The Bridges of Constantine

by Ahlem Mosteghanemi

  Were you jealous of the picture or the person? Why did you have the right to reproach me for one picture I had painted of a woman, when I had no right to make you answer for everything you had written prior to me, for that real or imaginary man you tortured me with?

  Your gaze returned to the last painting. You studied it for a while then said, ‘So, that’s me!’

  ‘Perhaps it wasn’t you,’ I said, ‘but the way I see you. You have something of the contours of that city, the curvature of her bridges, her pride, dangers, caves and valleys, the foaming river that splits her body, her femininity and secret seductiveness, her vertigo.’

  You interrupted, smiling, ‘You’re dreaming. How can you find an affinity between me and that bridge? How did the idea occur to you? Don’t you know I only like the small wooden bridges of Christmas cards, covered in snow and glitter and crossed by sleighs? Constantine’s iron bridges suspended in space are frightening. Sad. I don’t recall ever walking over one or looking down without feeling panic and vertigo.’

  ‘But desire is vertigo,’ I said. ‘It’s standing on the edge of an irresistible drop. It’s viewing the world from the summit of fear. It’s a mass of conflicting emotions and sensations that draw you to the depths and the heights at the same time. Falling is always easier than standing on shaky legs. To paint you as a proud bridge like this means admitting you are my vertigo – something no man has said to you before.

  ‘I don’t understand how you can love Constantine and hate bridges. How you can seek to create, but fear vertigo. Without the bridges there would be no city; without the gasp of vertigo, no one would love or create.’

  You were listening to me as though discovering something basic you hadn’t realised before. Yet you said, ‘Perhaps in the end you’re right. But I would have preferred it if you’d painted me and not this bridge. Any woman who gets to know a painter dreams in secret that he will immortalise her, paint her – not a city. Equally, any man who gets to know a woman writer hopes she will write something about him, not about something else unconnected to him. It’s narcissism, or pride or something unexplainable.’

  Your admission surprised me. I felt a little disappointed.

  Had I painted a fake representation of you? Was there really no communion between you and the bridge? Was the painting an authentic copy of my memory, while, ultimately, you dreamt of becoming a copy of Catherine, turned into an ordinary portrait in a compromising pose and with a heavily made-up face like hers?

  Hadn’t we been cured of that complex?

  With a note of despair, I said to you, ‘If that’s what you want, I’ll paint you.’

  You answered in a voice tinged with shame. ‘I confess that from the beginning I’ve been desperate for you to paint me. I would keep the picture as a memento, provided, if possible, you didn’t sign it.’

  As I grasped the amazing logic, I felt the urge to laugh or, more accurately, to grieve. I had the right to sign abstract paintings that bore no resemblance to you. But I couldn’t sign myself at the bottom of your image. My name would never be joined with the only woman I had loved, even if only once and at the bottom of a painting. Some only bought my signature, not my paintings. But you wanted an unsigned painting.

  I was a stubborn man who rejected this new logic of things, and refused in the name of love to turn you into a stray painting that could be claimed by any brush and any artist.

  My silence threw you. In a semblance of apology you said, ‘Would it upset you to paint me?’

  Sarcastically I said, ‘No. I’ve just realised again that you are an authentic copy of a nation whose features I once defined, only for others to sign my achievements. There are always signatures ready for such occasions. Since time immemorial there have been those who write history and those who sign it. That’s why I hate paintings that are easy to forge.’

  I wonder if you understood all I said to you then. I suddenly began to have doubts about your political awareness. In the end, all you cared about was the question of your picture.

  As you were leaving the studio, you said, ‘You know, we won’t see each other for two months. I’m going to Algeria next week.’

  I stopped you in the corridor and exclaimed, ‘Is what you’re saying true?’

  ‘Of course,’ you said. ‘I always spend my summer holidays with my mother in Algeria. I have to go back next week with my uncle and his family. There won’t be anyone left in Paris.’

  I stood stunned in the passageway. I gripped your arm as if to stop you leaving and asked you sadly, ‘And me?’

  ‘You? I’ll miss you a lot. I think it’ll be a bit painful for us – it’s our first separation. But we’ll trick time into passing fast.’ Then, as if you wished to solve a problem, or make it disappear quickly, you continued, ‘Don’t be sad. You can write, or call me on the phone. We’ll stay in touch.’

  I was on the verge of tears, like a child whose mother has told him she will be going away without him. You were breaking this to me with a degree of sadism that shocked me, as if my suffering was attractive to you.

  Should I have grabbed the hem of your dress like a child and burst into tears? Should I have spent hours talking to you, persuading you that I wouldn’t be able to live without you? That after you, time wouldn’t be counted in hours or days? That I was addicted to you?

  How to persuade you that I had become a slave to your voice over the phone? A slave to your laughter, your figure, your delectable feminine presence, your impulsive inconsistency in everything, at all times. Slave to a city and memory that you had become, to all that you ever touched or passed.

  Sadness suddenly surged over me as I stood in the corridor looking at you in the shock of disbelief.

  You were so close we were touching in a way that hadn’t happened before. I searched your face for something that revealed your feelings. But I understood nothing.

  Did your perfume, which permeated my senses and paralysed my mind, make me unable to look deeply? I was only aware that in a few minutes you would be far away, just as then you were close.

  You lifted your face towards me.

  I wanted to say something I’ve now forgotten. But before I said a word, my lips went ahead and devoured your lips in a sudden passionate kiss. My one arm was around you like a belt and in one swoop turned you into a piece of me.

  You squirmed a little in my arms like a fish out of water and then surrendered.

  Your long black hair suddenly came loose over your shoulders like a black gypsy shawl. An old desire to pull you by your hair in a frenzy of forbidden passion awoke. My lips were still searching for a way to leave my signature on your lips outlined in advance for love.

  This had to happen.

  You were the one who had shadowed your eyes and made your red lips feverish. Could I have held out for long against your femininity? My fifty years were devouring your lips and the fever was spreading to me. I finally melted into a kiss with the taste of Constantine and the confusion of Algeria.

  There was nothing more beautiful than your fire. The kisses of exile had been cold, if only you knew. Overly red lips lacking warmth had chilled me. The bed with no memory had been cold. Let me stock up for the icy years. Let me bury my head in your neck. Like a sad child, let me hide in your arms.

  Let me steal from fleeting life one moment and dream that all these flaming spaces are mine.

  Set me aflame, Constantine.

  Your lips were delicious, like two slowly ripened mulberries. Your body was fragrant, like a jasmine tree opening in haste.

  My hunger for you was a lifetime of thirst and waiting. A lifetime of complexes, obstacles and contradictions. A lifetime of desire and shame, of inherited values, of suppressed desires. A lifetime of confusion and hypocrisy.

  On your lips I gathered my life’s dispersion.

  In one kiss from you I resolved all my opposites and contradictions. The man I killed long ago in obedience to another man came back to life. The man who was once a comrade of your
father’s. A man who almost was your father.

  On your lips I was born and died at the same instant. I killed one man and brought another to life.

  Did time stop at that moment?

  Were we at last the same age? Was memory wiped away for a time?

  I don’t know.

  All I knew was that you were mine and that I wanted to scream right then one of Goethe’s Faust’s screams, ‘Stop, time. You are so beautiful!’

  But time didn’t stop. It was lying in wait for me as usual. Plotting against me as usual. After a few moments you were looking at your watch in an effort to hide your confusion and remind me of your need to go back to university.

  I suggested we have a cup of coffee in a final attempt to make you stay.

  You were in front of the mirror, tidying up your appearance and gathering up your hair. You said, ‘I’d prefer something cold, if that’s possible.’

  I left you in the living room and went to the kitchen. Deliberately I didn’t hurry back, as if I’d become ashamed of the traces of my kiss on your lips.

  When I came back, you were studying the titles of the books on the bookshelf and picking some of them up. You pulled a slim volume off the shelf. As you looked at the cover, you asked me, ‘Isn’t this the collection by your friend the poet you were telling me about?’

  I answered happily, having finally found a way out of my confusion. ‘Yes. There’s another collection of his on the same shelf.’

  ‘Is he called Ziyad al-Khalil?’ you asked. ‘I’ve heard that name before.’

  You handled the book. I saw you look for a long time at his picture on the back. You read a few lines, then said, ‘Can I borrow these two collections? I’d prefer to read them at leisure over the summer, and I’ve got nothing else to read.’

  I answered, eagerly or stupidly, ‘Of course. It’s a good idea. I’m certain those two books will leave their mark on your writing. You’ll find some excellent pieces, especially in the latest one, Plans for a Love to Come. It’s the best thing Ziyad has written.’

  Delighted, you buried the books in your handbag. It was the delight of a child going home with a toy she loved.

  Of course, then, I hadn’t been aware that later on I would be your other plaything, and that those two books would also leave their mark on the course of our story.

  Gradually you restored your usual face and normal expression, as if the whirlwind of my love hadn’t touched you. Was that an act or was it real?

  I tried to forget my frustration with you in front of the painting that had been the primary reason for your visit. I also tried to ease your frustration. I said, ‘I will paint you. Your picture will be my leisure this summer.’ Without any particular intention, I continued, ‘You have to come and see me one more time and sit for me so I can paint you. Or give me a photograph to copy.’

  You said, as if the answer was prepared, ‘I don’t have enough time to come and see you again, and I don’t have a photograph with me. You can make do with the photo on the back of my book until I come back.’

  I admit that, then, I also didn’t understand whether your response hinted that you would never come back to my house, or you were just replying with automatic innocence.

  Hadn’t you insisted that I paint you? So why did you turn that picture into a personal issue only I was interested in?

  I didn’t discuss it with you. Whatever the case, I knew I would paint you. Perhaps because I didn’t know how to turn down a request from you, or perhaps because I didn’t know how I would spend the summer without making you present, even as a painting.

  You left after kissing my cheeks and promising me we’d meet soon. After our kiss it was no longer possible to shake hands.

  I was aware that something in our relationship had changed. After that day it would no longer be possible for the genie that had suddenly emerged from deep inside us to go back into the bottle where we had sealed it.

  I was aware that in a few moments I had moved with you from love to desire. From innocent emotion to hunger, and that it would be hard from then on to forget the taste of your kiss and the heat of your body pressed against mine for a few minutes.

  How long did our kiss last? Two minutes? Three? Five?

  Could those few minutes have caused all that happened to me afterwards?

  How come I felt no regret or shame regarding my memory of Si Taher? That day, I committed my first moral betrayal.

  No. There was only love in my heart.

  I was filled with desire, lust, obsession. Finally, I was happy. Why ruin my happiness with regrets, with questions that would lead me to misery?

  I don’t remember who said, ‘Regret is the second mistake we make.’ There was no room in my heart, not even a tiny space, for anything but love to well from.

  Wasn’t the whole thing crazy?

  How did I allow myself to be so happy when I knew I had had nothing of you in the end except a few minutes of stolen happiness, and that before me was a lifetime of torture?

  Chapter Four

  Your departure had the same taste as my first tragedy. In a matter of days loneliness reduced me to the level of an orphaned painting on the wall. The opening line from a novel by Malek Haddad that I had once loved came to mind: ‘How great is God! As great as my loneliness. I see the Creator and he seems a painting.’

  In my isolation and loneliness I was both the creator and the painting. I was hanging from the wall of a vast and cold universe, waiting for you.

  After you left I entered a downward spiral of mental and emotional disappointment. I was living with the inexplicable anxiety that always came before and after an exhibition, when I would spontaneously run through my joys and disappointments.

  So my exhibition was over. As usual, only the specialist French press and some émigré Arab magazines had shown any interest. Yet I could say it had received sufficient media coverage, and there was a consensus that Paris had witnessed an Arab artistic event.

  Only the Algerian press ignored it, out of simple neglect, as usual. One newspaper and a weekly magazine mentioned it in passing, as if they lacked newsprint, not news. Abdel-Qadir, the journalist friend who had promised me he would be in Paris for personal reasons and interview me at length didn’t show up.

  Although I didn’t love the limelight or sitting for hours with a journalist to talk about myself, I had hoped the interview would take place so that I could finally address at length the only person who really concerned me – the Algerian reader.

  Abdel-Qadir called to tell me that he had to stay in Algeria to cover one of the festivals that were on the rise in those days, for reasons only God, and a few others, knew. I didn’t blame him. There was no comparison between an organised, official festival or gathering, paid for in hard currency, and an exhibition, no matter whose and no matter the years spent on the paintings.

  In the end, I couldn’t even really blame the Algerian press. What enjoyment or entertainment could an exhibition of arty paintings offer to Algerian citizens about to explode, or commit suicide even, and with no time for contemplation or taste. They preferred a Rai music festival, where they could dance and shout and sing until dawn. On those suspect pop songs, they might spend the few dinars stuffed in their pockets and the sexual energy accumulated in their bodies. That was the only real ‘wealth’ our youth possessed. And just like our currency, they could only spend it on the black market in despair. Some had realised this before others.

  In 1969, at the height of the desperate cultural vacuum being endured by the nation, someone, over a few days, came up with the idea for the biggest festival ever seen in Algeria or Africa. It was called the Pan-African Festival, and the whole African continent and its tribes were invited to spend a week singing and dancing (at times naked) in the streets of Algiers in honour of the Revolution.

  How many millions were spent on this first and last festival of joy? Its most important achievement was to cover up the trial of a historic leader. During the festival, his men
were interrogated and tortured in closed sessions in the name of that Revolution. The leader was also called Taher, and though we weren’t friends, I didn’t have any particular hostility towards him. He had once also been a fighter and a commander. I started to be aware of the game and greed of power and became wary of regimes that held many festivals and conferences. They were always hiding something!

  Was it a coincidence that my problems began back then, and I started to have a bitter taste in my mouth?

  I met that friend a few months later. He apologised sincerely and promised not to miss my next exhibition. I patted him on the shoulder and said, laughing, ‘Don’t worry. In a few days’ time the name of the festival will be forgotten, but history will definitely remember my name, even if after a hundred years!’

  Joking, but with a hint of seriousness, he said, ‘Do you know you’re arrogant?’

  ‘I’m arrogant,’ I replied, ‘so as not to be despised. We have no choice, my friend. We belong to a people that doesn’t respect its creative artists. If we lost our arrogance and pride, we’d be trampled by the illiterate and ignorant!’

  Later I asked myself if I really was arrogant. After a little thought, I understood that I was only arrogant when I stood, brush in hand, before a blank canvas. How arrogant did I have to be, then, to conquer its blankness and take its virginity as I circumvented my embarrassment with an outpouring of manhood and the virility of my brush?

  But as soon as I had finished and wiped all the colours off my hand, I would fling myself on to the nearby sofa and look at the painting in amazement, to discover that I alone had sweated and bled in front of it. They were Arab females, greeting my revolution with fearsome, inherited indifference.

  When I would collapse in disappointment, I would rip up a picture that annoyed me and throw it in the wastepaper basket. Some paintings were so naive and cold that they gave me a sexual as well as a creative block. Even so, no one would ever know, or perhaps even anticipate, my weakness and secret defeats. Others would only see my triumphs, hanging on the wall in elegant frames. The wastepaper basket would always be in a corner of my studio and my heart, out of sight.