The Age of Reinvention (44 page)

He had chosen a black suit, handmade in the finest fabric, with a satin lining that was just a little too shiny, a white shirt with a narrow collar that revealed the vein in his neck, and a black knit tie. He had chosen his clothes slowly and carefully; he wanted her to like the way he looked. He was no longer the moaning, spineless man he had been before, no longer pessimistic and envious and angry. Before, his arrogance had been all front, his pride the false pride of a failure, a jealous man. His marginality, his unsociability, his rudeness: all that had been a posture. Success had calmed him, given him confidence, an internal peace; he had his place in society now, and—surrounded by all these people acclaiming/approving/admiring him—he at last felt visible, recognized by the world.

It is early afternoon when he arrives at the center, stepping out of a black, leather-lined taxi. The center is a dump with red brick walls, located in a large Parisian suburb, near a residential area. It is a sad, ugly place. What chance would anyone have to rebuild themselves here? Samuel wonders. It's the sort of place that would finish you off, not save you. The building is located in a backyard overgrown by weeds and brambles, with, at its center, a large gray-brown worm-eaten bench and, in one corner, a little hut containing some multicolored sun loungers that are brought out occasionally, when the weather's good, as the short, stout, plain, middle-aged redhead explains when she welcomes him. Nothing special physically, but what a personality she has! There is an authority about her, a strong and magnetic presence that suggests courage, combativeness. She introduces herself: she is the manager of the shelter where Nina now lives.

The manager guides him—
Watch out for the step, wipe your feet on the welcome mat—
explaining that the women have just eaten lunch and gone through to the salon. He smiles as he repeats this expression: “They have gone through to the salon.” It sounds like the kind of thing you'd find in an old bourgeois novel, whereas what he sees here is grinding poverty.
They watch TV, read, work, chat. Go ahead . . . at the end of the hallway, on your right. You'll find Nina there
. In the hallway, he covers his mouth and nose with his hand: the air is thick with a strong, stale odor of food and frying oil.

There are six of them there today, in the large living room decorated with peeling greenish paint. They struggle to hide their embarrassment at seeing a man here, the question hovering on their lips:
What is he doing here?
He moves forward cautiously, greets them, blushing slightly, and oh, there she is, in the middle of these women of various nationalities, this little Babel—what a shock. He is tense, visibly uncomfortable, looking into her eyes—to see what? Desire? Emotion? A hint of tenderness that might make him happy? At this point, her mere presence is enough. Yes, there she is, wearing jeans and an overlarge white T-shirt, a weak smile lighting up her face. She doesn't move, doesn't stand up to greet him, and yet she has recognized him, she has noticed his metamorphosis: the fitted suit, the polished shoes, the bouquet of flowers in his hand, the paper bag branded with a famous perfumery (
Hey, it's Prince Charming!
one of the women
¹
shouts, and the others start laughing:
Can we try on the glass slipper?
)—the perfect replica of Samir the day they saw him on television. From this distance, however, he has trouble recognizing her. She has cut her hair very short (and she's done it herself, he thinks, maybe in a fit of anger, or at least in the absence of a mirror, because the cut is uneven and unattractive) and the roots are white. She has put on weight. She is not wearing any makeup at all. He has never seen her like this before. He walks up to her and, when he's standing next to her, thinks about kissing her and decides against it, despite their close proximity. He hands her the flowers and the gifts. She takes them, but does not open or even look at them, her face unmoved, while he asks her if they can speak in private. Yes, of course. Back into the hallway, trying not to breathe in the putrid stink. He leads her into the backyard and she sits on the bench and there, amid brambles and thistles, he gives her the big spiel: declaration-gifts-promises, his hands and pockets full, he plays the self-assured success—he can,
now
. She listens without any particular emotion. She radiates a certain hardness, something sharp-edged and incisive. “Why have you come?” “First of all, for this,” he says, giving her a copy of his book that he has signed for her. She takes it, opens it, and reads the words:
For Nina, the only one who knew how to console me
. “Did you know I'd had a book published? Have you read it? Did you see the reviews? Yeah, it's incredible. I'm so happy. I travel a lot these days, I never have a minute to myself, I try to stay calm, try to keep a cool head.” A little later in the conversation, he will even speak these words: “I'm still the same, simple person, despite my success.” She smiles, closes the book. “But I also came to bring you these,” he adds, pointing to the gifts. “I'll open them later, after you've gone,” she replies a little coldly, before asking, in a neutral voice: “Have you heard anything about Samir?” He never imagined she would mention Samir to him; instinctively, he bridles: “Hasn't he put you through enough already?” Then, in a gentler voice: “Sorry. But you know what's happened to him, don't you?” “Yes. One of his partners told me.” “You haven't tried to see him again?” “No.” “I think there's a good chance he'll be freed.” She does not cry when she hears these words, she only turns away, and shards of gold sparkle in her pupil. Reflected sunlight? Time to change the subject: yes, she found out he'd been published, by chance, when she arrived at the shelter. She read and liked his book, that tension between the real and the imagined, that disillusioned humor undercutting the tragedy. She was not upset at reading her own life turned into literature; on the contrary, there had been something cool about seeing herself represented as the heroine of a novel. He listens to her for a long time, then interrupts, moving closer to her, noticing the lines that traverse her forehead, the sagging upper eyelid of her right eye. “I came here to get you. I'll take care of you. I'll give you everything you want.” He says this with a certain pride in his voice:
I'm here to save her
, he thinks.
I'm here to save her from poverty, save her from the street, from idleness; it's a beautiful/great/powerful thing, it's heroic. I am saving her life because, twenty years ago, she saved mine
. “Come on, let's go. Pack your bags.” And, with these words, he gently takes her hand in his. But she shakes him off unhesitatingly.
No
. Did he mishear her? He doesn't understand.
No, I'm not coming with you
. She will stay here, in this women's shelter, for another three months. And then?
I'll decide when the time comes
. This is ridiculous—she can't stay here—
it's ugly, sad, horrible
. No. She likes this place. She feels comfortable among these woman brutalized by life, by men, these women with bloated/wasted bodies, with callused hands, toothless mouths, these tough, combative, tenacious women who have lost everything and won everything back, these women who were manipulated and docile for so long, who were sexualized and desexualized, beasts frightened of their masters' wrath, reduced to the ranks of slavery, abused, shrunk to nothing, unaware of their own bodies, incapable of saying
No
, from fear of no longer being loved, invisible in society, in male society, nonexistent. Yes, she feels comfortable here; among these women, she has found her place. She loves those moments of untroubled complicity, listening to the tales of their thwarted lives; she loves the warmth of their meals, eaten together in the large refectory that they decorated themselves. She loves her body, now freed from her obsession with perfection; it's a new feeling for Nina, who has always sought men's approval and protection. Ha, what protection? They have exposed her to the worst of the world. She accepts herself the way she is now: a poor woman.
Poor but free
.

Samuel says nothing. He suffers in silence. A narcissistic wound—the deepest kind. Finally, he gets up—
If that's what you want
—and leaves. He walks away, does not turn back. He does not want to think about her, remember her. In the hallway, he sees the manager—
No, not now
. She wants to show him the library; she insists—he said he would—holds him back, and eventually he yields.
Well, why not?
And he follows her. He is gripped by nausea, almost staggers, holds on to a chair and keeps his eyes on the manager as she talks and talks like someone giving a speech to a packed room, when the truth is they are alone—
I'm alone, from now on—
no one can hear them, so why is she speaking so loud? Showing him the shelves filled with books, she explains that she has always considered literature as a tool for the liberation of women. “When you read Tolstoy, Duras, Stendhal, you learn more about men and women than you do from your own life. And then, you write about your own life.” He does not reply. He looks at the books, most of them written by women: Simone de Beauvoir, Marguerite Yourcenar,
²
Marguerite Duras, Joyce Carol Oates, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Cynthia Ozick, Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva . . . “Where are the men?” he jokes.

Everywhere
.

1
. Lila Rodier, thirty-eight, a former prostitute. Keeps a private journal in which she invents “an exciting life with an upper-class guy.”

2
. Nina had been moved by this line from Marguerite Yourcenar's book
Alexis
: “There is a release in knowing that you are poor, that you are alone, and that no one cares about you. It makes life simpler.”

The next day, while he is still devastated by the loss of Nina, Samuel discovers he has been awarded a major literary prize for his novel
Consolation
. His name had been mentioned in connection with the prize for a few weeks, rumors circling that he had a good chance of winning it; his editor called him every day to talk about it, checking his actions and movements, even going so far as to test his moral strength, “because not everyone is tough enough to deal with that kind of acclaim. Some writers are too fragile, and they never recover from it. But you're strong, you're ambitious. You had to wait until you were in your forties to get published, so you have enough perspective to cope.” Samuel is not so sure. He does not feel strong—his life story demonstrates his inability to deal with social violence, the trials of competition—and he has never been ambitious. He thinks constantly about a line that Witold Gombrowicz wrote in his
Diaries
, in 1967: “I have known for a long time—I was forewarned, in some sense—that art cannot and must not bring any personal benefit . . . that it is a tragic undertaking.”

Now he was seized with a panicked fear at the thought of being surrounded again by photographers, journalists, booksellers, admirers, publishers, of being the center of attention, the center of a world from which he had for so long felt excluded. “It will be a great honor,” his editor told him, “for you, for both of us.” But what use is a great honor? Does it make you any more likely to be loved? Does it make you immortal? Invincible? A superhero? Is it a guarantee against a broken heart? Against melancholy and self-hatred? Against aging and sickness? Do you sleep better after you have received it? Do you become a better writer? A better lover? Does it increase your chances of people taking your calls? Of getting a doctor's appointment at short notice? Of being given a better table in a restaurant? And what if those dizzy heights give him vertigo? When you reach a peak, the only way forward is down, and it's often a steep and fatal ride. He feels more comfortable in the foothills, with those who have retreated, or even down in the plains, with those who have failed. From there, it is easier to see the social circus: all you have to do is look up and you'll see men falling. Not that he loved himself when he was a failure, but at least then he seemed to possess a critical lucidity, a distance from beings and events, that success would deprive him of. When it comes down to it, you have to be just as arrogant and narcissistic to refuse honors and awards. Scorning glory implies wanting to prove that you are above it. Detached, incorruptible. The obsession with moral integrity, the desire for purity, are just other masks for ambition. It's true: he wanted to be a famous loser: Julien Gracq refusing the Prix Goncourt (“I persist in thinking that there is no longer any sense in playing along, directly or indirectly, with any kind of competition, and that a writer has nothing to gain from allowing himself to be caught in that avalanche”); Jean-Paul Sartre, the Nobel Prize (“No artist, no writer, no man deserves to be consecrated in his lifetime”); Samuel Beckett refusing to go to Stockholm to receive his Nobel Prize for Literature, because he believed it was a “catastrophe”—the term that Tennessee Williams used to describe success.

(And his greatest fear: what success would do to him.)

He remembers what his editor told him soon after he had signed his first contract: “You have talent, but you live apart from the literary world. You're an outsider, basically. Which is fine—that has a charm of its own, and personally I like it—but you will have to make an effort when your book comes out.” An effort? Writing already demanded so much of him . . .

He has dreamed of this brief moment of glory. But he is too frightened of the possible consequences. Those tragic mornings-after when, having given everything, the words still resist your advances.

I refuse
.

He had thought that recognition—however late, however sudden—that success, the achievement of the ambitions imposed by a competitive, consumerist society, would satisfy him. He had even hoped to profit from this sudden celebrity and the comforts it offered when events had taken such a favorable turn, but a part of himself, obscure and intangible, had resisted, had remained at the margins and had grown inside him like a stinging nettle. It is there, in that part of oneself overgrown with brambles and thorns—where every movement exposes you to pain and injury, to irritations and infections, where every advance sets off an opposing reaction, where every attempt at change ends in failure, falling to the ground, into the mire, over and over again—it was there, and not elsewhere, that the writing mechanism was engaged, with its risks of explosion, fragmentation, and destruction, a bomb that can never be defused. Away from this place, in the perfectly demarcated and manicured expanses beyond, life was good—but you couldn't get your hands dirty. And a writer must have dirty hands.