Dany Laferrière - How to Make Love to a Negro without Getting Tired

COLEMAN, SIDE B. I’ve been sitting in front of this machine for ten minutes, trying to coax something out of a Remington that belonged to Chester Himes. Bouba and Miz Suicide continue their timeless dialogue. I seek inspiration from the struggles of a cockroach in the sink. (“No mortal eyes can see Him, though he sees all eyes. He is benignant and all-knowing.”) Coleman’s jazz ushers the insect into death. Upstairs, Beelzebub will not forgive us for this latest murder. Miz Suicide gets up for more tea and turns on the water. The Angel of Death.

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.”

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!

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 teeth, 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.