Alain Mabanckou - Black Bazaar

“This one’s a real daddy’s girl, I want you to whip her ass tonight! Drink some gin and tonic, you’re going to be up ‘til dawn and, believe me, this girl won’t forget it …”

Gwendoline was the daughter of a Gabonese minister. As soon as we’d been introduced she started talking about her daddy’s second homes, and about her own travels around the world. There wasn’t a corner on earth she hadn’t set foot in, she told me.

“When I’m at my father’s house I don’t touch a thing, not even a plate, we have servants, I have a driver, the hairdresser comes specially to our house with her six assistants.”

And so Vladimir left me in the claws of this daddy’s girl. She made me want to sneeze with her perfume that stank of the Mananas we use on corpses back home. I could spot my friend winking at me from a long way off, between the swirls of his cigar smoke. But there was no stopping Gwendoline. I let her carry on with the stocktaking of her paternal inheritance. I even got to find out what kind of plates and forks they had at home. Then she fell quiet because she could see I wasn’t impressed.

“You’re not very chatty, are you? You haven’t told me your name …”

“Buttologist.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“My friends call me Buttologist …”

She nearly swallowed an ice cube as big as a ping-pong ball.

“Are you joking or what? Right, well, I’d better call you what everyone else does! Vladimir told me you’re not just anybody. I understand that Mercedes Kompressor convertible in front of the night club is yours?”

I didn’t tell her we’d rented the car. I pretended to be the owner. I jangled the keys while whistling Another Day in Paradise by Phil Collins. I was smoking a Cohiba cigar and blowing smoke rings above my head.

She asked me what my line of work was.

“Businessman …”

“Really? What kind of business?”

“I sell diamonds to jewellers on the Place Vendôme. In a nutshell, I sell eternity because diamonds are forever …”

“My mother adores diamonds!”

I had scored a point. During the zouk love numbers, she clung to me like a leech. I’d never had anybody hit on me this hard. By the end I’d had enough, and I wanted to hover around two or three other girls who were tall as wading birds and kept on giving me lighthouse signals from across the dance floor. Nothing doing, Gwendoline had found her diamond dealer and she wasn’t going to let him out of her clutches.

“Diamonds! And do you sell gold as well?”

“Now and then. But frankly, gold is for small-timers. It’s not like diamonds, which are forever. And another thing, even if people say everything that glitters is not gold, they still go for the glitter. But diamonds don’t glitter, they diffuse light, and that’s why they’re the preserve of connoisseurs …”

“Aren’t you the smooth talker? I’m not buying a diamond now! But since you’re in the trade, perhaps you could finally explain something to me because I’ve never understood this business of twenty-four carats which everyone talks about but no one …”

“We’re here to have a good time … If things carry on like this, I’ll sell you a diamond and this evening could end up being very expensive for you!”

I wanted to catch my breath, but there she was behind me, staring at me as if I were a god. She shot envious looks at the Congolese women who recognised me. And I chose to pour oil on the flames. I zoned in on the ladies I knew, and threw myself into long conversations with them to prove I had my harem about me. Behaving jealously, as if we went back many a full moon together, Gwendoline came over to separate me from my little crowd. Even when we were dancing with our arms wrapped round each other, I was still treated to the fast-track biography of “The Minister” and his unstoppable ascent to power.

She wouldn’t let it drop:

“My father? He’s a very important lawyer, the most important lawyer in Africa! He is respected by the Whites! At the time when he did his studies, you could count the Blacks in French universities on the fingers of one hand. Of course there were Blacks in France, but they were road-sweepers, packers, gardeners, dockers in Marseille or Le Havre, factory workers for Simca, Peugeot, Citroën and Renault …”

I nodded, which only encouraged her.

“My father? You’ve got to meet him to understand what a truly exceptional man he is! He paid for my studies in this country’s elite establishments. I couldn’t love a man more than him! He is everything to me. He knew Pompidou, he knew the black members of the National Assembly at the time, your Senghors, your Boignys and others who would go on to become president in their own countries. My father was so brilliant that high office was thrust upon him straight away, and he’s been in government for more than twenty-five years now. He is the only minister the president can’t fire because he’s responsible for the country’s politically sensitive files. And if he opens those files, even the French government would come toppling down in less than five minutes!”

What she didn’t realise was that like most Africans who followed the continent’s current affairs a bit, I knew that Mr Bigshot Lawyer had been named Minister of Justice in order to carry out a specific mission: changing the country’s constitution every time the dictator president asked him to. He wrote the Constitution of his country in a single session because their president was obsessed with overtaking the French Constitution of the Fifth Republic. According to this Head of State, de Gaulle, who was applauded by everybody in Africa, had messed up his Constitution, and the French had taken advantage of this by showing him a lack of respect at the end of the sixties. Mr Bigshot Lawer had the original idea of giving all the powers to the President of the Republic. And so the President is at the same time Prime Minister, Cabinet Minister, Minister of Defence, Minister of the Interior, Finance Minister and above all Minister of Oil and Hydrocarbons.

While Gwendoline was bragging about daddy’s villas and fleet of cars, I was listening to her with one ear, and telling myself that the hour would strike when I’d make her be quiet and we’d finally get down to serious business. She would no longer be the minister’s daughter, with her taste for fancy cars and travels. She would be a naked woman in front of a naked man, and there, all human beings have the same weapons …

Looking back on it, I think what matters is that I managed to get Gwendoline into the car and that we slept on the fifth floor of the Novotel in Porte de Bagnolet, in a suite. I gave the excuse of having left my card in the car, so she was the one who guaranteed the room.

“Tomorrow, after lunch, I’ll get the money out at a cash point,” I promised her.

The minister’s daughter kept disappearing off into the bathrooms, drinking champagne and letting out idiotic peals of laughter in front of a television programme about the laborious mating rituals of the Zimbabwean rhinoceros.

She started up again with her question about the twenty-four carats. I explained to her that a carat was the amount of gold contained in an alloy and that amount was expressed as a twenty-fourth of the total weight. She stared at me, wide-eyed. But I knew we’d never see each other again. Because I didn’t like her derrière that only wiggled on one side. And because the way she went on about her old man would get on my nerves …

At five in the morning, while she was sound asleep, I tiptoed out of the hotel. All she’s got to do is call her father, I reasoned, and he can settle the bill from Libreville …

I still go and visit Louis-Philippebecause it makes a change from my pals at Jip’s. Talking of which, I must remember to give him back his copy of The Dirty Havana Trilogy , I’ve had it for a while now. He’s a real writer, and it’s not just the regulars at the Rideau Rouge who enjoy what he writes. I’ve got him to read a good chunk of what I’ve written so far. He’s told me I’m not there yet, that I’ve got to learn how to structure my ideas instead of writing when driven by anger or bitterness.