The Age of Reinvention

by Karine Tuil

  He clicks on each link, prints each document. He discovers that Samir got his master’s in criminal law from the University of Montpellier and joined the firm Lévy et Queffélec, where he worked for two years before taking over the branch they opened in New York. Samuel googles Levy, Berman and Associates. Having passed the bar exams in Paris and New York, Samir made his name representing an American firefighter who was seriously burned while rescuing victims of the Twin Towers attack, and two families of soldiers killed in Afghanistan. His name is also often mentioned in relation to lawsuits brought by feminist groups; in fact, he has represented several gang-rape victims. He also learns that Samir is married to Ruth Berg, the daughter of Rahm Berg.

  * * *

  On Wikipedia, he finds this article:

  Born in Jerusalem on May 4, 1945, Rahm Berg is an American businessman, former president of the RBA Group, listed on the Fortune Global 100. He is also one of the world’s biggest collectors of modern and contemporary art.

  His first name, Rahm, means “high” or “lofty” in Hebrew. His mother, Rebecca Weiss, is descended from a long line of ultra-Orthodox rabbis. His father, Abraham Berg, born in Jerusalem, is a former member of Irgun, a paramilitary Zionist group active in Palestine and then in Israel between 1931 and 1948. He emigrated to the United States with his family in the late 1950s.

  Rahm Berg is a fervent supporter of the “Jewish cause” and of Israel. He has financed several artistic projects and, in particular, one major exhibition entitled “Guilty Silence” at the Somerset House gallery in London.

  When he types “Sam Tahar” into Google, he notices something he missed the first time around. The search engine provides the most-searched-for combinations involving his name. Samuel reads:

  sam tahar lawyer

  sam tahar new york

  sam tahar jew

  They are dubious to begin with—they know that the description “Jew” is often attached to famous people on Internet search engines—but as they open the links, they realize there can be no doubt. “So Samir’s either pretending to be a Jew or he’s become a Jew—that’s pretty clear, don’t you think?” “Yes,” says Samuel coldly, apparently troubled by this revelation. “You think he converted?” Nina asks. “It’s possible . . . Anything’s possible where he’s concerned.” The two of them are suddenly struck silent by a large portrait of Samir in an American magazine. Caught by the lens of a famous photographer, he is posing in a black suit and white shirt, his face aggressively lit from below, as if to underline his importance and his duality, suggested by the article’s subtitle: God or the Devil? Above the full-page article runs the headline WHAT MAKES SAMI RUN?, while the piece itself, written by a young American novelist,1 is part of a series of profiles entitled Rising Stars, highlighting the upward trajectories of leaders in various professional fields. Samuel’s English is not good, but Nina’s is. “Give me that,” she says, grabbing the laptop and placing it (underside hot and motor whirring) on her knees. As she reads, she translates for Samuel. But after only a few seconds, her face tightens and she goes silent. “What is it? What does it say?” Samuel asks. Nina does not reply. She reads on, incapable of dragging her eyes away from the screen. “Tell me what it says!” Samuel shouts. He’s losing control now, this is torture, he’s about to crack. “Tell me what it says in the article! Why have you stopped translating?” Nina remains silent. She has to read the piece three or four times so she can fully understand what’s at stake and decide her strategy. He grabs her shoulders and gently shakes her: “Tell me! Tell me! What does it say?” But she only looks at him, her mouth half open, without making the slightest sound.

  * * *

  1. Samantha David, twenty-eight, author of the political novel The Reconciliation. Has also written works of erotica under the pseudonym Lola Monroe.

  4

  Here they are now, the Tahars, walking hand in hand through the main entrance with a complacent, seen-it-all look on their faces while the night watchman1 assigned to guard their building checks them out with a mix of fascination and contempt. Later, he will describe them to his wife as “those rich bastards,” but for now he’s all smiles—good evening, ma’am, good evening, sir, laying it on thick in search of a tip. It’s an importunate sort of obsequiousness, and Tahar will end up slipping him a few bills, but not now because—tough luck—Ruth’s cell phone starts ringing: it’s her father, wanting to congratulate her again, tell her how proud of her he is, etc. They take the elevator—Ruth’s father still talking—and enter their apartment, and finally she is able to hang up, after thanking her father ten times over. (And Samir finds himself wondering just how much input this man had in the organization of his party, hoping the answer is not too much because he can’t stand the idea of being indebted to his father-in-law again.) One last drink before bedtime? he asks his wife. But no, she’s had too much to drink already and she’s tired. “I can’t believe you still have so much energy. I feel like I’ve kissed so many people tonight that I must have caught every germ in Manhattan!” But there’s no way he can sleep now—it must be the excitement, the emotion. Before going to bed, she hands him the large white envelope containing the list that she left at Ralph Lauren. He can’t resist opening it in front of her and remarking on the amount of money each guest paid. “Stan, that son of a bitch—I made him who he is and all he gets me is a hundred-and-fifty-dollar scarf. Dylan gave fifteen hundred euros—I hope he didn’t hand it over in cash,” he jokes. “You have enough clothes to last you until you’re fifty,” Ruth says. And then, after kissing her husband, she moves off toward the bedroom. Samir watches her slim figure vanish down the hallway, holding her precious high heels by their straps in one slender hand, her bare feet gliding delicately over the carpet like the ballet dancer she must once have been, back in her childhood when, idolized by a father who saw her as a creature of earthly perfection, she had tried out every single activity a wellborn girl ought to try: ballet, music, and foreign languages, essentially. The results had been beyond even her father’s expectations: just look at the way she walks, stately and supple; admire her posture, her virtuosity at the piano; the ease with which she expresses herself in German, Hebrew, even Japanese, which she learned quite late, purely for the pleasure of being able to read haikus untranslated.

  * * *

  Samir watches her and instantly feels regret for having bedded so many other women, for having cheated on her whenever the opportunity has arisen, a slave to the irresistible urges of his nature, a hostage to his obsessions, to his own body which freely possesses/enjoys/desires whatever it wishes, sating his fantasies with a liberty that both distresses and impresses him. It is stronger than he is. The way he behaves toward women is offensive, he knows: ready to do it at the drop of a pair of panties, incapable of self-control; in public, in private, always on the alert, checking out every woman who enters a room, searching for that spark in their eyes. Sometimes he even spots them in a newspaper, on TV, and writes to them, inviting them to lunch—I love your work—novelists especially, looking at their photographs in the literary pages of Vanity Fair. “Doesn’t it scare you?” Berman would ask, each time he discovered some compromising liaison. “Sure, of course it does. I’m scared all the time. Scared of losing my wife, my family. Scared of falling in love. Scared that one of these girls will pester me afterward, cry rape because I didn’t call her back. I’m scared of catching a disease—I know, I know, you’ve told me before, it’s crazy not to take precautions: it’s irresponsible, inexcusable, I’m endangering my wife, my life . . . I might lose everything for ten minutes of pleasure. Ha, are you shocked? Well, let me shock you even more . . . sometimes it doesn’t even last ten minutes. And I hate myself afterward. I’m filled with regret, with guilt. I’m terrified of what might happen. But don’t you see? Desire is so much stronger than fear, so much bigger: fear just shrinks to nothing beside it. Every time, I tell myself not to do it again, to control myself, but it’s stronger than me. As soon as I see a girl I li
ke, a girl who excites me—and she doesn’t have to be beautiful: she can be plain, common, coarse; sexual attraction has nothing to do with beauty—anyway, as soon as I see someone I desire, I dive right in. You think I’m addicted? Yeah, you’re probably right. But what am I supposed to do about it? Suppress what I feel? It’ll happen naturally as I get older, won’t it?” Berman has already warned him about this several times: “In the U.S., you have to control yourself, you have to restrain yourself. Don’t you understand that? You will, believe me. This isn’t advice—it’s an order. Do not covet your neighbor’s wife. Don’t even look at her. Avoid being alone with her. I don’t care if she’s sexy or if she comes on to you, you have to say no. Talk to a shrink. Talk to a friend. Talk to me. Take deep breaths. Take a tranquilizer. Take a cold shower. Whatever it takes. Never let desire get the better of your conscience, your morality, because in this country, morality rules everything. Your morality is what will determine your future in American society. Lose your morality and you’ll lose your job, your wife, your kids’ respect, everything. Does that shock you? Then live somewhere else. Go back to France, where people’s private lives are private. François Mitterrand managed to lead a double life—two women, two families. You could do the same.” But this is impossible. Unthinkable. Tahar wants to stay in New York. His life is here, his career and family are here. He loves the life he leads here. He loves his job. And, in his own way, he loves his wife. But married life—with its strictly fenced-off codes and rules, its well-worn and signposted paths—is not for him. Life with Ruth is so calm and tranquil, but Samir needs adrenaline, danger, in order to feel alive. And this means limitless sex. Even age is not really a limit. Hearing this, his partner loses it. This is Samir’s weakness: seventeen-year-old girls who look like they might be twenty-two, made up like inflatable dolls, teetering on five-inch heels borrowed from their mothers or bought cheap online, the girls saying they’ll probably never wear them, and then, next day, wearing them out to a club. They want men to find them attractive. They want men to look at them and think: Whoa! She’s the sexiest girl I’ve ever seen! Samir thinks this, and says it too. And generally it works. They have two or three drinks and a conversation that invariably revolves around what kind of music they like or which TV shows they’ve seen recently, and then they do whatever he wants. Tahar has a theory about this: a girl of fifteen or sixteen is just as mature as a girl of eighteen. Sometimes he even goes further: “No one wants to talk about this, but I’m going to tell you the truth,” he told Berman. “I’m in favor of lowering the age of consent.” “Thank God you’re not running for office!” his partner replied. Tahar doesn’t try to hide it: he likes ogling girls as they come out of high school, especially the French High School of New York. “I sit in a café and I watch them. I pick out the most sensual and mature ones—you can spot them right away—and I shoot an imaginary movie. I’m behind the camera and in front of it too. I see myself in action, seducing them, kissing them, fu—” “Tahar, shut your mouth! I don’t want to listen to this shit! Even hearing it is a crime. So shut the fuck up or I’m out of here!” Berman yelled. But Tahar went on: “What’s the big deal? How does it harm anyone, as long as they’re consenting? That’s all that matters: they want to do it! I’m not talking about raping them . . . They’re not exactly shrinking violets, believe me! In fact, they’re a lot more forward than most women my age. And yeah, I do sometimes fuck older women—but not often, because they’re so damn complicated. Age makes them fragile: they want reassurance all the time, and I can’t stand that. That’s not why I’m there, you know? When I’m with a really young girl, I feel totally desired. They go overboard to prove they’re women and they love it. I’m always quite moved by their little excesses. They don’t understand that this is not how it’s done, you see: they don’t see anything artificial about framing their ass in a garter belt, for example—they don’t even know how to wear it properly; they probably bought it on sale at Victoria’s Secret with gift vouchers they got from their grandparents for their birthday. They’re not embarrassed to wear glitzy accessories in flashy colors, and that’s what I like about them: they haven’t yet been perverted by the mechanics of sex, with all its codes and rules, its obsession with performance. They’re separate from all that; they’re like kids with their noses pressed to the store window, and I find that touching.” Hearing him talk like this, Berman called him a pedophile. “Do you really not understand what I’m saying, or are you just pretending not to understand? It’s not a question of age—it’s a question of sexual maturity.” He couldn’t give up sex. He had tried suppressing his urges; he’d seen a shrink, who’d prescribed tranquilizers; he’d even seen a rabbi—yes, seriously—who had recommended that he be discreet, choose times and places that made it less likely he’d be caught, places far from home. Never in public. Never in daylight. One thing he never told Berman: once a month he dressed entirely in black and went to a cheap hotel full of whores, where he had sex with girls who called him Samir. He was not the kind of guy to pay a call girl a thousand bucks an hour—“Are you kidding? They’re charging the same rate as me, and I did eight years of study!” He promised to be careful. In the United States, his partner had repeatedly warned him, you get a trace of your semen on a woman’s dress, blouse, underwear, or T-shirt and you are socially dead. “In some ways, Bill Clinton paid for everyone’s sins!” Tahar knows all this. But nothing can hold him back completely, and when, that night, he receives a text from Elisa Hanks2—a tall, voluptuous blonde who works for the New York prosecutor’s office and whom he met during a trial—he can’t resist. Now, having just taken off his pants, shirt, and shoes, he is standing on his vast terrace overlooking Central Park, a glass of vodka in his hand, a cold wind whipping his face. Leaning on the railing, he admires the skyscrapers rising into obscurity like control towers. The Hanks girl has sent him a text wishing him happy birthday; he thanks her and asks what she’s up to—no woman sends a text as bland as that in the middle of the night unless she has something in mind—and, bingo, she replies immediately with a sexually loaded message that he has no trouble decoding. Then she asks if he’s near his laptop because she wants to chat with him on Skype. He knows what she means, but he daren’t go back to his office to switch on his computer so he can check out this girl as she undresses for him on-screen. What does she have to offer him, after all? Big tits—he’s already noticed them. But what else? Long blond hair that she always wears in a bun . . . God, he’d like to see it let down. The vision of that girl naked, hair falling down over her breasts, excites him so much that he unties the belt of his monogrammed bathrobe, pulls it off his shoulders, and lets it fall to the floor. He has a sculpted body, ripped from all his athletic activity (he’s proud to say he has the same private trainer as Al Gore), and his tanned skin contrasts with the whiteness of his expensive boxer shorts. Slowly he aims the camera on his cell phone at his boxer shorts, which are bulging with the proof of his excitement, then takes a picture. He sends it as an attachment, making certain that the addressee really is Elisa Hanks. Then he waits. His phone vibrates again. He waits for a moment, letting his excitement rise. Finally he reads the message he has just received. But, this time, the name on his screen is not the one he expected.