IL FAUT BEAUCOUP AIMER LES HOMMES

She watched Dazzled again. She forced herself to open books. She came across a sentence that she texted to him: ‘We have to love men a lot. A lot, a lot. Love them a lot in order to love them. Otherwise it’s impossible; we couldn’t bear them. Marguerite Duras’

He didn’t reply. Not five minutes later. Not three days later. She complained to Rose that he lacked a sense of humour.

‘He’ll contact you,’ said Rose. She wanted to see a photo. Solange sent her an internet link: the clip of Dazzled that made her weak at the knees. Rose went into raptures over his good looks, compared him to George. One more handsome guy in Solange’s already thriving love-life. She didn’t push it too far.

Except that it wasn’t one more guy in her life; it was life itself.

She searched through her computer history. Her computer that he often borrowed at night. And indeed he had nothing to hide: he was studying actors’ record sheets and budgets, watching films, comparing cinematographers, investigating the feasibility of sound engineering in the forest, reading all he could about Conrad and the Congo, finding out about equatorial diseases, waterproof cameras, portable mosquito nets, drinking-water tanks, lightweight tents, plane tickets, film studios in Lagos and Capetown, the cost of an interpreter in places inhabited by the Baka people. ‘Gwyneth Paltrow naked’ was the one slightly jarring item in this coherent record. And also—lots of time spent correcting Wikipedia entries and discussing with other contributors, on the topic of Conrad or Makeba or even the catfish (with poisonous antennae) in the Ogooué River. He was the sole author of the entry ‘King of Ife’, in three languages. The length of the article demoralised her.

So that’s what he was doing at night, instead of coming to bed with her?

His screenplay was also there, in a folder called HOD. Heart of Darkness. She typed in ‘the Intended’, and found nothing; she typed in ‘Gwyneth’ and the role appeared. Short: three pages, three scenes, three minutes. Scarcely more than what she’d done with Damon. Gwyneth wouldn’t want it. Of course, there was George. And now Jessie. But even if Gwyneth had a gap in her schedule…three minutes for a first-time director?

She held her hair up in the mirror: an old-fashioned bun, a few loose strands. Very pale make-up. A dress with a corset, the bodice buttoned to the neck but fitted. ‘No one knew him so well as I! I had all his noble confidence. I knew him best.’ Softer, a whisper: ‘No one knows him so well as I! I have all his noble confidence. I know him best…’

It was striking how so little of the novel was devoted to women or to Africans (so what role was Jessie going to play?). She thought about possible improvements. Everything changed if the Intended accompanied Kurtz to the Congo. She then became a particular type of expatriate woman: dashing and rebellious, close to the black people, both timid and sensual, stricken with boredom and with wonder. They got married there, in a little evangelical chapel. And when her man left the colonial army, she followed him, of course, into the heart of darkness.

She was the heart of darkness: it was her, with her kindness, her big heart, shining a light on the infernal sorcery of colonialism.

It was a magnificent role, encompassing the whole film. The type of role where she would be on the poster with George, like Isabelle Huppert with Kristofferson in Heaven’s Gate. She sketched a few drafts of scenes and filed them in HOD-2.

A week had passed. She couldn’t decide whether to call him or not.

Time took hold of her again. She was time’s catfish, a fish from stagnant waters, a large fish from a slow river. She was decomposing. Lloyd had told her about a little role in ER but she wasn’t sure. She had left a polite message on Steven Soderbergh’s phone but he hadn’t called back. At a dinner she surprised herself by not listening to a thing, until the word Kinshasa hit her like an explosion—the guests were amazed by her Congological knowledge. Had they heard about the new adaptation of Heart of Darkness? The conversation drifted on to Coppola, his daughter, his vineyards, and she stopped listening.

Dazzled by Michael Mann. She remembered that Lloyd had mentioned it to her at the time, but she’d been on the set of Musette, so it wouldn’t have fitted in. A scene where the two cops burst into a French restaurant—she could have been the sexy waitress. Their paths would have crossed. Would she already have fallen for him? Or? Synchronicity: one of Kouhouesso’s words. A practical man, who thinks in terms of compatible schedules. But she knew that—at any time, in Clèves, in Paris, in Los Angeles—at any time, she would have followed him.

No. She had found him handsome, that black guy who played Hamlet, not Othello, at Bouffes du Nord Theatre, but she had not gone out of her way to get to know him. She was twenty-two. She had crossed paths with the prince; it was unintentional. Or perhaps he was too princely for the Solange of that period.

The waitress in Dazzled ends up sleeping with the white guy. She couldn’t remember a film, American or otherwise, in which a black guy and a white woman—a white guy and a black woman—sleep together without it being the subject itself of the drama. When a white guy and a black woman—a black guy and a white woman—get a bit too close, it’s as if an alarm goes off, the public stiffens, the producers have said stop, the scriptwriters have already sorted out the issue, the black actor knows that he will not seduce the white actress: or else we’re in another film, a morality tale, an affair, a problem.

She rewound…there…he’s going to do it, he’s going to turn towards the sea and the light stays with him, obscuring his expression, and he becomes the focus, becomes everything…That motion blur, that tiny degree of motion blur, like a photo stared at for too long…

Their world was tolerant. Hollywood, Paris, Manhattan: homosexual couples, threesome couples, couples where the man was older than the woman. A few white-Asian couples. But Asians are white. And who did Rihanna and Beyoncé go out with? With black guys. And then there was Halle Berry, who went out with a white guy, but her skin was much paler than Kouhouesso’s. And she had seen photos of Lenny Kravitz with a Brazilian top model who, as white as she looked, was much darker than Solange.

Her head was starting to spin—like when you go through those wallpaper colour charts that look like giant phone directories of colours—from wondering if black is black. And she didn’t have a clue.