Standing heavy, p.1
Standing Heavy, page 1
Standing Heavy
GauZ’
Translated from the French by
Frank Wynne
BIBLIOASIS
Windsor, Ontario
Contents
Prologue
The Sales at Camaïeu
The Bronze Age:
1960–1980
A Branch of Sephora on the Champs-Élysées
The Golden Age:
1990–2000
Break
Return to Sephora, Champs-Élysées
The Age of Lead
Epilogue
About the Author
Copyright
For Céline
Sephora . . . my niece, my dove
This country’s perfect scent
Your papá, Armand, sent
These laughing words above.
Prologue
New Recruits
The Black men mounting the narrow staircase look like climbers roped together for an assault on K2, the most fearsome peak in the Himalayas. Their ascent is punctuated only by the sound of feet on stairs, footsteps muffled by a thick red carpet laid precisely in the middle of a stairwell so narrow that two men cannot pass. The steps are steep, and knees are raised high. Nine treads, a landing, then nine more, make a floor. With each floor, the weary mountaineers become more spaced out. From time to time, there comes the sound of someone catching his breath. Reaching the sixth floor, the first in line presses the button of the cyclopean intercom, its lone eye the black lens of a security camera. The vast office in which they find themselves, bathed in sweat, is open-plan. No walls interrupt the space between the men, and the glass cage is emblazoned with the three letters that mark the territory of the dominant male of this place: CEO. A huge picture window generously affords a view over the rooftops of Paris. Forms are handed out. Left, right and centre. Here, they are recruiting. They are recruiting security guards. Project-75 has just been granted several major security contracts for a variety of commercial properties in the Paris area. They are in urgent need of massive manpower. Word quickly spread through the African “community”. Congolese, Ivoirians, Malians, Guineans, Beninese, Senegalese, etc., the keen eye can easily identify each country by its style of clothing. The polo shirt and Levi 501 combo of the Ivoirians; the baggy leather jackets of the Malians; the striped shirts tucked below the paunches of the Beninese and the Togolese; the beautiful, perfectly polished moccasins of the Cameroonians; the preposterous colours of the Congolese from Brazzaville and the outrageous style of the Congolese from Kinshasa . . . If there is any doubt, the ear takes over because, in the mouths of Africans, the intonations of the French language are markers that designate origin as reliably as a third copy of chromosome 21 indicates Down’s syndrome or a malignant tumour denotes cancer. The Congolese modulate, the Cameroonians sing-song, the Senegalese chant, the Ivoirians falter, the Beninese and the Togolese waver, the Malians speak pidgin . . .
Everyone takes out the various papers required for the interview: identity cards, the traditional CVs and CQPs, a kind of official permit to work in security. Here, it is portentously dubbed a diploma. There is the famous motivational letter: “To whom it may concern”; “part of a dynamic team”; “a profession with ambitious career prospects”; “in keeping with my skills and training”; “please be assured”; “in anticipation of a favourable response”; “Yours faithfully”, etc. In such a place, the medieval circumlocutions and arse-licking phrases of covering letters seem risible. Everyone here has a powerful motivation, although it may be very different depending on which side of the glass one finds oneself. For the dominant male in the glass cage at the far end of the open-plan office, it is maximum turnover. By any means necessary. Hiring as many people as possible is part of the means. For the Black procession in the stairwell, it is an escape from unemployment or a zero-hours contract. By any means necessary. Security guarding is one of those means. It’s relatively accessible. The training is absolutely minimal. No experience is required. Employers are all too willing to overlook official status. The morphological profile is supposedly appropriate. Morphological profile . . . Black men are heavy-set; Black men are tall; Black men are strong; Black men are deferential; Black men are scary. It is impossible not to think of this jumble of “noble savage” clichés lurking atavistically in the minds of every White man responsible for recruitment and every Black man who has come to use these clichés to his advantage. But that is not the issue this morning. No-one cares. And besides, there are Black men on the recruiting team. The atmosphere is relaxed. Someone even ventures a couple of lewd remarks about the prominent breasts of one of the two secretaries charged with handing out the recruitment forms. Everyone fills out his form with a modicum of diligence. Surname, first name, sex, date and place of birth, marital status, social security number, etc. This will be the most demanding intellectual challenge of the morning. Even so, a few of the men glance at their neighbour’s form. A legacy of the classroom, or a lack of self-assurance. Someone coming out of a long period of unemployment lacks self-assurance. Papers in every possible combination are passed between the group of Negroes and the secretary with the big tits. After signing and initialling a few white pages blackened with esoteric phrases intended to regulate the working relationship with the soon-to-be-ex-unemployed and the soon-to-be-big-boss, every member of the group is given a bag containing a pair of black trousers, a black jacket, a black tie, a shirt that may be white or black and a monthly work rota indicating the time and place of shifts. The contracts are open-ended. Every man who came into these offices unemployed leaves as a security guard. Those who already have experience in the profession know what lies in store in the coming days: spending all day standing in a shop, repeating this monotonous exercise in tedium every day, until the end of the month comes, and they are paid. Paid standing. And it is not as easy as it might seem. In order to survive in this job, to keep things in perspective, to avoid lapsing into cosy idleness or, on the contrary, fatuous zeal and bitter aggressiveness, requires either knowing how to empty your mind of every thought higher than instinct and spinal reflex or having a very engrossing inner life. The incorrigible idiot option is also highly prized. Each to his own method. Each to his own goals. Each will walk back down the six floors in his own way.
The chapel at “La Chapelle”
Bar run by a Kabyle from Algeria, Chinese clothes shop run by a man from Nanjing, Tunisian bakery, little Pakistani hardware shop, Indian jewellers, another bar run by another Kabyle but frequented by Senegalese, Tamil mini-cab company, another Pakistani hardware shop, Algerian butcher, another Chinese clothes shop – this one run by a man from Wenzhou – second-hand clothes shop run by a Moroccan, Wenzhou-Chinese bar-tabac, Turkish restaurant – not to be confused with the Kurdish kebab shop next door – another Algerian butcher – this one from Djurdjura – Balkan boutique, Moroccan grocer specialising in African and West Indian food, another-other Kabyle bar, mini-mall of second-hand goods run by a sullen Slav, Korean electronics shop, branch of Topy shoe repairs run by a guy from Mali, Tamil hardware shop, another Moroccan grocer, another-other Kabyle bar frequented by preterminal alcoholics, African grocers run by a Korean, clandestine Croatian casino, Tamil hairdresser, Algerian hairdresser, African hairdresser from Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroonian grocer, West Indian shop selling arcane objects and bwa bandé, Jewish medical laboratory . . . walking down the rue du Faubourg du Temple is like taking a stroll along the tower of Babel if it had been expertly toppled by a demolition crew such that, rather than standing vertical, it runs horizontally from Belleville to place de la République. What if this is the hidden treasure of the Knights Templar, this incredible diversity of civilisations and cultures that line the streets where their Great Temple once stood? At Goncourt métro, the avenue Parmentier traces a perpendicular. Here the atmosphere is more Parisian, more French, more globalised Western, more “normal”: hipster bar; branch of Caisse d’Épargne; traditional French boulangerie with rustic, floury French baguettes; branch of Crédit Lyonnais; Italian pizzeria; branch of Crédit Agricole; Apple authorised dealer; bookseller and stationer; branch of BNP Paribas; restaurant mentioned in Michelin and Hachette guides; branch of Crédit Mutuel; company specialising in acoustics; branch of Société Générale; secondary school named after some dead French guy; branch of HSBC; shoe shop specialising in plus sizes; another branch of Crédit Lyonnais; two primary schools with plaques listing the names of children deported to the camps during the Second World War; municipal swimming pool . . . Heading east, you come to the town hall of the eleventh arrondissement, with its gilding and the Tricolour fluttering above a grey slate roof, a quintessential building of the French Republic. From here, visiting the branch of Camaïeu, a women’s clothing outlet, on the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Antoine feels to Ossiri like time travel.
* * *
Back in the days of “La Chapelle”, Ossiri and Kassoum paced the streets of the area systematically, like surveyors. Situated in the shadow of the angel’s gilded arse atop the pillar on the place de la Bastille, this part of the eleventh arrondissement, along with the Champs-Élysées, was one of the great night spots of Paris. The cool bars, the concept bars, the exotic restaurants from every latitude, the lounge bars, private clubs, nightclubs, dance bars and small concert venues all drew huge crowds every night, especially on weekends. In its less entertaining mode, this neighbourhood also boasted the highest number of Chinese clothes factories. In poorly ventilated, windowless rooms, in dark yards, converted
The spectacle of late-night party animals who were somewhat the worse for wear, especially on Sundays, was one of the things that Kassoum and Ossiri most enjoyed sharing. To make way for Zandro, the resident physiognomist at La Chapelle des Lombards, one of the most popular nightclubs in Bastille, they had to get up at the crack of dawn and leave the tiny studio they naturally dubbed the “Chapel”, since it was right above the nightclub. Since they did not have work every day and did not always know where to go so early in the morning, they would spend the early hours with the last of the revellers. Ossiri and Kassoum were fresh and wide-eyed. The straggling party animals were tired, drunk and wasted. With the old reflexes of a child of the Treichville slums,1 Kassoum could not help but think of these prancing peacocks as easy prey, ready to be relieved of a little jewellery or money; he had had considerable experience back in Abidjan. But Ossiri seemed to be able to read his every thought and, with a look, could rein him in. “Leave the vultures’ work to the vultures,” he would often say. And Kassoum would content himself with finding a prime viewing post to look and laugh at the late-night, early hours circus of Parisians and suburbanites. Even the night when a girl who was three sheets to the wind threw herself at him, shrieking “Take me! Take me!” in English, Ossiri did not succumb. Her gaping handbag revealed a wad of blue €20 notes that seemed to plead with Kassoum for the safe asylum of his pockets. He hadn’t seen so much as a euro in more than a week, and here was a yawning handbag that Fologo, the most ham-fisted pickpocket in all the shantytowns from Colosse to Treichville, could have lifted without attracting attention.
“Kass, leave the vultures’ work to the vultures.”
“Take me! Take me!”
“Come on! She’s practically giving it away. When a player on the other team scores an own goal, there’s no off-side, Ossiri.”
“Take me! Take me!”
“What’s she saying?”
“She really wants me to take her. I swear, she’s taunting me.”
“Lay one finger on her, and you don’t know me anymore.”
“Take me! Take me!”
“Fucking rich boy’s son!”
“Fucking rich boy’s son!” was the phrase that signalled Kassoum’s capitulation whenever the two of them disagreed on how best to earn a crust when times were hard. When the girl started throwing up over his jacket and then over his shoes, Kassoum decided to “awaken the ghetto” in himself and deliver a lunging python – a quick, well-placed, keenly felt head-butt, “a lethal head-butt” of the kind that had made his reputation and ensured that everyone in the sprawling ghetto of Colosse was wary of hand-to-hand combat with him. “Ossiri, I spent years and years sleeping in the ghetto. Now, it’s like the ghetto is sleeping in me.”
But something in the girl’s eyes made him pause, and the python refused to lunge. Kassoum could not quite tell what it was. Distress, maybe. The sort of distress he had often seen in the eyes of his neighbours in Colosse who did not know how to begin another day that, even before it began, was destined to be as wretched as the day before. Or was it the pale green of the girl’s irises? Who on earth has green eyes? In the folktales of his childhood, certain monsters were described as having green eyes, eyes the colour of the forest’s depths. Kassoum had never been so close to eyes this colour. His unease must have been palpable.
Behind him, Ossiri pressed his advantage, suggesting that they take the girl back to the Chapel and look after her until she came to her senses. Zandro would not say anything; he would probably not even notice. He was always too wound up by a night spent dealing with the thugs, the hysterics, the pickpockets, the drunkards, the queue-jumpers, the drama queens, the paranoiacs, the depressives, the drug dealers, the junkies and all the hotheads who thought they were the strongest men in the world after a line of coke or a couple of bombs of MDMA. Kassoum carried the girl up the narrow stairwell on his own. Her long blonde hair fell over her judoka’s shoulders, and, even in her inebriated state, she looked fearsome. This girl was clearly a descendant of the White tribe from the glacial Great North. Those who routinely pillaged the more southerly shores of Europe, spreading terror, chaos and spermatozoa. Ossiri made no move to help her, on the grounds that, even in Bastille, the sight of two Black men leading a half-comatose White girl down a dark, deserted street would seem suspect. In this, he was not wrong, but as so often, he pushed his reasoning much too far. “Since the Second World War, ratting people out has gone from being a sport in France to a national institution. When the Germans occupied the country, people turned in Jews and resistance fighters. When the Allies won the war, those same people turned in traitors and collaborators. In France, there are always sell-outs and people to be sold,” Ossiri said imperiously. But Kassoum had already stopped listening. Like a panther with a deer in its maw scaling a tree to hide its prey from a pack of covetous, carrion-eating hyenas, he lugged the strapping wench towards the Chapel. This is how Kassoum came to meet Amélie, who came from Normandy and taught secondary school English in a suburb in west Paris . . .
* * *
The town hall of the eleventh arrondissement overlooks a roundabout that alternately sends vehicles ricocheting along the avenue Parmentier, the boulevard Voltaire, the rue de la Roquette and the avenue Ledru-Rollin. At the junction with the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Antoine stands a branch of Monoprix. Tantie Odette has been the manager here for two years. She was previously a checkout girl for twenty-eight years. Thirty years ago, when her husband had her sent from a village nestled by the great forests to the west of Côte d’Ivoire, she could scarcely read or write and had never before seen humans of any race other than that which, for thousands of years, had loped beneath the liana-shrouded trees in Issia. “Auntie” has seen and learned many things working in this branch of Monoprix. Even so, it took twenty-eight years before she was allowed to emerge from behind the checkout counter . . . Was this fast-track promotion at the speed of melanin? She has long since stopped asking herself such questions. She is two years from retirement. Since Ossiri started working security at the Bastille branch of Camaïeu two weeks ago, his visits to this branch of Monoprix have almost taken on the form of a ritual. Tantie Odette offers him coffee. He accepts. They go into the break room. He asks for news of Ferdinand. In gruff monosyllables, she tells him what she has heard. She asks for news of Angela. He makes up stories, weaves lyrical phrases through the more general rumours from the old country. She laughs. She laughs a lot when he talks to her. Then he takes his leave, protesting that he will be late. She walks him back through the aisles, never missing the opportunity to introduce him as her son when some former colleague from the 1980s happens by. A kiss on the cheek as Ossiri unchains his bicycle from the sign that reads “NO BICYCLES”. Camaïeu is nearby. He walks.
* * *
1 — Author’s note: A poor district of Abidjan.
The Sales at Camaïeu
The Regulars
These women buy clothes as though they were perishable goods. They pop in every month, every week, every day, sometimes several times a day. Regular customers are easily recognisable. They are always the ones in a tearing hurry. They know what they want. They never stay long.
