The Age of Reinvention (18 page)

They speak for a long time. When they finally hang up, Samir checks the messages on his cell phone. Nothing from Nina. It drives him wild, this indifference of hers, and he can't restrain himself from dialing her number. He wants to hear her voice. But she doesn't answer. He tries three or four times—in vain. Then, suddenly, her voice at the other end of the line, a chilling and barely audible whisper: “I can't talk to you.”

Back at the apartment, she discovers Samuel, face reddened by alcohol, slumped asleep in front of his computer screen. Nina moves closer and sees a news page; she clicks on “History” and finds out that he has been researching Samir—his law firm, his wife, his children. It is obsessive, and she feels suddenly terrified as she realizes what is happening: history repeating. She could never have imagined that, twenty years later, all the old emotions would remain intact, that nothing would have changed—the desires and enmities unaltered by time, absence, distance. She gets into bed and is falling asleep when Samuel gently shakes her. He is above her, trapping her on the bed, his pupils dilated, something strange in his expression as if he is about to do something unusual. She pushes him away—it's late, she's tired—but he shakes her again, gently at first,
You're hiding something from me, come on, tell me, I want to know, tell me what happened
, and then with increasing force.
What is wrong with you?
Tearful, she refuses,
Leave me alone, I'm sleepy
, but he insists, hammering away at her, haranguing her with questions, and delivering his unequivocal conclusion:
You have to tell me everything. I know it's a risk, but I'll take it
.

And then something surprising happens. Even though she knows she should just go back to sleep—because how could he really want to know what happened between Samir and her? How could she believe he would be able to hear about her betrayal without suffering?—she sits on the edge of the bed and answers his questions.

“We had a drink at the hotel bar.”

“And then?”

“We went out for a walk near the Tuileries Garden.”

“And then?”

“He suggested we have one last drink at his hotel.”

“And then?”

“I agreed.”

“Did he ask you up to his room?”

“Yes.”

“And did you agree?”

“Yes.”

“Did you show any reluctance?”

“No.”

“So you followed him up to his room . . .”

“Yes.”

“But were you expecting anything to happen?”

“Maybe. I don't know.”

“Explain. I don't understand.”

“I don't know. I didn't really think about it. He asked me to go up to his room for a drink, and I agreed. I didn't think about what might happen.”

“You go into a hotel room with a man—a man you once loved, a man you had a relationship with—you go into a hotel room with him and you don't imagine what might happen. (I say ‘might'; I still don't know what actually happened.) I find it hard to believe you . . .”

“Well, I thought about it, but . . .”

“Oh, so you did think about it.”

“Yes, I thought about it.”

“And what exactly did you think?”

“About what might happen if he was . . .
forward
, let's say.”

“But you still went up with him?”

“Yes, I wanted to take the risk.”

“What did you do in his room?”

“We talked.”

“You talked. Is that all?”

“We talked. We had a drink.”

“What did you talk about?”

“About him, mostly. About his life in New York. And then . . . I wanted to find out how and why he built his new life on a lie by stealing your history.”

“And what did he reply?”

“Are you sure you want to talk about all this now?”

“Are you tired?”

“Yes. I'm tired and sleepy.”

With these words, Nina lies down, pulls the sheet up to her chest, and turns onto her left side, her back to Samuel.

“Did you fuck him?”

He asks the question in a harsh, icy voice. Nina doesn't reply. She doesn't move.

“Answer me. Did you fuck him?”

And so, without turning around, she replies in a monotone:

“Yes.”

Every time he sees his mother, Samir pulls out all the stops. The presents that he brings clink and rattle as she opens them, a symphony of heavy metal: ostentatious bracelets and silver clasps on purses. Nothing is too good for her. He brings her wads of dollar bills, euros too, gifts purchased in the best stores—costume/gold jewelry, black/white diamond pendants, silk foulards and scarves bought from Hermès or Dior, sometimes even dresses, when he has time: baggy, colorful smocks (always famous brands, because he knows that impresses her, that it reflects his success, makes her feel like she belongs), duty-free souvenirs (milk chocolates, mostly, but also perfumes, hand luggage, leather key fobs) . . . This is how he expiates his guilt, how he eases his conscience. So, this morning, as soon as he wakes up, he calls the concierge,
¹
asks for a car with a chauffeur, a bouquet of roses (the freshest, rarest, most fragrant they can find), and a Chanel handbag—a classic model, in quilted black leather with gold chains—money is no object, oh, and he'd like it all by noon, thank you.
Certainly, sir
. Always obsequious, always available: Samir enjoys these manifestations of subjugation provoked by his enviable social position; he revels in these flowerings of excessive politeness, interpreting them as a form of respect, the sycophancy demanded by his status as a customer—in a hotel, he is the king, and he wields power as he pleases: do this, do that, a bill subtly palmed, perfect, thank you. He had called his mother the day before, from the phone in his hotel room, to tell her he was in Paris:
I'll come and see you for lunch tomorrow
. He never warns her in advance that he's flying to France: he likes to surprise her, to hear his mother's natural, spontaneous emotion on the other end of the phone line. Never—in any of the women he has hit on/loved/met—has he encountered that candor, which owes less to simplicity of character than simply to love, he thinks, to the purity of maternal feeling. And yet, she is the one he's betraying. He is sitting on his bed now, in his underwear, the breakfast tray on his knees, the television showing CNN, and he is thinking about Nina. For a moment, he thinks about calling her again, but decides against the idea. Attachment—it's a mental illness.

He has not seen his mother for two years. The last time he came to Paris, in the winter of 2005, he thought she looked older. She complained of chest and leg pains, so—suddenly afraid he might lose her—he took her to the American Hospital for three days of tests. Her hair was whiter, her body shrunken, and he noticed that, whenever she spoke, she seemed to be fighting against some invisible force that held back her thoughts. And yet she was a strong woman, in the prime of life. She was barely even sixty.

He always dreads these meetings, but he has never stopped visiting her. He could have. It was a possibility he considered when he first met Ruth and, in particular, Ruth's father, and realized that there was no chance of him confessing the truth to these people; he had to make the resolution to live forever under the new identity he had inadvertently created. In fact, it would have been more opportune to stop visiting her. But he had not been brave enough to break off their relationship definitively—not because he wanted to protect her, but because he wanted to protect himself. He couldn't live without her. Something powerful still connected him to her, even if he was incapable of saying exactly what it was. Filial duty? Neurotic love? Yes, probably: as for all sons raised on the milk of the purest human tenderness, his mother remained the most important woman in his life. But there was another reason for the survival of these ties that bound them: the fear of casting her aside too brutally; the dread of hurting a woman who had endured a hard life, a life full of humiliations, one of those miserable existences that makes you seek out, in vain, the person or persons responsible, makes you search for the root causes: a penniless childhood, a forced marriage, exile and poverty, manipulation—a shitty life. He could never think of his mother without feeling outraged and angry. Ultimately, even in New York, in the richest and most bourgeois surroundings—where people are only allowed to enter after proving the prestige of their genealogy—he had never ceased to be Nawel Tahar's glorious vengeance on the world, the son who would avenge his mother's suffering. And every time he saw her, he was reminded of his broken promise: to keep her close by him in his hour of victory. He had won, of course, but elsewhere, without her. Each time he saw her now, she seemed slightly duller, as if another layer of dust had obscured the image of her he kept in his mind. But this impression was always tempered instantly by the affection she lavished on him; awakened by love, she was transformed—strength and color returned—and each time they were together after a long separation, she reacted the same way, with the same effusions of joy. She could spend hours in her kitchen, making the meals he loved, tidying her house, dressing in nice clothes, choosing the right perfume, for
him
. He had never told her that he'd had children, and she had never asked. Occasionally she would ask if he ever thought about settling down and starting a family, but that was all. He told her he'd met a few women, but had not loved any of them enough to marry. And generally, she did not press the point. Once—and once only—she told him how much she would love to have grandchildren, and he quietly, solemnly replied, “Insha'Allah, it will happen.”

As soon as he gets there, he feels uneasy. The place is a vision of horror—his childhood home befouled. He feels as if he is entering a zone of absolute ruin. How is it even possible to find such poverty, one hour from Paris? All he sees is the degradation of the place, the walls covered with obscene graffiti and misogynistic insults, the trees engraved with penknife lettering, the disemboweled carcasses of cars, surrounded by wastelands invaded by scalpel-sharp brambles and greenish black stinging nettles. Everywhere he looks, there are spare parts, scraps of metal, and fragments of wood sharpened into stakes, and kids of ten or twelve roaming the sidewalks, patrolling, on the alert, swear words filling their mouths, lips set in scowls, ready to rip into anyone who goes near. The vandalization/bastardization of language. The drug-dealing and poverty. He saved his descendants from this, at least, took them away from the determinism, the fatalism. He got what he wanted. He needed to know that his children would be protected, sheltered from want, benefiting from the very best that the world has to offer. That they would not be exposed to the violence of society. And what's wrong with that? He doesn't believe in the virtues of suffering, the advantages of being tested. He doesn't believe that you are made tougher by enduring life's slings and arrows, overcoming difficulties in order to succeed, experiencing poverty and humiliation and abuse. On the contrary, he feels certain that poverty makes you fragile. Deprivation weakens you, physically and morally. At best, it makes you resentful—and anger can be an energy, of course. Sometimes it can help smash down doors. But if you go through those doorways, you'll soon see how your rage stigmatizes you. Go through those doorways and you will immediately become a mimic, you will choose a form of conformism that does not exclude originality but gives you a chance to belong. Because, for the social elite, it is not rage that rules but self-control. Here is the true capacity for resistance. This is how you
really
stand out. And this self-control—Samir understood this when he met Ruth—although perhaps connected to mental strength, is essentially a question of education. Learning to keep your emotions in check—everywhere, all the time. Never complaining in public.

He thinks of his children. The advanced training they are receiving. Their delicate manners. Their extraordinary intellectual aptitudes maintained by the hours of weekly classes given to them by handpicked emeritus professors—retirees from Harvard or Stanford, concert musicians from the finest orchestras. They have everything. And on Sunday mornings, it's Samir himself who gets up at dawn and, even before he does his daily hour of exercise, makes them recite their lessons, checks their knowledge. He overdoes it, of course, and not only with his children. His friends and colleagues gently mock him for his obsession with performance, which he doesn't even try to conceal. He knows how to produce members of the elite. He succeeded with himself, didn't he? And in these moments of satisfaction, of personal glory, he is able to persuade himself that he made the right choices; he is able to feel strong and proud. But quickly this feeling is followed by shame . . . shame and humiliation . . . the shame of having betrayed the memory of his father, ignored his family's history, rid himself of their suffering . . . the shame of not having admitted what he is . . . the shame of having built his success upon a lie . . . the shame of having capitulated . . . the shame of having abandoned his mother . . . the shame of never having found her a better place to live . . . That is her choice: she never wanted to leave her apartment, despite his repeated proposals. Her life is this ghetto. Her life is this pile of shit. But it's a pile of shit swarming with life, and her neighbors are close by if there's ever a problem, and the local kids do her shopping for her. She's not alone here, whereas if she lived
among rich people
, they'd let her die.
They wouldn't even know I exist
. It's different here.
Yeah, sure
, he thinks.
The truth is it's dog-eat-dog wherever you live.

The chauffeur dropped him off a few hundred yards from the ghetto: he didn't want to go any nearer, said it was too dangerous. Didn't want to have stones thrown at his car. Samir walks quickly across the wasteland, feeling conspicuous in his gangster's clothes, his arms laden with white roses, carrying a Chanel bag. People call out to him, then yield when they see who it is—
Oh, it's the big boss
. He still has connections here: he's untouchable and he knows it. People touch knuckles with him, kiss his cheek—
Welcome, my brother
—
let him pass, he's one of ours
. He takes the stairs—the elevator's broken—and passes a woman of African origin, in her thirties, a child tied to her back with multicolored cloth, a bottle of water in her left hand, a bottle of milk in her right. She lives on the fifteenth floor.
It's like this all the time
. Samir offers to help her, just avoiding a puddle of urine. He carries the bottles to the door of her apartment and then, breathing hard, goes back down to the eighth floor, wondering how she survives. He arrives at the door of her apartment and breathes in for courage, breathes out to loose his anxiety. He feels emotional. He rings the doorbell once. She must have been waiting just behind the door, because she opens it immediately—and as soon as she sees him, the floodgates open and she starts to weep (and she's not pretending: these are
real
tears) and kisses him as if he is more than a mere mortal.
My son . . . my son
 . . . “Okay, Mom, take it easy! You're suffocating me!” He feels oppressed by displays of affection.
Come in, come in, yaouldi
. And he follows her and—wham, there it is! Childhood, like a boomerang, hits him in the face, memories hurtling past him as he walks. He hands her the flowers, the bag. She cries even harder: “Oh, it's too much, you shouldn't have, it's so beautiful, too expensive [and what she means is: too expensive for a woman like me], why did you spend so much money? You're too generous, such a good son”—and now she says, as if echoing what she had written to him: “And a good Muslim too, I know.” Here it is, oozing from him once again, the panic whenever she pronounces those words. His heart pounds, he can hear it: boom boom, boom boom. What if he died right now? Who would explain to his wife, to his children, what he was doing in this woman's apartment? If he died now, here, what would happen? His mother wouldn't tell anyone. She would have him buried in the closest cemetery, in the middle of the Muslim section. Ruth would find out a week later, from Pierre Lévy, perhaps.
This is where he's buried
. The shock. The anguish. Quick, a chair. He sits down. On the table are dozens of salads and some bread that she made herself that morning: a sort of thick, crumbly corn pancake that he adores. But now, suddenly, he has no appetite. His stomach is in knots—the emotion, perhaps. She bombards him with questions about his work, his life in New York, and reproaches him for the fact that he has never invited her there, not even once—
Just so I can see where you live, a mother has the right to know that, doesn't she?
—that he has never told her about his life, his house, his girlfriend, that she knows nothing about him. All he ever tells her are the superficial things, but she wants to know EVERYTHING about him—
You're not ashamed of me, are you?
—how and where he lives, what he eats, what he does, who his friends are, his partners . . . But today, Samir answers quickly because he can guess, from the distracted way she asks him all this, that she really only has one subject on her mind: the reason why she wanted to see him—François.