Fiston Mwanza Mujila Bagged The Etisalat Book Prize For ‘Tram83’ – Read An Excerpt

Acclaimed newcomer Fiston Mwanza Mujila has dazzled the literary world with his debut novel, a riotous look at the underbelly of life rarely featured in sub-saharan African literature.

Set in a bar in an unnamed Congolese mining town, Tram 83 follows poet Lucien and his escapades with a cast of writers, drunkards, drug dealers and dreamers.

Published in English by Jacaranda Press and translated by Roland Glasser, Mujila’s novel has been described by the Rumpus as a tale that “delights in absurdities” and extracts “epic poetry from violence, despair and distraction”.

Speaking to Africa is a Country, Mujila said: “I wanted Tram to be able to represent a form of exploitation and neocolonialism that happens throughout Africa, not just in the Congo.”

Tram83 – extract

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!

He was already thinking of the silicone breasts of the girl waiting for him at Tram 83
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.
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“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.

Tram83 was translated by Roland Glasser, published by Jacaranda Books in the UK, and is available to buy here

This Post Originally Appeared On TheGuardian