I make a point of wearing a suit because you’ve got to “keep up appearances”, as we say among the Society for Ambient People and Persons of Elegance, SAPPE, which, without wanting to be contentious, is an invention from back home, born in the Bacongo district of Brazzaville, towards the Total roundabout. We’re the ones who exported “Sappe” to Paris, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, because lately there are so many false prophets swarming these streets in the City of Light, to the point where it’s getting difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Of course, some people will argue that the Ivorians and the Cameroonians are Sappers too. Well let’s just see about that, shall we, they only started making an effort, poor things, because they complained their women were after us. So they thought it was down to our Westons and our Gianni Versace jackets. But when these desperate Ivorians or distraught Cameroonians wear the same clothes as us, there’s no competition, we’re talking night and day; the Congolese Sapper wins out every time thanks to his inimitable style, and that’s not me being biased here, it’s just the harsh reality, and I’d be lying if I said any different …
Linen jackets by Emmanuel Ungaro that crease elegantly and are worn with refinement. Terylene jackets by Francesco Smalto. One hundred per cent or even two hundred per cent lambswool jackets in pure Cerruti 1884 fabric. Jacquard socks. Silk ties, including motifs of the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe. That’s my style. And just some of what I’ve got in my suitcases …
I’m fanatical about Italian collars with three or four buttons, I like to feel them around my neck, stiff, folded double, uncreasable. Tell me how you knot your tie and I will tell you who you are — and even what company you keep. The people who go on telly don’t have a clue. They buy their ties from the first shop they walk into and then have the nerve to splash their face across all of France, including in Corsica and Monaco. It shouldn’t be allowed. When I’m watching a panel discussion on telly, like last time, I can tell how the participants are going to behave just by spotting their tie.
When I’m outside Jip’s, I’ve been known to feel sorry for, to burst out laughing at, and even to fight the urge to go to the rescue of the idiot who has neglected this small detail that makes a world of difference.
Broadly speaking, I’ve noticed that shy men wear their ties tightly knotted, and in our crowd we call them suicidals. As for the thugs — who we call pimps — they look like men at the gallows with their knot close to the throat, while the show-offs plump theirs up big time. They deserve their nickname of cooking pot lids because they have this cast iron belief that the best is always on the outside and not on the inside.
The ones we dub bulls with no style are messy, their tie-knots look like the bony humps on an ass’s back, and they don’t even notice until the day their girlfriend points it out to them in despair.
The austere and meticulous ones — or priests in our language — do everything to make sure their tie doesn’t move. They can spend a whole day without readjusting it. The chatterboxes — or sparrows — wear a loose knot.
The cuckolds — or has-beens — wear theirs to the side, sometimes it’s even the wrong way round. Do I need to remind you I’m no cuckold, seeing as I wasn’t married to my ex?
And last of all, the egoists, skinflints and whingers, otherwise known as the ants, don’t change the knot until the tie has worn out. They never learnt how to tie their own knot, so they trust the sales assistant and never undo what was knotted for them in the shop, in front of the till.
And to think some evil spirits preach from their pinnacle of blindness that the habit does not the monk make! My eye! They haven’t understood anything. The habit may not make the monk, but it’s thanks to the habit we recognise him. And sometimes that habit causes us problems. This came home to me when I found myself being mistaken for somebody I wasn’t. I felt so humiliated, I still haven’t got over it.
I was at the Gare du Nord and I had to get to La Courneuve where my cousin was organising a party. Some movers and shakers from the Parisian nigger-trash had been invited and I knew that basically it was an excuse to parade the latest suits fashionable on the streets of Paris. When it’s like that, we always turn up in sharp threads, well shaven and smelling fine, we stand there glaring at one another and casing the joint, we’re checking to see if there are any new girls from back home worth hanging around for, because when these wild gazelles turn up in Paris with the dirt fresh on them you don’t want to leave them any time to understand how the métro works or which counter they’re supposed to go to for their family allowance. If you do, they’ll go right ahead and dig an even deeper hole in the social for you. So you’ve got to grab hold of them fast, before they get the hang of things, ditch their country bumpkin accent to answer you in snooty tones and step out exclusively with small Whites who’ll chuck them away afterwards like the Kleenexes sold by the Arab on the corner. It’s a routine for us, but we like it like that, and the deal is never to go to one of these parties with your wife or girlfriend: you don’t take a sandwich to a restaurant. You never know when you’re going to take a shine to a nice plump gazelle fresh off the boat. It was a whole scene explaining to my ex that it would be better if she stayed at home. I told her she’d be bored out of her mind, that she’d be standing there staring into space, that nobody would talk to her because when you get a bunch of Congolese together in a corner, or even in a pocket handkerchief, they immediately start yelling in their own patois — and God knows we’ve got so many of these languages, you wonder how on earth we understand each other in our Tower of Babel. And then, seeing as my ex didn’t drink alcohol, I used to point out that the people from back home are horrified by water, orange juice or any other fruit juice, and that drinking anything of the sort in front of them would be an insult. At which point she beat a retreat and gave me the green light …
So, on the day I’m talking about, I’d managed to convince her once again not to come with me. I’d spent the afternoon haggling with her. And I kept on checking my watch, which didn’t help matters.
“Why are you in such a hurry, if it’s only a gathering of Congolese talking in their patois?”
I kept pacing about our studio. I couldn’t decide which suit to wear. I’d opened every suitcase and spread my clothes all over the floor as well as on the bed. In the end, I put on a bottle-green Yves Saint-Laurent suit with my burgundy Westons. Even our Arab on the corner stepped outside his shop when he smelled my aftershave. He waved at me from a distance, giving me the thumbs-up. I smiled at him, and walked down our street in the direction of the Chinese and Pakistani shops on my way to métro Marx Dormoy.
I could have caught a cab, but why miss out on the looks of passers-by? So I walked from Marx Dormoy as far as Porte de la Chapelle, and then on to the main entrance of the Gare du Nord.
It looked like a grand market where people were fighting over the final scraps on the eve of a world war breaking out. They were running everywhere. Some were staring hard at those screens with the train times on them. That’s when I realised I was caught in the same trap as everybody else: there was a general transport strike on.
I elbowed my way to the platform. It was airless down there, but nobody wanted to leave because during a strike it’s always when you decide to turn back that the train comes. You can’t trust the timetables, and the guys from the RATP and the SNCF play with the passengers’ nerves. They mutter incomprehensible messages into the loud speakers. They advise you to exit the station, to go back up to street level, to walk along Rue Magenta, then Rue Lafayette, then Rue de Strasbourg where, as if by magic, you’ll find a bus that will tip you out like torture victims over towards the east of Paris, and too bad if you were heading west because the workers over that way have been up in arms for the past ten and a half years.