How to Make Love to a Negro without Getting Tired

by Dany Laferriere

  I really laid it on thick. And immediately regretted trying to explain this very private combat to a girl from Sir George who’s been following the Scarsdale diet since her first period. She told me that the Self must have another destiny than to gulp down carbohydrates. For a famished Negro, Hegelian man is one of the sickest jokes in the Judeo-Christian panoply.

  THE COTTON CLUB ORCHESTRA launches into “Mood Indigo.” I hear Bouba whistling in the dark. Miz Sophisticated Lady is sitting on the bed in the higher biped position. Upright, proud, pathetic. Miz S.L. is literally bursting with indignation. I don’t know exactly when I committed the fatal faux pas. But it was monumental. Irreparable. It must have been when I said that Negroes are still at the Big Feed stage and that for them eating a bowl of rice is sometimes preferable to the mysteries of love. Normally, the Negro should be upset, indignant at still being in such a terrible situation. There’s no reason for an English girl to get upset. Besides, comparing a Westmount girl to a bowl of rice is a philosophical reflection beyond my means. Mao did not make the revolution so that every Chinaman could enjoy a Chinawoman, but so that every China-man and Chinawoman could enjoy a bowl of rice a day. Therefore, for the Chinese, man or woman, rice is a sacred thing. Whereas for Miz Sophisticated Lady, a bowl of rice is a bowl of rice. She won’t let me call a cab. The pride of the powerful. She exits. And the more I think about it, the more I believe that it really wasn’t a fight over rice, but an old historical misunderstanding, irreparable, total and definitive, a misunderstanding over race, caste, class, sex, nation and religion.

  IN THE hollow of his palm! Bouba assembles the frail chicken bones that were lying on the table. I settle in on the couch with Borges and thirty seconds later the first notes of “Take the A Train” fill the room. The music insinuates itself into my sinews, casting me into that moist, tropical sound jungle as old Duke looks on with cool, ironic eyes. While Bouba keeps time with two Chinese chopsticks.

  “Hear that, man?”

  “I hear it.”

  “‘Hot and Bothered’—you like that?”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Admit it’s genius, admit you’ve never heard anything like that in your whole lousy life.”

  “I admit.”

  “And there,” Bouba goes on. “Stravinsky took the line and ran with it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You didn’t recognize it?”

  “No.”

  “‘Sophisticated Lady,’ man. Pure symphonic jazz.”

  Negroes at the Exile Cafe

  BISTROT À JOJO. Noon. Warm temperature.

  We’re sitting at the back. In the shadow of filtered light. Armchairs. Soft soundtrack. A bar for the well-off.

  We order zombies.

  The man across from me is from the Ivory Coast. He’s been in Montreal fifteen years. He went through the October Crisis.

  “What was it like?”

  “You mean October?”

  “I’m not talking about that.”

  “You mean the ‘decline,’”

  “That’s right,”

  He takes a lungful of air.

  “You know something, brother, there was a time when black meant something here. We picked up girls just like that.”

  He snaps his fingers. A black angel moves across the field.

  He looks at me with his parchment face, a delirious sage under a baobab tree on a full-moon night.

  “Yes, brother, it was the golden age of black.”

  The ivory age, I’d say.

  The waiter finally arrives with our drinks. A big tip.

  “The tip is very important, brother. It’s your respect, your dignity, your survival.”

  The man is totally disillusioned. As if he had let go a long time ago. And been falling ever since. Free fall.

  I get things going again.

  “What percentage?”

  “You mean the tip?”

  “No, the girls.”

  “One black for six white girls. And there, brother, I’m talking about your average black man of average height and appetite. In the smaller towns, we were king of the castle. Those were the good old days, brother, if ever there were any.”

  A tall Senegalese (six feet six) walks across the café to our table.

  “Brothers.”

  “Hello, brother.”

  Another round. Three beers this time. The Senegalese is as tall and thin as a bamboo stalk in his dashiki.

  He sits down.

  A long silence.

  We drink. Another round. Three more beers.

  “How many do I have?”

  “Two, like the rest of us.”

  “Don’t take me for that kind, brother.”

  He shows me a tuft of white hair in the middle of his head like a cockade.

  “How many?” he asks again.

  I still don’t understand.

  The Ivory Coast man emerges from his silence to translate for me.

  “He wants to know how many winters you think he’s spent here.”

  “Ten,” I say to avoid offending him.

  He bursts out laughing.

  “Exactly twenty, brother. We’re burned up inside. Ice burns up everything here, brother. After twenty years here, you turn into ash. Look at that guy coming in. Looks hearty, doesn’t he? A strong wind will blow him over.”

  The newcomer does look a little wind-blown. And furious too. He sits down and orders a beer and a pack of Gitanes.

  “You know,” he says after listening to our conversation a while, “I can’t stand this talk about white girls any more.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “We blacks need to be left alone,” he declares.

  “Of course,” I say.

  Everyone nods his head.

  “You can love me or you can spit on me,” he continues. “I couldn’t care less. It’s all the same to me. The same hypocritical bullshit. I’m fed up, brothers, fed up.”

  A respectful silence. The man drinks from his beer and shakes his head. He smiles sadly.

  “I met a girl here once, in this very bar. We drink together. We go to another place. I live near here. You know, the classic progression. I bring her to my place. Two days I’ll never forget. She eats spicy— very good. She fucks hard—even better. Everything’s fine. Smooth as silk. I let her leave. I have to, right? She’s supposed to go canoeing with her family. I like people who have a sense of family. She swears she loves no one but me. I didn’t ask her to say that. She leaves. Not even a call. Nothing. I’m still waiting. Not a word. Three months later I meet her on St. Denis. ‘Hello, there.’ ‘Oh, hello,’ she says. ‘Why didn’t you call?’ She couldn’t. Didn’t have time. Three months and no time to call. When I think of what that girl said to me when we were fucking. ‘And what have you been doing all this time?’ ‘I learned to play the congas. With a marvelous teacher. Maybe you know him. He’s a wise man. He’s taught me all kinds of secrets. His throne is a couch, and he lies down on it. He’s the greatest sage in Montreal.’”

  After his confession, the man stares at me with his little razor-blade eyes. I know that sage who lives on a couch, but I never suspected his reputation had gone beyond the borders of the Carré St. Louis.

  A Young Black Montreal

  Writer Puts James Baldwin

  out to Pasture

  THE BOUQUET of peonies sleeps by the old Rem-ington. A lousy Sunday. Ashen, gray and damp. I feel empty. Horizontal on the couch, Bouba is drinking hot tea. Ella Fitzgerald’s soft voice singing “Lullaby of Birdland.”

  “You don’t look too good, man.”

  “I’m all right,” I say in a small voice.

  “You don’t convince me.”

  “I’m not trying to.”

  “You want a cup?”

  “Okay.”

  The hot tea is good.

  “It’s because of the book?”

  “I guess so . . .”

  “That’s why.”

  “I’m stuck
. I’m not getting anywhere.”

  “You should go out for a walk.”

  “That’s the tenth time you’ve given me that piece of advice.”

  “You know what, man?”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been meaning to tell you. Your problem is you think too much.”

  “I know.”

  In a voice that makes you feel like you’ve got a rope around your neck, Billie Holiday sings “Strange Fruit.” The song gives me a desperate case of the blues.

  Miz Literature comes in and stands behind my chair.

  “Are you going to keep on working?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Do you think you’ll get somewhere?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If there’s some way I could help you . . .”

  “Unfortunately, it’s the kind of thing you have to do yourself.”

  MIZ LITERATURE comes back to observe a half-hour later.

  “Cool, brother!”

  “Since when do Outremont girls talk like that?”

  “Since they hang out with blacks.”

  “Be specific—since they go to bed with blacks.”

  “You’re young, gifted and black, is that it?”

  “And you’re just rich, is that it?”

  “Not just rich, since I’m going to bed with a young, gifted black.”

  “You trying to ruin your Outremont reputation?”

  “What have you got against the rich?”

  “What do I have against the rich? I’m green with envy, I’m yellow with jealousy. I want to be rich and famous.”

  “You realize I’m taking you seriously.”

  “Good. That’s the only serious thing I’ve said in months.”

  “You want to become the best black writer?”

  “That’s right. Better than Dick Wright.”

  “Better than Chester Himes?”

  “Better than Chester.”

  “Better than James Baldwin?”

  “Baldwin’s all worn out!”

  “Better than Baldwin or not?”

  “Better than Baldwin. ‘With Black Cruiser’s Paradise, a young black Montreal writer puts James Baldwin out to pasture.’”

  THE RAIN stopped a while ago. It’s stifling in here.

  “Why don’t we go out?”

  “Where to?”

  “Outside.”

  “It’s no better out there.”

  “It’s different.”

  “You want a change of scene?”

  “That’s about it.”

  It stinks in here, but Miz Literature can put up with the smell better than I can.

  “It’s hot, huh?”

  “Very hot.”

  “How hot is it?”

  “Ninety or thereabouts.”

  “Look at that bike.”

  “Which one? Down there?”

  “Watch carefully.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s going to evaporate before it reaches St.

  Catherine.”

  “Are you crazy? What are you talking about?”

  “Just watch.”

  “Oh no!”

  “I told you so.”

  “Oh, my God! My God! My God!”

  “Are you going to say that all day?”

  “Oh, my God!”

  WE GO into Hachette. Artificial cool. The bookstore’s full.

  “Look at the crowd!”

  “It’s because of the air conditioning. Most of them don’t have the slightest intention of buying a book.

  They’re here for the cool air.”

  “What are they reading?”

  “Cookbooks, macrame, diet, horoscope, great outdoors, sports. Stanké and his gang.”

  “What are we going to read?”

  “We’re here to steal. When you rip off a book, you must choose only the best. When I want to read a bad book, I buy it. Getting caught with a lousy writer under your shirt is the greatest humiliation.”

  “What are we going to steal?”

  “Suit yourself.”

  I’ve got the cashier all figured out. She looks but she doesn’t see. Better pay attention to the guy standing with his hands behind his back, near the paperbacks. He’s the floorwalker.

  Miz Literature is whispering away. That’s her way of panicking.

  “Keep your eyes open for ladies in their sixties— you know, flower-print dresses, silver hair, clean hands, Madame Respectable. They’re liable to squeal on you just to get in good with the store manager.

  That gives them legitimacy, since they come here every day.”

  Miz Literature is all hot and bothered. The biggest adventure in her life. Theft. Corrupting an Outremont girl is practically a BA in itself.

  “How many do you have in your bag?”

  “Five or six, I don’t know.”

  “That’s a day’s work. Let’s go. Give me your bag.

  Go ahead, I’ll follow. Don’t look at the cashier. I’ll take care of everything.”

  MIZ LITERATURE is in exultation.

  “You know, I made a wish back there.”

  “What’s that?”

  “One day we’ll come here and steal your book.”

  I close my eyes. And picture, with a dash of perverse pleasure, an old lady slipping a book unnoticed into her purse: Black Cruiser’s Paradise.

  Miz Clockwork Orange’s Electronic

  Rhythm Drowning out Black Congas

  I TURN onto St. Catherine Street.

  “Hello, Black Beauty.”

  A transvestite.

  “Where’s the Clochards Célèstes?”

  “That way, Beautiful.”

  Bouba left me a message next to the Remington. Miz Literature had come by at noon. She’d be waiting for me tonight at the Clochards Célèstes.

  The staircase is as narrow as a rope ladder. Two spacious rooms. A bar. A trio of guys in battered fedoras, elbows on the bar, watching a baseball game on TV. No sound. The TV is on a shelf next to an enormous Budweiser bottle. This Bud’s for you.

  “A Bud.”

  Advertising works.

  At the far end of the room, thirty tables around a stage. Senegalese playing music. Four drums, two congas. Insistent, frenetic rhythm. Zoom to the back, right: Miz Literature sipping something green. Electricity in the air. The black bodies of the Senegalese glow in the darkness shot through with magnesium flashes. A whiff of hashish, light but persistent. I cross the room through the Senegalese show. The moist pulse of burnt bodies waiting for a rain of nago rhythm. Call of the bush on St. Catherine Street. Black music for white dancers. Soul. Soul on fire. High tension. Miz Literature is talking with a punk girl. Miz Punk shoots me a killing glance. She wants to play rough.

  Koko, one of the Senegalese musicians, winks my way. Brother. Miz Punk caught the signal.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Harlem.”

  “Harlem! I love Harlem.”

  “Do you?”

  Miz Punk is totally wired.

  “Is there a lot of crime?”

  “You do what you can.”

  “I heard no one makes it past seventeen. You die first. Is that true?”

  “Sure. I’m fifteen myself.”

  Miz Punk is seventeen. She gives me a strange look, trying to ferret out the famous Harlem beat in me. The killer instinct. I shake my head gently with my best Malcolm X look.

  THE SENEGALESE finish their show in a burst of frenzied rhythm. They gather up their instruments (drums, congas, kora), wave goodbye and go headlong down the suicide stairway, followed by a cluster of dashiki-clad groupies. Colonialized white girls. The priestesses of the Temple of Race. High on Negro.

  THE DJ puts on hard rock. Miz Punk leaps onto the dance floor. Tina Turner. She starts jumping up and down. Madness. Dervish. Hard face, upper lip split by a razor slash, deep-set eyes, her body dislocated, disjointed, off-center, fragmented. She dances a half-hour with no reprieve. Miz Punk lasts longer than the copper
-top battery. (“You, as well as they, are doomed to die.” Sura XXXIX, 31.)

  We don’t waste time getting out of there, Miz Literature and I, leaving Miz Punk, alias Miz Clockwork Orange, to crash through the floor of the Clochards Célèstes. It’s raining. We take shelter under the marquee of the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde. Miz Literature kisses me on the mouth in front of the Death of a Salesman poster. We take the 129. Miz Literature has wet hair, which only adds to her charm.

  “I don’t want any unpleasant surprises.”

  “I’m telling you for the hundredth time, my parents are in Europe. I got a telegram this morning. Here’s the proof.”

  She rummages through her bag and pulls out a balled-up piece of paper. Then wipes off her lipstick with it and throws it away, into the rain.

  HER ROOM is upstairs, across from her younger sister’s (a Roy Orbison groupie). Posters of Roy everywhere. Roy at the National Arts Centre. She pinned a tiny photo on the picture of Roy that covers the whole left side of the room: two suntanned girls hitch-hiking with their tops off. Roy at the Peterborough Memorial Centre, with a certain Vicky. Roy at the Lord Beaverbrook (this time she wrote “Roy Roy Roy” on the poster in black felt-tip pen). Roy at Toronto’s Massey Hall and the Winnipeg Concert Hall (consumption in the hall that night: one ton of marijuana). The last concert was on Vicky’s sixteenth birthday. On a Roy poster she scrawled in eyebrow pencil, “I just feel like killing myself.”

  “Those are Penny’s things, she’s my younger sister. She’s really crazy. She’s on tour now with Men at Work.”

  Miz Literature puts on a Simon and Garfunkel record and runs off to the bathroom to dry her hair. I stay in her room. Cushions everywhere. All kinds of colors. Left-over from the sit-in days of the seventies. Books piled up on the floor next to an old Telefunken record player. To the left, facing the door, a large walnut wardrobe. Reproductions: a beautiful Brueghel. An Utamaro by the window. A splendid Piranese, two Hokusai prints and in the corner by the library (made of bricks and boards) a precious Holbein. By her bedside, against the pink wall, Miz Literature placed a large photo of Virginia Woolf taken in 1939 by Gisèle Freund at Monk House, Rodwell, Sussex.