The Happy Marriage (11 page)

She’d made her case, and now it was up to him to draw his conclusions. Some of his friends volunteered to talk to the painter’s wife, especially since they knew of the witch’s reputation. But his wife had the ability to make people believe that she hadn’t only listened closely to them, but also agreed with them. So his friends had come away pleased with how their interventions had gone and had left feeling appeased. That’s because they didn’t know her well. His wife’s defense mechanism was simple and yet astonishingly effective. She always did as she pleased and was happily oblivious to what people thought of her.

One of the painter’s friends suggested that he try to seduce Lalla in order to drive a wedge between them. But the painter didn’t have the nerve to take part in such a farce. He wasn’t an actor. He left that kind of thing to his enemies and rivals.

Lalla’s relationship with the painter’s wife continued to be close, much to the despair of their children, who were beginning to realize how suspect that friendship really was. They’d complained to their father about it, who de-dramatized the whole affair so as not to worry them. One day, Lalla had had the audacity to meddle when they’d been planning their summer holidays with their mother. They had resented Lalla’s intrusion and had asked their mother to stop seeing her. But their mother was by then completely under the woman’s thrall, utterly bewitched, and had developed a debilitating dependence on her best friend.

Lalla had written some texts on “primal energy” and hadn’t been able to publish them. She’d had them bound and handed them out to people who deserved her trust. She said that her thoughts were so personal that she didn’t wish to share them with the wider public. She’d produced some rough drawings to accompany her texts, and the
fruit of her efforts had been so ridiculous that it hadn’t been worth all the fuss she’d made over them. This was how her tiny sect of acolytes financed her lifestyle. And nobody thought there was anything wrong with that.

One day, the painter had had the opportunity to watch a film that told the story of a young beautiful teacher who had started to teach at a college. The teacher was married and had two children, one of whom had Down syndrome. The teacher eventually made the acquaintance of an older professor who taught at the college, a middle-aged woman who lived alone with her cat. They quickly forged a friendship and they gradually became inseparable. The older teacher became a mentor to the younger one and guided her steps not only professionally, but emotionally too. One evening, the younger teacher succumbed to the amorous advances of one of her pupils, a handsome teenager. The older teacher surprised them in the act and started to blackmail her mentee, who didn’t actually share the older teacher’s feelings for her. The older teacher believed that her mentee was under her thumb, but an incident involving her cat and the child with Down syndrome finally put an end to their ambiguous friendship. Feeling betrayed and abandoned, the older teacher started a rumor that the younger teacher was a pedophile and that she was having sex with one of her pupils. A scandal broke out and the young teacher was sent to prison, but this turn of events eventually freed her from that perverse woman’s clutches.

The painter couldn’t stop thinking about Lalla’s relationship with his wife. He purchased the DVD of the film and asked her to watch it. Which she did, but in the end she told him: “I don’t understand why you wanted me to watch that film!” She clearly hadn’t noticed how similar the two scenarios were, and didn’t seem the slightest bit concerned. The painter smiled and decided he would abandon all hopes of ever freeing her from that evil woman’s influence. Someone had
told him: “You’ll see, she’ll get tired of it one day and leave her, you must be patient and give it a little time!”

Other problems came up and his wife’s relationship with that witch took a back seat to those. He’d understood that what mattered the most was that he save his own skin, and that he leave that relationship, where he no longer had a place or any standing.

XI

Casablanca

April 2000

Dreams, life it’s the same thing. Otherwise life isn’t worth living!

—
MARCEL CARNÉ
,
Children of Paradise

Imane wasn’t just a nurse, she was also a physiotherapist. She would massage his listless legs and arms, doing so both tenderly and energetically. The painter loved those moments and could assess the progress he was making, however tiny those improvements might have been. She was even a bit naughty, and would flirt with him using her eyes, smiles, and charm. He’d grown attached to her and had been very pleased to hear her tell him her story one day, just like she’d promised.

One morning, during the time Imane would come for her first visit of the day, the painter had seen a man and a woman wearing white coats come into the house. Their faces were lined, stern, and forbidding. The woman had told him: “I’m your new nurse, and my
brother is your new physiotherapist. Your wife sent us!” He’d protested by banging his cane against the floor, but the words hadn’t managed to leave his mouth. It was the first time that his wife, with whom he hadn’t spoken since his accident, had intervened in his life without taking his condition into account. He’d sent them away, and had told the Twins to pay them and tell them to never come back. He’d also wanted them to call Imane and inform her of what had happened, but he’d been so shocked by his wife’s unexpected meddling that he hadn’t had the courage to do so, and was waiting for the storm caused by that unpleasant visit to subside.

Imane’s return, which he’d managed to bring about thanks to the loyal Twins, had both pleased and worried him. He wanted to celebrate it, there was a joy within him, which he could not show due to his deformed features. But his eyes betrayed him. Imane had told him how two days earlier she’d been visited by his wife, who’d spoken to her in a forceful and threatening manner. Imane hadn’t wanted to get into a fight with her patient’s wife and so had preferred to give him up. She’d even hoped to write him a letter expressing her sympathy and say how sorry she was. “From here on out,” he’d told her, “you’ll answer only to me! If my wife ever speaks to you, just tell her that I’m the one who hired you and I’m the one who decides.”

Delighted, Imane had gotten back to work, humming and murmuring words that had a soothing effect on him. Which was exactly what he needed since the last bout of irritation still plagued him. What had happened to make his wife suddenly go back on the warpath? Must he steady himself against future onslaughts? He was worried. Imane decided to stay a little longer and offered the painter a cup of tea. The Twins were playing cards and turned their back to him in order to not embarrass him. It was a tea from Thailand called “the poet’s tea,” which had a smoky, subtle taste. Imane raised the cup to his lips and enabled him to drink it, sip by sip. She was sitting in
front of him, and on seeing him happy, asked him if he still wanted to hear her story. He responded with his eyes, but stopped smiling the moment he remembered how hideous a grimace he pulled whenever he tried to do so. From time to time, Imane would get up and go to the window in order to see if the painter’s wife was nearby. He understood her apprehension and reluctantly dismissed her, hoping to see her the following day. Unfortunately, Imane would have to spend the next day accompanying her grandmother to the hammam, which she insisted on still going to despite her age and frailness. Before leaving, she’d leaned over him and touched his cheek. She’d laughed and said: “It stings!” It had been two days since the Twins had shaved him.

XII

Casablanca

1998

You wouldn’t hesitate if you had to choose between a straight shooter and a thug, you’d choose the thug!

—Mrs. Menoux to Julie

FRITZ LANG
,
Liliom

Their marriage had become a living hell. Their home was their battlefield, their friends were caught in the crossfire, and their families had become arbiters, although they were hardly impartial. Nevertheless, the painter hadn’t given up hope of finding a means to bring the conflict to an end. He would spend countless hours reflecting on what was happening to them.

So it was that one day he thought he’d stumbled onto the reason why their marriage had fallen apart so strangely. His wife had become two different people. Two people, two characters, two moods, two faces coexisted inside a single body. Even her voice had changed. He
knew that every person on Earth seemed to suffer from a split personality, but the extent to which his wife did so was quite troubling. Sometimes he didn’t even recognize her. He would ask her: “Who are you? A stranger? Are you the mother of my children, or have you been possessed by someone else?” She never answered him. Over the course of his life, the painter had met people who were called “temperamental,” but this was something else. It seemed like a pathological condition! She would suddenly change from one state to the other, without any warning and without even noticing it. Whenever he heard her call out to him in a clear voice and say: “I have a surprise for you!” he knew the next fifteen minutes would be tough. It was her way of announcing that she wanted an explanation for something or that he was to fall victim to a well-organized attack.

Once, he’d returned home to find that the contents of his toiletry bag had been spilled onto the floor. He found his wife sitting on top of the stairs smoking a cigarette, waiting for him. At the time, he’d been using condoms whenever he made love to her. Calmly, she’d said: “Before you left for Copenhagen there were eleven, and now there are nine. So you cheated on me twice, you bastard, and you’re going to pay for it. I already called the hotel, her name’s Barbara, some bitch who works at the Klimt Gallery!”

Convinced that she was being persecuted—and that the painter’s family was out to get her, that her husband’s friends were dishonest profiteers, that the neighbors were jealous, that the people who worked in her house were trying to steal from her—she suspected everyone. She’d built a foundation of unshakeable certainties. There could be no discussions of any kind. He’d noticed that before she’d started to attack his family, she’d also tried to distance him from his friends, especially the ones he was closest to. She never lacked pretexts, and had ample opportunity to see them, so he’d always had to brace himself against her attacks.

The painter’s childhood friend had been an easy target for her. He had a bad temper and he was just as unyielding and full of hang-ups
as she was. She would provoke him and he would reply in a scathing manner. So it eventually came to a head, and the painter was ordered to cut his ties with the “dwarf” who’d dared to criticize her. That friend had a penchant for humor, but he never took things lightly. The painter had held steady until the day his friend had sent him a letter informing him their friendship was over. His wife had won.

Her next target had been another of her husband’s friends, a wise philosopher. She’d eventually had a falling out with the man’s wife, though she never managed to drive a wedge between the painter and his friend.

She’d done much the same to others, including a friend of his who owned a gallery and had been one of the first to exhibit his works. The painter had thought of this friend as a sister, as part of his family. She’d become close to his mother and they’d helped one another out on occasion. His wife had immediately accused this friend of being—or having been—the painter’s mistress, which had made the friend laugh: there had never been anything between them, apart from a platonic friendship.

The painter had never meddled in his wife’s affairs, a golden rule that he’d broken on only two occasions because he’d thought she was actually in danger. The first was when he’d discovered that she’d been seeing a Syrian “student.” He’d tried to get her to understand that while he might indeed have been a “student,” he was likely an agent for the security services. He’d explained to his wife that Syria was ruled by a fearsome police state and that he’d recently signed a petition for the release of political prisoners being held in Damascus. It would be very risky, he’d stressed, for either of them to be in close contact with this man. She’d refused to believe him and had continued going for “coffees” with the Syrian. The other occasion had arisen when a few friends of his in Casablanca had told him: “Your wife is keeping strange company these days. Do you know that she’s spending time
with a woman named Loulou, who has ties to black-marketeers and shady guys who pimp girls out to visiting Saudis? Your wife obviously doesn’t have anything to do with that, but she doesn’t understand the situation, or realize how much harm this could bring upon the two of you. She needs to break off all ties with this woman!”

He’d asked his wife to follow the advice they’d been given to the letter. She still had time to extricate herself. But she had taken all of this very badly and had shouted that he was just like every other Moroccan man: sexist and full of prejudices, letting himself be easily swayed by rumors. She was incapable of believing her husband, or confiding in him, or asking him any questions. She had no doubts. Never had any doubts. Never admitted her mistakes. He’d known that for a long time and now this was something all the people around them were starting to learn, too. Despite her husband’s repeated warnings, she’d continued to see Loulou, right up to the day when the latter had made an indecent proposition that had shocked her, at which point she’d finally stopped seeing her.

For a long time, the painter had never asked himself whether his wife was being faithful to him. He’d never suspected her of having lovers, even though he traveled so often for work that she had ample opportunity to cheat on him. Still, he’d never kept tabs on her, didn’t rifle through her belongings, didn’t read her letters or look in her diary. She was a free woman and wasn’t accountable to him. Yet he’d started to have doubts after she’d gone on holiday with a friend in Tunisia. She’d come back with an obsession: to know, read, and watch everything she could about—or by—Stanley Kubrick. He remembered that she hadn’t much liked
2001: A Space Odyssey
, so where had this sudden passion sprung from? As it happens, she’d met a certain Hassan, who’d been writing a thesis on Kubrick and had shown her some of his films. Her sudden interest in the filmmaker had merely been a means to pay him homage. Hassan had given her a big book on Kubrick’s films as
a present. For the next two weeks, she did nothing except talk about
Barry Lyndon, Paths of Glory, The Killing
, or
Dr. Strangelove
.