The Age of Reinvention (12 page)

They take the bus, then the suburban train. People stare and whistle at them—
Are you going to the Cannes Festival?
Samuel and Nina laugh. She struggles to walk on her four-inch stilettos, gripping tightly to Samuel's arm and holding herself upright.
We want people to notice us. You should wear your hair like that all the time
. It took her over an hour to straighten it. After that, she went to the manicurist—her nails are blood-red. She did the makeup herself—not too much. She wants to look her age: not older, not like a whore. He holds her close to him and thinks:
This is my wife
. Pathologically possessive? Oh, yeah. There is something puerile and pathetic in the way he boosts his own confidence by parading Nina like a trophy, but he has found no better way of resisting decline. His place in society is down to her; he owes her everything. He is nothing without her—he has persuaded himself of this through the years they have spent together:
If she leaves, I die. If she leaves, I'll kill myself
. He knows this, says it, and yet here he is, running the risk of losing her, testing her in the flame, playing with fire, on a suicide mission.

It is still early when they reach Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, so Nina suggests they walk for a while. He prefers taking her into boutiques—just to look around, not to buy anything—for the pleasure of being welcomed, respected, seen at her side. He asks her to try on a dress with a plunging neckline; under the complicit gaze of the sales assistant,
¹
he takes the dress over to the changing room himself. It'll be fine, he tells her, and when she goes inside, he follows her. You're crazy, she says, someone might see us. But this is exactly what he wants: to be seen. He draws the curtain and kisses her. “You're crazy.” “Yes, I'm crazy about you.”

1
. Kadi Diallo, thirty-four. The daughter of an African diplomat, she worked as a model for Dior before taking part in a humanitarian mission in Sudan. After three years, she returned to France, where she found this part-time job as a sales assistant. Her ambition is to be manager of the boutique.

Samir never feels fear—not on television, not in court, not with beautiful women or powerful men or judges. He is cool, unemotional, and years of speech-making and negotiating have toughened him up even further. But the mere idea of seeing Nina sends him into a panic. All the signs are there: accelerated heartbeat, trembling hands, practically stuttering. This isn't like him at all. What has happened to that self-confident swagger, that winning arrogance? Gone. He is shaking—really shaking. He feels his wrist: pulse throbbing, out of control. Even the blue vein that snakes down his forearm is quivering, for God's sake! He checks himself in the mirror, as if making an inventory. He changes his clothes three or four times—his shirt's too fitted, his collar badly ironed, the color too dark—then orders a whiskey and waits in his hotel room, switches on/off the TV, sits down/stands up, and finally grabs his laptop and googles Samuel and Nina. Nothing but a few profiles on social networks—this reassures him. He checks out their photographs. There are only a dozen of them, but he sees love/harmony/contentment and it revolts him. Nina's still as beautiful as ever, almost unchanged, while Samuel stands alongside her, outshone, a mere shadow. Angrily he shuts his laptop. Seeing them together is unbearable and he no longer feels sure he wants to go down to the hotel bar. He makes a few phone calls, hoping they will clear his mind, and then—five minutes before they are due to meet—finally decides to go downstairs. Time for the confrontation. He exits the room, banging the door behind him.
Calm down
. Walks quickly. But in the hallway that leads to the elevator, he sees a woman
¹
from behind who looks like Nina, and emotion pours through him once again.

1
. This woman's name is Maria Milosz, and her life merits more than a mere footnote.

They see him right away.
It's him. Look over there, at the back
—suntanned skin, impeccably styled hair, sitting on the velvet couch, phone in hand, a newspaper open on the coffee table in front of him. They're late, but they don't rush—better to take their time. As they close in on him, they sense his disarray. Samir looks at them too, and judges them instantly (Nina, even more beautiful than her photographs, even more breathtaking than she was twenty years ago—incredible; Samuel has changed, aged, and he thinks:
I'm better than him
). They're standing up and he's sunk in this stupid sofa. The position humbles him, reducing him to nothing, the lowest of the low. He wasn't able to keep her—that woman is the one great failure of his life—and in Samuel's eyes he reads the message:
Look at us. She left you for me. Look at us and suffer
. And boy, is he suffering. His heart's doing somersaults inside his chest and he's walking like a robot remotely controlled by a child or a sadist. He looks like he's going to crash into something. He feels like he's going to collapse. Time has not faded his desire. His whole body is reeling, exuding what he feels. And yet he loved her/had her. And there, the earth trembles, cracks open. He had imagined a gesture of affection, some humor/emotion, good evening, you've changed/haven't changed a bit, a sip of wine, a smile, a fluttering of eyelashes, nothing too disturbing, nothing to shake his cool self-confidence/arrogance. He had imagined a breezy, peaceful reunion, no conflicts or torments, just happiness at seeing each other after all these years, a little nostalgia, for old times' sake. He did not envisage the panic and dread that is rising within him now. He should never have exposed himself to this—should have remained mistrustful, protected himself—but now it's too late: he's exploding inside, he's in pieces, breathing too hard. He's a wreck. He holds out a damp, trembling hand—a hand that expresses his anguish better than any words could—and when Samuel ignores it and hugs him instead, taking him affectionately in his arms (when he hates him), smiling at him complicitly (when they are enemies, and have been ever since Nina first yielded to him), a childish idea fills his head:
One day, I'll take her back
.

They sit down. The ordeal of seeing them together, in love, all smiles. The ordeal of sitting opposite them, seeing them caress each other, limbs intertwined. The ordeal of listening to them recount their personal and social success. The ordeal of feeling close to her and not being able to touch her. The ordeal of being in the middle of a crowd of strangers, in a hotel bar, sitting down, dressed up, respectable, when he wants to be alone with her in his room. The ordeal of thinking about the chaos of his own private life when their happiness is exhibited before his eyes like a whore he can't afford.

Samir examines/scrutinizes/sniffs out the lack of taste, and then, suddenly, he understands. He is the Sherlock Holmes of social codes. He
sees
and he
knows
. What is that oversized, badly tailored suit that Samuel wears like a scarecrow? What are those fake leather shoes? And the plastic sole with the price sticker still glued to it? Maybe Samuel has money, maybe he's a success, but he's a rube. He's dressed up all shiny and tawdry, without any finesse or refinement. He looks him up and down now—
Compare the two of us
. This is the true confrontation, the duel: two gunslingers whipping out their social indicators, two poker players bluffing about what they have in their hands; two men who want the same woman, their eyes meeting, judging, measuring, and analyzing . . . it's a battle, a form of combat. You could cut the tension with a knife! And, in the middle of it all, the woman whose mere presence is the cause of all this sexual tension, this weird electricity. Such creatures are rare. It is not simply a question of beauty: there are plenty of beautiful girls in this hotel bar, perfect bodies perfectly fitted into four-thousand-dollar dresses, girls with sculpted features whose coruscating beauty sweeps all before them. But a woman who captures the light with such intensity, a woman whose erotic power you can sense even at a distance, across a crowded room, a wide radius around her that should be sticker-taped
WARNING: YOU ARE NOW ENTERING THE DANGER ZONE
 . . . you can search for a long time and never find such a woman. Not that she is particularly secretive or reserved, but she seems to be holding something back, as if she is cordoned off, and the man who sees her has only one desire: to uncover what is hidden. What is it like to go to bed with a girl like that? Does she close up even more? Does she let loose what's within her? Samir knows—it's explosive. You go in like a bomb disposal expert, every part of you protected, your features tensed and concentrated, uncertain whether you will get out alive. You go in and you discover that, with a girl like that, you will never really be able to possess her, to make her love you.

He wasn't expecting this—Samuel's offensive presence, his possessive control-freakery, his sickening exhibitionism,
Look at us, we're together
, rubbing it in—and for a man like Samir, used to being the center of attention, it is unbearable. It's unbearable to think that she chose to stay with this loser: a man who can't dress, who talks too loud, a man with dirty fingernails, callused hands, a man who doesn't even wear cologne. So he makes conversation, and Nina starts talking, ordering a glass of wine with a hand signal. She doesn't say she works as a model for Carrefour, but simply that she works “in fashion.” No, they still don't have children, but yes, of course they want them. Samir tells them about his life in the U.S., embellishing as he goes along, his success/career/money. It gets to Samuel: his money, the money he wears on every inch of his body. The priceless watch, the leather shoes, the hand-tailored suit, even the corruptive way he hails the waiter with the back of his hand, the way he keeps making more and more demands: to move somewhere else (“It's too noisy here”), to try a different wine (“I don't like this one”), to get a clean glass (“Look closely—you see that stain?”). “You're never satisfied, are you?” Samuel jokes. “I can be—I'm just demanding.” Samir tastes the wine the waiter hands him: “This one is perfect—thank you.” Nina takes a sip of her own wine.

“Tell us about your life in New York . . .”

“It's exciting. Exhausting.”

Samuel stares at him and says: “Paul Morand said:
New York shatters your nerves. No European can live there more than a few months
.”

“He wasn't wrong!”

They lift their glasses and toast their reunion.

“So?” Samir says, looking at Samuel. “Did you ever become a writer? I googled you, but I didn't find anything.”

He has good technique, of course. Aggressive questioning is his area of expertise. Samuel replies that he “got into business.” Business? Yeah, right. Social work, more like—solving local problems does not make him a successful businessman. He knows this, and tries to stay vague, but Samir won't let go.

“You gave up writing?”

“No, I still write.”

“But you haven't been published?”

“No.”

“And yet there are so many books published each year. It's incredible. You'd think everyone in France had become a writer, that it's . . .”

“Easy? No, it's not easy. Not for me, anyway.”

Nina interjects: “He still writes, but he doesn't send his books to publishers anymore.”

“Well, that would certainly reduce your chances of getting published!”

“I googled you too, you know. There's nothing under the name Samir Tahar . . .”

Samir laughs: “It was a mistake. They misspelled my name once, and after that it was reproduced everywhere. Everyone calls me Sam . . .”

“Or Samuel.”

“Yeah, sometimes.”

Tension crackles between the two of them. You can feel it.

Finally Samuel asks: “So you converted to Judaism?”

“No, no, that was just a misunderstanding because my wife is Jewish.”

“You could have. I don't see a problem with you converting . . .”

“My wife is Jewish—that's all.”

“I read a big interview with you in the
Times
, you know.”

Nina sighs. Samir looks at her, embarrassed.
What is he up to? Is he trying to unnerve me?

“I need to explain that . . .”

“There's nothing to explain. You used bits and pieces of my life to concoct your own biography! You pillaged my private history and used it to create your own! It's completely insane. How could you do such a thing?”

“What was I supposed to do? Ask your permission? You don't know what it's like with journalists—they want to know everything. I told them what they wanted to hear. Is this why you wanted to see me?”

“Ha, that's very Jewish—answering a question with another question.”

“What do you want me to say? That I did it deliberately? Well, I didn't. I just didn't feel like talking about my life.”

“And twenty years later, the first thing that comes to mind is
my
life?”

“Well, it did have an effect on me, I guess . . .”

Nina finally intervenes: “That's enough, now. This is getting ridiculous. Samir already told you he didn't mean to hurt you. You just have to take his word for it.”

The next moment, Samuel gets to his feet, claiming he has an urgent call to make, and vanishes. Time to put his plan into action. So now they're alone. They don't speak. They look at one another. Language has lost its power. Samir can't take his eyes off her face, her body. He wants to say:
I want you I love you it's so hard to look at you without being able to touch you I have to touch you let me caress you I want to make love to you come with me now
. Instead of which, he says: “It's good to see you again.”