“The Philosopher-King speaks.”
“I’m warming up for my interview. Can you see me on TV, with noted sexologist-for-the-people Janette Bertrand: my opinion, Mme Bertrand, is that we have too many distractions. Leisure time, the bomb, religion, marijuana, TV. Madame, we are the last ones to get off on sex. Whites have lost their interest in it. Though I’m not talking about the women . . . some interest is still apparent. Am I shocking your audience?”
“Not at all. On this program we’re free to discuss everything. But what about porno films and dirty books; wouldn’t you say that that disgusting proliferation proves that whites, despite what you say, are still interested in amorous activity—in sex, as we say in modem language?”
“It’s a trap, madame. The West no longer cares about sex; that’s why it tries to debase it. It’s all directed against blacks because the Judeo-Christian world believes sex is their domain only. It can’t help but knock down the merchandise. But we blacks must restore sex to its full glory.”
“Is that the theme of your New Crusade?”
“In so many words.”
BOUBA MUST need a sleep cure if he’s confusing a Negro with Janette Bertrand. (Me Tarzan, you Jane.) People have been talking about mutation for a long time now. But I didn’t know it had gone that far.
The First Black Vegetarian
JUST AS i was finishing that chapter, Bouba came in with a fabulous girl. California style. Sun and orange groves. White teeth and sparkling smile. A regular cover girl. Finally! At last!
“Forget the dishes, man, we’re eating out.”
“It couldn’t come at a better time. I just finished the first draft of my novel.”
“Did you hear that? He just finished it.”
Bouba grabs the manuscript and goes dancing around the table.
“I could use a shower,” I say.
“We’ll wait, Homer.”
A SHOWER. A novel on the go. A knock-out girl and a meal in the cards. Some days it all works. I finish my shower. My head is spinning. Allah is taking a personal interest in me these days.
“Are you vegetarians?” Miz Cover Girl asks sweetly.
“No, herbivores.”
She smiles. I know that perfect happiness is not of this world. (“Had they believed in Allah and the Prophet and that which is revealed to him they would not have befriended the unbelievers. But many of them are evil-doers.” Sura V, 81.)
A CRUMMY restaurant on Duluth Street.
Nuts and berries on the menu. A dozen diners religiously munching on bowls of alfalfa. We take a table at the rear, back to the wall. The sound of mouths masticating reminds us of a mosque. We listen to the vegetarian credo mouthed by a herd of cud-chewers. We order our meal from a nature girl who looks as though she was raised in an alfalfa field. Cuisine à la sunflower oil. In the restaurant, twenty-odd wooden tables are scattered through three small rooms. The walls are cluttered with maharaji brochures, eco-agro journals, mystical propaganda and comic strips. How can you eat in this decor? The guests look desperate in their lumberjack shirts. On the wall behind me I read this appetizing offer: “Christine, organic woman into spiritual ways, seeks to share house in the country. Prepared to share with one or more people who wish to experience forms of Chinese energy (tai chi and acupuncture) in a beautiful natural setting.” Cruising verboten no doubt; too bad, it would be curious to see a Negro performing forms of Chinese energy with a white girl. A large poster displays a tunic-clad young woman: MARGILIS. Margilis at the Conventum. MARGILIS UNLEASHED. We hit the Conventum. In the lobby, we admire an exhibition of caged apes wearing tutus next to six large black-and-white posters of an off-Broadway play. We go in. Margilis. Intermission. I go to the john. A coded message next to the mirror: New York, Luigi? Jojo, Smith. Paris Lucienne Lambale / London Marie Lambert Co. / Principal dancer for Talk of the Town, “émission zoom / ballet jazz de Montréal Eddy Toussaint &. Co.”
I go up to Miz Cover Girl, who’s absorbed in conversation with two other girls. She does the introductions. One of the girls is skinny; the other enormous. A biological scandal and an anthropological curiosity. There’s Miz Alfalfa (the nice one), nature-girl, clear skin, freckles, smell of hay, probably goes for love in the stables. She emanates a robust sensuality. The other one is a walking skeleton, no breasts (not even a trace), smokes three packs of cigarettes a day and writes poetry. Miz Alfalfa, naturally, tends the alfalfa fields in a commune called “The Together Revolution Alfalfa Company Inc.” She eats, talks, sells and shits alfalfa. Probably fucks it too. One day she’ll give birth to alfalfa babies. While Miz Alfalfa tells us the heroic tale of alfalfa, Miz Gitane is smoking up a storm.
MARGILIS, PART 2. No one wants to make a decision. We go into the Conventum bar and gulp down a merguez sandwich. Next on the menu is a poetry reading at the Dazibao gallery that no one wants to miss. Bouba and I were hoping to stop off at Zorba’s for a souvlaki, out of nostalgia for meat.
Dazibao, rue St-Hubert, up above Café Robutel. To get there you have to climb a steep stairway welded to the Robutel like a handle on a coffee cup. The price of admission is a stack of copies of the nbj, the magazine for avant-garde poets. Total cost: $2.50. Whither Mayakovsky and the era of free poetry? Inside, every rejection-slip poet in Montreal. Alcoholic, mystical, lumberjack, truck-driver, tubercular poets and cruised-out poetesses. Bouba and I find room in the rear. A great big guy next to Bouba screams bloody murder after every strophe. Cases of beer at his feet. Poetry by the bottle. An enormous poetess, as round as a beer-barrel, tells the story of her lumberjack lover who was jealous of her books. A gentle giant wanted to sing us a lullaby. Another poetess, totally drunk, sits down between Bouba and me. Then the enormous poetess returns to the stage to tell the story of her lover whose feet stank. Make love with your boots on or get out. Most of the time he did it without his boots and the house stank for a week afterward. I went home. The novel was waiting for me. I put my last beer next to the Remington and made a sandwich. It was going to be a long night.
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 ti
ght 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. ”
Miz Bombardier turns her attention to me.
“I read your book and I laughed, but it seems to me you don’t like women.”
“Negroes too.”
Miz B. smiles. I won the first round.
“But you do go a little far. . .”
“When people reveal their fantasies, you’ll usually find something for everyone—or against everyone. Let me point out that for all intents and purposes there are no women in my novel. There are just types. Black men and white women. On the human level, the black man and the white woman do not exist. Chester Himes said they were American inventions, like the hamburger or the drive-in. In my book, I give a more . . . personal version of them.”
“Very personal indeed. I read your novel. It takes place around the Carré St. Louis. In a nutshell, it’s the story of two young blacks who spend a hot summer chasing girls and complaining. One loves jazz; the other literature. One sleeps all day or listens to jazz while reciting the Koran; the other writes a novel about their day-to-day experiences.”
“That’s it.”
“Let me ask you something.”
“Go right ahead.”
“Is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“Did all those things really happen to you? I ask because, in your real life, you live in the same neighborhood, off the Carré St. Louis. You live with a friend and you’re a writer, like your narrator.”
“Pure coincidence.”
“Perhaps. Your novel is the first portrait of Montreal from the pen of a black writer. Admit that you were a bit harsh.”
“You think so?”
“But your readers like that because they’re used to a more plaintive sort of Negro.”
“The ones in my novel never stop complaining.”
“Yes, but the tempo is different. They’re tougher, sharper, more pugnacious. They’re complainers, but they know how to hit back. Humor is their most effective weapon.”
“That’s the way life is.
You parry the blows and you strike back.”
“Their weapons are quite different. Generally, blacks appeal to Africa, but your characters never do. Why not?”
“Because they live in the Western world.”
“But they’re Moslems!”
“True. Their faith belongs to Islam, but their culture is totally European. Allah is great, but Freud is their prophet.”
“Odd Moslems indeed!”
“The portrait is real. For when a black man and a white woman meet, the lie is the predominant feature.”
“Aren’t you painting things a little too black?”
“Last night I was in a bar downtown. A black man and a white woman were sitting next to me. I knew the guy. He was all but telling her he was a cannibal, fresh out of the bush, that his father was the big medicine-man in his village. The whole mythology. I watched the girl: she was nodding, in total ecstasy at finding a real bushman, homo primitivus, the Negro according to National Geographic, Rousseau and Company. I know the guy and I know he’s not from the bush. He’s from Abidjan, one of Africa’s great cities. He lived in Denmark and Holland for quite a while before coming to Montreal. He’s an urban man, a virtual European. But he’d never admit that to a white girl for all the ivory in the world. In the white man’s eyes, he wants to be a Westerner; but with a white woman, Africa serves as his supernumerary sex.”
“What about the girl?”
How to Make Love to a Negro without Getting Tired Page 9