The Age of Reinvention

by Karine Tuil

  he is married

  he already has two children

  he cannot run the risk of destroying everything he’s built

  he doesn’t want to lose her

  but she has to be reasonable about this, she has to calm down

  She listens, and his words echo inside her. The fear rises, stimulating her resentment, and with a coldness that chills him, she says: “Give me a child or never come back.” The demand is excessive, simplistic, childish; it betrays the fragility of her position. Nevertheless, she is issuing him a threat and he knows she is capable of following through on it. Panic seizes him. Insidious blackmail. And what if she had his child against his will? She has sworn to him that she’s taking the pill, but she could be lying. “I don’t understand you anymore.” “You don’t understand me? I’m in a foreign country, without friends, without any form of contact apart from you, living alone in an apartment—because you always advised me not to work. I just want something else, that’s all! I want some other connection to you than this apartment.” “I love you. That should be enough.” “If you love me, you should give me the child I want so much.” And so he turns to her and says with a detachment that petrifies her: “You’re ruining everything, and I don’t understand you anymore. You have everything a woman could possibly want.” Then, without even glancing at her, he picks up his jacket and leaves.

  15

  For a while, it’s fine, but after two or three days, Samir can’t take it anymore. It’s physical: he wants to see her, he misses her. Her absence does not weaken his desire, but feeds the flames. Alone at work, he is incapable of concentrating on his cases; his replies to his clients are evasive; he doesn’t call people back; he cancels all his meetings. The lack of her is like a hole inside him, widening into a chasm that terrifies him. He feels as if he is standing on the edge of a precipice. Without her, he has vertigo; he might fall. Fear makes his body tremble. He had no idea he could miss her this much. The idea haunts him because it hints at a new feeling that, until now, he had managed to keep at a distance: dependence. He thinks about her incessantly, and the suffering quickly becomes unbearable. He wants to resist—he doesn’t want to surrender to her, to lose this battle of wills—but he has to admit: he is impressed by her strength of mind. She hasn’t called, hasn’t shown the slightest remorse or concern. And yet, as he reminds himself, Without me, she’s nothing; she is dependent on me for the roof above her head, the food on her table. Here she is in New York, utterly isolated, with no money of her own: she must be afraid of losing me—I could dump her, never call her again. Yes, she’s nothing without me. In his mind, he belittles her—it’s a way of saving face—but the truth is that he is the little one, the one who feels helpless and lost without her. He has not felt like this since the day she chose Samuel over him and he came to the conclusion that he should never see her again. He doesn’t want to admit that he’s nothing without her: this is something new for Samir, who has never wanted to be attached to anyone or to fall in love again. But the fact remains: You love her. You love her and it hurts. He had not envisaged this: he threw himself into love as if he were diving from a boat into the ocean. Now, far from her, he finds himself sinking, dragged down to the depths by the lead weights of those he loves most in the world: his wife and children. His material comfort, his family life: he abhors them now. And so he persuades himself that he can take the risk of conceiving this child. Ruth need never find out. And in the long term, maybe he’ll divorce her. He feels strong enough now to face up to the wrath of the Bergs, to overthrow their hated, phony authority. He makes the decision at nine p.m., and is about to go to the apartment to break the good news to Nina when his wife calls: “Aren’t you coming home? It’s Shabbat. Don’t forget to buy cheesecake for my father.” It’s Shabbat. These Jewish rituals that make him feel like a stranger in a strange land; these interminable meals where everything revolves around them; this cumbersome Jewishness that he has never quite gotten used to . . . how he would love to give it all up. Give it up for good! Deep down, he has never felt Jewish in a religious sense. What he loves—really loves—is the feeling of solidarity that exists between Jews, the connection that would make a French Jew happy to meet an Argentine Jew. That is something he has never known. He felt alienated when he lived in an attic room in the sixteenth arrondissement, surrounded by middleclass kids with huge allowances. And he felt just as alienated when he returned to Sevran to live with his mother and brother. What dreadful memories! Yes, he can say for certain that he has never felt at home anywhere. He’s still in his office, practically alone, as most of his colleagues and partners have left—on Fridays, they sometimes leave work early in the afternoon. Only Berman is at his desk. A pale light filters through the blinds. He wants to call Nina, but forces himself not to. He writes her a text: “I love you. I want to have a child with you.” But he deletes it immediately, unsent. Picking up his belongings, he leaves the office and runs to a bakery in the next street, where he buys ten slices of cheesecake for his father-in-law, thinking: I hope he chokes on it. Leaving the store, he feels an irrepressible desire to see Nina, to kiss her, to hold her. He needs to talk to her, touch her, but he reasons with himself: He’ll wake her up tomorrow morning. He’ll get to her apartment early and tell her that he wants to live with her. He can’t keep this information to himself—it’s too hot, too big. He needs to share it. He doesn’t dare call Pierre—he doesn’t want to give him the news by phone—so Berman will be the first to hear his secret. He heads back to the office and finds Berman about to leave. “Don’t go yet—I need to talk to you!” “Can’t it wait till Monday?” “No, it can’t wait!” Berman is staggered by what Samir tells him. I’m in love, and I have to tell someone . . . do you understand? What I’m going through is so intense. This woman I loved came back into my life at a moment when I least expected it, at a moment when I felt dead. And she has made me feel alive again. Nothing happens anymore with my wife. I feel like I’ve been transformed—I don’t even recognize myself! Her name is Nina Roche. Berman listens and says nothing, offers no judgment. What could he say, after all, this fine father, this scrupulous husband, this devoted son who has never crossed a line in his life; this model citizen who votes at every election, pays his taxes, always uses the crosswalk; this man who hates risk? Samir is a better, stronger man than he is, and he knows it. He became asthmatic after the birth of his fourth child; he feels like he’s suffocating under the weight of his family, of his overprotected, security-mad building created according to the iniquitous laws of transmission; he has acted like his father and he is unhappy like him; he envies Samir his disregard of convention, his self-assurance; he’s simply not like that, not capable of such things, and he admits the fact himself: he could never imagine changing the course of his life. Samir continues: “I have to tell you something, because my decision affects the firm: it’s likely that a few clients, under pressure from my father-in-law, will decide to change their lawyer.” Hearing this, Berman tries in vain to interrupt him. “Listen to me!” Samir shouts. Then, in a softer voice: “I’m going to leave my wife. I’m going to tell her tomorrow.” “What? You can’t do that!” “Why not?” “Why not? Because it’s just not Jewish.” It is a simple moral judgment, tied to the weight of history, tradition, education. In truth, Berman is shocked. Having a brief affair or a one-night stand, experienced as guilt and ended with relief (and with the certainty that he will NEVER do it again) . . . maybe he can imagine that. But this double life, this meticulous organization with a woman set up in a plush apartment, provided with everything she could possibly want, this betrayal . . . no. Samir becomes angry when he hears this. “And what would be Jewish, in your opinion? You think there’s a moral position that is the sole privilege of Jews? A corollary to election?” He pronounces these words with savage sarcasm. “If there was a Jewish morality, we’d know about it!” Berman is horrified. Paralyzed by these words, he looks at Samir and feels that something is wrong, something that can never be
put right: his partner is a stranger. In a cold voice, he concludes: “You’ve gone crazy . . . I don’t recognize you anymore, Sam . . .” But Samir won’t stop. “You want me to tell you the truth? You scare the shit out of me with your sickening moralism, your probity, your obsession with doing the right thing. It’s unrealistic to think a person can live without betraying anyone. It’s unrealistic to think a person can stay pure. Purity is not a concept that should be applied to human beings. A stone can be pure. So can that ritual bath you take once a year on the eve of Yom Kippur to purify yourself of all the dirty tricks you have to pull in order to win cases! You come out of the bath and you’re holy, but believe me you become soiled again the moment you touch anything in this world.” “But, as a Jew, it’s my duty to—” “Oh, give it a rest! Jews are no more moral than anyone else, they’re just more moralistic.” Berman freezes: “You speak as though you’re not part of the community.” Samir gives him a contemptuous look: “Have I ever been part of it?” Their friendship seems to have been wrecked in the space of a few seconds. This man is an ashamed Jew, Berman thinks. He is a traitor to the Jewish cause, indifferent to his people’s sufferings. He is one of those Jews who regurgitate assimilationist speeches of the worst kind—an immoral, unscrupulous Jew with no love for his own kind. Suddenly, he feels disgusted by Tahar. But he doesn’t say any of this to him. All he says, in a monotone voice, is: “I don’t think we have anything else to say to each other.”

  PART FOUR

  Consolation

  A masterpiece!

  ERIC DUMONTIER1

  Shocking.

  DAN SBERO2

  A great book!

  SOPHIE DE LATOUR3

  A writer is born.

  MARION LESAGE4

  An amazing story.

  LÉON BALLU5

  * * *

  1. Eric Dumontier wrote this review in order to please Samuel’s book publicist, an attractive blonde with whom he was in love.

  2. The renowned literary critic Dan Sbero declared: “My greatest success was, without any doubt, my interview with Saul Bellow, two days before he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.”

  3. Sophie de Latour, thirty-four, aspires to edit the cultural section of the newspaper for which she works.

  4. Marion Lesage was also the author of a forgotten novel that sold only four hundred copies: The Inconvenience of Being Dead. She was recently fired from the editorial board of her newspaper—officially for economic reasons, unofficially because she refused the advances of the newspaper’s managing editor.

  5. Although professionally successful, Léon Ballu, fifty-five, confided to his psychiatrist that his private life was a “complete failure.”

  1

  Samir hadn’t called Nina for two weeks. She spent those long days prostrate, her isolation seeming to accentuate the gravity of the event, giving it a particular character, as if, by withdrawing from him, she was giving Samir enough space—a vast emptiness, she hoped—to make him realize how much he needed her, how pointless his life felt without her. And then, when she understood that he was never going to call her again, either because he was disgusted by her ultimatum and had decided not to see her anymore, or because he didn’t love her enough to risk losing his family, she decided not to let things drift but to get back in touch with the few people she had met in New York—women she had encountered at the hair salon or in the gymnasium of a luxury hotel, one of those places where everything is organized to satisfy your every whim and where Samir had signed her up on his own initiative. How many phone numbers did she have in her address book? Three or four at most. She saw practically no one apart from Samir: he had made it perfectly clear that he wanted her to be available for him whenever he was free. So she had to match her movements to his. Once and once only, she had arranged to meet a woman she had met in the gym—a Frenchwoman—in that little movie theater near Fifth Avenue that showed French films, and she’d had to cancel at the last minute because Samir had reminded her that she had to subjugate her timetable to his—it was the least she could do. Their meetings always followed the same unchanging routine: he called her to tell her he was on his way. She had to make sure she was ready for him (i.e., hair nicely styled, makeup on, dressed to his tastes). When he appeared, he kissed her. (She had to kiss him. Once, he came in and found her on the phone—he had been furious and had stayed mad at her for hours afterward.) They made love, then ate lunch or dinner together. After that, he would leave, though always after checking that she didn’t want for anything. She had given up everything in her life for him: first, her relationship with Samuel, which, while never perfect, nor very passionate (had she ever felt any passion for Samuel?), had suited her well enough that she had seriously considered having a child with him; second, her career, because while it was nothing to write home about and had never made her big money, it did give her a sense of pride to see her photograph in major store catalogues or on the posters that decorated the stores during promotion periods. She was a model—not a top model, admittedly; a model who worked in the world of supermarkets and food, not the world of catwalks and cocktail parties—but all the same, there was something cool about being regularly chosen to incarnate the French ideal: the healthy, well-balanced mother; the model employee; the smiling, devoted wife who would pose with the sturdiest and most affordable satchel, the tastiest ham, or the most absorbent diapers. Women looked at her and wished they looked like her; they saw her and immediately wanted to use the same products she used. While the job was not well paid considering the number of hours she had to pose for those photographs, or for all the time she spent making her face and body look desirable every day, it did have quite a few advantages: no two days were ever the same, and she could organize her time as she wished and was constantly meeting people who told her that she was stunningly beautiful. (And she was, of course, but her upbringing by a strict, paranoid father had drained her of any objectivity toward herself.) So, yes, for Samir she had given up this life that she had chosen for herself, and now—after a year—he was leaving her, without having given her the child she dreamed of having, without even having organized their breakup, without telling her clearly what would happen if he never came back. Her mother had abandoned her, and now Samir had abandoned her; her kindness, her beauty, and her other qualities had not been enough to keep their love; they had grown weary of her or had preferred other people to her—a man in her office, in her mother’s case; his wife, in Samir’s case, that rich heiress whose photograph Nina had seen on the Internet.

  * * *

  She calls her few acquaintances and tells them what has happened—and none of them deign to see her. In New York, she is a woman without friends or any personal prestige, a penniless woman. Samir used to give her money on a regular basis, but for two weeks she’s received nothing; she is surviving on what she has left. She doesn’t know how long she’ll be able to stay in the apartment. He hasn’t officially broken up with her. Should she leave? Keep waiting? Where could she go? She can’t afford to pay rent. Soon she won’t be able to afford to eat. Suddenly she is afraid of losing everything, and she wonders if this is what he wanted to prove by not calling her: You are dependent on me. Without me, you are nothing here. She wants to resist, but how can she? What resources does she have? She decides to call Samir to ask him for help. This will be difficult—she doesn’t want to do it. If she calls him now, she will be capitulating, giving up on the idea of having a child, a life together. But her existence is becoming increasingly precarious. She feels as if she is digging her own grave. Too pessimistic? No, I’m just being realistic, she thinks. And she calls Samir’s cell phone, which goes directly to voice mail. If it just rang and rang, she would have come to the conclusion he was screening his calls, avoiding her, but every time she dials his number, she gets the same message. She tries three or four times in forty-eight hours, and then she becomes panic-stricken. What if he’s had an accident? A medical problem? No one would inform her, because who even kno
ws about her? She calls the local hospitals to check that he has not been admitted: this takes her several hours, but she gets nowhere—no patient has been admitted under that name. After another week has passed, she decides to call Samir’s firm, as that is the only place she is likely to be able to obtain information about him without compromising their secret. The secretary’s unpleasant tone1 immediately makes Nina uncomfortable and she is practically stuttering when she asks to speak to Mr. Tahar. “He’s out of the office for a while,” the secretary replies. “Is he on vacation? When will he be back?” Nina asks. “I can’t tell you that.” “Could anyone else tell me?” There is a long silence, then the secretary finally admits: “I don’t know when Mr. Tahar will return. If this concerns an urgent professional situation, I can pass you to one of his partners.” “Yes, it’s urgent and confidential,” Nina replies. “Hold the line please. Your name?” Nina hesitates, then says: “Nina Roche.” For three or four minutes, Nina hears nothing but a Chopin sonata, and then a male voice comes on the line: “This is Berman.” She introduces herself and Berman instantly realizes who she is. Samir has mentioned her to him; he absolutely does not want her asking questions on the phone. He could ask her to call him later, but he senses that she would be capable of contacting Ruth, so he agrees to meet her in a café close to the office: “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”