by Hedi Kaddour
Neil looks at Raouf, then glances over at Wayne. Wayne is already sitting apart, in a low chair. They can hardly see him. He is taking notes. Neil will find them the next morning on his desk. It reassures him, he can start talking. Not easy to be lovers in the country, and even less so in this country. Do you think that lovers here can take three steps together? Neil looks at his wife, who remains motionless, and Kathryn tells herself that Neil has set off on a new project. There was Eugénie Grandet, tomorrow it will be The Barley Wind, and the day after that something else, and today it’s our project that he can’t complete because he no longer likes his film. It will bring in money, but he doesn’t like it anymore, he should have finished it a year ago. He’s dragging his feet, and he wants to do in a new film what he can’t do in this one, and he pretends to defend his originality by refusing a cross on a building. He’s right, but to refuse a cross on a building is not enough to make you an artist. Kathryn is thinking of Wiesner’s films . . . that woman in the shadows of a cell, her head against the wall, light from a barred window falling in intervals on her face, it was unbelievable and absorbing, and each time the shadow returned, placing dark gaps on the face. She also remembers the crazy rhythm, and Wiesner’s ill temper, a camera operator saying: He works well only when he has first scared the shit out of us . . . Wiesner’s models, a giant articulated dragon, with two men inside to move it, make the eyes roll and shoot out flames . . .
And, in front of his friends, Neil pursues his dream of a film. Even when there isn’t even a cat on the landscape there are always the eyes of people to see the lovers, so the lovers choose a silo where barley is stored, away from the eyes of others. They go there separately, the barley wind . . .
“I have the title before I have the film. Back home they say that a woman has skin as soft as a grain of barley, so lovers who make love in the softness of barley, the shadow and coolness of the silo, the rustling of the grain under their bodies. No, they aren’t assassinated, it’s not a typical story. I imagine they end up falling asleep, the scene ends.”
Neil lights a cigarette, drinks a large mouthful of whiskey, starts talking again, and the story doesn’t stop there, not with a common ending, either, so there aren’t any guards who burst in, no denunciation, no jealous ones who take revenge. Death, of course, but all alone, death that comes from itself. No, in fact it is already there, they came to death without knowing it, mektub!
Kathryn thinks Neil is making progress, When he said mektub he didn’t look at Raouf. Neil continues:
“And death catches them by surprise, because barley defends itself, not against lovers, of course, but against rodents . . . It ferments . . . a deadly gas, that’s the barley wind. How do you film what isn’t even a wind, how do you film a metaphor? Death that enters with each gasp of pleasure, with gestures that become desperate . . . And what makes it tragic?”
Kathryn thinking: He really has it in for lovers, all this rambling, all this aggression, it might make a good film, basically he’s mad at me for taking Raouf away from him, that’s why he’s doing this . . .
“Death is not enough,” says Neil, “Death is a brief news item, that’s all! To be tragic the audience must say to themselves that those two could have escaped death, but that they erred, through excessive love, they loved each other too much, that’s what cannot be pardoned, but that’s still not enough to make it tragic, except in newspapers. I’m not pointing at you, Gabrielle,” Neil smiles at Gabrielle, I wonder what role you might have played with my wife and my dear Raouf, I’m sure that the initiative came from Kathryn, and that you helped her, it didn’t come from Raouf, at his age one doesn’t betray a friend like that.
After a pause, Neil says that for a tragedy you need something more—a rat! A dead rat, in the first silo, they saw a rat, “Or a field mouse,” says Raouf. “Is the gentleman a specialist of silos or fauna?” asks Ganthier. Neil resumes:
“The lovers didn’t try to understand. They were content to go somewhere else, to the second silo. Barley defends itself against rodents, and it is the lovers who suffer from it . . . The rat is important, it is the tragic error. If I just show the lovers’ death it’s a soap opera. With the rat or the field mouse it’s tragic because they made a mistake that they could have avoided! But that’s still not enough. I have the story, I have the error, I have the death, Wayne, what am I missing?”
“Fleshing out?”
“Exactly, a true story needs to be fleshed out!”
Neil keeps a thought to himself: I don’t have any imagination, I don’t know how to invent, I have to find something to use, to rewrite, like Shakespeare did with Plutarch.
Again Neil’s voice, full of self-assurance: The context? As usual we’ll go get it from the great William, so we’ll cross the barley wind with a Shakespearean death of lovers, Romeo and Juliet, obviously, families that don’t want that love, competing families, and I already have a nice scene, a camel fight; each family has its contestant, no one has yet to put that in a film. So there’s a confrontation between the families, but no suicide, do the opposite of Shakespeare. The families reconcile much earlier than in Shakespeare. They agree on the marriage, that’s it—it will seem that we’re moving toward a happy ending. I can already hear my colleagues: Daintree uses Shakespeare to make a Hollywood story with a happy ending, he’s given in to Lakorsky, the big mouth is a flunkey like everyone else, welcome aboard! I’ll revise Romeo and Juliet, Neil continues, but with families who agree on the marriage. The two fathers negotiate, they begin to prepare the festivities, they look for the lovers, and they find them in the silo . . . Who’s they? Maybe another couple of lovers visiting the silo, for the same reasons, but then you can’t have shown the death of the first couple, only their sleep, their smiles. We’ll leave them right after their pleasure. They are naked, the barley covers them almost entirely, the boy is on his back, the girl against him. You don’t know where her hand is, no, just an outline, and if the viewer wants to imagine what the hand is doing, he’s free to do so. We leave them with this image, and later the other couple goes into the first silo, again, desire is in the air. They, too, see the rat. They go to the second silo . . . Shriek! They discover Romeo and Juliet, two arched bodies, rigid, with bulging, wide-open eyes, two mouths grotesquely open through asphyxia. Don’t hold the shot too long, don’t be predictable . . .
Cavarro interrupts: “If you’re not predictable you’ll never have an audience.”
And Samuel: “So what? He will have created a masterpiece!”
“I will have made a German film that no one will want because I’m not German!” says Neil, looking at Kathryn.
Samuel continues: “Balance! Cut some things, leave others . . .” A silence, then Neil:
“I want to end with sorrow.”
“In a novel you can,” says Gabrielle, “but not in performance. Even in Shakespeare, at the end there are no open wounds. They suture, life goes on . . .”
“I’m going to use the other couple,” says Neil, “The girl runs home, the boy will sound the alarm, and I’ll finish on the theme of ‘life goes on,’ with a true sentimental question for the audience: How can you still want to fuck when you’ve seen the cadavers of two lovers on a pile of grain?”
Around the bar things were heating up. Everyone had an idea for a screenplay for what Neil called a work of art for the general public, Cavarro defending the general public, recalling the quarrel people have with the movies, with all performance, with everything that gathers people outside their homes, everything that makes them an audience, facilities for the audience. One thinks that audiences are unhealthy, that only the individual has value, in his armchair, in his parlor, in front of the fireplace, a book in hand, with ample time. The problem is that they forget that a lot of people don’t have a parlor with a fireplace, and not a lot of time! And when Gabrielle interrupted him to ask who was that they who forgot people without fireplaces, Cavarro answered:
“Wealthy people, those who have a lot o
f money and gather in clubs where they forbid others to enter. They proclaim that the movies are a diversion for slaves!”
Raouf was listening, thinking of Cavarro’s Rolls . . . but remembering something Kathryn had said: “Francis comes from a place where, when you’re five years old and get your first cap, you have to defend it with your fists.” Samuel continued what Francis was saying:
“They create the slaves and they criticize those who entertain them.”
“That’s ingratitude,” said Neil, “because the movies prevent slaves from slitting their masters’ throats.”
“How?” asked Raouf.
“We show people that poverty is the result of the moral sins of an evil person who will be punished,” said Samuel, “They just have to be patient, and denounce the sins!”
His face had hardened. He looked at Francis:
“I dream of films that will instruct individuals, instead of just gathering together the herd!”
“So make those films!” Francis cried. Samuel jumped off his stool and disappeared.
“You’re rough,” Kathryn said to Francis.
“The herd,” Francis answered, “That’s an attack against my audience and the way I act.”
Ganthier hadn’t said anything, then he said softly:
“There’s nothing you can do, movies are the theater, and it’s in the theater that people become the herd, livestock, and that stupidity becomes contagious . . .”
He lit a cigarette, then:
“It is there that the neighbor reigns, it is there that one becomes a neighbor . . .”
He fell silent. That was pure Ganthier, provocateur, doomsayer, sententious . . . Cavarro told him so, cheerfully, with a slap on the shoulder, and before Ganthier could add anything Gabrielle began to laugh:
“It is there that one becomes a neighbor . . . He got you, that’s not Ganthier, da wird man Nachbar . . . that’s Nietzsche!” Ganthier started laughing. Gabrielle continued:
“It’s in The Joyful Wisdom, and what’s more our reactionary is a bit of a coward, he forgot a piece of the quote, go ahead, tell them everything, go for it!”
Ganthier didn’t say anything. Gabrielle continued:
“He forgot to say what Nietzsche inserted between become a herd and becomes livestock, he wrote that at a performance the audience becomes a woman . . .”
“Thank you for the combination,” said Kathryn.
“I censored it on purpose,” said Ganthier, “because I don’t think that.”
“But it makes sense,” said Gabrielle.
“I like Nietzsche,” said Neil, “He forces you to think against him.”
“Germans do that better than we do,” said Kathryn. Neil didn’t say anything.
47
EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK
And a week later there was the demonstration. It wasn’t supposed to happen. Everything came from those rabble-rousers whom the authorities in Nahbès allowed too much free rein, said some, rather, said others, because they pay as little as possible to people who extract and transport phosphate, and pay even less to those among them who are just natives. That had worked for a long time, however, the French workers comparing their fate to that of the natives and even to that of the Italians, and they were content, one salary for the French, another for the Italians and other Christians (the Spanish weren’t happy to be grouped with Italians), and the remainder for the natives, and now the natives were protesting. Things could have still stayed as they were, as long as the French felt happy with their situation, seeing profits grow, but with the economic crisis they were beginning to lose money, and they had the impression that they were getting dangerously close to those whom fate, history, God, or the law of the jungle had placed beneath them. However, even that wouldn’t have been enough to move the workers, but they had begun to say to one another that the owners were taking advantage of the lower salaries they were paying the natives to rationalize freezing those of the French, “If you’re not happy we’ll ask a Mohammed to take your place,” and then the others had to get involved, all those guys in Paris who thought the way they do in Moscow and who wanted folks to think like that in Nahbès, and that new slogan, “Equal pay for equal work,” can you imagine? When after all the Arabs have fewer needs! And the Italians and Spanish who are getting mixed up in that! In fact, all of this is coming from the Bolshevists, said Pagnon, and their union! And from that left-wing cartel who wants the same laws in Paris to be applied here, added Doly, as if the lesson of two years ago hadn’t been enough, and now Herriot and his cartel have raised the lid, the Bolshevists are taking advantage!
Things might not have gone any further if the natives hadn’t abandoned their inch Allah and their mektub, okay, with the crisis they no longer had enough to eat, they said, but there have been crises before, and as long as they have their mint tea in the evening, and are able to break off a piece of sugar to put in the teapot, and a bit of bread, in front of a nice sunset, they didn’t have much to complain about, even if the price of a block of sugar, as well as that of wheat, has gone up a bit—it was cyclical, and necessary, they had to be patient; the swipe of a rag and it would improve again; it was a cycle, the law of the market, do you know of any other? Anyway, it used to be much worse . . . But there were also the caps . . . We should have taken precautions when the Arab workers started wearing caps like the French and Italians. It began with the dockworkers, a cap, the ideas that go with it, if you can call them ideas, said Pagnon, and the dockworkers’ union indeed was agitating because the new assistant harbormaster didn’t want to hear about unions anymore. He’s right, said Laganier, no unions in the empire. With the natives there will always be war, it’s like Verdun here every morning!
And in the interior of the country, ninety miles from Nahbès, the phosphate workers had also been on strike for a week, and the railroad workers transporting the phosphates to the port; the first time that had happened in the region, that was modernity! The Prépondérants besieged Marfaing, no subversion, no more than in France, even less! The unions decided on a demonstration in Nahbès. The Prépondérants wanted an immediate crackdown, with rifle butts to begin with. But Marfaing knew that the tide was turning in Paris. He wanted to calm things down. A demonstration in itself isn’t bad, he said. They will shout, chant, and sing all afternoon, they will tell themselves that they have shown their strength, they will have seen that they don’t have very much, and the leaders will be able to say that action will be pursued in forms other than strikes . . . A demonstration, when it puts an end to a strike, that’s not so bad, I won’t prevent it. One must never put one’s adversary’s back to the wall, said Marfaing, let’s have a demonstration, a disciplined march, but on one condition: nothing in the city centers, not in the European city or in the Arab city!
The unofficial discussion with the unions was hard. They spoke of militants sent from Paris, David Chemla, a boy from here, you realize, said the lawyer Doly, those, yes, you know the ones I’m talking about. We’ve done everything for them. We’ve welcomed them, educated them, given them French nationality, and this is how they thank us? By wanting to destroy everything?
And it was also noted that this Chemla was accompanied by another Moscowphile native who stayed hidden, a certain Mokhtar. Nothing in the city, repeated Marfaing, otherwise I can’t be held responsible. You can march outside the city, all the processions you’d like, but nothing inside the city. During the discussion the city center became the entire city, a prohibition against any demonstration in the city. In the end the union representatives agreed: it was the first time the authorities were authorizing a demonstration, they said (not authorize, but tolerate, Marfaing clarified), that’s already a victory, we are not the strongest, let’s start with showing the strength that they let us show. In any case it will be called a “demonstration in Nahbès.” Even L’Humanité will talk about it, and we will have proven that we are the only true defenders of the workers of the country, unlike the socialists, those valets of
the colonial bourgeoisie!
And so there was a demonstration, on the outskirts of the city, caps, red scarves, banners, the CGT, raised fists, a fanfare in the front, drums and trumpets, several hundred men, many bicycles being pulled along, and behind there were also fife-players, darbukas, tambourines, and children, a disciplined procession in the countryside. Some were amazed at the large number of locusts they were crushing while walking, then they stopped paying attention. There weren’t to be any confrontations; a delegation was even to be received later by the general secretary of the contrôle civil. That was Marfaing’s sadism, to force Laganier, reaction incarnated, to meet with the Reds, and perhaps even have a photo taken with them. Chemla called it a demonstration by the worker class. They went through fields while avoiding crops. They sang, “Arise the damned of the earth!” in the middle of blue cardoons and nettles, hubbu dhahaya-l-idhtihad! Raouf and Gabrielle had slipped in among their ranks. This is an ideal spot for my reporting, Gabrielle had said. She was wearing trousers and a khaki shirt, and had looked with amusement at Raouf’s dark gray suit, telling him that it was going to get dusty. Raouf looked around him. These people are carrying each other along. I am in the middle of them, but I don’t feel carried, because soon I will be in Paris again? When he learns that I was in this march my father is going to let me have it. No, he won’t do anything, I am escorting a French journalist, the demonstration is authorized, more or less . . . Do I believe in the “Internationale”? Am I unable to believe in it because of my class affiliation, as David tells me? Two years ago, under the sovereign’s balcony, it was simpler. We thought that history was being made. This looks more like Mayenburg, a valiant last stand . . .