The manipulator

Adel El Zaïm



The manipulator


Chapter 1

I was in front of the door of the town hall of conferences, when I heard the voice of the man whom I had known, three years ago, to the day. My heart beat very hardly, but I took the courage to enter the hall by making hesitating, discreet, almost awkward steps. I was sure that he perceived me by far, but he pretended to be absorbed by his religious and philosophic talk:


"... Weak light of the distant celestial bodies made me open eyes and raise ears to distinguish the realities which get closer to illusions
As shadows semi enlightened by the moon Which let ants-pilots feel their road towards an unknown purpose

In this jolt of the illusions and the realities I found my road, my friends!
Under the eyes of the black holes in the deep sky
Under celestial bodies tired to turn in wide eclipse
And so we like seeing again these lustrums put out to light again the ground life of gloves
When they anticipate to find their bread
Somewhere in the world
In search of the painful tasks

Which poverty for some
Which happiness for the others... "



This man, big and costal, in the middle of his about forty, remained young, as I knew him, three years ago, when he was a boss of conference at the university of Nanterre. I do not still know if I hate him or I like him, but what is sure, it is that he let me suffer enormously, and that he took advantage of me, then he neglected me as a dirty dress...


His only virtue, if I dare to say, it is that he was capable of opening my eyes on the reality of the existence, through his false feelings and his permanent manipulation, while using the good word and the speech rhetoric each time.

And so he received this evening the strong applause of the public, and during this noisy excitement, I approached him, as if I wanted to congratulate on his success of excellent speaker. Really, I wanted to show myself in front of him, to reappear me in his life, while looking fixedly in the eyes which always shine roguishly, while observing his mouth which does not stop telling lies, without any fear of the rumors, indifferent to all which remains in the memory of people victims of his manipulations, as me, for example

He said to me " I have the impression that we are once met, Madam, is not it? "

I answered with a firm voice: " not only once, Sir, but several times, even for a long time " and I wanted to continue the conversation with him, but people who arrived near us, and surrounded him with all the sides, have prevented me from knowing his reactions..

Anyway, even if he pronounced some words, it would know only an illusion to be added to the other lies. If, by carelessness, I still continued to trust him! My experience with him
leads me to distinguish between the liar and the manipulator: the first one does not say the truth, the second distorts the truth, and it is much graver, because consequence which ensue from it remain and take root in the life of the one who was the object of manipulation...

Thus, I withdrew quite slowly towards the exit, and I waited him over there with obsession..

During almost a quarter of an hour, a dense wave of the memories rose in my spirit and this short duration of expectation appeared to me as century, but I did not lose the patience.

When arrived I in his road obliged to go out outside, he launched me a glance of surprise by biting slightly his lips, then he quickly made a wide smile to conceal his disappointment to find me still in front of him,
after he believed that I was already home, and he said to me very quietly: " if we take a coffee in the corner ", I lowered the head a little by frowning, then I answered coolly :

" yes. Absolutely, why not ", as if nothing spent ! poor woman that I am ,after so much painful memories of my story with this man... That I address him! Openly, it is shameful ", I said myself.




Chapter 2


In the cafe


Our conversation in the cafe became stormy five minutes after our arrival. At the beginning we remained silent, but he was curiously smiling and careless, in the meantime, fear-being, that I say some things.
I had to begin the discussion by reminding him certain facts as he wanted to erase them of his memory, doubtless, or he always pretends to ignore me. It doesn't much matter, because it was necessary to say on what I decided to reveal, after so many reflections and hesitations.

- You have to remember yourselves in the daytime of my birthday, three years ago, which my ex-husband invited you at home at the same time as the other friends who were foreseen of this date of anniversary.. In fact, your presence did not have been envisaged, but the fact that my ex-husband spoke about this date in front of a common friend, that one proposed that you come together. I was not against this invitation when my ex-husband spoke to me about you; but, Regrettably, all this was catastrophic for me and for him too.

He interrupted me suddenly by repeating the word " ex-husband " which I pronounced twice and said to me with surprise:

- You say your ex-husband? You are thus divorced?

I said: let me continue, please, because it seems to me that you began to find the memory..... This day there, you came home with your friend and the other invited persons, with a big bouquet in the hand, and a smile full of courtesy..

During the meal you did not stop looking at me, to the point that my ex-husband eventually noted your operation and he did not appreciate your unexpected and unusual gestures of a man who comes home for the first time. I augured in fact his profound feelings, because I knew him well, but he reacted by no means in front of the other guests. You thus continued stubbornly to fix your eyes toward me, what obliged me to make some goes and comes between the kitchen and the dining room calling upon reasons which I invented not to increase the possible suspicions which my ex husband would have made, further to these unhealthy and badly placed glances.

The following morning, Michel, you doubtless remember his name, asked me if I had possibly had knowledge with you. I denied absolutely any previous contact with you neither during our married life, nor in the past, what was true, as you know it well. But your phone call the same day by speaking more about me than about himself, aroused a feeling to him whom you were, for him, more or less, a little welcome intruder... You said to him by the telephone that I made a good cooking, that I was very hospitable and very kind etc... Besides, what still woke the suspicions, it was your proposition to invite us in a very smart restaurant the next day or after next day. Michel was a jealous and loving man of me; thus, he tried of to take away this idea of your head, but you so insisted that he had to say that he would speak with me and he will give the answer in daytime .

You phoned me the same day during Michel's absence, to repeat your proposition; then I said that we agreed to accept your invitation.

The dinner with you took place one week only after my anniversary, but you continued to speak to me by telephone almost daily, always during the absence of my husband ... ... You courted me as nobody made it before. It was true that my ex-husband loved me profoundly, but the oral expression of the feelings was missing. That was not absolutely as you made every day, but contrary for Michel, your expressions were false. Nevertheless, you trapped me effectively by letting me believe in your love and you managed to have had me, physically, in a hotel of suburb...

I wanted to continue still my revelations, but he interrupted me once again.. He said to me: I don't remember all the details but I find that it could arrive naturally that a man unmarried as me, is interested in somebody from the first day; when a woman so beautiful as appears in his life, he had to act in many circumstances whether he is at you either in the street or in a public place. You had to invade my heart and my spirit, even if you would not want to make it.. As for me, it would not be in my capacity to be indifferent to what it passes around me, which means nothing to hear, nothing to do. You cannot prevent people from admiring your beauty and the same being so loving at certain day of you ...but for the last point concerning the hotel of suburb, I don't remember of this very intimate meeting..

At this moment I became furious:

- it is not really all that you tell. You are only a home wrecker ! you wanted to destroy our common life and to add this poor and innocent girl that I was, in the list of your adventures, because, after our get- together of the hotel, you are completely disappeared..

He said: you are inequitable, either you ignore what this past about one month after your anniversary; so I am not disappeared as you say, simply I had been moved in the faculty of letters of Bordeaux and I stayed there until the last month. I always thought of you and I am very satisfied to see you again, especially that this idea comes from you this time. How did you find me exactly?

I said: simply I read in a newspaper that you go to give a conference in this place and I came to put points on our past that is to try to wake your consciousness to understand the big evil which had caused to me your cheating and your manipulation.

He said: I am ready to repair everything, now and for the future. Say only what I have to make and you will see that I shall deserve your confidence..

I answered curtly: what claims which you can have! You really have of the cap. At first, you ignored me in the hall of conferences, then you say now that you were thinking of me in Bordeaux!. Listen to me: I did not come here to take up with you. Remember that our relation lasted
only some weeks, and it ended very badly. Michel had felt that I was interested in this relation in that period, and to get to this point, he did not need to look for a long time.. You were capable of letting him believe in my infidelity from the earliest days... especially when you sent us once to our address of flowers without any visible reason. Which gesture, careless and awkward from your part, if it was not an unrefined operation to arrive at your purpose. So, with the repetition of these acts, we got angry and fought repeatedly, then it was the inevitable divorce.

He said with an air of visible bitterness: I am really sorry, in spite of I was for nothing in this affair, I swear you. If you do not want to believe in me, say to me where is your ex-husband at present, to explain all in front of him and ask him if he could make the conciliation between you two.

Then I said: he lives there where you came home in the time, but it is too late now.

- nothing is too late. Maybe that he always thinks of you and that would be enough a small gesture for restoring things as before.

- No. No. Enough to make manipulations still. Anyway, I do not have feelings anymore of nostalgia for my former life.

There, indeed, I regretted this last sentence which weakened, relatively the euphoria of my revelations.

And so he took advantage of the passage of the sentence on my lips to say to me:

Because you do not like him more, why you do not envisage another way, another life, I would want to say a new love?

In fact, I did not know what to say. I remained silent during some moments, which were sufficient for him to think that he already won a first ring.

He said to me: I give you my address and my phone number . I hope that you forgive me and that we see each other one day.

Finally, I was in the embarrassment, because I had no weapons
equivalent to his means to convince and to divert the conversation in the sense which he wanted.
I am overcome, but not still convinced in my inmost depths..

The last sentences of his speech resounded hardly in my ears:

In this jolt of the illusions and the realities I found my road, my friends!
Under the eyes of the black holes in the deep sky
Under celestial bodies tired to turn in wide eclipse
And so we like seeing again these lustrums put out to light again the ground life of gloves
When they anticipate to find their bread
Somewhere in the world
In search of the painful tasks

Which poverty for some
Which happiness for the others... "




Chapter 3


The snake in two heads


I had the heart squeezed after the failure of grip of my revenge during the last meeting with André the manipulator.. I tried to occupy my spirit with the obligations of my work as primary school teacher in the same place where I taught before my marriage. In fact, I returned to my offices some months after my divorce. It was just in the start of the school year, what did not facilitate the task and to find pupils who are freshly registered at the beginning of the school year.

My work pleases me enormously, and the colleagues with whom I work are excellent; especially Christine who has the same age that I and who was divorced as me. I have the chance to reach in one lifestyle which reminds me my debuts in the education when I was younger.

In this environment of new life, I was able to find a remedy in my daily, material and moral concerns. If it was not this last meeting with André, I shall have been able to continue to erase quite slowly the bad memories of an adventure of a fallen angel.

I often went out with Christine . we looked at films or at plays or attended interesting conferences of several literary celebrities... except, naturally, on the occasion of this conference of André where I wanted to take my revenge of a dishonest man who was not as high as my hope .I spoke about him, briefly, without giving too many details, with Christine who became my reliable friend. She listened to me attentively and showed every time of discussion her cordial condolence as for my feelings and my pains. She is an extraordinary woman that I like to keep her friendship for ever.

An important event occurred last week: Michel, my ex-husband had a car accident. He was seriously damaged and dead before arriving at the hospital. This piece of news really upset me and Christine who was next to me tried to calm me because I was not able to refrain from crying.

The next day, I received a phone call of the sister of Michel who confirmed me the news indicated in newspapers and gave me the date and the place of the burial and the funeral by proposing, as ex-woman of the deceased, that I appear in these ceremonies.

I presented my condolences to her and promised attending the funeral ceremony .

Christine accompanied me in the cemetery to consolidate me in this sad circumstance.
............

I stood next to the sister of Michel to receive the condolences of people who came to attend the burial.
Friends and colleagues to the deceased arrived at the cemetery one after the other before or during the speech of the priest. I held out the hand to every person by lowering the head in sign of thanking, without looking even at the faces of the persons which successively walked past me; then, at one go, I felt that my hand remained tight longer that with the other one persons. It was André himself accompanied with the other friend of Michel with whom he came home in the daytime of my
anniversary.

Which surprise and which sad meeting of the persons who have, one day, create the event ending in what we are at the moment with all which was changed in the life of each.
After the ceremony, Christine took me by the arm and we went towards the outside.

At cemetery’s exit, André and his friend waited for us in some steps of the gate in the street. They approached us and suggested taking together a coffee in the district. It often arrived in such circumstances.

We thus went, all four, to the cafe; but I was so exhausted and distracted that I preferred to keep silent most of the time... not to listen to the conversations begun around the table on several subjects, diversified and roam, rested me a little.

Curiously they did not speak about the deceased, nor about the death generally; André was completely quiet by speaking about his last poems and about other subjects little important, several times boring things for me. It prevented in no way Christine from being attentive to what he told. She seemed been even attached to his gestures and the way he speaks.

I watched Christine listening religiously to the voice of André. I was a little surprised and annoyed by the attitude of my friend, who had enough information on him to distrust his manners and his manipulations.. I said myself: certainly she is going to fall in the trap tightened usually by this monster. What idea to make come this creature with me and to allow this terrible manipulator to exercise his cursed talents on her in front of my own eyes?

I could not bear any more the scene and I asked for leave
to André and to the others to return at home. I got up to leave, but Christine remained indifferently sat down and showed no sign to want to accompany me. I understood that she wanted to continue the listening in André's bla bla without any concern of her part in what would have been able to bother me of this new meeting with him.

Several days are spent without any sign of Christine. She was absent at the school and I doubted that there were some things that she wanted to hide . Too bad! let her make what she she wantse and I make fun of it; but she ended by ringing me one day to say that she had news for me..

We were at home to take tea one Sunday. She spoke to me about André and how she finds him interesting, integral and attractive - I don't suspected that - then she told me the suites of our last meeting with him to the café next to cemetery. She recognized that she agreed to see him again two days later by what than he wanted to pass on a message, and it is me whom he chose in this mission!

She said to me: he wanted only to ask me to say to you that he loves you and he does not dare to contact you directly so that he is not propped up by a negative reaction of your part. He would sincerely like to take up with you. Then, what do you want to answer it? I find personally that you exaggerated a little by refusing to see him again since his last conference.

I answered negatively André's proposition. I added that if she wants to take him for a lover, I would not be against.

She did not answer me. Then I said before she leaves do not let be a dupe. When he charges you with this mission, he knows well that I would refuse to take up with him, but he wanted torelease your consciousness as faithful friend to me. I am sure that by your return to him to give my negative answer, he is going to embrace you and to declare his love to you. At this moment there, I would say to you frankly that you can make that you want, to accept or refuse his declaration. But for me he is a snake in two heads.




Chapter 4


The manipulated and unfaithful friend



I was sure, in hundred percent, that Christine had changed behavior with me. She avoided speaking to me when we crossed ourselves at the school, or when we were in the room of the teachers. I was really sad of this unforeseen and unexpected attitude. Is it always André who urged her to act in this way with me?
I learnt one day of the mouth of the other colleagues that Christine had taken some days off and gone to Florence in Italy; and when she returned, she said to them, that it was in package tour.

It doesn't much matter that she was absent in her function, except the periods of the annual school holidays... It doesn't much matter that she was in Florence or somewhere else; but why she continues to boycott me?

However, I received from her, on one Saturday after noon, a phone call asking to see me in emergency. It has been almost one month since she did not meet me. Doubtless, something important occurred. But what?

When I intended her to ring, I did not want to see the face which was always smiling and consolidating. I lost this feeling of satisfaction when she spoke to me, even if she said nothing important. For me it was pleasure to listen to her voice, to contemplate the eyes which spoke so tenderly... All this is ended and I have to open the door.

She threw herself into my arms by crying and I had the strength to prevent her from embracing me hardly on the face with the stream of tears which flowed of the eyes.

I smelt a feeling of condolence to her nevertheless what spent between us two this last time.

She told me that she passed three days with André in a small hotel in Florence... She believed that he had a certain affection for her.. That he really loved her in his way, that is physically above all. It was exactly what took place with myself: the desire before the love, or maybe without love..

She said : when we returned in Paris, I noticed that he had a bizarre feeling of fault... That he was always in love with you, and that we should not go together in Italy and to make love during three following days.

I answered at once that it was his usual method to manipulate the women: he once asked you to reconcile with me, only to release you from fault and take advantage of you quite freely; and here he is now, he uses the same method by calling his attachment to me to get rid completely of you! It is stupid not to seize the vast of his manipulations; but, as for me, I know him well: he has never loved me. He has never loved you. He never has loved nobody. But he wants to sleep with whatever naive or careless women.

She cried even more hardly, but she seemed convinced of my arguments concerning André. Then she said to me : what we are making now?
I said: we are going to phone him, to say that we discovered
his pitiful game, and that ask him to stop annoying us both… To say that it is enough for us all to continue this comedy which risks to last infinitely.

Then, I said after thinking: listen to me! We are going to play our trick. At first, I will begin to speak the first one, to say to him that I am ready to return to him, as he wished, on the condition of returning never to you. If he said yes, I would say that you are here and you want to confirm that you agree to break with him definitively in my profit and that will arrange us all.

And it is like that what is crossed. We used this strategy to know his reactions and act later to reveal our real intention and to make a fool to him and terminate his manipulations with us .

But in our great surprise, he said very calmly, that he is not very far from our street and he insisted to see us both , because he has many thing to be said to us.

" In less than fifteen minutes, I would be at you " he said .

Now, the fifteen minutes are spent , then one half an hour, then two hours, but he has never come!




The end