by Karine Tuil
5
Alcohol. From the moment he wakes, there’s a bottle close at hand. Nothing else can liquefy this concrete block, this dead body lying inside his head. In alcohol, it dissolves a little, becomes more bearable. Samuel feels the warm slide of its effects, lying on his bed or standing at a bar or, sometimes, underground, in a basement, lining up with all the other sheep to buy some hash or coke, just enough to keep him going for another five or six hours. He quickly moves on to harder drugs that explode in his head, finally giving him the energy, the power that he needs. It works on paper and in ink too, this explosion: for the first time, he feels as if he is writing something worthwhile. He’s better, he thinks, than all those pen pushers who have never known violence, deprivation, that fear in the gut, that dread of going out, the possibility of murder, the taste of blood and iron, all those innocents who don’t know what it is to be woken in the middle of the night by gunshots, a kid moaning, a siren screaming, by neighbors fighting/running/crying, while he has seen everything—poverty/shit/death—and nothing can scare him now. He’s mired in it, and he feels good. He wouldn’t change places with anyone now. He’s at home in this hole, where one day he will die, a broken man. He sits at his desk, writing so fast it feels as if he’s sitting on a rocket, speeding, driving drunk, close to crashing at every turn, seeing nothing, hearing nothing but the words unfolding inside his head, spending his days and nights writing, on the verge of collapse, his body tense, heart pounding, pupils dilated, mouth dry, no longer eating. He can’t even look in a mirror anymore: his reflection horrifies him. He doesn’t wash, scratches himself till he bleeds. All his clothes are too big for him. But he still has enough strength to take more coke, and that keeps him going. He’s in danger—he might die, might never return from this edge—but he’s not afraid. What he wants, now, is to write about reality, his reality: this solitude, this suffering, this misery, this isolation, this social leprosy imposed by the government, encouraged by the government. And those men and women in power, cut off from the rest of us. It would take him an hour on public transport to reach the capital and set fire to it. They’ve given up on us. And he thinks: It’s all true. He’s not inventing anything. This great social novel is his life. He writes with a line by Hemingway in mind: “A true writer . . . should always try for something that has never been done, or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.” All these years, there had been a terrible distortion between what he wanted to write and what he wrote, as if, when committed to paper, the most powerful thoughts became banal phrases and each word seemed badly formulated, each comma and period in the wrong place, and he would rewrite endlessly without ever finding that perfect match between his thought and its expression. And it was only now, at forty years old, after losing Nina, that he suddenly felt in full possession of his abilities, his intention meshing precisely with his ambition.
* * *
He works, and only ever leaves the apartment to get his fix. Maybe he should kill himself. His situation is drastic. As the door bangs shut behind him, he feels his strength leave him. His legs give way—this is happening more and more, it needs to stop—and his fingers tremble too as he holds on to the wall, pressing against it so he doesn’t fall. On the landing across from his, a twelve-year-old kid smokes and watches him, not lifting a finger to help him. He’s keeping watch, sitting on a shaky old chair like a curator in a museum—he’ll be there all night. He supports his family by doing this. Fifty euros a night, in cash. Samuel walks downstairs—the elevator’s out of order. And it will stay that way. Like this, the cops have to take the stairs, their boots scraping loudly against the enamel tiles of the steps—it’s Us—their handcuffs clinking as they shake from their belts, so loud you can hear it upstairs—it’s Us—their walkie-talkies crackling and hissing as they talk to the support on the ground—it’s Us, we’ve got the situation covered—and by the time they arrive, there is nothing left: it’s all been stashed, hidden, thrown away. The babysitter’s looking after it. She’s a young widow, three young kids to look after. Her husband was shot and killed in a parking lot nearby—three bullets in the chest—and now she’s under the protection of a gang leader. What choice does she have? She hides the drugs in the baby’s clothes, sometimes in the cloth diapers that she uses to save money—she couldn’t give a shit about saving the planet. They say hello and goodbye to her; everyone does what they can. On the eighth floor, it’s like a hurdle race, with iron barriers blocking access to the higher floors. It takes him a good fifteen minutes to force his way through, and when he finally reaches the ground floor, when he leaves the building and walks toward the median strip ablaze with light, he is hit in the head with a bag of shit. He should wear a diaper on his head. He walks on, stinking of excrement. He doesn’t even yell or get mad—he’s used to it. And he knows tomorrow will be just the same.
* * *
Chêne Pointu—“Pointed Oak”—is the name of a housing estate in Clichy-sous-Bois. It’s a picturesque name, but the estate doesn’t really live up to it. No one ever comes to visit him here anymore—it’s “too dangerous.” It is a no-man’s-land that reeks of death/sex/money, but it is swarming, it is alive. He takes the stairs down to the basement and walks past jeering kids, scurrying rats, dealers, and whores. He knows where he’s going, but when he reaches his dealer, he collapses. He needs a fix but he has no cash. Please, please, he’ll pay tomorrow, he promises, swears on his parents’ graves, swears on his own life and his unborn children’s, then goes home, the same way he came, takes an Ecstasy pill, and writes until the middle of the night, feeling like the king of the world.
* * *
Two days later, his door is smashed down. Armed men enter his apartment and tear it to pieces. They want to be paid. Samuel says he has nothing on him (in reality, he has nothing in the bank either; he has nothing left at all) but they see his laptop and help themselves. Samuel screams, holding on to their legs. The first chapters of his book are in that laptop, in a document entitled novel 5, his only copy . . . he’d rather die than let them take it. The two guys punch him in the face, take his laptop, and tell him he can have it back when he’s brought them their money, plus interest payments—You have twenty-four hours, you piece of shit. They leave him in a pool of his own blood, like roadkill, his face swollen and one tooth missing. And here it is, at last—he’s reached rock-bottom.
6
Samir knows exactly when it began—the moment when everything imploded and confusion reigned, a confusion so total, arbitrary, and definitive that he could no longer distinguish anything, his brain fogged, his vision blurred, anxiety choking him, absolute chaos. It happened about three weeks after Nina arrived in New York. He remembers precisely how his life began to disintegrate. All it took was one sentence, pronounced in a gloomy voice by his secretary, one Monday morning, about ten a.m., and his smooth world—a world made smooth by years of lies and sordid compromises, of social constructs created by his imagination and his vaulting ambition—started to creak and then collapse. One sentence—“Your brother is waiting for you in your office”—and he was suddenly outside Eden. His brother? What brother? He had no brother, had never had a brother. I don’t have any family—you know that. Yes, she knows. She almost laughs as she explains that this man—who introduced himself as his brother but did not have the same surname (“François Yahyaoui—does that ring any bells?”)—announced that he was looking for “Samir Tahar.” That’s not me. She knows it’s not him, and asks if she should inform Berman. A man comes to his office, without an appointment, claiming to be his brother—he might be a madman or a pervert or something. Is he dangerous? Armed? “He wasn’t very clear, if you see what I mean. The guys in the lobby downstairs let him right up when he said he was your brother. Should I call security?” A surge of dread. “No, don’t call anyone, I’ll deal with it myself.” Anxiety grips him: he thinks of Nina, of his wife, and imagines the worst. François is not the kind of man who can be control
led, hushed up: he might kick up a fuss, cause a scene. His face creases into a smile that looks more like a grimace. He feels hot. He can hardly breathe. His brother in New York—this is a possibility he never even considered. He never gave him his address or invited him over. He has always been wary of social networks. And he hates him—really hates him—a repulsion that is almost physical and that goes back years. And yet he keeps on walking, moving toward the room at the end of a narrow corridor lit by a geometrically perfect sequence of warm yellow spotlights. Berman’s office is only a few yards away: he might appear at any moment and ask, “What’s going on?” Samir pushes down gently on the door handle—it’s slippery in his sweat-gloved hands—then opens the door and sees him: François, his brother.
* * *
A physical description of him is necessary because, that day, there is something scary about him. Is it the denim jacket spotted with black stains (grease? ink? soot?) or his jeans with the ripped knees or his T-shirt emblazoned with the image of a hard-rock band or his flashy high-top sneakers with their frayed laces? Or is it something in his blue-eyed gaze—a spark of insanity? You look at him and you sense that he is capable of anything. He is sitting on a brown velvet chair, tense as a loaded pistol with its trigger being squeezed. But Samir doesn’t even give him time to speak: having closed the door and checked that there is no one around, he bombards him with questions: What are you doing here? How did you find me? Who gave you my address? What do you want from me? Is Mom with you? There’s no lack of ammo. How long do you intend staying here? Who have you talked to about me? Who told you you could say you were my brother? What the hell do you want? “Whoa! Take it easy, man . . . Is this how you welcome your brother?” He has just endured eight hours in a piece-of-shit plane with a layover, his legs crushed by the seat in front, curled up like a sick animal—and he puked several times during the flight too—he’s exhausted, he hasn’t slept all night . . . he’s done all this to come see his brother, and all his brother can find to say is: “What are you doing here?”
“What the fuck kind of way is that to talk to your brother? You asshole!”
“Calm down, please.”
“Oh, I should calm down? Well, how do you expect me to do that when you greet me like I took a shit on your carpet?”
“I just wasn’t expecting you, that’s all.”
“I wanted to surprise you . . .”
* * *
He’s cut his hair since the last time Samir saw him, and in places you can see his white skull scattered with freckles. He’s also lost weight, and there’s something eerily skeletal about the way you can see his bones protrude through his corpse-pale skin, about the flint-sharp edge of his Adam’s apple. A large, torn, green sports bag is lying at his feet.
* * *
You must never come to my office without telling me in advance.
* * *
François stares at the carpet and plays nervously with a small metal chain that he’s taken from his pocket.
* * *
I’m not moving my ass from this chair.
* * *
Samir cracks open the blinds and thinks through the problem, going through various hypotheses. He needs to react quickly, get him out of here by any means necessary. Turning around, he suggests in a quiet and suddenly friendly voice that they meet in a nearby café: “It’ll be more relaxed there. I feel tense here, I feel stressed.” He has no wish to be seen with this man, in his office, or to have a personal conversation here. He does not want anyone to knock at the door and say: “Hi, I’m X, Y, I work for the firm. And you?” Yes, he is probably a little paranoid—life has made him that way. He has two cell phones, never talks about his private life in his office. He fears revelation, fears transparency. François agrees and gets to his feet abruptly, his long legs surprisingly agile. Picking up his bag, he leaves the office first. See you in a minute . . .
Relief and fear. Nothing more than a temporary reprieve before the inevitable defeat.
* * *
I’m fucked.
* * *
The sweat that sticks to his skin is spumescent. It’s the anxiety. His pulse speeds up, crackling and sputtering. Can a person die of fear? He is incapable of seeing past his confusion. When he walks toward the exit five minutes later, his secretary asks him who that man was, the one pretending to be his brother. And, smiling, without thinking, he replies: “A client who would do anything to make me represent him.” What assurance he has in moments like that, erasing doubts, forestalling questions.
He has a panic attack in the elevator and almost suffocates; his lucidity makes everything seem unreal. What does his brother want? He feels trapped, and that terrifies him. He feels vulnerable, and for a man who prides himself on never being intimidated, this is something new. He tells himself to calm down, but he can’t hold back the wildfire of fear inside him. He stands in front of the mirror and adjusts his tie, combs his hair. Come on, come on, just chill out. He knows he must show no weakness. He has to win the battle of wills, maintain the balance of power between him and his brother, and send him back to Paris clueless, unsuspecting, happily distracted by the wad of bills in his pocket. (He manages to convince himself of this, until he truly believes it.) But when he enters the café where he had arranged to meet François, his brother is not there. Samir walks all around the café, even asks the waiter if he’s seen “a blond man with a green duffel bag.” No, he’s seen no one fitting that description. And yet, Samir wrote down the name and address of the café for him. For twenty minutes he sits and waits, incapable of concentrating on anything else. (He doesn’t read the newspaper, doesn’t touch the tea he ordered, doesn’t answer his phone—it’s his wife again.) He calls his secretary to ask whether anyone has left a message for him (“Yes, your wife called,” she replies. “She said she tried to get hold of you on your cell phone and she couldn’t understand why you didn’t answer”) and then finally gets up and leaves. End of round one—and he is losing on points.
Walking back to his office, he tries to think of a reason why his brother wouldn’t turn up: he changed his mind, he couldn’t find the café, he’s dead . . . Oh, yes, how he would love to find out that François had died in an accident, never to hear his name again . . .
* * *
François did not return to the office, and at seven p.m. Samir went over to Nina’s place to tell her what had happened. To lie down and talk. With her, he can be himself. Love and trust release the shackles on his words. He feels free to tell her whatever he thinks; he doesn’t have to hold anything back or calculate or control what he says—all those defensive postures he adopts on a daily basis with his family and his colleagues, so that he always comes across the way they expect him to. He tells Nina that he doesn’t know what to do: he feels paralyzed by this situation. All day long he has been in a daze, unable to concentrate, to answer his clients’ questions. “You have to understand: I have no hold over him at all.” He has never gotten a real understanding of his brother’s personality, and—he can admit this to Nina—he has never loved him. Nina listens, and tries to reassure him: “He’ll leave in the end, don’t worry. He’s probably just come to ask you for money.” Yes, this is what he thinks too, and for a few minutes this belief is enough to calm him. Money, he can give him. But affection, friendship, any sort of brotherly love . . . no. He can’t work out what his brother wants—François is a mystery to him—but he is sure of one thing: he needs to beware of him. “You think he’s simple, but he’s complex. You think he’s harmless, but he’s dangerous. He doesn’t have the intellectual training, the language, the education to express the nuances of his personality, so his complexities sometimes express themselves only in violence. His father rejected him, and he’ll never forgive that: he won’t forgive his father, and he won’t forgive us. And that’s why he’s here now: he wants to make me pay for it.” Nina feels sure that he found out Samir’s contact details on the Internet and came, spontaneously, for a few days. “He’ll go back.
” If he does get back in touch, all Samir has to do is play along: hug him, kiss him. When he talks to Nina about all of this, everything seems simpler and clearer.