We ate in a silence I began to find heavy and I was trying to figure out what was going on in Original Colour’s mind, given she didn’t really go to African restaurants much. Something was up, I could tell. Seeing as she couldn’t look me in the eye, I guessed straight away:
“You’re pregnant …”
I glanced in the direction of her friend at the bar. She smiled at me.
“Did she know about this?”
Original Colour didn’t answer.
“If I’ve got this right, we’ll need to move apartments?” I ventured.
“You must be joking, rents are expensive in Paris! We’ll just have to squeeze all three of us in.”
“We could always move out to the banlieue.”
“DON’T TALK TO ME ABOUT THE BANLIEUE!!! It’s a pile of shit out there!”
To this day, I still haven’t figured out why the word banlieue got such a reaction out of her. The people on the next table turned around when she started shouting. I chalked it up to the stress of being pregnant. One man even piped up:
“I’m from the banlieue, now d’you think I could eat my meal in peace?”
I wasn’t well paid at the printing works, so I needed to supplement my income. At the weekends I would go and buy clothes in Italy, which I quickly sold on to my compatriots in Château Rouge. I brought back suits and ties. Given that everybody knew about my taste for Sappe, there was no shortage of customers. They would follow me to the foot of our building, or else wait for me in front of the Arab on the corner’s. As a special favour, my former roommates from Château Rouge got to drink beer with me inside our studio. Mr Hippocratic saw red and took to impersonating the police in front of the main entrance. He demanded to see the identity cards of my customers.
I would react violently:
“You’re not the police!”
“As for you, bringing all the illegal immigrants in France and the neighbouring countries into this building! You’re going to hear me out!”
* * *
I’d like to make it clear that I’m the one who bought the baby clothes, because I wanted Original Colour to know I was the responsible type, that’s how it works back home, the man pays for everything, full stop. If I hadn’t paid for the baby clothes, my status would be rock bottom today. I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the mirror. I also noticed that baby clothes weren’t within everyone’s means. Those tiny bootees cost an arm and a leg, and the pram was the price of rent back in the home country. You can reproach me for whatever you like, but I’m proud that I protected my honour as a father.
When our little girl was born, I was the happiest father on earth. And I wanted the whole world to know about it. I paid for an announcement in the columns of Libération as well as Le Parisien, even though babies come into the world anonymously in our circles, as if the parents were ashamed of their progeny. People saw me out and about in the neighbourhood with my pram and a pack of Pampers. I’d be coming back from the Arab on the corner’s, I let him talk to my daughter because he said at that age children could understand all the languages in the world. So he spoke to her in Arabic without translating for me …
* * *
I didn’t wait three months before turning up with my kid at Jip’s to show her off to my pals, so they could see with their own eyes that I’d become a dad. They were the ones who had insisted on it, they gave me a hard time about hiding my daughter like those members of my tribe who only show their child several months later so as to avoid evil people putting a curse on them. I told them all they needed to do was read the newspapers in this country, that there was an announcement in Libération and Le Parisien.
Bosco the Embassy Poet was the first to see my little girl. He was standing at the entrance with a glass of red wine in one hand and a copy of Rimbaud in the other. There was a moment’s silence, then he stepped away from the door and stared at us tensely. I nodded to indicate he could hold my child, that I wouldn’t mind.
“Have you taken leave of your senses?”
I couldn’t understand why he’d reacted like this. It turns out that in Chad, in his ethnic group, the men won’t touch a baby until it’s twelve months old.
“Don’t be offended, my friend. I shall write for your daughter a poem in the style of Victor Hugo’s Infantile Influence. And you will see, I promise, that there will be some highly rewarding rhymes from start to finish! The trouble with today’s poets is that they have abandoned rhyme. So anyone can call himself a poet, and there is no way of separating the wheat from the chaff. I find it absolutely staggering when I read what these so-called poets write these days. Where has the elegance of Valéry gone? What has happened to the genius of Hugo? What have they done with the impertinence of Baudelaire? Could you tell me, please? I am the only one to stand up against this dereliction of poetic duty. But be there only one poet left, I shall be that poet. Let us place the order for your baby straightaway, here is my pen and a piece of paper to write it down. Would you prefer alexandrines or six-line stanzas? Or rather do not worry yourself, I shall write two versions, one with alexandrines, and another with six-line stanzas. Just allow time for my inspiration to take hold.”
To this day, I still haven’t received any poem.
As for Vladimir the Cameroonian with the longest cigars in France and Navarre, he joked that two of his cigars end-to-end were longer than my daughter was tall. Not only that but he wanted to know why we had called her Henriette. I told him it was after my grandmother, Henriette Nsoko, a woman who played a very important role in my childhood, and someone I miss a great deal. My mother and I used to go to see her in the village of Louboulou in the south of the Congo, she died when I was barely six years old. The picture I still have of her is of an old woman sitting in front of the door to her hut, her eyes raised to the sky as if she were putting herself in God’s hands for the rest of her days. The goats were her only confidantes, old age had worn away at her memory and she could no longer remember who I was. When I opened her kitchen door, she shrieked that she was being robbed, the villagers would rush over to explain that I was her grandson, the son of her daughter Pauline Kengué, not a goat-rustler. But my grandmother, doubtful and suspicious, would fret:
“Who is Pauline Kengué?”
This wasn’t how Vladimir saw it:
“I understand that Henriette was your grandmother’s name, but there’s no need to go overboard! With all the names that are available in the Whites’ calendar, how dare you condemn the poor little girl to death? Henriette is an old lady’s name! Let me tell you something, these Europeans don’t trifle with first names, they take them very seriously. They’ve got some fine-sounding ones like Georges, Valéry, François and Jacques. If you’d asked for my opinion, I’d have given you some sound advice. Not only did you go and have a baby behind our backs, but you lumber the poor innocent thing with a name from the Jurassic period! Do your really think Henriette is a name for a normal child, eh? You could have called her Jeanne, for example, or Charlotte, or Odette, or Marie or I don’t know what else, these are fresher names, they are more attractive and they will guarantee your child a future … And then there’s another false note, and I’m not going to hide this from you, it looks to me as if your daughter will be even darker than her mother, who is already at the peak of negritude. Anyone would think you made your baby in a Medieval Christian oven and left her in there to burn without keeping an eye on Hell’s fire. Because, as you know, normally when a black child comes into the world he is very pale-skinned like the children belonging to the Whites, it’s only afterwards that he gradually takes on his original colour. But your child is already as black as can be. I am completely taken aback, I’ve never seen such a charred baby, not even in Africa!”