Black Bazaar (13 page)

Madame Sangho, the bar owner, came over to tell him to lower his voice, that there were other customers who were disturbed by the noise we were making.

“Who are these customers? What do they have over
my big brother? Leave me in peace, woman! I need to talk! I've had enough! Am I looking for trouble in this bar? My big brother is buying my beers, he has got money, he is well dressed, have you seen his suit? Do you know where he bought it? Are we in France or are we not? The customer is king!”

Then, leaning over as if he didn't want the other compatriots to share what he was about to confide in me, he whispered in a deep voice:

“Big brother, I am going to tell you something you must keep to yourself … It is very serious what that Mitori has done. He's a bastard! It's because you don't know him, big brother! If you come across him here or anywhere, whatever you do don't offer him a beer because I can see you're too kind and you'll always be taken for a bloody fool. You're too nice, and too much of a bloody fool. Mitori is a crook, he's a snake, I swear! I won't tell you what a scandal there was over in Nancy where he lived before! That was where he took the virginity of the daughter of a lawyer from back home who dabbles in politics and who wants to become president by the way with a little help from the Americans. Do you think the Americans will help a guy like that who didn't fight in the Vietnam War and who didn't bomb the Iraqis? The Americans only respect you if you have fought by their side in war. But we Congolese, have we been in battle alongside the Americans? NO, NO, NO! This lawyer had Mitori
locked up for two years, the story was reported in the newspapers because the daughter of that lawyer was only seventeen but Mitori had been an adult for a long time, and the French don't mess around when it comes to that kind of thing. Back home, seventeen isn't a problem, you can already have two children by then, or even three or four, but that doesn't happen here, you're locked up if you lay a finger on a girl that young. When Mitori came out of prison, he went into hiding in Amiens and never set foot in Nancy again. I know everything, that's why he's scared of me, that's why he's kicked me out of the group. And the girl in question, whose virginity he took, I mean the lawyer's daughter, she's not even beautiful! Not beautiful at all! Ugly as a louse! If you saw her, you would think to yourself how can a girl be as ugly as that? It's true she's got a great ass, and I wouldn't say no, if she was offering. I'd close my eyes and do the business without leaving any marks, but I mean really is it because of that kind of girl that me, Carcass, would go to prison for two years, eh? Let's not get carried away here. And another thing, this girl I am talking about she is so black you can only see her eyes and her teeth!”

I was sweating profusely, and I was thinking hard, I wasn't listening to him. I wanted to go home, I knew I wouldn't do anything or say anything to Original Colour.

I paid the bill and left some money for Carcass
because he wanted to stay a while longer. He tore a strip of paper out of his notebook and scrawled down a telephone number. I told him I didn't have a number, that I would call him. I didn't want him to get Original Colour when he called me.

“Thank you, big brother, you are really somebody!…”

* * *

A week later, I called Carcass. He seemed very worked up about something:

“Big brother! I've been waiting on your call for days! Why didn't you ring me, eh? Guess what, yesterday I spotted Mitori, he was with that very black and very ugly girl I was telling you about, I mean the daughter of the lawyer in Nancy. They were in Château Rouge, at Pauline Nzongo's restaurant. And there was me thinking their story was over!”

Like a fool, I'd been looking after our daughter that evening while those two cousins were out eating and getting drunk at a Congolese restaurant on Rue de Suez …

One time the Hybrid
stayed in Paris for over a month even though his group didn't have any concerts booked. It's true he didn't sleep at ours, but I noticed Original Colour losing her head during that period, she was always getting dressed up, spending more and more time away from home and coming back very late. My cousin this, my cousin that. I won't be back early tonight, don't wait up for me. Pick up the kid from the Cape Verdean childminder and feed her at seven o'clock on the dot …

That same month I thought I was going to explode when I found the Hybrid sitting comfortably in our only armchair. This armchair was my place, I was the one who had bought it, and I sat in it to watch my programmes about those couples who go to an island to resist the temptations of handsome men and beautiful women. The Hybrid was holding the remote and watching
The Young and The Restless
. My daughter was fast asleep, and he was shedding a tear in front of the telly because of his soap involving a love story and an inheritance, as well as poisonings every two minutes and trite dialogue. All he was wearing was a pair of
shorts, he was gobbling up my garlic saucisson with some cassava and a hot pepper, and drinking my beers that I'd bought from the Arab on the corner. He was surrounded by empty bottles.

I asked him what the hell he was doing in the capital instead of being with his fellow musicians in their remote corner of northern France. He replied that the whole group was in Paris to record a CD, and that he and the others had decided to go back to the home country for good. In the meantime, he was making the most of it by looking after Henriette while Original Colour was at work. All in all, he was helping his cousin and I should be grateful to him.

At this rate he was as good as living with us. How can you stay round at other people's from morning to midnight? According to Original Colour, the cousin was doing a good job of looking after the little one. I'll admit that when he used to sing things to our little girl, she held out her arms to him and burst out laughing. She was getting so used to him that when I wanted to hold her and sing her the things from here that people sing to little French children – things like
Marlborough Has Left for the War
and
There's Some Tobacco in My Snuffbox
– she would blub as if she'd been stung by a red ant, she wanted to stay in the Hybrid's arms and she would only listen to the songs from back home. This pleased him no end, I tell you he was taunting me …

I had really had enough by the end. But I couldn't say this out loud. Original Colour kept praising the minstrel's talents, which encouraged him to leave two of his drums round at ours on the grounds that Henriette loved the sound of our ancestral instrument. On Sunday afternoons he would make a bloody awful racket, giving me a migraine and making Mr Hippocratic bellow that we should go back to the bush we came from and take our accursed tom-toms with us.

“The Negroes say fuck you!” crowed Original Colour.

* * *

Since the Hybrid felt at home, this meant I was in the way, and Original Colour made this very clear to me. One afternoon I even came back to find the minstrel in my Marithé & François Girbaud T-shirt. He was making a big show of wearing it, and was stretched out on the bed with a Pelfort and the telly tuned to his soap involving love, beauty, glory, inheritance and trite dialogue.

This time, he really had overstepped the limits of hospitality even if it wasn't me who paid the deposit on the studio. Have I lived but to know this infamy? I muttered, through Corneillean gritted teeth.

I vented my anger on him. He defended himself saying it was Original Colour who had lent him my T-shirt, otherwise he would never have taken the liberty of wearing it. And anyway, he added, this top looks like
a floorcloth, there are holes everywhere, you can't wear it outside the apartment. Did he follow fashion, this man? To say that about an item of designer clothing by Marithé & François Girbaud! What sacrilege! What ignorance! We nearly came to blows.

“Take that T-shirt off and fast!” I shouted.

He got up, his eyes went red, I could sense the anger rising in his chest. He warned me that if I laid a finger on him he would make mincemeat of me because he had been given a grigri at birth and if he head-butted me I would be out cold for twenty-four and a half hours:

“If you lay a finger on me, I'll send you off to Accident and Emergency in Lariboisière with one head butt! I'm not looking for trouble here. I haven't been in a fight for a long time, but if you want to test the force of my grigri from the village of Tsiaki, then just try touching a single hair on my head!”

On the basis that I didn't want to be out cold for twenty-four and a half hours and end up in A&E in Lariboisière, and because I know that you don't mess around with grigris from Tsiaki, I calmly repeated my request for him to take off my clothes and to pick up his shitty belongings, before finishing off with:

“That T-shirt is mine, it cost an arse and a leg, and we're not talking any old arse here, not even a piece of Original Colour's butt!”

* * *

Later on that same evening, before running to catch the last métro, the Hybrid told his cousin every word I'd said, and she wouldn't let it drop all night.

“You criticised my butt in front of my cousin? Who do you think you are? These buttocks of mine that you're insulting, aren't they the same ones that turned your head that first day in front of Soul Fashion, eh? Have you ever seen any others like these in all your life? Do you know how many people would pay to have me? Do you look at yourself in the mirror before you start talking to people? I am asking you again: who do you think you are, eh? You do nothing in this house, you go drinking with the riff-raff at Jip's, you work part-time, and you think you can play the boss round at my place?”

The Hybrid never did come back to our apartment and Original Colour stopped talking to me. At least, I thought to myself, we've got rid of the minstrel. But we still had two of his drums at home, and they got up my nose. When I looked at those instruments it was as if the cousin was there and our ancestors were talking to me, or even mocking me.

“So when is he going to pick up his things, that cousin of yours? We don't have any space in this studio as it is!”

This question was the last straw. Original Colour turned into a wounded tigress:

“Enough is enough! Enough is enough! Enough is
enough! If you won't leave this studio then I'm the one who is walking out!”

She was roaring so loudly that Mr Hippocratic banged on the wall several times.

“Silence, you Congolese negroes, or I'll call the police!”

I never did the business with her again after that. I took to sleeping on the floor, and eating out with my pals from Jip's. I spent time with Louis-Philippe who kept saying to me:

“Write, write about what you're feeling …”

I'd never taken
my hat off for anybody before. If I found myself eating humble pie now, it was for the sake of my child's education so that one day she would turn out a dutiful daughter. I was trying to get on top of things, to dilute my palm wine with water, and not to think about what Carcass had told me at Bar Sangho, I even stopped calling him so I wouldn't have to suffer any more. I wanted to become a responsible man, I wanted to show Original Colour that I didn't give a monkey's about her history with the Hybrid when she was seventeen.

So I only went to the park once or twice with my typewriter, even though there were flocks of birds hopping about in the branches and waiting just for me.

When I made it to Jip's I only stayed for two hours tops, I downed two or three Pelforts and let my thoughts roam free. I was picturing the Hybrid with Original Colour a few years earlier when he was taking her somewhere, maybe to a barn to do the business. The poor girl was fragile, maybe she didn't think she was ready to enter the world of adults, or else she did want it, to free herself at last from her parents, and above
all from that lawyer. Back then, the Hybrid must have been even shorter and he already had sweaty armpits. And then, bam! he forced things. According to Paul from the big Congo, who used to drink by my side in those times of great confusion, a girl never forgets her first man. Hey presto, I would drink another beer, and erase those images. I would catch the métro to Etienne Marcel in order to get back to north Paris, hoping that the Hybrid hadn't returned to settle down in front of the telly and watch his stories about love, inheritance, glory and beauty …

Paul from the big Congo picked up straight away that the sparks were flying at home:

“You can always talk to me, Buttologist, you know how discreet I am. I mean have you ever heard me making fun of you the way the others do here? I'm getting more and more worried about you because you are not the man I used to know, anyone would think you don't sleep any more. You come here, you only have two or three Pelforts and then you run back home, it is like you've been given a set time and you can't be late, not even by a second. Is it Original Colour who is making your life a misery?”

I told him that everything was fine, that I was just a bit tired.

“Look me in the eye … You are lying … Yes, you are lying. I can see that your eyes are all red. You're not
going to tell me it's because of those stories you write on your typewriter! What is wrong?”

* * *

I found out that the Hybrid had been talking to our Arab on the corner and that the shopkeeper had enjoyed his company.

One evening when I went into his shop to buy some Pelforts and milk he said to me:

“For too long the West has force-fed us lies and bloated us with pestilence! Do you know which black poet spoke those courageous words, eh? My African brother, last night I was with your relative, I mean the cousin of your wife, so he is your cousin too. I often used to see him coming out of your building very late and running in the direction of the métro like the people who steal my vegetables from outside. I was puzzled as to who he was because you might not think it, but I know just about everybody who lives in that building of yours. There is a total of only three Blacks: your woman, your daughter and you. I'm not counting the Caribbean gentleman because he's a case apart, a strange character who does not think he's black, or that there's anything African about him, and that he's French through and through. But as for your cousin there, what a fine fellow! He talks softly, and when he listens he folds his arms and nods with each word. Wouldn't you call that a sign of respect? He is a very educated
kind of man because education begins with listening even though in the West they think it all starts with the spoken word. My father, he often used to say to me: ‘Djamal, he who listens is wiser than he who speaks …' Do you get my gist? Did you realise that cousin of yours there has already been to Algeria and Morocco for some traditional African music concerts? Do you know any African brothers who have worked such wonders? We should be developing exchanges like that between the Maghreb and Black Africa! We are strangers to one another, which is why there are fools who claim that in the old days the Arabs forced their black African brothers into slavery. Can you believe lies like that? Do I have the face of someone whose ancestors were slavers? We need to look into this subject, it is not for nothing that the West didn't dwell on it. It is a sensitive topic. But I say to Westerners that slavery is the West's story, it is not about us Arabs. We are all brothers and no one forces their own brothers into slavery … Anyway, all this is to say how happy I was when your cousin told me that he has been to Algeria and Morocco and that he liked these countries! He at least knows how we live over there. He has seen the meaning of respect where we come from. He told me that he wants to convert to Islam, isn't that a good piece of news? He has understood everything, he wants to follow in the footsteps of those Blacks who have become Muslims, those Blacks who have changed and who continue to change the world:
Mohammed Ali, Malcolm X, Karim Abdoul-Jabbar, Louis Farrakhan, etc. Do you realise that your cousin calls me 'papa', eh? I had tears in my eyes! Why haven't you ever called me ‘papa' when we've known each other for a long time and I could be your father too given that I am bald and going grey on the sides? If we had a million immigrants like your cousin in this country, we would be strong in the face of the West. And another thing, he has an extraordinary talent, he is the leader of a traditional music group. That group is very well known! Because, between you and me, to go and play in Algeria and Morocco you already have to be very well known throughout the world otherwise the Algerians and the Moroccans will never come to your concert, I know my people. Your cousin also told me that he is going to return to the home country for good with his group. Don't you think that's a respectable attitude? We should all go back home so that one day the African Unity of the Guide Muammar Gaddafi may turn into a reality. The Guide also said, like the pastor Luther King: ‘I have a dream'! It is up to us to make his dream come true, it is not the people from the West who are going to give us a leg-up, they are too cunning, they have created their European Community even if they don't get on among themselves. Do you know why they don't get on among themselves? It is because the English don't want anything to do with their single currency. It is because the Danes and the Swedes don't trust it, now
look if they really do want that currency then why are they going round in circles instead of jumping on the bandwagon with the other countries, eh? And then, my African brother, why doesn't this Community of theirs accept that Turkey has a place in it, eh? Well, let me tell you, it is because when you see Turkey on the map, this country shares her life between Europe and Asia, and yet the problem it is that the Europeans who had the idea for their Community in the first place are all against polygamy! What are the poor Turks going to do? Move their country? But with our Community that we are going to create thanks to the Guide Gaddafi, if Turkey wants to stay polygamous, well then she will be able to join us, we will open our doors to her because polygamy isn't a problem for us, why it's even enriching! And this is what I was saying to that cousin of yours, and he understood everything from A to Z. He is so modest that he didn't want to tell me he is a great artist who is the pride and joy of our continent. It was only when I asked him where that drumming sound comes from I've been hearing in your building recently, that he told me he was playing the drums to soothe your little one and to help her acclimatise to the African environment! Splendid, don't you think?”