Letter to Jimmy

by Alain Mabanckou

  It is through the present, through encounters, that this common identity is woven; sometimes we can even find ourselves surprised by how much it conflicts with the idea of a “primary root” that would lead us all back to a single past. This other awareness—that black Americans have been able to develop throughout their long and troubled history—this other awareness, as I was saying, should take into account the experience lived out on French soil. The effect outrage has as a response to an injustice depends on a collective cause, which is given greater value than the individual in an abstract sense, and is related to our humanity. In this way, when we are witness to an act of racism, when we witness an act of anti-Semitism, it is our sense of humanity that sustains injury.

  •••

  Jimmy, citizens of black Africa are convinced that African-Americans today have succeeded in creating a community whose influence is so far-reaching that it affects the destiny of the entire United States. And so, when confronted with an attitude that is unjust, with an act of racism or discrimination, black Africans automatically ask themselves, “So what would our black American brothers have done in this exact situation?” Is it surprising then that certain observers are alarmed to see “racist,” Black Muslim ideas imported into France?

  Whatever the case may be, the comparison with the black American community is further corrupted by the fact that blacks in France do not have the same experience of migration, and that they do not have the same “score” to settle with France as black Americans do. On the other side of the Atlantic, racial segregation was institutionalized—France, on the other hand, played a significant role in “the elaboration of the ‘African experience’ in the formulation and reformulation of a global blackness,”122 thanks to the diversity of the black migrations that it experienced and still continues to experience today.

  Blacks in France can certainly draw inspiration from their American black brothers, and envy the rights they have achieved in the United-States—however, let us be reminded, with the help of Fanon, that every right was wrested from fierce struggle that ended with the United States painted into a corner. From these struggles great leaders were born and immortalized in contemporary American history. What these black leaders shared in common was that they refused to have their humanity called into question.

  It is Fanon who emphatically highlights: “No, I do not have the right to come scream my hatred at the White man. I do not have a duty to murmur my gratitude to the White man . . . if the White man questions my humanity, I will show him, weighing down on his life with all my force as a man, that I am not the “Y’a bon Banania” that he insists on imagining . . .”123

  9.

  the ghost of Saint-Paul-de-Vence

  As the summer of ’86 begins, the specter of death looms over Saint-Paul-de-Vence.

  You withdraw to the back of a room, near an old fireplace; shut away from the world, you stretch yourself out on a mattress on the floor, pushing away the inexorable verdict with an authoritative hand, although the hand is weaker than in the days when your power as a civil rights activist and your finesse as an essayist made all of America tremble.

  Until your last day, until your last breath, you hammer away at the keys of your typewriter, as if to engrave your final wishes, to write the sentence with which posterity would remember the name, that would perhaps utter nothing more: James Baldwin . . .

  Unmoved by your work ethic and blind to beauty, Death comes to Saint-Paul-de-Vence in 1987. She spends no time contemplating the splendor of the ramparts, turns her back on the hills, the Mediterranean and the Esterel Massif. She arrives by way of the old village cemetery without slowing down, because this time she does not plan to miss you. Death knows you, but only from afar; perhaps she is unable to face your big eyes that would have studied her from head to toe.

  If on that night you had gotten up, if you had gone to the window and opened it, you might have seen the bad omens: the awkward flight of lost passerines, the cawing of crows troubled by the blanket of black covering the sky for weeks. You might have noticed the passing shadows of the artists who earned Saint-Paul-de-Vence its reputation. Why do they linger in the famous hotel, Le Robinson, surprised that it is now called La Colombe d’Or? The walls of the Colombe d’Or are decorated with the paintings and drawings of Braque, Picasso and Matisse. Who could help but smile when hearing that it was with these that the artists paid the restaurant? No matter—these souls have wandered over to La Pergola and La Résidence. There again they discover a new name: Café de la Place. From your window you could have waved at these illustrious friends. Matisse, Chagall, Renoir, and Modigliani would have been the first to wave back to you. Then Cocteau and Prévert, followed closely by the film people, Cayette and Audiard. The latter would have called out to you, as a consolation against your imminent death, “The ideal thing, when one wants to be admired, is to be dead.” And to make you laugh, he would have thrown in one of the sayings that made him famous: “The French irritate me immensely, but as I speak no other language, I am obliged to talk with them.”

  The musicians—I am thinking of Armstrong and Miles—would play a piece that would rouse the Provençal countryside. And yes, Bessie Smith’s voice would be there, too. She would sing out in a clear voice a strain from “Back Water Blues.” Once more you would be moved by this woman who sang about her despair, though she accepted it all the while.

  In the background, hazily drawn on the scene, you would see Romy Schneider, Tony Curtis, and Roger Moore, while your friend Yves Montand and Lino Ventura would be arguing over a game of pétanque. You would remember the time when you discovered this fascinating region, and when you still lived in the Hôtel Le Hameau, several kilometers from the village, on the road to La Colle. You would think back to the face of your great friend Mary Painter who first spoke to you of Saint-Paul-de-Vence when you needed rest after a hospitalization.

  In 1950 you meet Mary Painter in Paris, in a bar. She was working as an economist at the American Embassy. You never concealed your love for her, to the point of admitting that not being able to marry her meant that you would never marry any woman. In 1950, having already come to terms with your homosexuality, you knew that it was impossible for you to hope for a serious romantic relationship with a woman. And, as David Leeming points out, you did not want to live a lie, nor to find yourself in a situation like your character from Giovanni’s Room, David, who, disturbed by his sexual problem, had to lie to his fiancée, Hella.

  You nevertheless remained close to Mary Painter, in whose home on the rue Bonaparte you listened to Beethoven and Mahalia Jackson with your Swiss partner Lucien Happersberger, and smoked PX cigarettes.124

  And so it happened that Mary Painter knew Saint-Paul-de-Vence from the time she had spent there with her husband.

  After your stay at Le Hameau, you moved into a room at the large farm belonging to Jeanne Faure. Many people wondered how you managed to convince her to open the doors of her property to you. She was in fact very distrusting of people of color; it was a distrust that bordered on loathing. All of your biographers evoke the bitterness of this “pied-noir,” who had lived in Algeria during the colonial period.125 Uninformed and hurt, she had always believed that black people had helped chase the French out of Algeria, her homeland. You needed references from Simone Signoret, Yves Montand and the owner of the Colombe d’Or before you could sign the rental agreement. Later, when she would sell you a part of her home, she would deem it necessary to block the door leading to her rooms with an armoire, while at the same time alerting her neighbors to justify her behavior: “You never know what to expect from these ‘nee-gers.’”126

  Jeanne Faure is not the only one to harbor such feelings. The fear of a foreigner in a small village, who happens also to be a man of color, is not surprising. You receive by mail anonymous threats and insults. This does not discourage you; you have known nastier situations. All you have to do is talk with people. Your open spirit and your generosity break down the walls around
you, little by little. You walk through the village, greet the passers-by, invite some of them for a drink in the local bar. You surprise many people with this simple approach.

  In time, even your landlady becomes less suspicious of you. She invites you to dine with her, and is not offended that you return the favor. She enjoys listening to you talk about your America, your fight for the rights of your countrymen, and about what you are in the process of writing.

  On the day of her brother’s burial, you are spotted in the funeral procession. In suffering, the depth of man’s spirit is discovered. From that moment on, the black man who smokes all day long charms Jeanne Faure, tapping away at his typewriter, and openly displays his good mood. Many people remark on your neighbor’s presence when François Mitterrand awards you with the Legion of Honor in 1986. And when Jeanne Faure finally decides to leave the village, she sells you her entire property. A change of heart? Certainly. But Miss Faure also had financial troubles.

  •••

  On your deathbed, you can do nothing more than imagine these famous figures. You are waging a war against your own shadow. Cancer gains ground. The treatments intensify and let you believe that hope and faith will take it away. Who would not believe it, after all, especially after the surgery on April 25, 1987, that allowed you to eat and work again? You devote yourself to writing a play, The Welcome Table.

  The lull is short-lived. Your illness returns at a full gallop, and your loved ones draw near. Your partner Lucien Happersberger arrives from Switzerland. Your little brother, David, comes in from New York. Your personal secretary, Hassel, was also there, always faithful and devoted. Your neighbors surround you. They stop by, knock softly on your half-opened door, and David leads them to you. They come to see “Jimmy,” a man who chose Saint-Paul-de-Vence as his home, as his place of freedom. They want to hear your laughter. Alas, it has all but disappeared, replaced instead by a fixed grin that is either the beginning of a smile or the glimpse of an inner pain you struggle to conceal.

  And who are the neighbors? I think mostly of the musician Bobby Short. He lives not far from there, in Mougins. With Bobby at the piano you used to sing little songs with him; David, with his deep voice, summoned his memories and the repertoire of old songs you had composed, some when you were still just a schoolboy.

  David helps you move from your bed to your work-table. Sometimes, in a fit of pride, you refuse his help, which you see as defeat. Sick, yes, but incapable—no. You dread leaving your bed just to have your brother lead you back to it like a child. The persistent David has the gentleness to remind you that you carried him on your back countless times in his childhood. Why should he not take his turn in carrying you?127

  •••

  This sudden affection feeds your distress; distress at leaving behind a shroud of sadness, at not finishing your last sentence. The anguish of telling yourself that you will join the other world, and will have to talk with David Baldwin, your father. You will have to tell him how he was wrong to believe for so long that he was nothing but black trash, and wrong for not knowing that he was beautiful. Hassel, who is very superstitious, admits privately to having seen your shadow on the wall. And so the fatal moment has arrived. Hassel is convinced of it. However, he clings to the idea that he has always seen you cheat death, has always heard you insist that you would leave the earth in a spectacular way, not weakened by illness. Hassel is not unaware that you see Death, and that you are now talking with her. No, you do not want to negotiate your departure date from the world. You have accepted the idea of your death.

  Hassel has many reasons to believe that you will survive the 1st of December 1987. But there is the shadow on the wall that grips him. Can one survive an omen? It is possible. After all, he thinks to himself, you are an exceptional being. Had you not survived two heart attacks? These warnings did not prevent you from attending to your business, honoring your engagements around the world, even though you had to reduce your consumption of tobacco and alcohol.

  You have to live your life. For these reasons, while you are attending a performance of your play The Amen Corner at London’s Tricycle Theater in February 1987, no one could have imagined that you had already reserved a hospital room in Nice for cancer surgery.

  This time the doctors can do nothing more. The situation is desperate. Your entourage conceals from you their despair and the seriousness of your condition. But you are not so easily fooled. Your doctors assure you that you will make it through the end-of-year holidays without danger.

  You begin to organize, therefore, a big event in Saint-Paul-de-Vence.

  In these final hours when the world must seem very still, a woman appears before you, her face hidden by a dark veil. Your curiosity pushes you to remove the veil: it’s her, your mother. Now she wipes her thick glasses, foggy from tears. Yes, Emma Berdis Jones is somewhere in this room, despite the thousands of miles that separate you. You call her often, and, from Harlem, she listens to you with the despair of a mother who has always known that her child was fragile, and yet predestined to carry the world on his shoulders.

  Your conversations remain unchanging. She offers you advice as she did long ago, when you were a child in Harlem: take care of yourself, don’t stay up too late, above all don’t smoke too much, drink even less, don’t give in to the taunts of those who attack you now that you are a public figure, or because your sexual orientation differs from theirs. For her, despite your international influence, you remain little Jimmy, who followed her around the house . . .

  •••

  At present your world is reduced to the four walls of your bedroom. The biographer James Campbell paints a striking picture of this room that holds the secret of your final hours: a room submerged in soothing darkness, but whose wall paintings create an atmosphere of hallucination.128 In this confinement, as Campbell points out, there is the feeling that Simone Signoret and your other friends dead long ago have come to bring you news of the other world.

  You still have the strength to give an interview in November 1987 to the writer and professor Quincy Troupe who will publish, two years after your death, a collection of essays dedicated to your memory.129 In the mix are the voices of Toni Morrison, Amiri Baraka, Maya Angelou, William Styron, Chinua Achebe and Mary McCarthy, among others.

  An abundance of project ideas fill your mind. You plan, for example, to write a long introduction for a publisher in London who will publish two paperback editions of Richard Wright’s novels. A large number of critics and biographers would doubtless consider such a presentation as reconciliation between the mentor and the pupil. But you will not have time . . .130

  In November 1987, you had planned to host a large dinner at your home for Thanksgiving. You imagine that there will be a lot of people there. You and your friends will dine outdoors, you will smoke, crack a few jokes.

  Alas, you will not know this farewell filled with laughter and song.

  You leave this world on December 1, 1987. After the inhabitants of Saint-Paul-de-Vence have said their goodbyes, your body is brought back to the Harlem of your childhood. There is a viewing at the Episcopal cathedral Saint John the Divine. From your casket you can hear the sobs of cultural icons as well as those of strangers you managed to win over.

  You are buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York, on December 8, 1987.

  10.

  on the need to read or reread you today

  If you return to this world, Jimmy, you will judge your homeland even more severely than you did when you were alive. Inequalities are now more subtle, and more hidden, in a society which has not yet resolved the issue that had been so important to you: redefining American identity, or, in your words, addressing integration through the “power of love.” Happily, Judgment Day is not yet upon us.

  On the other hand, if you cast a fleeting glance toward France, our mutually adopted homeland, you will be shocked to discover that your words and writing are as relevant today as they ever were. France is still burde
ned with the skeleton in the closet—the country’s “colonial activity”—a chapter of its history so controversial that a line has been drawn in the sand between those who would systematically lay claim to memory and the “competition for victimhood,” and those who call for an end to the “tyranny of guilt,” in keeping with the notions of Pascal Bruckner who, in 1983 evokes the “tears of the white man” and his “suspicious tears.”131 By way of introducing The Tyranny of Guilt, the French author and essayist asserts, “Strangely, we are experiencing today a one-way street of guilt: the latter feeling is demanded of only one group, ours, and never of other cultures, of other regimes who cloak themselves in their alleged purity to blame us more easily. But Europe accepts too willingly the blackmail of blame, if we are so taken with self-flagellation, and covering our head with ashes, is it not our secret wish to exit history, to shelter ourselves snugly in the cocoon of contrition, to discontinue action, to escape from our responsibilities? Repentance is perhaps nothing more than a triumph of the spirit of abdication . . .”

  Later, in the preface to the paperback edition of the same book, Bruckner would reveal the difficulties he encountered upon publication of his article, proving, as if it were necessary, that this subject remains a very sensitive one in a French society that has little by little constructed itself on a vision that is, to say the least, simplistic: executioners on one side, victims on the other. Between the difficulty of interpreting the meaning of its history and the need to curb the volume of grievances against it—grievances that could certainly last for centuries—France is on the brink of an ideological split.