The Age of Reinvention (42 page)

“No, none at all.”

That afternoon, Samuel was supposed to meet Samir. He wore a very handsome gray wool suit and a chalk-white fitted shirt in ultrafine cotton with mother-of-pearl buttons. He hesitated to wear a tie, but in the end chose a black one. He went to a hairdresser recommended by the hotel's concierge. There was something obscene in the care he devoted to these preparations. It was as if he were readying himself for a theatrical scene, the unspoken aim of which was the death of a man he had loved/envied/despised. Even at an age—at a moment in their lives—when the pressure ought naturally to have been released, the rivalry still held strong, as if this eternal power struggle was the only thing that could ever connect them. A confrontation, with one of them already on his knees. But then, what better moment could there be to mount an attack?

Samir had never believed in equality when it came to social relations: the world functioned through the complex interaction of spheres of influence, through privileged admission, through services exchanged, forced takeovers—various procedures often supported by additional connections: the same sexual or religious orientation, the same social or ethnic group, the complicity of friends or sexual partners. (This last, according to Samir, being the most powerful of all, the one that enabled the most concessions to be wrung from a situation, the one that gave you a literal hold over the other person: he had experienced its benefits on many occasions, and some of his conquests had even been to see his lawyers in order to help him.) Was that unfair? Probably, but he had long understood that injustices are
never
put right. Sure, you could condemn them, but that was as far as it went. And it was because he hadn't wanted to be on the wrong side of this balance of power that he had become a lawyer, had lied, and that was why he had no expectations of today's sudden and unexpected arrival of Samuel—the superhero who had flown in from France to rescue him and his reputation. Yeah, right! All he had ever done to Samuel before was hurt him, steal from him what he most loved in the world. What could he possibly expect from Samuel now but a precisely targeted personal attack? Samuel, who was now “the great French writer,” and who had expressed his wish to meet him and write an article about him to make the French public aware of his incarceration: that was the official version. “But honestly,” he had explained to his lawyers, “what help do you think I'm going to get from a man whose life I deliberately destroyed, simply in order to satisfy my desires? You've told me that he's written a successful novel—good for him!—and you've said he intends to act as a witness in my defense . . . But come on! I exploited his life to invent my own biography, and he knows it! I even stole his first name! I tried to seduce the woman he loves on two separate occasions, and succeeded both times! Why on earth would he want to help me, after all that? I don't believe a word of it. I refuse to be taken hostage!”

“But why else would he be doing this, if not to get you out of here?” Stein asked. “As a form of vengeance?”

“No, too childish.”

“To humiliate you?”

“Maybe.”

“Seriously? You think he's going to fly thousands of miles just to see you on your knees? All he has to do is switch on his computer. No, I honestly think he's sincere. You were friends before, weren't you?”

“In the past? Sure. We were like brothers. But that was twenty years ago.”

Samir had asked his lawyers to get him a copy of Samuel's book. He wanted to read it before giving his response. He wanted to understand what it was, in this story, that had earned Samuel such repute—this man who, up to that point, had never even been published, and who had never been a charismatic man. Pierre lent him his copy, and from the moment he opened the book, Samir never put it down, forgetting to eat, giving up the right to leave his cell, even refusing to take a shower. The book was dedicated to Nina, and that was probably the only sincere thing in the entire novel, which seemed to him less an attempt to faithfully retell his story than a gigantic and staggeringly perverse hoax, a manipulation that even he—in the mendacious construction of his success—could not have achieved. Because there was nothing true in this book, this book that had crowned Samuel with glory. Not a word on his suicide attempt. Not a word on the tension between himself and his parents. In this version of events, their relationship had been idyllic, whereas the truth was that he had stopped speaking to them, had run away from home. He had told the story of a man who'd been abandoned: by his biological mother, by his adoptive parents, by the woman he loved, by his best friend, by society itself . . . An expiatory victim. A tale to bring tears to the most hardened cynic's eyes. Whole sections of the book were completely invented—the worst lie being his assertion that his parents had not died in a car accident, but had committed suicide. Nothing about his real mother, who really had killed herself. Nothing about his cowardice, his emotional blackmail, his threats. All he had wanted to do with this book, thought Samir, was to move his readers with his cardboard-cutout words—his camouflage sentences—and he had succeeded! Manipulation through fiction. Perversion by language. Now he understood why Samuel had come to New York.

“You should at least agree to meet him,” Stein said, after listening to his client's reservations.

“He'll come, he'll look at me, he'll listen to me, then he'll go back to France and write a book about it all so he can go on being a great success. I know all too well what a man is capable of doing in order to keep what he has acquired through hard work, cunning, the compromising of all his principles. Maybe it's a false kind of happiness, but once you've tasted it, you can't let it go. You want me to be part of that?”

“Just consider your own interests. He's committed to defending you in France, and he'll do that.”

Mechanically, Samir nodded.

“And anyway,” Stein went on, “there's something pretty cool about being the subject of a book, don't you think? You could be immortalized. You've read
In Cold Blood
, right?”

Yes, he'd read it. He'd even liked it. But this was different.

“This is about
my
life.”

Nina is staying in a room in a small Parisian hotel near the Place de la Bastille. What is she supposed to do now? Samuel has vanished and she has no way of getting ahold of him, as his phone number has changed; Samir is in prison; she has no family (her father died three years ago, and she has never seen her mother since she abandoned them), no friends (all marginalized by her beauty) . . . she has nothing left at all—her love for Samir has destroyed everything—and now, all at once, she understands that she will not survive very long in these conditions. She will not survive without a job, a place to live, an income. Not once, even in her worst imaginings, did she think her life would end up like this. She had envisaged the possibility of a breakup, but not of a total abandonment.

She struggles. She tries to find hints to Samuel's whereabouts in the phone directory, through his former neighbors. Never does it cross her mind to use the Internet: How could she have guessed that he had become a famous writer? And besides, she is afraid of typing Samir's name into a search engine and discovering further news of his fall. In search of work, she answers private ads she finds on supermarket message boards, she makes phone calls, but all she gets are a meeting that ends up being canceled and an interview for a job as a babysitter, which she fails due to a lack of references. In a real estate agent's, she asks about renting an efficiency, but hits a brick wall:
Sorry, we can't do anything for you right now—come back when you've found a job and you have a few pay slips, some money to act as security, etc.
She contacts her former agent, hoping to do some modeling for a catalogue. She calls a dozen times but never gets through to him: he is away from his desk/in a meeting/busy with another call/abroad/on a flight, and finally, one morning, he replies: “You didn't honor your last contract! You just ran away without considering the consequences. Now suddenly you reappear and you think you can just get your old job back? Get real, Nina!” Silence on the line. Then he starts again: “Anyway, I have nothing left to offer someone in your age range.” This is the final blow. She has no money left: she can't even pay for a hotel room. In the space of a few weeks—it all goes so fast—she finds herself on the street.

Don't get sentimental
, Samuel thinks,
I'm here to write, to do the dirty work
. So why does he feel so oppressed when he arrives in the prison where Samir is being held? It's a terrifying place: a concrete block topped with barbed wire, stuck in the middle of nowhere, and filled, so it's said, with the most dangerous prisoners in the United States. Why do memories keep flashing unsummoned into his head, he wonders, as he walks down the long metallic-gray corridors, struggling against the dread that grips him like a noose? Melancholy. Nostalgia. Poor Samir, shit out of luck. And when he finally reaches the room where Samir is waiting for him, he forgets why he has even come here: instead of taking out his notebooks, he spends a long time looking at his friend, one hand on the Plexiglas window, shocked by the horrific vision of this desperately thin man, citrine-colored skin, his hair balding in patches, vainly searching for his words as if he's just suffered a concussion and is trying to recover the power of speech. The tragedy of life. This is what misfortune, what the hazards of existence, can do to a man. In the second when his eyes meet Samir's, Samuel knows he will not write this book. Samir is seated, his fingers writhing nervously. Coming through the window that separates them, his voice sounds muffled.

“What are you doing here? Did you come just to see me in this state?”

As he says this, Samir feels a pain in his legs and grimaces. He bends over to massage his ankles, which are shackled by metal chains, and emits a feeble moan.

“How do you feel?” Samuel asks.

“Great! Never felt better!” Samir shouts, reviving. “Look at me—I'm the happiest man in the world! Everything's just peachy! And how are you?”

“I'm sorry . . .”

“You're sorry? What for? You're not responsible for what's happened to me. It's my fault I'm stuck in this shithole, not yours. A guy like you wouldn't last twenty-four hours in a place like this! Why have you come here?”

“To testify for you.”

Samir sighs. “Oh, really? You're going to tell the judges that I'm a model of virtue? A man of great moral integrity? A good father and a loyal friend? Come off it—I'm a libertine. Morality means nothing to me except in a professional sense. Ethically, I'm irreproachable. But in every other way . . . I'm an adulterous husband, a lying father, a man who betrays his friends without a second thought. And a bad Muslim, as my mother would add . . . And the worst thing is, I don't even feel guilty! Not in the slightest! So tell me what you could say to the judges that might convince them. I'm exactly the kind of guy they want to find guilty! And anyway . . . I don't believe that you're sorry. In general terms, I don't think anyone is really affected by anyone else's sufferings. Maybe they feel a pang of compassion, but it doesn't alter their own happiness . . .”

“I came because I wanted to understand, and to see what I could do to help you.”

“You came to clear your conscience. That's what all men want—to be able to fall asleep at night, thinking:
I'm a good man
. But in that respect, we always fail, no matter what we do . . .”

“I could never claim that.”

“Yes, you could—just like everyone else! You've come all this way to prove to me that you bear me no ill will. You're the one who has the upper hand now—you should hate me for what I did to you! You should hate me and enjoy my downfall. Come on, admit it—in your heart of hearts, that's what you're hoping for. This situation excites you. You look at me and you think:
Could he have fallen any lower?
Maybe you even think:
This is karma. Nina has gone back to France and he'll never see her again. She's free
. . . that's what you wanted, isn't it?”

“I haven't heard from her at all . . .”

“Well, don't just sit there waiting! Go out and find her! She must be alone in Paris, with no money . . . It drives me crazy! I wasn't able to protect her . . .”

“I have no worries about Nina. She's tough.”

“Tough? But she must be completely alone now. Find her!”

“And why would I want to do that?”

“Do it because I'm begging you to. Because I've lost everything and you pity me. You do pity me, don't you?”

“No one could ever pity you.”

And for the first time in this meeting, Samir smiles.

“How am I supposed to know where she is?”

“You'll find her. I don't know how exactly . . . Use your connections. I'm sure you're at the center of things now. I know what that's like . . .”

Embarrassed, Samuel looks away. For a long time, neither of them speaks.

“Your lawyers told me you have a good chance of getting out of here.”

“Considering how much I'm paying them, my lawyers have a duty to be optimistic.”

“They say there's no evidence against you, and that's why you haven't been sent to Guantánamo.”

“So? You think it's any better here? This place is hell! And I have special privileges too—they've put me in an isolation cell. Thank God—I'd never have survived amid the gangs otherwise. If you could see what it's like . . . They team up along ethnic lines and spend all their time beating the shit out of each other . . .”

“You'll be out of here soon . . .”