Black Bazaar (15 page)

He forced a smile and said:

“Dany Laferrière is a great friend! I would urge you to read another of his books:
How To Make Love To A Negro Without Getting Tired …
”

A redhead cut short their conversation. She glared with blood red eyes at the brunette who realised she'd better scat and fast. The brunette left the bookshop muttering to herself, with one book by Dany Laferrière but none by Louis-Philippe.

The redhead had a more direct approach. She grabbed a stool, sat bang opposite the author and proceeded to tell him that she took some of his books to bed with her, especially
God's Pencil Has No Eraser
. She even felt as if he was writing them for her, that she was one of his characters.

“I want a proper dedication, none of that ‘With best wishes from the author' nonsense! I want a dedication intended for me and me alone. This is a book I'll read every night before going to sleep, even if there's a guy lying next to me …”

Louis-Philippe looked up at the ceiling and then wrote something. He held out the book to the redhead who immediately read the dedication. She blushed, kissed the author on the cheek and left the Rideau Rouge waving at him in a knowing kind of a way.

I was staring at her B-side and thinking to myself: “That one's a dormant volcano!”

* * *

After taking his leave of the bookshop owner, Louis-Philippe made his way over to me. I had his book tucked under my arm. He called me “old buddy”.

When I told him that I lived in the area he nearly exploded:

“That means we're neighbours! I don't live far. We must swap phone numbers. Drop by whenever you want, you've got to try my Barbancourt rum from back home!”

We left the bookshop, walked up Rue Riquet and grabbed a table at the Roi du Café. I had my back to Rue Marx Dormoy, so I could see in his eyes the marks he was giving the backside of each girl as she crossed the road. This was all we talked about, the different kinds of B-sides. And he was having a good laugh with it.

That evening I arrived back home feeling lighthearted and it didn't bother me that Mr Hippocratic was lying in wait. the Hybrid had already left for the night, I wasn't interested in finding out why. I started reading even though Original Colour complained that the light would wake the little one. I was far away, I wasn't in that studio any more. Everything around me stopped existing. I was picturing Louis-Philippe's island, Haiti. I was the character from the capital of Port-au-Prince which he had re-named Port-of-Filth. He had painted the portrait of Pointe-Noire, where I come from. The people looked like me. I underlined everything. I was in a state of wonder before the poetry of his language.

I called Louis-Philippe the next day. I went over to his place, and I got to drink Barbancourt for the first time. I admired his bookshelves, I leafed through each of his books that had been published. He teased me a bit about my outfit.

“Do the Congolese always dress like that?”

The following day after I went to buy a typewriter from Porte de Vincennes because I don't like computers, and because I wanted to be like a real writer who rips up pages, crosses things out, and has to interrupt his creative flow in order to change the typewriter ribbon …

* * *

When Original Colour nagged me for spending too much time writing, hanging out at Jip's and only working part-time at the printing works, I'd just get up and take my typewriter for a walk in the park. I would sit on a bench under a street lamp along with the tramps who were knocking back bottles of red, and I'd keep on writing.

I think I must have been hitting the keys too hard because even the tramps were giving me funny looks, as if they thought I was losing the plot and would soon be joining them. I kept on writing, I was writing more and more. When I saw a bird moving in a branch, I would write it down. When it flew off to another tree, I wrote that down too because Louis-Philippe who knew a thing or two about inspiration had told me that writers
noted everything down and then went through their notes so they only kept the stuff that really mattered. Thanks to him I was now reading like a bookworm, I wasn't just reading dead authors, I was reading living ones too, I really wanted to become a writer in the vein of Georges Simenon whose Maigret adventures had been all the way round the world. But then I realised that I could only write about what I'd experienced, about what there was around me, and that it would have to be every bit as chaotic …

If I had several encounters
only a month after Original Colour left, it was because I felt very angry and I wanted to get my own back. I'm not the kind of person who thinks that revenge is a dish best eaten cold. I don't like all that biblical patter about how you've got to turn the other cheek when someone slaps you. I grab the bull by the horns.

So off I went hunting in our community's nightclubs and at the concerts of Koffi Olomide and Papa Wemba. But I came home empty-handed and started to feel despondent, it was as if I had lost my charm and I wondered about the sand slipping through my fingers. I risked becoming a man of the past. There were good-for-nothings out there who knotted their ties better than me, and they were more forward too. I started believing my misfortune was written on my forehead where Original Colour had put a curse on me.

And then someone rose to the bait one evening at the Keur Samba nightclub, in the 8th arrondissement. That's where I ran into Rose. She had arrived from the Congo a month earlier, and there was no mistaking it when you saw her on the dance floor, she looked like someone who,
instead of being descended from the apes like everyone else, was heading back that way for good. She hopped about, opened her arms and legs wide before landing down on the ground. At the end she was sweating so much I was turned off by the sweat stains on her white blouse. There were a few compatriots chasing after her, and she was playing hard to get, she'd lead them into a corner before coming back to dance opposite me. It was all a show, I'd clicked that she was available and that I was the one she was enticing with this dance of the spear-wielding caveman hunting the mammoth.

What have I got to lose, eh, I thought to myself, by indulging in a bit of pleasure this evening? I'm being provoked, so I have to defend myself, and attack is the best line of defence.

I stood up and tried to dance a few centimetres away from her, imitating her prehistoric movements. I held out my hand, she turned her back to me: it was all about proving she wasn't an easy catch.

I sat back down again, what else could I do, I'd rather have died than carry on following her jerky moves and strops.

My withdrawal strategy paid off, Rose came over to me:

“Is that how they try to pick you up in Paris? The girl gets a bit stroppy and the man goes to sit back down again without putting up a fight? Come on, come and dance the tchakoulibonda with me!”

She could see that I wasn't familiar with that particular dance. You had to shake your shoulders, grab your partner by the waist and simulate a violent penetration from the B-side. Apparently, it was all the rage back in the home country. I've never felt so ridiculous in my life. The entire nightclub was looking at me and I thought I could hear people creasing up with laughter.

Towards two in the morning I suggested to Rose that we go and drink a last glass back at my place.

“Cut the patter, you want do the business, I can tell! I'm not a little girl any more, I've got a sixteen-year-old kid back home!”

I thought the game was up, but she went to fetch her bag which her cousin was looking after. I heard her say to him:

“I won't be coming home this evening, but don't worry, the guy I'm leaving with is a big brother. He's a softie, he's not going to cause me any trouble.”

We caught a taxi not far from Fouquet's. I didn't say anything as we were crossing the city, and nor did she. I was picturing Original Colour again, and wondering what she was up to right then back in the home country with the Hybrid.

The taxi dropped us off in front of the Arab on the corner's, which was closed at that hour.

I was praying that Mr Hippocratic wouldn't wake up as I opened the door to my studio.

Rose just stood there on the threshold.

“Aren't you going to turn on the light?”

“We don't need it,” I answered, “come in.”

“We don't know each other well, and I'm not happy being in the dark like this with a stranger, I've heard lots of weird stories …”

She flicked the switch and the light dazzled us. I got a good look at her close-up and wondered if this was the same woman as before. At Keur Samba she'd looked so young, her skin as soft as a suckling babe's. And in the violet light of the disco club her wraparound skirt showed off her B-side nicely. What I hadn't noticed was that her skin had been put through some kind of chemical peel, and her hair and nails were fake.

“Turn the light off, please,” I said.

“How are you going to know I'm beautiful if there isn't any light?”

So we left the light on. She got undressed quickly. I didn't want my eyes to spend too long on her breasts, which were covered in stretchmarks like the slashes you find on the Téké faces back home.

I lay down on the bed but leaving a big gap between her and me, and I just stared at the ceiling.

“When are we starting? Anyone would think you weren't hot for me any more … Come here!”

I started to touch her.

“No, no, no, don't stroke me, I'm not a White girl! That doesn't arouse me, it just makes me giggle and then it gets annoying …”

When she said that, my thing down there didn't want to rise any more, it contracted into my testicles and I couldn't imagine what extraordinary event might bring it back out of its storeroom.

Rose asked me if there was a problem.

“No, everything's fine, everything's fine …”

“So what are we waiting for?”

“Let's sleep, we'll do it tomorrow, it's better that way.”

“What? There won't be a tomorrow with me! Not on my life! Who do you take me for? You aroused me at Keur Samba and now you want to leave me in this state? Why did you bring me back to your place if you can't go through with it? Do you know how many people wanted to do it with me today, eh, people I sent packing because I wanted it to be with you?”

“Listen, I'm not feeling on form, and I'm not going to force things!”

“So what does it take? When a normal man sees a naked woman it starts up right away. Are you a man or not? So let me touch your thing down there, you'll soon get in the mood, you'll see …”

“No!”

“Are you saying NO to me???”

She leapt out of bed like a wounded tigress. She put her clothes back on as quickly as she'd taken them off.

“Idiot! Jerk! I thought time-wasters like you only existed back home, not here in Paris. You were well dressed with a suit and tie but you can't even give a girl
a good poking. What's the point of your thing down there? Just for pissing, is it? Stupid bastard! Give me my taxi fare or I'll smash everything in here and scream out in the hallway!”

I stood up to take a note out of my jacket pocket. I held it out to her, she tore it off me while spitting in my face.

“That's so you'll remember me! I'm Rose, and I'll say it again, you're a stupid bastard, I don't know what kind of woman goes out with a guy like you!”

She slammed the door. Luckily, Mr Hippocratic didn't bang on the wall …

* * *

And I also remember the day when, together with Vladimir the Cameroonian who smokes the longest cigars in France and Navarre, the two of us played at being princes at Atlantis, a club in the 13th arrondissement on the Quai d'Austerlitz. It's Vladimir the Cameroonian's stronghold, he gets the red-carpet treatment there, and he's even allowed to smoke his cigars inside. So I could make out I owned the place too. Seeing as Vladimir never does things by halves, we hired a Mercedes and a BMW that evening.

Once we'd been seated in the VIP corner, Vladimir brought over a girl who was tall and skinny as a broom handle and he whispered in my ear:

“This one's a real daddy's girl, I want you to whip her
ass tonight! Drink some gin and tonic, you're going to be up ‘til dawn and, believe me, this girl won't forget it …”

Gwendoline was the daughter of a Gabonese minister. As soon as we'd been introduced she started talking about her daddy's second homes, and about her own travels around the world. There wasn't a corner on earth she hadn't set foot in, she told me.

“When I'm at my father's house I don't touch a thing, not even a plate, we have servants, I have a driver, the hairdresser comes specially to our house with her six assistants.”

And so Vladimir left me in the claws of this daddy's girl. She made me want to sneeze with her perfume that stank of the Mananas we use on corpses back home. I could spot my friend winking at me from a long way off, between the swirls of his cigar smoke. But there was no stopping Gwendoline. I let her carry on with the stocktaking of her paternal inheritance. I even got to find out what kind of plates and forks they had at home. Then she fell quiet because she could see I wasn't impressed.

“You're not very chatty, are you? You haven't told me your name …”

“Buttologist.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“My friends call me Buttologist …”

She nearly swallowed an ice cube as big as a ping-pong ball.

“Are you joking or what? Right, well, I'd better call you what everyone else does! Vladimir told me you're not just anybody. I understand that Mercedes Kompressor convertible in front of the night club is yours?”

I didn't tell her we'd rented the car. I pretended to be the owner. I jangled the keys while whistling
Another Day in Paradise
by Phil Collins. I was smoking a Cohiba cigar and blowing smoke rings above my head.