BISTROT À JOJO. Noon. Warm temperature.
We’re sitting at the back. In the shadow of filtered light. Armchairs. Soft soundtrack. A bar for the well-off.
We order zombies.
The man across from me is from the Ivory Coast. He’s been in Montreal fifteen years. He went through the October Crisis.
“What was it like?”
“You mean October?”
“I’m not talking about that.”
“You mean the ‘decline,’”
“That’s right,”
He takes a lungful of air.
“You know something, brother, there was a time when black meant something here. We picked up girls just like that.”
He snaps his fingers. A black angel moves across the field.
He looks at me with his parchment face, a delirious sage under a baobab tree on a full-moon night.
“Yes, brother, it was the golden age of black.”
The ivory age, I’d say.
The waiter finally arrives with our drinks. A big tip.
“The tip is very important, brother. It’s your respect, your dignity, your survival.”
The man is totally disillusioned. As if he had let go a long time ago. And been falling ever since. Free fall.
I get things going again.
“What percentage?”
“You mean the tip?”
“No, the girls.”
“One black for six white girls. And there, brother, I’m talking about your average black man of average height and appetite. In the smaller towns, we were king of the castle. Those were the good old days, brother, if ever there were any.”
A tall Senegalese (six feet six) walks across the café to our table.
“Brothers.”
“Hello, brother.”
Another round. Three beers this time. The Senegalese is as tall and thin as a bamboo stalk in his dashiki.
He sits down.
A long silence.
We drink. Another round. Three more beers.
“How many do I have?”
“Two, like the rest of us.”
“Don’t take me for that kind, brother.”
He shows me a tuft of white hair in the middle of his head like a cockade.
“How many?” he asks again.
I still don’t understand.
The Ivory Coast man emerges from his silence to translate for me.
“He wants to know how many winters you think he’s spent here.”
“Ten,” I say to avoid offending him.
He bursts out laughing.
“Exactly twenty, brother. We’re burned up inside. Ice burns up everything here, brother. After twenty years here, you turn into ash. Look at that guy coming in. Looks hearty, doesn’t he? A strong wind will blow him over.”
The newcomer does look a little wind-blown. And furious too. He sits down and orders a beer and a pack of Gitanes.
“You know,” he says after listening to our conversation a while, “I can’t stand this talk about white girls any more.”
“What happened to you?”
“We blacks need to be left alone,” he declares.
“Of course,” I say.
Everyone nods his head.
“You can love me or you can spit on me,” he continues. “I couldn’t care less. It’s all the same to me. The same hypocritical bullshit. I’m fed up, brothers, fed up.”
A respectful silence. The man drinks from his beer and shakes his head. He smiles sadly.
“I met a girl here once, in this very bar. We drink together. We go to another place. I live near here. You know, the classic progression. I bring her to my place. Two days I’ll never forget. She eats spicy— very good. She fucks hard—even better. Everything’s fine. Smooth as silk. I let her leave. I have to, right? She’s supposed to go canoeing with her family. I like people who have a sense of family. She swears she loves no one but me. I didn’t ask her to say that. She leaves. Not even a call. Nothing. I’m still waiting. Not a word. Three months later I meet her on St. Denis. ‘Hello, there.’ ‘Oh, hello,’ she says. ‘Why didn’t you call?’ She couldn’t. Didn’t have time. Three months and no time to call. When I think of what that girl said to me when we were fucking. ‘And what have you been doing all this time?’ ‘I learned to play the congas. With a marvelous teacher. Maybe you know him. He’s a wise man. He’s taught me all kinds of secrets. His throne is a couch, and he lies down on it. He’s the greatest sage in Montreal.’”
After his confession, the man stares at me with his little razor-blade eyes. I know that sage who lives on a couch, but I never suspected his reputation had gone beyond the borders of the Carré St. Louis.