“Lucky for him he didn’t take it,” said Colonel Jumbo.
“Either way,” said Oufiri, “he was fucked.”
“He could have done some damage,” said Jumbo. “Made it inevitable for the affair to go public. Then things would have turned out differently.”
“No,” answered Oufiri. “They would have been hushed up differently, but the end result would have been the same. The issue is between one power and another. The particular reactions of individuals play only insignificant roles.”
“Perhaps so,” Jumbo admitted.
The two were sitting in vast armchairs in the property near Montfort-l’Amaury. At present they were smoking Schimmelpenninck cigars. They seemed calm, the two black men with filed teeth.
“All things considered,” said the marshal (and the idiotic expression sounded odd coming from his fleshy lips), “all things considered, you can screw Josyane. What does it matter? It’s like the death of that Butron. Such details are unimportant because they belong to a larger whole that transcends and almost obliterates them.”
Jumbo gazed at the marshal with hesitation.
“I’m not taking her back home,” Oufiri added. “You are right. My wife . . . The possibility of scandal . . .”
“Other leaders have white mistresses,” said Jumbo.
He had thus changed his position in the middle of their conversation. Oufiri played on Jumbo’s habit of continually contradicting him. Whenever Oufiri changed his mind, Jumbo made a symmetrical shift. They personified pro and con alternately over and over again, though of course Oufiri always started things off and always had the last word.
“Screw her,” urged the marshal.
He had thrust his black hands back into his pockets and his fists were gently clenched. Beneath his square fingernails a gum-like matter had accumulated composed of shreds of tobacco and various vaguely greasy substances. In his mind, which had slowed down, ideas no longer sprang up but merely floated. Oufiri could not give a fig, after all, if Jumbo went upstairs to Josyane; or if the security team had all had the little whore. He really did not give a damn. He smiled.
“I’m in the mood to smoke some hash,” he said.
Dutifully, Colonel Jumbo ferreted in the right inside pocket of his well-cut jacket and took out a lump of hashish wrapped in a Kleenex, opened up the tissue, which was fraying, and began crumbling the brown, rather pasty substance onto a sheet of newspaper. First, however, he heated it over the flame of his cigarette lighter, a solid gold Dupont bearing his initials.
It smelled good, with a hint of eucalyptus.
Jumbo seemed preoccupied. He stuffed a clay pipe with a mixture of the hashish and a very fine-cut tobacco, English, of the kind generally used for rolling cigarettes.
Oufiri watched him with a good-natured smile, relaxing in anticipation. His gaze wandered. He spotted a small metal structure in a glass of water revolving in a lively manner. Was this what was called a Cartesian diver? There were all sorts of curios and gadgets in the villa. The place did not belong to Oufiri. It had been loaned him by a French criminal.
The N’Gustro affair was going to make waves. Oufiri was beginning to feel certain of that. The crook who owned the villa would need to be protected. Not that Oufiri was grateful. It was just that everyone had to know that he protected anyone who did him a favor. Otherwise there would be no good reason to do so again.
He would have to have a word with the Americans, discreetly of course. They would be useful only in the event of major problems.
Most of all he must consult with those elements within the French secret service who were counting on the departure of President de Gaulle and on a certain number of uncertainties that would ensue.
It was all rather complicated, Oufiri reflected. He was pleased with himself for thinking through such a complex situation.
The marshal clicked his tongue. With respect to his immediate perceptions he operated like a shrimp: he was forever probing his close surroundings with a multitude of fine-tuned and imaginary organs. At this moment he sensed a certain discomfort in near proximity. He widened his eyes vaguely and focused on Colonel Jumbo. The colonel was not completely relaxed as he finished filling the clay pipe.
“You’re not completely relaxed,” said Oufiri.
“It’s Josyane,” the colonel reminded him.
Oufiri smiled with relief, hesitated, and then stopped smiling.
“You go ahead,” he said. “I’d forgotten, that’s all.”
Jumbo relaxed after casting a hesitant glance at the marshal. He tamped down the plug in the pipe’s bowl with his big purple thumb. His pores dilated. Oufiri passed no judgment on the secret-service chief. Despite the country’s political independence, white women, it was true, were still irrepressibly desirable. There is such a thing, thought the marshal, as a complex that affects the colonized and is buried but that we all suffer from at some level or other—and generally at the level of our crotch.
“Light it for me,” he decreed blithely.
Jumbo lit the pipe with his Dupont. A scent reminiscent of eucalyptus, though much more appealing, filled the air along with trails of blue smoke. Jumbo passed the pipe to the marshal along with his Dupont, because the mixture drew badly, and the pipe often went out, though there was pleasure to be had from relighting it.
Oufiri nodded slightly to tell Jumbo that he had carte blanche. The colonel left the room deferentially. Oufiri heard him walking down the hallway and upstairs. Jumbo had bought himself squeaky shoes again. He was especially fond of patent leather but he was also rather cheap. His shoes were always gleaming, and they always squeaked. Dirty nigger, thought the marshal as he closed his fat lips over the stem of the pipe.
He sucked.
He went and sat behind the desk for a while. The smoke gently warmed his bronchial tubes. Oufiri eschewed hard drugs. Alcohol and cannabis he was fond of; for his powerful body they were but minor stimulants that could not weaken his rational thought processes, his political vision, his conscious feelings, or his voluntary motor functions.
He laid the pipe down on the edge of an ashtray and went out into the hallway for a moment. One of the security guys had completely disassembled his machine gun. Oufiri shook his head and smacked his tongue lightly in a disapproving way.
The guy hurriedly began reassembling his weapon with a hangdog look.
“Don’t disturb me until further notice,” Oufiri commanded—carefully, because he could already feel his tongue furring over.
Your fat violet tongue, as Josyane was wont to say. His tongue was pink, not violet, and not particularly fat. White bitch! Oufiri went back into the library, closed the door, and chuckled very softly.
The pipe on the edge of the ashtray had gone out. Before picking it up and relighting it, the marshal made himself comfortable.
He took off the jacket of his Italian suit and unbuckled the Mexican bandolier that he was still in the habit of wearing, even now that he was the minister of justice. His gun had changed since the early days. At the very beginning it had been a trusty P38. Nowadays the marshal was much more interested in a weapon’s decorative aspect, which was why he carried a replica of Sheriff Wyatt Earp’s .45-caliber Colt Peacemaker with its very long barrel, walnut buttstock, and collective ejector—a heresy historically speaking, but very practical.
Oufiri slipped the Colt under a couch cushion. The bandolier he laid on the couch. He loosened his tie, stretched, put the pipe back between his teeth and relit it. He breathed in deeply. Just before he lay down he picked up the small tape recorder and carried it over to the couch. Butron amused him, he did not quite know why.
He stretched out and listened with half an ear to the tape, glad to feel his muscles loosening and his mind calming down. His perception of things remained clear but he lost all sense of urgency and fell into a distinctly blissful mood.
So when, for example, with a newfound auditory acuteness he heard bedsprings squealing above his head, he smiled blissfully. He pictured Colonel Jumbo, bare naked, all dignity gone, the dimples on his buttocks filling with sweat as he labored over Josyane. So much effort for such a paltry result. Sheer joy contorted Oufiri’s expression. Jumbo is a stupid Negro, thought the marshal. He listened to the room filling with his own peals of laughter.