by Karine Tuil
* * *
Samir calls his wife and hears her voice coming from the living room. He puts down his briefcase, removes his jacket, and goes to see her. But when he enters the living room, he has a shock: his brother is there, sitting across from his wife, a glass of wine in his hand. Dressed in a black suit and a blue tie, he looks like some life insurance salesman from the 1950s. For an instant, Samir is paralyzed: he has no idea what he should do or say. His wife—after first expressing her surprise at the blood on his shirt (it’s nothing, he assures her, I just had a nosebleed)—introduces him as François Duval and explains that he works at Pierre Lévy, is spending a few days in New York, and wanted to meet Samir. “Oh, yes, Pierre mentioned you might be coming,” he replies with false enthusiasm. “Pleased to meet you.” He offers François his hand, which is clammy, and sits close to him. “You must have forgotten to tell the night watchman,” Ruth chides him. “I had to go down to the main entrance. I was a little doubtful, I must be honest,” she says, laughing. “I called you but you didn’t answer.” “Luckily, I had my business card with me,” François jokes. Samir is tense, nervous, somehow conducting the conversation in English. François’s English is terrible, so Samir switches to French, asking him abruptly in hard-to-follow street slang what he’s after, why he has come to his house and embarrassed him in front of his wife. Ruth watches them uncomprehendingly. François looks at her, then turns to Samir: Does he really want him to answer now, here? Yes—Ruth doesn’t speak French well enough to follow. Go ahead! And suddenly, François panics. He is terrified by the thought of expressing himself in front of this woman, to Samir’s face. He is frightened of measuring himself against his brother. Even when he first arrived here and found himself standing next to her, having to explain himself and the reasons for his visit, having to coax her into inviting him into their home, he had been seized with the most awful anxiety. Thankfully, she had not been suspicious. Probably she took pity on this poor young Frenchman who stammered and barely spoke English. He too, like everyone else, is impressed by the money, the furnishings, the decorum, the self-assurance that speak of power. He had thought he had the upper hand, but no: here in the United States, in this immense apartment, where every object had been chosen at the most prestigious antique dealers, where everything seemed in its place, surrounded by this silent staff that came and went, he is nothing. Ruth watches them. Samir turns toward her and explains that he is sorry, but François finds it difficult to speak English, so they’re going to continue the conversation in French if that doesn’t pose a problem for her. No, she says, that’s fine: she has work to do (and, she thinks, nothing to say to this man). Before leaving the room, she smiles and says goodbye to François with the usual polite formulas, not forgetting for a moment the codes of her rank. Finally, the two men are alone. Samir attacks first. He is trembling, his face red. He feels like punching his brother, but controls himself. “What the hell gives you the right to come to my home without warning me? What exactly is it that you want from me?” This is quickly followed up by a threat: he could file charges against him, prevent him physically from ever coming back—he has the right contacts and connections. He’d better not be trying to blackmail him: you can’t play that kind of game, with him, Sam Tahar, here in New York. All it would take is one word and he’d be deported, imprisoned. Does he understand the risk he’s taking? Does he understand the seriousness of what he’s doing? No, François doesn’t understand. He shrugs. All he wanted was to meet his family, his nephew and niece, to see where his brother lives. “Your brother?” Samir asks sarcastically. François is nothing to him: he is not and never will be part of his family. The only family he has is his mother. He starts to talk too loudly: “Go home!” “Take it easy . . . do you want your wife to find out your real identity? Do you want me to go into the kitchen and tell her the truth about the father of her children? I could . . .” Samir stands up, pours himself a drink and swallows it, then asks in a shaky voice how François found out where he lives. “Oh, you’re not very careful, Samir.” (And, at this, he takes a step back, as if his brother were talking about a stranger.) “Don’t call me Samir here.” François smiles contemptuously. “When you came to see Mom, you left your jacket in my room. I went through your pockets, found your passport, opened it, read it, and put it back. I also took a business card from a guy in your firm. That’s it. But actually, how should I address you now—Samir or Samuel?” “What do you want? You come to New York, you turn up at my office and now at my home. You want money, is that it? How much?” François leans toward the pedestal table to his left and, pointing at the large, seven-branch candelabrum that sits on top of it, asks: “That’s nice. Where did you find it?” Samir does not reply. “This thing’s Jewish, isn’t it?” Clearly this is an attempt to provoke; Samir remains impassive. François starts wandering around the room. Pointing out an old photograph of rabbis studying a page of the Talmud, he says: “You have pictures of rabbis in your home? Have you turned Jewish?” He continues, pausing at every object that attests to someone’s Judaism—a prayer book, a mezuzah—and suddenly Samir tells him to stop: That’s enough! “Wait for me outside. I’m going to talk to my wife.” Samir leaves the room, struggling to conceal his discomfiture. He tells Ruth that he has to accompany François to his hotel. “Can’t he take a taxi?” “No, he’s a new employee. I can’t let him go back alone. Anyway, I need to talk to him.” And he goes.
* * *
Outside, François is circling Samir’s car. He admires it, covets it, imagines himself driving it, thinks of the women he “could have with a machine like that,” and when Samir reappears, he asks him: “Will you let me drive it?” Samir does not respond. Inside the car, François switches on the radio and finds a rap station. He looks distractedly out of the window.
“Will you let me drive or not?”
“Maybe . . . Not now. Why didn’t you go to the café, like I told you?”
“I was pissed off with you for the way you greeted me. When I left your office, I decided I didn’t want to see you again.”
“So why did you come to my home?”
“To see where you lived. I was intrigued . . .”
“It’s up to me if I want to invite you to my home or not.”
“Would you have asked me to come? Really? Give it a rest, Samir, you’ve never given a shit about me. You arranged to meet me in the café because you were scared, that’s all . . .”
“Why would I be scared?”
“You’re asking me? Your own mother doesn’t know you have children! She spends her whole time hoping you’ll marry one day and give her grandkids! If she knew . . . Why haven’t you told her, by the way? Do you have something to hide?”
Samir does not reply. He keeps his eyes on the road, imperturbable.
“It must be your wife you’re protecting. Because you couldn’t care less about me and Mom, could you? You must have told her that your family was rich. You were ashamed to introduce her to your mother. In fact, I bet there’s more to it than that. I bet she doesn’t know that you’re a—”
“Shut up! Now you’re going to listen to me. I’m going to find you a hotel room and I’m going to give you some money so you can buy some clothes and stay here a few days. I’ll pay for a guide to take you round the city. You can see the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, the Empire State Building, and so on. After that, you go home, you say nothing to mom, and you forget all about me. Do you understand?”
But François merely smiles insolently and says: “Okay, have you finished? Now, are you going to let me drive this thing?”
9
That evening, after dropping his things in the hotel room that Samir booked for him, François goes out. Dressed in leather jacket and jeans, his fingers aglitter with big flashy rings, he chats up a girl1 near a club where Samir promised to meet him at midnight and asks her to go with him, but she says no. Outside the club, the bouncer2 lets him pass. He doesn’t even need to say the name Tahar—he’s white,
he’s blond, he’s a good guy, he’s in. So François walks through into the darkness checkered with strobes, intermittently dazzled by multicolored spotlights, feeling . . . what? Desire? Something animal? The lights flash brightly, reflecting the rocks on girls’ fingers, the purses hanging from their shoulders—bling bling! He’s never seen anything like these girls, so beautiful, so easy, all whores/bitches/sluts, laughing loudly, Check it out, they’re almost naked, they bend over and you can see their pussies, their tits, man, this is hot. They’re like the women from the porno movies he watches all the time, he thinks: the kind of girls who fuck and suck on the first date, maybe even at first sight. None of them virgins, he’s sure. None of them pure like the girls in his dreams: untouched child-women never soiled by another man’s hands. No, here, there’s nothing but shameless bodies, stinking of impurity (deodorant, semen, blood, sweat, shit). He hates everything about them: their alcohol breath, their brazenness, their corrupting smiles. A man like him knows how he’d take them if he got the chance, knows what they want, deep down, the little whores—to be dominated, to be fucked—and, just like that, he’s hard. Shit, guy, control yourself. They might not let him, after all, so shy, simpering, intimidated . . . Ha, yeah, right! That is all they’re here for! And at this very moment, he notices a tall redhead3 near the bar. Shit, she’s hot: rose-colored skin and those huge tits that wobble as she dances. Man, he’d like to fuck her. He puts his hand on his rock-hard dick and imagines what he’d do to her if he had the money: tell her to suck him off . . . Calm down . . . he sees his reflection in one of the massive mirrors that make the club look like a whorehouse—do they like to watch themselves necking and groping? does that turn them on too?—but it’s his father he sees now: the spitting image of his father, white, blond, his complexion creamy when he wants to be coffee-colored, curly-haired. He’s sick of walking around with his cute little angel face, being allowed in everywhere. No one’s scared of him—not like his friends, Arabs or Africans, who are never allowed in anywhere, who everyone’s scared of. But no, not him, and yet all he wants to do is blow the place up, destroy, go crazy, sneak into his father’s house and set fire to everything—the linen sheets (white), the porcelain plates (white), their hairless genitalia (white, very white, talcum-powdered) . . . God, he hates him! He hates it all, this white bourgeoisie, so respectable, polite, unfriendly, avaricious, their asses clean but their mouths bitter, filled with acid. He hates his father. He himself is unbending, stubborn, untamable—all his teachers told him so, and he knows it’s true, but so what? He hates his father and he hates his brother—for his opportunism, for the way he looks down on everyone as if he belongs to some higher sphere to which you can never gain entry—and, yes, that is why he’s come here, it hits him now, the truth of it: he’s come to destroy him. And the day of his brother’s fall, he’ll be in the first row, the best seat in the house, clapping until his hands hurt . . . Oh, and talk of the devil: here he comes now. Samir, in a skintight black T-shirt, walking toward him. “Why are you standing? I’ve booked a table. Follow me.” Why is he doing this? Why put so much effort into pretending to be friends with his hated brother? To snare him, lead him on, lull him into a false sense of security. He buys him drinks, and after a couple, François is relaxed, the music pounding in his head. He asks for another drink—a third, a fourth, a fifth—Samir gets up and heads toward the bathroom with a skeletal blonde. He seduced her effortlessly, while François doesn’t even dare nod or wink at that redheaded slut. A sixth drink, a seventh, and ten minutes later François is staggering toward the club’s exit because he thought he saw the redhead leaving. Reeling right and left, it takes him fifteen minutes to walk fifty yards, and then he sees her, behind a car—the redhead from the bar, leaning against the driver’s door, her skirt riding up her thighs, blouse open, and he thinks: That’s all she wants. He walks up to her, starts talking to her. She shouldn’t smoke alone—why don’t they share? But she doesn’t want to share, or to talk, she just wants to smoke, and she tells him to leave her alone. She’s speaking English, so he doesn’t understand everything she says, but she’s yelling now and he can sense the violence of her rejection, see the red veins in the whites of her eyes. She’s upset, she’s had too much to drink. He mutters, “Slut” (in French), and throws himself at her, ripping her blouse (Filthy whore!), pulling up her skirt and shoving his hand inside her panties. Roughly, aggressively he tries to get his fingers inside her, indifferent to her screams, her punches and kicks (Filthy whore!), and, holding her down firmly with his left hand, he drops his pants, whips out his dick (Filthy whore!), and, as she screams so loud it seems to fill the night sky, it happens—he comes over her bunched-up skirt as the bouncer arrives, carrying an iron bar. François makes out his heavy figure in the darkness, lets go of the woman, and bolts toward the road. He runs so fast, no one can follow him, no one could ever catch him: his strength is all in his legs, agile and supple, sprinter’s legs that seem to glide over the asphalt. Like a vague murmur, he hears the squeal of a police siren, merging with the girl’s screams. But they are far, far away now.
* * *
1. April Vincente, nineteen, of Hispanic origin. An average student, April’s ambition is to “start a family.”
2. John Dante, thirty-five, a former boxer. Having dreamed of being “champion of the world” from the age of eight, John had to settle for a career in nightclub security.
3. Graziella Beluga, twenty-one, from Texas. Abused by her father at the age of ten, she lived with several foster families before moving to New York to work as an au pair for a French family in the hope of changing her life.
10
Francis Scott Fitzgerald revealed that he began to be a writer the day he discovered that his mother had lost two children before he was born, and Samuel too can date precisely the moment when he became a writer: the day his parents died. This provides the subject of his book—identity, bereavement, parents, and children. He has never gotten over the death of his mother and father. The tragedy that led to other tragedies: his suicide attempt, the breakup with Nina, his slow reconstruction (into what?). He never got over it, and so this is what he writes about. The unconscious state that precedes writing. The writing that resolves nothing and makes everything worse.
What weighs on him is the contrast between the intellectual demands of his parents (demands that also affected their religious choices, because they, like their son, studied sacred texts, without ever giving up their more literary and philosophical readings), their obsession with scholarly success, the absolute glorification of knowledge, and the outcome of this approach, of all those years of work. He could have been—should have been—a quantum physicist, a rabbi, a philosopher, a geneticist. Instead of which he took law because of a computer error during registration and ended up abandoning it and becoming a social worker in a place where he had to hide the fact that he was Jewish. What a failure, he wrote, that dissimulation should become the key to his survival! What a failure to think that he had fled his family, given up what he was out of simple opposition, out of rejection, perhaps, but also out of personal desire, by his own free will, and that now he had to lie about himself in order not to be insulted, rejected, in order to keep a place in life that was not the one he had chosen. He had thought he would be published, but everything he had written had been rejected, without any justification or reason, so much so that he had stopped even sending out his books. He kept all those rejection letters in a shoe box. He had never found the resolution to throw them away. Had Nina believed in him, in his literary potential? No, never. So, from now on, he wrote against her.
11
Samir does not understand why his brother fled. He does not understand why he isn’t answering his phone. He is worried. He can’t explain to his wife why he is so depressed, why for the last few days he has been taking anti-anxiety pills at bedtime, why he no longer feels like making love/getting up/washing/dressing/checking the kids’ homework, and now he feels the full consequences, the
full implications of his big lie—this pain: I can never be myself. He can’t sit next to his wife or next to a friend and say: Listen, I’m Samir Tahar. And even with Nina, to whom he feels so close, Nina who knows almost everything, he often feels as if he is playing a role. It is a fleeting sensation, and he can’t put his finger on where it is coming from. In the office, his colleagues observe that he is anxious, nervous. And they’re right: he is. He’s hiding something.
Hey, there, Sami, everything okay?
No, everything’s not okay. He is hiding the shame he feels at what he has become: this parvenu who would rather die than admit the truth of his origins. He is hiding the brother he despises: that vulgar stranger, without manners or education; that coarse, disturbing man, driven by some inner violence. He is hiding his moods: the rage that rises within him and then vanishes; the helplessness he feels at being at the mercy of others, of chance, at no longer being the master of his own destiny. He’s in such a terrible state that the only future he can see is a sort of desperate escape—eloping with Nina. He knows that he could never bear to be there when the truth is revealed, and François’s presence in New York offers a constant threat of this. Because he did reappear suddenly a few days ago, without providing any explanation for his absence, and now he calls Samir every day, sometimes several times a day—conversations in which he sounds unhinged, menacing. Samir knows he must talk to someone about this—he’ll go crazy if he doesn’t—but who? He’s still able to keep up appearances in wider society, but for how long? He needs a few lines of coke every day now to hold it together. Inside, he’s a complete mess, and one day, when he senses that he can’t take it anymore, that he’s about to collapse, he decides to call Pierre Lévy and tell him everything. Lévy is in New York for a few days: the time is right, he thinks. And even if their last meeting in Paris ended in failure, Samir knows he can count on his friend. So he calls him, and Pierre notices instantly, just from the sound of his voice, that something is wrong: “What is it, Sam?” “I have problems, Pierre, serious problems. You have to help me.” They agree to meet that evening in a restaurant on Madison Avenue. As soon as he hangs up, Samir feels better. Knowing that he will finally be able to confess the truth of his identity fills him with calm. Nina is glad: this desire for truthfulness, for transparency, is just the beginning of a bigger change, she says. One day, they will be together—Nina and Samir. She persuades him of this and he believes it.