The Influence Peddlers

by Hedi Kaddour

“Months go by like that in the movies?”

  “Yes.”

  “And whose house is that?”

  “That’s not a house, Kathryn says it’s a theater!”

  Kathryn adding: The actors have become famous and André is suffering from not seeing Séverine anymore:

  “It’s beautiful, all those well-dressed people.”

  “Look, it’s the marquis.”

  “Where?”

  “On the right, at the edge of the balcony in the theater, he’s watching.”

  “Kathryn is saying that André is wearing a big nose and is playing Scaradère.”

  “Why is he kicking fat Binet? Because he hit him with his cane before?”

  “No, it’s to make everyone laugh.”

  “And why is the theater stopping?”

  “Because they’re changing the reel.”

  Marfaing to the colonel:

  “This is going well. The nationalist shouting is not that bad, and those Americans, they can really tell a story! Will André find Séverine again? They even turn the Revolution into a screw-fest!”

  “You call that a screw-fest, monsieur le contrôleur civil?”

  On the screen André is with another woman. Kathryn gives her name, Climène. She is Binet’s daughter. They were getting lost. Is that André’s house? No, it’s in the hotel.

  “In France when you go to a big city you go to a hotel.”

  “You don’t go to your family’s?”

  “No, in Paris they don’t have families, they go to a hotel.”

  “People without families, those poor people.”

  “They aren’t poor, they are people who sleep with everyone, they don’t know who their family is anymore.”

  Climène gave André a stony look.

  “What is Kathryn saying?”

  “She says that an incomplete conquest wounds a woman’s vanity.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I know, Climène wants André, so she goes to his room.”

  “That’s not vanity, it’s shameful!”

  “You saw them, on the mouth, he’s kissing her!”

  “Climène has won!”

  “You know, dear friend, that in America, a kiss takes ten feet of film?”

  “Yes, but for foreign showings they make it longer.”

  “Basically Francis doesn’t get much out of it, you can sense it’s purely professional, but I’m sure that in real life . . .”

  Thérèse chuckled. Marfaing didn’t like that.

  “. . . Now Climène has gone, and who is that one?”

  “It’s Séverine! She’s also at André’s house.”

  “He has all of them, cheitan lakhor, he’s a devil.”

  “No, look, he doesn’t have Séverine, he’s on his knees in front of her.”

  “Séverine says that she’s marrying the marquis, the marquis is rich.”

  “They’ve had a revolution and the marquis is still rich?”

  Raouf forced himself to take stock, André and two women, the marquis and two women, Séverine and two men, Climène and two men, a nice geometry, four triangles . . . Kathryn and me, Wiesner and Kathryn, Kathryn and Neil, Metilda and me, Neil and someone else, who? Metilda and who? He chided himself, the calculations of an old man . . . Séverine had disappeared. André was looking for Climène. Climène was with the marquis.

  “The marquis already has Kathryn, is he taking two wives at the same time?”

  “No, look at the house, one is going out and the other is going in.”

  “And Papa Binet during this time he’s eating chicken with his hands! The French tell us to use a fork, and at home they eat like that?”

  “But Binet is not just in France, he’s here, too.”

  “No, look, he’s never been here, he doesn’t know how to eat with his hands, he’s eating like a pig.”

  Climène leaving the marquis, joining André at the inn, telling him that she would not leave a marquis for a little actor like him, and in the following image Séverine telling the marquis that she had seen him with Climène and she never wanted to see him again . . .

  “Good for her. The marquis killed the lawyer, he denounced André, you don’t give him a woman.”

  38

  A MASS UPRISING

  Scaradère was again on the theater stage, talking to the audience. And suddenly they were lost in new images: the countryside, a duel, the marquis . . .

  “Where is the theater?”

  “Look, it’s the field we saw earlier when the lawyer was killed, the marquis is killing someone else.”

  “No, not someone else, it’s the same guy, he’s going to kill the lawyer.”

  “I’m lost, the lawyer wasn’t dead?”

  Thérèse Pagnon: “It’s the wrong reel again!”

  Kathryn speaking slowly: André is telling the theater audience about the assassination of his lawyer friend by the marquis six months earlier.

  “. . . André is showing the past? When people show the past they’re crazy.”

  “Watch out, lawyer! The marquis is going to kill you!”

  “Shut up, that won’t help, he’s going to die, mektub.”

  “A man can’t show the past, that’s God’s eye, I’m leaving.”

  “Now the people in the theater are attacking the marquis.”

  “In the army’s theater you couldn’t.”

  “When there are a lot of you, you can, we could have.”

  “You mean this evening we can beat up the colonists?”

  “Yes, and the soldiers will shoot you in the stomach, and no one will come off the canvas to help you.”

  “Where’s the marquis?”

  “You talk and you’re not watching: he left with Séverine.”

  Rania said to herself: Those two women are right, they’re making fun of them but they’re acting . . . they’re taking! I, too, have the right to love . . . but what if he doesn’t love me? He responds “no” to me and I’ve exchanged my dream for wind, I hate men who force you to declare your love, but I prefer to lose everything than to wait anymore.

  An argument between Ganthier and his neighbors. One of them was outraged: How can we allow the natives to talk so much during this screening? This is what they call culture, isn’t it? And Ganthier:

  “No! For them it is above all the revolution they will fight against us one day.”

  “You’re still the provocateur, dear friend, all your land, but it would make a good Soviet farm!”

  On the screen André has become a deputy . . .

  “Yes, he’s talking to the great assembly of Paris.”

  “The djema‘a where we can’t go?”

  “Yes.”

  “But if we have a dustour we can have our own djema‘a, like the French.”

  In Paris the marquis and the other nobles were challenging the deputies of the people to a duel and they killed them.

  “Why?”

  “Because André and his friends want every man to have a voice, and the others don’t want that.”

  “It’s the same here, my voice is worth nothing next to a colonist’s.”

  “That’s because the French say they have preponderance.”

  “What’s preponderance?”

  “It’s when you preponderate.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It’s when you have the machine guns and the Senegalese.”

  “The French say you are preponderant when you are more civilized.”

  “More civilized? They eat chickens back there like pigs.”

  “And the killers, with those nice clothes, are they preponderant, too?”

  “Kathryn says that the noble just said that he will kill those who aren’t civilized.”

  “André isn’t civilized?”

  “Yahyia André!”

  “Preponderant, the French say that it’s when you’re ahead.”

  “So the Americans preponderate the French?” />
  “André has also become very strong with the sword. Every day he kills one or two rich people.”

  “Soon only the poor will be left.”

  Raouf listened to Kathryn’s voice and wondered why she and Neil were still together, to avoid causing a scandal in the newspapers? Or because it’s really hard to break up when you don’t love each other anymore? That would have made another good discussion on La Rochefoucauld with Otto . . .

  “. . . What’s the marquis saying?”

  “He wants to kill André.”

  “And Séverine doesn’t want that. She’s telling the marquis that she’ll marry him if he doesn’t have a duel with André.”

  “She’s wrong, a guy like the marquis, you don’t marry him. The woman should open her eyes before doing that.”

  “Yes, afterward all she can do is close them.”

  “And now, where are we?”

  “At the duel!”

  “The marquis has lost his sword. He’s up against the wall, kill him!”

  “Why is André letting him get his sword?”

  “Because André’s a true nobleman, with a heart.”

  “He’s wrong, you don’t give a rabid dog its teeth back, you kill it.”

  The wounded marquis, unable to raise his sword; André turns his back to him, disappearing; the marquis limping, sword in hand, to his carriage; Séverine, seeing him, thinking he killed André. She begins to faint. The marquis holds her up. André turns around. He sees her in the marquis’s arms . . .

  “You see, colonel? Not a single subversive cry! Two men, one woman, the magic of the movies!”

  “You mean a feuilleton! Little Arthur thinks that Little Gustave has stolen Little Bonemine from him!”

  The film stops, reel change, starts again, Kathryn saying that several weeks have gone by. On the screen a crowd, an orator, a large chin, like a fist, Danton! Kathryn adding that the revolt is growing . . .

  “Did you see the teeth on Danton?”

  “Yes, like the poor.”

  “Then the poor will trust him.”

  “Where’s André?”

  “There, on the left, Danton is giving him a piece of paper.”

  Kathryn’s voice: Danton orders André to organize the Revolution in the provinces! In the streets a crowd armed with sabers and knives . . .

  “Did you see the grinder’s millstone, as tall as him!”

  “I don’t understand why the movies make such a big millstone, just to sharpen, it takes up the whole canvas, it’s turning really fast!”

  “If it comes apart it will come right at us!”

  “And the grinder, without a shirt on, and a woman next to him, hchouma!”

  “The woman is thinking about revolution.”

  “That’s not good, revolution with women.”

  Cries in the audience, hchouma! The colonel, worried,

  “Maybe we should stop it here . . . If there’s a riot on the screen . . .”

  “You hear their cries, hchouma, for them revolution is shameful.”

  Rania couldn’t care less about shame, I refuse to live with a stone on my heart, I’ll stand in front of him and I’ll speak, and if he speaks of our differences I’ll call him a coward, a man is obliged to respond to such a word, no . . . Men don’t feel they are obliged to respond, they turn their backs and they leave . . . Turn their backs, it’s their right as rulers!

  “. . . Look, all those people in the street, they’re breaking everything.”

  “It’s going too quickly!”

  “The day that happens here, you’ll see how fast it goes.”

  “The people with knives and guns are coming from all directions.”

  “Kathryn says they’re going into the king’s house.”

  “And the king is still sitting down, he’s not a real king, when that happens a real king gets on his horse and fights.”

  “Okay, the king got up.”

  “Is he going to fight?”

  “I don’t know!”

  In the countryside now. André at the home of his godfather, who tells him that his daughter Séverine and her friend Madame de Trégastel are in danger in Paris. André decides to go get Séverine . . .

  “André is showing a piece of paper to his godfather, what is it?”

  “Kathryn says that it’s his orders, signed by Danton.”

  “It’s like in the army, with that André can go anywhere.”

  Kathryn saying that André wants to save Séverine, but not Madame de Trégastel.

  “Who is that Trégastel?”

  “I don’t know!”

  The godfather telling André, Madame de Trégastel is your mother!

  “Long live the seventh art, Monsieur le contrôleur, Little Arthur learns that the friend of Little Bonemine and Little Gustave is his own mommy!”

  The rhythm accelerates. André is in a house in Paris. Séverine discovers he’s not dead, and Madame de Trégastel takes André in her arms, crying, Kathryn reading, My son, my son! André shows his orders . . .

  “Watch out, behind you, it’s the marquis, he has a pistol.”

  “The marquis is everywhere! How does he do it?”

  “Watch out, André! The dog has returned!”

  “The marquis wants the paper and André refuses.”

  “André has a pistol, too.”

  “And Trégastel is putting herself between them.”

  “She’s telling André that the marquis is his father.”

  “What?”

  “The marquis is André’s father!”

  “Their eyes are crazy!”

  “Trégastel is crying.”

  “Everyone is crying.”

  “Even the marquis is crying.”

  “He’s asking for peace from God.”

  “Those scenes, my dear, I dare say it’s a bit much.”

  “Would you like a handkerchief, Madame Pagnon?”

  “Useless. In these situations my wife doesn’t need a handkerchief, she needs a full sheet!”

  “Peace from God, you can’t refuse that.”

  “André is giving his orders to his father, why?”

  “So he can be saved from the Revolution.”

  “And the marquis is refusing!”

  “André has taken out his sword.”

  “Is he going to kill his father?”

  “Look! He’s giving him the sword!”

  “The marquis is going outside with the sword? Against the whole Revolution?”

  “When you have lived like a dog, you can die like a man.”

  The crowd now attacking the marquis with axes; André in a carriage, going through a gate out of Paris with his mother and Kathryn; the crowd is very agitated . . .

  “The people are doing what they want in the streets now, they are killing the rich, they all have a bottle of wine, hchouma.”

  “Revolution with wine, it’s shameful!”

  The colonel asking Marfaing for the order to intervene, Marfaing not responding, This is going pretty well, but Daintree has fucked me, his film is showing the Terror! These Americans, always ready to create a mess! Right, while he’s denouncing the revolution of women and wine, the Muslims are forced to be against that, but it’s best to stop it.

  “Neil, that’s going too far! We’re stopping it!”

  Raouf regretted that he no longer wanted to shout, “Long Live the Revolution,” Today, it means nothing to me, that’s the disadvantage when one has ended up as a mere observer . . . David and Karim will both now call me a bourgeois who waits and sees!

  Scenes of pillaging on the screen.

  “They’re carrying women off under their arms!”

  “They shouldn’t have been in the streets.”

  “They’re stealing everything, even from the store selling pots and pans.”

  “You have a store that sells pots and pans, do you still want a revolution?”

  “There, what’s that woman doing in the street?”

  “She’s
sharpening an ax.”

  “Everyone’s taking an ax.”

  “We could do the same.”

  “Kathryn is saying that the crowd is shouting Long live the nation!”

  “Yahyia l’watan!”

  “What does that mean, a procession of rioters?”

  “It’s like it was here, ten years ago, when we killed Christians in the central market.”

  “Are the French doing like us? We can do like them?”

  Danton on the screen, Kathryn reading the message that is brought to Danton.

  “Danton says that Prussia is attacking France.”

  “Prussia is the Germans?”

  “Like in Verdun?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why is the piano playing military music?”

  “Monsieur le contrôleur, I’d like an order!”

  “Just a second, everything is still under control!”

  Mass uprising in the streets of Paris.

  “It’s the war, the Germans are attacking.”

  “Like they did in ’14, we must go!”

  “And Danton is shouting to take up weapons!”

  “He’s shouting Long live the nation!”

  “Yahyia l’watan!”

  “The Boches are attacking. You’re a man, you’ll go.”

  “Nemchiou, let’s go to war!”

  “Stop fighting for the French.”

  “No, he’s right, we’re going! It’s war, l’harb, you’re a man, you’ll go, and you’ll shoot the Boches!”

  “Look on the canvas, the soldiers are marching pressed together. They have bayonets, like we did.”

  “And we also sang against the Germans! ‘La Marseillaise.’”

  “And the pianist, Hector, he’s playing the same thing.”

  “And everyone is singing, look, the Senegalese are singing, Form your battalions, only the Italians aren’t singing, and all our veterans are singing like at Verdun, even the wounded, and our soldiers, too, everyone.”

  “Look, next to Danton, André is holding Séverine, they’re singing together, yahyia André! And Rachid, he’s also singing because he sells them oranges, and M’hammed is doing it, too! Let’s march, let’s march, we’re going to beat the Germans!”

  Marfaing wasn’t saying anything. He was singing, standing up, looking sideways at the colonel, Don’t gloat, some of the natives are singing “La Marseillaise,” I was right, they applaud a hero of the Enlightenment and the war for human rights! And Thérèse can very well wait . . .