Lullaby

by Leïla Slimani

  *

  She goes to bed. Her heart is pounding so hard in her chest that she finds it hard to breathe. She tries to sleep and then, unable to bear it any longer, she calls Paul and in tears tells him this story of the chicken. He thinks she’s overreacting. It’s like the script of a bad horror film, he laughs. ‘Surely you’re not going to get into a state like this because of a chicken?’ He tries to make her laugh, to make her question the gravity of the situation. Myriam hangs up on him. He tries to call her back but she doesn’t answer.

  *

  Her insomnia is haunted by accusatory thoughts and then by guilty thoughts. She starts by hurling abuse at Louise. Then she thinks that the nanny must be mad. Maybe dangerous. That she nurses a sordid hatred for her employers, an appetite for vengeance. Myriam blames herself for not having guessed at the violence of which Louise is capable. She had already noticed that the nanny gets angry about this kind of thing. Once, Mila lost a cardigan at school and Louise threw a fit about it. Every day she talked to Myriam about that blue cardigan. She swore she would find it; she harassed the teacher, the caretaker, the dinner ladies. One Monday morning she saw Myriam dressing Mila. The little girl was wearing the blue cardigan.

  ‘You found it?’ the nanny asked, looking ecstatic.

  ‘No, but I bought another one.’

  Louise became uncontrollably angry. ‘I can’t believe I tried so desperately to find it. And what does that mean? You get robbed, you don’t take care of your things, but it doesn’t matter because Mama will buy Mila a new cardigan?’

  And then Myriam turns these accusations against herself. It’s my fault, she thinks. I went too far. It was her way of telling me that I was wasteful, frivolous, casual. Louise must have been offended that I threw away that chicken, when I know that she has money problems. Instead of helping her, I humiliated her.

  She gets up at dawn, feeling as if she’s hardly slept. When she gets out of bed, she immediately sees that the kitchen light is on. She comes out of her bedroom and sees Louise, sitting in front of the little window that overlooks the courtyard. The nanny is holding her cup of tea – the cup that Myriam bought her for her birthday – in both hands. Her face floats in a cloud of steam. Louise looks like a little old lady, like a ghost trembling in the pale morning. Her hair and her skin are drained of all colour. Myriam has the impression that Louise always wears the same clothes nowadays. She feels suddenly sickened by that blue blouse with its Peter Pan collar. She wishes she didn’t have to speak to her. She wishes she could make her disappear from her life, with no effort, with a snap of the fingers or a blink of the eyes. But Louise is there; she smiles at her.

  In her thin voice, she asks: ‘Shall I make you a coffee? You look tired.’

  Myriam reaches out and takes the hot cup.

  She thinks about the long day that awaits her; she has to defend a man in court. In her kitchen, face-to-face with Louise, she considers the irony of the situation. She, Myriam Massé – whose pugnacity everyone admires; whose courage when confronting her adversaries Pascal always praises – is terrified by this little blonde woman.

  *

  Some teenagers dream of movie sets, football pitches, concert halls packed with fans. Myriam always dreamed of courtrooms. Even as a student, she tried to go as often as she could to watch trials. Her mother didn’t understand how anyone could be so passionate about sordid accounts of rapes, about precise, deadpan descriptions of seedy murders or cases of incest. Myriam was preparing for the Bar exam when the trial of the serial killer Michel Fourniret began. She followed the case closely. She’d rented a room in the centre of Charleville-Mézières and every day she would join the group of housewives who had come to observe the monster. Outside the courthouse an immense tent had been put up, where the crowd could watch the trial broadcast live on a giant screen. She stood slightly apart from the others. She didn’t speak to them. She felt uneasy when these red-faced, short-haired women with their close-cut fingernails would greet the van containing the accused with screamed insults and gobs of spit. Myriam, so full of her principles, so rigid sometimes, was fascinated by that spectacle of open hate, by those calls for vengeance.

  Myriam takes the metro and reaches the courthouse early. She smokes a cigarette, her fingertips holding the red string that encircles her huge dossier. For more than a month Myriam has been helping Pascal prepare for this trial. The defendant, a twenty-four-year-old man, is accused of committing a hate crime – along with three accomplices – on two Sri Lankan men. Under the influence of alcohol and cocaine, they beat up the two illegal immigrants, who were employed as cooks. They hit them again and again, hit them until one of the men died, hit them until they realised they had got the wrong men; that they had got their darkies mixed up. They weren’t able to explain why. They weren’t able to deny the charge either, as they’d been caught in the act by surveillance cameras.

  During the first meeting, the man told his lawyers his life story, an account littered with obvious lies and exaggerations. On the threshold of life imprisonment, he tried to charm Myriam. She did all she could to keep a ‘good distance’. That was the expression that Pascal always used; the basis, he said, of a successful case. She sought to disentangle truth from falsehood, methodically, with the evidence to back her up. In her teacher’s voice, choosing simple but sharp words, she explained that lying was a poor defence technique and that he had nothing to lose now by telling the truth.

  For the trial, she bought the young man a new shirt and advised him not to tell his sick jokes, and to wipe that smug smirk off his face. ‘We have to prove that you, too, are a victim.’

  Myriam manages to concentrate, and the work allows her to forget her night of horror. She questions the two experts who stand in the dock to talk about her client’s psychological profile. One of the victims gives evidence, with the aid of a translator. The testimony is laborious but the public’s emotion is palpable. The accused keeps his eyes lowered, his face impassive.

  *

  During a pause in proceedings, while Pascal is on the telephone, Myriam sits in a corridor, staring into space, seized with a sudden panic. She was probably too high-handed in the way she dealt with that issue of Louise’s debts. Out of discretion or indifference, she didn’t look at the letter from the tax office in much detail. She should have kept the documents, she thinks. Dozens of times she asked Louise to bring them to her. To start with, Louise said she had forgotten them, that she’d think about it tomorrow, she promised. Myriam tried to find out more. She questioned her about Jacques, about those debts that seemed to go back years. She asked her if Stéphanie was aware of her difficulties. But these questions, asked in a gentle, understanding voice, elicited nothing from Louise but an impenetrable silence. It’s modesty, Myriam thought. A way of maintaining the frontier between our two worlds. So she gave up trying to help her. She had the awful feeling that her questions were like the lashes of a whip on Louise’s fragile body, that body which for the previous few days had seemed to be turning pale, withering, fading away. In this dark corridor, filled by a nagging murmur of voices, Myriam feels bereft, prey to a deep and heavy exhaustion.

  This morning Paul called her back. He was gentle and conciliatory. He apologised for having reacted so stupidly. For not having taken her seriously. ‘We’ll do what you want,’ he told her. ‘In these circumstances, we can’t keep her.’ And, pragmatic, he added: ‘We’ll wait for the summer. We’ll go on holiday, and when we get back we’ll make it clear to her that we don’t really need her any more.’

  Myriam replied in a hollow voice, without conviction. She thinks again of how thrilled the children were when they saw the nanny again after she had been ill for a few days. Of the sad look that Louise had given her. Of her moonlike face. She hears again her hazy and slightly ludicrous excuses, her shame at having failed in her duty. ‘It won’t happen again,’ she said. ‘I promise.’

  Of course, all she has to do is put an end to it. But Louise has the keys to their apa
rtment; she knows everything; she has embedded herself so deeply in their lives that it now seems impossible to remove her. They will drive her away and she’ll come back. They’ll say their goodbyes and she’ll knock at the door, she’ll come in anyway; she’ll threaten them, like a wounded lover.

  Stéphanie

  Stéphanie was very lucky. When she started secondary school, Mrs Perrin – Louise’s employer – offered to enrol the young girl in a Parisian school, one with a much better reputation than the school in Bobigny she was due to attend. The woman had wanted to do a good deed for poor Louise, who worked so hard and was so deserving.

  But Stéphanie did not repay this act of generosity. The troubles began only a few weeks after the start of the school year. She disturbed the class. She couldn’t stop laughing, throwing objects across the classroom, swearing at her teachers. The other pupils found her simultaneously funny and tiresome. She hid from Louise the notes in her parent–teacher contact book, the warnings, the meetings with the headmaster. She started bunking off and smoking joints in the morning, lying on a bench in a little park in the fifteenth arrondissement.

  One evening Mrs Perrin summoned the nanny to tell her how disappointed she was. She felt betrayed. Because of Louise, she had been humiliated. She had lost face with the headmaster, whom she had spent so long persuading and who had been doing her a favour by accepting Stéphanie. A week later Stéphanie was summoned to the disciplinary council, which Louise was also expected to attend. ‘It’s like a court,’ her boss explained coldly. ‘You will have to defend her.’

  *

  At 3 p.m., Louise and her daughter entered a round, poorly heated room with large windows made of green and blue glass that spread a churchlike light. A dozen people – teachers, counsellors, parent–teacher representatives – were sitting around a large wooden table. They all spoke in turn. ‘Stéphanie is a misfit, undisciplined and rude.’ ‘She’s not a bad girl,’ someone added. ‘But once she gets started, there’s no reasoning with her.’ They are surprised that Louise never reacted, given the scale of this problem. That she didn’t respond to the teachers’ requests for meetings. They had called her on her mobile. They had even left messages, but she never called them back.

  Louise begged them to give her daughter another chance. She explained, in tears, how well she took care of her children; how she punished them when they didn’t listen. How she didn’t allow them to watch television while doing their homework. She said she had strong principles and a great deal of experience in the education of children. Mrs Perrin had warned her: this was a trial, and she was the one being judged. Her, the bad mother.

  Around the large wooden table, in this freezing room where they all kept their coats on, the teachers tilted their heads sideways. They repeated: ‘We are not questioning your efforts, madam. We are certain that you are doing your best.’

  A French teacher – a slim, gentle woman – asked her: ‘How many brothers and sisters does Stéphanie have?’

  ‘She doesn’t have any,’ replied Louise.

  ‘But you were talking about your children, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, the children I look after. The ones who stay with me every day. And believe me, my boss is very pleased with the education that I give her children.’

  *

  They asked her to leave the room so they could deliberate. Louise stood up and smiled at them in a way that she imagined made her look like a woman of the world. In the school corridor, opposite the basketball court, Stéphanie kept laughing idiotically. She was too fat, too tall, and she looked ridiculous with that ponytail on the top of her head. She was wearing printed leggings that made her thighs look enormous. She did not seem intimidated by the formal nature of this meeting, merely bored. She wasn’t afraid; on the contrary, she kept smiling knowingly, as if these teachers in their nerdy mohair jumpers and their old-lady scarves were just bad actors.

  As soon as she left the meeting room, her good mood returned, along with her dunce’s swagger. In the corridor she collared some friends who were coming out of class. She jumped up and down and whispered secrets in the ear of a shy girl who suppressed a laugh. Louise wanted to slap her, to shake her as violently as she could. She wished she could make her understand how humiliating and exhausting it was bringing up a daughter like her. She wished she could rub Stéphanie’s nose in her sweat and her anxieties, could wipe that stupid, carefree smile off her face. She wanted to rip apart what remained of her childhood.

  In that noisy corridor, Louise forced herself not to tremble. She gradually reduced Stéphanie to silence by tightening her fingers’ grip around her daughter’s chubby arm.

  ‘You can come back in.’

  The headmaster poked his head through the doorway and beckoned them to return to their seats. The deliberation had taken only ten minutes, but Louise didn’t realise that was a bad sign.

  Once the mother and daughter had sat down again, the headmaster began to speak. Stéphanie, he explained, was a disruptive element that all of them had tried and failed to control. They had used every educational method they knew, but nothing had worked. They had exhausted every possibility. They had a responsibility and they simply could not allow her to take an entire class hostage. ‘Perhaps,’ he added, ‘Stéphanie would be more comfortable in a neighbourhood closer to home. In an environment more suited to her, where she would have more points of reference. You understand?’

  This was March. It still felt like winter. It seemed as if the cold weather would never end. ‘If you need help with the administrative aspects, there are people for that,’ the careers adviser reassured her. Louise did not understand. Stéphanie was expelled.

  On the bus home, Louise stayed silent. Stéphanie giggled; she looked through the window, earbuds stuck in her ears. They walked up the grey street that led to Jacques’s house. They passed the market and Stéphanie slowed down to look at the stalls. Louise felt a surge of hate for her; for her offhand reaction, her adolescent selfishness. She grabbed her by the sleeve and dragged her away with incredible strength and abruptness. Anger filled her, an anger that grew ever darker and more heated. She wanted to dig her nails into her daughter’s soft skin.

  She opened the small front door. Barely had she closed it behind them than she started showering Stéphanie with blows. She hit her on the back to start with, heavy punches that threw her daughter to the floor. The teenager curled up in a ball and cried out. Louise kept hitting her. She summoned all her colossal strength. Again and again her tiny hands slapped Stéphanie’s face. She tore her hair and pulled apart the girl’s arms, uncovering her head. She hit her in the eyes. She insulted her. She scratched her until she bled. When Stéphanie didn’t move any more, Louise spat in her face.

  Jacques heard the noise and he went up to the window. He watched Louise punishing her daughter but made no attempt to separate them.

  The silences and misunderstandings have infected everything. In the apartment, the atmosphere grows heavier. Myriam tries not to let the children perceive it, but she is more distant with Louise. She speaks to her in a clipped voice, giving her precise instructions. She follows Paul’s advice, which she repeats to herself: ‘She’s our employee, not our friend.’

  They no longer drink tea together in the kitchen, Myriam sitting at the table and Louise leaning on the countertop. Myriam no longer pays her compliments: ‘Louise, you’re an angel’ or ‘You’re the best nanny in the world.’ She no longer offers, on Friday nights, to share a bottle of rosé, forgotten at the back of the fridge. ‘The children are watching a video. Why don’t we have some fun too?’ Myriam used to say. Now, when one of them opens the door, the other closes it behind her. They are hardly ever in the same room any more, the two of them avoiding each other’s presence in a perfectly synced choreography.

  Then spring comes, dazzling and sudden. The days grow longer and the first buds brighten the trees. The good weather sweeps away their winter habits; Louise takes the children outside, to parks. One evening s
he asks Myriam if she can finish earlier. ‘I have a date,’ she explains, her voice trembling slightly.

  She meets Hervé in the neighbourhood where he works. Together they go to the cinema. Hervé would rather have gone for a drink on the terrace of a café, but Louise insisted. And she likes the film so much that they go back to see it again the following week. Next to her in the darkness, Hervé dozes discreetly.

  In the end she agrees to have a drink with him on a terrace, outside a bar on one of the Grands Boulevards. Hervé is a happy man, she thinks. He smiles as he talks about his plans. The holidays they could take together in the Vosges. They would go skinny-dipping in the lakes; they would sleep in a mountain chalet belonging to a man he knows. And they would listen to music all the time. He would play her his record collection and he is sure that, very soon, she wouldn’t be able to live without music. Hervé is ready to retire and he can’t imagine enjoying those years of rest and relaxation on his own. His marriage ended in divorce fifteen years ago. He has no children and solitude weighs heavily on him.

  Hervé tried every ploy in the book before Louise finally agreed, one evening, to go home with him. He waits for her at the Paradis, the café opposite the Massés’ apartment building. They take the metro together and Hervé puts his red-skinned hand on Louise’s knee. As she listens to him, her eyes are fixed on that hand, that man’s hand which settles, starts to move, wants more. That discreet hand which tries to hide its intentions.