The Influence Peddlers

by Hedi Kaddour

  Before the caïd had arrived, the contrôleur civil had told Ganthier that Si Ahmed wanted to ask him something important—it was political—and France needed men like the caïd. Yes, it was Ganthier whom he had chosen for a confidential mission, yes, a colonist, and even the most reactionary in the region, he, and not one of the lovely socializing or Christianizing souls that hopped around the good natives whom they invented in their minds. Si Ahmed was not particularly sincere in what he called his friendship with France, but he wasn’t a dreamer, and he thought that a move one inch to the left of his sovereign meant communism. He honored Ganthier and Marfaing with his confidence. He was preparing the future. He was giving them his only son to enlighten, “and you know, my dear Ganthier, that at this moment it would be better for young Raouf to go on a little trip. The police want to lock him up. The resident general is hesitating. I can still protect him, but he needs to make himself scarce, unless you prefer seeing him behind bars for some time.”

  Marfaing seemed to be enjoying himself. He knew that Ganthier would not endure the thought of seeing Raouf in prison, and Ganthier knew that if Marfaing had chosen him it was because his connections with the military enabled him to protect Raouf. And there was something else, the expression Marfaing used, “give us his son to enlighten.” Ganthier and Marfaing belonged to the same Masonic fraternity, and in places higher up than theirs Raouf was probably considered a recruit for the future . . . Ganthier concluded by thanking Si Ahmed for doing him this honor, which he accepted as very high testimony to their old friendship, and while Si Ahmed was bowing once more with affection, the colonist for a fleeting solitary moment saw Gabrielle’s Cheshire Cat smile floating in Marfaing’s office. After all, young Raouf was an excellent reason to go to Paris. Ganthier wouldn’t seem to be going there to chase after a woman who chose to wear trousers and still wanted nothing to do with him. He smiled, and the two men smiled at him.

  As they were leaving, Marfaing said to Ganthier: “I’ll take care of Kid . . .” Kid was an authoritarian and affectionate dachshund, Ganthier’s hunting companion. Si Ahmed had continued to talk to the colonist while they were walking into the large hall of the contrôleur civil’s residence: The youth of today frightened him, their contempt for their elders . . . an intoxication for learning . . . atheism . . . Could Ganthier remind his son to do his prayers over there? And may God be with Ganthier! An anxious Si Ahmed, paternal and pious, who squeezed Ganthier’s arm: one might have forgotten his reputation for Machiavellianism and his penchant for strong alcohol. Ganthier suddenly wondered if Raouf would actually agree to go, and he realized that in a very short time he had actually taken to this arrangement. Gabrielle really liked Raouf. She loved giving him advice. Ganthier already saw himself in Paris with the young man as a protégé, a lovely trio, he had to be sure, especially since Raouf was as stubborn as a mule! As Ganthier was saying good-bye Si Ahmed admitted that his son might be a bit hesitant. He also wanted to go to Turkey: “That’s what worries me the most, you understand, dear old friend, the bad example, so close . . . Those people, those Turkish officers, they are our distant family, today they unleash passions, and passions are daughters of death. Do you know what they found in one of my secretaries’ desk? No, not the Communist Manifesto, and I’m counting on France to deal with the communists. No, they found the speeches of Atatürk, translated into Arabic. They’re all looking for news from Turkey. There’s a photo that is circulating now, the entrance to a village in Anatolia, a military blockade: when the peasants arrive they must exchange their turban of a believer for a Western-style cap, and at the same time they are shown what has been constructed in a ditch, a gallows . . . Do you want us to do that here? With an agrarian reform?” Ganthier laughed, and he began to look forward to having one of those discussions with Raouf during which each of them tried to paralyze the other, a discussion that would take them late into the night. He was already thinking of the argument he would use to convince him: “You don’t want to go see how they create the world that is dominating you?”

  Part II

  THE GREAT VOYAGE: WINTER 1922–SPRING 1923

  19

  THE JUGURTHA

  At the harbor, looking up at the massive ship, their necks began to ache. Ganthier said:

  “The Jugurtha, eighty feet high to the top of its funnel, four hundred thirty feet long, seven thousand tons, a lovely lady.”

  Then there were the usual arguments with porters, at the ticket window, passports, the swaying gangway, the warning horn, the passengers pressing at the poop deck for the farewell ceremony, and children still waving their arms as the dock became a thin line against the light in the distance.

  Well before anyone else, Raouf gave the crowd a look that he decided would be his last, and went to stand on the bow, alone, waiting for the ship to be out to sea. Then finally he was looking at the open water, the last sounds of the horn increasing his impatience. His hands quickly became cold on the guardrail. He breathed in deeply, becoming dizzy in the finally open expanse, one that was completely different from that of the sand that his father had crossed in his youth, a parched expanse that opened up only onto increasingly poor oases, and when he arrived on the other side the towns were much poorer than Nahbès, an exhausting journey through sand and stones to arrive in a stunted land. “When God created the desert, he was so happy with the result that he threw stones into it,” said Si Ahmed, who never understood the enthusiasm of Westerners for a journey that led to only one desire, that of returning home as soon as possible; whereas here, on the bow of the Jugurtha, beyond the waves Raouf was contemplating, there were wonderful cities for him to discover. And each time the bow fell from a wave he felt the violence of the energy that was carrying him to a world where true revolutions were still being prepared.

  After a while he went back inside to warm up, noticing in passing someone who must have been watching him from behind a window in the salon, a young girl, dressed in clothing the colors of which he had never seen before: a dark green skirt, the color of a forest, with dots of cool red on it. As he passed by, she held his gaze, her eyes very light, transparent, brown hair under a beret . . . He nodded to her, a friendly gesture. Everything happened very quickly. He didn’t even have time to note the exact color of her eyes.

  He went back to his cabin and opened his suitcases so the steward could put everything away. The man was old, stiff, efficient. The drawers and cupboards smelled like furniture polish, lavender, and the bathroom like bleach and orange blossom. The walls were paneled with red wood, almost pink, and the copper of the doorknobs and the rims of the portholes reflected the slightest ray of light. Ganthier and Raouf both had first-class cabins, the caïd sparing no expense for his son. Marfaing had said to Ganthier: “Our dear Si Ahmed wouldn’t have insulted you by offering to pay you for this, would he?” Of course not, and Ganthier would never have accepted. But two days before his departure he was offered thirty magnificent cows. “From Holland, but resilient, born in the country,” said the vendor, who asked for scarcely two-thirds of what they were worth. Ganthier had understood, he refused. The man added: “If you don’t accept I’ll sell them to Pagnon.” Ganthier accepted.

  Raouf was one of the rare Maghrebis onboard to travel in first class, and the only one who wasn’t wearing a djellaba. Other passengers looked at him like a curiosity: a native dressed European style is someone who isn’t playing the game.

  “Your compatriots aren’t happy that I’m in a gray suit,” he said to Ganthier, “They’re friendlier to the two old men in burnooses. I even heard a woman say that she found them more handsome in those than in Western-style dress.” Ganthier responded:

  “The French don’t like to be imitated.”

  “It’s more that they don’t like anyone to catch up with them.”

  “It’s not a question of imitation or of catching up . . . They feel that you won’t want them anymore.”

  “What’s funny,” said Raouf, “is that you can’t stand it w
hen they look down on me. Because I am one of your pieces of luggage?”

  Raouf had promised himself never to appear gauche, but the first evening he arrived too early at the dining room. A pleasant and respectful maître d’ seated him at a small table with a view onto the entrance to the kitchen. Ganthier arrived fifteen minutes later. He looked around for Raouf. The maître d’ seated them at one of the bay windows looking out at the sea, at a table from which they could also see the entire dining room. When they were having dessert the captain came over to join them at their table. The conversation moved onto the port of calls where the ship would be stopping.

  “I don’t understand how French ships will facilitate our relations with Spain or Italy,” Ganthier said, “and what’s more, it makes the journey longer.”

  “Yes, but the direct route doesn’t bring in enough money,” the captain replied.

  Raouf knew that some French people wanted to open the doors of the Maghreb to millions of Spaniards, Italians, and Maltese to increase the population and thereby achieve true colonization. Ganthier was against that, even though such a large number of Catholic immigrants should have pleased the former seminarian in him. Raouf refrained from mentioning that.

  The second day, on the promenade deck, they encountered a group of four women, very flashily dressed, noisy. They spoke to everyone, and everyone spoke to them, but no one lingered with them.

  “They are beautiful, decked out, lively, would you like me to introduce you?” Ganthier asked.

  He had seen that those women had noticed Raouf and that irritated him.

  “You think I’m incapable of recognizing coquettes?” Raouf said, “Your beautiful ladies are returning home after a stay at the court of my dear sovereign.”

  “Do you want one? I’m sure they would do it uniquely for the pleasure.”

  “No, thank you,” Raouf replied, “but if you want to buy some ready-made love, you can count on my discretion.”

  Raouf had become friendly with a different female passenger, an Austrian girl his age. She was traveling with her parents; the father manufactured and sold windmills and electric motors throughout the world. Her name was Metilda. She was the one he had noticed behind the windows of the salon the day of their departure. She often played badminton on the deck. She was the best. Unlike many of her adversaries she was not hindered by excess weight; she ran and jumped gracefully. Since she won all of her matches, she played more often than others, until a young French girl, who was eliminated, refused to let her step in. The girl shouted: “This is a French boat. The Boches will have to wait!” The father of the young Austrian girl, looking upset, called her over to him.

  Metilda later said to Raouf:

  “My father is angry with me for putting myself in a bad situation.”

  “What is a bad situation? When you’re right?”

  “No, my father taught me a long time ago, it’s a situation that you can’t defend. I mustn’t forget that I belong to a country that has been defeated.”

  “You’re talking like my own father, but your country isn’t occupied, you can live there peacefully.”

  “That depends. We also have to be careful at home. We’re Jews, we are considered responsible.”

  “For the war?”

  “No, for the peace, the conditions for the peace, like in Germany, the end of the empire, the end of the Habsburgs, la fin des haricots—the end of everything, as the French say . . .”

  She smiled, then:

  “Abroad I’m a Boche, at home I’m a mongrel.”

  “You speak French very well.”

  “For us it was the language of novels, poetry, free ideas, sensations. We said that German was for the barracks and bureaucrats, which isn’t true, and today it’s French that has become a language of the diktat . . . No, I’m not being fair, it’s something else . . . Do you know Heine? Trakl? Georg Trakl, a poet who died during the war, I have a collection with me, his poetry is very beautiful, I’ll lend it to you, umschlingen schmächtig sich . . .”

  “They didn’t teach us much about German literature at the lycée,” Raouf interrupted, very happy to be talking about the lycée in the past tense, “but I’ll read your poets, if you promise to read mine . . . and if you have translations.” Metilda regretted her thoughtlessness: “Umschlingen schmächtig sich die sehnenden Arme . . . delicately the avid arms entangle . . . I’ll translate them for you myself.” Her eyes were very pale blue.

  Later, Raouf gave her a translation of The Muallaqaat. He had added a poem that he had copied by hand:

  “That’s a French poem, the author isn’t well known. It’s very modern, ‘May, lovely May floating on the Rhine’ . . . It’s more difficult than the others to learn. It’s by Guillaume Apollinaire. He’s dead, like your Trakl, wounded in the war, then flu.” Metilda folded the sheet of paper and asked Raouf to recite the poem. When Raouf had finished she promised to learn the poem by heart, too:

  “That way we’ll be able to recite it together.”

  She had already remembered two verses, “The petals fallen from the cherry trees in May / Are the fingernails of the one I loved so much.” She also talked about the voyage she had just taken:

  “Mother made Father visit the old Jewish quarters in each city, and she told him, ‘We should help them, but they must understand that they have nothing in common with us.’”

  Raouf kept a remark on class prejudice to himself. Metilda also asked him why his friend Ganthier sometimes seemed sad.

  “He’s just a bit melancholic,” Raouf said, “He left his dog, Kid, at home, and he’s sorry he did. It’s a dachshund, but takes up just as much space as a big dog.”

  “Does he love it a lot?”

  “He says it’s all that he brought back from the war, a gift from his men, but he will never admit that he loves it, he thinks that would be inappropriate, but I love Kid. He’s a colonist’s dog, but he doesn’t bark at Arabs.”

  One morning, on the bow of the boat, Metilda looked Raouf in the eyes:

  “I’d like to do what one of my cousins did, go to Palestine.”

  “I think we might fight about Palestine,” Raouf said, coldly.

  “Okay, let’s talk about something else.”

  But Raouf smiled and Metilda added:

  “Monsieur Ganthier told me that you know Francis Cavarro, and Neil Daintree. Have you really spoken to them?”

  “Yes, and they have spoken to me, surprising, right?”

  “You’re mean . . . You’re twisting what I say . . . I’m going to be self-conscious.”

  “I didn’t intend to be mean, it’s more of a reflex.”

  Raouf pointed out the horizon behind the boat:

  “Back there I’m often forced to respond with bitterness, and where I’m going it will be the same, but I’m sorry I spoke to you like that. You’re not the same, you’re like my American friends. They ask me to really talk to them, and not just about rugs and palm trees.”

  “What about your school friends?”

  “I have French friends, but I sense that when they’re all together they speak differently. You’re not the same.”

  Metilda smiled, she relaxed. Raouf also smiled, and continued:

  “Admit that you shouldn’t have brought up Palestine.”

  “Do you often do that?”

  “What?”

  “Let down your guard, smile kindly, but still go on the attack?”

  “Can we make peace?”

  “Okay, but for good this time, okay?”

  She took his arm, and they began to stroll. Without looking at him Metilda said:

  “Do you realize that we’ve just had our first fight?”

  The weather was mild for the month of December. They ran into Ganthier and the captain.

  “I don’t like this temperature,” the captain said, “Fifteen degrees down here, whereas up there (he pointed at the sky) it must be at least minus forty . . . We could be in for some trouble.”

  Raouf a
nd Metilda began talking about a subject of great interest to many young people throughout the world: they began talking about movies. They argued, Metilda saying that Americans were too simple. Raouf defended them. He told her about Daintree; she had only seen The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. She knew a lot about German film, which Raouf knew nothing about, and she sometimes voiced harsh criticism—she said that film was three steps behind opera. She said that on purpose because Raouf had never seen an opera; then she regretted it and told him what she knew about the revolution in Vienna in 1918.

  They were the same age, but she knew more. She smiled at him often, and in the evening, during their strolls, her voice filled with emotion.

  “I love Stendhal,” she said, “the quest for happiness . . .”

  “I’ve read him . . . the little individual goals . . . I don’t attempt to be happier than anyone else.”

  “Are you always so snide, so morally superior?”

  He just looked at her, trying to seem friendly in spite of his refusal to say anything more. She pointed out a couple that had just met on the ship:

  “You see, yesterday, during their first walk together they were hesitant; this afternoon they look like they’ve been together for years, and they’re having more fun.”

  She invited him to have some tea:

  “It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to go to your cabin, but you can come to ours.”

  “Your parents are very open-minded.”

  “They want to be absolutely modern. Father would be horrified to be considered some sort of rabbi. He speaks Yiddish very well, but he hides it. He’s very proud of his German and his French, and his atheism.”