Bouba sits bare-chested on the couch.
“Do you know Papini?”
“No,” answers Miz Suicide.
“Papini,” Bouba lets on, “wrote some very intelligent things on the subject of suicide.”
“What did he say?”
Miz Suicide’s only suitor is death.
“You see,” Bouba begins, “this Papini was an Italian writer, a totally disillusioned man. In one of his books, he tells the story of a German who wanted to commit suicide.”
Miz Suicide listens like a bodhisattva of the highest degree.
“This gentle, civilized man sought a courteous way of killing himself,” Bouba continues.
“What did he do?”
“He analyzed the methods. He considered all of them brutal, stupid or vulgar, except one . . .”
“Yes? . . .”
Miz Suicide is feverish with suspense.
“This one: he decided to let himself waste away, physically and morally, day after day.”
“But millions of people do that!”
“Of course. The difference is that he did it methodically.”
An angel passes. A death-angel. Miz Suicide shakes her head. Bouba smiles beatifically. Coleman blows. A pause. Then Miz Suicide drinks her final sip of tea, packs her grip in silence and leaves.
“You really think that empty shell understood your Sermon on the Mount, you bum-wipe Buddha?”
I asked him a little later.
“Why not?”
“Aren’t you afraid she’ll really go and do it one day?”
“On the contrary, man: it’s the only thing that keeps her alive.”
“It’s the only thing that lets you play black Buddha.”
Bouba breaks out in seismic laughter.
“What are you doing with that bag of bones anyway?”
“Ever heard of charity, man?”
“You don’t know the first thing about Buddhism, you Buddha-hole.”
“How dare you say that?”
“You know what the Diamond Sutra says, brother:
Charity is but a word.”
Bouba lets loose another dissonant jazz laugh (a kind of scream shot through with honks).
“The hell with the Diamond Sutra. No Sutra can stand up to the Buddha.”
A Bouquet of Lilacs
Sparkling with Rain
TAP, TAP, tap, on the door. Very discreet.
“Can we come in?”
“If you’re bringing cold hard coin of the realm— otherwise, keep walking.”
“We’re bringing flowers.”
There’s a girlish burst of laughter and the two of them come in, each carrying a bouquet. Bouba has been sleeping for several hours, legs pressed against his chest, in the fetal position. Valery Miller makes a beeline for the couch with a big bouquet of lilacs sparkling with rain. Miz Literature puts her flowers in a vase and the vase in a corner of the window ledge. She watches me type for a moment. Valery Miller is wearing a green and yellow Sonia Delaunay–style dress.
“What are you writing?”
“A novel.”
“A novel!”
“Fantasies, really.”
“Fantasies!”
In the Western world the word “fantasy” is the next most powerful thing after the atom bomb.
Outside, a fine slanting rain is falling. Not enough to cool the air.
Valery Miller seems right at home here, standing by the window, gazing at the Cross. Even that lousy Cross looks a little more human when it’s being looked at by Valery. She has a heart-stopping kind of beauty. As long as she is of this world, the atom bombs will not fall. Even the bomb will be kind to her.
Miz Literature is not bad either. But Valery Miller is an event. She moves naturally through the room. As if her beauty was an everyday occurrence. It’s like having Mount Vesuvius in your own house. Beelzebub upstairs can go take a walk.
Miz Literature inspects my books.
“You don’t have many women authors.”
She says it nicely, but that kind of comment can hide the most wrathful condemnation.
“I have Marguerite Yourcenar.”
Yourcenar, it seems, does not get me off the hook.
Too suspect. I don’t have Colette or Virginia Woolf (unforgivable!), not even Marie-Claire Blais.
“I have some Erica Jong poems.”
“Really!”
Valery’s face lights up. Vesuvius in eruption. Valery illustrated a Jong collection last year. As fate would have it, the book is on the table.
Cheek to cheek in a flash-frozen tango, eyes closed, in one voice, they scream out the poem “Sylvia Plath Is Alive in Argentina”:
Not dead.
Oh sisters, Alvarez lied . . .
Miz Literature needs a little drink to go on. She pours herself a good hit of wine and it’s bottoms up and the poem resumes. Valery waits like a sprinter in the blocks for the 440.
& she sits playing chess
with Diane Arbus . . .
And with raised glasses:
A regular girls’ dormitory
down there
in Argentina.
The girls are gone. I am alone in the dark. I didn’t see the night close in. A crescent moon like a hat beyond the Cross. Automobile lights in the rain. Wet pavement. House lights flash on as office lights go out. I feel depressed. A kind of stylized depression.
Bouba is some specimen, lying there with his mouth wide open, and a bouquet of lilacs between his crossed arms.
A regular black dormitory, out there, with those girls!
Like a Flower Blossoming at
the End of My Black Rod
WE TOOK our last big meal before the nuclear holocaust in the company of a girl from Sir George Williams. On the menu: white rice, white wine and Duke. Duke Ellington. The Duke.
“I love jazz,” she jumped right in.
“Really?”
“It’s so alive.”
Bouba places the pots on old copies of National Geographic that were bought for that purpose at the Palais du Livre. Miz Sophisticated Lady (that’s Bouba’s nickname for her, in homage to Duke) is on a strict diet. To say she is both English and disciplined is a needless pleonasm coming from a Negro. The wine went straight to her head. And the diet went out the window. But a half hour after the meal, I spotted her sneaking a little brown leather book from her Gucci bag.
“Are those Chairman Mao’s sayings?”
“No.”
“A book of Eastern prayers?” I guessed again.
“No,” she answered sharply.
“Oh, of course! It has to be the Bhagavad-Gita.”
“You’re cold.”
“In that case it’s an abridged version of the Kama Sutra.”
“Sorry,” she said with a weak smile. “It’s a booklet that tells you the number of calories for different kinds of food.”
“You want to know how many carbohydrates you just ate?”
“You could put it that way,” she smiled.
“Can I see?”
She hands me the book with the same eagerness she might use to lend me her toothbrush. I go looking for an exact count of the calories and mineral salts that fill the bellies of the black world. Shrimp and rice: 402 calories. Pork fried rice: 425. Chicken fried rice: 425. We’re doing all right. Rice wherever you look. I could never share the fate of a civilization that ostracizes rice. In no way could I trust people who believe yogurt is superior to rice. The taste of rice is greater than the most sublime elevations of the soul. It is one of the forms of black happiness. Black paradise found. The white (and floury) land promised since the first Slave Trade contract was signed. Is a psychoanalysis of the black soul possible? Is it not truly the dark continent? I’m asking you, Dr. Freud. Who can understand the crisis of the black who wants to become white, without losing his roots? Can you name me a single white who one fine day decided he wanted to be black? If there are any it’s because of rhythm, jazz, those sparkling white te
eth, the eternal suntan, the free and easy life, that high, sharp laughter. But I’m talking about a white who wants to be black just for the sake of it. I’d like to be white. Let’s say I’m not totally impartial. I’d like to be a better kind of white. A white without the Oedipus complex. What good is the Oedipus complex, since you can’t eat it, sell it, drink it, or trade it for a round-trip ticket to Tokyo? Or even fuck it (well, maybe so). If my wishes were granted and I suddenly turned white, what would happen? I have no idea. The question is too important for suppositions. I would see blacks in the street and know what they think when they see a white. I wouldn’t want people staring at me with that covetous look in their eyes.
BOUBA WENT out for a walk on the Mountain. It’s his day out. Miz Sophisticated Lady is much better naked than I imagined. She has a wild sexuality that contrasts wonderfully with that starched look of hers. You have to be a little warped to fuck her. She got right down on all fours and I took her then and there. To my own sweet rhythm. She keeps asking for all kinds of dirty stuff and coming from Miz Sophisticated Lady, it’s wonderfully perverse. I move in slow motion. A ticket to eternity. I take her from behind and she howls. High-pitched, eccentric screams. She’s a nervous yet trusting fuck. It’s not difficult to give her what she wants: penetrate her violently, till it hurts, then pull back nice and easy. Elementary, indeed. But surprising all the same from a Sir George girl. Looking at her tastefully dressed, you’d never suspect the voracious, insatiable little animal lodged deep in her vagina. I feel my legs tremble, the nape of my neck growing tense. The cry uncoiling deep in my stomach. The heart of my sex in jubilation like a fish swimming upstream. The Koran says, “Is it the truth that you are preaching, or is this but a jest?” (Sura XXI, 56.) I carry her to the bed with no let-up in the rhythm, holding her at the end of my cock. Like a flower blossoming at the end of my black rod. The window still open on the Cross of Mount Royal. Miz Sophisticated Lady lying on her back. Displayed. All moist and soft. Allah be praised! This Judeo-Christian girl is my Africa. A girl born for power. So what is she doing at the end of my black rod? The juices flow between her white thighs. Her eyes are turned inward (reminding me of a childhood image of St. Thérèse of Lisieux in ecstasy). Her bent neck rests on my left shoulder. (“His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me”—The Song of Solomon.) No sounds. Non-verbal communication. Just fucking. Fucking. Fucking. I slow the rhythm. She moans a personal Sura. I can’t make out this perverse, animal esperanto. I put my ear to her mouth. “Fuckme fuckme fuckme fuckme fuckme fuckme fuckme fuckme fuckme fuckme fuckme . . .” I’m coming! Let me push you over the edge. A combination of quick jabs (one two—one two three—one two) before finishing off with one from close in. Winded. She sits up suddenly then throws herself back onto the bed in a single movement as waves of spasms flow through her. I move in deep and slow. I want to fuck her subconscious. A delicate task that requires infinite control. Think about it: fucking the subconscious of a Westmount girl! I catch a glimpse of my oiled thighs (coconut oil) against this white body. I take her white breasts firmly in my hands. The light down on her white marble body. I want to fuck her identity. Pursue the racial question to the heart of her being. Are you a black man? Are you a white woman? I fuck you. You fuck me. I don’t know what you’re really thinking when you fuck with a black. I’d like to put you at my mercy, right here. Slow movement of the pelvis. Almost monotonous. Changes of rhythm scarcely perceptible. What about you? You’re there in total metaphysical concentration and I don’t know what you’re thinking. But I do know there’s no sexuality without fantasy. You seem unfeeling. You hardly move. Are you indifferent? Is it coming from the deepest part of your being? My sex celebrates your golden hair, your pink clitoris, your forbidden vagina, your white belly, your bowed neck, your Anglo-Saxon mouth. To touch your WASP soul. Metaphysical fucking. Mystic vapors. It’s all clothed in unreality. There you are, prone, with your Ophelia face. Slowly you slip from the material world. I will pull out of this inert, unfuckable, indifferent body. I pull out slowly. What is this cry? Where does it come from? It is the cry of the vagina itself. I hear its voice: “Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yeeeeeeeeees.” A taut, keening cry in high C, sharp and lasting, inhuman, first allegro, then andante, then pianissimo, an endless, inconsolable, electronic asexual cry, modulation for modulation a perfect copy of the primal scream from Beelzebub’s chamber above.
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.
“I don’t get it,” was her only comment.
She does not get it.
“It’s not easy.”
“I just can’t understand such a thing.”
She just cannot understand such a thing.
“It’s just that way.”
“Can’t you explain it?”
“Can it wait till tomorrow?”
As if I had refused a drowning man a life preserver. How can I tell her that this cultivated, concerned young man with whom she chatted away the afternoon nourishes in his heart of hearts a deep and abiding hatred of milk, steak, cheese and eggs? (“Believers, do not forbid the wholesome things which Allah has made lawful to you.” Sura V, 89.) Would she believe me? Or at least understand? It goes back to the embryonic stage of the blackman. For Bouba, these foods are and will forever be malevolent devils working to reduce him to slavery. Bouba is a brave man engaged in constant warfare in his very chamber. Warring against dark forces of blackest despair. He knows he doesn’t stand a chance. His body is covered with scars. Wounds, some still bleeding. Blows that would prove mortal for most. But every night (and tonight was no exception) he continues to match swords in hand-to-hand combat with the hydra of the Stomach.
How to Make Love to a Negro without Getting Tired Page 5