The Age of Reinvention

by Karine Tuil

  * * *

  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.

  11

  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.”

  12

  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 guy2 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.

  PART TWO

  1

  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 secti
ons 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.

  * * *

  They take the bus, then the suburban train. People stare and whistle at them—Are you going to the Cannes Festival? Samuel and Nina laugh. She struggles to walk on her four-inch stilettos, gripping tightly to Samuel’s arm and holding herself upright. We want people to notice us. You should wear your hair like that all the time. It took her over an hour to straighten it. After that, she went to the manicurist—her nails are blood-red. She did the makeup herself—not too much. She wants to look her age: not older, not like a whore. He holds her close to him and thinks: This is my wife. Pathologically possessive? Oh, yeah. There is something puerile and pathetic in the way he boosts his own confidence by parading Nina like a trophy, but he has found no better way of resisting decline. His place in society is down to her; he owes her everything. He is nothing without her—he has persuaded himself of this through the years they have spent together: If she leaves, I die. If she leaves, I’ll kill myself. He knows this, says it, and yet here he is, running the risk of losing her, testing her in the flame, playing with fire, on a suicide mission.

  It is still early when they reach Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, so Nina suggests they walk for a while. He prefers taking her into boutiques—just to look around, not to buy anything—for the pleasure of being welcomed, respected, seen at her side. He asks her to try on a dress with a plunging neckline; under the complicit gaze of the sales assistant,1 he takes the dress over to the changing room himself. It’ll be fine, he tells her, and when she goes inside, he follows her. You’re crazy, she says, someone might see us. But this is exactly what he wants: to be seen. He draws the curtain and kisses her. “You’re crazy.” “Yes, I’m crazy about you.”

  * * *

  1. Kadi Diallo, thirty-four. The daughter of an African diplomat, she worked as a model for Dior before taking part in a humanitarian mission in Sudan. After three years, she returned to France, where she found this part-time job as a sales assistant. Her ambition is to be manager of the boutique.

  2

  Samir never feels fear—not on television, not in court, not with beautiful women or powerful men or judges. He is cool, unemotional, and years of speech-making and negotiating have toughened him up even further. But the mere idea of seeing Nina sends him into a panic. All the signs are there: accelerated heartbeat, trembling hands, practically stuttering. This isn’t like him at all. What has happened to that self-confident swagger, that winning arrogance? Gone. He is shaking—really shaking. He feels his wrist: pulse throbbing, out of control. Even the blue vein that snakes down his forearm is quivering, for God’s sake! He checks himself in the mirror, as if making an inventory. He changes his clothes three or four times—his shirt’s too fitted, his collar badly ironed, the color too dark—then orders a whiskey and waits in his hotel room, switches on/off the TV, sits down/stands up, and finally grabs his laptop and googles Samuel and Nina. Nothing but a few profiles on social networks—this reassures him. He checks out their photographs. There are only a dozen of them, but he sees love/harmony/contentment and it revolts him. Nina’s still as beautiful as ever, almost unchanged, while Samuel stands alongside her, outshone, a mere shadow. Angrily he shuts his laptop. Seeing them together is unbearable and he no longer feels sure he wants to go down to the hotel bar. He makes a few phone calls, hoping they will clear his mind, and then—five minutes before they are due to meet—finally decides to go downstairs. Time for the confrontation. He exits the room, banging the door behind him. Calm down. Walks quickly. But in the hallway that leads to the elevator, he sees a woman1 from behind who looks like Nina, and emotion pours through him once again.

  * * *

  1. This woman’s name is Maria Milosz, and her life merits more than a mere footnote.

  3

  They see him right away. It’s him. Look over there, at the back—suntanned skin, impeccably styled hair, sitting on the velvet couch, phone in hand, a newspaper open on the coffee table in front of him. They’re late, but they don’t rush—better to take their time. As they close in on him, they sense his disarray. Samir looks at them too, and judges them instantly (Nina, even more beautiful than her photographs, even more breathtaking than she was twenty years ago—incredible; Samuel has changed, aged, and he thinks: I’m better than him). They’re standing up and he’s sunk in this stupid sofa. The position humbles him, reducing him to nothing, the lowest of the low. He wasn’t able to keep her—that woman is the one great failure of his life—and in Samuel’s eyes he reads the message: Look at us. She left you for me. Look at us and suffer. And boy, is he suffering. His heart’s doing somersaults inside his chest and he’s walking like a robot remotely controlled by a child or a sadist. He looks like he’s going to crash into something. He feels like he’s going to collapse. Time has not faded his desire. His whole body is reeling, exuding what he feels. And yet he loved her/had her. And there, the earth trembles, cracks open. He had imagined a gesture of affection, some humor/emotion, good evening, you’ve changed/haven’t changed a bit, a sip of wine, a smile, a fluttering of eyelashes, nothing too disturbing, nothing to shake his cool self-confidence/arrogance. He had imagined a breezy, peaceful reunion, no conflicts or torments, just happiness at seeing each other after all these years, a little nostalgia, for old times’ sake. He did not envisage the panic and dread that is rising within him now. He should never have exposed himself to this—should have remained mistrustful, protected himself—but now it’s too late: he’s exploding inside, he’s in pieces, breathing too hard. He’s a wreck. He holds out a damp, trembling hand—a hand that expresses his anguish better than any words could—and when Samuel ignores it and hugs him instead, taking him affectionately in his arms (when he hates him), smiling at him complicitly (when they are enemies, and have been ever since Nina first yielded to him), a childish idea fills his head: One day, I’ll take her back.

  * * *

  They sit down. The ordeal of seeing them together, in love, all smiles. The ordeal of sitting opposite them, seeing them caress each other, limbs intertwined. The ordeal of listening to them recount their personal and social success. The ordeal of feeling close to her and not being able to touch her. The ordeal of being in the middle of a crowd of strangers, in a hotel bar, sitting down, dressed up, respectable, when he wants to be alone with her in his room. The ordeal of thinking about the chaos of his own private life when their happiness is exhibited before his eyes like a whore he can’t afford.

  * * *

  Samir examines/scrutinizes/sniffs out the lack of taste, and then, suddenly, he understands. He is the Sherlock Holmes of social codes. He sees and he knows. What is that oversized, badly tailored suit that Samuel wears like a scarecrow? What are those fake leather shoes? And the plastic sole with the price sticker still glued to it? Maybe Samuel has money, maybe he’s a success, but he’s a rube. He’s dressed up all shiny and tawdry, without any finesse or refinement. He looks him up and down now—Compare the two of us. This is the true confrontation, the duel: two gunslingers whipping out their social indicators, two poker players bluffing about what they have in their hands; two men who want the same woman, their eyes meeting, judging, measuring, and analyzing . . . it’s a bat
tle, a form of combat. You could cut the tension with a knife! And, in the middle of it all, the woman whose mere presence is the cause of all this sexual tension, this weird electricity. Such creatures are rare. It is not simply a question of beauty: there are plenty of beautiful girls in this hotel bar, perfect bodies perfectly fitted into four-thousand-dollar dresses, girls with sculpted features whose coruscating beauty sweeps all before them. But a woman who captures the light with such intensity, a woman whose erotic power you can sense even at a distance, across a crowded room, a wide radius around her that should be sticker-taped WARNING: YOU ARE NOW ENTERING THE DANGER ZONE . . . you can search for a long time and never find such a woman. Not that she is particularly secretive or reserved, but she seems to be holding something back, as if she is cordoned off, and the man who sees her has only one desire: to uncover what is hidden. What is it like to go to bed with a girl like that? Does she close up even more? Does she let loose what’s within her? Samir knows—it’s explosive. You go in like a bomb disposal expert, every part of you protected, your features tensed and concentrated, uncertain whether you will get out alive. You go in and you discover that, with a girl like that, you will never really be able to possess her, to make her love you.