The Age of Reinvention (11 page)

1
. David Sellam, twenty-three, and Paul Delatour, twenty-four, fifth-year students at the Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie. The former dreamed of working in a hospital; the latter intended to take over his cardiologist father's office in the eighth arrondissement of Paris.

2
. Linda Delon, twenty-eight, real name Linda Lamort. She changed it because her original name means “Linda Death” in French.

3
. Frédéric Dupont and Louis Minard, both thirty-five, were years later registered with dating sites under the names John Lewis and Ben Cooper.

4
. Manon Perdrix, twenty-eight, a mother of two who dreamed of a “strong France” and a “big family.”

The day he asks Nina to get in touch with Samir, Samuel turns up for work as if it is just another day. In truth, though, he knows what he is risking; he knows what he has to lose. But for the past twenty years, not a day has passed without him thinking,
She only chose me because I forced/blackmailed/threatened her, and I need to know if she will stay with me again, now, of her own free will
. This is what is running through his head as he enters his office, where a woman is waiting for him, curled up in a chair and crying her eyes out. This is his life: violence. This is his life: a ten-square-meter office filled with people who come with or without an appointment, who enter and say hello my husband beats me my son beats me I'm here illegally my daughter is pregnant my son is in prison, who say they insulted me they raped me robbed me I'm living on the street, who say I'm on a credit blacklist I can't afford to feed my children I only eat every other day, who say I'm alone I'm a widow(er) I'm old, who say I don't have any children I have ten children I'm dying help me help us, who cry for help, and every time he knows what to do, he finds a solution. He likes being with these people, listening to them, talking to them, calming them down, explaining things to them, going out of his way for them, making phone calls to find them money or a place to live. His life is other people. He likes being useful—it gives his life meaning, it lifts him up—but not this morning, because his mind is full of Tahar, overflowing with Tahar, just thinking about it gives him a headache. So, no, today he doesn't work—he just sits at his desk, head in his hands, and waits for Nina's call. When the day is over, he still hasn't heard from her. It's five p.m. He goes home and finds her lying on the couch, reading a magazine. He walks up to her, kisses her, and asks if she's called Samir. Yes, she did, but he wasn't there—“His secretary said he'd call me back.” “That's all?” “Yep, that's all.” “So what else did you do today?” “Oh, I never stopped.” But he can see, in her worried look, that she spent the whole day waiting for that call.

Nina Roche called
. Samir pinches himself. He has to read the words three times over to convince himself that he's not dreaming—it really is her name written on this Post-it note. Could it be a coincidence? Someone else with the same name? He leaps to his feet and runs out of his office, charging into his secretary and demanding: “What time did she call? Did she say anything in particular?” “No, nothing.” He is trembling. He feels like he's going to faint, to collapse in a rush of emotions.s

It must be a joke. It can't really be her. Impossible. Twenty years without a word, and now this? He goes back into his office, sits down, cradles his head in his hands, and laughs quietly to himself.
I can't believe it
. Then he convinces himself that it really is her, that she wants to see him again, twenty years on and she's filled with regret, he feels sure of it now. But how does he feel about it?
Do I really want to see her again after all these years? To see her twenty years older? Has she changed? Why now?
He's trembling, confused. He wants to talk to her right now, out of curiosity, to hear her voice, and suddenly he remembers that he has lied—that he's no longer Samir Tahar, that she must know nothing of his life here, he must never see her again, it's too risky. How would he react if he saw her now, twenty years after she left him? He doesn't call her, but he's dying to. He can think of nothing but her, and then—realizing that it's nearly one a.m. in Paris—decides that he has to call her now or never. It's too strong—he can't bear it anymore—he has to get back in touch with her. He can feel, he knows:
You're going to destroy your own life, your calm, ordered, perfectly structured life
. And yet he says to his secretary, in a voice that barely masks his excitement: “Get Nina Roche on the line. I'll take the call in my office.”

He sits in his large black leather chair, one hand resting on the phone, ready to pick up. His heart is banging against his rib cage. The phone rings and he hears his secretary's voice—“Miss Roche for you”—and the next voice he hears is hers: he recognizes it instantly, warm, husky, deep, the voice that used to drive him crazy. All he wants is to hear it. “I'm sorry to call so late,” he says in French. “I hope you weren't asleep?” “No, not at all. Happy birthday—I remembered.” “After all this time?” “I saw you on TV yesterday, by chance, and I . . .”

You remembered me
.

They talk for a long time. On the other end of the line, Samuel listens in, wild-eyed with anxiety, and realizes: this is suicidal, it's madness. He listens to them chat, exchange promises to meet again. She plays the game perfectly—puts her heart into it, and quickly he is thrown off balance. Fear grips him, and he signals with his hand:
Cut it short
. She squints in concentration, holds up a hand—
Hang on
—and laughs again, that openhearted laugh that expresses their complicity, her happiness at having found him again—the horror—and, a few seconds later, she finally hangs up.
You got what you wanted
. He pretends to be pleased: Go and get something to drink, we should celebrate. But when Nina stands up and he sees her from below, standing tall and statuesque, when he sees that heavenly body, the emotion suddenly grips him—and he grabs her by the arm, pulls her brutally toward him, and kisses her, to possess her, to tell her: You're mine. You belong to me. Samuel believes that conflicts are resolved by sexual dominance. Aggression as erotic power. Hostility as fuel for desire. This is the only means he has found to go on. And she lets him do it, although she shouldn't. But it proves nothing, this sudden docility, this unexpected obedience, because on her face is the most awful expression of detachment.

He had never expected to see her again. The call was a shock, and now it's all he can think about: the phantasmagoria of love and eroticism conjured by the mere sound of her name. He wishes he could tell her now: I missed you so much, I thought of you often, you still mean so much to me, I loved you, I adored making love with you, and all I want now is to be with you. Suddenly, hearing her voice, he misses her again, feels the ache of her absence with a new intensity. This natural kind of sexual attraction—without the effort required by seduction, without any lines or moves—this raw, brutal passion, is something he has only ever experienced with her. It is unique; he knows that now. And that is enough to make him hound her, to insist:
I want to see you again
. Because he wants her, and can think of nothing else. Maybe he can slowly wear her down, maybe she will eventually give in to him through weariness—it doesn't matter how it happens.
I really want to see you again
. This thought obsesses him, crowds out his mental space to the point where he is caught in a whirlwind of fantasies and erotic images and he finds it almost impossible to concentrate on anything else—work, family life, politics.

Everything else leaves me cold
.

Ruth's bourgeois morality. Her concern with convention. Her almost boring constancy; the way she is always where he expects her to be. With her, he has never felt fully himself. He has been merely a perfect simulacrum of masculine archetypes—skillful lawyer, good father, conscientious Jew, loving husband, attentive son-in-law—roles he has always fulfilled with a little too much eagerness, as if he found a subconscious satisfaction in being this man of whom people said,
He has everything
, of whom even his wife could say,
He's the perfect man
. But no matter how brilliantly he invents a new life for himself, it will never truly be his. He has constructed a character the way a novelist does. But with Nina, he feels he could return to the source of himself, to the original version, the essential, Eastern him—to that spontaneity he misses so much and that he rediscovers only during his brief visits to his mother.

Starting the next day, he sends her suggestive messages. He is open about his desire for her: she is all he ever wanted and he will prove it to her: he'll arrive in Paris next Monday at 8:10 a.m. Nina does not show Samir's texts to Samuel; she erases them. This troubles her, and she knows it. He is forward, insistent . . . what can she do? Nina is one of those passive, reserved girls who find in their withdrawal an intensifier to their desires; if he wants her, let him find her, let him take her. But then he asks the question that obsesses him:
Is there someone in your life?

When he sees the name “Samuel,” he feels as if everything disintegrates around him. He feels suddenly fragile, and for a man like him—a strong, virile, self-controlled man—this is a source of suffering; it is proof that he has not paid his debts to the past. He is losing, he can feel it. He is sinking. He had forgotten this awful feeling of uncertainty, the inability to control his emotions, these futile, desperate attempts to reason with himself. Quickly he realizes that it's too late: he's fallen for her again, head over heels. He calls her. “You stayed with him?” He asks this lightly, ironically, but in truth it is tearing him apart. “Yeah,” she replies, “are you surprised?” He hesitates: “No, not really. You should be a saint by now.” He hears her laughter at the end of the line and it drives him crazy. “Any children?” “No.” He feels relief. If she had children, perhaps he wouldn't be able to insist on seeing her again. On a general basis, he prefers to avoid having affairs with women who've had children: maternity makes them less available, and they never give themselves fully, as if part of their souls remains tied to the child. (Some even go so far as to wear their child's scent—those insipid kids' perfumes that instantly desexualize them.) And he couldn't have stood the idea that one day he would meet the children Nina had with Samuel, and think: She should have had them with me instead.

He wants to know if Samuel is aware that she has called him.
Oh, yes, he was sitting next to me when I saw you on TV
. (And he thinks contentedly:
So he
saw
me
.)

This is the moment she chooses to tell him that she read the interview with him in the
Times
. At the other end of the line, there is silence. So she knows. He tells her he would prefer to talk to her about this face-to-face. “You think I want to see you again?” she asks. He waits a few seconds before replying, then says in a controlled voice: “Of course you want to see me again. And I want it too.”

In the airplane, Samir puts on his earphones and chooses
No Country for Old Men
, a Coen Brothers movie starring Josh Brolin.
¹
But it makes no difference: all he can think about is her, and the moment they will meet again. He would prefer not to have to talk to her—he wants her to be there, waiting for him by the arrivals board, and he wants to take her in his arms, kiss her, and go with her to the nearest hotel so they can make love. Why complicate things? But when he gets to the airport, the only person he finds is the seedy-looking chauffeur sent by the hotel, a little bald guy
²
holding up a sign that reads
SAM TAHAR
.

1
. The American actor Josh Brolin has played in over thirty movies. A French journalist asked him if he had ever considered quitting Hollywood and he replied: “People used to say to me:
You're about to make it big!
After ten years, I started replying:
Shut up, man!
”

2
. Alfredo Dos Santos, forty-five, has been a chauffeur for ten years. He leads two very separate lives—one in France, the other in Portugal.

She is his success. Look at her: so entrancing in her black lace dress, her long hair falling loose over half-bared shoulders. She is the best thing in his life and it's good that Samir knows this, sees it for himself: twenty years on, she is still with him, still just as beautiful . . . Quite a sight, isn't she? Feast your eyes. Even without money, she has been able to preserve her beauty, thanks to her ingenuity. Every day, when the department stores open or at lunch when they are packed with tourists, when overscented salesgirls flit through the aisles waving thin strips of white perfumed paper, Nina goes to one of the big-brand perfume sections and uses all the samplers she can find: anti-wrinkle creams, foundation, eye shadow, serums, and colognes—she chooses the most expensive products and asks for samples, saying that she wants to try them before buying. In this way, she has managed, through all these years, to look after her skin and wear the best fragrances without ever spending a centime. For her hair, she would go regularly to a hairdressing college where the students tested out the latest styles on her. Sometimes she would patronize the African hairdressers near Porte de la Chapelle and have her hair braided for a few euros—into a long, glistening plait that she wore on her head like a crown and that made her look like a princess.

Samir had booked a table for them at the Bristol. He called Nina as soon as he arrived, and she warned him: she was coming, yes, but with Samuel.
Sure, no problem
.