by Rémy Ngamije
A blue-grey Sony Walkman puts a spring in Guillome’s step as he walks down a Brussels street. The sunshine does not scorch. Food never runs low. And music – O! music – never stops playing. The discotheque lights are purple and pumping, the fashion is green and yellow and twirling, the drugs are white women and white lines.
There is a black man on the dance floor who does not stop moving and shuffling from the moment he enters the club to the time he leaves, sometimes alone, most of the time with company. Company with bright blonde hair, flowing brown hair, cascading black hair; company that cannot keep up with him on the dance floor, hinting they can keep up elsewhere. Company that smothers his muscular brown frame in kisses and caresses, pausing right before the moment of pleasure and saying, “Show me how black men do it.” His propensity for skirt-chasing is only eclipsed by his love of books and collecting jazz records, hobbies in which he can indulge as often as he likes. Later, he will meet Therése, the woman with whom he shall spend the rest of his life. But just like in a certain good book, before Guillome can find his Eve, Adam will come along first.
They met at a dinner party hosted by a mutual friend, Jacques, who liked to collect eclectic intellectuals, pursuing sophistication by association. Guillome and Adam were the only two brown-skinned men at the party and they gravitated towards one another like fluff to a jersey. Adam was a New Yorker by birth, a firebrand by upbringing. Guillome was enamoured by how Adam dismissed ideas of equality in the United States without reparations, how he defended Malcolm and Martin alike. It was he who told Guillome to look up Aimé Césaire. “Brother, you need to get his work. And Senghor, those African brothers know the truth,” he said.
Guillome, lost in the fictions and fantasies from France, recommended some titles to Adam, and the suave American said, “Brother, I ain’t got time for white imagination, only black realities.”
Adam was tall, taller than Guillome. “When you’re as tall as I am your head gets further and further away from your feet, and that presents you with a problem. With my head that far away from my feet, I was bound to wind up in the Negro Basketball Association. I wasn’t having none of that. That’s why I came to Paris. Over here, a brother can do more than play sport, shuck and jive, or be shipped off to ’Nam to die in the Marine Corps.” Adam was insistent that Guillome visit Paris. “You should come to Paris. I think you’d like it. There are brothers from all over Africa there. You’d feel right at home.” Guillome said he would consider visiting.
To Guillome, women were always beautiful, and his recent and frequent descents into their bountifulness had only reinforced this belief. He knew they considered him desirable and he was thankful for it, but never before had he stopped to consider men’s physical frames until he met Adam. If the word handsome was made for anyone, then it must have been this man who fished beers out of the kitchen fridge, bending over and straightening in a fluid motion, leaned against a bookshelf in the dining room, elbow against the wall, legs casually crossed. Even the cleft at the bottom of his neck, deep and pronounced, seemed more manly than any cleft Guillome had ever seen. He looked at the dark brown spot, imagining its warmth, how it would vibrate when Adam’s deep voice rumbled by it. Adam saw him staring and said, “You see something you like, brother?” Guillome turned away.
At dinner, Adam was given the task of being the negro whisperer.
“You see,” Adam said, “black people in the United States are only asking for equality, for justice, for all of the truths that are apparently held true and dear in the United States. And if they can’t get those, they’re happy with being left alone. They just want the police and the real estate boards to stop beating them in the streets and to stop shepherding them to the ghettoes. They don’t want to wake up with burning crosses in their backyard. I don’t even think at this point in time they want to be a part of the American dream. They just want to wake up from the African-American nightmare.”
Sympathetic sentiments followed his every pronouncement.
“Feminism’s going to upset a whole lotta folks when it gets itself organised,” Adam said. “Only reason why all of us brothers are still on top is because we organise fast, especially when it’s a dumb cause. But the whole thing makes sense. If you give people their freedoms then you have to spend less time policing their infractions against their restrictions.”
Genevieve, Jacques’ friend, sat up and said it was about time they were offered a better kind of man. She was less than subtle about the qualities she was looking for as she eyed Adam.
Jacques, who had been trying to sidle closer to Genevieve, was not a fan of where her attentions were being directed. He sat up in his chair and puffed out his chest. “You’re not happy with the quality of men you have to choose from now?”
“Choose?” Genevieve creased her forehead. “There’s no choice, there’s only accepting what’s available at the moment and hoping for the best. In the future maybe there will be choices. Ones which do not involve losing yourself or everything. For now, there’s only acceptance. Show me any man in the world, good or bad, rich or poor, smart or simple, kind or cruel, and I’ll find you a woman willing to settle for him.” She looked at Adam for the expected approval but his eyes were on Guillome. Adam asked Guillome what he thought of it all.
“I do not know much,” Guillome said, “only what I have heard. But I am not against it. But when it comes it should come equally to everyone. I do not like the way rights come down a ladder. White men, white women, black men, black women.”
Adam looked at Guillome and said, “I agree.” When the dinner party ended Adam approached Guillome and said, “You know, I’m in town for two weeks. You should show me around. I see too few brothers here and it would be nice to not be the only one sticking out.”
“Sure,” Guillome replied.
Together, the two proceeded to burn the night life into day, stumbling out of clubs with company of various shades and hues. In the afternoon once they’d recovered from their hangovers they would play football at Guillome’s university’s pitch, dribbling and shooting until they were shiny and glistening in the sun. They attempted to emulate Arthur Ashe on the tennis court too. Guillome found he took to the sport naturally and gave Adam some competition, but the American was more agile, sauntering across the court and powering drives past Guillome’s fumbling reach. When they tired of sport or skirt-chasing they would sit in Guillome’s apartment, listening to his records, which had substantially increased in number and diversity from Adam’s recommendations. The books on Guillome’s bookshelf also changed their content and character. “Brother,” Adam had said when he looked at Guillome’s collection the first time, “black people didn’t die in nooses so they couldn’t make it to your bookshelf.” The titles changed from the romances and epics of Hugo, Balzac, and Cocteau to the heavy, dense tales of Ellison and Hughes, and Adam’s personal favourite: James Baldwin. Adam recommended that he start with Notes Of A Native Son but copies of the book were hard to come by. So, instead, Adam lent him his own wrinkled, scarred, and note-ridden copy of The Fire Next Time. The prose burned Guillome’s soul. When next he met Adam on the tennis court he gushed about it. Adam merely laughed and said, “I know, brother. I know.”
In those two weeks of clubbing there came a day. Guillome and Adam were too tired for sport and they were a little fuzzy from the previous night’s cavorting. They were stuck indoors, Guillome lying on the couch reading another one of Adam’s recommendations, Adam leafing through the record collection, looking for something to distract his ears.
“Brother,” he said, “this record collection needs some updating.”
“It has been updated,” Guillome said without looking up from his book.
“Yes, but it needs some more. Can’t collect properly if you don’t collect Mingus, brother.”
“We shall get Mingus next time then.”
“When are you coming to Paris?” Adam kept insisting Guillome visit him there and mingle with all of the other black
intellectuals in the city. “I can’t believe you’ve been here so long and not made the trip up. You village boys sure take small steps at a time. It’s Paris, not the moon, brother.”
“Us village boys also get ourselves from Kigali to Brussels, brother,” Guillome replied.
“Brother G got some bite in him.”
“Brother G also does not have time for discussing foolishness.”
“You want to say ‘ain’t got no time’. It sounds more authentic.” Finally, Adam found something he liked and put it on. He leaned his back against the couch as the opening salve of bass notes from Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman” escaped into the air, his eyes closed like he had taken a hit of heroin.
The two did not move for a long time, Guillome reading, Adam wandering the far fields of his mind. “Jazz and jezebels, Brother G, these things’ll make you find new religions,” he said when he blinked and found himself back in the apartment. “What d’you plan on doing after you finish here in Brussels anyway? Going back to Rwanda?”
“I do not know,” Guillome said. “Perhaps not.”
Adam looked at Guillome intently. “Which one is it? Don’t be one of those brothers who leaves home for no other reason than not going back. You need to go back and do something. You could be someone serious there.” He paused. “And I could visit, see what it’s like.”
“It’s not Paris.”
“It’s Paris, not Paradise. Don’t get too hung up on these places. They’re just placeholders for us. Eventually, we have to go home.”
“You are going back home when you are done?”
“Home is where the hurt is, brother. Even then I will still go back.”
“To do what?”
“Whatever I can.”
Adam let Coleman take over again for a while. “Brother G, you got any cards?”
“Yes.”
“You know how to play poker?”
“No.”
“I’ll show you.”
Guillome rode his beginner’s luck for a couple of rounds. They were playing with peanuts and candy for chips. A healthy mound piled up in front of Guillome. Then came some rounds where his luck dwindled. Adam’s pile grew in size while Guillome’s shrank. The losses began to frustrate Guillome, while Adam laughed every time he scooped peanuts and sweets towards his side of the table. Guillome all but gave up.
“All right,” Adam said, “you got a choice to make here, brother. You don’t know what I have and you don’t know what the next card is going to be. All you know is what you have. There’s a chance it might be a good card, there’s a chance it might be a bad card. Now, you can fold right now, but that’ll mean that you’ll lose everything on the table. What you want to do is go all in, you see. That way I also have to go all in if I want to win outright.”
“But if I lose – ”
“– you lose the right to play. But if you win, you win everything. That’s how all of the important things in life go.”
“All in.”
You bluffin’ me, brother?” They looked at each other for a long moment and then Adam said, “All in.”
The fifth and final card was shown. Three-of-a-kind for Guillome; Adam had a flush.
“That’s how it goes, brother,” Adam said. “You win some, you lose some.” Adam smiled at him. The cleft at the bottom of Adam’s throat seemed more pronounced. “You see something you like, brother?” Guillome shifted his gaze away quickly. “It’s okay,” Adam said.
“What is okay?”
“Whatever it is you need to be okay so you can not ask me what is okay, brother.”
“You talk in circles, Adam.”
“Because I can’t talk straight around you, brother.”
It took Guillome a while to do the maths. He looked at Adam and said, “You are—”
“—still a man.”
“But you—”
“Yes.”
“How—”
“Always that question. I can answer it for you now as simply as I can: it isn’t a process; it’s an event. And to answer your next question: since I was small.”
“So you—”
“—have always known. Terrible thing to have to leave home for.”
The kitchen clock ticked and then it tocked. Adam moved in one swift movement, rising from his chair and leaning over the narrow kitchen table, and kissed Guillome on the mouth, softly. Guillome willed his body to pull back and found it unwilling to comply. He stayed still. Adam pulled back slightly so that their faces were separated by a few centimetres. “Brother,” Adam said, “you’re allowed to participate.”
He kissed Guillome again. This time Guillome found the mechanics of his mouth moving. The warm sensation of Adam’s mouth was pleasant, tasted like the chocolate he had eaten as they played, and the smoky cologne he wore invaded his nostrils.
Guillome pushed Adam away gently. They looked at each other for a while and then Guillome said, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologise,” Adam said. He sat back down.
“It’s just—”
“The flip of the card,” Adam took the cards and stacked them and then cut them. “I think I should be off to Paris soon. You should come up.”
“I agree,” Guillome said.
“That’s my line, brother.”
Father and son have this thing where they look at each other and see too much of themselves in each other and, like mirror reflections of truths too awkward to bear, they look away and find points of interest off in the distance, in the rumbling darkness of the sea, in the zooming cars below, in the blowing of the breeze, in the stars that fight for attention in the night sky. Any place that is not the interior of a black man. Father and son do not speak for a while.
“So what happened?”
“What happened with what?”
“With him – with Adam – did you ever see him again?”
“We arranged to meet in Paris. We were supposed to meet at a party but he never showed. I met your mother instead.”
“And that’s it?” asked Séraphin.
“That is it.”
Father and son are silent again. Far distance, dark sea, cars below, blowing breeze, night sky. Any place that is not the interior of a black man.
“Why d’you tell me this?”
“Is it not funny how we, after all this time, after everything, we both have this in common? Just like me back then I was also directionless, Séraphin.” Guillome smiled. “But then I found a person and together we found a purpose. You are lucky to have found one of those things, Séraphin. However, I do not think the other one is here.” They looked out into the night. “You have to come home, Séraphin. It will be good for you, I think.”
“Maybe.”
“And Mamma would be happy to have you around more. And Yves. Even Éric. And we won’t be disappointed that you won’t be a lawyer.” Séraphin turned towards his father in fear. “We always had a feeling you did not want that, Séraphin,” Guillome said without looking at his son, “and maybe we pushed too hard. We thought it would make you secure, make us more stable. You said you would study this degree. And you have done it and we are proud. Everything else is for you to figure out. Ibindi ubundi.”
Distance, sea, cars, breeze, sky.
Any place that is not the interior of a black man.
“So you will come home then?” Guillome asked.
“Yes.”
“Anyway,” his father said, “why would you stay? What is here for you, Séraphin?”
XXVI
Remms Memorial Hall was filled with parents fanning their faces with graduation programmes. The air in the room was languorous and every so often a cough could be heard. The necessary protocols of convocation were followed by the conferring of an honorary degree upon some minor academic. He tried to make a rousing speech to all of the assembled law graduands dressed in their black gowns. Séraphin thought they looked like black crows all seated in a row. When he told the person sitting next to him, a freckly re
dhead of name unknown, that the hall looked like an attempted murder he saw his joke flutter away. It was not his best one and he knew it too. His mind was elsewhere.
Séraphin and his father had completed their tour of Cape Town. Each day his father seemed to change, laughing at things Séraphin thought he would not have laughed at. When Séraphin took him to Stellenbosch for some wine tasting, his father requested that his friends come along. “You must spend time with them, Séraphin. After all, you are leaving soon.”
When the wines were brought out and the sniffing and swirling and drinking without swallowing commenced Séraphin said they all tasted the same. “That is because you are not rich enough, Séraphin. Money will make you taste new things,” Guillome said. “Except the truth, of course. But if you ever need to know something about wine all you need to know is this: white wine has fantasies in it, red wine has memories. Either way in vino veritas so be careful whichever one you decide to have. If you ever entertain, remember these rules: wisdom over tea, gossip over coffee, whisky for business. I myself do not drink, but this wisdom has made itself known to me.”
Séraphin did not ask where his father had acquired such slickness with words. He suspected some other persona had channelled itself in the newfound freedom of a secret no longer carried alone. It was, however, pleasing to see his father being social, being cordial, shaking hands with strangers, exchanging business cards and numbers and promising to keep in touch. When their sightseeing came to an end and they began packing up Séraphin’s apartment his father had said, “I can see why you like this place. It can relax you, make you remember parts of yourself.”
Séraphin agreed, but since the games night and the police incident he felt a final fall from the romance of Cape Town. As the days had petered towards graduation, each day the streets seemed dirtier, the service in restaurants slower. Mostly, though, his father’s words echoed through his mind all of the time.
