The Fugitivities, стр. 46
“Hey man, I don’t mean to get all on you and shit, but rent is due to-morrow.”
“You’re right. My bad, I’ll get on it.”
“Oh, and before I forget, you got another letter from that French girl—excuse me, pardonnez-moi, from your mademoiselle.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Yeah, I put it on the desk in your room. You musta put something special on her, boy—she’s really feelin’ it, you got her jonesing for you long-distance. I mean, how many times she gotta write you before you go over there and do something about it?”
“Nah, man, it ain’t even like that.”
“Oh yeah, what’s it like then?”
“Man, I don’t know. If I did, I would tell you…Hey, is this Miles?”
“Nah, this Booker Little. My uncle Darren played trumpet for a while, knew all about the music. Always told me Booker was his favorite. No one knows how great he was, or how great he might have been ’cause he died so young. ’Bout our age, come to think of it. Cut some beautiful records before he left, though. Contributed his one little piece to the edifice, to the tradition. Played his part. See, I knew you would like this one.”
“Oh yeah, how’s that?”
“It’s all about you, chief. It’s called ‘Man of Words.’ And that’s you, brother; just listen to that there…Now that’s a blues for ya. A blues for the man of words.”
PART TWO
Era bom
Aquele tempo em que eu vivia junto de você
Aquele tempo que se foi
—ELZA SOARES
I’m writing to you from the Hotel Rubens in Antwerp. Mariam came to visit me here last weekend. She wanted to party, so I took her out clubbing and we took ecstasy together. I’m still trying to process the whole experience. At one point we were dancing, touching each other’s faces and laughing hysterically in a kind of feverish game. The music was shit but it didn’t matter because I felt lucid and uncomplicated and happy. I didn’t want it to stop. At first, I wasn’t sure if Mariam wanted to go as far as I did. Only that we kept having this magnetic sense of wonder at each other’s bodies. It was so hot and there were too many creeps trying to hit on us, so we left and walked back to my room. I never felt so beautiful. It wasn’t just the sex, it was this energy ringing inside of me, this need to tell Mariam things I’ve never said before. I think I may have frightened her a bit. We didn’t sleep at all, just stayed up in our bathrobes talking for hours. When it was light out, we went looking for breakfast pastries and ended up walking together through Nachtegalen Park in a cool leafy blur. I had this overwhelming desire to tell Mariam that I loved her. It’s so hard to know what it would mean to be worthy of that word. I wondered whether our experience was honest, or if rolling together had created an artificial paradise that would evaporate as soon as she got back to London. I still have this unshakable worry that I’m not on Mariam’s level. She always knows exactly what she wants. It’s what makes her so hot. But she is so confident that it’s hard for me sometimes to assert myself. I can tell she thinks she has to educate me. It angers me because I can show her things too. It’s just that I’m too much in my head, always composing instead of playing. I’m under no illusion that Mariam couldn’t get any lover she wants. But I don’t want to be settled for. I don’t want to be the one she’s with just because I’m smarter than her other girlfriends—because I read books and they just watch television. I want her to want me because I’m desirable in every way. But should I have to prove it? If that’s what it takes, I need time. But that’s the problem. I don’t know if I have enough time before she loses patience or interest in me. And then I’ll lose her. If things don’t work out, it will be my fault. Do you think I’m afraid of letting myself truly have what I want? Am I sabotaging and dodging the very thing I seem to be pursuing? I ask you because I know you will answer me in your own sweet way by talking about something else. It’s funny how the two of us are alike and also so different in our muddles. No one knows you like I do. I hope it’s okay for me to say it like that. I feel like you will understand. You and I have this ability to talk across the world to each other, across everything that makes us so distant. I will always value that. But I also know there are some things that are only mine to discover, and some that are only yours. I need to find out what I really believe. I’ve got to find out about living for myself. I want to know how much of this world can be mine. I want to live all that I can. And if you still love me, you’ll understand this, and you will know how to think of me no matter what.
—A
11
Closing your eyes when a jolt of turbulence rocks the cabin makes it worse. When the sucking feeling in his chest came, the temptation was to go dark, but he refused. Below the belly of the plane was the black Atlantic. According to the in-flight map, the little islands of Cape Verde and the tip of Africa at Dakar were somewhere out his window. They were crossing the great slave-shipping lanes now, cruising swiftly over the swollen past, the vast stretch of black-and-blue veins that sealed the fortunes of the Americas. In the greatest empire the world had ever seen, he had paid two hundred dollars for a