The Influence Peddlers

by Hedi Kaddour

  On the sidelines there wasn’t any singing. A few stones were thrown at the audience and the projector truck. People were taking advantage of the images, and taking revenge. Shouts, commands, the Senegalese opened the chevaux-de-frise and charged with blows of their rifle butts. Groups of poor people dispersed into the ravine, running down the slope like madmen. Two soldiers who were faster or more excited than the others were suddenly surrounded below, on the edge of the wadi. More shouting, shots fired . . . In the public park people were getting worried. It was farther away, but still. The gendarmes started evacuating the park calmly. No more shots were fired. And Marfaing didn’t talk about it in his report to the residence; he wrote about what he called a lovely demonstration of Franco-American friendship and progress, “which enabled the more modern element of the local population to demonstrate its attachment to France and the enlightenment of its protectorate!”

  39

  THE PRÉPONDÉRANTS

  For Pagnon and the other Prépondérants of Nahbès—that is, Doly, Laganier, a half dozen officers, as many bureaucrats, many colonists, as well as merchants and artisans (who, Doly noted, would never have been admitted to their high-quality Cercle if we had been in France)—for all those people the film screening had been, as they said, the last straw. Marfaing and his enlightenment, Marfaing and his Americans, Marfaing and his liberal wind blowing over Paris, his little games with the left, and the caïd’s double-dealing, and the triple-dealing of Ganthier, said Pagnon. Ganthier seems to be one of us: in fact, he is always glued to the Arabs, and when it’s not the Arabs, it’s the Americans. The residence doesn’t want to hear about it, and when we try to alert Paris, they say he’s untouchable. Military intelligence, my ass!

  Pagnon was holding a grudge against Ganthier. It wasn’t just political; it went back to the Bellarbi affair. Bellarbi was a peasant, as brittle as nettles in the month of August, who owned thirty acres, olive trees, wheat, some livestock. His father had been able to live off all that. Bellarbi could have continued living off it, but then Pagnon had wanted that land. Pagnon wasn’t dishonest; he offered a decent price. Bellarbi refused. So Pagnon went up to a normal price, but Bellarbi continued to refuse. So Pagnon offered the price he would have offered a French person. Bellarbi still refused. Pagnon took it badly. He said that with those people honesty was useless. His wife tried to rein him in, she didn’t like trouble, and then she said to herself that anything that could keep her husband occupied wasn’t a bad thing.

  In general those sorts of issues were dealt with in the civil administration, in the evening, among the initiated, and the next day an administrative measure would be taken. The meeting took place. Marfaing didn’t refuse, but he dragged his feet. He forced Pagnon to start over, ask again, and to ask again is annoying. Then came the day when Marfaing again told him that it would be done, of course, but, dear friend, don’t get upset . . . It upset Pagnon when he was told not to get upset. He told others that Marfaing was an ass, that they should force him to act, and then a grenade exploded on a path that went through Bellarbi’s land—no, not to frighten him, not some cretinous threat, it was more subtle, an explosion at the wrong moment, at dusk, just when the gendarmes were passing by on patrol, very close, because they were just frightened. They didn’t put their fear in their report, but they put in enough so that Marfaing was forced to sign off on it and Bellarbi was sent away, an attack against authority. The penalty for that was the seizure of his property, which was to be resold right away, and if Bellarbi didn’t cause too much trouble, his prison sentence wouldn’t be too long. He was lucky, because an attack, even without victims, could mean the guillotine.

  But Bellarbi didn’t go quietly. He caused trouble. He spoke of being set up, demanded justice. The nationalists got involved. Si Ahmed finally asked what was going on, and that’s when the gendarmes found a grenade in front of their door, this one defused, with an anonymous letter, typewritten, which said that there were many grenades like that in a shed on Pagnon’s property, with the detonating cord used to explode them from a distance, very good cord, strong and supple, modern, cord bought in France, not Arab cord. The gendarmes went to see Marfaing. Marfaing had received the same letter, without a grenade, but with the cord. The gendarmes were upset: Your crazy doctor could have killed us for a few acres; he could have at least warned us! Marfaing had Bellarbi released.

  The gendarmes wanted to go to Pagnon’s farm, but things settled down before they went any further. To calm the gendarmes Pagnon had six months’ worth of vintage burgundy wine delivered to them. He also gave up on Bellarbi’s land. He wasn’t happy. He acted as if it were he who was the victim of a plot. He kept repeating that someone had really tried to blow up the gendarmes, but he didn’t know who it was. He even said to people he trusted that the day he found out who had written that letter there would be blood in the street. There would be consequences. He would find out: there was a traitor in their midst! Thérèse told him to be quiet because people were going to wonder what the traitor had betrayed. Pagnon didn’t insist, especially since one evening, at the Cercle, Ganthier pointed out to him in front of everyone that by threatening with death the one who had sent the anonymous letter, he was going to provoke that person into taking initiatives against him. Pagnon scowled, Ganthier even joked: “And you risk finding yourself in your cemetery.” That made everyone laugh, because the cemetery next to the hospital was called “the Pagnon cemetery.” The doctor calmed down. He offered champagne to all present and said to Ganthier that it was a pity, if he had obtained that land they would have been neighbors. Ganthier didn’t reply.

  Since then, Pagnon didn’t say another word about that affair, but he hadn’t forgotten Ganthier’s joke, and when the Prépondérants began making plans to unseat Marfaing, Pagnon made sure Ganthier was quarantined. No need to talk about this with someone who talks to everyone. He repeated his phrase “triple-dealing.” Some members of the Cercle told Pagnon that that was when one returned to one’s original spot. He didn’t find that funny.

  They began to discuss seriously an idea proposed by Laganier, the high-ranking bureaucrat in the contrôle civil, Marfaing’s closest collaborator, who thought only of getting rid of his boss, so he could fill the post in the interim, at least. The incidents at the outdoor film screening had made him think; he spoke of the roots of their grievances. This was his great idea, the natives are unpredictable? Then let’s set them on the right course! The Cercle mustn’t wait for the moment, they had to create it, and fight, no, administer a vaccine, as Marfaing does, but a true horse pill: drain the abscess for ten, twenty years, and settle things with Marfaing in passing, and maybe even with the Americans. Those discussions between Arabs and Americans are no good, it makes our Arabs pretentious!

  Laganier didn’t like America. He spoke of decadence, of new barbarism lighted with electricity, of mechanized plutocracy. The others let him speak. All of that wasn’t important; what was important was land, measures that would enable them to seize more native land when the Arabs will have calmed down. They had the right to do it; it was even an old leftist slogan, “Land for those who work it!” That’s what several Prépondérants told Gabrielle when they learned she was writing an article on them and on the history of the colonization. Their fathers had arrived on this land wearing black clothing, with only a bundle of belongings, and what they knew how to do; knowledge that came from very far back in time, Gabrielle had written, men with empty hands but who had strength within them. It wasn’t the richest who crossed the Mediterranean, or the most clever, but they had some of that knowledge that takes centuries to settle in the minds of men, and they arrived in an uncultivated place—a former garden, however, Ganthier had told Gabrielle, the Numidian garden, but that was perhaps a Ganthier legend, a gilded legend, with its fruit, vegetables, olives, almonds, melons, a garden that was later transformed into a wheat machine by the Romans, the wheat that killed off the other crops; they didn’t know anything about that at the time, so bea
utiful was that wheat, and because no one’s eyes were good enough to see beyond the scarcely more than thirty years that at that time made up the life of a man.

  Ruin had come without anyone anticipating it, a long-term ruin, they now knew, bitterly, but this time it was perhaps a black legend, drought and famine throughout the Mediterranean basin, and people thought it was a curse, the fault of the stories they told about their single god, or on the contrary the vengeance of a single one against idolaters, but in reality it was the fault of the wheat, which puts so much joy in men’s hearts when the ears are heavy. The Romans needed it for their plebeian cities: a million bushels a month for the Rome of Augustus and his successors, free bread for the people. Northern Ifriqiya became the breadbasket, where they tore out the vineyards, even the olive and citrus trees; and when everything was submerged by the blond tide they went farther south, to even more arid lands, with even less rain, smaller yields, over larger areas; the nomads were chased away. They also captured the wild animals—lions, panthers, and others—they were sent to Rome, and they cut down trees for wheat; carnivores became rare, and the paradise of wheat became a paradise for herbivores, a land that became even more stripped by the grazing of goats, gazelles, and sheep, and there was nothing to fertilize the land—one year of wheat, one year of rest with weeds for the herbivores; they thought that was enough—and the land flew off in the wind. There were fewer plants and so there was less rain, but they didn’t know, and when it rained it carried off the land. The plants began to creep to survive, and it became a country of Roman ruins on a ruined land. And when new conquerors arrived it improved; then it fell again, for centuries. Then other conquerors arrived, with a single god, not the same one, but always only one, conquerors who were not farmers, said some, having on the contrary the cult of water, said others. And the country sometimes improved, then fell again, improved, and the colonists in black clothing arrived from Europe to a land where farmers still used a plow made of burnt wood, and the newcomers had in their heads and in their arms a more efficient knowledge: it was like their weapons, a blunderbuss against a Lebel rifle and a seventy-five-ton cannon, the conditions in a slow country, centuries of “Turkery,” said some, of bigotry, said others, so that in the end they lost their energy. And it wasn’t clear when the great progress had started, over there in Europe? Or how, perhaps by chance, a warmer climate, or a better grade of iron, for the scythe, much better than the sickle they still used to harvest here, bent over, singing; with the scythe there is more hay, more animals, more manure; the plow replaced the swing plow; they invented the harrow, the shoulder collar, the roller . . .

  And everything that had taken centuries to settle in their minds, in their tools, and in their bodies, the newcomers were now suddenly attributing it to their genius, the natives for them being only backward-looking. They were the moderns, they had understood, and the ones who have understood have a right to the land, and they took it: first the fallow land, then the land of the nomads, tribal land that soon had no tribes. The nomads folded their tents, put them on their donkeys, and left, qifa nabki, let’s stop and cry, said the other, min dhikra . . . manzili, on the remains of an encampment; they are used to it; and this time they left them their tents and a few goats, whereas before, the sovereign’s people confiscated everything for taxes and they couldn’t even change grasslands; all they could do was pull it out from between graves on the outskirts of cities. They were now allowed to keep their tents so they could go farther away, and when they left, great estates were created, hundreds, thousands of acres. The estates were profitable, especially when the expropriated nomads were brought back to work them. Those people, when they are kept under tight control and aren’t left alone, are fine, and they are very frugal! And the colonists also brought all those who go with them: artisans, masons, mechanics, employees at the post or gas office, bakers, teachers, curés, laborers, restaurant owners, foremen, people who were hard workers and led hard lives, intolerant and prolific, having believed in this land the way some had believed in America, but on a smaller scale, forgetting how much time it had taken them to get there, calling racial genius what centuries had enabled them to accumulate, designating themselves holders of a natural superiority, and the cleverest among them choosing a word that was better than superiority, superiority could be de facto, so let’s say preponderance, there is righteousness in that word, value, legitimacy; and in Nahbès the Prépondérants hadn’t immediately gone into action. Laganier first wanted to have the backing of their spiritual leader and man in charge in the capital, Richard Trillat, the editor-in-chief of Présence Française, even if not everyone agreed about Trillat, a man who was a bit crazy. His favorite saying was, “The darkening is the cross that is raised in the crossroads of today’s society, between fallen verticality and triumphant horizontality.” They found that rather insane, the most irreverent calling Trillat “the marabout.” Nor did Trillat endure the slogan “the greatest France” of a hundred million . . . It was silly nonsense, a white is a white, a black a black, an Arab an Arab. “For me, a guy who continues to call himself Mohammed or Mamadou will never be a part of France. The whole problem comes from giving them education!” Trillat didn’t even like France very much. During one of his trips to Marseille the customs officers thought he was an Arab in the French line. He had lived for a long time in Lebanon, had dark skin, brown hair, thick lips. A customs officer called to him: “Where are you from?” Trillat responded, “Corrèze,” holding out his passport, with the guttural sounds of the Levantine in his voice, and the bureaucrat wondered if he might be dealing with a disguised Ben Something or Other, with that rosary in his hands. That was what raised his suspicions, the rosary. They sometimes saw Christian Arabs from Beirut pass through, but they went directly into the line for Orientals. They didn’t claim to be from Corrèze, not like this Trillat, who was perhaps from Corrèze. The customs officer gave him back his papers, from the tips of his fingers. It might have ended there, but Trillat began to yell at the bureaucrat, and the more he yelled, the more his voice resembled that of someone from Beirut. The customs officers dug in, went through his suitcases, and strip-searched him. That’s to give you a reason to complain—a profound reason! Since that day Trillat thought that France was rotten because of its bureaucrats. Of course, he didn’t tell that to Laganier, who was a bureaucrat, and he showed enthusiasm for the plans of the Prépondérants of Nahbès: Very good, a fixation abscess; they were finally moving to action; you should also catch a few sons of Zion in your nets, and some wops, they’re getting ideas; we mustn’t let Mohammed or Mardochee or Pepino get the upper hand! Our slogan should be “Maghreb for France and France for the French”! My paper will support you! Laganier left Trillat with what he called a true papal benediction.

  40

  THE STORM

  Elsewhere, there were those who were less concerned with plotting than with living agreeably together. Kathryn and Raouf took walks that were more natural than before, because this time they really were what they had for a long time pretended to be: good friends . . . each of them now hiding what he or she wanted, having only one fear, that of showing a desire that would put him or her at the mercy of the vanity of the other, who would then try hard to sacrifice his or her own desire to that vanity. Raouf was afraid of being asked to talk about his relationship with Metilda and what might pass for dissimulation, and Kathryn didn’t want to be questioned about how she had become Wiesner’s mistress in only a few days of filming in Berlin. And so they were happy to be together without adding anything more, in an ambiance that even allowed them to laugh about the past and to continue to enjoy shared emotions, like the day when they had been attacked in the street by dogs. Careful, said Raouf, they often have rabies, and that means a month of shots in the stomach! He gave the parasol to Kathryn: Stay behind me! Then he slowly put his hand in his pocket, and took it out just as slowly, one of the dogs, the biggest one, came to within fifty feet, his teeth bared, and with surprising speed Raouf t
hrew the stone he was holding; too short, Kathryn thought; the stone landed just in front of the dog, which hadn’t backed away, but it ricocheted on the pavement and hit the dog right in the mouth, a dull sound of stone against bone. The dog took off yowling, followed by the other members of the pack.

  “Do you often have stones in your pockets?” Kathryn had asked, her voice tense.

  “When I’m walking, always.”

  “There are plenty of stones on the ground. All you had to do was bend down and pick one up.”

  “I really like having time to choose the right one. The stone has to be big enough, fairly round, and since the dog doesn’t see me bending to get one, he can’t get ready.”

  “Was the ricochet on purpose?”

  “What do you think?”

  Then he explained: “A dog watches direct trajectories, it can’t calculate. We learn to throw like that very early here, even before we play marbles or mechmeche.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Apricot pits, you put four on the ground, in a pyramid, and using another pit, from six feet away, you try to knock over the pyramid. You have three tries, or only one when it’s a ‘sudden death’ match. The one who knocks over the pile gets the pits. You can make the game more difficult by putting the pyramid farther away in front of a wall, and you have to hit it by first ricocheting the pit against the wall. If you miss your throw you have to give the owner of the pile the pit you used to throw. Not just any old pit—the throwing pits are true jewels. They are painted; the owner puts his own personal mark on it. You dig out a hole in it and pour in melted lead, to weigh it, make it heavy or somewhat heavy. They make wonderful projectiles; they hit hard. A good throwing pit is worth a hundred ordinary pits, or even more, even money.”

  Raouf’s ramblings on mechmeche had had the desired effect; they had calmed Kathryn. They set off through a residential quarter, along streets bordered with eucalyptus and jacarandas, their leaves drenched in beautiful pale green and purple, a few carriages, no cars; from time to time a gray bird came to hop in front of them. The houses belonged to people who had had an ambitious vision, no doubt more ambitious than they were, and who wanted to show where they had come from: houses from the Basque country, Alsace, Brittany, Savoy . . . The architecture wasn’t very adapted to the land; the owners named this quarter Little France.