The Happy Marriage (26 page)

In the space of a few moments, I had become a model at the mere age of seventeen and a half! An exceptionally good job that meant I left each shoot with armloads of presents. My parents turned a blind eye to all of this. On one condition: that I wouldn’t fail my final exams. I didn’t listen to their advice and in June I was forced to take remedial classes. It was a slap in the face. I’d never thought of myself as a poor student. I hadn’t realized how many significant gaps there were in my learning. I was so arrogant that I thought I’d be able to catch up in no time. After all, it wasn’t my fault that I’d had such a chaotic and troubled education. I didn’t even know who I was anymore! Was I Lahbib Wakrine’s daughter, or did I belong to Mr. and Mrs. Lefranc? Was I Arab or Berber? French or Belgian? Mrs. Lefranc had Flemish roots …

I attended my remedial classes and managed to barely pass my exams. My French parents had nothing to say in that regard. I enrolled at the university, but never set foot there. I preferred to waste my time on far more futile endeavors and went to photo shoots. I was an adult by then and I didn’t realize how time was slipping through my fingers.

Although I’m not exactly sure as to how it happened, my Armenian friend got herself sucked in by a producer and featured in some explicit scenes in movies that were never shown in Marseilles’s bigger cinemas. She got into a big argument with her parents and disappeared. That drama made me snap out of my waking dream. I left that filthy scene behind and started taking my art history course seriously.

But all of a sudden, from one day to the next, I found myself on my own. My French parents wound up separating, and I barely noticed, since truth be told I’d been spending so little time at the house. They divided up all their possessions and I got caught in the middle. Mrs. Lefranc asked me if I wanted to go live with her or stay with her ex-husband. I was embarrassed. But as luck would have it, everything worked out: a court decree authorized my right to family reunification. My father, who’d set himself up in Clermont-Ferrand, sent for his wife and two of his other children. Forgetting all the sadness I’d suffered in the past and the pain I’d felt when I was abandoned, I suddenly felt the urge to join them. The botched adoption had merely been an interlude that had allowed me to have a fairly normal education. My parents were still my parents. My name was Amina Wakrine even though the Lefrancs called me Nathalie. As it happens, I never figured out why they’d chosen that name. At school, everyone had called me Natha. As for the guy with red hair, he wanted to call me Kika. And why not? My name seemed to change all the time, but I was still the same person, my parents’ daughter.

Once I got to Clermont-Ferrand, I felt like I was having a panic
attack. That city felt like a prison to me. It was ugly, gray, and stifling. I wanted so badly to leave it and never return. Seeing my distress, my father decided not to say anything and allowed me to leave for Paris so that I could continue the studies I’d begun in Marseilles. He opened a bank account for me and deposited some of the money that the French couple had given him. It was a considerable sum, especially since it had been supplemented by the money orders that Mrs. Lefranc had been sending me ever since she’d gotten divorced. Leaving for Paris was a turning point for me. I was finally independent and free of all the guilt I’d ever felt toward my parents. I was determined to make the best of it. I would never have dreamed at that time of the monumental failure that would await me with the painter many years later.

I must admit that it wasn’t very long after I’d moved to Paris before I’d acquired a lot of boyfriends. But I remained a virgin, as I wanted to save myself for marriage. Go figure why a rebellious girl like me who’d known such a difficult life would care about keeping her hymen intact. Traditions and customs appeared to be stronger than I was.

My future husband never knew any of this. I never wanted to tell him and he hardly ever asked me any questions about that time in my life. Maybe he thought that everything that had happened before we met was ancient history—Jahiliyyah, the time of ignorance, as the Muslims call the centuries before the arrival of the Prophet Mohammed.

I only saw Mrs. Lefranc one last time after that, when she was in an old people’s home. She wasn’t even that old by then, but she had nobody to look after her or keep her company. She hugged me tight and I could feel her crying. When I left, she gave me a little suitcase. “You’ll open it on the day you get married,” she told me. But I couldn’t resist the urge. I opened it as soon as I got home. I was impressed: it was filled with jewelry, photos, a notebook with addresses,
some of which had been scrawled out, a Moroccan dress that she must have bought at the souk on Place de la Kissaria in Rabat, and lastly a letter addressed to Maître Antoine, Esq., 2 bis Rue Lamiral, etc. I didn’t open it and I still have it somewhere in my files. One day I’ll go visit this Maître Antoine …

The Secret Manuscript

You must be asking yourself: how did I come to learn of the existence of the manuscript you’ve just finished reading and which I’m now rebutting point by point? By stealing it. Yes, by stealing it. I knew that one of his best friends, an amateur who wrote in his spare time, was up to something. But I suspected that they would try to conceal the fruit of their labors. So I started spying on them, taking care that they didn’t notice anything. Here’s how they went about it. Over the space of six months, his friend would come visit him very early in the mornings. They would spend hours talking and then he would pull out his laptop and edit their conversation, polishing it up into a proper text. When he was satisfied with the results, he would immediately print out the pages of that strange kind of biography and locked them up in the studio’s safe, to which I had neither the combination nor the key. A month ago, I took advantage of the fact that my husband would be spending the day at the hospital to run some tests and I called a locksmith to open the safe for me. After all, there was nothing strange
about that, it was my own house and no locksmith would refuse to open up a safe, simply assuming I’d lost my key to it. I raided its contents and grabbed everything inside it. Before leaving, the locksmith asked me to think up a new combination code and so I’m now the only one who can access the safe. The manuscript was inside a folder marked “confidential.” I had a blast reading it. I breezed through it and made notes on it in the space of a single night. I was beside myself with rage, but for the first time my desire for vengeance was well-founded. His friend never came back. I believe he fell gravely ill. My prayers bore their fruit.

When my husband realized what I’d done, he didn’t do anything. I thought I heard him complaining to himself. I brought him an herbal infusion, but he gave me a look to signify he didn’t want it and then made it clear that he wanted me to leave. On my way out, I deliberately knocked a pot of paint onto an unfinished canvas. I regretted having done something so petty. I ruined a painting that could have one day made me a lot of money. Now let’s move on. We never act the way we should. My instincts often trump my ability to think rationally.

Foulane owned a collection of rare Arabic manuscripts. He was very proud of it, he would show it to his visitors and talk about it at length. I took advantage of him leaving the house to go for a medical checkup to steal them. I hid them at Lalla’s, since she owned a large chest. I will use them as a bargaining chip one day or another. I made sure he noticed their disappearance, which sent him into a fury. He went all red in the face and his body started shaking as though he’d been having an epileptic seizure. I stood right in front of him, and savoring my victory over him, I said:

“Now you’re going to pay. I’ll never let you go and this is but a taste of what’s to come. You’ll never see your precious books again. When I decide to burn them, I’ll wheel you out to see it so you can watch them burn! You’ll be stuck in your chair and won’t be able to do a thing about it!”

I’ll start from the top, just like in a police report. No hesitations, emotions, or concessions. Reading that manuscript left me feeling unexpectedly invigorated. Being at war suits me just fine. I feel alive. I’m ready to kill and I’m always sharpening my blade. It’s going to be a fight to the death. After all, after having read about all he’s said and done, I have no qualms about speeding up his demise. I’m not well educated, I don’t have any fancy degrees, and I’m not sophisticated; I’m straight up, direct, and sincere. I can’t stand hypocrisies. I don’t try to sugarcoat things. His family’s always done plenty of that. Let’s go straight to the facts.

I hope you noticed that he never referred to me by my name throughout the entirety of his manuscript. I was nothing to him, a gust of wind, a smudge of dew on the window, not even a ghost. Just like his father, who never called his wife by her name. He would just shout, “Woman,” and she would come running. Very well, I’ll do the same. From now on, I’ll refer to my husband as Foulane, an Arabic word used to refer to “any old guy.” I know, it’s a little contemptuous, perhaps even a little pejorative. “Foulane” means someone who doesn’t really matter, a man just like any other, without any distinctive characteristics. When people are talking quickly, they often drop the “ou” in “Foulane” and pronounce it “Flane,” meaning someone whose actual name and origins are unknown. Besides, it was precisely his origins and roots that led to the failure of our marriage. He often spoke of how important his roots were to him and talked about them as though he were a philosopher: “Our roots follow us wherever we go, they reveal who we really are, they show our true colors and subvert our attempts to try to be something we’re not.” One day, I finally understood that despite all his gobbledygook, he’d always looked down on my peasant origins: on the fact I was the daughter of poor, illiterate
immigrants. He disliked the poor. He gave out alms, but always wore an expression of disdain. He would give his driver some money and tell him to distribute it among the beggars at the cemetery where his parents were buried. On Fridays, he would ask the cook to prepare large quantities of couscous for the needy, thus performing his duty as a good Muslim. After which his conscience would be clear and he would be able to devote himself to his paintings where he imitated photographs and gave them such shameless titles as “Shanty-town,” “Shanty-town II,” and so forth.

What exactly was he hoping to accomplish with this novel—what I read of it clearly indicates that it is a novel, especially since his friend the scribe called it such below that ridiculous title,
The Man Who Loved Women Too Much
? Did he want to publish it? Why? Who would bother to read such a pointless web of lies? There isn’t an ounce of truth or originality in it, starting even with the title, which is a rip-off of François Truffaut’s film,
The Man Who Loved Women
. Foulane simply added his two cents and tagged “too much” on the end of it to be a smart-ass. As for his friend, he was hardly a great writer. He self-published his books and nobody read them, so the copies just piled up in his garage. The book is just a series of falsehoods and allegations, each more intolerable than the last before it. Doesn’t one get the distinct impression that I caused his stroke by the time one gets to the last page? It’s a terrible insinuation. Isn’t it criminal and irresponsible? I may have been nasty and devilish, but certainly never criminal, not even close!

He already suffered from migraines, high blood pressure, tachycardia, and a host of other nervous disorders by the time I met him. They were congenital and I had nothing to do with them. You’ll have noticed that before describing the scene that caused his stroke—which I must stress was the sheer product of his artist’s imagination, which was intoxicated with his own success—he devoted a number
of beautiful pages to me, even going so far as to say that he loved me. Don’t fall for any of it—he was utterly incapable of the slightest praise, he never had a kind word to say in the morning, no tenderness before going to bed, nothing, he lived in his own world, and I had to dwell in his shadow and cower in it. Oh, that ubiquitous shadow, it was bleak and heavy, followed me everywhere, harrying me and overwhelming me to the point that it immobilized me. It pushed me into a corner and kept me there. A shadow doesn’t speak: it hovers over you menacingly and crushes you. I would wake up exhausted and empty in the mornings. The shadow had haunted me all night. I didn’t have anyone to talk to, and besides, who would have believed me? Struck by a shadow! People would have thought I was crazy, which would have played into his hands. It must have taken a lot of effort for him to ever say anything sweet. So he avoided it and closed in on himself. He would reach his hand out and rub my knee whenever he wanted to make love. That was the sign, his way of asking me to welcome his advances, as though I should be constantly at his disposal, willing and available, all so Foulane could reassure himself that he could still get it up. He was always in a hurry to satisfy his needs. He would push himself inside me a little forcefully and fuck me in a robotic manner for a few minutes until he came, at which he’d puff out, like a toy whose batteries had gone dead.

For instance, he never once bought me some roses. Buying someone flowers is easy, it makes them happy, it makes a statement. But he never bought me any. When he came back from his trips abroad, he would occasionally bring me a piece of jewelry, a necklace or a watch, as though to ask my forgiveness. But he always managed to find a way to tell me how much it had cost him. That’s just how he was, petty and miserly. He lived in his own world, inside the bubble of a famous artist, except that he always forgot he only started getting successful after we met. He never admitted that his career prospered thanks to our marriage. I brought him stability, inspired him, and even had a hand in the development of his radical new style. Before
we met, his paintings adhered to a bland, unimaginative realism. He just copied whatever he looked at. Simply improved on photographs. But, as you might have guessed, nobody could tell him that lest he fly into a fury. Yet once he was with me, he found the courage to develop his style and technique. His paintings became lively, surreal, flavorful, and human. He never had the honesty to admit that my presence and sensibility had enriched his work. I looked after everything when we lived in Paris, the house, the children, everything, while he would lock himself up in his studio, which was situated in a different neighborhood. Was it really a studio? Yes and no. I knew that he used it as a pad where he could meet with his other women, whores and those innocent young girls who swooned when they looked at his paintings. One day I asked him: “Why did you set up a bed in your studio?” “Why, it’s obvious, so the artist can rest,” he’d replied. But he never slept alone. His circle of acquaintances always included at least one or two women who would jump in a taxi whenever he called so that they could have a little “siesta” (as he put it). I knew all of this and yet made a superhuman effort not to burst in on them and make a scene, like any normal wife would have done in my stead. I was dimwitted and naïve. I was never scared of what I might find, I’ve never been afraid, instead it was an undefinable feeling. I just didn’t want to bother him. Yes, that was my intention, I knew that he worked hard, and I didn’t want to burst into his studio because I knew my wrath would be difficult to control. But one day when he was abroad on a trip, I noticed that he’d forgotten his keys to the studio in his satchel. I couldn’t resist the temptation to visit the lair that he used to cheat on me all the time. I went in, I was ill at ease, shaking a little, steadying myself to be slapped in the face by a reality that I’d hitherto refused to see. The bed was unmade, there was a painting that he’d barely begun, and a half-empty bottle of wine on the bedside table with two glasses next to it, one of which was stained with lipstick. A banal and clichéd snapshot of adultery in all its splendor, and as a bonus I also found a bottle of my own perfume, which he must have sprayed on his women in order
not to stray too far outside his comfort zone. As though guided by my instincts, I went over to the trash cans and found two condoms filled with sperm. Instead of flushing them down the toilet or putting them in a trash can outside his studio, the idiot had instead left irrefutable proof. I wanted to save a little of his sperm inside a bottle so I could give it to one of my sorcerers, but how could I do that? Some of his sperm would have been perfect for a potion that would make him impotent. I also went through his drawers. I found quasi-pornographic love letters, various photos, presents, dried flowers pressed between two leaves of paper that also bore the imprint of a kiss, and scented Chanel No. 5. I sat down in his armchair, lit a cigarette, opened one of his bottles of wine (far superior vintages than those he brought home), and began to reflect. I couldn’t just pretend as though I’d never been in his studio or forget what I’d discovered. I wasn’t going to forgive him or act oblivious, agreeing to share my life with a man who led his real life in that filthy shithole. I needed to react. Calmly. React so I could put an end to that abnormal situation. He was mocking me, and had been doing so since day one. I’d always known that, but seeing the undeniable proof made me want to throw up. I had to act as quickly as possible. I said to myself: “For once I’m going to plan things out and be rational about it. The wine is good, I’m calm, and I need to have a precise idea of what I’m going to do next. I can already picture him on his return, wearing that grin of his, with his potbelly, his raffish air and arrogance. I feel like putting out his eyes, or better yet cutting off his hands, just like they do to thieves in Saudi Arabia. A painter without any hands, now that would be a sight! No, it would be far better to slice off his prick, not that there would be much to slice off, but at least it would hurt. I should stop babbling since I’m not actually going to shed his blood. The best thing to do would be to keep quiet about what I’ve discovered so I can destroy him all the more when the time is right. I don’t know whether I’ll be able to keep my mouth shut. I’m hot-blooded. But one thing’s for sure, he’ll never touch me again! First I’m going to put the fear of God in him, and
that fear will gnaw away at him, wreaking havoc in his life. I spent the first ten years of my life ridding myself of fear. It was a matter of life and death, so I know all about fear, one could say it’s my specialty. I’ve endured droughts, thirst, hunger, I survived them during heat waves and glacial winters, and while fighting off snakes, scorpions, and hyenas … I had no other choice. I tamed my fears and now I know how to instill them in both men and animals.”