8.
    UNFAIR COMPETITION: YOUR NEIGHBOR SELLS DOUGHNUTS; YOU ALSO START SELLING DOUGHNUTS; YOU EVEN DABBLE WITH BLACK MAGIC TO NAB ALL HIS CUSTOMERS .
    Two days after the incident, Lucien came across Émilienne, who was waiting for him with open arms as if nothing had happened.
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI thought you’d intercepted the signals.”
    â€œYou shouldn’t have given in.”
    â€œYou left me alone with him.”
    â€œWell, you’re not my wife, after all.”
    They sat down. The dozing waitresses began to put on their makeup.
    Unfair competition.

9.
    TRAM 83: BY DAY AS BY NIGHT, ETERNAL IN ITS SPLENDOR OF A PARADISE GOING TO HELL IN A HANDCART, WITH THE CRUMMIEST CUSTOMERS AND THOSE WHO CHUCK THEIR FORTUNE OUT THE WINDOW, SYMBOL OF A SOCIETY IN PERFECT HARMONY, INTERMIXED, INTERMINGLED, CARTE BLANCHE TO MENDELIAN CROSSBREEDING, FORCED INFATUATIONS, PREMATURE EJACULATIONS .
    The reading-appearance called “Prophecies from Before Dawn” was set for a Saturday night around eleven. The guy entrusted with raising awareness of the benefits of literature entrusted it to another guy who entrusted it