“What do you mean, ‘learn distance’?”
“With distance, as things recede, you need not reject or devalue them to protect yourself. If you achieve distance, that which you might otherwise betray for fear of losing it still seems benevolent, loving – but gently dimming, going silent. Life recedes gradually until all that was bright and startling is like a city seen from afar, the noise of wind and traffic a barely audible hiss. You glide away without pain, and you love it still. She’s in the bright world that I have to leave.”
Duvalier and Arnaud hardly knew what to say, but they had a mental list and they went through it. “You served in Algeria,” Arnaud said. He could not help but think of Duvalier.
“You’ve been looking into me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“We may get to that later. But you don’t seem especially surprised.”
“What should surprise me? An idiot from the insurance company is taking pictures of me as I kiss a young woman I love but cannot have. I collapsed on the train. I have to deal with a detestable man whose name is Rich Panda. My grandson has leukemia. Classical music is as popular as hoopskirts. Two policemen show up at my door. Look, I wouldn’t be surprised if aliens came down and chopped me up for cat food. What did you say?”
“Algeria.”
“What about it?”
“What do you think about Arabs?”
“I don’t.”
“What do you mean, you ‘don’t’?” Duvalier asked.
“I don’t think about Arabs, per se.”
“What is your opinion of them?”
“I’m a Jew,” Jules told him. “My parents were murdered by the Germans because they were Jews. The gravest, most persistent sin of mankind lies in not treating everyone as an individual. So, in short, I take Arabs as they come, just like everyone else.”
“But as a group?”
“As a group? They have a very high incidence of killing innocents with whom they disagree. It’s part of the culture, part of Islam, part of their nomadic origins. But no individual is merely a reflection of a group. That’s the injustice that ruins the world. So, my answer is that for me an Arab is the same as a Jew, a Frenchman, a Norwegian, anything you’d like. If I were to judge people by their identity, I’d be like the people who killed my parents. Those were called Nazis. Do you think I could ever be one?”
“Did you have the same opinion in Algeria when you were at war with Arabs?”
“In Algeria, officers – before you were born – I had very little contact with Arabs. I was surrounded by French soldiers or alone in the forest. Even had I been prone to developing prejudices, I had very little material with which to work.”
“But now,” Duvalier pressed, “do you think they’re ruining the country?”
“Yes,” Jules answered, “along with everyone else. If you must speak collectively, they don’t get a pass. Some people burn cars, sell drugs, and rob passersby. Others buy drugs, live off the state, or, in airy offices at the top of skyscrapers, allocate capital, as they say, which is playing Chemin de Fer with other people’s money. Non-Arab politichiens take bribes and thrust their grossly inferior selves into positions they’re not competent to fill. And, may I add, pretentious, dissolute, beatnik philosophers sleep with the wives of their best friends.”
“I’m not going to let you get off that easy,” Duvalier announced. “What you say is anodyne. But I want to know what you think of the Arabs in France, one in ten of the population – as a whole, a community, a culture, a polity. Good for France? Bad? Indifferent?”
“Why would you want to know that? You’re not an opinion survey, you’re a policeman.”
“It bears upon the incident we’re investigating.”
“Am I a suspect?”
“No. We have no suspects at the moment.”
“I don’t understand, but I’ll be happy to offer my opinion. It was wrong for France to try to make Algeria a little France, to construct a replica of itself there and in other countries. We became a foreign master that destroyed the rhythms and tranquility of those places – both their qualities that were good and their qualities that were not. And it’s just as wrong – because we did not by and large assimilate in the Arab lands, and the Arabs do not by and large assimilate here – to have a little North Africa in France. Those who are here already should be made more welcome than they have been, but they must become French.”
Duvalier, because he agreed, played the devil’s advocate: “Why?” He expected a long essay. Fran?ois would have supplied one, in impassioned, bear-like tones, with Italianate gestures.
But Jules replied, “They must become French, because this is France.”
“You enjoy this,” said Arnaud, who had been quietly observing, ready to be either the good cop or the bad cop.
“Sometimes I enjoy everything, but what do you mean by ‘this’?”
“The questioning.”
“Certainly,” Jules told him. He couldn’t resist adding, in English, “I’m having a whale time.”
Arnaud, whose English was only elementary, thought that whatever the reference to a whale, it was very sophisticated. “The people we interview usually hate it. They get jumpy, tortured. Why are you having fun like a whale?”
“A lot of it,” Jules said, “is left over from what you saw on the street, but it’s not just that. My wife is dead, my only child long married, I have no more students, and my oldest friend is a quisling and a liar to whom I will not speak ever again. I can go a whole day saying only five or ten words to a human being – a waiter, the man who sells newspapers, the guard at the swimming pool. Now you show up, two cops, and you’re asking me interesting questions purely out of left field – what do I think about Arabs, am I going to make love to the girl you saw me with at the gate. And, then, maybe, we’ll get to why you’re here. Of course it’s fun. Stay all night. Have you had dinner? We don’t have to go out. I can fix you something. I have a big American steak, enough for three, even him,” Jules said, meaning Arnaud. “I can barbecue it ….”
“Please,” Duvalier said, holding up his hand like a traffic cop, which for a while in the beginning he was. “We won’t be long. Now, moving on, you row on the Seine, is that correct?”
“How do you know that?”
“But you haven’t rowed since October.”
“You know that, too?”
“According to the log in the boathouse.”
“I went to America. Then it was winter. Then I learned I have an aneurysm. The doctor told me that I shouldn’t row, and that means I’ll have to sell my boat. If I die suddenly, I don’t want to be lost in the Seine. It’s deep, turgid, and flows fast. I don’t want my daughter not to know where I’ve come to rest.”
“But,” Duvalier said, “after winter, before your aneurysm, you didn’t row. Others have started up again, months ago. Why not you?”
“No mystery,” Jules said. “I got out of shape. Every new season you have to begin again, and the older you are the more difficult it is.”
“Fair enough. How long have you rowed on the Seine?”
“Sixty years or so.”