Mirabelle had an enormous and very firm B-side, it was easy to grab hold of and let yourself be carried like a baby kangaroo stuffed inside its mother’s pocket.
“Hold on tight, little one,” she said to me, “or you’ll fall off when things heat up. Don’t be shy and don’t hold back. If you feel something rising up between your legs, don’t be ashamed, it’s only natural, it means you’re starting to master the kompa.”
So I squeezed her tight in order to rub myself up against her as best I could. But I was dancing the Congolese rumba and that annoyed her.
She shouted:
“The Congolese rumba isn’t the only thing in life, there’s the kompa too.”
And I answered:
“No one can learn a dance in one day …”
“Dance this kompa for me instead of talking! Squeeze me hard in the upright position, make like you’re rising up and sinking down while lightly brushing against my chest. But watch it, I don’t want you crushing my breasts!”
And then she said I had to go a bit faster than that, that I had to wrap my arms around her, and glue my face to hers. I applied myself: I was sweating, she was sweating, we were spinning, we were colliding with the other dancers, we were heading for the wall, then for a dark corner where she took the opportunity to stuff her hand between my legs and declare with a big smile:
“I see that now you have mastered the kompa! I didn’t know you could learn so quickly! There’s something growing hard between your legs …”
At least I saved face that day. But I still can’t dance the kompa properly because I always tread on the toes of my partners — especially Haitians from Pétionville …
* * *
Like me, Louis-Philippe has got a moustache. He wears glasses for being short-sighted, I don’t, which is only to be expected because he’s read more books than Roger the French-Ivorian, especially the Latin American writers. And he also maintains that a writer should wear reading glasses so people can tell he’s really working, that it’s all he does, that he sweats, because people won’t believe you’re a writer if you haven’t got reading glasses. So it’s hardly surprising if I wear clear glasses now, it makes it easier for people to imagine I’m short-sighted.
The day Louis-Philippe saw me with these glasses, he chuckled:
“It’s true I said in jest that you should wear glasses to fit with the image the general public has of a writer, but you didn’t have to go and buy the most expensive pair on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré!”
When I turn up at his place, he can’t wait to show me the most recent naïve Haitian paintings he’s brought back from his island. And we talk about everything. I say bad things about Mr Hippocratic. And explain how I’d like to move out of the building that has ruined my life.
Louis-Philippe thinks that, now Original Colour is no longer there, I should try talking to Mr Hippocratic from time to time.
“Mr Hippocratic is desperate, he’s the kind of person who only wants to hold your hand, but he doesn’t know how to go about it, especially with you. Try to reassure him, to make a friend you can talk to. Remember he’s a brother in colour, even if he doesn’t know it …”
My pals from Jip’s know how prudent I am when it comes to money. I only spend what I’ve got and I don’t covet other people’s possessions. I don’t want to owe anything to anyone. I refuse to be tempted by our consumer society. So I don’t like loans, whether we’re talking simple or compound repayments or by instalment, I don’t like credit cards with payments either deferred or not, I don’t like overdrafts that pretend they only cost you cents when the more cents stacked up by the banker the more the debt piles up. Cents are a bit like the yeast that makes the dough rise. Behind these loans, behind these cards and these overdrafts there are always shady schemes even if the banker has the friendliest smile in the world and suggests you pop over to the café right opposite his bank’s cashpoint. When a professional invites you to join him for a coffee like that, it’s so he can have you by the short and afro-curlies. It’s not expensive, the café opposite a financial institution, but you’re still the one who pays for it in the end. The thing about yeast is that you can’t see when it makes the dough rise, you wake up one morning and it’s already spilling over the edges. They add on interest for this and that to the coffee you drank on a day you can’t even remember any more, a coffee that wasn’t even black and that was served up in something as small as a Coca-Cola bottle-top …
Deferred repayments? Overdrafts? I know what’s inside those scalding hot cooking pots and how it all turns out. The men and women who end up paying off the whole debt are few and far between. Or why would the banks push us into placing the rope around our necks instead of them staking all that money on the stock exchange and leaving us alone in our poverty?
I’ve rumbled their business modeclass="underline" nowadays, poverty has become the best investment for a financial institution, there’s no point in buying apartments and putting tenants inside any more, you’ve got to invest in poverty. Soon you’ll be able to buy shares in it on the Paris Stock Exchange, and the shareholders, including the small investors, will make a killing …
I pay my taxes on time because I don’t want the bailiffs turning up at my door with a sinister-looking locksmith. There’s nothing worse than an ill-timed visit from these people with their long faces who proceed to itemise your hi-fi, your old typewriter bought from a second-hand shop in Porte de Vincennes, your electric toothbrush and your Italian cafetière.
Did I say bailiffs? Their grey suits get up my nose, I’m sure they always wear the same one. Their thick glasses try my patience, I get the feeling they can stare right into my body, and that they can part my bones to see if I’m hiding a secret stash of money between my growth plates. As for the injunction letters, they stop you from sleeping at night because you can never understand them even if you read them a hundred times with the latest Code of Civil Procedure right in front of you. There’s always a last minute article or a subtle qualification, the upshot of which is to make you pay the call-out fee for the sinister-looking locksmith as well as the administrative costs of the bailiff in the grey suit that gets up your nose …
In short, I am a man whose generosity knows no limits. Original Colour didn’t understand this. I give money to the beggars who sit in front of the mosque at Château Rouge. Why them? Well, because I prefer them to the beggars who wear me out in the métro because you have to wonder if they aren’t laying it on a bit thick. The beggars in the métro are aggressive, they accuse you of being responsible for their misfortune and they think you owe them something. Some of them even go right ahead and insult you.
I came across one on Line 4. He was as old as the prophets in the Old Testament who used to live for longer than we do. It was as if he’d been following me for several stops. Was it because I was well dressed or because I looked like I was a pushover? Maybe. Maybe not. In any case I slipped him a few coins because he told me he hadn’t eaten for four days and four and a half nights. I was happy to have done a good deed. I felt light-hearted and I held it against the other passengers for not smiling at him because a smile is the key to life after all, as our Arab on the corner likes to point out.