Dany Laferriere - I Am a Japanese Writer

I HEARD HURRIED steps in the stairway behind me. I was already fumbling for my keys.

“Didn’t Plato show up?”

“What Plato?”

His face grew dark.

“My rent.”

“You’ll get it…”

“I want it today!”

“But Mr. Zorba…”

“My name isn’t Zorba.”

I’d never seen him in a mood like this.

“We still have time.”

That drives him crazy every time.

“I don’t feel like chasing after you all night.”

“You’ll get your money, like every week.”

“Well, I didn’t get it this week.”

Poor guy — the fear of being ripped off! I can hardly put him off even a half day. Once I went to New York with friends, and he didn’t get his rent until three days later. That look of his! He went back down the stairs, murmuring peasant curses between his teeth. I opened the door, placed the rent money on the table, pulled off my clothes and got into bed. I had time for a little snooze, and I’d be up before he returned. That doesn’t happen every day. I even had time to make a spaghetti sauce out of garlic, onions and green peas, then eat it in front of the tv set as I watched an old Columbo episode. I discovered some low-rent wine in a bottle lying under the table — enough for one glass. Lucullus receives Lucullus. I sat down to the left of the set; I was both audience and antenna. The old TV and I know each other well. Actually, it’s more like a radio, since I can make out only vague shapes, though the sound is still good. The TV is perfect for Metropolitan Orchestra concerts, if you like that sort of thing, which I hate. Sometimes I listen, hoping for a miracle. Most of the time its gray eye stares at me in dumb accusation. Zorba is only good for demanding his money. Every time I ask him to get a better television, just to bug him, he acts like he doesn’t understand me. He can broadcast, but he can’t receive.

A KNOCK AT the door. It’s eleven o’clock. I won’t give him his money until ten minutes to midnight — not a second before. Those ten minutes are his tip. Another knock. Someone’s insistent. He knows I’m here. Okay, I’ll open up. Two cops. They barge in without wiping their feet. They begin a minute inspection of my room without bothering to tell me who they are (though I can clearly see that), or what they want, which I can’t know without their help. When it comes to the police, you just have to wait. And that’s what I do. I sit down. Downstairs, the landlord must be going nuts. Not only does he hate the police the way all immigrants do, but he’s wondering if he’s going to get his rent if something happens. The cops move around my place like they own it. They look this way and that. They open the dresser drawers and come upon a pair of women’s panties which they start playing with in the crassest kind of way. They go to the window, speaking to each other in low voices. I sit and wait patiently. Sooner or later they’ll have to talk to me. And here they come: now they’re standing in front of me. Two cops and a black man in a crummy room in a bad part of town in Montreal — the scene is set. The oldest of the two comes so close to me his knee brushes my thigh. Suddenly the room starts smelling like shit.

“Let me tell you how it goes,” the older one says. “You’re her pimp. She shows up to give you her money. You do some coke together. Then all of a sudden she really gets on your nerves, I can understand that…. What I don’t get is why you threw her out the window when you could have got rid of her down the stairs. A little fall downstairs wouldn’t bring me running. . But you were too stoned to know the difference, am I right?”

I don’t answer. He turns to the younger cop, who is gaping in amazement at his seamless demonstration.

“That’s thirty years of experience, kid…. Now let’s run him in, I’ve got other things to do tonight.”

I don’t stir from my chair. I know this is only the beginning. I’ve seen too many episodes of Columbo . The young cop (if it isn’t his first day on the job, it’s his second) moves towards me, ready to handcuff me. If this really is about the Hideko business, that happened days ago. If they had the slightest suspicion that a murder had been committed in this apartment, the whole neighborhood would be sealed off. And they wouldn’t have sent these two assholes (a young one and an old one), but a whole army. These two have just dropped by to see if there isn’t any coke on the premises. Just don’t move— that’s all I have to do. Don’t say anything, don’t do anything. On the other hand, I’m starting to have serious doubts that any of this has even happened. As Paul Veyne reminds us, “truths themselves are simply imagined stories.” For him, what is imaginary can become reality. I could have been drunk and brought a woman back here with me, and then she threw herself out the window, and I fell asleep afterwards. The next day, with the fragments of images that lingered in my head, I dreamed up the whole story. It’s true that I did go to see Midori at the Café Sarajevo, but I didn’t feel well, and I left after the Kiss Inc. show. Instead of walking home, which would have calmed my nerves and my stomach, I took the subway. The closed-in atmosphere didn’t help. I was reading Basho with my eyes on the Chinese girl across from me. I lost consciousness as I was leaving the train, and she had the presence of mind to catch me before I fell. Aren’t I building a new story because of the police? Did she come back with me? I have no idea. But something did happen. The morning after my illness, I stole the landlord’s newspaper in front of the building, and that’s when I saw the girl’s body on the sidewalk — right under my window. On page one. The shock of seeing yourself publicly involved with death. Death is a misunderstood star. It wears dark glasses in order to go incognito. It attracts everyone’s eye. In an instant, a nobody who dies becomes a somebody. Maybe I was too quick to conclude that she’d fallen from my window, just because she was lying underneath it. I was thinking like the police, who see murder wherever they go. For every murder, they need to find fifteen suspects. And never the right one. So I’d better think fast. First of all, this is not a fiction film. Next, which death are we talking about? Maybe Zorba pushed the beautiful Helena out the window. Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter, right? But I don’t think it’s a good idea to embark on that kind of discussion with two cops on a Thursday night.

The young cop starts pushing me to one side to slap on the cuffs.

“Now, wait a minute,” the older one says. “You have to wait till he goes along with my little demonstration. . You got something to say?” he threatens me, moving in closer.

He’s turning up the heat. I can see in the young cop’s eyes that he feels the difference too. He doesn’t know what might happen in this room either.

“I already talked to the police.”

“And who the hell are we?” he bursts out.

He rolls his nightstick along my thigh. We move into the sexual mode, the most dangerous part. The slightest reaction could be taken as a provocation.

“I mean the two other policemen who were here the night of the accident.”

“Hey, there, not so fast! It’s up to me to say whether there was an accident or not. In my book, there was a murder, and I’ve got a suspect.”

“They took the earrings and the letter…”

“What letter?” asks the young cop, who knows nothing about the case.

“The letter she wrote to her parents.”“Are you trying to insinuate that the Montreal police would steal jewelry from a whore?” he challenges, pushing his nightstick against my penis. The nightstick is an extension of his hand. The young cop notices his little game and immediately turns red.