Trafika Europe 11 - Swiss Delights

Trinité bantoue

his office, which was too cramped for his mastodon bulk. I slammed the door so hard, all the scorn and contempt I felt for him resounded in a sharp crack. I haven’t seen Mr. Nkamba since. Today, I regret having left Mr. Nkamba in those circumstances. Maybe I should have kept pleading. Maybe in the end he would have listened to my pleas. Maybe he would have remembered our five years of successful collaboration. Maybe I should have proposed we renegotiate the terms of our agreement, reduce my salary, cut my bonus on sales of his counterfeit goods. Maybe I should have threatened to denounce him to the Swiss authorities. Maybe… Waiting for the bus, it ’s not the story with Nkamba African Beauty that bothers me. Mr. Nkamba made his choice. Me, I’ll surely find a real job that suits my abilities, I tell myself with feeble conviction that trickles off my bare skull. What annoys me is not the bus’s delay. We always say that our distant cousins are an impeccably punctual people. Sure, but on occasion they too can be late— sometimes very late. The old lady next to me and her anger don’t annoy me either: she can rant and rave all she wants, she’ll have to wait for the goddamn snail of a bus. It ’s not even the political poster, hung over there across from me—which I will learn weeks later has an even more hateful character than most

57