How to Make Love to a Negro without Getting Tired (6 page)

“Is she ugly at least, this rare pearl of yours?”

“Oh, no! She's beautiful!”

“Then you might as well forget it.”

MIZ LITERATURE
wasn't expecting that. She stood there open-mouthed a minute. I was busy at my machine, correcting the chapter I had just finished. It was a mild afternoon. The shoebox, belly exposed, was on the table. A fly landed on the cake like a raisin. Miz Literature looked to me for an explanation.

“Didn't you know?”

“Know what?” she asked.

“Didn't you know Bouba is scared stiff of Beauty?”

“Oh, God! When Valery hears that she'll go crazy. She's always dreamed of meeting someone who cared about more than her looks.”

Miz Literature pours herself more wine. She's in a great mood today. I love the gaiety of serious girls. There's a knock on the door. Miz Literature smiles mischievously.

“I asked Valery to pick me up here.”

THREE DISCREET
little knocks. McGill code, it would seem. Miz Literature opens the door and a magnificent girl walks in. The kind of girl who leaves you breathless. Her smile is warm. Not that she needed it to set this room on fire. Bouba remains impassive. Miz Literature does the introductions. Bouba looks out the window. The evening shimmers. He takes down his old hunting hat. It's his day to go out.

I swear by the Exordium (“Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Creation”) that was the most electrifying cruise I have ever witnessed. Once Bouba's out the door, Valery literally goes into convulsions. She's one of those girls, not a snob or anything, whom everyone cruises but who refuses to go out with anyone. I'm sure McGill is full of very rich, very handsome and very intelligent fools whose only dream is to marry her. To meet Valery is to understand the dilemma: she despises herself, her beauty, wealth and intelligence—the classic situation! Her beauty stands between her and Truth, so she thinks. When you come down to it, Valery is looking for a guru. Bouba the Guru. Wouldn't you know it: to get the most beautiful girl at McGill, you have to stay at home and do nothing. Cruising in place.

Miz Suicide on the Couch

BOUBA IS
sitting on the couch like an ancient bhikkhu deciphering Li Po ideograms, with Miz Suicide at his feet, drinking in his words. Behold Miz Suicide: a tall stringy girl with dishwater hair and eyes that are always open a little too wide. Bouba is her suicide consultant. Suicide is her only interest. And the world returns the favor, with the exception of Bouba, who receives her every Tuesday and Thursday, from 4:00 to 4:45 p.m., which makes for three teas at fifteen minutes each.

Miz Suicide brews her own tea in an old samovar, heating up the water on an alcohol lamp. Miz Suicide, you guessed it, journeys through life with a pack of Camels, dirty fingernails and a copy of
The
Prophet
by Khalil Gibran. Bouba unearthed her at the Esoteric Bookstore on St. Denis, across from the Bibliothèque Nationale.

Seated on the couch like a diva in endless improvisation on the phrases of the old Zen master, Bouba creates a singular atmosphere without even trying. In his guttural, mystic voice, he reads the slender, precious book by the bearded poet Li Po on the correct manner of drinking tea.

“First you must learn.” Bouba explains, “how to breathe the tea before proceeding to drink it.”

Miz Suicide listens with the inner concentration of a true bodhisattva.

“Like this?”

“No. Let the bouquet of the tea slowly flow into you.”

Conscientiously, Miz Suicide sticks her nose into the teacup. When she comes up for air, her steamy nose is a horrible sight to see, as if she had just escaped drowning.

“Now,” Bouba instructs her, “you may take the first sip.”

“Not yet,” she says, more fanatic than her master, “I want to breathe it some more.”

I LIE
back on the bed, trying to clear the thoughts from my head. Coleman is playing “Blues Connotation.” Bouba speaks in low tones. Miz Suicide drinks her tea with ecstatic expression. I open the window. Down below in the alley, some kids are playing hockey. Six boys, three girls. From up here they look short and squat. The biggest girl is strong but the little one is not really old enough to play. She is too busy hanging onto her dog so he won't disturb the game. The dog is stronger than she is and he drags her into the fray. She pulls back on the leash, then gives up and drops it. The dog rushes into the melee and grabs the puck from off a stick. Then, according to a well-rehearsed ritual the dog comes back and drops the puck on the girl's lap. He lays his head in her lap and whimpers. The angry players recover the puck. The girl reprimands the whimpering dog. She pets him. The dog lets himself be petted for a minute or two, then rushes off to disrupt the game again. Darkness settles. The game slows down. The players are tired. The Cross on the Mountain is phosphorescent.

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.”

A Bouquet of Lilacs
Sparkling with Rain

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!

Like a Flower Blossoming at
the End of My Black Rod

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.