Adèle chokes back a cry and rushes out of the house but there is no longer any way she can truly escape, is there? She heads swiftly toward the forest and as she walks along, her heart and mind are silently swimming toward that cocooned spot where Melody has been sleeping for years.
“Will it soon be Christmas, maman?”
“Yes, ma chérie, it’ll soon be Christmas. I think Papa plans to fetch the Christmas tree on Saturday.”
“Can I go with him this year?”
“Yes, I’m sure you can. You’re big enough now.”
“Will you come with us?”
“Well, I work on Saturdays … but, yes, why not? I’ll fix it, don’t worry.”
“So it’ll be all three of us, like before?”
“Yes, like before. In the evening we’ll decorate the tree with angels and glass balls.”
“Will we make cookies?”
“Yes, big cookies and heart-shaped shortbread. Look, we’re almost there.”
The world is surely studded with countless such conversations, shining like fireflies in the night. Should we not capture them in glass jars and place them on windowsills, so as to enjoy their light and hearken to their murmuring?
Laura is walking with her mother along a marked trail through the forest. It is cold but Anita was right not to postpone this little expedition, promised for such a long time. Adèle won’t mind her not having called at the house to pick her up. When Laura had asked her if the two of them could go to the lake together, just us two, Maman, Anita could not refuse. That evening she will speak to Adèle, she will really try to tell her. This is her promise for the day, her New Year’s resolution. And whatever Adèle’s reaction and her decision, she will accept it. She will take things in hand again in the house, will stop working on Wednesdays and only exceptionally on the weekends, and will no longer rely on Adèle for everything. Anita thinks back nostalgically to Laura’s first couple of years when just the two of them were together from dawn until dusk. That was good, too, wasn’t it?
The sky is blue now, the path open, the cold biting. They encounter several walkers, well wrapped up like them, hi there, have a good walk. The dense light bears down heavily upon them, emphasizes the crunch of their shoes, accentuates the sweet green scent of the pine trees, ices up the fern fronds even more. Anita feels as if she were moving through one of those landscapes filmed with a special filter that reduces darkness, emphasizes contours, and polarizes colors. It is a truly beautiful winter’s day.
They turn off to the right. The lake is there, bigger and more somber than they had pictured it. Mother and daughter share the same memory at that moment, a stretch of bright water in which green foliage is reflected, great flat stones at the water’s edge, a wooden jetty bleached by the sun, and a laughing man diving in from it.
In the middle of the dark, waterlogged jetty stands a woman they recognize immediately. At her feet a big black bag. Each reacts differently. Anita gasps for breath. Laura utters a cry of surprise.
“Adèle!”
Adèle turns, not, as ever, with her arms open ready to enfold Laura, but with her arms tightly folded, clutching a gray binder and some white sheets of paper. Laura lets go of her mother’s hand, walks toward the jetty.
“Have you seen the swans, Adèle? Are they there?”
“Laura!”
Anita’s intention had been to keep her daughter at her side, calling out to her calmly, but what emerges from her throat is an authoritarian shout. Laura stops, almost slipping over, and looks back at her mother, surprised.
“Stop there, Laura.”
“But I want to see the swans, maman.”
“Stop there, I tell you!”
Anita walks up to the water’s edge. In summer there are masses of yellow flags at this very spot. She stares at Adèle and the gray binder that she recognizes, the one she adds to almost every day, her prop, her dictionary, her memory, her box of ideas, her intimate journal. Adèle’s neck, chin, and mouth are hidden by white sheets of paper, a sight that sends an icy chill through Anita’s body. She does not pause to wonder how Adèle has discovered her manuscript and her binder. She does not pause to wonder why she is here on the jetty. She does not pause to wonder whether Adèle has read them. All she wants is to get them back. Now.
“What’s happening, maman? I’m frightened.”
Anita places a foot on the jetty. Adèle has not stirred, it looks as if she has not noticed Anita, her eyes are only on Laura. She wants to imprint on her memory the image of this child in a pale-pink coat, wearing mouse-gray gloves with little white stars on them, camel-colored fur boots, the soft white scarf, her eyes, her nose, her mouth, the serious, terrified expression visible in her at this moment, the curls straying from beneath her cap. In her now are all the games, all the lovely stories, all the wonder, all the promises, all the questions she asked to try to understand life.
“What are you doing there, Adèle?”
Anita’s voice is sharp, full of anger, but that does not seem to affect Adèle, who goes on looking at Laura.
“Adèle. Give me that binder. Give me that manuscript.”
“No, Anita. It’s not yours. And where’s the rest of it?”
Adèle’s voice is soft as it has always been. When singing, when telling her life story, when taking orders at the Bar Tropical. A monotonous voice that Anita suddenly finds intolerable and lacking in emotion.
“The rest of what? Look, let me explain. You don’t know what it is. It’s a work of fiction. It’s a novel.”
“But the names are here. All I told you’s here. So, where’s the rest of the story?”
“I haven’t written the rest yet! I wanted to talk to you about it, Adèle, I promise you I was going to do it. Tonight, actually! Give it back to me, please, Adèle. GIVE ME BACK MY THINGS!”
Adèle backs away, shaking her head, and Anita begins shouting.
“You know nothing about it, Adèle! You’ve never read a book in your life. You don’t know what it is. Who do you think you are? You don’t exist. You’ve got no papers. No family. You’re nothing!”
Anita stops, stunned by the viciousness of her own words. Her body is leaning forward, her fists are clenched, as if she were preparing to strike Adèle. She tries to calm down, she takes deep breaths, summoning up positive thoughts, happy memories, she closes her eyes. Hush, hush, remember, Anita, only yesterday you still loved her, this woman, you wanted her to stay in your house forever, to look after your child, so that you can go out into the world and write articles about forgotten people, the poor, the unhappy, the exploited, and dine out off your tales of their world. Remember, you liked to hear her singing to your daughter the very nursery rhymes that your mother used to sing to you, but that you say you’ve forgotten, remember how you love her coconut cakes, her banana doughnuts, her curried fish, her green papaya salad; remember how she calmly told you her personal story because you questioned her, because you asked her for details; you told her, you must talk, Adèle, you must emerge from your mourning; you told her you’re in a deep depression and only words can help you emerge from that. Remember how every morning you promised you would tell her everything and accept her reaction. Remember your daily cowardice.
The two women are not so very far apart. They both grew up under the same tropical sun, they like the same food, the same music, they speak the same language, they have lived beside the sea but have never learned to swim, they could have been sisters. Anita opens her eyes and it is suddenly Melody that she sees, barefoot, her body convulsed with trembling, her mouth emitting a strange gurgling sound. Anita’s legs give way, she crouches on the jetty, desperate, exhausted. That voice in her head, the one that is forever in search of the telling detail, the color, the brand, the word, the thing out of place, the tic, the odd one out, the dust motes in the light, the random flow of tears according to the grain of the skin, the voice that had on one occasion dredged up from the depths of her memory a green plastic apple used for storing balls
of cotton, that same voice now said: Adèle stood barefoot on the slippery jetty, she did not know why she was there but she knew she had arrived at the end of her road.
Anita begins weeping because she is suddenly so tired and so appallingly shocked to have heard herself saying and thinking such things—you never know what you are capable of, how many times has this been said to her and only now, close to the age of forty, has she plumbed the depths of her selfish and imperfect heart. Anita weeps with relief too, all right, let it end now, let her take the binder, take the manuscript, and go.
At this moment, now that everything has gone quiet, another way still remains for each of them, there is still another door they can open. They can separate here, as calmly as they had met. One of them can take her daughter’s hand and go home to her wooden house. The other can disappear once more, survive or not.
Suddenly.
“Adèle, give maman back her things. That’s her work. You’re being wicked!”
Almost before Anita has time to turn round, Laura rushes forward. At the very same moment, or just a fraction earlier, a shout is heard from among the trees.
Adam follows Adèle at a good distance behind her. She plunges into the forest, not once looking back, with a sure tread. When she reaches the lake she takes off her shoes to walk onto the jetty. Adèle takes something from her bag and moves into the middle of the jetty. She sits down cross-legged with her back to him and bows her head over what she has taken out of her bag. Is it a book? Is it a photograph? After several minutes Adam retreats a little into the woodland, locates a fallen tree, and sits down on it. From time to time he stands up to check that she is still seated there, her head bowed forward. Perhaps she has finally relaxed a little.
There in the icebound forest, he slowly recovers his spirits, at last he can breathe. This is what he will do: watch out to ensure nothing happens to Adèle, she seemed very strange just now, her eyes dilated, the pupil had covered up the iris. Thinking about this, he unties his shoelaces, one never knows … What possessed him to show her those paintings like that? When she has finished here (reading, looking, contemplating) he will take her back to the house, will speak calmly to her and make her understand that what happened this morning (her body, so broad, so soft, so all embracing, her scent of fresh soap) will not be repeated. He will tell her she is safe here, that the choice is hers, she can leave, she can stay. Yes, that’s a good beginning. In an hour’s time everything can be as it was. He can pick up the threads of his life, get a grip on himself, for heaven’s sake! Telephone David Schtourm to apologize, telephone Imran to say something other than platitudes, and arrange to spend the New Year’s weekend away somewhere (Barcelona, for instance) instead of staying at home. Wood, the fire, the family, hot chocolate, and the Christmas tree scenting the evening are no longer enough, he must pull himself together. Anita is right, he is on the brink of turning into an old stick-in-the-mud. He thinks about that Christmas tree with its strips from Coca-Cola cans and smiles. Tomorrow he will shave off his ridiculous beard.
Suddenly he hears voices and his heart misses a beat.
“But what if the swans aren’t there, maman?”
“We’ll come back another day. But I’m sure they will be. They come every year, you know.”
Anita and Laura are quite close to him, walking past him, hand in hand, and for several seconds he has a vision of them as nymphs slipping between the trees, destined to live for a long time and to love him forever.
Later on when Adam is in his cell, with long blank hours stretching out ahead of him, he will ask himself why he remained hidden like a thief, instead of showing himself to them.
Adam feels as if his head is about to explode. Of course, the swans! Adèle knew as well, is that why she has come here? Is she thinking of telling Anita everything? Adam would like to rewind time, run in the other direction, return to the house, yes, sit down at the kitchen table, act as if nothing had happened, as if he knew nothing. Yes, no, yes, no, he becomes as agitated as a caged lion there among the trees, which barely a few moments ago had seemed to offer him some kind of salvation. He feels stupid, he has failed on all counts, he is nothing but a selfish, flawed bastard. He bends down to tie up his shoelaces and that is when he hears the shouting.
Anita and Adèle are on the jetty and he recognizes the gray binder in Adèle’s hands, the famous gray binder that always stays at the house, and that no one is allowed to touch. Laura is about to scramble onto the jetty as well, a little pink figure. Deep inside him a wild and primitive awareness senses what is about to happen. This terrible instinct beats a path up to his mouth and brings out a feral but perfectly useless howl that does not stop Laura and does not warn Anita but causes Adèle to retreat to the end of the jetty.
It takes several seconds.
Laura has a child’s impulsiveness, she does not have the patience to wait, she does not understand everything, she has seen her mother’s tears, she has heard the argument. She has recognized the binder (so many times her mother has said to her, Don’t touch that! That’s my work). At this moment what Laura wants is to get it back, to drive away Adèle, who is making her maman cry, and win praise for this good deed. She believes she can achieve this the way she believes she can climb onto the wisteria arbor without falling, or that she could fly if she had wings attached to her back. Deep down inside her she simply wants Adèle to go away for a while, a little while, so that things might be just as they were before, when her parents belonged only to her and she belonged only to her parents. She rushes forward. She is eight.
Adèle draws back, closes her eyes, and opens her arms, confronted by the little girl in pink hurtling toward her. The binder falls, the sheets of paper cascade like angels’ wings. All it takes to determine her fate is the thrusting gesture of an angry child’s little hand. She throws up her arms as if heading for death via a back somersault. It is much easier than she had imagined. Her body hits the water and she slips slowly into this dense cold world, just as she has so many times pictured the white Fiat slipping down the cliff. She no longer thinks of anything and, as Anita had so truthfully said, she is nothing, she does not exist.
When Adèle falls into the water, Laura utters a cry and takes a step sideways to regain her balance (she can distinctly hear her judo teacher’s voice: legs apart, knees bent!) but her foot slips on a sheet of paper, her ankle twists, she skids, her head hits a post but she feels no pain. The little figure tumbles over into the lake.
As for Anita, just before plunging into the water herself, and even though she has seen everything, and even though she, too, rushes in with a shout, and even though she cannot hear Adam yelling, for in truth no sounds exist anymore, she makes this unforgivable gesture, this downward lunge with an outstretched arm, as if to retrieve something and as she jumps into the water her fist is already grasping her gray binder. Long afterward, when the newspapers praise her courage and her maternal impulse to save her daughter from drowning, even though she herself cannot swim, she will think about that gray binder in her hand and, if there were nothing else to send her straight to hell, her place there would be well earned.
Adam is howling and running at the same time. Is this the perpetual stride that marathon runners speak of, this dissociation between body and mind? His body is an implacable machine but his head is on the point of exploding with distress: whom to save first, whom to search for first, his wife or his daughter? He is not thinking of Adèle, at this moment she no longer exists. The air grows denser, the light explodes in red showers, he is howling like an animal. Yet once he sets foot on the jetty and dives from it as he has done so many times, his mind and body are fused into a fierce and speedy ball of energy. If there is to be only one it will be Laura.
A kind of truth
ADAM IS SITTING ON A METAL CHAIR clutching a mug of burning-hot coffee in his hands. He is calm, he is ready. He has learned the story by heart. Now it is his story. The police officer, who has a lean face, without warmth but with no malic
e, looks at him. There is an extremely orderly desk between them. A laptop computer, a spiral-bound notebook, a jar of pencils, a roll of Scotch tape, a stapler, a ruler, and a little ebony elephant that Adam finds exquisite.
“Tell me again what happened back there.”
“I’ve already told you several times. I’ve told your colleague, I’ve told the emergency services.”
“I know. But I need to hear the story again.”
Did he emphasize the s in the word story? Adam must not let himself be distracted. Adam must not waver.
“We went to the lake to see the swans.”
“There are swans on the lake?”
“Yes. Last year we saw a whole family. There were nearly ten of them. My daughter wanted to see them again.”
“Was it normal for Adèle, that is to say the woman who called herself Adèle, to go with you like that on family outings?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“She was one of the family.”
“And you’d been sleeping with her.”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Six months. Maybe longer.”
At the hospital when Laura was in intensive care Adam and Anita had again become what they had been one day long ago on a green sofa: two minds animated by a single desire, the same wish to be brave, to give the best of themselves. They had decided to tell a story in which their eight-year-old daughter would play no part, in which they would not have to explain the complex nature of their relationship with Adèle. No novel, no paintings. Just a humdrum tale of infidelity that ended badly and, according to Alexandre, their lawyer friend, who went to see them before they were questioned by the police, things like that happen much more often than you’d think.
Waiting for Tomorrow Page 13