I lay down on the bed but leaving a big gap between her and me, and I just stared at the ceiling.
“When are we starting? Anyone would think you weren’t hot for me any more … Come here!”
I started to touch her.
“No, no, no, don’t stroke me, I’m not a White girl! That doesn’t arouse me, it just makes me giggle and then it gets annoying …”
When she said that, my thing down there didn’t want to rise any more, it contracted into my testicles and I couldn’t imagine what extraordinary event might bring it back out of its storeroom.
Rose asked me if there was a problem.
“No, everything’s fine, everything’s fine …”
“So what are we waiting for?”
“Let’s sleep, we’ll do it tomorrow, it’s better that way.”
“What? There won’t be a tomorrow with me! Not on my life! Who do you take me for? You aroused me at Keur Samba and now you want to leave me in this state? Why did you bring me back to your place if you can’t go through with it? Do you know how many people wanted to do it with me today, eh, people I sent packing because I wanted it to be with you?”
“Listen, I’m not feeling on form, and I’m not going to force things!”
“So what does it take? When a normal man sees a naked woman it starts up right away. Are you a man or not? So let me touch your thing down there, you’ll soon get in the mood, you’ll see …”
“No!”
“Are you saying NO to me???”
She leapt out of bed like a wounded tigress. She put her clothes back on as quickly as she’d taken them off.
“Idiot! Jerk! I thought time-wasters like you only existed back home, not here in Paris. You were well dressed with a suit and tie but you can’t even give a girl a good poking. What’s the point of your thing down there? Just for pissing, is it? Stupid bastard! Give me my taxi fare or I’ll smash everything in here and scream out in the hallway!”
I stood up to take a note out of my jacket pocket. I held it out to her, she tore it off me while spitting in my face.
“That’s so you’ll remember me! I’m Rose, and I’ll say it again, you’re a stupid bastard, I don’t know what kind of woman goes out with a guy like you!”
She slammed the door. Luckily, Mr Hippocratic didn’t bang on the wall …
* * *
And I also remember the day when, together with Vladimir the Cameroonian who smokes the longest cigars in France and Navarre, the two of us played at being princes at Atlantis, a club in the 13th arrondissement on the Quai d’Austerlitz. It’s Vladimir the Cameroonian’s stronghold, he gets the red-carpet treatment there, and he’s even allowed to smoke his cigars inside. So I could make out I owned the place too. Seeing as Vladimir never does things by halves, we hired a Mercedes and a BMW that evening.
Once we’d been seated in the VIP corner, Vladimir brought over a girl who was tall and skinny as a broom handle and he whispered in my ear:
“This one’s a real daddy’s girl, I want you to whip her ass tonight! Drink some gin and tonic, you’re going to be up ‘til dawn and, believe me, this girl won’t forget it …”
Gwendoline was the daughter of a Gabonese minister. As soon as we’d been introduced she started talking about her daddy’s second homes, and about her own travels around the world. There wasn’t a corner on earth she hadn’t set foot in, she told me.
“When I’m at my father’s house I don’t touch a thing, not even a plate, we have servants, I have a driver, the hairdresser comes specially to our house with her six assistants.”
And so Vladimir left me in the claws of this daddy’s girl. She made me want to sneeze with her perfume that stank of the Mananas we use on corpses back home. I could spot my friend winking at me from a long way off, between the swirls of his cigar smoke. But there was no stopping Gwendoline. I let her carry on with the stocktaking of her paternal inheritance. I even got to find out what kind of plates and forks they had at home. Then she fell quiet because she could see I wasn’t impressed.
“You’re not very chatty, are you? You haven’t told me your name …”
“Buttologist.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“My friends call me Buttologist …”
She nearly swallowed an ice cube as big as a ping-pong ball.
“Are you joking or what? Right, well, I’d better call you what everyone else does! Vladimir told me you’re not just anybody. I understand that Mercedes Kompressor convertible in front of the night club is yours?”
I didn’t tell her we’d rented the car. I pretended to be the owner. I jangled the keys while whistling Another Day in Paradise by Phil Collins. I was smoking a Cohiba cigar and blowing smoke rings above my head.
She asked me what my line of work was.
“Businessman …”
“Really? What kind of business?”
“I sell diamonds to jewellers on the Place Vendôme. In a nutshell, I sell eternity because diamonds are forever …”
“My mother adores diamonds!”
I had scored a point. During the zouk love numbers, she clung to me like a leech. I’d never had anybody hit on me this hard. By the end I’d had enough, and I wanted to hover around two or three other girls who were tall as wading birds and kept on giving me lighthouse signals from across the dance floor. Nothing doing, Gwendoline had found her diamond dealer and she wasn’t going to let him out of her clutches.
“Diamonds! And do you sell gold as well?”
“Now and then. But frankly, gold is for small-timers. It’s not like diamonds, which are forever. And another thing, even if people say everything that glitters is not gold, they still go for the glitter. But diamonds don’t glitter, they diffuse light, and that’s why they’re the preserve of connoisseurs …”
“Aren’t you the smooth talker? I’m not buying a diamond now! But since you’re in the trade, perhaps you could finally explain something to me because I’ve never understood this business of twenty-four carats which everyone talks about but no one …”
“We’re here to have a good time … If things carry on like this, I’ll sell you a diamond and this evening could end up being very expensive for you!”
I wanted to catch my breath, but there she was behind me, staring at me as if I were a god. She shot envious looks at the Congolese women who recognised me. And I chose to pour oil on the flames. I zoned in on the ladies I knew, and threw myself into long conversations with them to prove I had my harem about me. Behaving jealously, as if we went back many a full moon together, Gwendoline came over to separate me from my little crowd. Even when we were dancing with our arms wrapped round each other, I was still treated to the fast-track biography of “The Minister” and his unstoppable ascent to power.
She wouldn’t let it drop:
“My father? He’s a very important lawyer, the most important lawyer in Africa! He is respected by the Whites! At the time when he did his studies, you could count the Blacks in French universities on the fingers of one hand. Of course there were Blacks in France, but they were road-sweepers, packers, gardeners, dockers in Marseille or Le Havre, factory workers for Simca, Peugeot, Citroën and Renault …”
I nodded, which only encouraged her.
“My father? You’ve got to meet him to understand what a truly exceptional man he is! He paid for my studies in this country’s elite establishments. I couldn’t love a man more than him! He is everything to me. He knew Pompidou, he knew the black members of the National Assembly at the time, your Senghors, your Boignys and others who would go on to become president in their own countries. My father was so brilliant that high office was thrust upon him straight away, and he’s been in government for more than twenty-five years now. He is the only minister the president can’t fire because he’s responsible for the country’s politically sensitive files. And if he opens those files, even the French government would come toppling down in less than five minutes!”