The Age of Reinvention

by Karine Tuil

  * * *

  That evening, driving home, Samir calls his mother and asks about François. She is clearly upset, and it takes her ten seconds or so before she can speak clearly. That is when she tells him that François is gone—that he left their apartment with all his belongings, and you know what he said to me? No, Samir doesn’t know, would rather not know—he should have broken off all relations with them, that’s what he thinks—but his mother keeps on talking, her voice raw with hurt, the words coming fast: “He said he was never coming back.” Samir feels a sudden pain in his chest. The telephone slips between his fingers and falls to the floor. From the speaker, his mother’s voice crackles, calling out his name. He steps ever harder on the accelerator and the engine roars and he feels a sweet lightness, a kind of innocence, that he knows he will lose forever if he stops, so he floors the pedal, overtaking other cars, freight trucks, a sign on the back saying flammable materials, the word DANGER in big white letters on red, and he thinks, I could hit that tank and explode here, now, in the middle of the road, but he swerves around it—he’s the king of evasion—and continues at full speed until suddenly the car skids out of control, squeals to a standstill. Samir hangs on to the steering wheel and manages not to be thrown through the windshield. Blood is pouring from his nose, staining the leather seats. Samir raises himself slightly to look in the rearview mirror, but all he can see is his own terrified face.

  7

  Samuel’s downfall has been violent and painful, but there is also something—he is able to see this himself—almost funny about it. Tragicomic, that’s it. So here he is, waiting for something to happen, for a solution to magically appear—or perhaps simply waiting to be put out of his misery. He dreamed about it the night that those guys threatened him, in fact. He might die . . . well, so what? He’s alone now. Let them kill him. Let them finish him off. He’s losing everything anyway. Look at him—gap-toothed before his time. What does it matter if they smash all the rest of his teeth, his ribs too—why not, just for the fun of it?—his bones are fragile, it’d be easy. He can no longer feel his body. Everything is numb except his hand and his head—the only things that let him know the difference between nothingness and suffering, absence and solitude. He’s all out of drugs, his bank account is in the red, and his laptop is gone. He has no choice: he calls Nina and begs her to send him cash—a money order, a bank transfer—because he’s dying here. He won’t call her again, he promises, swears, and she ends up agreeing: the price of her mental and moral tranquility. It’s humiliating—the fact of being paid by her, the fact of having called her simply to obtain money—but it’s nothing compared to the desperation/fear/tension he feels, nothing compared to the certainty he has lost. The only certainty now is that he is damned, that he won’t last long. And yet he doesn’t give in: he clings to life, to what he might still make of it. And the next day, he makes the payment—hands over the cash and is given his laptop. Everything’s fine—no threats, no violence. They’re quits. But he’d better not come back expecting a fix from them, because they won’t give him anything. The drugs will go to those who stick to the only system that still works: consume/pay, consume/pay. He’ll die alone, as he no longer has the means to be an active participant in this system. He’ll have to make do with alcohol.

  So now he spends his days drinking, reading, and taking notes, as if what he were writing is a manual on romantic despair and solitude, and all the time he thinks: I’m not alone. Other writers have lived, loved, suffered, and have been able to turn their ordeal into literature. He has never been as disciplined as he is now, working for hours on his novel, waking up in the middle of the night to write passages of shocking violence in a sort of trance, as if they were being dictated to him by some kind of inherent rage, as if he were intoxicated and asphyxiated by anguish and anger even while he was in his mother’s womb. But in fact, the rage is just him. He is this writer with the wounded language, the chaotic sentences, the words pouring out of him with a power that sweeps away everything, wrecking all that was built, revealing all that was hidden, befouling all that was pure, convulsing all that was calm.

  * * *

  It is urgency, after years of reflection and waiting. It is mastery, after years of passivity. The moment when finally, at forty years old, he feels at the zenith of his intellectual maturity, in full possession of his powers. And for a man like him, whose life has been an exercise in renunciation, this is orgasmic. Nothing excites him now but the arrangement of words, the composition of sentences in rhythms that stir him, the invention and inhabiting of characters in a world that he created for them—a world that has to be virtual in order to bear that other world, the real one. He feels good, alone and writing. He knows his place now: in his office, laptop on, his dictionaries close by, always open, his black hardback notebooks scattered all over the desk and floor, his thousands of notes accumulated over the past twenty years—press cuttings, essays, book extracts, hundreds of handwritten pages that he has to decipher. Never has he felt so intensely the need to extricate himself from the world, not to marginalize himself—he sometimes has the feeling that his life up to now has been a slow process of social eviction—but to find his true place, which only writing can give him. Only writing offers a direct view of the world, without any distortion. He loves this life; he loves the state of extreme tension into which he is plunged during these moments of withdrawal, and he thinks again of that concept, born from Jewish mysticism, that his father once recounted to him: having created the world, God withdrew from it, leaving man to make of it what he would. Intellectually, he had been very close to his father, who had initiated him at a very young age into literature, both profane and sacred, into philosophy and exegesis. Since Nina’s departure, he has been rereading and annotating all the documents and books he inherited from his father—essays about Judaism, essentially. When he met Nina, having discovered the truth of his origins, he had severed all connections not only with his parents but with their religion. But now everything he had assimilated during those long years of learning comes back to him: the prayers and sacred texts, the commentaries and mystical interpretations, the commentaries on commentaries and the questions that are answered with other questions, the commentaries on commentaries on commentaries, the Hasidic stories and tales. His novel is full of this glorious mysticism, full of biblical characters with unpronounceable names. Everything he had buried for twenty years now resurfaces, and he welcomes those words back into his life without attempting to filter them. He feels as if his eyes had been opened at last. He feels a great peace. As if, by leaving him, Nina had allowed him to reconnect with his true self. For a long time, he had been incapable of mentioning his origins, his parents, and now the opposite is true: this is what his book is about. He is writing this dual story—his, and his parents’—in the novel on which he is working now, and which he has entitled Consolation, because the truth is that he has been searching for this all his life: to be consoled. And even now, alone, all he wants is to be with Nina. He misses her terribly. When he thinks about her, he feels the most awful pain, as if the jaws of a pair of pliers were digging into his heart. And yet he has managed to convince himself that he is finally able to write because she is no longer there. He has reread Kafka’s diary—the pages about the relationship between creation and solitude. He is writing well because he is alone, and he knows now that he will never give up this solitude, will never agree to live with a woman, to commit himself, and certainly will never have children. Social life, in spite of the useful observations it offers, turned him away from writing, and all he wants now is to write. For a long time, he has wondered what made him persist as a writer in spite of his repeated, endless failure to be published. Sometimes he felt as if he were a puny, inexperienced swimmer thrown in an Olympic pool and able to do nothing more than tread water, keep his head above the surface, while he dreamed of cleaving through the chlorinated water with a kick of his legs, holding his breath, eyes wide open, conquering the blue space
around him—because this was how he saw literature: as a vast territory to be invaded, a territory that cannot be breached without perfect breathing, masterful technique, total determination, without the drive to advance, to continue, to dive in every day even when you would rather stay in bed, to swim underwater even at the risk of never resurfacing. Most of the time, this ended in drowning.

  * * *

  He’d had this close, intimate relationship with writing ever since he was a child, sitting on his father’s lap and deciphering passages from the Torah. A man found fulfillment in reading and interpreting texts. A life without books was inconceivable. And—he could admit this now that Nina was no longer there—this had been the principal subject of incomprehension between them. Not that she was resistant to literature—she was a curious-minded woman with an instinctive intelligence—but she never understood how he could sacrifice his time, his energy, his friends for it; she never understood what it was in books that so absorbed Samuel. His obstinacy disconcerted her. The drawers of his desk were filled with rejection letters, but still he worked—hoping for what? Publication and recognition could no longer be expected. “Try to think about this clearly,” Nina exhorted him. To write—to choose to live alone most of each day without any contact with the outside world—you had to be crazy or willing to risk becoming so. And Samuel is—more and more. Crazy with solitude and sadness, crazy from missing her. And one day, when the pressure becomes too much, one day when he senses that he might be tempted by suicide again, he decides to call Nina. “I need to talk to you. I need to hear your voice.” He tells her he’s begun writing again, and says he would like her to read it. “No, Samuel. The answer is no. We must never talk again. You must never call me again. It’s over.”

  I’m not asking you for anything

  I don’t want money

  I just want to hear your voice

  I miss our conversations

  I miss you

  It hurts

  It hurts so much

  At the other end of the line, she remains cold and impassive. He silently searches for the words that might touch her, like a man rummaging through his wife’s things in the hope of uncovering a letter, a compromising object. Because that is what he wants: to compromise her. He wants to hurt her. He wants her to change her mind, wants to make her come home, so he can forgive her. He wants to coerce her through manipulation and lies: betray Samir. The day before, as if unconsciously hoping to increase his own suffering, he had reread a short memoir by the poet Joseph Brodsky, “Flight from Byzantium,” and he now surprises himself by saying to Nina the words the poet’s mother, who remained in Russia, had repeated to her son, exiled in the United States: “The only thing I want in life is to see you again.” But this makes no impression on her. For her, it’s over: she doesn’t want to see or talk to him again. She has turned the page and her life has changed for the better: it’s more intense, crazier, richer—the kind of life she always wanted. She doesn’t let up: she is not seeking merely to dissuade him, to distance him, but to destroy him. There is a sort of sadism in her determination, and this is a facet of her personality that they are discovering together. He is aghast, in pain; she is jubilant. She enjoys playing the role of the predator that catches/crushes/kills. She feels alive at last, fully aware of what she is doing: putting an end to twenty years of emotional alienation, avenging herself for all he made her lose, ridding herself of the humanity inside her, and winning. Armed with her new strength, she is supercharged by Samir’s love for her, by money and confidence, the certainty that everything is possible now, the knowledge that she has arrived, that she is at the top of the ladder while he is down at the bottom—and is going to stay there. Stay there and forget me! You think she’s cruel? So what? She owes him nothing, and in a cutting voice she says: “The last thing I want in life is to see you again.” Why such contempt? Why such brutality? Is she testing his resistance? There is a long silence, undisturbed by even the quietest whisper, and then suddenly he is reborn. He gets to his feet like a boxer sprawled on the canvas hearing the macabre count—1-2-3—and there he is, dancing again, proud, armed with what remains of his dignity and strength, and he avenges himself for what she made him suffer. The balance of power tilts. Now I’m the dominant one; now I’m in charge. “So you’re happy, are you? Happy, in your gilded prison, your artificial cocoon, your castle built on sand? Happier than you ever were with me, back when you were poor? Perhaps . . . but are you free? Do you really have the life you dreamed of? So your ambition was nothing greater than making yourself financially dependent on a rich man? All you ever wanted was a precarious romantic status that kept you from the clutches of poverty? It’s a false security, and you know it. He could dump you tomorrow and there would be nothing you could do about it. He loves you, he desires you? Sure, for now. But how long will that last? You think he’ll still be with you when you start to show signs of aging? How long do you think you have left? Three, four years of tranquil happiness . . . and then what? Shall I tell you what will happen after that? He’ll begin by cheating on you, though you won’t know about it. Then he’ll cheat on you openly but he’ll assure you that it doesn’t mean anything—just a fling, nothing more. In the end, he’ll leave you for someone else—a younger, more desirable woman—and all of this will happen without him ever divorcing his wife, because she gave him everything. It’s just reality. Life is unfair, it’s terrible . . . so what? What is he giving you? A life of luxury. You have a beautiful apartment, a cleaning lady, an expensive purse? Can’t you see that he’s treating you like a whore? That he doesn’t respect you? Can’t you see the machismo and the misogyny in the way he keeps you isolated in the name of his love for you? You’ve become exactly what you despised when you were twenty: one of those forty-something women who think they look ten years younger because they’re wearing a miniskirt that shows off their legs, one of those women who simper in front of men like little girls in front of their fathers, dressed-up dolls, sex toys that obey the masculine order, that indulge the fantasies of the powerful men who chose them! You used to tell me you would always be independent, and look at you now! Do you tell him how handsome and intelligent he is when he comes to see you between two business meetings, or in the evening before he goes home to his wife? Do you relieve the tension he feels after a hard day at work? Do you thank him when he leaves you cash on the table before he leaves—a wad of nice, smooth bills that he withdrew from the nearest ATM before he came to see you? Or is it a sort of tacit agreement between the two of you: I give you everything you want and, in return, you give me what I have the right to expect?”

  * * *

  She is about to start crying—she can feel the tears welling behind her eyes—and suddenly she drops the phone. Bastard.

  He somehow saw it all. That discreet/available mistress he described is her. He saw the cash that Samir leaves in her wallet, the underwear and sex toys he gives her or has delivered—surprise!—the clothes and shoes and handbags he buys her every day, money no object, so that she always looks her best and he will go on desiring her for a long time to come. (He takes care of her, and he does it well.) And he saw the day when Samir entered the apartment, grabbed Nina by the hair, and pressed her mouth down on his cock when she was feeling ill—No, I’m not forcing you, I would never do that, but please, just do it for me—and she was SICK, she told him that, she said, Not tonight, I’m tired, I have a cold, I’m NOT WELL, and him insisting: Look at the state I’m in, you can’t leave me like this, DO SOMETHING—and she did, the docile woman. Yes, he saw all of this, and she feels as if the entire world is watching her naked on giant screens. Her crying and them laughing.

  8

  Samir is still reeling, in shock, when he finally gets home. It is nearly nine p.m. and he has just walked across the sodden grass of Central Park—a detour he took to recover a little. He felt like he was choking, strangled by the thought of his brother in this city: he is toxic, toxic and venomous. And there is no antidote to this p
oison. François is a gun aimed at his head, a gun that might go off at any moment. Samir is no longer at the center of the social conflict; he has gradually moved away from it as he has climbed the ladder of success. Struggle? What struggle? His only real battle is professional: he wants to win his cases, gain more clients, raise his fees, merit yearly bonuses, be the lawyer everyone says is the best in his field, and that’s all. François is from the other side of town—the dark side, where life has less value and people disappear in the night. Well, that’s not my problem, Samir thinks. Let him disappear . . .

  * * *

  Entering his apartment and seeing his children in their cotton pajamas, hair freshly combed and smelling sweetly of baby perfume, seeing their English nanny with her hair tied back, wearing a black-and-white apron, he thinks how much he loves his life and how he would do anything to protect it. He loves this effortless calm, this metronomic regularity, this natural discipline, everything that contributes to this perfect order, the little details that comfort him when he thinks of the choices he has made over the years. This is the life he was destined for. Pushing open the door of his apartment, he has often imagined what his life would be like if waiting inside was another woman, other children—a Muslim wife, for example, modern and secular like him, or religious and traditionalist, whatever, but a woman with whom he would share a common identity and certain values—and that woman, for some unknown reason, does not excite him but fills him with anxiety. His children shout happily and jump into his arms, covering his face with kisses. He asks them about their day, strokes their hair affectionately. Then the nanny takes them by the hand and tells them it’s time to go to bed, and they follow obediently. This is what most fascinates him: this self-control, this discipline. He remembers his own father coming home from work, at one or two in the morning. He would already be in bed, on the foam mattress that his mother had picked up from a neighbor, his head covered by the blue blanket his grandmother had knitted (with poor-quality wool, rough and drab—he knows now that the quality of the fabric that touches your skin is a good measure of your social value). He wasn’t afraid of the dark. In fact, he liked it: in the dark, anything seemed possible. He would hear the key turning in the lock and his father’s heavy footsteps in the hallway. He would hear the toilet flush and then the drone of the TV that he always switched on, and that he would end up falling asleep in front of, as suddenly as if he’d been shot in the head. Sometimes Samir would get up and join his father on the couch, kissing his face, wriggling into his arms. But his father would always reject him. Go to bed. Hard. Cold.