Black Bazaar (12 page)

That Congolese minstrel doesn't even come up to my ankles, he doesn't even come up to my Achilles' heel.
Has he got a moustache like me or like my friend the writer Louis-Philippe? Has he ever worn Weston shoes in his life? Does he know how to knot a silk tie? Does he know why some shirt collars have three buttons? Could he recognise one hundred per cent lambswool? Does he own a Francesco Smalto suit with a topstitched lining? Has he ever seen the film
Three The Hard Way
with Jim Kelly, Jim Brown and Fred Williamson? Has he ever read
The Dirty Havana Trilogy
by Juan Pedro Guttiériez? NO, NO AND NO AGAIN!

I've got to calm down here or I might end up punching my typewriter. I've got to remember that the Hybrid is short even when he's standing up. Plus he's got one eye bigger than the other, and his calloused hands look like the claws of a crab from the Côte Sauvage at Pointe-Noire who can't decide whether to go back into the sea or to scuttle across the sand. His head is like a rectangular parallelepiped. His skin is like very dark laterite, and if you take a good look there's no difference between him and those famous sculptures of fighters that the Senegalese artist Ousmane Sow exhibited on the Pont des Arts, and which frightened some Parisians so much that the poor things were forced to cross the Seine using different bridges where joy wouldn't come again after each sorrow …

Original Colour will be sorry one day. When you're lucky enough to have a guy like me you don't leave him, you hold on to him.

Sometimes I wonder what people are looking for
in life. What on earth is she going to do with the Hybrid, eh? Listen to the tom-toms night and day? Tag along behind for his concerts in the back of beyond? What is this business of restoring drumming to the poor Africans of Africa? These days the Africans over there don't give a monkey's about traditional African drumming, because it's something they've left to the Whites who take lessons in it, who dress up in African textiles to look the part and who are rather pleased with themselves because they reckon they're doing their bit for integration and cross-cultural exchange. I can understand a White learning to play the tom-toms, it makes him look cool, the kind of guy who is open to all the cultures of the world and who is not in the least bit racist. But a Black who plays the tom-toms is dodgy, it's too much about returning to his roots, to the beginning, to the natural state, about having a sense of rhythm. It's not for nothing that the Europeans are so interested in African drumming. It's because they want to find out how things worked where we came from, when it was the only means of communication.

* * *

The Hybrid didn't know how to make the most of his instrument in the current circumstances. If I were a drummer like him, well, I'd have gone for the easy ride, I'd have stayed in Europe to cash in while the going was good, I'd have played bum notes for workers in
the sticks, at nurseries in the banlieues, at the after-school clubs in the 13th arrondissement, at the Porte de Vincennes fair, at the old people's homes in Rueil Malmaison, in prisons and psychiatric asylums, because music knows no barriers. There's money to be made because I've noticed that Whites go easy on our music, especially where those shitty tom-toms are involved. It all gets more complicated when fantasist negroes add in a bit of piano here, a bit of violin there. How are Whites supposed to deal with that, eh? They think to themselves: “Hold on, hold on a minute, your hullaballoo is fine by us but don't reduce our Bach and our Mozart to this rudimentary level!”

They're not wrong, when it comes to their music it's written down, you read it, you go to school to learn how to do it, you even have to repeat the year if you're stupid. But we've still got the kind of music that's in our bones and gets handed down from generation to generation. Bullshit! Rubbish! Go to music school just like everybody else, end of story. And on the day of the final exam it will be plain for everyone to see that this business about the music getting under our skin is just claptrap because the Whites have skin too even if unfortunately for them it's not black like ours …

The Hybrid didn't sense the winds of change. He thinks the Berlin Wall is still standing, that General de Gaulle will spring to life and bring back our prophet André
Grenard Matsoua to Maya-Maya airport in Brazzaville. He is convinced that Nelson Mandela is still in prison, and that Diego Maradona will play in the next World Cup. It's only to be expected, I have no idea what his intelligence quota is. Like the ostrich, his eye is bigger than his brain.

When I imagine my daughter calling him “papa” it makes my nose run but I refuse to blow it because I want to stay snotty on the subject of Original Colour and the Hybrid. Nothing can curb my desire to express myself, to write in this diary what I feel about him deep down …

The Hybrid was
becoming more and more of an intruder in our lives. Whenever his group had a concert in Paris, he would turn up at our place with no notice but lots of presents for the little one. He would lean over our daughter, rock her as if she were his own, and talk to her in a strange dialect. And since the Arab on the corner had explained to me that children can understand all the languages in the world, I wondered what that minstrel was telling Henriette. He would talk quickly with a smile that stretched all the way to his ears. And the child would fidget, giggle, hold out her arms to him. At which point the Hybrid would take a teddy bear out of his bag, followed by a doll, followed by a pink dress.

Was it thanks to the wild imaginings of Roger the French-Ivorian that all of a sudden I too found my daughter didn't look like me? The more I thought about it, the more it occurred to me that she looked a bit like the Hybrid. So I would glance from Henriette to the Hybrid and back again: same nose, same eyes, same mouth, the toes were the only body part I could claim.

“There is something I don't understand,” I said to
Original Colour, “I am finding that my child here is starting to look too much like your cousin! He has got to stop turning up to show his face to her, I don't want the little one turning out ugly given that I'm handsome!”

Her reply was head-on:

“Have you got a problem with my cousin or what? You do know that he can throw you out of here? You do know that he is the one who paid the deposit on this studio, eh?”

So the Hybrid ended up making me look like the worst kind of miser in Original Colour's eyes. For her he bought shoes, watches, brightly coloured fabrics, trinkets and clingy trousers that squeezed the Side B of my ex even more tightly and drove me to distraction when she refused with increasing regularity to let me stroke even her left toe or her right toe. At one o'clock in the morning I had to negotiate, argue, talk it through, and generally wheedle to the point where it disturbed Mr Hippocratic who could hear me grumbling when she pushed me away, swearing that she wouldn't let me touch her until I changed my attitude towards her cousin.

After the Hybrid went back to Amiens, he used to call Original Colour every evening, wanting to know Henriette's latest news. But I was the one who got shouted at when the phone bill arrived, even though it was those two who spent hours and hours chatting and giggling about nothing.

It's true that I frequently called Louis-Philippe, but we never talked for longer than ten or fifteen minutes. I kept him up to date with my writings, and told him about the birds I'd seen in the trees in the park, I assured him that I'd noted down their tiniest movements, their briefest songs, and he promised that he would read my work, and that he'd give me his opinion. When I wanted to confide in him about what was going on at home, I went to pay him a visit, we'd sit at a café table in his neighbourhood and I would read out what I'd scribbled down over the previous days and about how the Hybrid was wreaking havoc on our relationship …

* * *

It was at Bar Sangho, in Château Rouge, that I first met the person nicknamed Carcass. Perhaps it's partly down to what he told me that Original Colour and I have come to this point.

That day I'd bought a round of Pelforts for two compatriots who had arranged to meet me at Bar Sangho. A third compatriot sat down with us and insisted on me buying him a Pelfort too, even though he'd got a nerve, we hardly knew each other. He claimed we had a connection, saying that his father and mine used to be great friends. I wracked my brains and realised he was right, but that it was his big brother, Hervé, who I used to know when I was at the Lycée Karl Marx. So Carcass was mistaking me for my little brother. I
bought him a Pelfort. He told me he was a musician in a traditional group, that things hadn't worked out for him, that he'd been given the boot from one day to the next by someone called Mitori.

That name rang a bell. It took me a while before I realised it was the Hybrid's real name. Lucien Mitori …

Half an hour later, Carcass had already got through four bottles of beer. As soon as he raised a hand in the direction of the counter, he got served as if he was the one footing the bill.

He started raving, he kept on calling me “big brother”, and telling me I wasn't just anybody:

“Big brother, you are a powerful man! Eeeeh! You are really somebody! There are some shady characters in Paris, but you are not one, big brother. You see that suit you're wearing? It's a terrific suit! Back home you would catch the girls like flies, I swear to you! Outfits like that, not even the Whites know where they're sold or how they're made. I'm telling you, big brother, I'm trying to get by the best I can, I'm a true musician, me! There aren't two musicians of my calibre in all of Paris. I'm telling you! I have recorded with artists like Lokua Kanza, Ray Lema and Richard Bona. I nearly recorded with old Manu Dibango, but it fell through at the last minute because his schedule was too full. So I play here and there, but it's tough. Last month I was still playing with Griots Of The Congo. They didn't want me in that group because I've got talent. My time
will come, I swear to you, big brother! In your view, why did they kick me out of Griots Of The Congo, eh? There was a coup staged against me. And it was Mitori who mounted that coup d'état because I was starting to have too much power and success in the group, because I was nearly number two. He was scared that one day I'd be the boss, and most of all he was scared that I wasn't from the same ethnic group as him. Is that any kind of a way to behave, big brother? I don't like that Mitori! He's a dog! He's a hypocrite! I'd had enough. Our people will never change!”

He turned round, saw the waitress walking past and grabbed hold of her:

“What are you doing wiggling your backside around my big brother like that? Do you want to make his head spin or something? Do you think it's a fashion show here? Can't you see my bottles are empty and my big brother is looking after me properly? So what are you waiting for when you could replace them double quick, eh?”

I signalled to him to calm down.

“No, big brother, I don't understand these African bars any more. With the Whites, when a bottle is empty, it is empty! Another one is brought, double-quick! But with us, the waitresses go round in circles and flirt with the customers. Listen up, girl, bring me two ice-cold Pelforts and leave my big brother in peace!”

The waitress went off to sulk at the back of the bar.
Carcass moved his chair closer to mine:

“Big brother, thank you for these beers, you are not just anybody! Do you realise that the Congolese here in France form musical groups based on ethnic lines, as if we were still in the home country? Is that what they call promoting the traditional music of our nation? What image are we projecting of ourselves in Europe, eh? They tell everybody they're playing music from the Congo, but what about me, aren't I Congolese too? It's because I'm not from their ethnic group that they've excluded me. He's a dog, that Mitori! He's a hypocrite, that Mitori! I don't like him one little bit, that Mitori! When he is sweating he stinks. He is short as the dwarves you see with Snow White in those picture books for European kids. And another thing, when he plays the tom-toms his instrument is taller than he is. Have you ever seen that before, eh, a man shorter than his own drum? If I run into him, I will break his nose! At some of our concerts he would take me to one side, and say that the producers didn't have any money and we had to reduce the numbers. Big brother, you've known this country for a long time like me, have you ever seen a white producer who doesn't have money, eh? Or else, how come your Michel Sardous and your Charles Aznavours are never bankcrupt, eh? All the white producers have always got money, and I won't let anyone bullshit on the subject. It's the black producers who don't have anything, and that's all there is to it.
They rob the artists, they run off with the cashbox back to the home country, and that's why we don't have musicians who are as rich as your Michel Sardous and your Charles Aznavours. Big brother, name me a single one of our musicians who is rich. Nothing! Zero! They live poor, they die poor, the worst is their music gets forgotten too if there isn't a White taking care of it. I'm not being extremist when I say that, and these Pelforts aren't turning my brain in the direction of Mecca. Having a white producer is an opportunity to get rich. But that Mitori, he just wanted to get rich by himself, and he wanted to let the people from his ethnic group profit out of it. So he hired another conga player instead of me, a guy from the village where he was born, when I was the one who trained that musician here in Paris! Do you see the problem? What am I in this story, eh? What experience does he have, this Mitori, to run a group in France, eh? Me, I can play the tom-toms better than him! He is just a small-time thug, a no one, an anarchist as they say in France. He came to Nancy thanks to his cousin who then kicked him out because he was a slacker, because he wanted to do the business with the woman of his good Samaritan cousin, but the woman said NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!”