“You can count on me, he’ll do you a good price, he’s a childhood friend. We led the wild life together …”
* * *
And then there are some compatriots who don’t make their way from the Gare du Nord, but from the Gare de l’Est. The Marché Dejean is a detour, but they don’t care. They like drifting towards Rue de Strasbourg. They’re in no hurry. They know how to ponder time. But they can also pick up the pace when they need to, suddenly turning into crazy dromedaries. They walk along Rue de Strasbourg to soak up the atmosphere of Château d’Eau, the temple of hairdressing and negro cosmetics. There are always crowds in front of the métro station where skanky touts hassle passers-by with Jackson Five bushy hair. They offer them speedy cut-price haircuts in dimly lit basements or on the ninth floor of a nearby dilapidated building with no lift. These touts know how to make prospective customers feel like they have no choice, they lead them down winding corridors and up dark stairwells where the sound of scissors and the sputtering of secondhand clippers can be heard all day long.
Once I came across a character who wasn’t from the Congolese milieu — he was Central African. He was just about to cross the road when a tout, licking his lips with relish, pounced on him like a cat jumping on easy prey:
“What is that you’ve got on your head, my brother? Follow me, we will fix that with two snips of the scissors, a good job, double quick! You won’t believe your eyes! You will look like a real Sapper, oh yes, a proper one!”
“No thank you, my brother, I haven’t had my hair cut for a long time now, and anyway I …”
“What do you mean? So you are happy to stroll around with a crow’s nest on top of your head? Did no one tell you that French water is full of limestone, you wouldn’t believe how much since the Left fell from power? Look at your shoulders, anyone would think it was snowing every day in your hair! My god, it’s people like you who give us a bad name in this country! How can a White lady who is healthy in mind and body even look at you with hair like that? Come on, I’m giving you this advice as a brother, don’t spoil things for our race, our people have already suffered too much for four hundred years!”
The harassed man ended up giving in and following the tout, who pocketed a commission after making his sitting duck perch on a dirty chair with legs that were out of all proportion. He closed the door behind him and headed off again out into the street in the hope of harvesting another dazed victim. Now, was the hairdresser going to attack the frizzy vegetation he was eyeing scornfully? Was he going to comb it? He was shilly-shallying. He risked breaking his comb, because this customer’s hair was a dusty, unassailable mop of dry grass …
* * *
Château d’Eau is a place of transit for us before reaching Château Rouge. There’s Luxure, a shop where they sell all sorts of female wigs that smell of naphthalene and baby vomit. Girls who want to be on a par with blue-eyed blondes flock to the shop from morning to night, while the blue-eyed blondes go there to get their hair braided so they’ll look like Africans.
Sometimes you’ll find influential personalities from our community hanging out in the area to gauge how well their reputation has taken root. It’s a varied line-up of personalities: businessmen staying in Formule 1 motels on the outskirts of Paris, compulsive liars who claim to be great travellers but are incapable of locating on a map the countries they say they’ve visited, the legitimate or illegitimate sons of Heads of State, of ministers, of political refugees and opposition members who only represent their ethnic group, international footballers we’ve never seen playing on the telly, musical stars overtaken by the latest developments in instruments and the proliferation of tracks in recording studios …
At Château d’Eau you can find the latest musical hits from both Congos. Traffic wardens and police officers grumble and waste their ink raining down fines on cars parked on main thoroughfares classified as “red”. Many of these vehicles have number plates from European countries other than France …
One day I spotted a well made-up woman wearing pyjamas and carpet slippers, even though people said she lived in Creil, a banlieue more than fifty minutes from Paris by train. When she was heckled for her attire that was better suited for bed and shut-eye, she replied that France was a country of liberty, equality and fraternity.
“And anyway, you bunch of ignoramuses, haven’t you noticed the label on my pyjamas is Yves Saint-Laurent? I didn’t buy them for hiding in bed with, they’re for people to see! Before opening your mouths, take a good look at who you’re dealing with!”
I should point out that they don’t just cut hair in Château d’Eau. They don’t just go for cars with foreign number plates. And you won’t just find women in carpet slippers and Yves Saint-Laurent pyjamas. There are street hawkers too, peddling clothes. Their deals are sealed in café toilets, despite the beady-eyed complaints of the local traders. And people play cards, with bank notes passing from hand to hand at such a speed they’d push David Copperfield into early retirement.
It is also where I heard the famous speech by one of my compatriots, nicknamed “The Opinion Leader of Château d’Eau”, and who has the misfortune to be a permanent scapegoat for the police whenever they’re searching the area with a fine-tooth comb.
On this particular day he answered with:
“Officers, if you think that I am an illegal immigrant then you are mistaken! Nothing justifies this stop and search, in as far as I am causing no disturbance of the peace. Moreover, why just me and not the entire neighbourhood? I am not the only person with swarthy looks around here, oh no! You have no right to treat me like this, and I should like to remind you that the Penal Code forbids such public humiliations. I can assure you that I will be writing to the Minister of Justice and to some upstanding people such as your Robert Badinters, your Bernard-Henri Lévys and above all to Professeur Jacquard who takes such matters very seriously! Believe me, this will be discussed on the 8 O’Clock News, and even on Canal Plus. And you’re surprised that Château Rouge is constantly in the national headlines. You flout human rights in a so-called democratic country! The reality is that banana republics aren’t always the ones we think they are. Montesquieu himself, in The Spirit of the Laws, said that …”
The Leader, who was manhandled, made to face the other way and pinned against the wall, was unable to finish his diatribe. The crowd railed against the police while taking the precaution of doing it from the other side of the street.
Once again, The Leader was becoming the hero of the day, his words were repeated in nearby cafés and, later on, in the Marché Dejean at Château Rouge …
As I was opening my door I heard someone say hello to me in the corridor. I turned around: it was Mr Hippocratic. What had he been drinking to greet me like that from one day to the next?
Surprised by his change of tune, I said hello back. I went into my studio and switched on the telly: an African president was suspected of having poisoned his opponent. I was instantly reminded of the way in which the President of the big Congo had got rid of his fierce opponent, Moleki Nzela, more than two decades ago. Moleki Nzela was very popular, people said that although living abroad, he was already almost in power because a large European stadium had to be booked whenever he held a meeting. Moleki Nzela’s misfortune most likely boiled down to the fact that he had given a Fiat 500 to the most notorious madam in his country, a woman everybody would call “Mama Fiat 500” from then on. It’s a piece of history that gets told in every street of both Congos. And if it had happened here in Europe, pupils would have long since been studying it at school.