Before walking into the bar, I always glance across to where Soul Fashion, a ladies’ underwear shop, used to be. There’s a reason for me looking that way: it’s where my ex used to work. The shop closed down and nobody knows why. So now the Chinese guy with a restaurant a bit further along, on Rue de la Grande Truanderie, is opening a dry cleaners on the premises …
Lately, when I show up at Jip’s, Roger the French-Ivorian pounces on me. He’s heard it from Paul from the big Congo that, in order to drown my sorrows after my ex left me and to control my anger against the Hybrid, I’m writing a diary at home with a typewriter I bought from a second-hand shop in Porte de Vincennes.
Take the day before yesterday, when he saw me coming he didn’t even give me time to reach the spot by the bar where Paul from the big Congo often stands to get a better view of the girls going by in Rue Saint-Denis.
He said to me:
“Here you are, Buttologist, just the person I’ve been waiting for! Paul from the big Congo tells me you’re writing this and that and it is called Black Bazaar. So what’s your little scam? Why are you writing? I suppose you think anyone can write stories, eh? Is this a trick to claim that you are unemployed, to squeeze through the chinks in the system, to steal other people’s benefits, to dig an even deeper hole in the social security and to put the brakes on Gallic social mobility?”
Roger the French-Ivorian understood that I didn’t appreciate his tone of voice and ordered two Pelforts to win me back.
“Listen, my friend, you must be realistic here! Forget about sitting down and writing every day, there are much smarter people for that, and you can see them on the telly, they know how to talk, and when they talk there is a subject, there is a verb and there is an object. This is what they were born to do, they were brought up with it, but when it comes to us negroes, well then writing is not our thing. With us it is the oral traditions of our ancestors, we are tales from the bush and forest, the adventures of Leuk-the-Hare told to children around a fire crackling to the beat of the tom-tom. Our problem it is that we did not invent the printing press or the ballpoint pen, and we will always sit at the back of the classroom fantasising about how to write the history of the dark continent with our spears. Do you understand what I am saying? Plus we have got a funny accent, you can hear it even when we write, and this people do not like. And another thing, you need real life experience to write. What real life experience have you got, eh? Nothing! Zero! Now take me, I would have no end of things to write about because I am mixed-race, I am lighter-skinned than you are, and this gives me an important edge. My only reason for not writing a single line until now is lack of time. But I will make up for it when I am retired with a nice house in the countryside, and the whole world will recognise my work for the masterpiece that it is!”
He downed his glass of Pelfort in one and then, after a moment’s silence, he asked:
“Since you say you are a writer, have you at least got a white sheep in these stories of yours?”
I told Roger the French-Ivorian I didn’t like sheep and that I had never seen any that colour.
“You mean there aren’t any sheep in your district, over there in the Congo?”
“Well yes, you will find some among the traders in Trois-Cents, but their sheep aren’t even white, they are all black, with patches sometimes, and you can’t go telling credible stories with sheep like that. And another thing, the traders chop them up and sell them as kebabs at night in the streets.”
“Fine, all right then, but in these stories of yours, have you at least got a sea and an old man who goes fishing with a young boy?”
I said no because the sea frightens me especially since, like a lot of people in our country, I went to see Jaws and had to leave The Rex before the end of the film.
Roger the French-Ivorian signalled to Willy for two more Pelforts.
“Fine, all right then,” he went on, “but in these stories of yours, have you at least got an old man who reads love stories in the middle of the bush?”
“Oh no, and anyway how would we get love stories to the heart of the bush? Back home it would be mission impossible, our interior is closed off. There is only one road that goes there, and it dates back to colonial times.”
“You have been independent for nearly half a century and you’re telling me there’s only one road? What the hell have you been doing in all that time? You’ve got to stop blaming those settlers for everything! The Whites cleared off and they left you everything including colonial homes, electricity, a railway, drinking water, a river, an Atlantic Ocean, a seaport, Nivaquine, antiseptic and a town centre!”
“It’s nothing to do with me, it’s our governments who are to blame. If they had at least resurfaced the road the settlers left us, then today your old man could be sent his love stories. But let me tell you, that colonial road is a scandal …”
“What is the matter, eh? Why is it a scandal? Are you against the settlers or what? I say we owe the settlers respect! Me, I’ve had enough of people talking through their hats when those settlers conscientiously got on with their job of delivering us from the darkness and bringing us civilisation. Did they have to do all that, eh? You do realise that they worked like lunatics? There were mosquitoes, devils, sorcerers, cannibals and green mambas, there was sleeping sickness, yellow fever, blue fever, orange fever, rainbow fever and goodness knows what else. There were all these ills over our ebony lands, our ghostly Africa, to the point that even Tintin ended up having to come over in person on our behalf. So far be it from me to harbour a grudge against the settlers. You do accept that Tintin went to your Congo, don’t you? And did that Tintin ask himself a thousand and one questions? Didn’t he come with his friends, a captain with a beard who insults everybody and a small dog with more intelligence than you or I put together, eh? And if he managed to get there, well then, in these stories of yours, you can include some love stories to that old man along the colonial road!”
“Yes, but that road’s too dangerous, especially during the rains.”
“What’s the problem?”
“It never stops raining back home, and when it rains it is a thousand times worse than the Flood …”
After one round of silence and two gulps of beer, Roger the French-Ivorian, annoyed that I’ve always got an answer for everything, slammed his fist down on the table:
“I’m just trying to help you out here! Writing’s no joke, you do understand that, eh? It’s up to the people who the write stories to invent situations, not me. So fire up your imagination, help that old man who’s bored rigid out there in the bush to get hold of some love stories!”
When I didn’t answer, he capitulated:
“Fine, all right then, I’m getting worked up for nothing, I’m sorry, perhaps I’m asking you something impossible. The thing is, I’m trying to work out how difficult this is. But in these stories of yours, have you at least got a young Japanese compulsive liar who tells her analyst she can’t hear music any more, by which I mean she can no longer experience pleasure?”
It was my turn to get annoyed:
“Oh no, oh no you don’t, I’m not going all the way to Japan for a story about a compulsive liar who can’t get her kicks!”
“Have you got it in for the Japanese, or what?”
“Not at all, but why not go to Haiti too while we’re at it, and talk about voodoo, eh? What’s got into you? Are you some kind of sex maniac? Have you ever pleasured a woman?”
“Shhh! There’s no need to shout like that and insult me, everyone can hear you in the bar, and that won’t do. A writer should be discreet, he should observe his surroundings so he can describe them in minute detail … But in these stories of yours, have you at least got a drunkard who goes to the land of the dead to find his palm wine supplier who accidentally died at the foot of a palm tree?”