The Influence Peddlers

by Hedi Kaddour

  “When you’re done you can breathe in the perfume with your eyes closed.”

  They heard laughter from around the little band’s table.

  “It’s Karim, one of my friends,” Raouf told Francis and Samuel, “He’s telling them a story, rather, he’s reading it to them, that’s one of the ways we ‘practice’ literature. We call it a ‘session.’ We get together and read out loud and comment on good authors.”

  He listened, adding for the whole group:

  “It’s an old story, it takes place in Baghdad, in your tenth century, our fourth. It’s a story of winos, very drunk, who leave their tavern and go to the mosque and sit down in the first row of the faithful, behind the imam . . . During prayers the imam notices them by the smell of alcohol. He denounces them to the gathering of the faithful: ‘They have come to soil a sacred place, they should be put to death!’ The crowd tears off the drunkards’ clothes, cutting their necks. They are chased down the street. The drunks manage to escape; they take refuge in a brothel, wa qad j’alna addinar imaman . . . ‘the dinar was our imam . . . they led us to a woman with a perfect shape, with an undone belt,’ yes,” said Raouf, “I should translate the rhymes, it is rhymed and rhythmed prose, the woman covering the escapees with kisses . . .” Karim stopped reading, closed the book, and said, as if challenging him:

  “The rest, Raouf!” adding for the benefit of the Americans and the French:

  “He knows it all by heart!”

  Karim got up and held out his glass, saying:

  “To friendship!”

  They touched glasses.

  “Come over!” said Neil and Kathryn, the Americans and the French enlarged their circle, the two groups now made one.

  “The rest, Raouf!”

  Raouf started to recite, translating himself, or summing up during the recitation: The woman with the perfect shape is the . . . she’s not the owner, what do you call it? Raouf asked Ganthier.

  “She’s the madam,” said Gabrielle, and Ganthier, laughing:

  “You know some things!”

  Raouf continued:

  “The madam serves the escapees wine . . . khamrun keriqi fi l’udhu . . . liquor like my saliva . . . for sweetness, and delectation . . . liquor the depositor of the ages . . . only the bouquet remains . . . the bite of the snake . . .” And, in the story, the owner of the brothel ultimately arrives: It’s the imam who had wanted to kill the drunks and who begins to drink with them. Everyone applauded.

  “They certainly knew how to live, in the fourth century,” said Karim, “They nicknamed the author of this book Badi’ al-Zaman, the Marvel of Time.”

  There was some noise at the entrance to the room. A tall, thin man came in, bottles in his hands. The group greeted him with warm shouts of approval.

  “I’d like to introduce Aboulfaraj, proprietor and great purveyor!” said Raouf. Behind the man there followed several customers from the first room, with their glasses. The man said hello and began reciting in turn, ana min koulli ghubarin, ana min koulli makani . . . Raouf translated: I am from all the dust, from all places . . . sometimes at the mosque, and sometimes at the . . . bistro . . . “No, for the rhyme you need another word, a synonym for bistro.”

  “Cheap cabaret!” said Ganthier.

  “I’m not the only one who knows things,” said Gabrielle. Raouf continued: And sometimes at the cheap cabaret, thus acts reason that chases it all away! More applause. Raouf introduced Aboulfaraj to his friends. Aboulfaraj offered a round, saying: I have alcohol, kif, loving women, oblivion, poetry, contraband, intrigue, and pleasure, no pleasure without contraband . . . His right eye was serious, the left was twinkling. They raised their glasses, and they continued to talk louder and louder. They exchanged anecdotes and snippets of novels or poems. Ganthier even recited Death of the Wolf. Gabrielle thought it was the first time that a poem by Vigny had had an effect on her, and then dared say to Ganthier:

  “Don’t die right away, we need you . . .”

  She didn’t go any further. If she said too much he wouldn’t know what to do . . . Tess began to sing, accompanied by Samuel on the harmonica, a blues tune, “Mama Don’t Allow No Easy Riders Here.”

  At one point Aboulfaraj made a large gesture toward the little band and the customers who had come in with him: I’m shirking my duties, I neglected to introduce you to my little social group, my society of crumbs, a world that alcohol brings together but which is torn apart by many schisms. It’s the times that dictate that, that offer us many different roles, and we play them while pretending they are imposed on us . . . Aboulfaraj’s hand pointed at the people one by one, as if he were playing eeny, meeny, miny, moe: There is the resigned traditionalist and, next to him, the active or Salafist traditionalist, then the radical nationalist, the moderate nationalist, the democratic socialist, the revolutionary socialist, the communist, the falsely accused—we have several examples of that, with one or two real victims (the movement of the hand was accelerating). There is also the Sufi mystic, beloved by the Westerners, the bourgeois radical, the organized plotter, the solitary anarchist, the believer, who says that if one believes it will be better, the unbeliever for whom all evil comes from believing, but the unbeliever appears in all his splendor only when alcohol has flowed well, and it is a rather temporary role. There is also the Pan-Arab, and even a Turkophile Kemalist!

  Aboulfaraj spun around, filled a few glasses, continued: One of our favorite expressions is na’aldine Franca, cursed is the religion of France! The short form is “cursed is France!” but (a gesture of peace toward Ganthier and the Legion officer), because everything has another side, it also happens that we become partisans of that same France and its colonialism. It is a role that each of us can assume in function of the evil that has been inflicted on us during the day by those that the colonists call our “coreligionists,” and in that case the victim says hchouma ‘aleina, shame on us, and may then call on France, which is then no longer cursed, to free us as quickly as possible from the old customs and traditions that are the refuge of evildoers and shame, but in general France doesn’t want to; it prefers that we remain in the state in which we are; it costs less. So after midnight we pour everything into qalaq, which you call spleen, and some double it with a sort of relative atheism. We distance ourselves from God, so as not to trouble him, but we are not absolute miscreants, we have limits. We don’t eat pork, we are content to behave like the animal we don’t eat, and we sometimes do worse, because the pig never eats where it excretes!

  Aboulfaraj stopped talking. He seemed to be afraid of his own mouth. His oration had made them laugh, but the end of it, as Ganthier later said, had broken the mood. They started drinking again, were able to laugh more or less, recited other poems, told anecdotes. Then the melancholia returned, stronger, and they decided to go home. As they were leaving, Aboulfaraj took Raouf aside. He rocked from side to side while looking at the mosaic of Orpheus and the two grimacing masks:

  “I’ve heard a story about the little beggars that involves the Americans. Come back and see me. It doesn’t smell good.”

  45

  THE BLASTER

  Belfrayn traveled to Southampton, then on to Le Havre and Paris. He spent three days in Paris, to find out about the state of the country, its politics, the people in the news. He went to the Assemblée nationale and a brothel. The brothel had cost a bit much, but the French kiss was included and he met a lot of people there. Then there was the train south, and Marseille, another brothel, with the smell of garlic, he wrote in his notebook. He also thought about what he was going to do, the authorized interviews, the questions on the choice of North Africa, their life there, their relations with the natives, the actors’ work, not forgetting the problems in the country—no one could refuse to respond to such questions, not even Daintree—when the press knows how to act the whore, there’s nothing you can do to resist it.

  But for Belfrayn what was essential was what he would be able to do on the side. Over there, in that
asshole of the world, they must now be aware of his arrival. They must be busy preparing themselves. That wasn’t going to make things easier. Rather, yes, one mustn’t be put off by the caution of people, their way of thinking muckraker when they smile at you. There was an advantage in being considered a muckraker. It always ended up attracting a talker or two. Not immediately, a talker needs time to get excited, and a place conducive to talking, and the talker will never say that he’s talking: the talker exchanges confidences. You have to tell the talker juicy confidences, provoke a competition of confidences, while drinking good alcohol that the talker is delighted not to pay for. And you have to give him time to combine his confidences with the desire to be seen well in the press, and when the talker has begun to talk, you have to watch for the moment when remorse begins to clench his stomach, not to fight against the remorse. Don’t attack the talker’s good conscience: faced with an obstacle it would begin to develop. Don’t contradict it, but make the talker understand that he hasn’t given enough information for the listener to be able to hide the source of the information, and he really needs to tell the whole story, doesn’t he? Don’t blackmail him directly. Rather make use of the infernal machine that he, himself, set into motion. He’s not responsible for it, but if he wants to get out of it, he must tell him everything.

  But it would still be tricky: they would still just be chatting, and Belfrayn hadn’t come all this way to report hearsay. Such things were only of interest because they then led to the taking of photos, or to them being taken. He would have to hire an Arab for that, much less noticeable, teach him how to use a Kodak, to get the candid shot, Cavarro in a candid shot, in the company of the true love of his life . . . The charmer of all those ladies watching a sunset, his arm around the waist of his boyfriend, or on an isolated beach, not be content with gossip, get a successful black-and-white victory, and the essential question: What would be best, the glory of the scoop or the money he could get out of Cavarro? Or even Lakorsky? Probably from Lakorsky, he would pay twice as much to avoid the scandal, like Cavarro, but also to have something to hold over Cavarro. And not to stop with Cavarro: that little world must be letting loose over there, rediscovering their old orgy habits, discreetly this time, alongside which what one does in brothels lacked the enthusiasm that good people know how to put into dirty games. There is also Daintree’s wife, the Bishop woman. They didn’t have anything on her. It wasn’t possible, an actress who only sleeps with her husband for four years, when the husband always has a debutante on his couch, everyone says so: she has no one else, maybe she likes women, that would be too perfect. Or maybe during that stay in Germany? Improbable . . . Must check it out in any case.

  And then that other story, the seed of a rumor. Only one person in Hollywood had talked to him about it, nothing more than that, a true bomb if it were true. Bishop’s negress, Belfrayn had a score to settle with that negress. Those movie people thought they could live in a separate world, he was going to teach them what they owed to their country, and what it could cost a white man to play chocolate milk with a maid, and what that could cost the maid, a pretty girl, that one, a real bitch, a real mouth on her, must find something on her, and talk to her about it, that would make her docile . . . Belfrayn closed his eyes, unfastened his trousers, said, “Be careful, my blue velvet, it has to feel good,” and then he stopped himself from believing it too much, but in any event, he felt like a blaster choosing his best targets . . . Cash in on his silence about Cavarro, bring down the Bishop woman and Daintree-the-untouchable, and if God exists I’ll find something on the maid. Belfrayn was going to blow up at least half that group.

  When he arrived in the capital he decided to get his bearings before going to Nahbès. He stayed a few days, enjoyed couscous, tagine, fricassees, and fried fish, and visited two high-quality brothels. He also talked a lot, with the French and Arabs. The French all said the same thing, that everything was going well, and that all would go better if they increased the number of colonists and gendarmes. Some even wanted to bring in other Europeans, Spanish, Italians, other Christians. As for the Arabs, they were just as good drinkers as Americans. He quickly got along with them. He had met a group of fans of America dressed in Western-style clothes. They asked him about New York and Hollywood, the movies, skyscrapers, how to earn money. They listened to him and tried to repeat just do it . . . move on . . . land of opportunity . . . with a dreamy look. They adored stories of America, and to get them from him, they told him a lot about their country, about the court of the sovereign, the quarrels between ministers, between ministers and princes, between the French, between French and Italians, between Italians and Jews. They would launch into wild political imaginings, alluding to what President Wilson said on the rights of people. Belfrayn didn’t like Wilson, didn’t understand much about him, and quickly changed the subject.

  He would drink with his Arab friends in the afternoon, in a café or at one or another’s house. The discussions were cynical and cheerful, and the day before he was to leave for Nahbès, he was laughing with them in an apartment, in front of glasses of anisette, when the French police arrived. It was the first time in his life that he was treated like that. He was thrown into a cell at the central police station, sitting on the bare ground, next to a pile of shit buzzing with flies that then came to land on him. He didn’t understand.

  An attaché from the American consulate came to get him. They took a carriage, went down avenue Gambetta. Belfrayn was able to breathe again. Then he realized that they were going along the lagoon.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “To the docks!” the attaché replied, “Right now!”

  He gestured for him to be quiet and continued:

  “Are you here to meet filmmakers or rabble-rousers? Your pals are in big trouble! A great mixture of sons of whores: communists and nationalists! And there were forty pounds of propaganda in the apartment! Can you imagine, the French are going to tell the sovereign that Americans are mixed up in all that! You’re going home! Right now! Why? Because you are a double asshole! . . . If that doesn’t suit you I’ll take you back to the station and there will be two reports on you, mine and the French police’s, two, one for each of your assholes! . . . No, listen to me—your boss is going to love this story of contacts with Reds, he’s going to open your belly old-school-style, and he’ll unroll your intestines down Sunset Boulevard! You were set up? It’s a plot? Too bad! If you’re a true journalist you don’t find yourself in a canoe, without a paddle, in the middle of a river of shit! Go on, be a good boy, go back home now!” The horses were trotting. From time to time the coachman cracked his whip above their heads, toward the back of the coach to prevent kids from grabbing onto it.

  The American consulate truly had been horrified. That’s what the French police had wanted, as did their director, with whom Marfaing had had a nice telephone conversation a few days earlier: You understand, dear friend, no one needs a troublemaker. This film, this Franco-American project, it’s a good way to earn back some credit with them, especially since we owe them billions that Germany doesn’t want to pay us. You can see what’s at stake, can’t you?

  Marfaing was happy to do this favor for his American friends and for Gabrielle, who had asked him to do the impossible to help them. She had chosen that word on purpose, knowing that he would in turn find an occasion when he might ask the impossible of her, Gabrielle saying to herself that she would never even need to say no: the presence of Thérèse Pagnon alone was enough to contain the ardor of the contrôleur civil.

  46

  THE BARLEY WIND

  In Nahbès, the Americans relaxed when they learned of Belfrayn’s hasty departure, but Neil couldn’t forgive Lakorsky for that close call. The muckraker couldn’t have managed to come over without the blessing of the producer in a direct agreement with the owner of the Herald, collusion among the powerful. Lakorsky must have said to himself that if the Herald exposed his people that would make them more docile. He ha
d also written to Neil that it would be good if the missionary building that housed the children in the film had a cross on top of the pediment. And at the end of his letter he added that if Neil didn’t have a subject to propose for a new “local” film, he should return home with his team.

  Neil had refused what he called the “cross gag.” The aim of my missionaries, he had replied, is that they welcome human beings, not clients for their parish. Lakorsky let it drop. Neil knew what that meant: in Hollywood a film editor would be instructed to slip into the film an image of a building with a cross on top to please the Vigilantes.

  At the bar of the Grand Hôtel, Neil talks about it calmly. It was simple, either Lakorsky agreed to let him approve the final cut, or he would leave and set up shop somewhere else, in France, for example. He was liked in France, that’s the advantage of wars, there’s friendship among survivors:

  “Or I could stay here, I think I have a subject, the story of lovers, someone just told it to me, a brief news item, but not just any story, lovers who die, obviously, otherwise it wouldn’t be a true subject for a film.”

  Neil begins thinking out loud, a fourth whiskey in his hand, in front of his friends, a story with a landscape, a horizon, two lovers, a huge plain, great spaces, huge desires, that’s the movies, a landscape of harvests, and two bodies, superb, and it could be called . . . how do you say, Raouf?—rih achcha‘ir . . . the barley wind—that would be a lovely title, wouldn’t it? And beautiful images, a plain covered with barley that undulates, reality and metaphor, two beautiful, young lovers, beauty gives the right, youth gives the audacity, right, Raouf?