by Hedi Kaddour
Raouf also ran into Quôc in more bourgeois gatherings, like the Club du Faubourg or the Amis de l’Art. When Quôc saw him, the Indochinese man excused himself and introduced his new friend to a corpulent woman who spoke magnificent French while rolling her r’s.
“Madame is a great writer!” Raouf bowed respectfully. He soon found out that in addition to Colette, Quôc also knew Léon Blum, Marcel Cachin, and Marguerite Moreno.
And the next day, at breakfast, Raouf asked Gabrielle for more information. Yes, Marguerite and Colette were more or less together, but Colette also liked men: “No, Ganthier, she isn’t sleeping with Marcel Cachin, let’s be serious!” Kathryn’s laugh interrupted them. She was reading the Daily Mail, with the headline “Mobbed in London.” Raouf asked what “mobbed” meant; it was something like “crushed by the crowd.” In the photo they recognized Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, mobbed in front of their hotel, with a crowd of admirers. Kathryn read: “Douglas was forced to evacuate his wife by carrying her on his shoulders . . .”
“Carried on Douglas Fairbanks’s shoulders. I’d love to be Mary Pickford for fifteen minutes,” said Gabrielle.
“But no longer than that,” said Kathryn, “Afterward he starts drinking again.”
Gabrielle tempted by the shoulders of a man: Ganthier felt a wave of relief pass over him.
23
BROTHER AND SISTER
The doctors at the large French hospital had said that it was due to very bad health overall. But they were nonetheless able to bring Rania’s father, Si Mabrouk, back from where his ailing body had wanted to take him, for the time being, they said. What came next would depend on a very strict diet, and they were sure that, in spite of the heart attack, he had many happy days ahead, or generally happy days—that is, with all due respect for your excellency, days without alcohol or sugar, no fat of any kind, cooked or not. Yes, lean fish, white meat of chicken, no salt, either. Yes, that does mean no fried food. Your body is fat, your heart is fat, your arteries are fat. The fat is weighing down your blood. You must lose weight, both visible and invisible fat. Just because the patient has survived doesn’t mean he is out of the woods. The woods are still full of danger, said the head of the department of cardiology with the chuckle of a reed-thin man, a true reed, not an ounce more than a six-foot-tall reed. A strict diet: you must fight the good fight, your excellency!
Si Mabrouk had forbidden anyone to tell his daughter about his condition, but among those who are alarmed, those who are saddened, and those who rejoice, news of this type travels very fast, and the same day she had been, as they say, stricken by the news, Rania went to the capital: “I’m going to take care of you!” Then, seeing her father’s reaction, she corrected herself: “You’re going to take care of yourself and I’m going to help you, you’ll see, you’ll be fine.”
“But I’m already fine,” said her father from his hospital bed, striking his chest warily. Rania said:
“The doctors don’t exactly agree, but you will be fine, with some self-discipline!”
She quickly invoked the help of God, and seemed happy to be able to incarnate discipline. She had written to Gabrielle asking her to send some medical books, which hadn’t yet arrived.
Rania’s brother, Taïeb, found it scandalous that a woman would start talking about the human body in general, and about that of her father in particular. Si Mabrouk didn’t want her to stay: If you’re here that means I’m not well at all. Is that really what you want me to think? I have two European nurses. They take good care of me (he pointed to his lunch). I swallow only lettuce leaves, boiled fish, rice, and water; I’m not even supposed to eat a grain of couscous, and if you’re here, Taïeb is going to continue to come every day, to watch us. I’ll get upset. That’s very bad for the heart, and then there are things I don’t want to discuss with you, as you know, also so I don’t get upset, or be concerned. Just think about it, my only concern is your situation vis-à-vis your brother. It would be better to do things while there’s still time. You could choose your husband. Taïeb will not even let you choose. For him the family is only a court. Decide . . . But if you choose too quickly I’ll be worried. What do the doctors think? Are they any clearer? They talked about improvement? In any case I don’t want to know, but if the . . . delay . . . is really very short I’d prefer to continue to eat things that taste of life. No, never mind. I’m determined to keep to that diet. You have my word.
Si Mabrouk was thinking out loud in front of his daughter, his gaze fixed on the rays of light reflected by the steel posts of his brand-new bed. A bottle of oxygen was placed next to the bedside table: If you want to keep the Nahbès property, you must find a way, and it isn’t easy, Rania saying: I won’t need that, I won’t need anything! Which was the most upsetting response she could give, the father and daughter each playing the game of upsetting responses, Si Mabrouk continuing: I could sell it to a man of trust. Rania didn’t say a word, the father continuing: And you could buy it back from him with the money I give you, Rania saying with a laugh: A farm like that isn’t easily returned, it would take a very trustworthy man. She was tempted to say to her father that it would be useless, then realized that the calculations he was doing were helping him to forget his hunger, because he was hungry. I’m dreaming of méchoui, he kept saying, I keep dreaming of méchoui, tagine, couscous, baklava, that never happened to me before, I would give my soul for some honey, almonds, the crust from half a baklava, well browned in the oven . . .
Some people stoked that hunger with the remarks they made in front of the invalid: You’ve lost too much weight, Si Mabrouk, that’s not good. An old friend even told him, “An empty bag can’t stand up,” the former minister asserting: I’m not sick, I’m convalescing, I will soon be able to cheat a little. He wasn’t permitted to smoke, either. Among doctors that was the new thing: tobacco is the enemy, along with alcohol and fat, sugar. “They’re starving me, and they’re forbidding cigarettes that calm the hunger!” Rania had given instructions to the servants and nurses: filter the visitors, he needed rest. But among civilized people, an invalid was to be visited, and that invalid was bound by the laws of hospitality, he must welcome them; and a visitor, especially a relative, must bring a cake, a homemade cake, made by the most respectable person in the household. What can you do in front of a nephew who tells you: grandmother made it?
Rania put a stop to all that. The response to every visit was that the master was napping; they could come back a bit later. Of course they could leave the cakes; he would be delighted. Or she allowed an hour for a group visit, upsetting people, and her father ended up having the reputation of a bedridden sleeper, “I can neither eat, smoke, or talk to people!” It wasn’t true. They greeted friends who respected their instructions, and not the one who was scolded by Rania because he had brought cigarettes even so, a former minister, too. An assassin, that’s what the young widow had called him, adding that she would make his behavior known in high places. The man left. Si Mabrouk had laughed after his departure: He wasn’t trying to kill me, he just wanted to cheer me up, but it is a bit true that he’s an assassin. He must have thought you knew a thing or two, or that I told you something . . . you know, for the farm. I know people who keep their word, at least one man in Nahbès, Si Ahmed. The best solution would be to give you the amount in cash. You’ll buy the farm from him. You’ll have it in your own name, and when I will have closed my eyes for the last time you’ll be able to stay there, but that won’t prevent Taïeb from trying to marry you off to a man of his liking, and if you possess a lovely property that will increase your suitors and the pressure.
Sometimes Taïeb would come into the room. He kissed his father’s hand, greeted his sister, a good, affectionate boy. He said: Don’t let me interrupt you, what were you talking about? Already furious that his sister didn’t leave when he arrived. He was the elder brother: she should have even called him sidi, as was the rule in respectable families. She never did it, or did it only to mock him. It
was against nature to give so much freedom to a girl, but his father had always done that. One day he had heard him say to a friend, “She was born, and something happened in my heart, and since then it hasn’t changed.” For Taïeb she was a spoiled sister. His father had always been enthralled with her, with what he called her intelligence, her precociousness in speaking, reading, writing, counting. She was the only one in the house who could stand up to him without immediately having a crop come down on her head, and there was also a sign that made things clear—now that his father no longer drank he realized it—never had Si Mabrouk been in a state of inebriation in front of his daughter, whereas in front of him . . . without any dignity . . . as if I counted no more than the rug on which he ultimately vomited.
Taïeb had seen his sister gradually begin to talk as an equal with his father, who was ecstatic with his daughter’s audacity. The world was upside down; it was the Western world. It regained its hierarchy only in the stern reminders that Si Mabrouk gave to his son. A girl who liked books; Taïeb had rejected them as soon as he had seen that she liked them. He had kept only one, which he cited constantly, a collection of hadiths, and he had become furious when his sister had begun to criticize the use he made of them. The worst was the day when she had insulted him, had said to him: You want to return to the old law because you think that you will pay fewer taxes, not even three percent of what you earn in your rotten brick factory off the backs of fifty poor fellows that you make work as if God didn’t exist! She had been to that brick factory once, such gloomy men. Sometimes people laugh when they work; it’s a sign that poverty hasn’t won. Raouf had said to her one day: When they laugh it’s because they sense that the world could be better and that can make them want to transform it. In Taïeb’s brick factory, no one laughed. In response to her insult Taïeb tried to slap his younger sister. She blocked his arm; she was a head taller than he. He had tried to kick her. He had seen the triumph in his sister’s eyes, typical of her: to force him to make spurious gestures when he was just defending the True and the Right. She didn’t say anything. She knew that he was aware of what he was doing, that he was suffering from it. He had tried to hit her again, without success.
Their father had separated them: “You’re not children anymore, shame on you!” Taïeb had noticed that in pronouncing the word shame their father had looked only at him. Since then he never tried to hit his sister again. He had discovered that it was better to use a cold power. He told himself that after his father died, he would be able not only to have himself immediately obeyed by his sister but also to prevent a too-advantageous marriage for her. He had suffered too much in the presence of the dead husband who had almost become a second son to Si Mabrouk, and the favorite one. In the beginning, his father enjoyed calling him when he was with his son-in-law, and Taïeb said to himself that his father wanted to lean on him, to give to the other not only his opinion but that of his son, that of the men of the family, and then he had realized that Si Mabrouk spoke with his son-in-law of things that he didn’t understand, or less and less as the discussion advanced, points of law, ways of calculating risk, hypotheses for investment, loans that would enable them to make investments that would earn much more than they had cost. He told himself that those were things against religion, one was not supposed to earn money with money: that Paris stock exchange was only a place of perdition.
His father was always kind to him during those discussions. In reality he was doing it to humiliate him. Taïeb had wanted to protest but said to himself that it was better to continue to appear as if he didn’t know anything. After all, his father could think what he wanted, but he could never challenge his place as the eldest son. He didn’t really want to do so, in any event—Taïeb was sure of that—it was just the custom: treat his son like a dog, to teach him, to harden him. One day that would come to an end. He wondered what would be better: to marry off his sister now, see her go under another authority, leave the house; she would leave him free to live his life, but with the risk that she might marry a powerful man; or wait for death to carry off his father’s body, and organize a marriage with a good man, of course, but of moral goodness, a man without influence, a man who throughout his life would need Taïeb’s help, and a man of tradition, who would bring Rania back to the right path, through the necessary means. He had to act carefully; he had found such a man. For now he preferred to keep him in the shadows.
Rania wrote to Gabrielle regularly. Letters from her followed, from all the places where the quartet stopped, in France and Germany. Rania had told her about her father’s illness, without mentioning the concerns she might have about her own fate.
“She doesn’t talk about it,” Gabrielle said to the other three, “She must think that taking care of her own fate at this time would be inappropriate. I’m afraid one morning the sky will fall on her head.”
“That Taïeb is a monster!” Kathryn said. Raouf agreed. Only Ganthier pointed out that the brother had law on his side. He said to Gabrielle:
“The same law as that of the rioter you once presented as a Christ figure to the readers of L’Avenir, and also that of the people your Rania supported not that long ago by feeding their families, they were ready to die for that old law, which assigns females the place you know about . . .” Raouf’s face was solemn. Ganthier added:
“Our dear revolutionary is discovering the omnipresence of contradiction. It doesn’t have only a positive role. Sometimes, instead of nicely going beyond itself for the better, it crushes people.”
“Her father won’t allow it,” said Raouf. Ganthier smiled, then:
“Do you mean that former minister, an ‘enemy of the people’ and ‘valet of colonialism’? Are you counting on him to save your cousin? You’re beginning to make progress!”
In her response to Rania, Gabrielle tried to be reassuring. She didn’t doubt that Si Mabrouk would be able to protect his daughter, which hardly reassured Rania. When what your friends say rings hollow, that means you’re in trouble, she had thought. At the bottom of the letter there was a note in Raouf’s handwriting, just as hollow, and a surprising “Cordially,” from Ganthier. Rania looked out the window. It was raining on the capital. She missed her fields, her walks, and the wind of the sea that ruffled the clumps of grass on the sides of the path, and someone else with whom she would have liked to have walked, talked, close herself up in . . . He will come and I will allow him, no, he will allow me, she hesitated between different pleasures that were only in her head . . . ghadi sayujadu amsi, my tomorrow is only yesterday . . . She came back to herself. Her father was doing better. He kept to his diet without cheating. He pressed her to return to the farm.
“Don’t let your people get used to your being away.”
“My people like me . . .”
“Yes, but apart from laughter and tears, they can’t do anything, whereas Taïeb, with his will . . .”
Sometimes Rania wondered how a brother and sister could end up detesting each other so much. She realized that her father suffered from not having been able to prevent it.
24
A NIGHT AT GABRIELLE’S
“I’ll walk you home, Gabrielle”: that statement was running through Ganthier’s head. He was with Gabrielle at the Daumas’s house on avenue Montaigne, it had taken him some time to get to that simple five-word utterance. He just had to find the right tone. Place some tenderness on Gabrielle? No, better to give her a reason, “I’ll walk you home, it’s not safe to walk alone.” No! That’s too long, and it sounds like I want to be her protector! Act as if we had already decided to leave together: “Shall we go?” She would be speechless, success! No, she would be furious, and would say, “I’d rather go home alone,” looking around the room as she says it, so don’t act superior with her, not casual or protective, something like “May I accompany you?” But I can already hear her say, “That won’t be necessary.” Don’t say, “May I,” take control! But “I’ll accompany you?” is dangerous. She could respond, “There’
s no reason,” or even, “That’s very kind, but you must be tired.” She’s fifteen years younger than you. She’s capable of saying that while looking you up and down, just when you forget to hold your shoulders back, she never misses an opportunity for revenge. That will teach you to talk about Monsieur Seguin’s goat, on the evening you hope to seduce her, the battle between the goat and the wolf, the entire night. You shouldn’t have kept going on, you should have just enjoyed the profiteroles, but they seemed to be interested in what you were saying—that Ganthier, just as brilliant as ever. She smiled: There’s a proverb in Avignon, A woman who smiles is soon underneath. But when a woman like that listens to you while smiling, it means she’s letting you dig your own hole. She doesn’t like men. She watches you dig. And you talk about the night of the little goat, the struggle, the pleasure the little goat puts into that struggle, the happiness of being a wolf in front of such a goat. She must not have liked the metaphor of the goat. Three glasses of champagne, a couple glasses of white, a Bordeaux that made you want to go lie down under the barrel, and for the red a Burgundy, an indescribable Gevrey-Chambertin. Glass after glass you were inexhaustible on the little goat, idiot, with cognac at the end. You have to forestall the “no thank you,” just a hint of a request, out of courtesy, but with words that must force her to say “yes,” or a mute acceptance—that would be best, mute acceptance.
Ganthier was much in favor of mute acceptance, it made the body speak: She gets up, she doesn’t speak, she answers with her eyes, her body, she pulls in her stomach—if she does that while she’s speaking to you, you’ve won. Place her in front of a dilemma. She accepts with her entire body or she affronts you, but she wouldn’t dare do that. She knows what the Daumas would tell everyone: Can you imagine, yesterday evening she refused to let Ganthier see her home. She doesn’t want to be seen in a taxi with a man: she would get in trouble with the girlfriends! You must make the “no” impossible. Act forceful, but force wrapped in velvet, “I will accompany you,” to make it a fait accompli, with a question in your voice, and then a way out, offer her a way out. That’s good: “I’ll accompany you to your door.” She must be able to imagine herself saying thank you to me in front of her door, and turning her back on me.