Revisiting the Café de Paris, Dakar

More than a quarter of a century ago, and I can still taste the sweetness of the croissant as it mingled with the salted butter. The butter still hard from the fridge, portioned in gold foil with the fine printed label Produit de France. Relics of old tyrannies they called civilisation in gold-wrapped pats of butter. And peanuts, peanuts everywhere, measured out in jar lids for sale on the street and pictured on the back of coins as the economic base.

Bush taxi to Casamance, where black men in uniform guarded the enclaves of the Club Mediterranée against intrusion by the locals while public beaches were infested with shysters dealing dope and plastic bangles. The vision of escaping the winter in a divided city in central Europe, flying across continents to a land of steamy tropics, lush fruits and palm wine.

Gratefully back in Dakar, the Café de Paris like a familiar refuge now. Croissant, butter, fresh French coffee, everything tasting finer after the boat trip to the slave island, casting off the past, escaping the wall, abandoning guilt, forgetting families. Liberation, emancipation, relief, release, living for the moment.

The unguarded moment back in Africa when I mortgaged my future.

I lived my childhood in a Jewish family in apartheid South Africa. Even fairy tales were conflict zones to be negotiated between sensitivities about race, colour, class, religion and ethnicity, with post-Holocaust trauma threatening every innocent joy. The Brothers Grimm were gruesome and German – enough to condemn them. That left Hans Christian Andersen as almost respectable (if we overlook the tell-tale middle name).

The Little Mermaid suffering for her sex has pursued me for a lifetime. But much more terrifying was the fate of the heroine of The Red Shoes – my namesake, Karen, brutally crippled for the crime of trying on the tempting shoes.

Some mistakes are quickly rectified, then best forgotten. The marriage contracted in the Café de Paris, Dakar, and enacted six months later in Berlin, was worth no more than a single poem.

The pain is in the title: the pain of mutilation when love becomes torture.

The Red Shoes

Thanks for painting me
in the red dress
and the red shoes.
The shoes made the picture.

Later you hung me
in the Berlin art academy
and on the oak tree avenue Zehlendorf;
next to the portrait
a friend reported
a notice:
Karen. Nicht zu verkaufen.

You hung me in the gallery
I was your only portrait of a lady
I didn’t go to see

you gave it me
— Yes; but that was then
and now is
now I want it back again.
The moment of giving
regret starts gnawing
a gift for you
is always a loss

                  coin
tossed in the slot machine:
NEXT PLAY words light up
Scheiße. A slim Dostoevsky book
peeps out your jacket pocket
you grope, fish out 5 marks
computer noises crowd the calculation
three-fifty for a beer
one for the one-armed bandit
what’s left sends you
spinning to the bank singing
over the tannoy
I’m just a poor boy
my story’s seldom told.

absent from Europe
outside the Café de Paris
Avenue Georges Pompidou, Dakar
you read Der Mann
ohne Eigenschaften vol. 1 & I
à la recherche du temps
perdu vol. 2
Here comes the beggar
shuffling on his bum
look, no legs
the lapdogs yap at his stumps
va t’en! va t’en!

the proprietrice
as his legless back recedes
places our Pernods on the table
pats her coiffe, says, Mes chiens
peuvent sentir tout suite
les sales noirs.
sipping the cloudy liquid
taste aniseed
mourn lack of absinthe
in the paris bar back home.

you turned my ring
on your little finger
traced the line of my left eyebrow
bowed head softly said
into the smoky yellow glass
marry me.

Nice of you, your Omi wrote
sending back the wedding snaps
to think of me but how o how
will I ever live this down?
— it’s a shame a crying
shame the bride wore red shoes.

In the picture I sat still, long
feet foremost
true to lifesize
in the red shoes: the girl
in the grim story
danced and danced
wild entranced
until she dropped
still couldn’t stop —
chop. chop
The woodcutter took the first foot off
and then, in a trice, the other.

aah. what a relief
she sat stiff
stumped. please she asked
can I move now
No he said stern
turned to the canvas
not till I finish your feet.

© Karen Margolis, Berlin 1988/2010