A Night in Tunisia

by Tony Richards

  A NIGHT IN TUNISIA

  Tony Richards

  Copyright © Tony Richards 2011.

  ‘A Night in Tunisia’ first appeared in Extended Play: The Elastic Book of Music, ed. Gary Couzens. Copyright © Tony Richards 2006.

  This is a work of fiction. All the names, places, events and characters portrayed are either fictitious or are represented entirely fictitiously, and any other resemblance is wholly coincidental.

  www.richardsreality.com

  Who are … ‘they’? Good question.

  What you have to understand is – if you don’t already know it – jazz music, rather like life, isn’t just the formless, spur-of-the-moment mess it at first seems to be. There are, in fact, certain famous numbers everybody knows, everyone can hum out loud, and any artist worth their salt has a go at their own version of at some juncture in their career. The most famous and most recorded has to be ‘Round Midnight, originally composed by Thelonious Monk and covered by every artiste from Charles Parker to Elkie Brooks – it even wound up being used as the title and the theme tune for a major motion picture.

  Then there’s Nat Adderley’s Work Song – oh, a real toe-tapper that.

  And then, of course, there’s A Night in Tunisia. ‘Cannonball’ Adderley? Davis? They have all laid down their own versions of that one.

  A night in Tunisia.

  Which is precisely when and where we first met. On a hot and humid night out there, the sky all drenched with stars.

  He never liked to be called ‘Bob.’ In the first place, probably, because ‘Bob Biko’ would have sounded like the tag of some stand-up comedian.

  But most of all because ‘Robert’ wasn’t actually his name.

  He was born Royston Prince Hoyle down in Charleston, South Carolina, although his family moved up to Harlem when he was just five. Never liked the ‘Royston’ bit from the outset, and changed it to ‘Robert Hoyle’ when he began his musical career at seventeen. Then he changed his stage surname in 1979, out of sympathy when news of the killing of Steve Biko leaked out of South Africa, apartheid as it was back then.

  That was back in his ‘solidarity’ phase, his ‘roots’ phase, call it what you will.

  He went through a lot of different phases. Most good artists do.

  When I heard he’d died, I put on the record almost straight away. An inappropriate record to accompany most deaths. And yet … the right one for his, from my perspective.

  And in case you’re wondering, this isn’t going to be a ghost story as such. I’ve written a good few of those down the years, but this one’s ninety percent real. Most of it did happen, in precisely the same way that I’m about to set it down.

  So, which of this is the remaining ten percent that isn’t based in fact? Well …

  Somehow – and don’t ask me how – Lauren had done it once again. She didn’t even have the Internet to help her in those days, but she spent the best part of an afternoon scouring through the travel ads in the backs of the dailies, looking up stuff on Teletext, then getting on the phone. And by the end of it, she had booked us a holiday at half the normal price. Two weeks at the Hotel Splendid off in Gamarth – you pronounce it ‘Gam-art’ – which was on the Mediterranean coastline half an hour’s cab ride outside Tunis. It was early in our marriage, and the first time that we’d ever visited North Africa.

  The hotel lived up to its name and then some. It would, under normal circumstances, have been way out of our league in fact. Rich Arab businessmen would be chauffeured there for a drink, a meal, come evenings and weekends, and even the country’s President showed up for an hour.

  Most of the other foreign guests were conspicuously well heeled, middle-aged and deeply sun-bronzed French and Germans, chunky gold watches, designer shades, and polo shirts with alligators on them everywhere you looked. There was no beach, merely big rocks that the green-grey sea beat up against. But the pool was massive, there were tennis courts – we were the only people out on them who were not wearing whites. Otherwise we’d hang out in the local souk, or head off by bus to Sidi-bou-Said , further down the coast, or the ruins of Carthage.

  The waiters in the hotel’s restaurant were utterly mild and charming. And, considering that this was Ramadan – a summer one at that, the daylight only starting to fail some time after nine o’clock – their good humour was remarkable. Since … what must it have been like for them? I still can’t imagine -- serving food, smelling it right under your nose, and not being allowed all day to touch the smallest morsel.

  There was a nightclub in the hotel’s basement. But the whole first week that we were there it remained firmly closed. Due to the religious festival, we both supposed a little disappointedly. But right at the beginning of our second week …

  “They’re open again! They’ve got jazz!” Lauren announced as we were passing by the entrance to it, off on our way to the restaurant again.

  I gazed at the brand new poster stuck there on the wall.

  JULY 11th TO JULY 14th. ROBERT BIKO, JAZZ SAXOPHONIST, AND HIS QUARTET. 10:30 P.M.

  Robert Biko? The name rung a bell somewhere. Hadn’t I seen it on a free-jazz album I’d got hold of in a bargain bin at Our Price? Playing alongside Archie Shepp or Sonny Stitt, somebody like that?

  We went in for dinner, which was tuna brik and cous-cous. Then migrated through into the outdoor bar. The air had grown dim by this time and cicadas called. It was still pretty warm, and far closer than it had been during the daylight hours. We drank some wine and peered at the massed stars overhead, which were growing brighter as the last light disappeared. It was an amazing sky that night, as I remember.

  The hour rolled around to ten twenty p.m., and we went down into the nightclub.

  I woke up suddenly on my own, a good deal more than a decade later. Thinking, before my head had even lifted from the pillow, He’s still here!

  It was autumn, maybe a dozen years after Tunisia and late in the afternoon. The sky was overcast, and there was some damp in the air. Lauren by now had this job which took her to a lot of conferences overseas and, given the number of international organizations which have bases in Geneva, she was visiting the city maybe four, five times a year. It was only forty minutes from there to Lausanne. So I’d go with her when I could, and take the opportunity to drop in on Robert, if he wasn’t away touring somewhere.

  The train snaked gently through the low Genevan suburbs, and then gathered speed as it approached the countryside. There were vineyards around me before too much longer, broad green fields speckled with pale dots that moved occasionally and were cattle. The dim shapes of mountains hung off in the distance. Buzzards circled, high above. Beside the track was Lake Geneva, Lac Leman, slate grey with a tinge of blue, the snow-capped French Alps rising on the other side.

  I was alone in the carriage, and spread myself out. Had bought along a book to read, but something other than that caught my eye.

  A newspaper had been abandoned on the seat opposite mine. And by the look of the headline – which was upside-down – someone well known had just died.

  I picked it up and turned it over. DEXTER GORDON EST MORT, it read.

  Dexter Gordon was one of the principal saxophonists of his generation, the kind of jazzman who would play to a packed house at the Royal Festival Hall. And even if you know nothing about the music, then you still might have seen him. I mentioned that great Bertrand Tavernier film -- ‘Round Midnight’ -- at the start of this? Dexter Gordon played the leading role.

  Only in French-speaking Europe could the death of a jazz musician make a national newspaper’s headline. And it made me rather sad, since I had ten of the guy’s albums. So I hung onto the paper when I finally got off the train, and had it in my grasp as I went quickly down the slo
pe.

  By this time, Robert had quit his studio flat on the Rue du Haldimand for a neat one-bed apartment in a far more modern block, half way down the gradient to Ouchy on the Avenue de Cour. It took me fifteen minutes to walk there. After which I buzzed. He let me up.

  There’s another thing you have to understand – if you don’t already know it – not about jazz music this time, nor the guys who play it, but about the fans. When it comes to the all-time greats of our beloved musical form, the stellar superstars of it, we have a habit of referring to them in the familiar, like they somehow are, or were, extremely close friends of ours. So, Chet Baker is simply ‘Chet.’ Miles Davis is simply ‘Miles.’ John Coltrane is ‘Trane,’ Dizzy Gillespie’s flat plain ‘Diz,’ and Charlie Parker’s always ‘Bird.’

  So when Robert opened his front door to me I waved the newspaper at him and asked him, almost yelping, “Hey, did you hear? Dex is dead!”

  He already knew of it. He looked from the headline to me, jutted out his lower lip.

  Then shrugged softly and commented, “It happens to us all sometime. You can’t stay here, man – they won’t let you.”

  Who the hell are ‘they’?

  It was a broad, low-ceilinged area normally designed for dancing, except tables had been set up all across it now. We were the only tourists who’d come down here. All the rest were those businessmen I’ve mentioned in their dark, sleek suits, who’d come out from Tunis with their fiancées and wives. They appeared very still, I noticed, as though in a partial trance. The lowest of murmurs escaped them. I couldn’t remember, ever, seeing such a quiet and moveless crowd. A closer look around at them gave me a hint of why.

  Their faces were glossy, their cheeks puffed out a little and their eyes noticeably glazed. This was Ramadan, remember? They had gone the entire day without a single bite to eat, then, once the sun had set, had gorged themselves on flat-bread and harira soup. Which had had quite an effect on their blood sugar levels. They were drunk simply on sustenance, a phenomenon I’d never come across before.

  They kept gazing at the stage in happy expectation, smiling gently, eyes like mirrors in the gloom. We found ourselves a table with a clear view. Lauren ordered drinks.

  Three young local men in pale grey suits came shuffling out onto the stage, and took their places respectively behind the drum-kit, piano, and base. They started tuning up, and took their time about it. We waited impatiently, the only people like that in the entire place.

  A spotlight shone down suddenly on the microphone out front.

  A voice announced over the Tannoy, in clear English for some reason, “Ladies and gentlemen … Robert Biko!”

  And out walks this tall, broad-shouldered black man, holding in his king-sized grasp a gleaming alto sax. Dressed with incredible stylish smart sharpness in a blue suit with a matching tie and a pale yellow shirt. His cuffs were evenly presented and a handkerchief was folded to perfection in his breast pocket. His shoes were cleanly buffed. His nails the same. There was not a hair nor a thread out of place.

  Like so many black jazzmen – and I came to understand this only later – it was a pride thing for him. A desire to be taken seriously and a rebellion against stereotype. He hated any kind of sloppiness. Despised street-fashion when it came along, with its baggy trousers and its back-turned baseball caps.

  They had to get in a replacement pianist at short notice one time when he was playing here in London. When the guy turned up, it looked like he’d been wearing the exact same clothes the past couple years. Filthy sneakers. Badly crumpled, grubby jeans. A maroon woollen cardigan that had halfway unravelled. Robert was polite enough to him while he was present … but I can still remember clearly the look of disgust on his face once the man had gone away.

  Smartness was synonymous with self-respect in Robert’s mind. And – whatever life threw at him – he always possessed that.

  “Hey, did you hear …?”

  I have no musical talent whatsoever, but I have one claim to fame in that regard.

  About six months before the ‘Dexter Gordon is Dead’ evening, Robert had finished cutting a new album. And, for some reason, was at a total loss as what to call it. He was sitting in his new apartment, literally racking his brains, when his gaze fell on a book that I had sent him.

  He always liked to read my stuff. And I had posted him a new tale in the Twelfth – and as it turned out final – Orbit Book of Ghost Stories.

  And so he called the album Ghost Stories. I beamed hugely when he phoned me up to tell me that.

  You must have heard the term ‘infectious grin’? He had one to a tee. He stopped in front of the mike, cast his gaze across the audience. And, satisfied with what he saw, broke into the widest, laziest, and most unaffected smile you could imagine. Everybody – including ourselves – could only smile right back.

  I can’t remember what he said, exactly. Nor the first couple of numbers that he played. What I can recall is the way the three local musicians struggled to keep up with him.

  He played like a bird in flight, soaring and then swooping, only to next spread his wings and ascend to new heights. He spiralled on thermals of inner feeling, let an unexpected draught of creativity take him to a new place entirely. His eyelids were gently closed, his shoulders bowed with the strain of his efforts. Riffs and licks exploded from him, dazzlingly bright.

  His backing band looked more nervous as every minute passed. They were actually sweating, glancing helplessly around at each other with their eyebrows raised.

  Don’t get me wrong here. Robert wasn’t an ungenerous performer. Every so often, he’d glance back and notice the trouble they were in, then slow his pace a little and allow them to catch up.

  But then some brand-new flight of fantasy would take him over. He’d be off again, forgetting them. Lost only in the music.

  By the time that he was halfway through his set, the audience had been completely roused out of their torpor. Were shouting encouragement, applauding wildly at the end of every number. Robert nodded modestly and gave them a dose more of that infectious grin.

  “We’re gonna finish up now,” he announced at last. “And, seeing as where we’re at, what better tune to finish with than this one?”

  The band knew where they were at last. The drummer took his place behind a set of congas and set up a backing beat. The pianist came in next, low and insistent. And finally, Robert lifted his mouthpiece to his lips again, and A Night in Tunisia came skirling out.

  The entire audience was on its feet by this time, Lauren and myself included.

  It was over. Robert and the others bowed, then emptied from the stage. We settled back down, chattering busily, the adrenalin of the performance coursing through our veins.

  Except … some fifteen minutes later, Lauren happened to glance across to a table in the corner. “There he is!”

  Still dressed as he’d been on stage, he was sitting drinking quietly with a small brunette who turned out to be, back then, his fiancée.

  We wandered across cautiously, not wanting to intrude. Said things to him like “Great set, man! Terrific set!” and reached across and shook his hand.

  “You guys English?” he asked us, and he looked slightly relieved when we confirmed we were from London. We figured out in that moment that, apart from Birgit, he had no else to talk to.

  “Why don’t you join us for a while. What’ll you have to drink?”

  We were faintly surprised but accepted, settling down across from him. And started to converse about the hotel we were in and its surroundings, where exactly we lived and where else we had been. And then the subject turned to music. Jazz, of course.

  And, during the next couple of hours – by that unguessable magic that a hot, close night off in a foreign country can sometimes impart to life – we became firm friends.

  This next bit happened a few years later, but is far too relevant to put off any longer. It’s a perfectly true story about man’s inhumanity to man. I still can’t believe
that things of this sort happen, but they do.

  In between us visiting him and vice versa, the three of us would go up to see his then-fiancée Birgit, who lived in the Swiss capital, Bern. There was no need for us to book a hotel, she told us the first time that we went there, since she knew some people we could stay with.

  It turned out to be a gorgeous city, its centre a medieval fairytale full of arcades, old statues, and spires. Birgit’s friends – Astrid and Ivan – lived in the best part of it, the embassy district. Astrid had been married to a leading surgeon once upon a time, and come off splendidly in the divorce. So she now inhabited, with her bohemian boyfriend, a truly massive townhouse, an ornate wrought-iron staircase spiralling up the core of it to scores of wooden-panelled rooms. Most of these she let to students, so that at least a dozen people sat down at the dining table every single evening.

  She and Ivan were both in their fifties, and extremely unconventional inhabitants of such a neat, smart, rather stuffy district. She had been a beatnik in her youth, and still dressed mostly in plain black. As for Ivan -- as the name implies, he was a Russian. Was an aging hippy too, his thin hair trailing halfway down his back. He dressed in an odd ragbag of ethnic clothing and smoked skinny little Indian cigarettes tied up with cotton at the filter end. But he turned out to be highly intelligent, cultured and thoughtful, as well. He could speak and read High German, and discourse on any of the arts.

  Which he did, for the first couple of hours at least of our very first meal together. During which, several bottles of red wine mysteriously disappeared.