by Marie Ndiaye
I start off again down the warm, mild street, terrified that at any moment I’ll hear footsteps behind me, that a gnarled but still vigorous hand will land on my shoulder and, in that harsh, jagged accent—in my own language or another I tried hard to forget but which I’ll understand all the same—the old woman will say, “Is that you, Nadia? How fat you are!”
And how will I answer? Feign surprise, deny all knowledge of Nadia, using the slightly sharp, racing voice I can so easily adopt, and a few high-flown, precious words this illiterate old woman won’t understand, which will drive her back as efficiently as a bullet to the chest?
But this is ridiculous, I tell myself, that can’t be her, it can’t be my mother.
Come dance with the woman who’s all alone,
Fragile thing, I’ll go and dance,
God stands over all!
From the moment they came to Bordeaux, my parents never left Les Aubiers projects, where my father worked as a groundskeeper, two people perfectly united in their fearfulness, slinking through the streets as if they were sought for some terrible crime, in everything they did acting as if they’d done something wrong—could those cowering people, who could have been accused of any misdeed without so much as a thought to defending themselves (and they would have helpfully held out their wrists for the handcuffs, apologizing for being a bother), could they really be here, so far from home, serenely singing My little golden bag? And singing it for whom, for what little ears, in what little head will those words take root forever, words I wrongly thought had slipped from my memory: Little black hen, come dance to the balafon?
It’s ridiculous, I tell myself, it’s ridiculous.
No hurried footsteps have come up behind me, no hand has snagged my shoulder. But the terror is still in me, physically materializing as an urgent need to empty my bowels.
“But where, for pity’s sake, where?” I can’t help murmuring aloud.
I hurry onward with clenched little steps, fearing catastrophe.
Go back to the house of the little golden bag, beg them to let you use the toilet, and if your aged mother really is there, she surely won’t turn you away…
The street leads to the seafront avenue, where it ends. The hot, dry wind blows skin-lashing, eye-stinging sand through the air.
Desperate, about to give in (and in my exhaustion almost yearning for the unstoppable warm spurt to begin), I sprint into a bar on the street corner. And the tears in my eyes are almost tears of gratitude when a moment later I find myself sitting in the privacy of the bathroom, repaid, respectable again.
I hear a quiet hum of men’s voices from the bar. Some of them stand out now and then, a higher pitch, a quick laugh, an exclamation. And among them… Still perched on the toilet seat, I lean toward the door. Someone tosses out a joke in that language I can’t understand, met with a round of friendly, indulgent laughter—and then that same man speaks again.
I know that mellow voice, even with this gaiety I’ve never heard in it before…freed of its tremulousness…its excessive, unwholesome humility… And he seems to be telling jokes, which would be extraordinary…
Just when I’m about to stand up, a fresh bout of diarrhea drops me back onto the seat.
It’s him, how can I go on doubting it? Could they really have afforded to move here on his paltry groundskeeper pension?
I put my forehead to the door, close my eyes. I’m trembling and shivering. My swollen stomach rests on my knees, awaiting its moment.
Exactly which of my crimes is this thing meant to punish, this coming abomination?
Now, a bit later, I’m out on the little street again, slowly walking back the way I came, resigned to passing by the house of the little golden bag. The mellifluous-voiced man must have gone home to that house by now, that man who is my father, my elderly father, beyond all possible doubt, whom I didn’t see in the café when I finally emerged from the bathroom.
It must be noon. The smell of meat fried with onions and spices has settled onto the street.
How eagerly, how happily, with what an untroubled conscience I climbed the stairs toward that smell when I came home from school for lunch, and how in later times I fled it, careful not to make any dish that would confront me with it again, turning my heels in disgust if I happened to stroll past a window or door it was coming from, or one like it, or a memory of it!
My mouth is dry with hunger, a fearsome hunger. Now I’ve almost reached my parents’ house. The door is open, I see. I don’t slow down. But a sudden dizzy spell blurs my vision, and to be sure the noontime heat is overpowering and the noontime sun fierce, but that’s not what’s blinding me, and I know it.
I stop and wait until my vision clears. Then I walk toward the wall opposite my parents’ so I’ll be as far away as I can when I pass by their door, and that moment soon comes, the moment when I’m straight across from the open door to my poor, aged parents’ new house, the parents I declared dead to Ange’s face without a blink or a shiver though I knew it wasn’t true, though I knew, how could I not, that my silence and tacit disownment and mute, groundless hatred would surely hasten their actual death, and somehow or other I would hear of that death, but I could never tell Ange, and so that death would become a shameful secret in the ugly depths of my heart.
I look intently into my parents’ house. And I would be willing, and I would be ready, should my eyes meet with the most fleeting glance from either one of them, to ford the gap between me and the door.
And I’ll simply walk in, and I’ll greet them as if nothing had happened, very normally, with no show of emotion, which would only be awkward for all three of us.
From here, across the narrow street, the sunlight’s so bright that the room seems very dark. I can make out a table, a cupboard, a sink.
My son is sitting before a full plate at one end of the table. He lifts a spoon to the lips of a tiny girl in a high chair. She opens her mouth, then closes it tight, and my son lets out a loud laugh. He turns the spoon toward his own mouth, takes a dab between his lips, then holds it back out to the child, who immediately eats.
Two old people are sitting before them, a man and a woman, and even from here, from behind, I recognize my father and mother. They’re sitting at the table, arms touching. My father’s hair is sparse and white. My mother’s is covered by a yellow scarf.
Suddenly my son looks up, and for a few seconds we stare at each other. A gleam of merriment lingers in my son’s eyes, on his parted lips, but I see it slowly fade as he realizes I’m there and I’ve seen him.
34. What have I done to that boy?
I hurry back to the hospital parking lot. My son’s car is still sitting in the blazing sun.
Someone comes running behind me—it’s him, it’s my son. We wordlessly climb into the car, in our usual seats. It’s so hot inside that I can’t hold back a groan.
I sense anger in my son, not the guilt I was expecting. And I also realize that the raging resentment I’d long felt toward him, ever since he left Lanton and maybe even before, maybe from the very beginning (did that really never happen, my too brusquely repelling his embrace, the anxious, devoted child he was on Rue Fondaudège falling back and hitting his head on the tile floor, did that really never happen, my picking him up, more afraid for myself than for him, and desperately pressing him to tell no one? Oh it’s true, how can I deny it, and I hated that he was forcing me into such acts, such a loss of control, and into making him my accomplice in secrecy, because everything about him filled me with muted irritation), that resentment is gone from inside me.
I’d like to lay my hand on his thigh and tell him, but that would mean admitting the anger I once felt, and so I keep quiet, sitting motionless at his side, in that silence heavy with his anger and annoyance.
He starts back up the mountain road. The soothing shadow envelops us. Very quietly, I ask, “Why did you bring them here?”
My son shoots back, “Who?”
“Your grandparents,” I say.
“But you didn’t know them,” I say. “I never took you to see them when you were little.”
“So?” cries my son. “They’re still my grandparents, aren’t they? Besides, that’s the whole problem, I never met them, thanks to you, and it’s hard to have a natural, relaxed relationship when it started so late.”
He stops the car at exactly the same spot where he took off his leather jacket earlier. He puts it on again, buttons it up, as—amazed to hear myself speaking so freely—I ask, “The baby, that’s Souhar?”
“Yes,” sighs my son.
“She lives with them?”
“Yes.”
“She’s pretty,” I say, “she’s already got beautiful hair.”
My son has started off again, back up the deserted, silent road, which pushes us deeper into a hostile winter with every passing yard. His jaw has hardened, his lips are tucked back into his mouth. He’s not going to say another word.
And no, I never told him my parents were dead, I simply never said they existed, never spoke their name, never described my life as a little girl in Les Aubiers, so he would understand and accept from his earliest childhood that no question on that subject would be tolerated, and wasn’t I hoping he’d get the idea that even thinking about them was forbidden in just the same way?
Breaking the silence, my son says to me stingingly, “You never knew it, but the day I turned twenty I went to see them in that filthy project where you were letting them die.”
“So you had their address,” I stammer.
“I got it from Papa,” says my son, “poor Papa.”
I wasn’t blind back then to my son’s father’s weaknesses and forebodings, no, I wasn’t blind—I kept a close watch on that man, vulnerable as he was to emotion and apprehension; I suspected he might seize any occasion to flout the rule that we must never, no matter what, tell my son of my parents, but I knew all about his failings and fears, and I knew what he thought: that one day some act of providence would avenge my parents for the way I’d treated them, without a trace of reverence or piety.
Again my son stops the car. He covers his face with his hands, and I hear him sigh. Because he’s thinking of his father, my ex-husband? Or because he’d spoken of Souhar?
A surge of affection for my son rushes to my face, making my cheeks hot and damp.
I think I can say your daughter’s name now, I’d like to tell him: Souhar, Souhar!
I give the back of his neck a quick, light stroke.
“I saw your father not long ago,” I say. “He’s doing all right.”
My son shakes his head, rubs his eyes, turns the key again.
“I’d like to bring him here too,” he says, “but he doesn’t want to come.”
“He’s moved a horrible woman into my study,” I blurt out, immediately sorry I did.
“I know,” my son answers softly. “He doesn’t want to leave her, he says he owes her so much.”
I can’t help but laugh in derision. But immediately that laugh makes me ashamed.
“If you could only answer Lanton!” I say.
My son taps his fingernails on the steering wheel. Between the flaps of his leather jacket I see his thigh twitch, bare, golden, smooth, and slender, as if, I tell myself, an eternal youthfulness were preserving my son’s lower half just as it was when he was fifteen, while, to compensate, an excessive maturity fills his gaze with the earnest gravity, the lofty dourness that yesterday made me almost doubt that this man, this fanatic, could possibly be my son.
But a fanatic for what cause, what faith? The attainment of his own moral perfection? Oh, I would tell him, you’re not a naturally good man like your father, that would be too much toil and pretending for a soul such as yours, is there really any point?
“I will never,” says my son, “never answer Lanton.”
35. He’s giving a lecture
My son and I have a quick lunch with Wilma (two braised teals, with tiny spoonfuls of cabbage and carrots that Wilma doesn’t touch, claiming to be full from a generous helping of teal, but clearly the truth is that this woman likes and perhaps even tolerates nothing but meat), and when, falsely casual, Wilma asks if I spent the whole morning with Ralph, I find it easy to lie and say yes.
My son doesn’t correct me. Pleased, reassured, Wilma suggests we do the same tomorrow morning.
I’m very hungry, but I force myself to take only one thigh and some carrots. My son eats very frugally, leaving Wilma to devour the rest of the meat with a pleasure so excessive that you can only look away.
Afterward, they both go off for a nap. They start seeing patients again at four in the afternoon, they tell me.
I step outside. Even at this midday hour, the road is cold and damp, however clear and bright the sky over the roofs. I start off uphill on the road, which circles the cluster of houses and runs on between two rows of pine trees, first low and scrawny, then ever taller, thicker, and more vigorous, and so I soon find myself in the damp coolness of a blue tunnel, where nothing rustles or shakes.
After a multitude of inexplicable curves, with no visible reason why the road might have thought it should turn this way rather than that in this endlessness of identical pine trees, I suddenly come out into a vast clearing.
Children’s shouts begin to ring out. A new-looking building of wood, glass, and aluminum deploys its sinuous, rounded forms at the far end of the clearing. Before it, a pretty paved schoolyard, now filling with a flood of children.
I come closer, already in the grips of envy and regret. I clutch the bars of the fence. The big blue and gray pine trees surround the school from a distance. All wearing brightly colored anoraks, the children run and jump in the muted light, in the eternal, polar shadow that veils this side of the mountain, but the sky is high and bright.
I immediately sense that this is a good and fine school, where nothing bad could ever happen to me. How happy I’d be to work here, I tell myself!
The tranquil joy radiating from the children’s dark faces, their quiet play, everything tells me that here I’d be just where I belong, and it pierces my heart with the gentle pangs of melancholy.
I pull myself away from the fence and walk into the schoolyard. The circle of teachers immediately stretches into a line as I come near. Curious and gentle, they extend their brown, deep faces toward me, and now they’re bent over me, short as I am, like tall, kindly pine trees.
Oh, I tell myself, at first struck dumb, I’m one of them!
Then my surprise falls away, my uncertainty and timidity, and I feel how positively natural and irrefutable is my likeness with these strangers now smiling at me, curious and patient, trusting in my decency and my right to walk into this schoolyard.
“I’d like to see the principal,” I say, after the customary greetings.
They answer me in my language, politely, with an accent I recognize, my parents’ accent, which I once so violently scorned.
Inside myself, I reflexively flinch. Reflexively, too, a very faint disdain brings a cold little smile to my lips, I can feel it, a smile quickly erased, and I cordially thank them, silently praying I’ll soon be allowed into this group whose accent I might well end up taking on, I say to myself, and not even know it.
I walk to the door they’ve pointed me toward. No sooner have I knocked than a bright voice tells me in French to come in, and the moment I push open the door Noget’s face leaps out at me.
Terrified, I pull the door toward me again. The voice on the other side exclaims in surprise. I push the door open again.
“Well, come in,” says the principal.
She’s a pleasant young woman, with a smile on her face. The continual twitching of her wide, protruding lips reminds me of Corinna Daoui in our Les Aubiers youth, as does a very slight veil of sadness in her black eyes, emanating from some old or indefinable pain, in spite of her smile.
&
nbsp; She’s sitting at a desk. Above her, facing the door, a tacked-up poster shows Noget’s face—his beard trimmed and combed, his gray hair slicked back, his hollow cheeks no doubt discreetly touched up with pink. Below it I read: RICHARD VICTOR NOGET, AUGUST 29, 8:00, COMMUNITY CENTER.
“Noget’s coming here?” I say, dumbstruck.
The principal looks back at the poster.
“Yes,” she says. “Quite an honor, isn’t it?”
“But why should he be coming here?”
“Well, after all…”
Now it’s her turn to be surprised, and she looks at me in friendly puzzlement.
“Well, after all, he’s Noget.”
“And so?”
“Don’t you watch television?” she asks, her voice suddenly almost mystified.
“No,” I say, “my husband and I don’t have a TV.”
Still pleasant but cautious, a touch more distant, her gaze slips from my face to my breast, to my stomach, where it lingers musingly before climbing back up to my eyes. She gestures broadly toward a bookshelf against the wall.
“I imagine I have his complete works,” she says.
I go to it, pull out a book.
“That one,” says the principal, “is his first little treatise on education. I’m going to ask him to sign it for me.”
I page through the volume, reading a few sentences here and there. I feel as if I’m hearing Ange’s voice: “The classroom must be not a comforting womb, but a place of judicious severity and implacable justice. / My brothers, what have we done to our children? / We must bring them not milk, an abundance of milk in their earliest years is enough, what we must bring them is in a sense the opposite of soothing milk: we must bring them blood, metallic, unpleasant, and sublime.”
Yes, that’s exactly the sort of thing Ange liked to say, and it so put me off that I learned to play deaf when he launched in, looking at him with a vacant eye, humming to myself (come dance, my little silver bag!) so my mind would go blank and I wouldn’t have to hear.