Dirty Feet Read Online Free PDF

remnants of a life or of a failure that spoke the truth. His own. The basic setting of his painting was a roadway littered with the shards and rubble of lives. He grew despondent and eventually dropped his brush.
    Askia left without saying a word and went back to his cab. A calm night. The girls on Saint-Denis were shivering. No customers in sight.
    He drove towards Boulevard Haussmann, Gare Saint-Lazare. Two blocks away, the flames of a fire. The air was burning. A scarf of smoke choked the globular moon, hanging from the edge of a gutter. He thought of a chapter from Revelation. Pictured the remains of lives that would drop onto the sidewalk in front of the blazing building. As in Petite-Guinée’s painting. Pictured the remains of a body once big, bits of toes worn out from tramping over the pavement, a shred of cotton once an article of clothing, the turban shrouding Sidi Ben Sylla Mohammed’s exile, his retreat. He pictured Sidi dead.

12
    IN THE SHADOWS of Paris. His taxi crossed paths with fire engines. He prayed there would be a few skins left for them to save. Zero customers. He switched on the radio. The news report mentioned boatfuls of illegal African migrants grounded on the Canary Islands. Men and women come to find deliverance in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Tomorrow he would turn on his radio again and there would be new boats, another story of flight, and the next day yet another chapter with people running away, and so on in the days, weeks, months to follow, until their feet gave out and the nomad sky ended.
    At Les Invalides he picked up an old gentleman who had hailed him from under a lamppost he had been leaning against. The man wore an impeccable suit, spoke courteously, sprinkling his sentences with phrases such as would you be so kind and forgive me when explaining his destination. The man kept his eyes on him constantly. For a brief moment he seemed to hesitate, concentrating on the driver’s face. Two bikers in leather jackets passed them before running the red light fifty metres away. Life is short, brother, so why slow down? A few seconds waiting at the traffic light. It turned green. Green, the go-ahead, and the man too went ahead:
    â€œYou know, I like skins.”
    â€œ. . .”
    â€œI’ve been around the world and around skins. The flesh.”
    â€œ. . .”
    â€œKuala Lumpur, Phuket, Macao, São Paolo . . .
    They were young. The skins.”
    â€œ. . .”
    â€œPlease don’t take this the wrong way, but yours reminds me of another. The face too. A head with a turban. It must have been a good ten years ago. He was standing in front of the Gare de l’Est and he was cold. Don’t take this the wrong way.”
    â€œ. . .”
    â€œA few years ago I experienced a moment of great intimacy with someone who resembles you. A beautiful night. Serene and passionate. Quite a contradiction, you might say. Don’t take this badly, but it was what’s referred to as an encounter. Truly. Only, his skin was dirty. But once he’d washed he was brand new. Shining. Like you. But you won’t take it the wrong way, will you? A treasure of softness under the filth. If I may be so bold, would you be interested?”
    â€œ. . .”
    â€œPlease don’t be upset. I could pay you the equivalent of your night’s earnings and a handsome compensation on top of that. How does that strike you? Of course, you could take a bath . . .”
    â€œ. . .”
    Askia dropped the man off in front of his mansion and drove back into the night.

13
    OLIA INVITED him over for lunch. She still had not found in her boxes the signs, the photos of Sidi Ben Sylla’s passage through Paris. He started to tell himself, Askia, it’s all a joke. Sidi is a joke, the myth of a father you never had . He had stopped as usual at the Jardin du Luxembourg. There were new pictures on the park fence. It broke the