The Influence Peddlers

by Hedi Kaddour

  She had Raouf sit next to her, patted him once or twice on the shoulder, placed her hand on his forearm. Raouf didn’t resist, but he didn’t do anything. He became completely passive; he didn’t even blush, nor did he seem to be shy. He perked up when they spoke of books and films, as if he were with an old friend. She had never had that feeling of complete equality with a boy before. Her Austrian friends also treated her as an equal, but she felt that the ones who were more in love already imagined her nursing a baby or giving orders to a servant. That wasn’t the case with Raouf; he didn’t see her as a housewife. Nor as a lover. She was a friend. She tried to find out if he had known other women, but he didn’t talk about it, implied that there had been others, saying: “I really have a lot of other things on my mind.”

  He was a very pleasant traveling companion. He refused to play badminton because he didn’t want to learn how, but he watched Metilda win while holding the towel that she used to wipe her face at regular intervals. As for what others thought, it was obvious: the young man who was holding a young lady’s towel, damp with perspiration, could only be her lover. One of the mothers, with a large chignon, who was watching the young girls said of the couple: “Birds of a feather . . .”

  Metilda was mad at herself for having made advances. She was even madder at Raouf for not responding. But he wasn’t being coy; he simply wasn’t doing anything. She wondered why. She finally concluded that she was dealing with a tormented soul, like the ones that one of her Viennese girlfriends had described to her, one of those young men who become so attached to their bad habits that they become melancholy and incapable of escaping that melancholy, which sends them right back to their bad habits, which then feed that melancholy; they suffer, but are incapable of changing. She had mentioned this in veiled terms to Ganthier, who had understood, and confirmed her fears, in veiled terms. Raouf was not an easy young man, yes, he had an American woman friend:

  “I think he was in love with her in the beginning . . . It was rather literary, a way to experience what he read in novels and poetry, but the American woman was older, she turned him into her good friend. Yes, she went back at the end of October. He doesn’t seem to be suffering very much, and there is another woman, a cousin, a widow, a bas bleu—do you know what that is?”

  “Yes, that’s what you call women who read books?”

  Ganthier apologized. To continue the conversation he had brought up that other woman, the head of a large farm, an exception! A cultivated, energetic, stubborn woman! Ganthier surprised himself in singing Rania’s praises . . . And here I am talking to a Boche . . . Metilda didn’t resemble anything that he was familiar with or expected to find, there was something very free about her, a younger Gabrielle, but without provocation, who spoke to him as an equal, apparently without effort, without needing a purse that she could hold in her hands, which she sometimes put in her jacket pockets like a boy, but different from Kathryn, calmer, no doubt having had to fight much less than the American woman did. Ganthier also understood that Metilda suspected something other than just bad habits, and he disabused her. Raouf really was interested in women, but it would take him some time to become comfortable with them.

  On their last night on board Metilda decided not to be appropriate, and she knocked on Raouf’s door. Surprised, he asked her in, and for the first time he blushed. She had worn her boldest top, a rectangular neckline. He was in his dressing gown. They began by talking, then Metilda claimed to feel ill and asked to lie down a moment. She wasn’t really ill, of course, but then the sea suddenly became very choppy, and she quickly did become nauseous. Storms in the Mediterranean are violent, Ganthier said later when he ran into Raouf in the passageway holding a yellowish Metilda, a towel at her mouth. She wanted to breathe as much fresh air as possible. The wind had picked up; the captain had forbidden access to the deck. From behind the windows of the salon, in the flashes of lightning, they saw the bow of the Jugurtha dive into the ever-higher lead gray waves.

  “They’re at least thirty feet high,” said Metilda.

  “Not as tall as that,” said Ganthier, “but even so . . .”

  When they arrived the next morning the two young people promised to write. Ganthier never really knew what had happened between them, and as she was shaking his hand Metilda said: “See you soon, perhaps . . .”

  20

  NIGHTS OF DREAMS

  In Nahbès, before Raouf’s departure, and by making even more promises to Marfaing, Si Ahmed had finally obtained the name of the one who had slandered his son. Yes, slander, that was the interpretation the contrôleur civil had given in his response to the letter from the general residence of France on the subject of young Raouf: slander, jealousy, a rather hot-headed young man, granted, but he reads and cites Pascal, Montesquieu, Balzac, had the best results on the bac. Youth rebels only against itself. They’re basically good, if you know how to deal with them, and Marfaing knew how to deal with them.

  The day after his negotiations with the contrôleur civil, the caïd had had another conversation, this one with Jacob Bensoussan, a very respected man in the world of loans in Nahbès and throughout the region, and Jacob Bensoussan had very happily agreed to Si Ahmed’s request, as they had been friends for forty years. Then Si Ahmed had accompanied his son to the Nahbès train station. On the platform, he placed a white cardboard box in Raouf’s hands: baklavas. Raouf said:

  “I’m not ten years old anymore!”

  “You’re eighteen, and you’ve become hardened.”

  It was awkward. The caïd knew that Raouf knew the adage, “When you’re hardened you can be broken.” Before boarding the train Raouf kissed his father’s hand, which didn’t please Si Ahmed: Raouf thought he was feeling an emotion that he didn’t want to feel. The train had started to move; smoke and sparks billowed out onto the palm trees around the station, and then it disappeared. The caïd had wanted to say, “I’m here, I’ll keep watch.”

  Once his son had left, Si Ahmed did not seek out Belkhodja—absolutely not, that would have given credence to the slander. He had preferred to allow the merchant to carry on his business as he saw fit. Belkhodja, to survive his shameful marriage, increased his trips to the capital, spending lots of money on expensive things. Some criticized these new ways of a man whom up to then they thought was pious and said that the clothing of a good man is prayer. But for most of those who talked about him, Belkhodja’s new vest, discreetly embroidered with gold thread, his immaculate jebba, his babouches of the best calf leather, changed at least twice a day, his extra-fine English socks, his elegant mustache, trimmed by a barber who visited him every morning, his silver cigarette case, his gold watch, and all his elegant ways, especially his calm, which separated him from all material urgency but left him full of attention for the requests of his clients—all of that was for business, an elegance of a great merchant, necessary for someone who had to stay in the capital frequently. A great merchant couldn’t dress just any old way, eat just anything, sleep anywhere; he needed a style that mirrored the level of his business, business that brought him increasingly into contact with foreigners of quality: the French, of course, but also Italians, Egyptians, English, even Germans. Belkhodja was proud to send his rugs all over the world.

  In Nahbès, elegance didn’t cost that much, but with the money spent on a meal in an elegant restaurant in the capital one could live for a week in the provinces. Belkhodja was ashamed of his extravagance; he said that those expenses helped him in his trade. He wasn’t wrong: that way of life put him within reach of very good opportunities, and he was able to grasp a few of them. In the evening, after meals with his buyers, there were also nightclubs—the Sphinx, the Miramar—the cost of champagne, and the bills that one slipped into the scanty bottoms of the belly dancers, quite an art, a gesture of discreet elegance but one that the other guests must notice in order to have an idea of the extent of Belkhodja’s means. And after the cabaret, there were card games, the art of losing with good humor or of plunging back
into risk after winning. Belkhodja’s clients came and went, but Belkhodja was always there, every night. After midnight, there was also the white powder, a bit expensive to buy, but so much more effective than the kif pipe for staying lucid and agile. Granted, none of that was a sign of great piety, but Belkhodja felt that the unfair blow he had been dealt in his marriage earned him the right to the sins that he might henceforth commit. He dressed well, spent his money, sometimes told himself he was spending badly, like a donkey that scatters its barley, but his new accounting promised large profits. Belkhodja often went from one column to the other and paid himself in advance.

  There was no one to voice a warning, even among his friends at La Porte du Sud. Almost no one in Nahbès knew about the debauchery that was being given free rein in the capital, hundreds of miles away, and those who did know said to themselves that the merchant had found in debauchery a means to soothe a soul prey to the violence of shame and hatred. Belkhodja could have pulled himself out of it, by controlling his expenses and not playing cards so often. What was most surprising was that he was not possessed by the demon of gambling; that was for the weak, and even the white powder for him was only something extra that helped him to see better in card games and business. It was also true that at the suggestion of the receptionist at the Excelsior Hotel, a Frenchman who greeted Belkhodja the way a European never would have done in Nahbès, at the suggestion of this receptionist—Monsieur Michel—Belkhodja sometimes requested a second pillow, to sleep better, a second pillow that the chambermaids, in the morning, among themselves, called a doormat to a brothel, a Russian or Italian pillow, of a very expensive blond; but Belkhodja didn’t abuse that either because he came back most often to sleep at hours when even that type of creature must be taking a well-deserved break. All of that was basically very pleasant extras, but never essential. The proof was that he very easily did without all of it when he returned to Nahbès, though he returned less and less frequently, that was true.

  And so Belkhodja had absolutely no reason to stop. He, himself, facing his conscience, recognized his sins, but he wasn’t a slave to them, and the remorse he experienced even gave his prayers—he still did them at least once a day—the bit of guilt that went well with good piety. But the one thing Belkhodja could not do without, the thing he anticipated at the beginning of the afternoon when he was in the capital, a true drug, which turned him into a man outside of himself, an eater of time, was the night. Belkhodja had begun to love the night, and instead of going to sleep while devising plans as a diligent merchant would do, he plunged into the night, not that of Nahbès, which nevertheless had a few places suitable for causing a good man to err; no, the night to which Belkhodja was addicted was the night in the capital. And that passion for the night did not come from the vilest of what the night can offer, when the sky is veiled with black and bodies undress. If the night had been only gambling dens and brothels Belkhodja would have ultimately rejected it and, in disgust, fear, or fatigue, would have quickly returned south, to backgammon and fig alcohol. No, his passion had begun with aspects of the night that were more recommendable, the coolness of night, the depth of night, the night that awaits you when you leave a place of debauchery at three in the morning, as if the debauchery had been only a pretext for rediscovering the immaculate face of the night, the abysses of shadow and stars into which you could plunge while walking, with the clarity of one who is no longer tired, the night in which huge dreams could be dreamt, when you are the last human being to resist sleep, which you can face with all the strength of your imagination, when you dare, and it repays you by inspiring dreams that are far richer than those it grants to reasonable people who have ultimately fallen asleep.

  Belkhodja loved those dreams at the end of the night above all else, dreams he savored while walking in the silence of the capital, dreams whose realization was held only by a thread, great deals that led him from the sale of rugs to owning a boat, then a real ship, then two, Belkhodja going from a merchant to a shipowner in a few dreams on the background of Ursa Major, Capricorn, and clouds. Like the French he launched his ships throughout the Mediterranean, and to enhance his dreams he walked toward the smells of the docks, the sound of the waves, or he returned to the center of the city, constructed the headquarters of his maritime company right on avenue Gambetta. He inaugurated it in the presence of all the authorities of the country. He invested in the farming of his native region, became one of the Mediterranean lords of olive oil. He didn’t really like that oil, but knew that it could become liquid gold. He also bought a newspaper. He became its soul, defined great politics, took a plane, and with each of the great stages of his dreams he also had a new mosque built.

  He walked in the night with great strides, to the point of exhaustion, and went to sleep in the morning, drunk on his dreams, and when he set off at the beginning of the afternoon to resume his activities as a merchant he had a tendency to be increasingly patronizing with people who were never at the level of his dreams. He took care of business, had dinner, and at the end of his dinner hurried to the cabaret, then to the best gambling dens. He ate, smoked, and gambled to accelerate the passing of time, impatient for the hour when he could leave, his head empty, to walk in the deserted night when you can talk to yourself because there are no passersby to think you are crazy . . . to launch his boldest activities at the moment when all others are interrupted . . . to have his successes file before his wide-open eyes, in the cool night air. And in order to plunge into his best dreams, those of a feverish night wanderer, he needed the expenses of the preceding hours to have put him into a state close to panic; he saw his capital dry up, he saw the time come when his shoes would be worth more than he, but he needed his dreams more and more, and never dreamt of grandeur better than when he thought he was on the edge of the abyss.

  To maintain his lifestyle and his frequent trips to the capital, Belkhodja the lender began to borrow increasingly large sums. It was no longer a question of obtaining rugs from the starving Bedouins; the hunger had come over to his side, the hunger for dreams, and for the elegant life he had to lead to imagine what could be dreamt, and the debt that shocks you and launches you back passionately into the dream. One day, Jacob Bensoussan, his usual lender, gave him a veiled warning. He said to him: “When the party is over all that’s left is the dirty linen,” and shortly afterward for the first time he refused to help. It was from that moment that Belkhodja began to have serious difficulties. For a time his French police friends were able to calm his creditors in the capital, but his situation worsened; he absolutely needed money that Jacob Bensoussan now refused to sell him, while even demanding the reimbursement of what he already owed. In Nahbès people still didn’t know a lot about Belkhodja’s situation, but they quickly heard about Bensoussan’s strange refusal. In the capital, too, the other lenders avoided him; Belkhodja had become their nightmare. The downward spiral accelerated in a few weeks and the merchant ended up going back to his house in Nahbès, where two or three relatives could at least feed him and help him save face. He no longer had any dreams; he had only one prospect, that of dishonorable ruin. And Si Ahmed watched all of that from afar.

  One Friday as he was leaving the mosque, Belkhodja ran into the caïd. He feared the encounter, but Si Ahmed, unlike many people, greeted him kindly, even said comforting things to him that showed he was aware of his financial situation, and in a tone that also indicated he didn’t know anything else. They had known each other for a long time. Belkhodja knew Si Ahmed was rich and discreet, had a great reputation as a negotiator, never refusing business if it promised to be profitable. Belkhodja had already been advised to approach him, but Belkhodja hadn’t dared to give in to what his conscience suggested was a dangerous provocation. It is always possible to avoid the blows of a man whom one has harmed, but that’s not a reason to place oneself within his reach. After their encounter, he did, however, decide to pay the caïd a visit. Their meeting was fairly pleasant. Si Ahmed spoke of his health problems, mai
nly his back. He had for a long time been proud to be able to carry the sheep of the Eid al-Adha feast, but now he was paying for that pride. Belkhodja took advantage of those confidences to bring up the difficulties he was having in his business, and he ended up “making overtures.”

  The caïd would not allow Belkhodja to sink to the shameful level of a beggar, and during the following visit, he himself jumped a few obligatory steps in this type of conversation, saying:

  “I’m not a forest where one can come looking for wood. I also have my problems.”

  Coming from a man like Si Ahmed, that confidence was shockingly clear. Belkhodja even found it somewhat discourteous. He was afraid that the caïd had learned certain things; he attempted to feel him out:

  “Yet you are not that bad off, it seems you have bought a new car, and in town they’re talking about a trip . . .”

  Si Ahmed raised his eyes to the heavens. Belkhodja was an old acquaintance. He forced himself to endure his remarks, then replied:

  “Indeed, if I can’t lend it’s because I’m spending . . . The car is because one day I won’t be caïd, and the trip . . . isn’t for me . . .” Si Ahmed alluded to his son’s voyage with no apparent bitterness. He continued:

  “And it’s when I’m spending my money that people think that I have some, but I am a caïd, not a banker.”

  Belkhodja hesitated, then jumped on the opportunity:

  “I’m prepared to reimburse you at thirty percent.”

  “Yes,” the caïd said, “and not at fifty, like for Bensoussan, who in any event no longer wants to lend to you. And be careful, it is not because he’s a Jew that you mustn’t pay him back; there are rules. And you know, on my son’s head, I will never lend with interest.”

  There was no irony in Si Ahmed’s tone, speaking of his son’s head. He wasn’t aware of anything. His tone simply indicated that the conversation had come to an end. As he was standing up, Belkhodja said: