The Influence Peddlers Page 14

  He returned home. Two other friends had inquired after him in his absence and assured him that no one had anything to feel guilty about. Belkhodja believed them, clung to that belief. He felt better, but he hadn’t taken the hammam into account.

  What no one had seen in his wife, other women had finally noticed at the hammam. They had found, as they said, the roots in the fog, by getting the young wife to talk. All naughty stories go through the hammam, which is, for many, the place of perversion for women, just as the gambling den is the place of perversion for men, except that the hammam is worse than the gambling den, because the gambling den is known for being a place of dissolution and true pleasure, it isn’t trying to be anything else—you go in and the whole town knows what you’re doing there—whereas the hammam, with its burning stones and jets of water, is primarily the place where one goes to rid oneself of the impurities of life; but it is also there, in the steam, among all the naked bodies, that women come to exchange unhealthy recipes and where sins are prepared and revealed, including one that is among the most vile, hypocrisy.

  “I have something to tell you from someone for whom you have become the only light.”

  “No! I forbid you to play that game with me, don’t tell me anything.”

  “Alright.”

  “And you should be ashamed to tell me impious things.”

  “If they were impious words I wouldn’t try to tell you, or show you the photo I was given.”

  “A photo at the hammam, in five minutes the steam will turn it into a rag!”

  “No, I left it in my basket, at the entrance.”

  “Your messages are made to destroy the one to whom they are addressed.”

  “You’re wrong, he’s the one who is lost, because of you, and you know who I’m talking about.”

  “When your cousins claim that they are going to be lost, they never go very far.”

  “But he’s not like the others, he’s going to leave.”

  “Leave? Where?”

  “He’s desperate, he’s going to join the French soldiers and go to the Sahara, very far away, where they die.”

  “He’s incapable of doing that, he’s a liar.”

  “No, he told me that he would join up this evening if I don’t have an answer, and if you don’t want to hear any more, I won’t bother you with it.”

  And so on, between women with calm faces, and the impious message will finally be delivered, and will be the object of a response, negative, of course, but formulated in such a way that it, in turn, calls for a response, and above all not a departure for the Sahara. And so all the conversations will continue for the happiness of the hammam owners and for the anxiety of the women who go there with an urgency whose ardor is not only from the desire to be cleansed. They talk and the one who says nothing is also the one who has the most to hide.

  Belkhodja’s young wife was smiling but reserved. Her friends at the hammam had tried to get her to talk. After all, young brides, especially the girls who come from the country, who have lived a less cultured life than those in the town, and who have fewer words at their disposal, have a lot of things to tell, and they often do so with a naïveté that is the delight of those around them. This one had quickly become the target of the fanatics for whom a spoon can always extract what is in a jar. Without results. They had left the young wife with her friendly smiles alone, but the way she always seemed to be thinking of something else made them think that she must be doing a lot more than what a husband might ask of a wife.

  And then, little by little, the newcomer relaxed, speaking innocent word after innocent word, and when you put such words end to end they always ultimately turned into something that was not completely innocent, from one confidence to the next, from exaggerations to rectifications. She wasn’t exactly naive, the young wife who came three or four times a week to plunge into the steam of the hammam where they were beginning to see through the fog. When a friend talked to Belkhodja’s mother, she had at first refused to believe what she was being told. She had taken her time. She questioned the women who had met her daughter-in-law about what she liked to do, her hours at the hammam, her activities, her outings, her encounters, about everything. She let them speak. She also threatened those who didn’t talk enough. She questioned her daughter-in-law directly. She set traps and she finally understood, like all those who had already understood. The young wife wasn’t naive. Oh no, the truth had come out: she was simple-minded.

  Simple-minded, yes, a bit backward, as they also said. Other, more straightforward descriptions had circulated. The dreamy young wife was nothing but a big dummy. The sly Belkhodja had married a real dummy. There was no risk of that one being perverted. The mother had defended her son. He couldn’t have known. In such a situation men can be unaware for years. And she, herself, informed her son. She didn’t tell him that he should have come to her instead of placing his interests in the hands of an unscrupulous matchmaker. She didn’t stress that she would never have chosen for him a girl who had only a chickpea in her head. She was loving. She simply said and repeated that to repudiate that woman would be to lose face.

  Belkhodja had become the laughingstock of his world. Some advisers told him: “Throw away the poker, it will take the smoke with it,” but he followed his mother’s advice. He was happy to send the simpleton back to the country, where that type of thing is noticed less than in the city. On the advice of Doctor Berthommier he decided not to have children with his wife, but he didn’t complain to anyone about the misfortune he was enduring. He didn’t want to be at the mercy of his confidants. He waited for them to forget all about it. He could then take another wife, when the anguish of perhaps making another bad choice would have passed. The little band at La Porte du Sud had enveloped him in their friendship. Those young men who were so ready to make fun of everything vowed not to make the slightest allusion in his presence. They had defended him against slander. They tried to distract him, to engage in great discussions in which they asked for his advice on questions of religion and politics, even if it was only to contradict him, and they forced him to spend time in the capital again. He did excellent business there and spent wonderful evenings drinking, laughing, and dreaming. Shame was easier to treat than jealousy.

  One morning, at the beginning of the month of October, Raouf himself came to Belkhodja’s shop along with his American friend. She was about to leave the country, and wanted to buy one of his most beautiful pieces, a Zerrour, a choice that lasted hours, the three of them in front of a copper tray, with two servants who unfolded the rugs, and another who at intervals changed the teapot, one of the most beautiful conversations that Belkhodja had had that year. Kathryn asked him many questions about each of the rugs he showed her, the stitches, the code of the colors. She knew quite a bit. What she asked Belkhodja was in addition to her expertise, wool on wool or wool on cotton? Or silk . . . “It’s finer,” Belkhodja said, “but . . . (he caressed his mustache, with a sad look), since it is finer the degradations of time are seen more quickly . . .” For the large Zerrour that Kathryn finally chose, Belkhodja asked such a low price that Raouf objected. Kathryn understood. She acted as if she couldn’t possibly buy it, and Belkhodja agreed to increase his price. All three of them were happy with the bartering in the contrary direction. Money exchanged hands, but each had showed that money wasn’t what motivated them above all else. They parted ways with their dignity, and Belkhodja dared compliment Kathryn: “Your eyes also know how to buy.”

  Belkhodja had wanted to take revenge on the matchmaker, but she couldn’t be found. He ended up attributing that bad adventure to the realm of destiny, but he wasn’t content with ordinary mektub: he sought something that was his own, which would show that above all he had overcome his misfortune, and sometimes, when the tableful of friends had laughed a lot, he quoted a saying that they had never heard before, but which seemed like the voice of destiny itself: For each one who laughs there must always be one who cries.

  Between bo
uts of bitterness and resignation he began to endure his existence again. One day he learned that in the city people were saying that he hadn’t married a cow of Satan but a donkey of God. He understood right away where that had come from. And that destiny had very little to do with it.

  17

  TROUBLED TIMES

  It was that time of the autumn when ripe fruit would soon make way for dead leaves. In Nahbès this change wasn’t greeted with sadness. The rains didn’t come, but at least the temperature was less stifling. Work on Warrior of the Sands was progressing, but Neil was dragging things out, moving at a more human rhythm. No one wanted to go back to the States, though they were eager for news from back there. The telephone worked badly. Newspapers arrived weeks late. The Fatty Arbuckle case continued to cause damage in the world of film and performance. An actor, Wilbur Dutton, had had a picture taken with his mistress. His wife had called a lawyer. Yes, that happened in Atlanta, very far from California. He had gone all that way for nothing. His bosses had said to Wilbur, “If you break your marriage contract we’ll break your acting contract,” and in Hollywood and San Francisco or New York actors were forced, no, said Kathryn, felt forced every morning to declare to every journalist that their only values were God, America, and marriage, which didn’t prevent the leagues of virtue from continuing to cry “shame” in front of movie theaters, and photographers from rooting you out wherever you shouldn’t have been. Only Marion Davies, Hearst’s mistress, was at peace. Even Hearst’s legitimate wife didn’t dare say anything. She knew what her husband was capable of.

  “We’ve become a nation of hypocrites,” said Neil, “but since prosperity is returning, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Prosperity on credit,” said Samuel Katz, “Credit is a lie, the banker doesn’t grant you a loan, he’s selling you a product, a very expensive one!”

  They also talked about the election of the first woman senator in the States. Gabrielle congratulated Kathryn, who answered that it wasn’t a change, but luck. And one morning Raouf disappeared from Nahbès.

  Ganthier didn’t seem to know. Kathryn didn’t say anything. Neither did Gabrielle. But that same night Gabrielle in turn disappeared, and things became clear when news from the capital began to arrive, the stirrings of political agitation, asserted the French, a foreign influence, from Moscow, from Cairo, no hold over the country, it’s going to fall again. Some pointed their finger at the Americans: your angelism, the rights of the people, what abstraction!

  The Prépondérants of Nahbès demanded that a “preventative curfew” be imposed in the old city. Marfaing didn’t want anything to do with that. When one has muscles one needn’t show them. He continued to go to the bar of the Grand Hôtel, relaxed and friendly, delivered some news, censored, of course, to squelch the unfounded rumors by means of what he laughingly called founded rumors: Yes, there have indeed been demonstrations, but they were the squawking of crows, nothing more.

  In Gabrielle’s absence, Kathryn passed along the news to Rania. They also talked about Raouf:

  “As soon as politics are involved, he drops everyone and everything. I’m sure he’s forgotten the people who love him,” Rania repeated the people who love him carefully, and the people being vague, Kathryn saying, “He’s a spoiled child who only thinks of others when they are standing in front of him.” She was furious not to have any news. Rania thought there was a bit of vanity in Kathryn and found it unfair, and in Kathryn’s opinion he was behaving like a little male, who thought that women should step aside when things became serious, Rania trying to create a diversion: “Here, the peasants say that the legions of martyrs will descend from the heavens and attack France from the Sahara.”

  News came from all sides. The sovereign had demonstrated some remnants of pride. The people’s attitude toward their sovereign was bizarre, a foundation of contempt—after all it was his family that had reduced the country to this—but as soon as he showed any sign of a spine, they sang his praises or they spoke of the crown prince, a classic scenario: the father is docile, but the prince is a good man, he often talks with the nationalists, assures them of his support. In fact, they said, the sovereign wanted to take advantage of the current uproar, of the coming visit by the president of the French republic. The French were planning to portray him as a sovereign, and now he wanted to play a real sovereign, so he fired one of his ministers who was too close to the colonists and met with the U.S. consul in private.

  And in an editorial in Présence Française, the newspaper published by the Prépondérants, the editor-in-chief, Richard Trillat, demanded the rejection of “all these thoughtless native demands and a response reflecting our long-term interests,” which meant the end of the protectorate and the country’s alignment with the regime of Algeria. They spoke about it more and more, there could be no more hesitation, and some Prépondérants spoke even more directly: “We give them this, they demand that,” with gestures accompanying the words, holding the right arm straight out, the index finger of the left hand placed at the base of the right index finger and then going up the arm to the shoulder, and they added, to be more explicit: “But we’re not going to drop our trousers!” Richard Trillat even demanded an actual policy for the Christianization of the country, re-Christianization, in fact, attracting the criticism of those who tried to be more diplomatic. France owed it to itself to respect the Muslim religion, “which we know,” said the resident general, “has a taste for immobility,” which was not without advantages for French interests.

  It was rumored that the sovereign had also made an explicit gesture in front of the resident general, raising a hand to the sky and passing the other under his throat to show the extremes to which he was ready to go if they imposed decisions on him that were contrary to his status. He detested his ministers, assigned by France, a question of principle, said his partisans, a more practical decision, said those on the side of the residence, since some ministers had more access to public resources than he did, and they also wanted to control his and those of his son, which were prodigious, by the way, especially those of the crown prince. As for the sovereign’s wife, she sought to insure her future as a potential widow by having one of her favorites made a minister.

  And so the agitation was coming from the palace, some said; no, from the nationalists, said others; and Raouf traveled through the capital, from meeting to meeting, talking with friends who were communists, socialists, nationalists, being called an eclectic bourgeois by some as soon as he showed the slightest skepticism about what was going on; the people in the street proclaiming that they were ready for anything: they talked to each other without knowing each other, talked at intersections or in front of a pastry shop, gave looks of defiance to the police or soldiers patrolling the streets, met in groups of ten, fifteen, or more; it wouldn’t take much, here, either, the world could be turned upside down. Raouf ran into Gabrielle—they were worried about him in Nahbès, he should send some news. Raouf replied that if he sent his friends news he would have to send some to his father, and he didn’t want to. He refrained from saying that he had already been held several hours at a police station.

  On the phone Gabrielle told Kathryn that she had seen Raouf and he was fine. Kathryn went right away to see Rania, and that time it was Rania who was angry: he was just a kid who didn’t send news so he could appear important, to frighten his father and family. The young widow got even angrier at Ganthier, who had also left for the capital. He must be throwing fuel on the fire. If he thinks that’s the way to obtain his plot of land, he’s mistaken! Kathryn found her friend’s trembling voice when she talked about the colonist bizarre. She almost asked her why. Rania calmed down, returned to Raouf: You were right, most men in this country are only little males, spoiled by women who get only what they deserve. They spend their life at the beck and call of males, and the males call the docility of those women honor because their own docility, toward foreigners, is without honor, little spoiled males . . . She fell silent . . . adding that t
hey were perhaps finally about to change . . . What she said about little males reminded Kathryn of what Gabrielle had once confided in her: here women ruin boys, especially the servant women. For them the male heir is sacred, a guarantee that the house will survive, that their old age will be assured: I’ve seen one kiss the penis of a newborn! . . . Gabrielle had told Kathryn that she wanted to write a piece about it, but my boss would take out that paragraph. He would talk about decency. He is capable of adding two lines to a story to describe how a man condemned to death had to be dragged to the guillotine because he had uncontrolled reactions, but this story of servants and newborns, he wouldn’t want it. He would look at me strangely, ask me if I had actually witnessed the scene.

  In the capital people were waiting for the spark. They talked about incidents between the sovereign and France. The crisis also came from the poverty, said the socialist militants, immediately taken to task by the communists: you talk about poverty because you don’t want to denounce exploitation; you cry about the results but you don’t blame the mechanism. For Raouf the communists weren’t wrong, but even so they took malicious pleasure in isolating themselves and walking right into a wall. He, himself, couldn’t manage to take sides. He talked about it with Chemla, for whom the struggle would go on for many years: they had to accept being in the minority, simply bide their time; this country must first develop its own bourgeoisie.

  In Présence Française the problem came from Paris, as usual, from the National Assembly, where the deputies of the left, the center, and some of the right had just voted for a disastrous project, providing for a constitution, fundamental liberties, and a representative assembly for this country which was absolutely not a nation, and would not be one for a very long time, “You realize, it’s Paris that lit this fire, the carrot instead of the stick, they are weakening our North Africa! And all this just when the Germans are signing a treaty with the Russian Bolsheviks! We are facing a threat to the east, and they create one for us in the south, not to mention those English bastards who are recognizing Egypt’s independence!” Fortunately, there was the lengthy interview with the sovereign in Le Vigilant, a very influential Parisian daily, and what the sovereign said in Le Vigilant was a rejection of any ill-conceived reform, his horror of communism, and his love for the protectorate. A nice touch, Marfaing confided to Daintree, Marfaing’s pride allowing his indiscretion, to stress the skill of the colonial authorities. It was the resident general himself who had dictated the responses to the journalist. Yes, the journalist had indeed met the sovereign, not for very long: My respects, Your Highness, thank you, Your Highness, good-bye, Your Highness. The rest was good editing. They had perhaps thrown the boules back a bit far, said Marfaing, because in reading Le Vigilant the sovereign had become furious—a corrupt journalist had made a liar out of him—but some nationalists claimed that the sovereign had perhaps not lied that much, he was used to playing both sides, and the sovereign was even more furious that they were making him the enemy of the nationalists, even moderate nationalists, and he decided to abdicate the day before the visit of the president of the French republic, a snub for a snub. And the news spread through the capital, Raouf watching the closure of shops, stoppages in transportation, factories, almost beginning to believe what was happening, the strike extending to the European city, the first marches, the police, insufficient numbers, the resident general bringing two regiments out of their barracks. In the middle of intersections in the old city, men climbed up on crates to improvise speeches.