To put herself out of her misery, she went to the bathroom. When she saw herself in the mirror, she thought for a moment that she didn’t look too bad: her hairstyle matched her face nicely. This flash of satisfaction was something she both liked and disliked. What was the point? There comes a moment when a woman must choose between her face and her body. Fat had preserved her face, keeping it round, firm, and without wrinkles, but down below, Patricia had become enormous. And to think of all the work she had put in over the past few weeks. She’d been as busy as someone training for the decathlon. If you couldn’t see it in the mirror, it ought at least to be visible on the display screen of the scales. She stepped onto the scales. What? It must be a mistake. The needle must have jammed. Impossible. She had lost only three and a half pounds.
Flying into a rage, she started hitting her body, striking her stomach, arms, and thighs. What was this cellulite doing here? She had never invited it!
The sound of an altercation came from the street. Afraid Albane might be involved, she rushed to the living room window. Two young men wearing tracksuits were having a row with a couple in dinner suits over a parking space, each claiming it as their own. The young people, as agitated as they were foul-mouthed, were yelling, while the posh couple kept asking them to be quiet.
Fearing that violence was about to gain the upper hand, Patricia intervened. “Is there a problem? Do you want me to call the police?”
The society couple looked up, and the two young people turned their anger on her. “The police? What have the police got to do with it? This is our space. We always park here.”
“Parking spaces don’t belong to anybody,” she replied.
“Look, old lady, why don’t you just fuck off and leave us alone? Wrinkled hags like you should be in bed at this time of night.”
“It’s all right, madame,” the posh man said to ease the tension. “We’ll park a little farther on.”
Patricia withdrew and took refuge in her living room. Old lady? That was all she needed. They just had to take one look at her, and they called her old? Fat maybe . . . but old?
She shuddered. So she had grown old! Here was the reason for her unease, this was what she had been feeling all evening. Albane in a miniskirt, Albane made up to the point of being indecent, Albane purring when a man looked at her, Albane transformed into a sex object: Albane had been communicating the fact that she, her mother, had to withdraw, drop out of the race, because she was fit only for the scrap heap.
Her heart started beating faster. She put a hand on her chest. Everything was clear now: even though she and Hippolyte were the same age, he was so attractive that it was possible for Albane and Hippolyte to get together, whereas it was highly unlikely that any male friend of Albane would come on to her, Patricia. Her time had run out.
An image flashed in front of her: the golden light striking the white flowers on the coffin at Séverine’s funeral. Peace. Rest at last.
There was no time to waste.
She rushed to her room, got up on a stool, and rummaged through the top of her wardrobe. There, she found the box she was looking for, took it down, and opened it. In it were several bottles of Veronal pills. They had been there for years. The barbiturate had been prescribed by Dr. Gemayel when she had turned forty, to help her get to sleep; except that Patricia didn’t give two hoots about sleeping at night because she preferred to read. She had bought the pills and put them there, just in case.
It was as if she had fixed an appointment with herself years in advance. If she took an excessive amount of the drug, she would fall asleep and never wake up again. A perfect death, without suffering and without any damage to her body. She wouldn’t inflict on others a terrible sight that would traumatize them. It would be a clean death.
But she mustn’t wait! If you stopped to think about that kind of thing, you were screwed.
She went into the kitchen, took the pills from their packaging, and lined them up carefully on the table. Then she poured a large glass of water and grabbed the first pill.
The doorbell rang.
She hesitated. Should she answer or not? There was never any peace here. Who was it at this time of night? It must be a mistake.
The doorbell rang again.
What if it was the two young guys from the square, coming up to murder her?
Who cares, Patricia? You’re in the process of committing suicide. In a few minutes, you’re going to fall asleep. So why should you care?
She lifted a pill to her tongue.
The doorbell rang again, more steadily and for a longer time.
You can’t even die in peace these days. All right, I’ll deal with it, then carry on.
Silently, she went to the door and looked through the spyhole. She was surprised to see a neighbor, one of those you didn’t see much of, the engineer’s wife, what was her name again?
Just then, she heard a voice say, “Mommy, please open up.”
Albane? Looking more carefully through the distorting lens of the spyhole, she saw an oddly-dressed young girl at the end of the landing . . . Albane?
She opened the door.
Her daughter threw herself into her arms. Diane asked if she could come in with her. In a few words, since Albane had started sobbing again, she explained what had happened.
The following morning, when Patricia saw the kitchen table covered in white pills arranged in rows, she felt ashamed. How could she have been so thoughtless, so irresponsible as to want to leave? Albane was still here, and she really needed her. Imagine if she’d come in here after being violently raped and found your dead body? Shamefacedly realizing the selfishness of suicide, she threw the pills in the trash.
Dr. Gemayel arrived at nine in the morning, after Patricia had left him a voicemail message at dawn, reporting the drama. As soon as he appeared on the landing, dark-skinned, cleanly shaven, dashing, with his phlegmatic Lebanese virility, she wondered if she wasn’t making a mistake by bringing in a man to see her daughter. But she felt calmer when she saw the relieved expression on Albane’s face when he entered her room: Dr. Gemayel was their doctor first and foremost, and only secondly a man.
He was with her for a long time. To him, being a doctor was about more than just medicine, and his activities comprised more than diagnosing and prescribing. He also liked to listen, to understand, to reassure, to get the patient thinking about his or her future. At once a humanist and a scientist, he believed that to provide care was to form a relationship with the person. In his opinion, this bond was as important as pharmaceuticals, and had to be kept up in all circumstances, even if the treatment failed.
At the end of the consultation, he asked to speak to Patricia.
“The injuries are more emotional than physical. Albane must be helped to regain confidence in herself and in other people. At her age, that’s crucial.”
“Don’t worry, I’m here.”
“Your presence is essential, absolutely essential, but not necessarily sufficient. Albane will be too embarrassed to tell you everything.”
“Yes, I know.”
“We have to stop her from withdrawing into herself and seeing sex as violence.”
“I’ll help her.”
“I have no doubt of your good intentions. Forgive this intrusion into your private life, but what’s your situation at the moment?”
“What situation?”
“Men, sex. Are you single?”
“Yes . . . No . . . Actually, I’m in a relationship. We’re considering living together.”
“Does Albane like your future partner?”
“Er . . . yes.”
Patricia closed her eyes, thinking she should have replied, “A bit too much, actually.” As she thought this, she realized that none of this would have happened—Albane’s running away, the rape—if she hadn’t introduced Hippolyte to her daughter. She turned
pale.
Dr. Gemayel was watching her, aware of her conflicting thoughts. He took out his notepad. “I’m going to refer you to a colleague of mine. She’s a trauma expert.” He scribbled her details on a prescription sheet. “Marie-Jeanne Simon. Please call her. In a case such as this, it’s the family as a unit that needs to be treated, not just the person involved. Sometimes, those close to the victim are as affected by the trauma as the actual victim.”
The Bidermann affair made Patricia’s situation even more complicated. When it was revealed in the media that there had been a rape in the Ixelles area of Brussels the previous night, Patricia thought, Why aren’t they mentioning my daughter’s rape? The more attention the case got, the more the hype weighed on her: didn’t they realize that Albane had suffered far worse violence than Zachary Bidermann had inflicted on one of his guests? The conjunction of the two events was a cruel one. Every mention of the case was like a knife through her heart. Crime was everywhere. Inside the apartment, the assault on Albane hovered in the air and was constantly in her thoughts, and then, as soon as she switched on the television or the radio, the assault committed by Biderman would come flooding in as well; outside, the square was monopolized by journalists, TV vans, photographers, and voyeurs. Rape had taken over the world.
In a state of shock, Patricia was losing control of her thoughts. Whenever Albane mentioned her attackers, Patricia would superimpose Zachary Bidermann’s face on those shadowy figures, seeing three of him bending over her daughter’s humiliated body. Whenever she heard the news, she imagined Albane at the Bidermanns’ dramatic party. The boundaries between personal history and collective history were becoming porous, Patricia felt as if the horror of it all was pursuing her; the world was growing dark.
She no longer knew how to deal with Hippolyte. Should she tell him what had happened to Albane—that would mean accepting him once and for all as part of the family’s private life—or keep him at a distance until Albane felt better?
He was hassling her over the phone, wanting to see her. At first, she had managed to make up credible excuses, but Hippolyte had sensed her resistance and asked for an explanation. “Is it because of your daughter?”
“Yes, it’s because of her.”
“Tell me.”
“Soon.”
Patricia felt responsible. Her relationship with Hippolyte had begun like a dream but turned into a nightmare, especially since she couldn’t help making a causal connection between Hippolyte and her daughter’s rape: if Albane hadn’t dressed up like a provocative whore in order to excite him, she would never have met and aroused those three bastards!
Madame Simon took to coming every morning. Patricia would exchange a few words with her, but remained on her guard. Although she had obeyed Dr. Gemayel by consulting her, she felt that the psychiatrist was usurping her role as a mother. Albane shouldn’t be confiding in a stranger, but in her, Patricia! She had carried her in her womb, raised her, educated her, comforted her after the death of her father; when this shrink put the case behind her, she would forget all about it, while Patricia would still be here, taking care of Albane until her dying breath. That was unfair! Besides, what was this woman hearing from her daughter’s lips? Every time she left the girl’s bedroom, Patricia would give her a sideways glance, frantic at the thought that she might have just been told about her mistakes or faults; with each passing day, this intruder must be coming to the conclusion that most of the daughter’s problems came from the mother.
When Madame Simon suggested they talk, Patricia struggled with the impulse to run away. She couldn’t have felt more humiliated if she’d been handcuffed.
Madame Simon sat across from her. “Albane is intelligent and brave.”
You don’t need an advanced diploma to work that one out, Patricia thought defensively.
“She’ll get back on track. You’re here for her, and that’s good, I congratulate you, but, in the present circumstances, she’s suffering a lot from the absence of a father.”
Does she think I’m going to resurrect him? Did she study medicine or did I?
“It might be good if there were a male figure taking part in the process of recovery. I don’t think she’ll be able to heal fully in an all-female household. What she needs is the presence of a kind man, a figure that would counterbalance the aggressive ones. Don’t you have a partner?”
“I . . . I have a boyfriend,” Patricia stammered, “but we don’t live together.”
“Do you trust him?”
“Yes.”
“Has he behaved in an ambiguous way toward your daughter?”
“No, never. I have no doubt on that point.”
“What do you have doubts about?”
Here we go, the viper’s sizing me up, as if I were her prey.
“I doubt I can start a new life with him.”
“Don’t you love him enough?”
“Oh, yes, I do!”
“What about him?”
“The same, I think.”
“What is it, then?”
“I don’t know how beneficial it would be to start a new life, to upset the current balance.”
“Allow me to express a few doubts concerning the ‘current balance.’ You live alone, almost like a recluse, with a daughter who until recently thought you had given up on sex. It may be a cocoon, but it’s an unhealthy, regressive, unrealistic cocoon. For Albane, having a happy mother who’s pleased to be with her partner would be excellent medicine. Besides, she needs a father figure to whom she can show affection.”
Patricia frowned: should she tell this psychiatrist that Albane had tried to seduce Hippolyte? No, that would be disloyal.
“See you tomorrow, madame.”
The psychiatrist got up and left.
Is that all?
Disapproving in her heart of hearts, Patricia obeyed the prescription. She arranged to meet Hippolyte in their usual café in the Marolles and told him what had happened to Albane.
As she told the painful story, Patricia felt every detail of the rape in her flesh and her soul. She choked, struggled, cried, screamed. Upset, Hippolyte had to cradle her in his arms for a long time before she pulled herself together.
When she returned home that afternoon, she announced to Albane that Hippolyte would be joining them that evening.
“Good,” Albane muttered, and went back to her room.
Patricia was terrified by this acquiescence. She was so used to Albane being morose that her amiability aroused her suspicion. Would the horror start all over again?
Still, Albane showed up to the second meal with Hippolyte dressed plainly, in fact, even more modestly than usual. She behaved pleasantly, didn’t do anything untoward, and Hippolyte genuinely enjoyed getting to know her and talking with her.
Even so, Patricia couldn’t stop worrying. Every time she went to the kitchen to clear a dish or bring in the next one, she would stop once she was out of sight and listen to make sure that the tone or the subject of the conversation hadn’t changed.
At ten o’clock, Albane said goodnight to the two adults and retired to her room. Patricia and Hippolyte chatted quietly, then Hippolyte said, “I can stay tonight, if you like. Germain has offered to look after Isis.”
Patricia was surprised to hear mention of Isis. Accustomed to meeting Hippolyte on his own, she often forgot that he was raising a daughter, so seldom did he speak of her. In any case, he never mentioned her as a problem. Men and women really are different. His daughter isn’t a major issue in his life. Hippolyte’s casual attitude when it came to Isis irritated her so much, she had to stop herself at the last moment from calling him an unfit father.
He came and put his arms around her; she finally stopped thinking, and allowed herself to be led to the bedroom.
When, after several kisses and slow caresses, he gently tried to undress her, she panicke
d and stopped him. “I can’t.”
“Don’t you want to?”
“I can’t!”
He looked at her uncomprehendingly
She tried to explain. “It’s because of . . . ”
“Because of Albane?”
“Because of Albane.”
“Because she’s here?”
“That’s right. I’m not used to it.”
“Don’t you think you should be getting used to it?”
Patricia shuddered even more. Searching for a solution, she improvised. “You’re right, we should be getting used to it . . . So I suggest you prove that you’re ready to share your life with mine.”
“Great.”
“Let’s spend the night together and not make love.”
He looked at her for a long time, then, his face lit up with affection, he agreed enthusiastically.
Patricia also pretended to be happy. It didn’t matter that Albane was sleeping down the corridor. The truth was, she didn’t feel like sex. After what her daughter had been through, she found the thought of a man, even Hippolyte, intruding on her body intolerable. Yes, tonight she hated men, fornication, that torture passed off as sensuality, and couldn’t fathom how she could ever have enjoyed it.
She woke in the morning to realize that Hippolyte was already up and that there was an appetizing smell of toast in the apartment.
She went to the kitchen and stopped halfway: there was laughter coming from there, frivolous, conspiratorial giggling that expressed the happiness of being together rather than the reaction to a joke.
Albane and Hippolyte had their backs to her, but she could see them perfectly well. They were having coffee. Their laid-back manner, their casualness, their relaxed body language had the kind of informality that usually develops after months of acquaintance. She saw Hippolyte raise his hand to Albane’s cheek and almost tenderly wipe away a crumb.
“Out!” she screamed.
They both jumped.
“Out!”
They turned to see Patricia’s face twisted in anger.
The Carousel of Desire Page 47