I didn’t want to enter into legal wrangling we’d never see the end of. Of course I could go to Brazzaville and settle the matter with machete blows. But that’s not my style. I don’t like war. I don’t like confrontation. Plus the country seemed a long way off to me. I’ve been gone more than fifteen years now.
And so I chose not to take the path of justice or to make the revenge machete trip. I just pay up without batting an eyelid. I do it for my daughter.
When Original Colour calls me from the home country it’s to remind me that in a fortnight it will be the end of the month and I mustn’t forget to send “her” allowance. I hang up on her shouting that I’m not a Crédit Agricole cash point, and that it’s not her allowance.
But each month I still head for Porte de la Chapelle to do a Western Union. I queue up with the Malians who are sending all their money back home and who, from what I hear, are building villas over there for their retirement …
III
Each time I sit down to write — at home or in the park nearby — I stare at my typewriter for a long while and think about how I came to buy it, because back when I was always falling out with Original Colour I got to know Louis-Philippe who did book-signings in our neighbourhood, at the Rideau Rouge bookshop. So Roger the French-Ivorian is wrong to think that I started scribbling this diary because of my ex and the Hybrid. Yes they triggered something off in me, and yes psychoanalysts would have tonnes to say on the subject, but I mainly owe everything to meeting Louis-Philippe …
I hadn’t heard of this writer before. I’m very wary when it comes to contemporary writers, I only read the dead ones, authors who are alive annoy me, they get on my nerves. When you see them on telly they hold forth on whatever they’re writing about and they’re so smug anyone would think that they had found the philosopher’s stone after managing to square the circle or fill the Danaides’ jar while standing on their head. Whereas with the dead ones — yes, I know it depends which dead ones — they’ve written their life’s work, they’ve taken their leave, they lie in peace in graveyards by the sea or at the foot of weeping willows, they let us say what we like about their output because they know that sooner or later we’ll have to read them if we don’t want to be labelled a dunce by the parents-in-law at the dinner table.
I didn’t go to the Rideau Rouge to meet Louis-Philippe, I just happened to be passing by, I was in need of some fresh air because Original Colour was waging a Trojan war against me for the way I’d behaved towards the Hybrid on the day he had worn my Marithé & François Girbaud T-shirt and I’d said it was worth more to me than her ass.
There was a crowd in front of the bookshop. I used to think people were often scared of going into bookshops, what with the risk of coming out with a book they wouldn’t read and then being harangued in their sleep by the characters from it who wanted to make them face up to their responsibilities.
So I walked in out of it curiosity. Too bad if I come out with a book I won’t read, I thought to myself, and the characters of that book pop up to give me a hard time in my sleep even though we don’t know one another.
When Louis-Philippe looked up between signing a couple of books I could tell from his smile that he was happy to see me there, probably because writers are all the same, I’ll never understand them, they’re good at making the people who are about to become their readers believe they even know the date of their birthday.
He winked at me, as if to say he’d clocked me, that I mustn’t get away. So I wandered around between the piles of books. There were girls eyeing him voraciously, and he was flashing his seductive smile. I was taking a good look at the backsides of these female readers, and trying to figure out if any of them had come for something more than getting their book signed. Louis-Philippe had a joke for each of them, he took his time choosing the words he scribbled on the first page of the book.
We could hear his deep voice:
“Should I be dedicating this to your husband as well?”
“Oh, I’m not married!” simpered the single woman.
The bookshop owner noticed that my gaze was on the rear assets of the reader standing in front of Louis-Phillippe. She looked embarrassed and, to help her out of an awkward moment, I grabbed Louis-Philippe’s book, Dream of A Childhood Photo, and went over to the till. She wanted to explain what the book was about, but I wasn’t really paying attention. She also caught me soaking up the B-side of a very fidgety brunette now standing opposite the writer. I was trying to work out if her butt was like Original Colour’s or if it just had a manual gearbox. Boy, was that brunette dragging out the conversation. No one else existed in her eyes. Given the way Louis-Philippe was looking at her, I thought: my god, this story is going to end up in the sack in a hotel on Rue des Petites Écuries.
To kill time I re-read the title of Louis-Philippe’s book that I was holding. It was warm and tender: Dream of A Childhood Photo …
* * *
Half an hour later the brunette was still narrating how her ninety-eight-year-old uncle had been to Haiti, how he had adopted a young Haitian who now works for the Post Office in Nantes, how he’d also helped several Haitians flee Papa Doc’s regime, and then Baby Doc’s, how he’d been initiated by the great voodoo practitioners, how he owned naïve paintings by some Pétionville artists, how his favourite book was Country Without A Hat by Dany Laferrière because it captures the spirit of Haiti, it’s chock-a-block with proverbs, and there are people in the street who are in fact zombies and all that kind of thing. The elderly uncle in question had met the author of Country Without A Hat in person, a brilliant, witty man who never knew whether he should be living in Miami or Montreal. Louis-Philippe didn’t want the brunette to think that he was in the least bit bothered by her flaunting the merits of another Haitian author, when he was there to sign his own books.
He forced a smile and said:
“Dany Laferrière is a great friend! I would urge you to read another of his books: How To Make Love To A Negro Without Getting Tired …”
A redhead cut short their conversation. She glared with blood red eyes at the brunette who realised she’d better scat and fast. The brunette left the bookshop muttering to herself, with one book by Dany Laferrière but none by Louis-Philippe.
The redhead had a more direct approach. She grabbed a stool, sat bang opposite the author and proceeded to tell him that she took some of his books to bed with her, especially God’s Pencil Has No Eraser. She even felt as if he was writing them for her, that she was one of his characters.
“I want a proper dedication, none of that ‘With best wishes from the author’ nonsense! I want a dedication intended for me and me alone. This is a book I’ll read every night before going to sleep, even if there’s a guy lying next to me …”
Louis-Philippe looked up at the ceiling and then wrote something. He held out the book to the redhead who immediately read the dedication. She blushed, kissed the author on the cheek and left the Rideau Rouge waving at him in a knowing kind of a way.
I was staring at her B-side and thinking to myself: “That one’s a dormant volcano!”
* * *
After taking his leave of the bookshop owner, Louis-Philippe made his way over to me. I had his book tucked under my arm. He called me “old buddy”.
When I told him that I lived in the area he nearly exploded:
“That means we’re neighbours! I don’t live far. We must swap phone numbers. Drop by whenever you want, you’ve got to try my Barbancourt rum from back home!”