The Age of Reinvention

by Karine Tuil

  * * *

  1. Charlène, twenty-three, and Nadia, twenty-five. The former dreamed of becoming a ballet dancer. The latter had been an aerobics instructor for several years before being hired by this club on the insistence of her boyfriend, Bruno “B.B.” Benchimol. She has told her parents that she is working “in events.”

  2. X’s real name is Mouna Cesar. Though her parents are metalworkers, she pretends to come from the aristocracy.

  5

  The failure of that first meeting, the disappointment—We idealized him, didn’t we? was Nina’s conclusion—is, for Samuel, a victory. It is a victory to be able to say that, even with “all his money, his confidence, his condescension,” Samir wasn’t able to impress them—or seduce her. It is a victory to discover that she is still so attached to Samuel, and this revelation leads him gradually to the realization of the goal that is already, consciously or subconsciously, in his mind: to find out whether, given the same dilemma she faced twenty years ago, she will remain with him by choice rather than through coercion. She lists Samir’s faults—but who is she trying to convince? “He’s arrogant, pretentious, narcissistic, superficial. He wants everyone to worship at the altar of his success. He’s everything I hate.” They both say repeatedly how much they despise Samir for showing off his wealth: it’s disgusting, they say, it’s vulgar, ostentatious. How pure they are, how incorruptible . . . how frustrated. And what liars! Their integrity is invented. An illusion.

  Nina does not tell Samuel that she has received several messages from Samir. They come in bursts. He wants to get her back, to win her heart. All she admits to is one message stating that he wants to see her again—alone this time. Samuel understands, but says: “Go ahead. I have no problem with that, if it’s what you want.”

  “It’s not, really. I don’t have anything to say to him.”

  “Go and see him.”

  “Are you asking me to meet him on my own?”

  “Yeah. So? I don’t have anything to fear, do I?”

  “You’re not going to bother asking me if I want to see him?”

  “You want to. It’s written all over your face.”

  “I’m honestly not that interested.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “No.”

  Does he really trust her? Is he testing her? He says: Go ahead. So she does.

  6

  Since arriving in Paris, Samir has already received several calls from Pierre Lévy. His former boss is very keen to see him, asks him to drop by the office in the morning. Do you have time for lunch? Or dinner? No, not really. He can’t say: I have to see my mother, I want to spend time with her. He doesn’t know if he can talk to him about Nina, not yet, so he invents excuses: business meetings, a cardio exam, a visit to a sick friend, and Pierre finally interrupts to say he understands, though the truth is that he’s hurt. He’s hurt that Samir doesn’t have time to see him. It saddens him to realize there is such a wide gap between his own feelings—and his attempts to express them—and Samir’s icy indifference. “Did I do something to upset you? I get the feeling you’re trying to avoid me . . .” For a long time, he has treated Samir like a son, though he has learned, over time, to make their relationship more equal, without losing his initial affection—a demonstrative affection that made Samir feel suffocated to begin with. He wasn’t looking for a father. He’d had one that he loved—a weak but noble father, a poor but honorable man. This time, he didn’t call Pierre to give him his flight details. Usually, Pierre is the one who meets him at the airport, and often Samir stays with him when he’s in Paris, in the large apartment on Place de Mexico in the sixteenth arrondissement. Pierre lives alone: he has never married, never lived with a woman. The only women Samir has seen him with are a few Eastern European models he’s encountered in nightclubs: he has a taste for icy blondes, and this has become a running joke between them: “Why don’t you open a branch in Minsk?” “Because I don’t want to have to fall asleep with a picture of Lukashenko above my bed.” So, no, he doesn’t understand why, this time, his protégé didn’t tell him what time he was landing, nor why he booked a room at the Bristol: “What’s wrong with my place?” He is saddened by this new distance, though he doesn’t say anything. “Come around in the morning if you like—I’ll be in the office.” And Samir goes, thinking that he ought to tell him about Nina. On the way, he stops to buy boxes of chocolates and macaroons for Pierre’s employees. He arrives about ten a.m. and Pierre greets him warmly, exuberantly, holding him tight and kissing him on both cheeks. “You came! Just because I asked you to! Shall we go out for a coffee?” “No, let’s stay here, it’s fine.” They sit in Pierre’s large, light-filled office, the very place where, seventeen years before, he had been interviewed for his first job. He feels uneasy in this room. He has the impression that everything went wrong here, between the desk and the chair, that everything went wrong in a few minutes of conversation: a misunderstanding that committed him for life.

  “So what can be so urgent and so time-consuming that you fly all the way to Paris and are too busy to have lunch with me?”

  Samir smiles silently—a grin of complicity.

  “Ah, I see . . . And what is she like?”

  “Brunette. Very beautiful.”

  “She must be, for you to fly for eight hours and not even be able to spare an hour or two for your best friend. How long have you been together?”

  “Nothing’s happened yet . . .”

  “So you’re flying the flag for platonic love now? You really have changed, Sami! You’re crossing the Atlantic just to fuck a woman?”

  Samir laughs. “Not just any woman.”

  “Given how much it costs to fly business class from New York to Paris, I would tend to believe you. Tell me about her . . .”

  “She’s a girl I loved when I was twenty years old.”

  Pierre starts to laugh. “Well, she might have changed a bit in twenty years. You might not even recognize her . . .”

  “No, I saw her yesterday. She’s even more beautiful than she was twenty years ago.”

  “Married?”

  “She lives with an old friend of mine.”

  “What a fine and faithful friend you are!”

  “I’m crazy about her.”

  “Well, enjoy it while it lasts.”

  “You’re a cynical man.”

  “Not at all! Just realistic . . . Which explains why I never got married.”

  Pierre stands up and angles the blinds to let in less sunlight. Now it enters the office in thin shafts that fragment into bursts of iridescence.

  “Actually, I meant to say . . . thank you for the birthday present,” Samir says.

  “You liked it? Your wife suggested we put the money toward a list she’d given to Ralph Lauren. Are you sure your wife knows you, Sami? I’ve never seen you wearing Ralph Lauren! Your children, maybe, but you . . . ? Doesn’t she know you have the same tailor as the President of the United States? Jesus, Sami—twenty thousand dollars on a suit!”

  “Thirty-five thousand.”

  “For one suit!”

  “Yes, but what a suit! Hand-tailored in the most supple fabric I’ve ever touched. You know the joke, don’t you? The only thing Democrats share with Republicans is their tailor.”

  “I can still see you now, in your little gray pin-striped suit, the day of your job interview . . .”

  And it starts again, this psychotic reliving of the morning when he became someone else. And so the expiatory process begins again too: Why did he lie? Precisely because of that adjective that he hated so vehemently: “little.” He lived in a little apartment, with his little mother, who dreamed he would marry a “nice little woman,” he had little money, he wore a little suit . . . but his dreams were BIG.

  “You’ve come a long way, that’s for sure. But the apotheosis was your birthday party. I’ve never been to anything like that in my life, and as you know, I’m not the sort of man who’s ever be
en short of invitations. Your wife really impressed us. Where did she get all those ideas?”

  “She hired the biggest events firm in America.”

  “There were wild animals there, for God’s sake! Did she steal them from the zoo in New York?”

  “The elephant was an old movie star, and it was on its last legs. I thought it was a bit pathetic, to be honest!”

  “And I turned up carrying a book! Still, I bet you can’t imagine what I had to do to find it . . .”

  “I know—it’s a rare edition. I loved it. Did you bribe someone at Christie’s?”

  “I seduced the head of the precious books department. What I don’t understand is how a man who loves political books as much as you do has never run for office himself.”

  “In the U.S.? I think that would be tricky . . .”

  “Surely you’d have more chance there, as a Jew, than you would in France.”

  And there it is: the stab of the knife blade into the crack in his identity. Each time this happens, he has the impression they are talking about another person.

  “Yeah, you’re right. I should give it some thought . . .”

  “Your father-in-law would certainly have the means to help you.”

  “Berg? Nah, he’s got more than enough on his plate with his own affairs . . .”

  They laugh. A moment later, there is a knock at the door. “Come in.” A man appears—a fairly short man in his early thirties, running slightly to fat, and, as Samir notices immediately, a North African. He has dusky skin and thick, curly, jet-black hair that covers his skull like a helmet. His face is round and adolescent-looking. He is wearing a conventional gray suit, a white shirt, and a burgundy tie that is knotted so tightly it looks as if he’s being throttled. “Oh, I’m sorry—I didn’t realize you were in a meeting.” “That’s all right, Sofiane—come in, I’d like to introduce you to Sami, our American partner.” The man walks up with a friendly smile and offers Samir a firm handshake. “Sami, this is Sofiane Boubekri, our newest employee. He’s been with us for three months now.” “Pleased to meet you.” (We should really have a close-up on Samir’s face when this man first enters his field of vision. There is surprise and curiosity in his expression, but also a sort of disdain—a disdain that does not betray any feelings of superiority but, on the contrary, Samir’s jealousy and envy, without any nuance or detachment.) Samir feels hot; he is sweating. He would like to find out what this guy is doing here, in the place that should have been his, in the office that was given to him, under his real identity. He hates him at first sight, and Sofiane Boubekri probably senses this because he says right away that he should leave them in peace. “I’ll come back later. Great to meet you.” As soon as he has turned on his feet and closed the door, Pierre asks Samir what he thinks of him.

  “Dull.”

  “Dull? I don’t know what you mean.”

  “What made you hire that guy? He’s nothing special.”

  “Nothing special? He came from Braun and Vidal! He studied at Paris II and spent a year at Cambridge. He’s funny, very lucid. Where do you get the idea that he’s nothing special?”

  “I don’t know . . . It’s just an impression he gave me.”

  Pierre laughs. “You think he’s dull . . . Guess who he’s married to!”

  Suddenly Samir seems infuriated. “How the hell should I know? I don’t know the guy from Adam . . .”

  “You remember Gaelle, that gorgeous lawyer we hired three years ago?”

  Samir shrugs.

  “Yes, you do—you remember her. You even invited her to dinner, and she rejected you. She’s a redhead, quite small, very pretty . . .”

  “All right. So what’s your point?”

  “Well, he’s married to her and they’ve just had a son who they named Djibril.”

  “Wow, good luck to the kid—trying to make his way in France with a name like that!”

  “What is up with you, Sami? Do you have a problem with Sofiane?”

  “No . . . It would have been nice if you’d told me, that’s all . . .”

  “But you work in New York! You come here once a year at most! I’m hardly going to send you his CV. Besides, you trust me, don’t you? If I tell you he’s a good guy, an excellent lawyer . . . In fact, let me be honest: I think, in pure procedural terms, he’s better than either of us.”

  “He might be better than you. I kind of doubt he’s better than me. Where’s he from, anyway?”

  “What do you mean, where’s he from? I already told you: he studied at Paris II . . .”

  “Really? I bet he got beaten up a few times by those morons from the GUD.”31

  “Finish your thought. You mean because he’s an Arab? I don’t know—I never asked him about it. But I can tell you that when I was there, I got my skull cracked a few times, and I never just lay down and took it. I was president of the local branch of Jewish Students in France. I don’t know how many fights I got into with those fascists . . . Weren’t you ever politically active?”

  “Yes, I was in the UNEF-ID,2 but I gave it up pretty quickly. I was never really a joiner.”

  “Me neither. You can’t hold it against me.”

  “Hold what against you—hiring an Arab?”

  “Clearly, you have a real problem with that . . .”

  “I have no problem at all.”

  “Oh, come on! You turn up all smiles, everything great, then you see Sofiane, I tell you he works here, and suddenly you’re angry and irritated . . .”

  “I’m not angry or irritated. I was just surprised, that’s all, and I have another meeting.”

  “Listen, I can see where you’re going with this, and I’m not sure I want to get into it with you. He’s an Arab—so what? He speaks fluent Arabic, he has clients in Dubai, in London, he—”

  “So you hired him because he’s useful to the firm . . .”

  “What the hell are you getting at? Yes, of course, I hire all my employees because they bring added value to the firm. All employers do that, don’t they?”

  Losing his temper, Pierre knocks over his cup, spilling coffee on the papers arranged on his desk. Shit! Samir gets up and helps him clean the fast-spreading brown stains from his desk. “It’s fine, I can do it . . . I think you’d better go to your meeting.” Hearing these words, Samir grabs his coat and stands immobile for a few seconds, watching Pierre, not knowing what he should do. Then, finally, he mutters that he’s sorry—really sorry—and walks away.

  * * *

  1. Group Union Défense is the name of a succession of violent French far-right student political groups, founded in 1968 at Panthéon-Assas University (otherwise known as Paris II) by Gérard Longuet.

  2. The Union Nationale des Étudiants de France—Indépendante et Démocratique was a far-left French student union that existed between 1980 and 2001.

  7

  That evening, Samir arranged to meet Nina in a large Parisian restaurant situated under the alcove of an elegant townhouse with a view over a verdant garden. It’s beautiful and chic, he thinks, the kind of thing that might impress her: that bourgeois minimalism, that well-ordered sobriety, that quietude provided by the feeling of being among your own kind—something he discovered quite late, mainly through his wife, who had never known any other world. Having asked the hotel concierge to reserve a small table set aside from the others, he arrived early. Even so, he has trouble concealing his excitement when he sees Nina enter the restaurant, shoulders slightly hunched in a defensive posture, wearing a little low-cut red dress that gives a glimpse of her opulent breasts. When she walks into the room, she is all that he—and every other man in the room—sees. He stands up to kiss her cheek, letting his lips linger on that soft square inch of skin close to the corner of her mouth, while his hands touch her arm, feeling her shape and warmth through the fabric. She turns him on—everything about her turns him on, even her perfume, a mix of mandarin, incense, and cedarwood—and he finds it hard to move away from her. It’s physical: even if he t
akes a step back, lets go of her arm, looks away from her face, it is obvious that he wants her, that his body and mind are in turmoil; it is obvious that he wants to touch her, to keep her next to him, to take her. They sit side by side, their bodies close, looking out across the room, waiters scurrying past in both directions. Nina has never been taken anywhere so elegant before, she has never tasted such fine food. She is excited, nervous; he sees this and is pleased. He pretends to be surprised by her reaction. This is all perfectly normal for him. It is normal to be served, pampered, flattered. He enters the room and they give him the best table. Before he has even ordered anything, the waitress brings him a glass of his favorite champagne. He asks a question about the menu and the chef himself comes out to greet him. His aura of power is natural now. And he has acquired something else, through imitation, through contact with his wealthy wife whose every wish is granted: the false simplicity of people who have everything. We are together, we are having a conversation; I am a normal man, an accessible man; this surprises you, delights you; but look more closely, look at how I hold myself, listen to the way I articulate my words . . . can’t you perceive the distance between us now? The extraordinary self-importance conferred by a privileged social position. Samir is there, at the center of everything, in complete control. And suddenly Nina feels pathetic in her little red dress that she borrowed and showed to Samuel with genuine excitement. She has the impression that her perfume—a copy of a Prada eau de toilette that she bought at the flea market in Saint-Ouen, not in a perfumery, because she couldn’t afford to—is a little too intoxicating. Under the table, she hides the high heels she bought in a secondhand store, for fear that he will see them. Who are you kidding with your cheap fancy-dress outfit? Nobody. And certainly not a man like him, capable of spotting a designer brand at fifty feet. Leather? Nope, plastic. Satin? Nope, polyester—you sweat inside it, it’s allergenic, it makes you itch like crazy. Cashmere? Nope, just acrylic—a fabric that pills, that soaks up body odors. It’s obvious, embarrassing, your lack of money, of taste, and it makes him even happier: this social gap shifts the balance of power in his favor—it’s erotic. Here in this restaurant, he is the dominant force—you sense that he has power, has money—but in a room, in bed, she will be the one with power over him, an authority that society denies her, a control beyond her capabilities in this place where she is afforded no influence, where she can only claim to belong at all because of her proximity to Samir. She feels unwell, ill at ease, and a confession bubbles to her lips: “Samir, I lied to you. I’m not what you think I am. I don’t really work in fashion and Samuel isn’t a company director . . . I’d prefer you to find out now, rather than later.” “I already knew.” He says it arrogantly, but does not reveal how he knew. He can’t say to her: It’s because of the way you both look, your clothes, the way you enter a hotel, the way you avoid the waiters’ eyes, and above all—the most telling detail—because of your shoes: you, Nina, perched on worn-out high heels that make you wobble as you walk, heels with square tips when the fashion is for pointed tips; and him in his cheap leather, too-big shoes, with soles that squeak when he walks—And for fuck’s sake, he thinks, if you’re going to buy a pair of shoes in a bargain store, the first thing you do is remove the damn price sticker! He doesn’t dare ask her what they really do/are, but she tells him anyway: “Samuel is a social worker in Clichy-sous-Bois. As for me, well, I do work in fashion—I really am a model—but only for department store catalogues. When the marketing team at Carrefour are preparing their summer or winter promotions, they call me. I always play the perfect mother in those pages devoted to barbecues or Beaujolais Nouveau or pork products or school supplies! And I don’t even have kids!” She says this ironically, self-deprecatingly, and he is touched by it. “I really need to get hold of that catalogue. I can imagine how sexy you must look holding a pig’s head in your hand.” And she laughs.