How to Make Love to a Negro without Getting Tired
Page 10
“She was beside herself. She had found her African. Her primitive.”
“You’re a harsh judge of people.”
“A harsh judge for harsh times. Don’t forget that the guy was wounded in his way too. Do you know what he told me in the men’s room? He asked me, ‘Do you know why Whites never say that a black is ugly?’ I didn’t know the answer; he did. ‘Because, so far, they’re not sure of our true nature.’”
“Can you elaborate?”
“We never say that a cat is ugly. Either we praise the animal or we keep quiet. We’re not entirely sure about animals. We say that the tiger is a handsome animal, but we don’t know what the other animals in the jungle think. And we never talk about specific tigers. We say, the tiger. It’s the same thing for blacks. People say, the blacks. They’re a type. There are no individuals.”
“Aren’t you exaggerating a little?”
“I may be.”
“How have blacks reacted to your book?”
“They want to lynch me.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I let the cat out of the bag. They don’t like being caught with their pants down. They say I’ve sold out, that I’m playing the white man’s game, that my book is no good and the only reason it was published was because whites need a black man around to carry on and give whites a clear conscience.”
“Is that your opinion?”
“I have no opinion. I make no statements without consulting my lawyer—unless they’re about writing. That’s not what the Moral Majority thinks. They say my book is the kind of trash that pollutes the reader, whose only goal is to debase the white race by attacking its most sacred object: Woman. You see, I’ve hit the jackpot.”
“Doesn’t that bother you?”
“What? Debasing white women?”
“No. Your black readers’ opinion.”
“To be a traitor is every writer’s destiny. I hope that’s the first cliché in this interview.”
“A final question: are you going to write another book?”
“Yes. Three others. It’s in the contract.”
“Good luck.”
The Negroes Are Thirsty
LAST NIGHT bouba dragged in a couple of half-dead females. Both of them were dogs. He’d picked them up on St. Catherine. Everyone knows no one’s ever seduced a girl with an offer of a place to sleep. They had to be dogs.
When he came in Bouba whispered to me that the big one was mine and I could do whatever I wanted with her: fuck her, sell her, throw her out the window. I didn’t want any part of it. It wasn’t in my job description. A month ago I would have considered her manna from heaven. (“On the day when they behold the scourge with which they are threatened, their life on earth will seem to them no longer than an hour. That is a warning. Shall any perish except the evil-doers?” Sura XLVI, 35.) But these days I’m on a diet. I’ve lost my taste for gimps, drunks, poetesses, what-the-cat-dragged-ins, sick of all those girls that nobody will take except bums and blacks. I want a normal girl with a conservative father and a bourgeois mother (both racist to the core), a real live normal girl, not a blow-up doll smashed on beer. Shit, I’ve got a thirst for a decent life. I am thirsty. The Gods are thirsty. Women are thirsty. Why not Negroes? The Negroes are thirsty.
The Big One was worse than a crushed cockroach on a Sunday night. She didn’t even see me; she flung open the fridge door and helped herself to a beer. Big, ugly and vulgar. (“Fighting is obligatory for you, much as you dislike it.” Sura II, 216.) Up above, Beelzebub is lying low. Very low!
Bouba started undressing the Little One and feeling up her breasts. The Big One had had time to put away three beers and still not notice me. I scrunched down in the bed. Bouba signalled me to take care of the Big One and went on feeling up the Little One. I was laying in wait for the Big One behind the eleventh beer. Then the ceiling came tumbling down with a tremendous crash. It had to happen sooner or later. Columns of pink smoke. But we were spared the worst. Escaping death by inches. Beelzebub wasn’t lying low up there after all.
The Big One went and stood in the shower with all her clothes on and and started screaming at the top of her lungs. She was hungry. She went and cooked up some spaghetti. Soaking wet. I don’t know when I finally snapped. I didn’t stop screaming for over an hour. The police came. I fell asleep right afterwards. The next morning the girls were gone.
A GRIMY noon. Bouba went out. I’m typing the last chapter at top speed. The end of my ordeal is in sight. The Remington (my partner in crime) hasn’t lost its touch. I’ve just got to finish this prologue. When you add it up, I wrote this novel in thirty-six days and eighteen nights, using three ribbons, four jars of liquid paper, five hundred sheets of bond paper, thirty bottles of wine and a dozen cases of beer. I totalled it up in a little black notebook, a gift from Miz Literature. I’m typing like crazy. The Remington is having a ball. Words are squirting out everywhere. I type. I can’t take it any more. I type. I’m at the end of my ribbon. I finish. I crash out on the table next to the typewriter with my head on my arms.
You’re Not Born Black,
You Get That Way
DAWN CAME up, as always, independent of my will. Sweet adolescent dawn. The lances of the sun without their sting. Gentle and cajoling. My novel stares at me from the table, next to the old Remington, in its fat red folder. My novel is a handsome hunk of hope. My only chance. Take it.
DANY LAFERRIÈRE was born in Port-au-Prince in 1953. He worked as a journalist under Haiti’s notorious Duvalier regime before immigrating to Montreal in 1976. Laferrière is the author of fourteen novels and the recipient of numerous awards, including the Prix RFO du Livre 2002, Le Grand Prix de la ville de Montréal 2009, the first Prix Carbet des lyceens and the Governor General’s Award. How to Make Love to a Negro, originally published in French in 1985, was his first novel and later adapted into a Genie Award– nominated film. Laferrière’s other novels include Heading South, I Am a Japanese Writer and the international bestseller L’énigme du retour, which won the prestigious Prix Médicis in 2009. Laferrière lives in Montreal.