DUKE ELLINGTON finishes up “Hot and Bothered.” Miz Sophisticated Lady sleeps on. I sit down to write. The Remington seems to be in a good mood. I’m typing like crazy. Clattering in the night. The sentences come all by themselves. I laugh. I’m naked. My sex still anointed. My body sweet from all the smells of Miz Sophisticated Lady. I’m writing. I’m happy and I know it.
An hour later. The middle of the night.
“Hey! Wake up!”
Miz Sophisticated Lady wakes me in the middle of the night.
“Hey!”
“What? What’s wrong?”
“There are mice in here.”
I rub my eyes.
“No, there’s no mice here.”
I go back to sleep.
Ten minutes later.
“Hey!”
“Now what?”
“I heard mice!”
“Oh, shit.”
“I’m sure there are mice in here.”
“In the building?”
“No, in the room.”
She is sitting in the lotus position on the bed. Neck pivoting. Her frightened eyes sweeping the room. At any moment she expects to see a single-parent family of mice come traipsing across the floor.
“I don’t hear anything. Listen.”
“I heard them!”
I’m fascinated by her eyelashes flickering at an infernal rate (8,000 beats a minute, I’d say). If nothing intervenes, she’ll soon enter a trance (boudham saranam gacchami) and effortlessly reach the center of purity of Tathagata, there where no mouse may importune her.
“I’m going to go see,” she resolves.
As if it were the biggest decision of her life. I hear her switch on the bathroom light. What danger can a mouse possibly represent for a healthy Westmount girl? If a tiny mouselet sends her into panic, what about a Negro? Making love to a Negro isn’t frightening; sleeping with him is. Sleep is complete surrender. It’s more than nude; it’s naked. Anything can happen during the night, when reason sleeps. Do we dream our lover? Do we penetrate his dreams? Shifting sands, says the Western world. Danger. Beware. Danger of osmosis. Danger of true communication. What started out as a simple roll in the hay can turn into. It’s happened before: young, white, Protestant Anglo-Saxon girls sleep with a Negro and wake up under a baobab tree in the middle of the bush, talking over family affairs with the village women. Did you hear about the daughter of one of the heads of Canadian Pacific who lay down with a Negro on Mount Royal one summer’s day, in plain sight? No one’s seen her since. And the daughter of the program director at Radio-Canada is selling reed baskets and fishing nets in a little Casamance village. What about the wife of one of the members of the McGill board of directors who’s harvesting peanuts in Senegal? There’s no end to cases like this. Be careful. Fucking with a Negro is all right (it’s even recommended), but sleeping with one. I picture Miz Sophisticated Lady running down an antelope, preparing manioc to make cassava and serving tea at the death-bed vigil. “Sleep with a Negro and wake up in Togoland”—a new travel agent ad. What is Miz Sophisticated Lady doing in the dark with this Negro? Chasing after a mouse. I fall back asleep, battle-weary, leaving her to the hunt. Gently, I enter sleep. In slow-motion flight. I clearly hear Duke Ellington playing “Soda Fountain Rag.” The rag reminds Duke of the good old days at the Poodle Dog Café. Duke plays this hilarious thing with guys who can crack you up. Edison and Cootie Williams on clarinet (who could ask for more?), Bubber Miley and Stewart blowing trumpet with a disdainful sound as if their minds were somewhere else, but how it swings! Al Sears, Al the Great, on sax. Brand on bass (can’t you just hear it?) and Sonny Greer on drums. With a band like that you could bring down the house. Upstairs, Beelzebub is sleeping. Hades in repose.
“Hey!”
“Hey” is for horses! Don’t these Westmount girls have any couth? They don’t respect the sleep of their bedmates. Miz Sophisticated Lady, it seems, has stumbled onto something.
That something is Bouba. Bouba sitting on the couch in the darkness, devouring a head of lettuce. (The Koran says, “You shall eat the fruit of the Zaqqum-tree”—Sura LVI, 52—“and fruits of your own choice and the flesh of fowls that you relish”— Sura LVI, 28.) I must admit it’s an impressive sight for a Westmount girl. I didn’t hear Bouba come in. He must have been quiet about it. And since Bouba eats anything at any hour of the day, he must have opened the fridge with a hole in his stomach, only to find a head of lettuce. He must have set about consuming it in silence. But Miz Sophisticated Lady’s sharp ears picked up the sound of gnawing incisors. And now she has come upon Bouba devouring a head of lettuce in the dark.