Black Bazaar (4 page)

Sometimes I feel like smashing his face in, but what's the point when the stairs can take care of it? I don't want any trouble. You get people like that, you see them, you think they're healthy enough, you shake them up a bit, and the next thing you know you've laid yourself wide open to trouble because all it takes is for them to bash into a wall on purpose – even if it's only made of plywood – and they'll start claiming assault and grievous bodily harm leading directly to them snuffing it.

So I don't take any notice when he's trying to get a rise out of me. But he's always on my case. He's after
confrontation. He steals my doormats and dumps rotten fruit in front of my door. I know it's him, and nobody but him, I don't see who else in this block would act that way. I don't have any problems with the other tenants …

* * *

Mr Hippocratic has had it in for me from the day I moved into this studio. One evening, my ex had told me not to forget to take the rubbish out, so I went down to the basement with a torch. I could feel someone breathing behind me. Someone padding along. I turned around and who should I see but Mr Hippocratic.

“So your country is the Congo, isn't it?” he asked, without telling me how he knew.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Did you see the telly last night?”

“No, I was busy, I didn't watch TV …”

“Dearie me, the poor Congolese, we've got to do something for them! There are diseases, there is famine, they have many wives, and they are always fighting all the time, poor things! And the president of these Congolese I'm talking about, what's his name again?”

“Denis Sassou Nguesso …”

“Oh no, that's not it, that's not the name I heard on the telly! That's not the name at all! It was a longer name, more of an African name, by which I mean rather barbarian sounding …”

“Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu wa za Banga?”

“Yes! Yes! Yes! That's the name! Something has got to be done, the poor Congolese are all going to die of starvation or AIDS or because of tribal wars …”

“That President Mobutu is already dead, you must have seen a programme about former Zaire and the regime that Mobutu …”

“Oh no he's not, Mobutu's not dead! I saw him on telly last night with my own eyes! He's your president, and he was in the pink of health! He was giving a speech in a packed stadium. Apparently it was in the same stadium where he murdered and buried Patrice Lumumba. That Mobutu makes his people suffer, he is a villain, he is evil, he's a dictator, we should send in the Americans to do a spot of mopping up over there! That man brings shame on your race, it's intolerable! If I were an African I would rise up, I'd go and fight against that dictator. Hasn't he ever heard of democracy, that president of yours? He sells your diamonds, he buys himself fancy homes in Europe, is that a normal way to behave?”

When I didn't react, Mr Hippocratic started up again:

“And what about you, as a Congolese man living like a coward in Europe, what are you actually doing for your poor country where there are diseases, where there is famine, where the men have many wives at the same time and on top of that they are always fighting, eh?”

“I'm from the other Congo, the small Congo, Congo-Brazzaville. There's another Congo which is bigger and where …”

“No, it was definitely your country on the telly yesterday, with that president with the long name who wears glasses and a leopard-skin hat. He walks with a stick! Are you telling me you don't know who your own president is? I find that shocking! I'm telling you I saw him with my own eyes on the telly …!”

* * *

Even when my partner and our daughter were still living here, Mr Hippocratic would already be snooping on us through his spy-hole at the first sign of noise in the corridor. I know this because I could hear him tiptoeing over to his door and holding his froggy breath. And when our daughter was born, he wanted to know if I had triplets and not just one baby because a single child couldn't possibly bawl fit for an entire nursery school. And off he went to snivel at our landlord about how there were small groups of Africans who were stirring up ill-feeling in the block, who were turning the premises into a tropical capital, who slit the throats of cockerels at five in the morning to collect their blood, who beat the tom-toms all night long to send coded messages to their bush spirits and put a jinx on France. That they should be sent back home, or he'd refuse to pay his rent and taxes
any more, he'd go and give evidence at the local police station, and these immigrants would be allocated a one-way ticket on a charter flight, even if it was the French taxpayer who had to pick up the tab for their return to the native land.

I let him have his way. I've got nothing to add to his wild rants because back in the home country we were always taught to respect our elders, especially when they've got grey hair, which is the case for Mr Hippocratic. Each time I tell him I agree with him, that if negroes have wide noses it's simply so they can wear glasses, and that the black man does not live by bread alone but also by sweet potatoes and plantains.

And since I'm not the type to pick a quarrel with anybody, I've decided the only answer is to move out. Unlike my ex who didn't like the banlieue, I'm willing to go and live there, but I don't want to move back into that studio in Château d'Eau I used to share with several of my compatriots. In life, you should never go back to square one.

I've visited a lot of studios in the area. Nothing doing. I'd need decent payslips, but I've been working part-time since my ex left, so I don't see how I'll ever leave this place.

I don't talk to Mr Hippocratic any more. I try to make sure I come home when he's already asleep. And when we cross paths in the hallway or down by the
bins, we stare at each other defiantly. He spits on the ground and shouts:

“Bloody Congolese! Your woman's walked out on you! Go back to where you come from!”

Now, if I were a nasty piece of work like him, I'd have evened the score a long time ago:

“Bloody Martiniquais! Go back to your island in the Caribbean!”

When I check out my
profile in the mirror, I reckon I'm not a bad-looking guy. I wouldn't even begin to compare myself with that minstrel who's gone off with my ex and taken my daughter with them. Between him and me it's like night and day. I'm tall and nicely proportioned; he's such a midget you don't even notice him when he walks past. If you're not careful you might trample him underfoot or mistake him for a four-legged animal with no tail. I've got a small moustache and I'm handsome; he looks like a primate who narrowly missed out on evolving into a human. So that nickname of the Hybrid I gave him fits like a glove. As for the way he dresses, it's a disaster! Does being an artist mean he's got to wear threads like that? What a load of bull, I know artists who are always snappily dressed with shades and a fan for flaunting it. When it comes to clothes I don't mess around, and my friends at Jip's understand this, including Roger the French-Ivorian. I'm not trying to show off, but my suits are tailor-made. I buy them in Italy, in Bologna to be precise, where I scour the shops, stopping at each boutique in the city's arcades. When I moved in here I didn't know where to store it all. I've got six big suitcases of
clothes and shoes – mostly crocodile, anaconda and lizardskin Westons, as well as Church's, Bowens and some other English shoes.

I make a point of wearing a suit because you've got to “keep up appearances”, as we say among the Society for Ambient People and Persons of Elegance, SAPPE, which, without wanting to be contentious, is an invention from back home, born in the Bacongo district of Brazzaville, towards the Total roundabout. We're the ones who exported “Sappe” to Paris, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise, because lately there are so many false prophets swarming these streets in the City of Light, to the point where it's getting difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Of course, some people will argue that the Ivorians and the Cameroonians are Sappers too. Well let's just see about that, shall we, they only started making an effort, poor things, because they complained their women were after us. So they thought it was down to our Westons and our Gianni Versace jackets. But when these desperate Ivorians or distraught Cameroonians wear the same clothes as us, there's no competition, we're talking night and day; the Congolese Sapper wins out every time thanks to his inimitable style, and that's not me being biased here, it's just the harsh reality, and I'd be lying if I said any different …

Linen jackets by Emmanuel Ungaro that crease elegantly
and are worn with refinement. Terylene jackets by Francesco Smalto. One hundred per cent or even two hundred per cent lambswool jackets in pure Cerruti 1884 fabric. Jacquard socks. Silk ties, including motifs of the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe. That's my style. And just some of what I've got in my suitcases …

I'm fanatical about Italian collars with three or four buttons, I like to feel them around my neck, stiff, folded double, uncreasable. Tell me how you knot your tie and I will tell you who you are – and even what company you keep. The people who go on telly don't have a clue. They buy their ties from the first shop they walk into and then have the nerve to splash their face across all of France, including in Corsica and Monaco. It shouldn't be allowed. When I'm watching a panel discussion on telly, like last time, I can tell how the participants are going to behave just by spotting their tie.

When I'm outside Jip's, I've been known to feel sorry for, to burst out laughing at, and even to fight the urge to go to the rescue of the idiot who has neglected this small detail that makes a world of difference.

Broadly speaking, I've noticed that shy men wear their ties tightly knotted, and in our crowd we call them suicidals. As for the thugs – who we call pimps – they look like men at the gallows with their knot close to the throat, while the show-offs plump theirs up big time. They deserve their nickname of cooking pot lids because they have this cast iron belief that the best is
always on the outside and not on the inside.

The ones we dub bulls with no style are messy, their tie-knots look like the bony humps on an ass's back, and they don't even notice until the day their girlfriend points it out to them in despair.

The austere and meticulous ones – or priests in our language – do everything to make sure their tie doesn't move. They can spend a whole day without readjusting it. The chatterboxes – or sparrows – wear a loose knot.

The cuckolds – or has-beens – wear theirs to the side, sometimes it's even the wrong way round. Do I need to remind you I'm no cuckold, seeing as I wasn't married to my ex?

And last of all, the egoists, skinflints and whingers, otherwise known as the ants, don't change the knot until the tie has worn out. They never learnt how to tie their own knot, so they trust the sales assistant and never undo what was knotted for them in the shop, in front of the till.

And to think some evil spirits preach from their pinnacle of blindness that the habit does not the monk make! My eye! They haven't understood anything. The habit may not make the monk, but it's thanks to the habit we recognise him. And sometimes that habit causes us problems. This came home to me when I found myself being mistaken for somebody I wasn't. I felt so humiliated, I still haven't got over it.

I was at the Gare du Nord and I had to get to La Courneuve where my cousin was organising a party. Some movers and shakers from the Parisian nigger-trash had been invited and I knew that basically it was an excuse to parade the latest suits fashionable on the streets of Paris. When it's like that, we always turn up in sharp threads, well shaven and smelling fine, we stand there glaring at one another and casing the joint, we're checking to see if there are any new girls from back home worth hanging around for, because when these wild gazelles turn up in Paris with the dirt fresh on them you don't want to leave them any time to understand how the métro works or which counter they're supposed to go to for their family allowance. If you do, they'll go right ahead and dig an even deeper hole in the social for you. So you've got to grab hold of them fast, before they get the hang of things, ditch their country bumpkin accent to answer you in snooty tones and step out exclusively with small Whites who'll chuck them away afterwards like the Kleenexes sold by the Arab on the corner. It's a routine for us, but we like it like that, and the deal is never to go to one of these parties with your wife or girlfriend: you don't take a sandwich to a restaurant. You never know when you're going to take a shine to a nice plump gazelle fresh off the boat. It was a whole scene explaining to my ex that it would be better if she stayed at home. I told her she'd be bored out of her mind, that she'd be
standing there staring into space, that nobody would talk to her because when you get a bunch of Congolese together in a corner, or even in a pocket handkerchief, they immediately start yelling in their own patois – and God knows we've got so many of these languages, you wonder how on earth we understand each other in our Tower of Babel. And then, seeing as my ex didn't drink alcohol, I used to point out that the people from back home are horrified by water, orange juice or any other fruit juice, and that drinking anything of the sort in front of them would be an insult. At which point she beat a retreat and gave me the green light …

So, on the day I'm talking about, I'd managed to convince her once again not to come with me. I'd spent the afternoon haggling with her. And I kept on checking my watch, which didn't help matters.

“Why are you in such a hurry, if it's only a gathering of Congolese talking in their patois?”

I kept pacing about our studio. I couldn't decide which suit to wear. I'd opened every suitcase and spread my clothes all over the floor as well as on the bed. In the end, I put on a bottle-green Yves Saint-Laurent suit with my burgundy Westons. Even our Arab on the corner stepped outside his shop when he smelled my aftershave. He waved at me from a distance, giving me the thumbs-up. I smiled at him, and walked down our street in the direction of the Chinese and Pakistani shops on my way to métro Marx Dormoy.