A leisurely wide smile slowly stretched Marshal George Clemenceau Oufiri’s plump blue mouth. Paris . . .
He too had known Paris. Not as well as Colonel Jumbo, now still upstairs working on Josyane at an increasingly defeatist cadence, Jumbo who had attended the Sorbonne. Oufiri had never got beyond high school, the Lycée Michelet in the southern suburbs of the capital. His father had sold off a herd of cattle, head by head, as Oufiri completed his secondary education.
That education did not greatly benefit him; it merely ruined his family. Oufiri had his baccalaureate, but no skills and no money to go further. He tried to hold on for a whole summer. He remembered the sweaters with holes at the elbows. He was a driver for a month—no heavy trucks, no commercial license, just delivering old autos from one garage to another. He recalled going to pick up cars in a suburb near Versailles and driving them to central Paris.
On one trip he pulled over on Route des Gardes to drink a pastis, because it was hot. As poorly dressed as he was, the barmaid, having seen his American car, an old Chrysler, gave him a sweet smile.
This got Oufiri to thinking. He got the blue suit from his belated first communion out of his valise. The jacket was rather tight, but this did not spoil the effect. The next day, and almost every time he passed, he stopped again at the bar. The first time he was driving a Peugeot 404; the next three times he was in big Americans in fairly good shape; the final time he arrived in a Porsche. It was the Porsche that did the trick. They raced down the West Autoroute, he and the barmaid, and kept company until evening. Coitus in a bucket seat took place. The blond screamed with pleasure.
Now, stretched out on the couch, his arms alongside his body with palms turned upward and his mouth half-open, Oufiri was perfectly relaxed. He relaxed scientifically by focusing his thoughts on his big toe. He felt weighed down. His eyelashes fluttered. He recalled the barmaid. He had been fired as a consequence. But it had been worth it. The cries of joy of that wanton white girl! He had no job after that. He let himself be picked up two or three times by older women.
It was different with the older women. Since it was much less exciting his mind was much less able to banish the idea of sin.
Oufiri was very susceptible to the notion of sin. What Butron said was dumb. Or else he had been told dumb things. Muslims versus Christians in Zimbabwin? A gross simplification. He, Oufiri, was Catholic to the hilt, yet one of the country’s most officially established leaders.
Sex was the devil’s work, he mused. He had vowed to kill a Communist with his bare hands for every mistress he took. Compensation was essential.
He was overwhelmed by disgust at the third older woman, the one that smeared quince jelly on herself and had her Pekinese lick it off. Three weeks of unemployment followed. He no longer wanted so much as to look at a woman. He wandered along by the Seine with his razor in the pocket with a hole in it and the piles of pornography on the bookstalls, Kama Sutra and the like, made him want to slice off his male member.
To escape the Devil he enlisted in the army. There everything was well ordered. Healthy sweat. Healthy expenditure of energy.
He was posted to Indochina. Foreign paratroopers. A tough, manly life. Few jumps. Much ground combat. Absolutely enthralling stuff. Booby traps in swamps. Sharp nails, half a dozen or so, six or eight centimeters long, driven through a wooden board. A man who stepped on it, wearing Pataugas or not, would get a hell of a flesh wound. And in the jungle gangrene does not dawdle.
He was never taken prisoner, but he gave much thought to subversive warfare. This helped him take a leadership role in Zimbabwin’s national liberation struggle. He was ever a centrist politically. The left supported him against the nepotism of rightists. The right supported him against the adventurist junior officers who soon split off and founded the MPLZ.
Someone was coming downstairs. Oh yes, the bedsprings above were no longer squeaking.
Colonel Jumbo entered without knocking. He had no manners. He seemed completely exhausted. He was wiping his face with a very large white silk handkerchief. His black skin was moist, like leather under the rain. He gave a great sigh. Oufiri’s smile broadened.
“Did she come?”
Jumbo shrugged and collapsed into a rustic chair, which groaned.
“I’m the only one who knows how to do her properly,” said the marshal contentedly.
“No longer, most likely. She’s been screwed by the entire security crew; she can’t respond anymore.”
The frown between Oufiri’s eyebrows was hardly more noticeable than a tiny ripple on a calm lake. He burst out laughing.
“You’re right,” he said, debonair.
Jumbo was nonplussed. He sniffed the air.
“Oh,” he said, “I get it.”
“You want a toke?”
Jumbo shook his head.
“Pure as the driven snow,” sighed Oufiri. “A real Robespierre. Had you been a little bit older at the right moment, you might have been ruling the country by now.”
“Or hanging in the cellar.”
Oufiri cracked up.