Men by Marie Darrieussecq

stupidly, because he was not very dark? Or because, like her, he was French? His West Indian accent, his family from the islands, it was—anecdotal, cosmetic. She didn’t care in the slightest. They spent their time in nightclubs blowing money from the commercials they did during those years. They danced. He was good-looking, twenty, peroxide hair very short. He was only interested in auditions. For the agencies, black was fashionable: nighttime, Thierry Mugler, Nick Cave, Tim Burton, the last echoes of the New Wave. An airy, twirling memory, like a dress. And perhaps, in his own way, he was not black. She remembered in particular that he liked boys. Girls, too, but also boys. When he left her, she was not unhappy, but she lost weight. In haste and in terror, she had investigated his background. At that time, Haitians, heroin addicts and homosexuals were the only ones rumoured to have AIDS. For her, Haiti and the West Indies were one and the same.
    No AIDS. She forgot him. And she forgot that she had had at least one black lover after all. Brice was colourless, likeher at the time. Their pigmentary difference was no big deal.
    Kouhouesso woke up. Said hey , still in a slightly surprised tone. Rubbed his eyes with the flat of his hands. Got up to piss. She stayed there, her heart pounding. He came back. Wrapped her in his arms. Settled himself, taking his time, magnificently. They made love. Occasionally they laughed. Even then, she did not know what was going on. She only knew what was in her mind: that she was at the centre of the world, in his shoulders, his arms, his hair.
    She had to keep him a bit longer. But, between the moment he opened his eyes and when he left, it was always the same scenario, the minutes flew by and then he was standing up. He put on his clothes from the day before, and left. Never showered at her place. Didn’t call her. But if she sent him a text—‘Miss you’, ‘I’m thinking about you’—he replied, just a few words—‘me too’ or ‘lots of love’.
    Lots of love , that’s the way her English pen pal had signed off her letters, when they were fifteen.

    Out of pride, she made herself put him to the test with her own silence. Two days, three days…ten days. She ended up capitulating and sent a text proposing a date. He was always up for it. With astounding candour, he asked why she hadn’t been in touch. And he was punctual, ever since she had rebuked him, in savage French, for being late the first time.
    He had raised his voice a little: ‘ Nous n’avions pas précisé une heure .’
    He hardly ever responded in French. Where he came from, they spoke English and French and numerous (three hundred!) other languages. Nous n’avions pas précisé une heure : the sentence was a bit odd, but mostly it was his accent that was odd. An accent like the comedian Michel Leeb’s. For a second, she thought he was making fun of her. That he was overdoing it. In her village, in Clèves, in the eighties, there was always someone imitating Michel Leeb imitating black people. If he had said in English, just as firmly, we didn’t say what time , she might have been intimidated. But she wanted to smile now. When he said it, précisé became a warble, with a rolling ‘r’, the first syllable emphasised, and three big open vowels. As for ‘time’, it was a throaty sound, sombre and menacing. She remembered the ugly old ebony masks brought back from Senegal by her paternal grandparents, well before she was born, and laid out on a Basque tablecloth. She had never thought twice about any of it.
    Afterwards she forgot. Something took over, kept taking over. She had read Heart of Darkness. Enough of it to know that his project was madness. Short of digitising the forest, renting a green-key studio and dumping the actors into the jungle? Marlow didn’t meet the Intended until the end. It was a beautiful scene—if short and cruel, the Intended waiting for Kurtz in vain—but you could get a few