The Influence Peddlers

by Hedi Kaddour

At dinner, it didn’t take much. Ganthier began to tell about their meeting the Austrian girl on the ship, saying to Raouf:

  “By the way, the captain told me that in fact Metilda is half-German. Her mother is German, born in Berlin.”

  Kathryn made a joke, but in her head there was a pang of concern. In bed, that afternoon, she had asked:

  “How was the ship? Okay?”

  Raouf, his head resting on her stomach, responded: “It was fine . . . I’ll tell you all about it.”

  Later she said to herself, That’s what Neil says when he doesn’t want to talk about something. She wanted to forget, not go through with Raouf what she had gone through with Neil. Her moods went up and down during the next few days, and she fought them, caressing Raouf’s cheek, he who in any event didn’t sense what was going on, being too busy trying to regain his balance ever since he had seen through the window of the train bringing him and Ganthier from Marseille to Paris towns flying ever more quickly by, towns with their red brick train stations and houses with little yards, piles of wood, and clotheslines. And the houses turned into buildings that rose higher and higher, became thicker and thicker as they got closer to the city, and at one point, very far in the distance, the Eiffel Tower. A glimpse of a dream, then it disappeared. Then the sudden feeling that he was going to be swallowed up. He had envisioned something like “the two of us in Paris,” from atop a rise in the city, perhaps not that tower, nor the cemetery where Balzac had Rastignac speak, but at Sacré Coeur, for example. He had seen a photo of Paris taken from the steps of Sacré Coeur: “My heart at peace, I climbed the mountain from which one can contemplate the city in all its breadth.” But now, in the train, he wasn’t contemplating anything. He was being shot through the blows of a whistle into a world that would force him always to do what he had begun to do ever since the buildings began to get taller: raise his head. The city forced you to raise your head, and when you lowered it you saw the train tracks that increased in number, Ganthier saying: “We’re entering hell, the entrances are becoming larger!” Raouf silent, in his head a memory, “We will enter splendid cities,” and soon the train rolling in a sort of ditch that ran between walls like cliffs on either side of the tracks, with buildings on top of the cliffs, and more buildings, the walls covered with advertising posters that became increasingly gray and dirty, not the city of peaceful squares and streets that you saw in photos, but a city of maws of blackened buildings, all piled together, “Hold your step . . . We will enter the splendid cities,” a single gray cloud over everything. Finally the great station, getting out of the train and fighting the surge of passengers, Ganthier saying: “Be aware, son of the caïd, here we are only anonymous travelers!” Outside, at the entrance to the station an omnipresent smell of coal blended with that of manure and the exhaust of vehicles, black dust on all surfaces, all the growling, plaintive, sometimes hateful sounds pouring out of the people and machines in a commotion of tramways, automobiles, buses, and carts, clacking, bellowing, under a network of tramway lines that crossed one another in every direction in the sky.

  They had begun to go on walks with Kathryn the day after they arrived, and to annoy Ganthier, Kathryn said that she found Paris pretty—no vulgar comparison with New York or Chicago, no, pretty was the right word—she adored Paris, caught Raouf, who was looking at a woman passing by, and said:

  “Close your mouth, she’s going to think you’re an idiot.” Raouf laughed, without at all feeling he had done anything wrong. Kathryn laughed in turn, and the story of the Austrian girl and the ship came back to her. That’s the worst, she thought, when they do things without realizing it . . . He never talks about that girl. I have to drag the words out of him one by one, like I did for Rania, but that Austrian girl is more dangerous. Maybe he’s not thinking about her anymore, maybe, but if we go to Berlin she’ll be there, after all, she’s half German, unless Ganthier refuses to make the trip; I’ll be in Berlin, she’ll be there, not Raouf, true, but she could join him in Paris while I’m not here. Why wasn’t I really jealous of Rania? Because I decided that she and Raouf weren’t possible? A cousin who loves him, no more.

  Kathryn forgot about Metilda for a while. Then there was the happiness of being together and of life as a couple, without hiding anymore, choosing a hat before they went out: “Yellow looks best on you . . . No, everything looks good on you,” Raouf also in agreement about a change of dress at the last minute because he could see Kathryn in her slip again, and sometimes she changed her slip.

  “You know, not every woman is as shameless as I am.” They kissed. Sometimes she would take the towels and clothes out of the bathroom so Raouf would have to come out naked.

  “Raouf, how do you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “You eat twice as much as I do, you could have a bit of a stomach,” Raouf kissing the slight beginning of Kathryn’s stomach:

  “This is what I find most delicious about you.” She laughed, called him clumsy:

  “I don’t have anything more delicious than that?”

  Kathryn didn’t dare ask Ganthier what had happened on board the Jugurtha and Ganthier didn’t dare ask her questions about Gabrielle, who had appeared at the Scribe two days after they had, splendid. She had just returned from Italy; she was nice to Ganthier, acting as if she were his contemporary, saying “the children,” referring to Kathryn and Raouf; she took his arm in the street; they made a handsome quartet. At the end of the day Ganthier was almost happy. At night, at the hotel, he heard Raouf leave the adjoining room to go to Kathryn’s, and he didn’t dare go to Gabrielle’s apartment a half hour from the Scribe. He was waiting for an opportunity, knew he would be incapable of creating one, invented one in his dreams, couldn’t fall asleep, and in the morning forced himself to appear the way he should to carry on in the quartet.

  When he was alone with Kathryn for a moment, Ganthier made an offer of an exchange, an exchange of information:

  “Raouf is growing up quickly. On the ship he was still just a kid.”

  Kathryn said: “How old was she?”

  “Who?”

  “The Austrian girl, I’ve already forgotten her name.”

  “Metilda? The same age as he, and she acted like a debutante.”

  “But Raouf seems older than he is!” Kathryn didn’t add anything, waited for a response that didn’t come, decided not to say anything to Ganthier about what he was waiting for in turn, then, seeing his face:

  “Sometimes, in Nahbès, I would get tired of Gabrielle, always talking about you.”

  Ganthier blushed, Kathryn thinking: Austrian, German, Berlin, the same age as he, a debutante . . . in New York the rich kids go to debutante balls. Then she said to Ganthier:

  “Debutante, we also use that term back home. I really despise the French word. People want to sound snobbish, but it just sounds stupid.”

  “It just describes what it’s meant to describe.”

  “How?”

  Ganthier was happy to elaborate:

  “To ‘debut,’ in the game of boules, is to knock your opponents’ balls away from the but—goal—debutantes are the girls who come to knock away the girls from the year before.”

  Kathryn didn’t say anything.

  Some evenings Raouf would sometimes disappear after dinner, or even before.

  “Raouf out enjoying himself!” Gabrielle said. All three of them knew. Once, seeing the young couple come in after midnight, Kathryn disguised as a man, Ganthier had warned Raouf:

  “Your revolutionary meetings are at your own risk, but if Kathryn is caught, her career is over.”

  Raouf then started going out alone, Kathryn wasn’t jealous of those outings, saying to Gabrielle:

  “I have my marriage, he’s wedded to politics.”

  She was watching for something else, a letter . . . One day, at the hotel reception desk, looking at the mail slots, she surprised herself by saying:

  “Nothing for us?”

  That was to keep Raouf from
asking the question again, and she started doing that even when she was alone in front of the man with the golden keys. No letter from the Austrian girl, but Kathryn knew what happens on a ship when there isn’t much time . . . And Ganthier didn’t dare say anything about the last night and the storm. He regretted his earlier indiscretions but waited in vain for Kathryn’s about Gabrielle, Why did she tell me, “She likes to take revenge”? But they must share confidences . . . Regarding the ship, he had said:

  “It was amusing . . . an enterprising young girl, Raouf, who seemed not to understand anything, but now I understand everything.” Looking at Kathryn, then:

  “Metilda didn’t stand a chance.”

  Ganthier told her only innocent things, and for Kathryn it was perhaps worse, a boy and a girl who had experienced such pleasure in being together that they didn’t even consider going farther . . . He must regret it now, no, I’m stupid, they fucked, I’ve taken the boat enough times to know, and if they didn’t do anything she’ll try again, I wouldn’t have given up, she’s going to try to see him again, I would write, when you want a man you don’t let him breathe.

  Kathryn lived like a time bomb, alternately on a ship she had never taken, sometimes on the edge of a catastrophe that she averted by asking Raouf nothing. Then she calmed down, took back her persona as a lover, and Raouf’s arm, and the pleasure of walking as a couple in Paris. From time to time, without looking at him, she squeezed his arm, said in a low voice:

  “Put your hand on mine,” or there was the shouting of a concierge who caught them kissing in a doorway:

  “Are hotels meant for dogs?”

  Kathryn was once even called a cheap hooker, and immediately went to the concierge’s window to confront her:

  “That’s not true! I’m very expensive!”

  And later, to Raouf: “What am I worth, in your opinion?”

  “Standing up or lying down?” Raouf had asked.

  She liked to surprise him, kiss his hand right in a salon de thé, say to him:

  “You’re my sweet pastry,” cause a false scene when he pulled his hand away:

  “You’re ashamed of us!”

  She also did more discreet things, such as when he went in front of her as they were entering a café or restaurant and she would sometimes put her hand on his behind.

  During their walks the entire city pulsed with a joyful rhythm, the flowing of the Seine, its banks, the beautiful arches of the bridges, Raouf saying:

  “‘Shepherdess, oh Eiffel Tower, the herd of bridges is bleating this morning.’”

  “Who wrote that?”

  “A poet, Apollinaire.”

  The bouquinistes, Raouf’s vertigo in front of them, take a step and Michelet rose up, then a complete collection of Balzac, and Shakespeare, and Dostoyevsky, the journals of Stendhal, André Gide, sometimes the Tharaud brothers.

  “Who are they?” Kathryn asked.

  “A colonial cliché, with some truth from time to time.”

  They left the bouquinistes, walked into the Tuileries gardens, stepping lightly on the path of fine dirt. Kathryn started walking around Raouf while laughing and repeating, “I love you.” They passed by girls, their heads uncovered, observed for a moment the people who were trying to warm up by pressing their backs against the wall of a sun-filled terrace, gardeners with copper badges, a curate in his robes walking in a straight line. There were many iron chairs with star-shaped openwork, and skinny women moving around, gathering a few coins in “rent,” and when they saw the skinny women, young working girls in white caps got up quickly. Next to the large basin a mother was saying to her child: “I told you so!” in a triumphant voice, the crying child carrying a large sailboat, useless: the water had frozen. Farther, a dog was getting excited over a large balloon. In front of them they could see the Arc de Triomphe. Sometimes it was the time of day when the shadows in the large garden became longer and began to climb the trunks of the oaks or plane trees, the sun leaving behind a red light that became darker and darker. Raouf stood with his back against a tree; she put her back against him; he wrapped his arms around her; she held onto his hands, pressed them against her. There were still some light clouds, and a momentary red reflection on the windows on top of a building.

  The bouquinistes were closing. Raouf quickly bought a copy of Apollinaire’s Alcools, which he gave to Kathryn; the river was becoming paler and paler, abandoning its paleness for darkness, the depths of the streets became darker and darker, the buildings transformed into black cliffs with jagged lights that they watched coming on one after the other. They also liked taking the elevated metro, the illuminated iron caterpillar that moved above the boulevards alongside bedrooms and dining rooms up in the apartment buildings; a child was doing his homework at the corner of a table that was already set for dinner; the apartments became bigger and bigger as they got closer to Passy, Metilda was no doubt there, in one of those apartments, This time I won’t let it happen, one never knows when you have to say, “That’s enough,” If it’s too early, you’re crazy, or you make them discover what they hadn’t seen, Kathryn once confiding in Gabrielle: I would even sometimes point women out to Neil and tell him I found them attractive. Maybe I did it on purpose. He pretended to be unmoved; he found defects. To hear me sing their praises, you never know when it’s time to stop, and when it’s too late there’s no longer any point: you just have the wrong role. Metilda entered and left Kathryn’s head like a faceless passerby. Kathryn was mad at Raouf. He must have read in one of his books that jealousy stokes desire. He’s not saying anything on purpose. He could say just one or two words, “She was nice . . . a bit much . . .” Raouf didn’t say anything, because he has nothing to say, I’m being stupid, he’s not thinking about her anymore, he never thought of her, nothing happened, nothing, but why am I so upset? Pain always tells the truth.

  Kathryn became a crossroads of sudden pain, Paris the hiding place of a debutante, and alcohol didn’t calm anything. They were on a bus, laughing out loud at a passenger who was knitting a huge pink sock; then, without warning, the city would shoot needles of pain into Kathryn’s chest. The bus stopped, they got off, decided to walk from Passy to the Trocadéro, Kathryn saying to herself, no questions, no lies, and kissed Raouf’s neck. The streets were silent, their steps in harmony, a sign in front of a door, “Rooms by the hour,” and then fifty yards farther Kathryn’s face became white. Raouf was concerned:

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing . . . a stitch in my side, it’s bothering me!” And to the lie she added some truth:

  “I hate being in pain!”

  He sensed Kathryn’s mood by her voice, didn’t look at her. She calmed down. They reached the Arc de Triomphe by avenue Kléber, walked down the Champs-Élysées, some pressure on the arm she was holding, Put your hand on mine. They jumped into a taxi, met Gabrielle and Ganthier at the hotel.

  “Raouf was introducing me to poets.” Kathryn recited: “‘Shepherdess, oh Eiffel Tower, the herd of bridges is bleating this morning.’”

  “I don’t hear any rhyming,” said Ganthier, “I see a ludicrous image. That’s called poetry, now?”

  They changed clothes just as the night was beginning to take over, and the four of them, to rid themselves of any hint of moral uprightness, went to a supper club, the band playing in the middle of the room, the clinking of jewelry, place settings, joyful noise, brutal, competition from the other couples, and bursts of laughter from girls with splendid breasts when an overweight man tried to arch his back during a tango.

  “Cinderella has gone home,” Ganthier said to the maître d’, who was about to refill Raouf’s glass. Gabrielle got up to avoid an invitation to dance by Ganthier and threw herself in the arms of a partner whom she seemed to know. Ganthier asked Kathryn so she wouldn’t be asked by anyone else.

  Raouf was in a taxi, heading toward the rue de la Grange-aux-Belles, or to the thirteenth arrondissement, to other places, smoke-filled and humid, where skinny men spoke
in trembling voices of a world beyond the seas.

  “We are not backward!” It was a representative of the Intercolonial Union who was speaking, an Indochinese. He added, “And Europe is not the cradle of humanity”—short, with protruding cheekbones, his eyes sunken with fatigue—“Nor are we the reserves for your revolution.”

  “That comrade is uncontrollable,” said a Frenchman speaking to someone next to Raouf.

  The little man with sunken eyes was called Quôc. He retouched photos to make a living, translated Montesquieu into Vietnamese, and wanted to write a book that he would entitle The Oppressed. Raouf was ashamed that he didn’t have such an ambitious project. Quôc had been traveling the world since 1911; he had gone to America, central Africa. He said, “I learned French in Saigon, English in London, and Russian in Montparnasse.” Ganthier had warned Raouf, “The police are watching your Annamite. You’re going to be in their sights, too.” Gabrielle told Raouf that she would protect him.

  On rue de la Grange-aux-Belles they had warned Quôc against the bourgeois Arab who dressed too well. Quôc responded that he had been recommended by several North African comrades, and that a police informant would have changed clothes to join them, he trusted him: “He thinks the way I did when I was younger. I was like him, the son of a notable, don’t you trust me?” Raouf had tried to interest Quôc in his country. He discovered that Quôc knew almost as much as he did about the Maghreb and central Africa, and when he spoke about Indochina it was always very precise: “Do you know that back home there are official outlets for opium? Licensed shops, like for alcohol, distribution insured by the colonial state. For a thousand villages France opened in my country a thousand opium shops and six schools; it is in the process of building a seventh.” He didn’t need to assume a sarcastic tone, and continued: “We also had volunteers who signed up for the mother country in 1914 . . . The French officers held ropes across the street, one at each end of a village, and all the young men who were in between the ropes were volunteers . . . There were even some who didn’t want to exercise that volunteerism, so they rubbed their eyes with pus, or lime.” He told Raouf that he had begun by wanting reforms. He had sought the help of enlightened people in Paris, but imperialism is an octopus. You can’t negotiate with an octopus. You cut off its tentacles, and then you negotiate . . .