I Was an Elephant Salesman: Adventures between Dakar, Paris, and Milan

Chief Laman

I Was an Elephant Salesman 59 Double Malaw I don’t know how many people’s houses I went to looking for a place to stay, in those weeks between October and November , but there was never any room for us. Our Senegalese friends saved us from the pain of the cold and the car for a few days, but at the end of a few days they always said the same thing: “Guys, you have to leave.” We left. We saw in what conditions they were forced to live. Lucky for us, we never ran out of friends. One friend who is not much of a talker but is nevertheless very nice is named Mara. He has just arrived from Paris. We find ourselves two more friends who live in an apartment in Valverde di Cesenatico. We find out that they are going to France. We ask if we can sublet the place, which is in the name of an Italian girl. They say OK. We just have to change the name on the contract. For two hundred and twenty thousand lire a month, utilities included, we find ourselves a home: three rooms in Valverde di Cesenatico. Exciting, right? But the problems with the Peugeot get worse. Poor girl, she’s having a hard time keeping up. Every day something breaks and there isn’t a night that we don’t have to push her to get the motor going. But still we don’t give up. The selling continues . We look for new piazzas and on the weekends we go as far as Padua. The piazza in front of the Basilica of Saint An- 60 Pap Khouma thony is our marketplace, and the devout pilgrims our customers . The Moroccans are right next to us with their hands in the pockets of their jackets, which are always too tight. Our faces disappear between our scarves and our wool hats pulled down over our ears. We would make an ugly monotonous army of salesmen if it weren’t for Malaw, who breaks up the monotony—vertically speaking. We become friends with Malaw, a Senegalese guy with wide shoulders who is remarkably tall, two meters and thirteen centimeters tall, which explains his name Double Malaw. He lives in Padua in a hotel room that costs him fifteen thousand lire a day. He owns a little Peugeot. He tore out the back seat and sits with the front seat pushed all the way back so that his infinitely long legs can reach the pedals. He always has trouble finding the right bed since they’re never long enough for him. He doesn’t have trouble selling, though. We find this out immediately because we get along right off the bat and Malaw decides to move with us to the Riviera. We let him stay with us as our guest at Valverde and that’s how we find out how much he snores at night, but also how sweet and nice he is. Traveling around the Marches, Romagna, and the area near Padua and Ferrara, Double Malaw becomes popular. His approach is always the same. Laughing and bright-eyed he tells people how “he is so big and must eat a lot to live.” Caught off guard, people look at him and he takes advantage of this to sell. Malaw is a phenomenon. He can even sell in the supermarkets . Our little community gets bigger when we find a driver for Malaw. The girlfriends of our two Senegalese friends come to visit us every now and then, sometimes with Italian friends. This is enough to set the neighbors against us: they complain, “You’re noisy.” It’s not true. They keep at it, though: “You’re bothering everyone. Cut it out.” They complain to the girl whose name is on the rent contract for our apartment: “They stole the radio from our car parked outside.” The girl sticks up for us, but the neighbors don’t give up. In the end one of the most aggressive ones goes to the carabinieri and reports: “They’re all drug dealers.” So the carabinieri show up at our apartment. Malaw, Falou, Mara, I Was an Elephant Salesman 61 and Mordiarra have gone to Ravenna to get some merchandise from someone named Mauro, a friend of Malaw. He’s a good guy who sells us a whole bunch of stuff on credit, everything from eagles...