The Influence Peddlers Page 12

  “Yes . . .”

  “Three years in prison, if District Attorney Brady decides to pursue you?”

  “Yes . . .”

  “Thank you. No more questions.”

  That was where McNab showed his stuff, said Wayne, when he let the facts talk. Later it was Nancy Blake’s turn, at the end of her rope, muttering that she had never been sequestered, she had stayed with the mother of Mr. Duffy, a deputy district attorney . . . Yes, Mrs. Duffy had slapped her, but it was to wake her up . . . McNab pounded her: Why had she gone from a Virginia saying “I’m dying,” in the first deposition, to “He hurt me” in the next one, then “He killed me”? Blake didn’t say anything. McNab asked her who had ordered her to say, “He killed me.” Blake started to cry, McNab on the offensive. When he looked at Brady you could see he hated him. The district attorney thought he was the only one who had a right to hatred, hatred of corruption and crime, and now, right in front of him a man showing a hatred that was just as moral, a hatred of blackmail and manipulation, and Blake said that the district attorney had forced her, that Mrs. Duffy really had slapped her, she was drunk and she slapped me . . . I’m afraid . . . McNab had no more questions, Blake tried to breathe, and Brady didn’t question her, said Samuel, he didn’t want to flog a dead horse.

  Everyone was waiting for another great moment, Fatty on the stand, which occurred two days later. The assistant district attorney, U’Ren, led the questioning. He did a wonderful job. He shot out his questions while walking around the room. He watched for the moment when Fatty would let down his guard. He made him talk about his career, his profession as an actor, his talent. He put him at ease. He had taken a friendly tone: “In your opinion, Mr. Arbuckle, what is a good actor?” Fatty was delighted, but many in the room had understood, Fatty was about to hang himself, and he answered: “A good actor . . . is someone who . . . experiences the truth and expresses it . . . He is a servant of the truth!”

  An angry look from District Attorney Brady to U’Ren: the accused had just screwed them. Brady had more witnesses of morality file through for Virginia, while announcing that he would begin investigations into false testimony against those of the defense. People were getting bored, and that’s when McNab did something strange, something disgusting, said Kathryn, no, said Neil Daintree, it was reality. In the other trials the prosecution had also used reality, the two doors, that of the bedroom and that of the bathroom, set up right in the middle of the courtroom, with a discussion of Fatty’s fingerprints and those of Virginia. They had reality before their eyes for days and days; they were the district attorney’s doors, the doors of death. So McNab had the right to produce a piece of reality, too, and a court clerk entered with a large box, silence in the courtroom, the type of silence that makes you smell the heat, the sweat, the cloying perfume. He put the box on a table, took off the lid—you would have thought you were in a great hatmaker’s shop—he found a spot of light on the table and took out a large jar, put it in the ray of sun, and the sun revealed a diseased bladder. McNab didn’t say a thing, the prosecution didn’t dare say anything: it was no longer just by way of the doors that Virginia Rappe was present. Everyone was nauseous. That’s exactly what McNab wanted. It was his turn to talk. He said that he would simply read the report of the doctors, whom the prosecution had not accused of perjury: it was a great strategy. Brady had gone after so many people that an unaccused witness could only be telling the truth, and McNab read: first abortion at fifteen. Brady tried to object; the judge overruled. McNab sometimes shot a glance at the Vigilantes. Treatment for chronic alcoholism, treatment for urogenital tract infections, 1908, 1911, 1914, 1917, 1919 . . . The voice of science, McNab, then he set down his paper and stopped talking. That was all. In the summaries U’Ren attacked Fatty, Kathryn saying: He mainly described his parties, and he wasn’t wrong! And Neil replying that the prosecution lacked material evidence and testimony that was true.

  At the bar of the Grand Hôtel that had been the most serious incident between Neil and Kathryn, a terrible moment, unbearable, when Kathryn had asserted that people were afraid to talk, fear and money helps make the rich innocent; Neil’s smile, it seemed to pierce his wife’s story. She suddenly fell silent. Cavarro seemed to enjoy that silence, but everyone sensed that there was going to be a real catastrophe, Fatty and Kathryn . . . He had helped her at the beginning of her career, in exchange for what? Fatty wasn’t much the type to ask for permission, they knew that, Neil adding that when girls went out with Fatty they were well aware of what might happen, Kathryn becoming very pale. It would have taken only a few more words, and they said to themselves that Kathryn was going to say what they already more or less knew, that Daintree and Cavarro had participated in the party at the Saint Francis. She could also give the age of the girls who generally accompanied her husband, and McGhill would quickly find out: he would make them all go back home, right away. Kathryn had a fixed, cold stare . . . And it wasn’t just a lull in the conversation, Ganthier would later comment, we might have been there as safety nets, allowing them to tell a tellable story. That didn’t prevent the devil from lighting a fire under them.

  After Gabrielle told Rania all that, Rania took Kathryn’s side:

  “Your men also have their ways of reducing women to silence. They make a woman think she can live, then they remind her that she doesn’t have the right to have lived, I mean, to have made mistakes. Do you think one day we’ll have the right to make mistakes and to benefit from them?” To be in the right, thought Rania, in the right while making mistakes . . . the just feeling doesn’t trick . . . his hand on my stomach . . . the sensation of happiness . . . and we both fight sleep . . . a look, nothing is finished . . . wa sukrun, thumma sahwun, thumma chaw qun, drunkenness then sobering, then desire . . . and the proximity then the abundance then the intimacy, and when I pass him I don’t dare say anything to him. Rania didn’t want to ask if Kathryn had really slept with Mr. Fatty, and Gabrielle had no idea. Fifty or so yards from the veranda there were cypress trees. Gabrielle was surprised by a sort of mute explosion in the trees, followed by a small cloud. Those are pollens that are being freed, Rania said. Nature is much freer than we are, isn’t it?

  Samuel broke the silence Neil had provoked. He told of the end of Brady’s summary, his words to the jury: If you don’t find this man guilty, you will be breaking your oath, you will be perjurers! For weeks, each time Brady and his men accused someone of perjury, they then dragged him in front of a judge; some jurors were going to see that as blackmail. When it was the defense’s turn, McNab first sent Schmulowitz in front of the jury. Schmulowitz was very calm, very logical; he appealed to the intelligence of the jury, the foundation of law, reasonable doubt:

  “We don’t claim to know absolutely the cause of Miss Rappe’s injury, we simply know that there are other possibilities, just as strong, if not more so, than external violence, and that is enough to establish reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the defendant.”

  He had concluded by saying that he left it up to the soul and the conscience of each juror.

  Then McNab got up. Schmulowitz had done the work of Fatty’s innocence. McNab was going to take care of the lie. He attacked strongly, saying that the district attorneys had transformed into a hateful pack. They had manipulated, threatened, sequestered the witnesses for more than six months, Miss Blake and Miss Prevon, one of them shamefully beaten in the name of the American people! And they had constructed an untrue idealization of the victim, “a human being whom I respect, but the prosecution can’t turn her into a saint, she was a victim of society, but one who didn’t belong to the world of real women.” McNab had thunder in his voice. He looked at the Vigilantes, then the jury, and he paraphrased Ruskin, “Wherever a true wife comes, her home is always around her . . .”

  McNab had finished, and Brady let Friedman conclude in the name of the prosecution; he didn’t do it himself. McNab had just stolen their thunder—no question of making any comparisons, especially since Fri
edman had a final card to play. Brady and all his colleagues had stayed up all night perfecting it, the irrefutable argument that McNab hadn’t anticipated:

  “If we had, as the defense claims, forged all these testimonies, if we had built our case on ‘moonbeams,’ wouldn’t we have been more careful with our work? Would we have presented to the jury the hodgepodge of witnesses that we were forced to present?” Brady was clearly steaming. They had perfected the direction of Friedman’s speech but hadn’t chosen those words, “moonbeams,” “hodgepodge.” McNab and Schmulowitz looked at each other: Friedman had just admitted that the prosecution had screwed up.

  The judge had instructed the jury to deliberate, and within a few minutes the jury came back into the courtroom. McNab’s face turned white. Were they requesting additional information? Like in the earlier trial? The jurors entered. The district attorneys were all smiles. Some jurors had very hard faces. A piece of onion skin paper was passed from the jury foreman to a bailiff, from the bailiff to the judge, who read it in silence, a stern look at Arbuckle. Everyone was sweating. In such moments, said Samuel, everyone feels important, that’s why people come. There was finally a unanimous verdict: not guilty!

  Mayhem! Everyone wanted to touch Fatty. The jurors began to sign a sheet of paper that was put on the table. It was their apology. Mr. Arbuckle had been the victim of a great injustice. No bit of proof had ever been provided by the prosecution. Mr. Arbuckle was in no way responsible. They hoped that the American people would accept the unanimous verdict of twelve free men who had reflected for a month. Fatty Arbuckle was innocent of everything!

  In the bar of the Grand Hôtel Kathryn concluded that it made a very modern story, the opposite of Dickens or Hugo. With them you have a good person who is found guilty—it makes you cry—whereas with Fatty you had an innocent who was still a real bastard. It wasn’t easy to talk about that affair, she told Gabrielle later, we managed to sweep everything under the rug, but it might well come back to haunt us one day. McGhill would really like us to tear each other apart in front of him!

  15

  AT THE MARKET

  They strolled through the aisles of the central market, three women, two Christians, as the shopkeepers called them, although neither of the two had been Christian since they were old enough to give up their dolls, but in Nahbès “Christian” enabled the locals to talk about all foreigners without having to get tangled up in distinctions between Europeans and Americans. So they were two Christians and a Muslim whose eyes were the only thing they could see, the two Christians dressed decently, Hamid the butcher had said to his son Aymen, as if they had given up their eccentricities so they wouldn’t upset the woman who was accompanying them or whom they were accompanying, difficult to say, so equal did those three seem, some of the shopkeepers having recognized the veiled woman and greeting her discreetly in passing, caught between the general rule, which said a woman was not to be acknowledged, and the specific rule, which applied to trade, which was that a widow, and one from a powerful family, should be shown respect, especially this one, who in addition had brought food to the people of Asmira during their trial, and who also refused to let her land be taken by a colonist. Of course the central market did most of its business with Christians, but that wasn’t a reason not to greet a courageous Muslim woman, even if some shopkeepers refused to do so. Some women can be the exception and move around certain places but not receive gestures that are reserved for men, and furthermore, they shouldn’t have to do the shopping, which should remain a man’s business, the most important men of Nahbès having even brought their buying habits from the market of the old city to that of the new city, not for all products, of course, because it wasn’t worth buying things here that cost twice as much as on the other side of the wadi, but you could buy new products—jams, for example, those famous jars of Félix Potin from Paris, or even, for the more daring, some said, or those who were more influenced, said others, those famous cheeses, also imported, the glory of our table, said the French, and perhaps even those daring or influenced ones also came to buy . . . No, wine certainly wasn’t sold here. They had it delivered to their homes in the evening. It was the curse of the times, when believers contravened the prescriptions of the Book on that subject and on many others, and that’s why a woman shouldn’t leave her house. That’s what Hamid’s neighbor, Abdelhaq, the most traditionalist vendor of fowl in Nahbès, whom tradition had not prevented from setting up his shop right in the middle of the European city, that place of all perdition, and who begged pardon from his interlocutors each time he was forced to utter the word woman in conversation, was now asserting to Hamid. Yes, Hamid had responded, this city is perdition, but do you really think that wine waited for the arrival of the French to flow into Arabs’ mouths? I’m a good Muslim, I don’t drink, and if I want to greet the Belmejdoub girl, a respected widow, I’ll greet her, even if she doesn’t have to respond to my greeting. And Abdelhaq didn’t pursue it, so as not to start the day with a quarrel with his neighbor, but even so, that widow, Abdelhaq knew she was an atheist—he had been told that more than once—a false Muslim who used religion for politics, whereas the only message from On High was that politics was fully contained in religion, and that woman who was helping the relatives of rioters wanted religion to be contained in politics, like the Turks, and we know what that led to. Politics weren’t good. The colonists were there. For the pious Abdelhaq it was the will of the On High, and it was no use trying to change it. It was like trying to wash a crow.

  The three women were coming straight toward them, each followed by a little porter holding a new straw basket. Kathryn couldn’t get over all the colors and smells.

  “Colors are the most difficult to describe,” said Gabrielle.

  “How do you do it when you write?” Kathryn asked.

  “You have to follow one that you find in others, yellow, for example. I really like following yellow. It really stands out, and it also flows into the green of the leaves, the tails of leeks, the blue of the flowers, the orange of fruit, of saffron and birds of paradise, and the brown of dates, and the beautiful matte yellow of the melons that make you think of some mustards.”

  Kathryn asked: “Do you know how to choose a melon?”

  “No, never. In Paris I rely on the vendor.”

  Kathryn and Gabrielle bought without restraint, filling their baskets without much discernment, Kathryn asking Rania why she wasn’t buying anything, Rania responding that it would be scandalous if she started buying the fruit of the earth, a scandal here and a scandal at the farm, and my very presence is a scandal: can you imagine me returning with tomatoes? I’ll buy something on our way back, some spices. There are two vendors who sell good spices. I’ll buy some from both!

  “Why do you want to go to the market?” Neil had asked Kathryn, “when you always eat on the set or at a restaurant?”

  “Because I want to see it,” Kathryn had said, “and smell it, and touch it, and it will give me ideas.”

  “What sort of ideas?”

  “I don’t know, but the market is exciting, I haven’t been to one in years!”

  The women walked around, talked, took it all in, hesitated, went down the aisles. It was nine in the morning and it was already very hot.

  When they first entered the large covered market, Kathryn and Gabrielle had initially wanted to refuse the services of the boys, who were undaunted and who remained planted in front of them, their hands already on the baskets the women had just bought, as if the refusal of the young American and French women had only been a formality before an agreement that would in any event be concluded. Kathryn had turned toward Rania, saying that she was against making children work. “I am, too,” Rania had said, “but that’s how these children live, and if you don’t use one of them, they’re all going to harass us . . . Do what you want . . .” Gabrielle was thinking that Rania knew how to argue well, to help the poor, escape harassment, exercise your will, just by speaking softly to Kathryn . . .<
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  The friendship between the two young women was unique, spontaneous and cautious at the same time, as if they were both afraid of a harshness that would have needed only a slight push to be established between them. The journalist had taken some time to introduce these two friends, and she wasn’t yet convinced that she had done the right thing. It had happened at Rania’s. Kathryn’s name kept coming up in conversation, which was odd, anyway, when the great subject in Nahbès among the women was Cavarro. Rania never talked about him, nor was she ever the first to bring up Kathryn’s name—she left that to Gabrielle, and Gabrielle always found herself mentioning Kathryn, even when she had decided not to, Why do I talk to her about her? Because I sense that she wants to? Because I’m incapable of stepping away from what could become a story? Because of Raouf? Or to annoy Ganthier?

  And Gabrielle had ended up persuading Kathryn to visit Rania. The young widow would be happy to see them, to have the world in which she would have liked to come and go freely come to her. “Sometimes,” Rania would say, “I feel much freer than other women, but I become angry at myself for being satisfied with crumbs!” There was vehemence in her voice. She had liked Kathryn; she wasn’t like the European women; she immediately broke the barriers, laughed, spoke loudly, said intimate things, asked her after a few minutes if she knew Raouf well, yes, ever since he was very young, a cousin, distant, on our mothers’ side, and Rania found that she, too, was confiding in her, telling about how she brought him to the hammam with her when he was young. At that time he could have been taken for a girl with his long eyelashes, his lovely lips and sweet voice. He was in love with me. The other women adored him. He rubbed their backs, they tickled him, he fought back—Rania wondering then how she could say such things to an American woman whom she had known for only an hour, when she should have had her talk about Raouf, ask her what she had done to turn him into an escort, Rania continuing: I remember a day when a woman said to him, “When you were younger you were nicer”—he wasn’t even six—and he replied, “I didn’t know you as well.” That day we understood that he loved words and that he no longer belonged to us.