Free Black Bazaar by Alain Mabanckou

look of the Angolan resistance fighter of the day, Jonas Savimbi, a charismatic man who, right up until his death, prevented his rival, President Eduardo Dos Santos, from sleeping soundly at night.
    Original Colour harboured a grudge against her father. And that spark of hatred would flare up as soon as I tried to find out a bit more about him. She sounded very vexed on the subject. She used to say: “That proslaver”, “that creature”, “that tribalist”, “that person I don’t know” and even “that man who calls himself my father”. According to her, this lawyer was just a Southern extremist, a man who cultivated intolerance even in his own home, a political fanatic whose wife soaked up his words without raising her voice. He would receive at home the bosses of our former regime, which was now shot to pieces following two civil wars. The lawyer and his frustrated guests would ponder a new political party in order to win back power, by force if needs be. He was waiting on the green light from America because, he maintained, these days you can’t have political change in any French-speaking country in Africa without the help of the Yankees given that the French kept everything under lock and key in their former colonies …
    * * *
    I’d had to push for Original Colour to explain how she’d ended up on her own in Paris instead of livingin Nancy. She had fallen out with her father – and so, on the rebound, with her mother too – on account of a marriage deal that her parents had struck with Doyen Methuselah, our former Finance Minister back in the home country, the one who had emptied the state coffers when he realised that the regime in which he was a senior minister wouldn’t survive the second civil war, because the new strong man in the country had the support of France as well as more tanks, missiles, helicopters and rockets than the regular army. And so Doyen Methuselah had fled in great haste across the Congo River together with the ex-president, before catching a plane to Belgium, then France where he was accorded the status of a political exile. The minister liked to proclaim it from the Paris rooftops that he could feed every member of the Congolese opposition living in France, including those in Corsica and Monaco, for a hundred and fifty years. The Congolese in France would visit him at his private mansion in the 8th arrondissement and leave clutching big fat envelopes stuffed with notes. His fortune was estimated to equal the entire debt of our country. So all he had to do was give back to the people what he had stolen and then our nation could stop snivelling at the summits of rich countries about getting our debt cancelled. But Doyen Methuselah led the high life in France. He threw private parties in grand palaces where, in the middle of the night, he would have his wicked way with young Congolesegirls barely out of puberty. Doyen Methuselah was very close to Original Colour’s father, who had defended him in a trial about embezzling public monies that had made a lot of noise in France a while back, and he had set his heart on the daughter of his former lawyer and his friend. He wanted to marry her despite the thirty-eight years that separated them. This would have tied things up nicely for the lawyer from Nancy who was hoping to benefit from the financial support of Doyen Methuselah so as to strengthen his political party while waiting for the green light from the Yankees.
    Original Colour wanted to turn the page. So I didn’t ask her any more questions on the subject. She talked to me instead about one of her childhood friends, Rachel Kouamé, who had left Nancy for Paris ahead of her. They had been inseparable from elementary school all the way through to lycée. The day before Original Colour, in accordance with her father’s wishes, was supposed to marry Doyen Methuselah she packed her bags for Paris and went to knock on