My Old Remington Kicks Up Its Heels While Whistling Oh Dem Watermelons
HORIZON OBSCURED. I can’t make out much. I’ve been in isolation for three days with a case of Molson, three bottles of wine, two cans of Ronzoni spaghetti, five pounds of potatoes and this goddamn Remington. Next to the bell downstairs, I put up a sign that any idiot can understand: “Do Not Disturb: Great Writer Writing Last Masterpiece.” After three days of straight typing, the lower-case letters are beginning to look iridescent. The capitals resemble those hairy spiders from the tropics. The room pitches lightly on a sea of Molson. Waves of dense heat flow over my back. The consonants fornicate and whelp as I look on. The dishes pile up. The garbage can is overflowing. I’m suffocating. I watch, inert, as the cockroaches go about their business. The room is running in ultramarine humors. How not to consider yourself a genius under such conditions? This horrid heat! I can picture Homer, old Homer himself, typing out his first book, his Iliad, under the Mediterranean sun. Borges would have kept his anthracite suit at 88 degrees F. Bukowski too. Not Saint-John Perse, despite his Caribbean roots. All you need is a good Remington, no cash and no publisher to believe that the book you’re composing with your gut feelings is the masterpiece that will get you out of your hole. Unfortunately, it never works that way. It takes as much guts to do a good book as a bad one. When you have nothing, you can always hope for genius. But genius has refined tastes. It doesn’t like the dispossessed. And nothing is all I’ve got. I’ll never make it out of here with a so-so manuscript.
I WRITE by day.
And dream by night.
IN MY dream I walk past the Hachette bookstore on St. Catherine Street. I see my novel in the window under an enormous poster: “A Young Black Montreal Writer Puts James Baldwin out to Pasture.” I go inside. My book is positioned between Moravia and Greene. Good company. That book, holding its own, with that red and yellow cover and jazz look — that book is me. Completely me. I am those 160 tight little pages. Someone is going to come in any moment now, pick up my book and leaf through it, dubious at first then delighted, he’s going to go to the cash and give the cashier the $12.95 that will get him the book. The cashier will put my book in a Hachette bag and give it to him. The guy will go home with his new purchase: my book. And this man, miracle of miracles, will be my first real reader.
THE BOOKSELLER comes up to me. He recognizes me. My picture is on the end papers.
“Sir. ”
And this man, miracle of miracles, is the first white man to call me sir.
“Excuse me, sir. ”
I pretend I didn’t hear him. It’s such a novelty to my ears. I let it linger there a while.
“Sir. ”
“Yes.”
“I read your book.”
“Oh, thank you!”
Oh, how proper I’ve become!
“It’s very powerful.”
“Is it selling?”
Oh, how mercantile I’ve become!
“It’s doing very well.”
“Good.”
“Hasn’t anyone told you?”
“I was in New York. I got back last night. I haven’t even spoken to my publisher.”
“I see. Come into my office, you can call him from there.”
And I do.
“Hello. ”
“Who is this?”
“I don’t know if you’ll remember me. ”
“I don’t know either.”
“I sent you a manuscript. ”
“We’re having a bad season. Very bad. What was our answer?”
“The manuscript was called Black Cruiser’s Paradise. ”
“Where the hell were you? We’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
“I was there.”
“There where?”
“I was in New York. I always go to New York this time of year.”
“Good for you. Your book is out and it looks like it’s doing well.”
“Is it selling?”
“Not so fast. ”
“I’m at Hachette.”
“Don’t listen to booksellers, they don’t know anything about anything. They’re just salesmen. They take no risks. None whatsoever.”
“Where’s the success, then?”
“The critics, my friend. The critics are bowing down to you.”
“I’m flattered. How much is that worth?”
“Don’t use that cynical tone with me, young man. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to act cynical with Madame Bombardier.”
“Miz B-52!”
“Not so fast. You’ll be going on Bombardier’s show, Noir sur Blanc. Fits you like a glove, wouldn’t you say? Meanwhile, we’ll work on what we have, and what we have is a superb piece by Jean-Ethier Blais.”
“Blais!”
“Himself in person, my friend, in fits of admiration. Get yourself a chair and listen to what Mr. Blais has to say: ‘I have never read anything so strong, so original, yet so obvious. This is the most horrifying portrait of Montreal I have read in years. If what this young man says is true, then we must conclude that our brand of liberalism is the most incredible hogwash that ever existed (something I’ve always suspected).’ And Pierre Vallières took five columns in La Presse to say: ‘Finally, the true Black Niggers of America! ’”
“Uhh. that’s nice of them.”
“That’s nice of them? Is that all you have to say? Don’t I get any credit? I know you authors, you write your little books in your dingy basements with delusions of grandeur about being Henry Miller. And when it works one time in a thousand, you act so innocent. Oh yeah, someone called and asked you to call them back.”
“Carole Laure.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know.”
Carole Laure. Carole Laure. CAROLE LAURE.
Carrel Or. What am I going to say to CL? I wrote a book with my guts to get a call from CL. And it worked — she called. What are you supposed to feel at a time like this? I can’t feel a thing.
“HELLO. ”
“Yes, this is Carole Laure.”
“I think you called my publisher.”
“Oh, it’s you!”
“I was in New York. My publisher gave me your message today.”
“What are you doing now?”
“What am I doing now??”
“Oh, I understand. Have you eaten yet?”
“Me? No.”
“It’s my treat. Where are you now?”
“Me?” I’m not entirely sure. “I’m at the corner of St. Catherine and Berri.”
“I’m not far. Do you know Prince Arthur Street?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll see you soon.”
I’ve got a date with CL on Prince Arthur. On Prince Arthur. where on Prince Arthur? Oh, shit!
For fucking Allah’s sake! I forget to ask her where.
I can’t start looking for CL in every restaurant on Prince Arthur. I can’t stand Carole Laure up!
The literary section of Saturday’s La Presse is supposed to run an article on me with the headline “A New Genius.” Some genius! Can’t even make a date right.
CUT TO RADIO-CANADA, for the taping of the show Noir sur Blanc.
Miz Bombardier looks straight at the camera and the show begins: “The novel you will be reading this season is called Black Cruiser’s Paradise. It was written by a young black Montreal writer, and it’s his first book. The critics have greeted it with the most enthusiastic praise. Jean-Ethier Blais states that he has read nothing like it in generations. Réginald Martel says the book is the first in a search for new literary forms. Gilles Marcotte has spoken of ‘a filter of lucidity through which violence and eroticism of the most explicit sort acquire a certain purity.’ A junior college teacher in Montreal has included it in his course on Racism and Society. David Fennario is currently translating it into English, and plans to adapt it into a play he’ll call Negroville. ”