The Age of Reinvention

by Karine Tuil

  * * *

  When her speech is over, she sits down, taking care not to bare her legs. Samir hardly listens as his lawyers present his defense. The judge clears his throat. His gaze sweeps the courtroom. Samir trembles—he really trembles: he can see his fingers quivering—and this suddenly fills him with revulsion. He is filled with revulsion at being treated like a war criminal, a pariah, a terrorist, and he starts to yell: “I’m innocent!”

  * * *

  Stein grabs him by the arm and tells him to shut up. The judge gives him a hard stare and, in a scathing voice, orders him to remain silent or he will be held in contempt of court. Samir says nothing, but he doesn’t look away. The judge stands up and retires for a few moments in an adjacent room before passing judgment. It lasts forever. Then he returns. Samir closes his eyes and, when he opens them, he sees the judge’s impassive face, his angry, contemptuous gaze aimed at the accused.

  * * *

  I order the continued detention of Mr. Samuel Tahar.

  22

  The next day, a photograph of Samir in handcuffs appears in the French newspapers: right in the middle of the page, the picture shows his distress all too clearly, in spite of the slightly blurred image. Samir looks away, his hands behind his back, flanked by two huge, aggressive-looking armed men. To the sides, you can see a crowd gathered behind metal barriers; they look like they are yelling something. One of them, a woman with a lined face, holds up a sign saying “THE ENEMY IS AMONG US.” Samir’s face is lined, his back hunched. He’s a hunted man, a broken man, seeming to rush toward the entrance of the courtroom in order to escape the crowd’s rage; he is no longer that arrogant golden boy, that affected and condescending womanizer; Samuel can no longer see in him the student he once knew, the mocking charmer with the machine-gun delivery, open shirt revealing a bronzed chest, boastful and uncomplicated—an incarnation of virility. In the picture, he looks shrunken, a man weighed down by some vast invisible force, perhaps even sick. There are purplish circles around his eyes, which have obviously seen things he would rather forget but cannot. It’s over. There is no way he can bounce back from this. After this, how could he ever again enjoy the same position he held before his arrest? After this, how could he ever again become the respected, influential, powerful, important man he was before? After this, how could he even dream of experiencing again the simple joys of family life, the pleasure of playing tennis with a friend, of reading a book, a newspaper, of going to see a movie: all those insignificant acts that make up daily existence and that he will never again be able to accomplish without feeling a great weariness, without sensing that he will never be happy again? After this, something has broken forever, something has fallen to pieces inside him. Physically, he is still there, but in reality he is elsewhere—in that prison of the mind that he will never again leave without his chemical straitjacket.

  * * *

  Samuel is sitting at the bar of the Hotel Bristol when he discovers the news, on one of those velvet sofas, away from the madding crowd, that he is now able to reserve for his meetings. He likes to come here every day—to the place where Nina and he met Samir, at his request; this opulent, luxurious place, the lighting subdued to accentuate the feeling of intimacy. Sometimes he books a room here for a night or two. He always arrives early, to order a beer and enjoy seeing from a distance his own empty table, reserved just for him, several other diners turned away because he is such a valued customer. The critical backlash had only increased his book’s commercial success. There is a certain pleasure in finding himself in the place of the person who once dominated him, in now being the one who gives the orders, and Samuel, dressed in an elegant suit, savoring his newfound power, feels at ease in the role that Samir once (over)played, back in his glory days—that of the loyal and very important customer.

  * * *

  Samuel sits down and instantly a waiter comes to ask him what he’d like to order. He always takes alcohol. He doesn’t drink as much as before—he knows how to control his thirst now—but he can never resist a good wine, and he always insists on tasting it first, with almost pathological stringency. This evening, he is waiting for a Swiss journalist who will interview him for a major literary magazine. He motions to a waitress that he’d like her to bring him his newspapers—two dailies that he always flicks through, starting with the back page and working his way to the front (a habit accrued from reading, right to left, the Hebrew texts his father gave him)—and suddenly, on the second or third page, he recognizes Samir. His initial reaction is to place his hand on his forehead, as if trying to wake from a nightmare, repeating to himself: It’s not possible, it’s not possible. And yet it really is him—Samir Tahar—with the headline above the photograph reading: Downfall of a French-American lawyer, and, below this, the words: He is suspected of involvement in a terrorist operation.

  * * *

  For a long time, Samuel studies the photograph, studies the look in Samir’s eyes, then he speed-reads the article. He wants to know, as quickly as possible. He reads between the lines, puts the newspaper down on the table. In shock. The violent shock of suddenly entering turbulent air. Immediately he thinks of Nina, of what must have happened to her in these tragic circumstances. Has she stayed by Samir’s side? Does she have an official place in his life now? Or is she completely independent? He has no idea if she is still in a relationship with Samir, and after reading the article, this soon becomes his sole obsession: to speak to Nina—he hasn’t heard her voice in such a long time, in deference to her determination not to see him again, and he feels emotional as he types the letters of her first name into his phone’s contact list. He trembles as he waits for the ringing—which always sounds strange when you are calling overseas, as if affected by the distance—but not for long, because a robotic voice informs him that this line is no longer in service. Nina must have changed her number, he thinks: he did the same thing, in fact, weary of all the calls he was receiving from people he knew when he was a social worker, asking him for help, money, a signed copy of his book. He hangs up and grabs the newspaper again, rereads the article, certain that it must have something to do with a settling of scores—some sort of business deal, maybe an illegal one, that had gone wrong. He does not believe for a moment that Samir was involved in terrorism. If that were the case, he would never have invited Nina to New York when he could have simply paid her regular visits in Paris, where he was so much freer in his movements—Paris, where he had no attachments and could easily lead a double life without anyone being suspicious. A man with a mission as dangerous as that of a terrorist secret agent would never have brought a former lover to live in his home city, to make her part of his life, knowing that if the scandal came out he would risk his own destitution and forced contrition. He asked Nina to be with him in New York because he felt untouchable, invulnerable, beyond reproach. A life without smoke or fire; a life like a calm sea, with nothing more compromising than a naked woman in a luxury apartment. But what was the connection with Islamist terrorism? What did that have to do with Samir, a moderate Muslim, someone who had always seemed slightly ashamed of his North African origins, just like all those Jews who Frenchify their names to unburden themselves of an oppressive identity? Not for a moment could he imagine Samir transformed into an Islamic leader, a wannabe martyr aiming to destroy a world whose values (even the most corrupt) he so obviously shared. He drank, he loved women, and he loved America! How could it have come to this? It saddened Samuel, but at the same time, he found it hard not to feel serene. He imagined Nina’s reaction: Did she realize she had made the wrong choice? Did she regret it? He often wondered if she’d heard about the publication and success of his book. He hadn’t dared send a copy to Samir’s office. He did think about it, but decided he had too much to lose.

  * * *

  Samuel rereads the article, and then the full-page profile that runs alongside it—an accusatory profile for which numerous people were interviewed. Strange that the journalist didn’t think of asking
me, he thinks. Because everyone else was quoted—former friends, colleagues, neighbors, all describing, in considerable detail (and sometimes in incongruous detail, perhaps purely imagined or invented), the man they had known: “a brilliant opportunist who would do anything to succeed”; “a Muslim who always had a problem with his identity”; “a pathological womanizer”; “a brilliant, calculating student who could spend an hour chatting with his professors after a class in order to win from them what no one else was able to win: their trust and esteem.” The article’s punch line was a remark from a law professor at the University of Montpellier, who claimed to have known Samir well and who paraphrased Maurice Barrès in order to sum up his former student: “Young, infinitely sensitive, humiliated, he was ripe for ambition.”

  23

  Nina wanders alone through the labyrinthine corridors of Paris’s Charles de Gaulle Airport, carrying her small suitcase, a few bills stuffed in her pockets (enough to cover the bare necessities), her forehead pearled with nervous sweat. Passing the customs desk, she collapses: she is going to lose everything, she feels certain. How she envies those smiling passengers with friends waiting for them behind the fingerprint-stained glass wall, as excited as children looking forward to seeing their parents again—an emotional outpouring that electrifies the others and leaves her a pillar of salt. Don’t turn around. Forget New York. Forget Samir and the life she had shared with him. Forget the tragedy. For the first time, she has the unpleasant feeling that people are watching her not because she’s beautiful but because she’s strangely alone. She thinks about something one of the women at her gym in New York said: “Once you get to a certain age, the only ones who whistle at you are construction workers high up on scaffolding.” The obligation to seduce—it transformed her from an upright and rather shy girl into a doll ogled by men for pleasure, submitting to masculine order. Will she be able to find a job in France, where she has no friends or family? Is there any chance she’ll get through this? And how can she justify the way she quit work and has now suddenly returned? She left her agency; the big stores must already have replaced her—other, younger women must now be incarnating the ideal mother designed to serve as a role model to thousands of perfectionist housewives. She had left Paris in a rush, without informing her employer, without honoring her contract for the next Carrefour advertising campaign. She had emptied her bank account—the few hundred euros of savings she had—without informing her bank, so her account has probably been blocked in her absence, perhaps even reported to the Bank of France. She had neglected to tell her few acquaintances that she was leaving, abandoning them without any explanation—how can she possibly call them now? And then there were all those meetings she never bothered to cancel, the people she never called back, the obligations she backed out of without providing any justification. She had run away like a thief in the night, certain she would never return to France, and now here she was, back in her homeland, without any ties at all.

  * * *

  Walking through the automatic glass doors, she relives the moment when Samir came to fetch her from the airport in New York: she had put on fresh makeup, a squirt of perfume, had changed her clothes in the public restrooms, and had entered American territory like a conquering goddess—proud and beautiful, hips swaying and hair shining. Now she is just this dull-eyed woman uncertain whether to take the suburban train or a taxi. Public transport is better, she thinks—cheaper, and she’ll be at Samuel’s apartment in under an hour. And then she will see, in the moment when they come face-to-face, how he reacts. She attempts to tame the dark thoughts in her head, but they are too strong, too wild. She’s a bundle of raw nerves. Making her way through the long corridors, she looks at the billboard ads on the walls for “Paris–New York return flights at knockdown prices”—bastards!—and the emotions cluster inside her, constricting her chest. And then, as she’s in the RER train, sitting on a ripped-up bench, the feeling rises and disgorges, her pain spreading, overflowing, destroying all before it like a river in flood, submerging her world. Is everything all right, madame? asks a street musician with a strong Eastern European accent. No, everything is not all right—everything is bad, very bad, and suddenly she rushes out of the train onto the platform, running at full speed, her feet seeming to glide over the ground as if she’s wearing roller skates. Get out. Breathe. Quick.

  * * *

  HELL

  * * *

  Outside, the wind is molding the clouds into one solid mass of dark thoughts, herald to a storm, and Nina manages to reach the bus stop, finally hopping on board just as a streak of lightning splits the charcoal sky, followed by a crack of thunder. But it’s okay, she’s under shelter now. Sheltered from what, though? Because now it is time for the confrontation. Mentally, she prepares for the test of her contrition. She knows Samuel is not going to welcome her with open arms, Let’s forget the whole thing. He will want to make her yield, confront her with her crimes: the selfish, reckless behavior, the insanity, because that is how you behaved toward me, like a beast wrecking/crushing/smashing my life, and she will submit. Why did she go to New York? What has she become? A good wife. A wife who submits to her husband’s desires, who exists only through his eyes. She thinks about this, and for the first time she blames Samir, in spite of the tragedy that has enveloped his life; she blames him for not helping her to lead an autonomous existence in New York, for having thought of dumping her after she had sacrificed everything to be with him. What an utter defeat.

  * * *

  She’s there in ten minutes, standing outside the tower block that rises up above her. She had forgotten these concrete towers, covered with dust, embedded in a dismal landscape where no light filters through anymore, the rays of sunlight ricocheting from the façades of glass-walled buildings in the business district a few miles away. Nina prefers not to analyze what she’s feeling in the moment when she enters the building; she hides it from herself, thinks, I’m coming home after a long trip, and it is natural for her to slide her key into the lock in the door of the apartment that she once shared with Samuel. The door opens. The hallway is deep in darkness. Nina enters, switching on the light, and hears a cry of fright, sees the figure of a woman at the end of the corridor, then that of a thin man, staring at her darkly, moving toward her with his hand raised, ready to attack. She asks: Who are you? The man replies coldly in a foreign language. The apartment is now occupied by a Chinese couple and their children, who start to scream and laugh as if they are at the theater. She cannot understand a word any of them says. This is my home! You’re living in my apartment! Where is Samuel? Where is he? (And, unknown to her, the Chinese family say: What does she want, this madwoman? Do you know her? What is she talking about? Throw her outside!) Who gave you the right to move here? Did Samuel leave a phone number? I don’t understand anything you’re saying! (I don’t understand anything she’s saying! Call the caretaker—let her tell us what this crazy bitch wants. Go on—she seems dangerous to me.) Five minutes later, the caretaker arrives—a woman of Asian origin, in her sixties, who grumbles at being torn away from her TV show, then explains in French/Chinese that Samuel Baron left this apartment a month ago, and no, she doesn’t know how to get ahold of him. He’s gone, I’m sorry . . . Your things? I have no idea. He left without a word, didn’t even say goodbye. And then it’s over, everyone goes back to their business, and Nina is left alone in the wasteland outside at nearly eight p.m., night about to fall, with nowhere to sleep and only a few hundred euros in her pocket, enough to last her a week at most. The horror!

  24

  What happens in the mind of a writer when he thinks he has found/defined a subject? The excitement of revelation, then the self-questioning: How should I treat it? In what form? With what ambition? What can I use and what result am I aiming for? Following his unexpected success, Samuel asks himself these questions with a new intensity. Already the pressure is on: What are you writing now? What project are you working on? Have you started writing again? When will it be
finished? Can you tell us a few words about the subject of your next book? He was convinced that a book could be lost by talking about it during the act of creation; that by exposing any part of it, he would be dispossessed of it; that something would crack that could never be repaired. The power of a piece of writing was its marginality, its secret existence. Revealed by publication, by announcements, by its transformation into a commercial object, it became something social that, sooner or later, you would end up hating. Samuel had not yet thought about a second novel—he’d been too busy promoting the first one—and suddenly here he was, presented with a story that was rich and new, a story he could exploit for his own ends without any qualms, a subject that had fallen from the sky before he had even begun his search for it. At that moment, he felt no hesitation about the prospect of writing a novel about a friend, a living person. To write is to betray. He had always believed that the object of literature was not to be legitimate or useful or moral, that it died as soon as it became pure or clean or unstained.

  * * *

  The next day, Samuel called Samir’s lawyers and told them that he could help them. He had been one of Samir’s closest friends; he knew him better than anyone. He was the best possible character witness. This phone call—just when Samir was in direst need—was a stroke of luck for Stein and Lévy, and they immediately asked Samuel when he could come to New York, at their expense. Stein had no idea who this man was—he had introduced himself simply as a “French writer and close friend of Samir Tahar”—but Lévy knew very well, and was fulsome in his praise: “I read his book, and loved it. He’s very well known in France. He could write an article about Sami for one of the national newspapers there—I’m sure it would have a big impact.” But Samuel imposed a condition: he wanted to meet Samir in prison, ask him a few questions, hear his version of the facts. They said they could not promise him this, as their client was in almost total isolation: “Since the authorities discovered he was a Muslim, it’s become almost impossible to get to see him.” And yet, two days later, they managed to secure him this interview. Up to this point, no one—apart from Ruth and themselves—had been allowed to speak to Samir, and most of those talks had been granted before the federal authorities found out Samir’s true identity. The prosecutors, Stein and Lévy explained, had been aware of Samuel’s status as a writer. They were probably fearful that he would write articles in newspapers all over the world, denouncing the suppression of individual liberty by the American judicial system. They also knew that Samuel might be able to join a French delegation of the Red Cross and enter the prison under the guise of humanitarianism. Others had done it before. So that was why he was allowed to see Samir. Samuel’s flight was organized that very day. To what extent was he guilty of manipulation, of opportunism? Massively, of course. The exploitation of a true story. The obsession with realism. He hadn’t even thought about what he would say or not say; Samir’s innocence or guilt mattered less to him than what the case represented in terms of material—a mass of information, a succession of facts. There was a book to be written about this story, which encompassed major themes, and he felt in full possession of the means to do it justice. Was he aware that he might worsen things by making the case public? Aggravation of harm? Not his problem. A writer is not a bonus pater familias. He does not have to act with due care and diligence. He doesn’t have to worry about the damage he might cause. Morality? What morality? And so, during a very brief chat with his publisher, he recounted Samir’s rise and fall. He recounted it because it was so amazing and he could hardly believe his luck in being presented with such a story, and maybe also because he felt pity, and when he had finished, he asked the publisher what he thought. The publisher smiled and replied in a monotone voice: “You know what F. Scott Fitzgerald said? A writer lets nothing go to waste.”