by Ryad Girod
As I kept an eye on Mansour who was asking the waiter to refill our two glasses, which we would then drink rather quickly, my gaze crossed that of a woman whom I found to be extremely beautiful. Nadine, I would later find out she was called, was rather simply dressed for such a reception … jeans, blouse, and linen jacket … shoulder-length hair cut in a bob, curled and skillfully mussed up … no jewelry and no makeup, and yet she shone, to my eyes. As I approached her, I noticed a touch of kohl around her eyes and a light red to her lips but also, not without a twinge in my heart, a husband at her side. A pleasant-looking husband, fortunately. Venez vous joindre! he threw at us in poor beginner’s French when he caught sight of us, Mansour and me, looking lost and maybe a bit restless … Pulling myself together, I grabbed my friend and soon the four of us were deep into the introductions and then in full conversation … In fact, it was Stan who took charge of the conversation; chatting garrulously and draining his drinks rather quickly, he directed our volleys like a true coach, which it turned out he was … Nadine, quiet, curiously stared at Mansour, who still appeared lost, looking successively at his glass his feet the people and the walls of the residence … and me, tightrope walker that I am, I admired Nadine’s face and, as best I could, sometimes in English sometimes in French, pulled the wool over the eyes of Stan the Australian ex-tennis champion, a Francophile, he told us, who had since become an athletics trainer for wealthy Saudis who wanted to stay in shape. I also tried to attract Nadine’s attention by showing myself to be tellement amusant and by trying to be si intelligent but nothing managed to divert her gaze from Mansour, who continued peacefully, off in his own little world, to put back drink after drink … I even managed to buttonhole the Eternal Jack as he walked past us at one point and I even managed to make him laugh and to suck him into a discussion about mineralogy in the oceanic plates of the Gulf, but nothing, absolutely nothing, was able to divert Nadine’s attention away from poor—and likely already drunk—Mansour. I let Jack go free to resume, like a satellite in zero gravity, his trajectory around other clusters of people and I surrendered, not without regret, before the black hole that my friend had become and that held prisoner all of Nadine’s light.
Gassouh! Gassouh! What a trajectory, Mansour! What a trajectory! I only now understand that what brought you close to Nadine, nothing could have pulled you back away … what brought you close to her brought you closer to yourself than you could have ever been on your own. They are gravitational forces so powerful that nothing and nobody could have changed the trajectory. And what a trajectory! From the halls of the French residence to this square, so noisy and so hostile … My God the hostility! Nothing and nobody, oh God, would have been able to curve the straight line that you travel … and you will bend forward beneath the blade the same way that a rock falls to earth … My God, what a trajectory! And I ask your forgiveness, Mansour, for having momentarily wished for your head when Nadine was avoiding my gaze to attract your eyes … I beg your forgiveness, Mansour!
Nadine Nasr-Vaughan asked Mansour, in Arabic, if he was also Lebanese. Sort of … he replied, without ever really climbing out of his lost state or his drunkenness. She seemed contented enough with his reply seeing as she asked for no further clarification. Did she simply want to hear his voice? Who is to say? I went off to get refills for everyone. When I returned, I noticed that a strange muteness had fallen over the three of them … Mansour was looking at Stan who was looking at Nadine who was looking at Mansour … I distributed the drinks and Stan asked us what we did for a living. I was explaining that we worked for a property development firm, me as an engineer, and Mansour as an architect, when my friend interrupted me to specify that he had lost his job and was looking for a new one … that his training having been more in landscape design he hoped to undertake a career as a gardener. Which triggered great hilarity from Stan but also his generosity, because he instantly proposed that Mansour begin his beautiful and glorious new career in their garden … to which my friend replied favorably, but volunteered at the same time one reservation, seeing as he was looking for a job that came with accommodation and meals, with gîte et couvert, he had said at first in French, to Stan’s incomprehension … to which Nadine also replied favorably, especially seeing that they had, at their villa, a little outbuilding that would do the trick perfectly after a few adjustments … to which Mansour replied, Oui, d’accord … after which Stan got out his cell phone to type in Mansour’s number, held out his hand and said, Merde! It’s a deal, you asshole! out of some sort of tenderness … and of course with proximity and attachment. As for me, I needed nothing more than my eyes to observe the gravitational forces that bind stars together, and the inexorable trajectories that they follow.
From that point on, the series of events occurred following a rather hazy and rather incoherent progression. The liquor was seriously interfering with our vision and our hearing and pushed us toward happenings that we would surely feel embarrassed about the following day. While the other three went back to their enigmatic muteness, I attempted to follow Jack’s trajectory with my eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of his cards as he went about French diplomacy … Nevertheless, I understood that Monsieur Jack Lang, so comfortable and so similar to the rest of the executives in his gestures and his speech, was not only along on the trip to represent the Institut du Monde Arabe. Perhaps he was there to step in for Fabius, who was visibly tired and had promptly withdrawn from this little shindig? Who is to say? Simple to spot thanks to his hair, as black and distinctive as it was, my friend Jack was easy to follow in his peregrinations, shifting seamlessly and without interruption from discussions with the heads of industry to accolades with Le Drian to chuckles with Montebourg and to peals of laughter in the company of the representatives of the realm, which is to say the princes and the deputy princes and the crown princes and the deputy crown princes and the deputy crown deputy princes … and so on until there was no longer a trace of him, the alcohol seriously impairing my sight and my sense of direction. Immobile, I lost myself trying to follow Jack’s amazing hair and Nadine’s unbelievable eyes at the same time … And at that very moment, the alcohol overwhelmed Mansour’s stomach most of all, which emptied itself noisily all over Stan’s suit. A woman screamed in revulsion at the sight of the yellowish geyser spurting in fits and starts from my friend’s mouth, and Stan, paradoxically, belted out his admiration regarding his new employee. Merde! I love this asshole! As best we could, Stan and I hurried to haul Mansour out into the residence’s gardens where he continued, a heave at a time, to empty his stomach all over the beds of flowers that they had miraculously brought to life at this latitude, where we suffocated all year long … The embassy guards—sporty young men with short-cropped hair, in suits and typically wearing smiles in all circumstances—charged at us, not smiling at all, asking us if we please wouldn’t mind clearing the hell off … As I was asking myself if the formula “to not mind clearing the hell off” might qualify as an oxymoron, François Hollande, who had only then finished his round of selfies and who had witnessed “the incident,” approached us to ask if everything was all right and if he could be of any sort of help … which drew over, of course, half the guests, who all squeezed in to admire Mansour on his knees, Stan holding him by the shoulders, Nadine wiping off his face, the little dickhead hiding his own face in his hands, and me, negotiating with the guards in hopes of a respectable exit for the group of us … and thus half the guests all had the opportunity to admire the large and grotesque smile, some might say idiotic, that François Hollande directed our way as we took our leave, the four of us, flanked quite closely by the best of the guards.
Outside, things were still just as chaotic … Nadine’s stare boring a hole into me when I insisted I would accompany Mansour home and then Nadine’s voice expressing her desire for Stan to accompany us both and Mansour crying out his refusal and Nadine’s hands encircling Mansour’s taut face as he kept refusing to allow the humiliation go that far and Stan’s firm hand ab
ove Mansour’s cringing face and then the hugs between Stan and Mansour and me that went on right up until a vehicle full of Saudi soldiers came to a stop beside us. The driver lowered his window and asked if everything was all right and then the car drove off after they had heard Stan assure them in English, Okay! Okay! Everything’s all right! And then at that, Nadine’s stare as it turned away and her face as it disappeared into Stan’s dimly lit 4x4 and the sound of the doors as they slammed and then the fading sound of the engine … and then Mansour at the wheel of his beautiful red Camaro and then me in my car, behind, trailing the taillights of that beautiful red Camaro as it flew toward its destiny along the highways of Riyadh. That’s how the night ended, or, at least, the conscious recollection we had of that soiree … because we just drove, one behind the other, completely wasted and without the least bit of self-awareness, as if following some sort of trajectory. For that matter, we had no idea, when we awoke in our own beds, how we were still alive. We had purely and simply been towed along by powerful gravitational forces. That evening had had its bundle of hopes in the person of François Hollande, who promised to save our country either directly or via Lebanon, and in the person of Stan, who had promised to hire Mansour and who, visibly, had enough physical strength to take him in hand … and then, there had been the face and the eyes and the voice of Nadine, which I hoped to see turn in my direction one day. But upon waking, after having thanked the guardian angels who had transported me to my bed, I was no longer all that sure about anything at all.
Gassouh! Gassouh! It’s toward these cries that the gravitational forces pulled you, Mansour … and nothing and nobody could have changed the destination or diminished the strength of that attraction. Will François appear among all these hate-filled faces? Will he laugh his head off after a clever joke? A cutting jibe? Or will he at long last find the strong bearing of the president of France and the diction to go with it? Or maybe François le Français, defender of human rights, will smile at you again, one last time, to show you his compassion, his regret, and his firm condemnation? I don’t think so, Mansour. We understood nothing of the world or its fall from grace. We thought we could see the intentions of the powerful for what they were, but neither one of us had the intelligence or the intuition to have a hope of understanding anything at all about anything at all.
5.
VERY QUICKLY, Mansour found himself in Stan and Nadine’s employ. Having abandoned job and apartment, he from that point lived in a small outbuilding near their large villa, among the scorched plants and flowers of the garden. The sun, the dryness, the heat and the absence of upkeep had ended up leaving everything charred and giving that elegant courtyard the look of a field of despair. Mansour had even said that it reminded him of the strange prairie from his dream and that all that was missing for him to feel fully back there again was the ass … to which I replied, inevitably and inwardly, that he would suffice as a stand-in for the ass. Very quickly, Mansour found himself in Stan and Nadine’s employ … and, to go into specifics, everything was arranged over a span of three days, made to seem like one single long day by my excessive drug use. We were returning from a trip out into the desert where Mansour, as was his custom, had gone off in isolation to enter into communion with I have no idea what, while I, as was my custom, had remained in isolation in the Camaro and within the cloud of hashish smoke to enter into communion with myself, or so I had pretentiously thought. And so, heading back in and then ringing the bell at the large villa, we saw Stan open the door for us and demonstrate his joy by shouting to Nadine, somewhere within the house, that those two assholes had arrived … Hunched over, I followed Mansour who followed Stan, looking at him as if he didn’t truly exist … as if Stan possessed no human qualities, as if he were no more than mobile and sonorous matter that led us toward the living room and its deep armchairs, where we settled in to await the drinks he had promised us. I felt more and more hunched over, as if bowing under my own weight. I gradually sank into the large leather armchair and tried desperately to cling to reality by watching, through the room’s bay window, the comings and goings of Stan and Nadine’s chauffeur, as he circled a brown 4x4 parked in the courtyard. Stan appeared and disappeared with regularity without my knowing the exact reason, and Mansour was constantly staring at me, also without my knowing the reason. I avoided his stare by continuing to observe the comings and goings of the driver and the furnishings of the living room, which I considered to be pretty tasteless and which conflicted with what I’d picked up on about Nadine as far as style and refinement went. Stan finally returned with the desperately awaited drinks and promptly closed the curtains of the bay window. Those assholes would send you to the gallows for the five hundred riyals! he confided as he invited us to share both his caution and a sampling of the vin maison that he made himself in the basement, access to which was utterly forbidden to the Pakistani, Ikram, who served as Nadine’s driver. It was true that Ikram kept a constant eye on us as he cleaned the 4x4, like he expected to see something interesting or like he suspected something serious was afoot … or quite simply out of curiosity, I had told myself. Stan held out to us the fruit of his labors, cloudy and reeking of alcohol, and asked us where we were arriving from. Incapable of replying in any audible way, I left it to Mansour to take care of things. From the desert, he said concisely. And why’s that? pursued Stan, but Mansour didn’t answer, or not really, muttering something like, No reason, which clearly had no effect when it came to dissuading Stan, who, in search of a topic of conversation, had hit on a good one. You watch yourselves! There’s something bewitching out there … A friend of his, an expat like him and like the whole lot of us, actually, used to go out there quite frequently and once he left Saudi Arabia and returned to England, he missed the desert so much that he tried a thousand different ways, any way you can imagine, to get a visa so he could return and see the dunes of the Najd … but obviously, no visa and he hadn’t been able to come back. Sad and desperate, he only found comfort in spending entire evenings watching all kinds of Westerns on TV, paying close attention to the noisy cavalcades as they rode from the cliffs of the Grand Canyon to the wide sands of New Mexico, in the hope of finding a bit of that lost magic once again … his wife grew tired of him and his depression cost him his job. It didn’t take long for him to find himself all alone, watching shitty Westerns from morning till night in the company of a goldfish with which he said he could communicate through signs … despite my repeat attempts to find out more about these mysterious signs, I lost the thread of the conversation and returned to mechanically following the comings and goings of the driver, on the other side of the bay window, up until the moment that Nadine made her entrance into the living room. Her entrance and her exit, actually, because she hardly greeted us and hurriedly pulled Mansour away by the arm to introduce him to Ikram and to arrange, between the three of them, how and when they would collect all of his things so as to have him moved in as quickly as possible. Vivacious and beautiful enough to die for, Nadine clarified that she would go out immediately to purchase everything she thought Mansour would need so that he would feel comfortable, so that he felt at home, or even better than he had been in his own place … Nadine, like a slap that instantly tore me from my torpor and from the armchair into which I had sunk only to find myself watching them from behind the curtain of the bay window, spying on them, while Stan just stood there firmly planted in the middle of the living room, his drink in his hand, offering me a smile that I wasn’t quite able to interpret. Was he still under the effects of that slap and was he still smiling at me or had he gone back to telling me the story about his friend while I turned back to the curtains and observed them—they say that spirits haunt those dunes—while Nadine continued to hold Mansour by the arm—that it’s somehow the place where all of the spirits on earth congregate—while her lips moved as Ikram looked stormily on with a look that I found strange and intolerant, to say the least, sizing things up in an underhanded way, compared to that of Nadine, whi
ch to me appeared straight and resolute and open and irresistibly beautiful as it focused on Mansour’s gleaming eyes, who then turned to Ikram and held out his hand, which the other man then listlessly took in his own to shake it just as listlessly as he looked away from Nadine’s unbelievable face even as I asked myself how it was possible to turn away from that face for a single instant and since Stan was still behind me—spirits that sometimes end up inhabiting certain men—waiting for I don’t know what to become clear about the whole scene that I continued to observe in spite of everything … in spite of the indecency, in spite of the impropriety, in spite of the fear and in spite of the tearing, the lightning bolt that shot through me when Nadine took her leave of Ikram and again clung to Mansour as she accompanied him like he was an invalid back inside and to the living room where Stan and I, turned to stone, hadn’t moved a muscle—spirits that ended up inhabiting some of us to never leave again. Nadine gently pushed Mansour toward the center of the room and went off to do her shopping. Mansour advanced toward us as if he was still driven by the slight momentum she had imparted to him before she left, leaving him to us as if a rolling ball.