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  Praise For Fiston Mwanza Mujila & Tram 83

  ·Winner of a FRENCH VOICES AWARD from the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the US, 2014

  “Tram 83 isn’t for the faint of heart, but rather, it’s for those that have a sense of humor, an interest in seedy underbellies, and a willingness to, at times, feel a little lost in the haze of biblical imagery, flippant debauchery, free sex, and anarchy. Ezra Pound would be proud; Mujila ‘made it new.’”

  — JOSH COOK, Foreword Reviews

  “Talk about verve — and vivre: Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s Tram 83 introduces a rousing, remarkable new voice to this world, surely in its original French, most definitely in Roland Glasser’s superb translation. This book has drive and force and movement, it has hops and chops. It has voices!”

  — RICK SIMONSON, ELLIOTT BAY BOOK COMPANY (SEATTLE, WA)

  “I was totally into the wild formal thug-haunted adventurousness of Tram 83.”

  — FORREST GANDER, author of The Trace

  “Blade Runner in Africa with a John Coltrane soundtrack.”

  — MARK HABER, BRAZOS BOOKSTORE (HOUSTON, TX)

  “Through observation and conversation, the reader is exposed to the economic boom and cultural bust of contemporary Africa in search of what the future holds for human relationships and survival in a place where tradition and personal histories are quickly being swept under the rug by global forces. Mujila captures chaos in a hypnotic free-jazz rhythm that is so rarely found in novels of this scope.”

  — KEVIN ELLIOTT, 57TH STREET BOOKS (CHICAGO, IL)

  “Tram 83 is part Satantango, part Fitzcarraldo, and part Blood Meridian. A dark, funny, and true accomplishment.”

  — CHAD FELIX, WORD BOOKSTORES (BROOKLYN, NY & JERSEY CITY, NJ)

  “Q: What if Césaire beat Houellebecq at his own game? A: Tram 83.”

  — DUSTIN KURTZ

  “Tram 83 reads like a modern, twisted The Great Gatsby. …An unaffected view of humanity that is at once repulsive, hilarious, and oddly uplifting. …The novel, like the nightclub, is eccentric and somewhat disturbing, yet inclusive and universally appealing.”

  — CAITLIN THOMAS, Three Percent

  More international praise for Fiston Mwanza Mujila & Tram 83

  ·Winner of the GRAND PRIX SGDL DU PREMIER ROMAN (for Debut Novel), 2014

  ·Shortlisted for the PRIX DU MONDE (Le Monde Literary Prize), 2014

  ·Shortlisted for the PRIX WEPLER-FONDATION LA POSTE, 2014

  ·LITERARY PRIZE OF THE CITY OF GRAZ, Austria, 2014

  ·GOLDEN MEDAL IN LITERATURE of the VI Jeux de la Francophonie in Beirut

  “A real discovery among this season’s novels.”

  — author ALAIN MABANCKOU, Jeune Afrique

  “One of the more exciting discoveries of the fall … Frenetic, flamboyant, and intense, there are touches of Hieronymus Bosch. An insolent, globe-trotting Bosch, who would have read Gabriel García Márquez and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.”

  — Le Monde

  “Invigorating and astounding, the linguistic creativity of Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s writing paints a vivid picture of an imaginary Africa.”

  — Le Populaire du Centre

  “A debut novel with a vertiginous rhythm. Picaresque poetry turned into music by a mix of slam and a series of loops and turns as bewitching as a sustained jazz melody.”

  — Livres Hebdo

  “Tram 83 is a high-speed trip, a tragic, burlesque, melancholic, melodic tale.”

  — LIRE Magazine

  “Watch out for this blazing comet! Tram 83 will sweep you off your feet like a Coltrane number, and never put you down again.”

  — Rolling Stone (France)

  “Mujila has invented “locomotive literature,” and the genre of the “stage-tale,” making his debut novel the manifesto for a convulsive poetic prose, a cross between Aimé Césaire and Boris Vian.”

  — Le Nouvel Observateur

  “A novel of mind-blowing, poetic beauty.”

  — Point Magazine

  “This debut novel heralds a promising literary career.”

  — Notre Afrik

  Deep Vellum Publishing

  2919 Commerce St. #159, Dallas, Texas 75226

  deepvellum.org · @deepvellum

  Deep Vellum Publishing is a 501c3 nonprofit literary arts organization founded in 2013.

  Copyright © 2014 by Fiston Mwanza Mujila

  By agreement with the Pontas Literary & Film Agency.

  Originally published in French as Tram 83 by Editions Métailié in Paris, France in 2014

  English translation copyright © 2015 by Roland Glasser

  Foreword copyright © 2015 by Alain Mabanckou

  First edition, 2015

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-941920-05-3 (ebook)

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER: 2015935847

  —

  Cet ouvrage a bénéficié du soutien des Programmes d’aide à la publication de l’Institut Français.

  This work, published as part of a program of aid for publication, received support from the Institut Français.

  French Voices Logo designed by Serge Bloch

  This work, published as part of a program providing publication assistance, received financial support from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, and FACE (French American Cultural Exchange).

  —

  Cover design & typesetting by Anna Zylicz · annazylicz.com

  Text set in Bembo, a typeface modeled on typefaces cut by Francesco Griffo for Aldo Manuzio’s printing of De Aetna in 1495 in Venice.

  Distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution.

  You will eat by the sweat of your breasts

  Contents

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  FOREWORD

  BY ALAIN MABANCKOU

  I was fortunate enough to get to read some of Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s poetry a few years back. I didn’t know at the time that he was busy writing a novel, or for that matter the degree to which I would be moved by his new work and how each page would bring me so much joy. When I turned the last page, I exclaimed: “This is a masterpiece!”

  Fiston Mwanza Mujila took the French literary scene by storm in 2014. His native Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), one of the most populated countries in Africa, had been waiting for some time for a great novelist to come along, a novelist who was truly one of theirs, speaking their language. Fiston has met their expectations.

  Tram 83 is written with the kind of magic one finds in only the best of storytellers, an astute observer of everyday life and a genuine philosopher. His words bring to life the city of Lubumbashi, filled with a cast of characters, writers, drunkards, drug dealers, dreamers, lost souls, all living side by side in the popular neighborhoods in which all of life’s pleasures are traded. And then there’s also the “t
rashy side” of life, the drugs and the vodka, a glimpse at the underbelly of life that is so rarely featured in sub-Saharan African literature, a world far from the images on the postcards sold to tourists. Fiston’s novel has lifted the veil Africa has been compelled to wear over the years, and she now stands naked before us. His voice is original, a genuine breath of fresh air, and we will surely be following this exciting new voice in the years to come. I can hardly believe Tram 83 is a first novel … So much creativity, linguistic innovation, and such a pleasure to read!

  1.

  IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE STONE, AND THE STONE PROMPTED OWNERSHIP, AND OWNERSHIP A RUSH, AND THE RUSH BROUGHT AN INFLUX OF MEN OF DIVERSE APPEARANCE WHO BUILT RAILROADS THROUGH THE ROCK, FORGED A LIFE OF PALM WINE, AND DEVISED A SYSTEM, A MIXTURE OF MINING AND TRADING.

  Northern Station. Friday. Around seven or nine in the evening.

  “Patience, friend, you know full well our trains have lost all sense of time.”

  The Northern Station was going to the dogs. It was essentially an unfinished metal structure, gutted by artillery, train tracks, and locomotives that called to mind the railroad built by Stanley, cassava fields, cut-rate hotels, greasy spoons, bordellos, Pentecostal churches, bakeries, and noise engineered by men of all generations and nationalities combined. It was the only place on earth you could hang yourself, defecate, blaspheme, fall into infatuation, and thieve without regard to prying eyes. Indeed, an air of connivance hung ever about the place. Jackals don’t eat jackals. They pounce on the turkeys and partridges, and devour them. According to the fickle but ever-recurring legend, the seeds of all resistance movements, all wars of liberation, sprouted at the station, between two locomotives. And as if that weren’t enough, the same legend claims that the building of the railroad resulted in numerous deaths attributed to tropical diseases, technical blunders, the poor working conditions imposed by the colonial authorities — in short, all the usual clichés.

  Northern Station. Friday. Around seven or nine.

  He’d been there nearly three hours, jostling with the passers-by as he waited for the train to arrive. Lucien had been at pains to insist on the sense of time, and on these trains that broke all records of derailment, delay, and overcrowding. Requiem had better things to do than wait for this individual who, with the passing of the years, had lost all importance in his eyes. Ever since he’d turned his back on Marxism, Requiem called everyone who deprived him of his freedom of thought and action armchair communists and slum ideologues. He had merchandise to deliver, his life depended on it. But the train carrying that son of a bitch Lucien was dragging its wheels.

  Northern Station. Friday. Around …

  “Would you care for some company, sir?”

  A girl, dressed for a Friday night in a station whose metal structure is unfinished, had come up to him. A moment to size up the merchandise, a dull thud, a racket that marked the entrance of the beast.

  “Do you have the time, citizen?”

  He had adequately assayed the chick and even imagined her lying on her mean little bed, despite the half-light. He pulled her body against his, asked her name, “Call me Requiem,” stroked his fingers across the young creature’s breasts, then another line: “Your thighs have the allure of a vodka bottle …” before disappearing into the murky gloom of the slimy, sticky crowd.

  Instructions were required. To designate a place they could chat without distraction. The young woman grew pushy. He sighed, bit his lip, and sputtered: “Meet you at Tram 83.” Quite pointless, of course, for he had to take that Lucien home. Requiem shook his head at the very idea. And then there was the merchandise to be delivered to the tourists freshly arrived from Eastern Europe. Meanwhile, the racket had increased tenfold. The curse of these trains that arrived at this time of night was that they carried all the scum, be they students or mineworkers, who couldn’t get back to town under their own steam. For reasons still unknown, the railroad cut the only university in the region in two. Afternoon classes were disrupted not by the ruckus of the engine but by students gathering their things and leaving the premises, because if you missed those trains, you’d piss your pants, dear intellectual. The few professors who crashed in the suburbs of the City-State slipped their moorings along with their disciples. The survival instinct can’t be learned. It’s innate. Otherwise they’d have introduced instinct classes at university already. The trains passed without stopping, which meant the swiftest students had to grab ahold of the beat up railcars. All’s fair in love and war! In stark contrast to these impulsive students with their sense of entitlement were the brutish diggers, who departed and returned on the same contraptions. The former reproached the latter for selling short their dignity to the mining operators and brokers of diverse origin. The latter couldn’t care less, displaying, through their rotten luck and bodies stiffened with radioactivity, that you needn’t spend time in the classroom to fuck and then clink glasses of ice-cool beer after. Some students even scratched out a living in the mines to pay their debts.

  Requiem began to search for the needle in the haystack. The scrawny students, overwhelmed by the goings-on, and angry too, brandished theories like spoils of war. The miner-diggers, or digger-miners, it depends, voiced imprecations we shall refrain from expressing. Every evening, the same opera. They eyed each other up, balked, traded insults, and even came to blows. A legend suggested the figure of one thousand seven hundred dead in the most recent clashes, without counting suffocations and other serious injuries.

  Weary from the noise, and the alcohol he’d just consumed, Requiem leaned against a pillar, waiting for them to vacate the field. They loitered on the platforms till late into the night: the students with their strike, the miner-diggers with their stinking rusty breath.

  “I’m a free woman, but I’m still looking for the man of my dreams.”

  He was already thinking of the silicone breasts of the girl waiting for him at Tram 83. But after so many years apart, how could he abandon Lucien and slip into the folds of the night with that doll? The students and the diggers of mines were still squaring off. As the flurry of insults reached its peak, they headed off on the same road to nowhere. Requiem sensed a presence. He raised his eyebrows: Lucien, in the flesh but skeletal. Requiem stepped forward. He realized that his friend had lost all his weight. That an era was on the wane. That a civilization was champing at the bit. Lucien was dressed all in black, the harmony broken only by a red scarf, the wad of papers under his arm, and an imitation-leather bag, worn thin, slung over his shoulder. Tousled hair. Crumpled face. Mustache intact. Cold gaze. Hoarse voice. They embraced without much enthusiasm.

  “The bastards, don’t tell me they’ve mangled your brains.”

  “What’s your news?”

  “What about Jacqueline?”

  “Long story.”

  “How did you get out?”

  “I’ll tell you.”

  “The bastards, the bastards, they …”

  “Shall we go?”

  “Yes,” replied Requiem, coldly, no doubt haunted by the girl dressed for a Friday night in a station whose metal structure is unfinished, where dissident sex-starved rebels, students, and diggers head off on the same road.

  “I’m a really sensitive girl.”

  Two fat tears slid down the face of the man who’d arrived by train in this station whose metal structure … In silence, they crossed the concourse and the other fragments of the station, where neglected single-mamas roamed, along with professors selling their lecture notes, intellectuals reeking of salted fish, and Cuban musicians performing salsa, flamenco, and merengue for no reason at all.

  2.

  FIRST NIGHT AT TRAM 83: NIGHT OF DEBAUCHERY, NIGHT OF BOOZING, NIGHT OF BEGGARY, NIGHT OF PREMATURE EJACULATION, NIGHT OF SYPHILIS AND OTHER SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASES, NIGHT OF PROSTITUTION, NIGHT OF GETTING BY, NIGHT OF DANCING AND DANCING, NIGHT THAT ENGENDERS THINGS THAT EXIST ONLY BETWEEN AN EXCESS OF BEER AND THE INTENTION TO EMPTY ONE’S POCKET THAT EXHALES CONFLICT
MINERALS, THIS COW-DUNG ELEVATED TO A RAW MATERIAL, IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE STONE …

  “We walked through the darkness of history. We were the cash cows of a system of thought that profited from our tender age, that crushed us completely. We were a piece of shit.”

  “We had an ideal, innocence …”

  “Innocence,” echoed Requiem, bursting into laughter. “You really mean innocence? Innocence is cowardice. You have to move with the times, brother.”

  “You haven’t changed a bit.”

  “You don’t age here. You simply exist.”

  “Requiem …”

  “It’s New Mexico, here. Every man for himself, and shit for all.”

  Tram 83 was one of the most popular restaurants and hooker bars, its renown stretching beyond the City-State’s borders. “See Tram 83 and die,” was the regular refrain of the tourists who blew into town from the four corners of the globe to conduct their business. During the day they wandered zombie-like through the mining concessions they owned by the dozen, and at night they ended up in Tram 83 to refresh their memory. This gave the place every appearance of a true theater, if not a massive circus. Here’s the kind of thing you might hear as background noise:

  “I want to massage you by way of foreplay, then slowly suck you off, suck your whole body, suck you till my mouth runs dry.”

  Not only at Tram 83, but even at the university and in the mines, unmarried women didn’t hold back from accosting potential clients with the same psalms.

  Inadvertent musicians and elderly prostitutes and prestidigitators and Pentecostal preachers and students resembling mechanics and doctors conducting diagnoses in nightclubs and young journalists already retired and transvestites and second-foot shoe peddlers and porn film fans and highwaymen and pimps and disbarred lawyers and casual laborers and former transsexuals and polka dancers and pirates of the high seas and seekers of political asylum and organized fraudsters and archeologists and would-be bounty hunters and modern day adventurers and explorers searching for a lost civilization and human organ dealers and farmyard philosophers and hawkers of fresh water and hairdressers and shoeshine boys and repairers of spare parts and soldiers’ widows and sex maniacs and lovers of romance novels and dissident rebels and brothers in Christ and druids and shamans and aphrodisiac vendors and scriveners and purveyors of real fake passports and gun-runners and porters and bric-a-brac traders and mining prospectors short on liquid assets and Siamese twins and Mamelukes and carjackers and colonial infantrymen and haruspices and counterfeiters and rape-starved soldiers and drinkers of adulterated milk and self-taught bakers and marabouts and mercenaries claiming to be one of Bob Denard’s crew and inveterate alcoholics and diggers and militiamen proclaiming themselves “masters of the world” and poseur politicians and child soldiers and Peace Corps activists gamely tackling a thousand nightmarish railroad construction projects or small-scale copper or manganese mining operations and baby-chicks and drug dealers and busgirls and pizza delivery guys and growth hormone merchants, all sorts of tribes overran Tram 83, in search of good times on the cheap.