How to Make Love to a Negro without Getting Tired (13 page)

The Big One was worse than a crushed cockroach on a Sunday night. She didn't even see me; she flung open the fridge door and helped herself to a beer. Big, ugly and vulgar. (“Fighting is obligatory for you, much as you dislike it.” Sura
II
, 216.) Up above, Beelzebub is lying low. Very low!

Bouba started undressing the Little One and feeling up her breasts. The Big One had had time to put away three beers and still not notice me. I scrunched down in the bed. Bouba signalled me to take care of the Big One and went on feeling up the Little One. I was laying in wait for the Big One behind the eleventh beer. Then the ceiling came tumbling down with a tremendous crash. It had to happen sooner or later. Columns of pink smoke. But we were spared the worst. Escaping death by inches. Beelzebub wasn't lying low up there after all.

The Big One went and stood in the shower with all her clothes on and and started screaming at the top of her lungs. She was hungry. She went and cooked up some spaghetti. Soaking wet. I don't know when I finally snapped. I didn't stop screaming for over an hour. The police came. I fell asleep right afterwards. The next morning the girls were gone.

A GRIMY
noon. Bouba went out. I'm typing the last chapter at top speed. The end of my ordeal is in sight. The Remington (my partner in crime) hasn't lost its touch. I've just got to finish this prologue. When you add it up, I wrote this novel in thirty-six days and eighteen nights, using three ribbons, four jars of liquid paper, five hundred sheets of bond paper, thirty bottles of wine and a dozen cases of beer. I totalled it up in a little black notebook, a gift from Miz Literature. I'm typing like crazy. The Remington is having a ball. Words are squirting out everywhere. I type. I can't take it any more. I type. I'm at the end of my ribbon. I finish. I crash out on the table next to the typewriter with my head on my arms.

You're Not Born Black,
You Get That Way

DAWN CAME
up, as always, independent of my will. Sweet adolescent dawn. The lances of the sun without their sting. Gentle and cajoling. My novel stares at me from the table, next to the old Remington, in its fat red folder. My novel is a handsome hunk of hope. My only chance.
Take it.

DANY LAFERRIÈRE
was born in Port-au-Prince in 1953. He worked as a journalist under Haiti's notorious Duvalier regime before immigrating to Montreal in 1976. Laferrière is the author of fourteen novels and the recipient of numerous awards, including the Prix
RFO
du Livre 2002, Le Grand Prix de la ville de Montréal 2009, the first Prix Carbet des lyceens and the Governor General's Award.
How to Make Love to a Negro,
originally published in French in 1985, was his first novel and later adapted into a Genie Award– nominated film. Laferrière's other novels include
Heading South, I Am a Japanese Writer
and the international bestseller
L'énigme du retour
, which won the prestigious Prix Médicis in 2009. Laferrière lives in Montreal.