Blue White Red

by Alain Mabanckou

  I didn’t send letters home anymore. I didn’t send any news about me. Like everyone else around me. This way, they said, we manage the suspense back home. Back there, they have to wonder what you have become. A good picture. A picture of a fighter. A picture of a Parisian. If I wanted to write, the letter had to recount all the good things I thought about Paris. Moki would correct me. He would never miss an opportunity to squeeze in, here and there, a superlative more bombastic than my own.

  I laughed my head off skimming the sort of letter that everybody copied over. A letter written to a girlfriend back home. The letter hung from a wall in the room, right next to the broken window. Who had edited it for the community’s delight and happiness? I didn’t know. Those who copied it changed only the first name of the addressee. The letter was addressed to a certain Marie-Josée, sweetheart of the anonymous author. One look at how it was stained made clear that we were all schooled in the art of making carbon copies. The letter was clear and summed up our desire to perpetuate the dream.

  My dear Marie-Josée,

  I’m writing to you, facing the Montparnasse Tower, which I admire every morning from the bathroom in our magnificent apartment in the fourteenth arrondissement. Summer is almost over in the most beautiful city in the world. We are heading into autumn, and then we’ll move on to admire the white splendor of the snow in winter.

  I have bought you lots of presents, clothing from the top designers from the rue Faubourg Saint-Honoré. I have also bought you a pair of Weston loafers. I would really like to send them to you, but I’m afraid of you having a shindig with my local adversaries, folks who don’t even know how much a pair of Yoshi Yamamoto pants cost. As for me, I’ve got nothing left to prove. I am a Parisian with a capital “P.”

  I soared through the sky in an airplane throughout an entire night, and even had the chance to use the facilities as we glided over the country, an opportunity that isn’t given to just anyone, certainly not to peasants. In other words, I fed the fish in our Atlantic Ocean. It’s all only to marry you “for better.” There will be no “for worse” with me. I give you my word as a Parisian. Count on me. I am preparing our future. I embrace you tenderly. I love you, my little Golden (that’s what they call the apples that I like here) . . .

  Your Parisian fiancé.

  I had opened my eyes to another world.

  What did I see in front of me? Those night owls. Those confabs that went on and on. The murmurings on the mattresses. I had doubts about my presence. About this Paris. About Moki’s Paris. About the other compatriots. About those who saw it like this and accommodated themselves to it.

  What could I do?

  It didn’t take me long to learn how to live differently. Between the shock and Moki’s attitude, I was split in two. The circle closed again behind me. Moki had two faces. He wore several masks. One mask for the country. Another for Paris. His confidence bowled me over. I could put up with it—I just had to refuse to answer him. His authority bothered me. An authority attained simply because he had been the first to have tread upon this land of dreams. He was in his world. It was up to me to find my place. A little place that suited me . . .

  And our lair?

  I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it. Yet I lived there for several months. I rotted there. It had to be done. We lived there, Métro stop Alésia, on the eighth floor, in a maid’s room in the fourteenth arrondissement, rue du Moulin-Vert. A skylight on the ceiling spread poor daylight. Just a little light that flickered all morning long before brightening the room, because it had to circumvent the peaks and red-tile roofs of neighboring buildings. No other opening. Nothing.

  The surroundings were a jumble of dilapidated, mismatched, lifeless furniture. You rarely saw people leave. When, by chance, they were out, they picked up the pace, warily, went into the corner store run by an Arab, and then immediately came back to their building. Cars were parked down both sides of the street. They never seemed to move from there.

  What struck me from the first day was the sign at the entrance of the front gate, which read that the building, our building, was under demolition. The number of the municipal by-law was written in red. Work was planned to build a school and kindergarten cafeteria. To quell my fears and astonishment, Moki repeated his turn of phrase, which I finally fully understood:

  Paris is a big boy, he said. Yes, a big boy, all grown up now and vaccinated. Forget about Moki from the country. Don’t ask yourself questions and content yourself with achieving the purpose that led you to come all the way here. To that end, all means will serve well. Mark my words, all means. You’ll start by going out and learning to live like we do here. There’s no other way to succeed than this. Think about it. What do you want me to say to you? Take the first plane back? You can do that; you already know what awaits you back home. Worse than shame, banishment . . . As for this building, put your fears on ice. I’m in control of the situation. That sign was put up ages ago. No one here has seen a single Caterpillar in front of the entrance. So consider yourself lucky that you don’t pay rent; it’s a good way to start saving. We’ll show you the ropes to pick up money where it’s lying around, without breaking a sweat. For now, I’ll go see Préfet, my buddy, who’ll make your papers as soon as your tourist visa expires. He’s a good, down-to-earth guy, just wait and see. We are in a foreign land here. The final judgment will be back home. They’re waiting for us back there; it’s unthinkable to go home empty-handed. Who would commit such a crime? Only hicks . . .

  We had no elevator to get all the way to the eighth floor. The building was poorly lit and smelled of mildew. There were no other occupants besides us.

  We could hear everyone that climbed up and down from inside our room. Friends of Moki’s whom I didn’t know. We all slept there, nobody knew what anyone else did during the day. His friends arrived very late at night, like felines, masters of the art of positioning their steps on the wood staircase without making it creak. In the room, they whispered, popped open Heinekens, ate roast chicken, and went to bed around 2:00 a.m. to get up at 5:00 a.m.

  We would wake ourselves the next morning, piled together like cadavers tied to some sort of mass grave. To sleep, you had to put a superior intelligence to the test and do without all those hindering positions, such as stretching out length-wise or spreading your legs and hands. Space would cost you: a sharp dig of an elbow or knee, as needed. Gesticulating or farting while sleeping was to be kept to a minimum. We were doubled over, some under the little plastic table, the only furniture in the room, others in the corners. The concert of snores no longer bothered anyone. We didn’t know who snored. We all went to sleep on the floor using big wool blankets. Moki, the landlord of the place, claimed that once you bought a bed in a foreign country, you were done for. You were totally screwed. You’d end up forgetting the road back to our own country.

  I wasn’t able to count all the occupants in the room. They weren’t always the same. There were more than a dozen compatriots sleeping in that tiny room.

  I slept all day long to contain my bitterness. Moki and his friends quickly took to criticizing me for being as lazy as a snail in its shell. They warned me that, at this rate, I would blow my chance of returning home. They spelled out the rules of caution. Shut the door.

  Don’t sleep with a lit candle. Knock on the door with our secret code: one knock, then wait a few seconds, then two knocks, and then cough—just once.

  This was not a world of indolence. Idleness was the first sin. It blocked all perspective. It distanced you from all your compatriots. One idle day and you’d be lectured all night long. Each morning, the day had to be a battle. It had to start very early and end late, with a reward at the end. Speed was the watchword. I had to wake myself up. We weren’t in the countryside anymore. Here, we ate standing up, never closed more than one eye, and kept our ears open day and night. We were on the move, ceaselessly. We didn’t talk a lot but said a great deal to each other in very little time. We never phoned each o
ther—you never know.

  Another world.

  I acknowledged that they tolerated my inactivity at first. I had the excuse of not having a single document that gave me the right to work immediately and venture out in the street without fear of bumping into a police officer. My visa didn’t allow me to stay in France for a long sojourn. It was a tourist visa, the same exact kind that allows you to visit a country, not set up shop there for good. I needed papers. Different papers, if I wanted to stay in France for a long time. Otherwise, I would be undocumented. I said nothing at all about this concern. As far as I was concerned, things would work out. Moki was there.

  While waiting, when the compatriots went out on business, I stayed there, cloistered, studying the walls grimy with sweat. I opened the skylight to let the cold morning air in for a few moments, so the rancid odor that impregnated the room would vanish.

  It was through that skylight that I was able to study the autumn sky in Paris. I was already looking there, in those dark, dense clouds, for hints of a promised return to the fold . . .

  Resigned, I convinced myself that it was necessary to move on. Just to be here was a big step. Who back home would know that I slept on the floor? Who back home would know that I lived in this building?

  Moki was right. My jeremiads wouldn’t be believed. The religion of the dream is anchored in the conscience of the country’s youth. To shatter those beliefs is to expose oneself to the fate reserved for heretics. I also felt the need to maintain the dream. To cajole it. To live with it.

  That’s what I was going to do.

  I decided to look at things differently.

  My joie de vivre came galloping back. I started to smile again. I was asked to take care of the cooking until I could become active. I accepted.

  I knew a little about how to prepare dishes from our homeland. I had watched my mother and my sister prepare food. I could work miracles.

  I set myself to preparing national dishes. Why me? It was also the rule. Because I was the one whose memory was still fresh enough to remember that cuisine. I was the latest arrival. In our little world, the last one over was good for doing everything. The Parisian predecessors must be respected, whoever they may be. Obey them, consult them, and worship them endlessly. The last arrival was dubbed with the surname débarqué. Up until another débarqué arrived.

  Kitchen duty allowed me to discover a place that would later become a decisive landmark in my existence: Château Rouge, the neighborhood located near Barbès, in the eighteenth arrondissement.

  I went there to buy exotic ingredients from our country, from the African continent. It was a place that reminded me of the markets back home. Manioc leaves, tubers, and smoked fish made me feel at home. I forgot that I was in France. I walked from one end of the market to the other, in the hope of bumping into a face I knew. The place was swarming with people who were primarily foreigners. A true tower of Babel.

  Small groups of Africans spoke in patois at the top of their lungs and burst out laughing in eruptions of festive happiness. They tried on clothing and shoes in the cafés across the street. North Africans sold watches, handbags, and cassette tapes along a side street, keeping their eyes open and necks craned like cautious storks to guard against a possible round-up by the cops. Two streets ran parallel to the market, and down these streets older women plied their wares and dozed off despite the brouhaha of the area. Passersby had to slalom between several bowls of red yams from Côte d’Ivoire and crates of plantains from Bobo-Dioulasso.

  In front of the entrance to the Château Rouge Métro station, a kiosk displayed the major newspapers from African and Arab Francophone countries. The front pages of these dailies, weeklies, and monthlies rivaled each other with portraits of heads of state. A few meters away, other Africans braved the cold—on their feet for hours already, wearing gloves, they distributed flyers hailing, in broken French, the supposedly magical powers of sorcerers from the African continent, all homonyms, practically to the last letter. We took flyers from hands forced on us. Gave them a cursory glance and then threw them on the ground after crumpling them. The street was brimming with these scraps of paper. The same phrases to lure the hopeless. Promises of cures for all maladies, including sterility, cancer, and, in passing, AIDS. Promises of bringing a wife back to the conjugal hearth, of success in entrance exams, casting spells upon the person one lusted for. A marabout even boasted of having obtained legal status for several clandestine immigrants after casting a spell on everyone who worked at the Bobigny police station.

  People jostled each other at Château Rouge.

  I blended into that heterogeneous mass of humanity. I bought manioc, foufou, peanut paste, maize. While I was shopping, a police car emerged from a side street. I also had to play cat and mouse with the forces of law and order. Stealthily disappear from the scene. Along with the illegal merchants or those without legitimate status to stay in France, we would disappear into the crowd. I looked to the left and to the right and hastened my steps until I got to the next street. When needed, I dove into a café and ordered a glass of Monaco to wait until the danger had passed.

  The police left empty-handed.

  It was usually just police officers on a routine patrol, whom we wrongly took for a premeditated trap set to catch people without papers . . .

  In our room, I lit the little camping stove with the long, rusty legs that made everything placed on it tilt. I reestablished the center of gravity with a spoon. I prepared a big pot of salted fish with peanut paste and fine herbs. It was a main dish with soporific powers. We wanted to sleep deeply at night to gain weight. A Parisian was not puny. We made fun of the fact that it was not easy to feed oneself in Paris.

  My dish was seasoned with semolina made according to our custom. I kneaded it. I made a dense dough with corn flour. The pot, uncovered, simmered on the hot plate. Everyone served themselves, paper plate in hand. I received compliments from the greedy. A good beer accompanied the meal.

  All of the occupants, except me, kicked in money for the meal. They gave me the total collected in the evening, and I did the shopping the next morning. I was given a dispensation against making a financial contribution, not because I prepared the food, but because I still wasn’t working. I didn’t doubt that this was temporary and that when the time came, they wouldn’t hesitate to ask me to pay . . .

  We were sated. We belched heartily without excusing ourselves. The smokers filled the room with a cloud. Those who, despite these meals, didn’t gain weight swallowed Periactin pills. With that, the results could be seen within a few weeks . . .

  Moki put me on a pedestal in his milieu. That would completely change the course of my existence, especially the meeting with Préfet.

  I found a variety of people with multiple faces. Complicated people I tried to grasp. They all juggled shadows and light. The masks they wore during the day miraculously concealed their nocturnal behavior and obliterated any natural urge for self-reflection, which would torment ordinary mortals. They had a sixth sense, honed through experience, facts, and observations about the universe they found themselves in. Over time they learned how to pinpoint flaws in this society they were not part of and to penetrate a world that was closed to them. Rising to that occasion had taken some time. The time required. The time to get themselves settled. They came in first through the small door, very quietly. Then they progressively invaded the space and had finally left their marks and raised the pylons of their empire. There they ruled supreme. On the outskirts of society. They were unpredictable individuals, capable of the best and the worst. In a novel, they would be dressed modestly in the clothes of antiheroes.

  The multitude of people who gravitated around Moki, despite their different areas of activity, maintained connections with each other. Their paths went in opposite directions, crossed each other, met up, and in the end converged. They were characterized by the same spirit. The same white-knuckled grip and the same fury to bust their way out . . .

  He intro
duced me to most of these people. His friends. The most influential in our world. His most trusted collaborators, as he called them, haloed him with pride.

  Their nicknames intrigued me. Crazy, but accurate, in a sense. And such nicknames! Each of them had a nickname that evoked their particular expertise.

  I knew that in this milieu Moki called himself the Italian. Which never ceased to pull a full-throated laugh from my throat when we weren’t out in the street. Everything had an explanation. There was a reason for his surname. It was the reflection of reality. Italian, because he went to Milan twice a month to buy clothing to resell to compatriots who were heading back to the home country for vacation.

  When he came back from Italy, the room on Moulin-Vert was crammed with clothing. A mountain of clothes to sell. At night, a stream of buyers. Mass production of trousers. Pure wool. Virgin wool. Alpaca. Cotton. Polyester. Leather. Suede. Linen suits. Ties. Shirts, still in their packaging, which he threw on the floor to count. Moki excelled in his trade. He had a good feel for clothes. Nobody had any doubt about it. His clients were fully confident that he could buy for them with his eyes closed. He often put their clear-sightedness to sleep. They bought because they knew his past. One of the old Aristocrats. One of the most elegant men of the times. One of the most famous Parisians in the country.

  When he couldn’t leave for Italy, he pulled a hoax on that naïve clientele. He assured us that he was going to Milan or Naples. He packed his suitcases, grabbed his leather jacket under his arm, and off he went. We knew that this was just for show. A decoy. He would stay in France. He would disappear for two or three days and make his purchases in Aulnaysous-Bois or at La Varenne, places on the outskirts of Paris. He would sleep in a hotel in one of those towns to lend credence to his deception. He would come back one evening and resell this clothing for twice as much as it cost in the stores where he bought it . . .