The young man’s work was not limited to what he did up in his box. You’d hear him hurtling down the stairs and dashing outside to receive the reels delivered from the Duo and the Roy, on the other side of town, in a little Renault 4L van. In fact we had to wait till the two other places had finished at least two reels of fifteen to twenty minutes each. This meant that for long films — like The Savage Princess, which lasted over two and a half hours — the courier had his work cut out, as did the projectionist, who got booed by the spectators if there was a delay and the showing got cut off in the middle of some thrilling piece of action because the van had broken down, or the other cinemas had had a hitch. Cool as a cucumber, the operator would simply show us an advert for Cadum soap, over and over again…
Outside the cinema a number of vendors spread their merchandise on the ground: comics featuring Tex Willer, Rodeo, Ombrax, Blek le Roc, Zembla, as well as the novels of Gérard de Villiers and San-Antonio. Sometimes you would come across an anthology of poems by Rimbaud, Baudelaire or the complete works of some author, published by Pléiade, bearing the stamp of the French Cultural Centre. Not something easy to sell, since in the ‘bookshop on the ground’ the most popular title was African Blood (volume 1, The African; and volume 2, A Woman in Love), by Guy des Cars. We were captivated by the two protagonists of African Blood, who were bound in a mixed marriage: a French woman, Yolande Hervieu — with her rich, racist ex-colonial parents — and the orphan from l’Oubangui-Chari, Jacques Yero, born into a poor family, adopted by whites who sent him to France to study in the 1950s, a time when the Negro was still struggling to prove to the world that he was a man like any other. The two protagonists would meet in the amphitheatre of the law faculty in Paris. We would hold our breath reading the passage where the white girl decides to introduce her black husband-to-be to her parents. We would be touched by the courage of the Frenchwoman, who would follow her husband to Africa, aginst the wishes of her parents, who were naturally opposed to their union. Throughout the first volume of African Blood, it was our own story we were reading, for the life of the couple on the black continent coincided with the independence of several francophone countries, and with l’Oubangui-Chari becoming the Central African Republic. The second volume showed us a couple in which the man had risen to a position of political power, arousing jealousy among blacks, as well as those whites who still liked to foster the view that their own race was superior. Later, when I arrived in France, I realised that Guy des Cars was an underrated author, so much so that his works were referred to as ‘station bookshop novels’, and the author sometimes nicknamed ‘Guy des Gares’. But this in no way diminished my admiration for a man who, without a doubt, had inspired a whole generation of Pontenegrins, not to say French-speaking Africans, with a taste for reading.
The ‘bookshops on the ground’, which were often to be found outside the Roy and the Duo, were dependent on the cinema clientele and therefore did not survive the demise of the cinemas. Times change; outside the Cinema Rex, traders have set up a makeshift telephone booth, offering calls for fifty CFA francs, selling mobiles and top-up cards. Others sell petrol in used pastis bottles they’ve collected in the centre of town. If the faithful of the New Jerusalem respect the spirit of the Bible, perhaps one day they will lay into these street traders, as Christ challenged the merchants in the Temple of Jerusalem.
It’s early afternoon and I’m standing outside the building that delivered our dreams, bringing fictional heroes from all over the world to our neighbourhood. The Cinema Rex looks tiny to me now, though at the time it seemed vast, immeasurably so. Is that because I have since been to bigger cinemas in Europe and Los Angeles, or in India, where the cinemagoers actually become actors themselves?
I look at our old cinema, and can scarcely conceal my disappointment. A banner announces that a festival of Christian music will take place in the building. Two members of the congregation of the New Jerusalem, one tall, one small, are standing at the entrance, and give me a challenging look, as though they have guessed I’m planning on coming in. I approach the entrance and the taller one steps aside. Perhaps he thinks I have an appointment with the pastor. In the doorway I turn round and wave to my cousin Gilbert and my girlfriend, who are outside the Paysanat restaurant opposite. They cross the Avenue of Independence to join me.
At the sight of my girlfriend’s camera, the little one frowns and rushes up to her:
‘What’s that, madame? This is a place of worship, no filming or photographs allowed!’
At once Gilbert comes to her rescue:
‘My cousin’s from Europe, he’s a writer, he’s writing a book about his childhood memories and…’
‘Out of the question! Anyway, non-believers aren’t allowed in here, writer or not!’
‘Non-believer? You don’t even know him, and you call him a non-believer?’
‘I can tell by looking at him! If he was one of God’s children he wouldn’t turn up here with a video camera!’
‘It isn’t a video camera, it’s just a camera…’
‘Same thing!’
At a loss for arguments, my cousin decides to cut to the chase:
‘Bollocks to your religion! Why do you film your Sunday masses, then, to get on TV, if God doesn’t like images?’
The tall one intervenes:
‘That’s enough, now beat it!’
Furious, Gilbert pushes the little one aside and comes through to join me in the auditorium. My girlfriend does the same, while the two congregation members stand there like pillars of salt, shocked by our cheek. They come on through as well, and stick to us like glue. The tall one complains loudly while my girlfriend takes pictures:
‘Stop filming in the house of God!’
A young man dressed up to the nines appears at the back of the worship area.
The little one growls like a cooped-up dog:
‘Pastor, we couldn’t stop them! We told them they mustn’t enter the house of the Lord, but they came in anyway!’
In a calmer tone, the pastor asks us:
‘Do you have the owner’s permission to take photos in here?’
‘Who is the owner?’ my girlfriend asks.
‘He lives just at the back, I don’t think he’s going to be too happy about what you’re doing, you’re violating private property. You’d better come with me and explain yourself. He will make you destroy the pictures you’ve already taken. It’s not the first time this has happened!’
We exit in single file, the pastor at the front, and walk round to the back of the building. We find ourselves outside a plot where a man with a shaven head in a pair of bermuda shorts and vest is sitting in front of one of three doors in a long building up for rental.