The Age of Reinvention (16 page)

“Why are you doing this? You'll destroy everything.”

“Maybe.”

Finally, it is stronger than her, and she throws herself at him, kisses him, weeps, shaking, but he pushes her away.

“I want a child.”

“No.”

“I want to stay here with you!”

“No.”

“I love you. I'm forty. I want a child—it's now or never.”

“Never.”

When she hears these words, she walks to the bathroom and does not come out again until an hour later. By then, a metamorphosis has taken place: she is wearing so much makeup, she looks like a geisha—or a whore.

I'm going out
.

He's been drinking—drinking a lot—and his eyes are filled with hatred and violence as he asks Nina if she's going back to meet Samir at his hotel.
Where are you going dolled up like that, you slut? Back to see him? Not had enough, eh?
He is sitting on the couch in the living room—an IKEA sofa in faded colors that he found in the business section—and he's smoking: the ash falls onto the stained cloth and burns a hole in it.
Be careful
. No—he takes another drag on his cigarette.
I don't give a fuck
. Bluish clouds of smoke veil his darkly lined face. Nina no longer recognizes him: Is this really the man whose child she wanted to bear only an hour earlier? She says she doesn't need him, that she's not afraid anymore, and as she is about to leave the apartment, she hears him shout:
Going back to see your rich boyfriend? Go ahead, get the hell out of here
. And that is just what she does: she gets the hell out of there.

In the suburban train, some kids
¹
are talking loudly. She wears headphones so she doesn't have to hear them. Samuel calls her cell phone three or four times to find out where she is, where she's going,
Why are you doing this to me?
She doesn't answer.

She arrives at Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, enters the hotel lobby—hello, madame—not feeling very sure of herself. In the bathroom, she stands in front of a large mirror and reapplies her makeup: gray eye shadow, crimson lips, hair loose, a little perfume, and she leaves. The scent radiates from her, impregnating the atmosphere. All eyes converge on her, as usual: men, women, children, everyone is attracted to her. Finally, she goes up to reception and asks to speak to Mr. Tahar.
Just one moment, please
. And the receptionist moves away from the desk, whispers a few words to a man who appears to be his boss.

He thinks I'm a whore.

He thinks I'm a whore.

He thinks I'm a whore.

She smiles.
Stay calm. Wait
. At last, the man comes back to the desk, dials Samir's room number, informs him that there is a young lady downstairs wishing to speak to Mr. Tahar. Then he hands her the receiver. At the other end of the line, she hears Samir's voice:
Who's this?
(even though he knows it's her: he was expecting her) and she says simply: “I'm here.” She hears him breathe into her ear. Finally his voice orders her: “Come up. Suite 503.”
²

1
. Kamel, Léon, and Dylan, sixth-graders from the
collège
in Sevran. On the first day of school, in response to the question, “What job would you like to do when you are older?” Kamel replied: “President of the Republic”; Léon said: “Video game designer”; and Dylan announced that he wanted to be “the most famous armed robber of all time.” Everybody laughed.

2
. Suite 503 has been the venue for many adulterous liaisons—in particular an affair, which remained secret, between a famous French actress and a male French politician (whose only personal ambition was to have an affair with this actress in Suite 503).

Samuel calls her ten, twenty times, but she doesn't pick up.
What is she doing? What have I done?
And then it comes, rising up inside him: he was mad to let her go, he's filled with regret, calls her again, screams, MADNESS, what got into me, how could I think that I (the master of SELF-DESTRUCTION) could ever hope to hold her back, I could never keep her, I am a FUCKHEAD, an IDIOT, a piece of SHIT, that's what I am, I deserve to DIE, I don't deserve a girl like that, she left me, that BITCH, that WHORE, and I did everything for her, I was always there to listen, always there when she was SICK, with her all I did was SUFFER, with her I could never feel confident, could never EVOLVE, she RUINED my life, and all for what? So she can go back to HIM, that JERK

that MAGGOT

it's too late

it's too late

TOO LATE

you've lost her

How could I ever believe I could KEEP her? The only way I was ever able to POSSESS her was through threats, through COERCION, no surprise, a girl as BEAUTIFUL as that, she's TOO good for you, TOO beautiful for you, you never did anything to HELP her, put her FIRST, help her SUCCEED.

SUCCEED

SUCCEED

What was IMPORTANT for her (you think): being known/recognized/loved/valued/seen in the papers/loved for what she represented, for her BEAUTY, you never did anything to make her HAPPY, and look at her now:

DULL

SAD

UPSET

BITTER

Wait

Hang on a minute

she

is

going

to

BETRAY YOU

She's probably betraying you right now in fact, she's with him, in his bed, he's fucking her while you mope about, she is NOT coming back, she will NEVER come back because you were never in her league, you only managed to keep her because she PITIED you, because you have nothing to offer her, it's over, it's OVER, you've

LOST HER

“Come in.” Nina stands in front of Samir. She occupies the space and she is all he can see. Her beauty is shocking. He pulls her toward him, kisses her without a word, his eyes closed. He moves closer and breathes in her perfume, the smell of her skin, touches his face to her neck, breathing in/out, intoxicated by her, suddenly feverish, burning with the desire to undress her and see her flesh again at last, that perfect body, designed to make you gape, make you yearn, designed for love, and Samir senses that he will not be able to take the time to seduce her, to coax her from her shell, slowly soften her up, because she is here for
that
. There's no need to go through that bland, pointless social phase—asking her to sit down for a chat, ordering something to drink, questioning her, asking her why and how she came. No, he has no intention of listening to her—not now anyway, there'll be time for that later—because right now he wants to touch her, feel her, take her. This is all that matters, all that means anything to him, this intimacy that the years have kept from them, this bodily familiarity. But she's about to say something, and he puts a finger to her lips.
Shh, quiet. Come
. She lets his fingers stroke her chin, her neck, the top of her breasts. “Samir, I . . .” She says his name, and it's a liberation for him, a man living under another identity for so long. It's a recognition. What does it awaken in him? What desire? “Say it again. Say my name. Say it.”
Samir, Samir
. Holding her face in his hands, smoothing her hair, he kisses her, his tongue in her mouth, and once again the feeling takes hold of him: he is filled with her, crazy for her. Slowly, he leads her toward the bed.
Say my name
. He undresses her and stops for a moment to look at her. He is in her thrall, and he knows it. He could try to be cunning, to not focus on her appearance, but such ruses would be in vain. Her beauty is central to everything: he can't simply bypass it, evade it. He knows he must come to terms with this feeling of vertiginous panic that grips him when he sees her naked, and he calms down, or pretends to, watching/breathing her in until he is sure he can take her without losing control. The intensity of the instant: he is inside her, with her—it's overwhelming—and when she lies back, her hair stuck to her face by sweat, eyes closed, half drifting into sleep, he finally gets up and orders champagne, wine, and food.

We are together
.

The questions and the revelations come later—after dinner. They are lying next to each other on the bed.
I want you to tell me the truth
. It's a command, not a request, and something inside him clicks. He is going to speak. She wants to know why he stole Samuel's identity and elements of his biography in order to construct his new life. If his friends and family know the truth. If he has thought about the consequences. “I guess you never imagined there'd be an article about you in the
Times
 . . .” Exactly—she's right. Never once did he imagine having such a meteoric rise. “Where I come from, people hardly ever move or change. They end up dying in the same hole they grew up in.” He has seen his old friends a few times: most are unemployed or stagnating in menial positions. They have kids, money problems, tiny apartments, secondhand clothes. They never go on vacation, they wait for the end of the month the way some people wait for the Second Coming, dream of changing their car/television/life. Some ended up in jail. He doesn't regret what he did. Sure, he lied. Yes, it was a kind of betrayal. But only in the final and glorious aim of achieving something with his life, when society offered/promised him nothing. “You want to know why I reinvented myself? Shall I tell you?” She doesn't reply. She looks at him.
What does it matter?
—in a shock of bliss—
What does it matter, when I love you?
He sits up and grabs her shoulders. “Nina, my entire life is built on a lie.”

“After Samuel's suicide attempt, and after we broke up—and let's not forget that you were the one who gave in to his blackmail; I loved you!—after I lost everything that mattered to me, I left Paris. You never knew that, did you? I never told anyone about it, apart from my mother. I got a scholarship at the university in Montpellier to study law. I didn't want to see you and Samuel anymore. I didn't want to run the risk of passing you in the street. I didn't even want to hear your names mentioned! I distanced myself from all our mutual friends and acquaintances. I erased their numbers from my address book. I had decided to forget about you completely. And I never tried to see you again . . . I . . . no, actually, that's not true. I'm lying. Once, just once, I took a train to Paris. I'd just moved to Montpellier and I felt terrible: I wanted to see you. I spent the whole day standing in front of your apartment building, hidden behind a car, just waiting for you to appear. But when you did finally emerge—I remember you were wearing a denim skirt and a white top—I didn't dare speak to you; I was paralyzed by the fear that you would reject me again. That hurt so much; I was in pieces by the time I got home. After that, all I did was work. Whenever I think back to that period, I see myself locked in my room, poring over my law books. I see myself learning dozens of books by heart, telling myself:
She'll regret this
. So, deep down, you played a part in my success. Subconsciously, I was trying to prove to you that you'd made the wrong choice. I wanted to amaze you . . . Ridiculous, isn't it? Anyway, I got my master's and was admitted to the bar—I was in the top ten, in fact. Then I got my MAS. That summer, I worked as a waiter in London. And when I came back to France, I started looking for a job . . . This is where things became more complicated . . . I had a fantastic CV, believe me—I'd spent hours perfecting it. And every diploma, every line on that résumé was a victory over adversity, over the contagion of failure and resignation. That résumé was my life's work. So I had no doubt about my abilities, and I sent it to the best law firms in France. That evening, I took my mother and my brother to a restaurant to celebrate. I felt happy and proud . . . this was the culmination of twelve years of work and self-sacrifice! Nobody helped me! No one! And within ten days, I was utterly disillusioned. I started collecting rejection slips. Three in one day . . . then six, then eight, then ten. It was a slap in the face. I couldn't believe it. I would wait for the mailman in the lobby every morning . . . I'd sent my CV to a bunch of law firms, having gotten their addresses from the phone book. They all said no. No, but good luck. No, but we'll call you if anything comes up. I didn't even get an interview! They had all decided I was unsuitable without even bothering to meet me! That was a bad time. I felt very low. I started boxing, as a way of preventing myself from going under, but it did no good. I could feel myself sinking. I tried to analyze where it had gone wrong. What mistake had I made? But I thought:
Look at you—you are faultless. You were efficient/convincing/dynamic. You're exactly the profile of applicant they're looking for. Not only do you have the necessary diplomas, but you passed them with spectacular scores. You even won the speech-making prize at the law conference! And you won it easily! They applauded/praised/were jealous of you. Everyone said: He's one of the most brilliant students of his generation/he'll go far/give it five years and he'll be one of the most famous lawyers in Paris. And now they are all rejecting you! They send you long letters full of excuses to justify those rejections. Because, of course, they are terrified. They don't want to be accused of discrimination in their recruitment procedures. So they abide by the rules: they give you lots of valid reasons why you don't correspond to their needs for that particular position.
Put yourself in my place: I was angry! Filled with hatred! I hadn't dared tell my mother the truth: I let her believe I'd been hired by a big firm. Every morning I would get up early, about six a.m., dress in a suit, and leave the apartment with the words, ‘See you this evening!' It was my first acting gig! I would take the bus, then the RER, to the business district. And you want to know the truth? It was a nightmare. Seeing all those clean-shaven executives bustling past, stinking of colognes that their wives bought for them at a hundred euros per bottle from a special perfume store in Florence . . . I wanted to kill them. My life might easily have tipped over to the other side in the space of a few seconds. I could feel that violence welling up inside me. I wasn't scared. Quite the opposite: that violence made me feel strong. It was with me all the time: as I looked through the windows of luxury boutiques, telling myself I couldn't afford to buy any of their wares, that I didn't even dare go in; as I watched those beautiful and very young women parading around on the arms of doddery old men . . . hatred! I felt like everything was out of my reach—but why? I would sit in seedy cafés and read. My existence was making me sick. I'd lost over twenty pounds in two months. Back then, I was boxing three times a week with a guy I'd met in law school, and one evening, we decided to go for a drink afterward. I'd just had another rejection letter. I was desolate. My friend kept telling me that things would work out, that I'd get a job, but the more he repeated this, the more I felt the violence rising up within me—like when you keep releasing the safety catch on a box cutter, so that, in the end, all you're holding is the blade itself and you are bound to cut yourself, to make yourself bleed. He kept saying: You have to stay positive, it'll come! But I couldn't stay positive. Optimism was something reserved for the privileged few—those people with life insurance policies and positive bank balances. Optimism was a luxury I couldn't afford anymore. I knew I had very little chance of being hired by a good firm, of succeeding in a world whose doors opened only to those who knew the secret codes; I knew my way would always be blocked by someone else, someone with more influence, better recommendations, and I wanted to know why. Oh, I had my own ideas about it, but all the same I asked him: ‘Is the fact that I have an Arab-sounding name the reason for all these rejections?' My friend started to laugh. He said I was paranoid, that the idea was ludicrous. But I wasn't paranoid. I had sent my résumé to a dozen firms and had received only rejection letters—some of them hadn't replied at all—whereas another guy from our law school, a guy with no personality, no sense of judgment, no ability—this guy who had failed the final exam twice and who everyone said would end up dropping law as a profession and taking over his father's business—this guy wound up being hired by Bertrand and Vilar, one of the biggest firms in Paris . . . And you know what my friend said to me? He said: ‘You're looking at this the wrong way. You're making yourself the victim, accusing other people . . . it's counterproductive.' He didn't completely deny the persistence of discriminatory practices, but he refused to believe that racism was a systematic and organized part of society. I, on the other hand, felt certain that I had not found a job simply because I was an Arab. The human resources guys, the employers, would see my name and immediately think:
Cross that one off the list. Leave that one in the ghetto where he belongs!
And it was at that moment, as I explained to him that my name and my identity were the problem, that he told me to change my first name. He was completely serious. He thought it was possible that success was more likely in modern-day France for someone named Louis, Hugo, or Lucas than for someone named Mohammed. He was just describing a social and political reality. And he was right. He told me: ‘Write Sam Tahar instead of Samir. Maybe that'll make a difference.' So, one evening, I tried something. I felt I had been a victim of discrimination, you see, but I wanted to be certain of it, so I sent my CV to a dozen law firms with this name typed at the top left-hand side of the first page:
SAM TAHAR
. All I had done was remove two little letters—it was hardly a betrayal. I just wanted to see what would happen. And guess what? Within a week, I had been invited to three job interviews. The first two went well; the senior partner even assured me that I would have a response very soon. The third interview took place at a large firm on Avenue George-V that specialized mainly in criminal law. On my way in, I noticed a little clear plastic box stuck to the pediment of the door—you know, one of those objects containing a parchment that Jews put there to protect their houses? The man who was interviewing me was named Pierre Lévy—a Mediterranean Jew, in his forties, who immediately made me feel at ease. An intelligent, perceptive guy. I don't know exactly how it happened, but in the middle of the interview, he said, in a buddy-buddy tone of voice, ‘Sam's short for Samuel, I take it?' Without thinking, I nodded. It was completely spontaneous. I wanted that job. And I didn't really understand the implications . . . Well, okay, I understood that the guy was a Jew, but I didn't see any harm in it, I didn't see the danger. Sam, Samuel, Samir—did it really matter? Then, when he told me that he'd once been engaged to a ‘North African Jew'—Claire Tahar—whose brother was named Samuel, I realized that he assumed I was a Jew, and in that moment I must admit that I wavered, I got a little scared. I thought:
Maybe he's going to hire me because he thinks I'm one of them
. I had in mind the cliché of Jews helping each other out. Later I realized how false this was, because—once they reach a certain social level, Jews don't want to stay with their own kind anymore. The ghetto mentality is something that bothers them greatly. I hadn't said much during the interview: I didn't feel I'd really shone. In fact, I remember thinking that I'd been less convincing in that interview than in the previous two—I'd slept badly the night before, I was stressed—and yet, as he walked me to the door, this man told me that I was now part of the law firm Lévy and Queffélec. Unbelievable, isn't it? The next morning, he introduced me to the firm's other two partners; he showed me my office—a nice one with a street view—and he took me out to lunch at a restaurant. As we were looking at the menus, he asked me if I was religious and I replied that I didn't eat pork. That was all. I didn't lie. He laughed and said, ‘Oh, I see. So you're just a Yom Kippur Jew!' I could have denied it then, but I didn't say anything.