Adèle

by Leïla Slimani

  She undoes the ribbon and opens the box. To start with she doesn’t understand what it is. A gold wheel decorated with pink stones and topped with a carving of three ears of wheat. She looks at the jewelry without touching it, without looking up and running the risk of meeting Richard’s eye.

  “It’s a brooch,” he explains.

  A brooch.

  She feels very hot. She’s sweating.

  “It’s so beautiful,” whispers Odile.

  “Do you like it, darling? It’s an old piece. I felt certain it would suit you. As soon as I saw it I thought of you. It’s very elegant, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, yes. I like it a lot.”

  “So try it on. At least take it out of the box. Do you want me to help you?”

  “She’s emotional,” says Odile, fingers gripping her chin.

  A brooch.

  Richard takes the object out of its box and presses on the pin, which lifts up.

  “Stand up, it’ll be easier like that.”

  Adèle stands and Richard delicately pins the brooch to her dress, just above her left breast.

  “It doesn’t go with this sort of dress, of course, but it’s pretty, don’t you think?”

  No, of course it doesn’t go with this kind of dress. She’ll have to borrow a suit from Odile. A scarf too. She’ll have to grow her hair and tie it up in a bun. She’ll have to start wearing block-heeled shoes.

  “Very pretty, my love. My son has excellent taste,” Odile says proudly.

  Adèle does not accompany the Robinsons to the midnight mass. She has a fever and she falls asleep in her garnet dress, curled up under the covers. “I knew you were getting ill,” Richard laments. Even after he rubs her back and piles on extra blankets, she is still chilled to the bone. Her shoulders shake, her teeth chatter. Richard lies down next to her and holds her in his arms. He strokes her hair. He makes her take medicine the way he would Lucien, simpering a little bit.

  He’s often told her before that cancer patients, when they’re dying, start to apologize. Just before they take their last breath, they ask forgiveness for sins that they have not had time to explain. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” In her delirium Adèle is afraid to speak. She is wary of her weakness. Fearful that she will confide in whoever is looking after her, she uses the last remnants of her energy to bury her face in the drenched pillow. Say nothing. Whatever you do, say nothing.

  Simone opens the door, a cigarette dangling from her lips. She is wearing a wrap dress, badly tied so it offers a glimpse of her dry, suntanned chest. She has thin legs and a round belly. Her teeth are stained with lipstick and, seeing this, Adèle can’t resist the urge to rub her tongue against her own teeth. She examines the clumps of cheap mascara clinging to her mother’s lashes, notes the blue pencil lines on her wrinkled eyelids.

  “Richard, darling, I’m so happy to see you. I was so disappointed that you weren’t coming to celebrate Christmas with us. Although it’s true that your parents do know how to do things properly. We can’t afford to be as chic as they are.”

  “Hello, Simone. We’re very happy to be here, as always,” Richard says enthusiastically as he enters the apartment.

  “It’s nice of you to say so. Get up, Kader, can’t you see that Richard is here?” she shouts at her husband, who is slumped in a leather armchair.

  Adèle lingers on the threshold. She is carrying the sleeping Lucien in her arms. She glances at the blue chintz banquette and gets goose bumps. The living room looks even smaller and uglier than before. The black bookshelf opposite the sofa is cluttered with trinkets and photographs—of her and Richard, and of her mother when she was younger. A collection of matchboxes is gathering dust in a large saucer. Fake flowers are arranged in a Chinese-style vase.

  “Simone, no smoking!” Richard scolds her, gently wagging his index finger.

  Simone stubs out her cigarette and stands against the wall to let her daughter pass.

  “I won’t kiss you. We don’t want to wake the little one, do we?”

  “No. Hello, Mom.”

  Adèle walks through the tiny apartment and enters her childhood bedroom. She keeps her eyes fixed to the floor. She slowly undresses Lucien, who has opened his eyes but is not struggling for once. She puts him to bed. She tells him more stories than she usually does. He is sleeping deeply when she opens the last book but she continues to read, in a very soft voice, the story of a rabbit and a fox. The boy stirs and pushes her out of his bed.

  Adèle walks through the dark hallway that smells of mildewed laundry. She joins Richard in the kitchen. He is sitting at the yellow Formica table and he shoots a complicit grin at his wife.

  “Your son takes a long time to fall asleep,” Simone says. “You spoil that kid. I never went in for any of that nonsense with you.”

  “He likes stories, that’s all.”

  Adèle steals the cigarette from between her mother’s fingers.

  “You should have got here earlier. It’ll be ten o’clock before we eat at this rate. It’s a good thing Richard was here to keep me company.” She smiles and nudges the bridge of her yellowed incisor with the tip of her tongue. “We’ve been very lucky to find you, Richard. It’s a miracle, really. Adèle was always so awkward and prudish. Never a word, never a smile. We thought she’d end up an old maid. I kept telling her to make herself more attractive—men need to be seduced, after all!—but she was so stubborn, so secretive. I could never get her to confess anything. And there were plenty of blokes who had a thing for her . . . Oh yes, she was very popular, my little Adèle. Eh, weren’t you, very popular? See? She doesn’t even answer me. She’s up on her high horse again. I told her: Adèle, get a grip on yourself! If you want to act like a princess, you’d better find yourself a prince because we can’t afford to look after you. With your dad being sick and me slaving away all my life . . . I’ve got a right to enjoy myself too, you know! Don’t be a fool like me, I told Adèle. Don’t marry the first one who comes along and then spend the rest of your life regretting it. I used to be beautiful, Richard, did you know that? Have I shown you this picture before? It’s a yellow Renault. The first in our village. And have you noticed that my shoes match my handbag? Always! I was the most elegant woman in the village. Ask anyone, they’ll tell you. No, I’m very thankful that she found a man like you. Seriously, we’ve been very lucky.”

  Adèle’s father is watching television. He has not got out of his seat since they arrived. He is engrossed by the New Year’s Eve celebrations in Paris. His eyes stare out over swollen pouches, but they still contain a certain haughty spark. He still has a good head of hair for a man his age. It’s brown, with a dusting of gray at the temples. His large forehead is still as smooth as ever.

  Adèle sits next to him, her bottom hardly touching the banquette and her hands on her thighs.

  “Do you like the television?” she asks in a very soft voice. “Richard chose it, you know. It’s the latest model.”

  “It’s very nice, love. You spoil me. You shouldn’t spend your money on us.”

  “Do you want something to drink? They’ve started the aperitifs without us in the kitchen.”

  Kader moves his hand closer to Adèle and slowly taps her knee. His fingernails are shiny and smooth. They look very white next to his long tanned fingers.

  “Leave ’em in peace, they don’t need us,” he whispers, leaning toward her. He smiles at her knowingly and takes a bottle of whiskey from under the table. He pours two glasses. “She always likes to show off in front of your husband. Well, you know your mother. She’s spent her life organizing dinner parties to impress the neighbors. If I hadn’t had her on my back, annoying me all the time, I’d have lived a real life. I’d have been like you. Living in Paris. Journalism—I bet I’d have liked that.”

  “We can hear you, Kader,” Simone sniggers.

  He turns back to face the telev
ision and squeezes his daughter’s slender knee.

  * * *

  *

  Simone does not have a real dining-room table. Adèle helps her to set the plates on two little round low tables, each consisting of a bronze tray and wooden trestles. They eat in the living room, Kader and Adèle sitting on the banquette, Richard and Simone on small blue satin poufs. Richard has trouble concealing the discomfort of this seating arrangement. Handicapped by his six-foot-two-inch frame, he eats with his knees touching his chin.

  “I’m going to check on Lucien,” says Adèle.

  She goes into the bedroom. Lucien is asleep, his head half hanging off the bed. She pushes his body against the wall and lies down next to him. She can hear the music from the television and she closes her eyes to silence her mother. She balls her fists. Now all she can hear is the rousing music and all she can see is the insides of her eyelids filled with stars and glitter. Gently she moves her arms and holds tight to the naked shoulders of the dancers on the television. She dances too, languorously, looking beautiful and ridiculous in a pink tutu like a circus animal’s. She is not afraid anymore. She is nothing but a body, offered up for the pleasure of tourists and retirees.

  The holidays are over. She is going back to Paris, solitude, Xavier. Finally she will be able to skip meals again, be silent, hand Lucien over to whoever will have him. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one: happy new year, Adèle!

  Nothing went as planned. To start with, they couldn’t find a car. Adèle was fifteen, Louis seventeen, but he had promised that one of his friends—an older kid who hung around outside school during classes—could take them to the beach in his father’s car. On Sunday morning, though, there was no sign of this friend. “Never mind, we’ll take the bus.” Adèle said nothing. She didn’t admit that her mother had forbidden her to use public transport, especially to leave the city, and especially with boys. They waited twenty minutes for the bus. Adèle was wearing skintight jeans, a black T-shirt, and one of her mother’s bras. She had shaved her legs the night before in the little bathroom. She’d used a man’s razor that she’d bought at the grocery store and she’d made a mess of it. Her legs were covered with scratches now. She hoped it wasn’t obvious.

  In the bus, Louis sat next to her. He put his arm around her shoulders. He chose to talk with her rather than with his friends. He’s treating me like I’m his woman, like I belong to him, she thought. She liked that.

  The trip lasted more than half an hour and when they got to end of the line they had to walk for a while to reach the house belonging to Louis’s friend, the famous beach house to which he’d been given the keys. But the keys did not fit the lock. They didn’t open the door. Louis tried to force it, he tried going under and over it, he tried the back door and the front door, but nothing worked. They’d come all this way, Adèle had lied to her parents, and she was here—the only girl with four boys, joints, and alcohol—and the key wouldn’t open the door.

  “We can go through the garage,” said Frédéric, who knew the house and was sure that it could be entered that way. “There’s no car in there.”

  They had to smash the little window, which was six feet off the ground. Frédéric was the first one through. Louis gave Adèle a leg up and, not wanting to show any fear, she jumped down into the damp garage. They’d come all the way to the seaside just to find themselves locked in a dark garage, sitting on moldy towels spread out on the concrete floor. But they had alcohol, joints, even a guitar. In those hungry bellies, those puny chests, all of this good stuff should be enough to make up for the loss of the beach.

  Adèle drank to give herself courage. The moment had come. She wouldn’t try to get out of it. There were too few opportunities, too few secluded places, too few beach houses for Louis to back down now. And she’d already talked the talk. She’d told him that she knew about that kind of thing, that she wasn’t afraid. That she’d seen other boys before. Sitting on the freezing floor, slightly drunk, she wondered if he would realize. If you could get away with that kind of lie or if it was always obvious.

  The atmosphere darkened. There was a sort of gloom in the air. A childhood desire tightened her throat. One last jolt of innocence almost made her chicken out. The afternoon went faster than expected and the other boys found an excuse to leave the garage. She could hear them outside scratching around like rats. Louis undressed her. He lay on his back and sat her on top of him.

  She hadn’t imagined all this. This clumsiness, these labored gestures, these grotesque movements. The difficulty of making his penis go into her vagina. He didn’t seem particularly happy, just furious, mechanical. He seemed as if he wanted to get somewhere but she didn’t know where. He grabbed her hips and started thrusting back and forth. He told her she was crap at this, lumbering and inert. She said she thought she’d smoked too much pot. He put her on her side and that was even worse. He lay her in the fetal position and impatiently shoved himself inside her. She didn’t know whether to move or let him take the lead, stay silent or make little moans.

  They went home. In the bus, Louis sat next to her. He put his arm around her shoulders. So is this what it’s like to be his woman? she wondered. She felt simultaneously dirty and proud, humiliated and victorious. She sneaked back into the house. Simone was watching television and Adèle rushed to the bathroom.

  “You’re taking a bath at this time of night?” her mother shrieked. “Who do you think you are, the Queen of Sheba?”

  Adèle sank into the hot bath. She stuck a finger into her vagina in the hope of finding something. Some kind of proof. A sign. Her vagina was empty. She wished they’d had a bed, that there’d been more light in that little garage. She didn’t even know if she’d bled.

  Six euros ninety. Every day she gathers six euros ninety in loose change and buys a pregnancy test. It’s become an obsession. Every morning when she wakes up she goes to the bathroom, takes the pink-and-white packet from the bottom of a toiletry bag where she’s hidden it, and pees on the little strip. She waits five minutes. Five minutes of absolute anguish, and yet it’s completely irrational. The test is negative. She is relieved for a few hours but that evening, after checking that her period still hasn’t arrived, she goes back to the pharmacy and buys another test. This is perhaps what she fears most: becoming pregnant by another man. Not being able to explain it to Richard. Or, even worse, having to make love with her husband and then tell him that the child is his. And then she gets her period, to the sound of broken eggs. Her belly grows heavy and hard. She comes to savor the spasms that keep her in bed all evening, her knees pressed against her breasts.

  There was a time when she used to take an AIDS test every week. As she waited for the result she would become paralyzed with anxiety. She would smoke joints when she woke up, starve herself all day, and end up roaming the paths around the Salpêtrière hospital, her hair disheveled, a coat over her pajamas, to pick up a yellow card with the word “negative” printed on it.

  Adèle is afraid of dying. Her fear is intense: it grips her by the throat and stops all thought. So she starts palpating her belly, her breasts, the back of her neck, finding swellings that are, she feels sure, the signs of a fast-moving and horribly painful cancer. She vows to stop smoking. This resolution lasts an hour, an afternoon, a day. She throws away all her cigarettes, buys packets of chewing gum. She runs for hours around the rotunda in the Parc Monceau. Then she decides that it’s not worth living while fighting against such a desperate desire, such an absolute need. That she would have to be insane or utterly stupid to inflict this deprivation on herself, to watch herself suffering and hope that it lasts as long as possible. She rummages through all her drawers, turns out her coat pockets, shakes out her handbags. And, when she’s not lucky enough to find a forgotten packet somewhere, she goes out on to the little balcony and picks up a cigarette butt with a black filter, cuts the end off and sucks at it greedily.

  * * *


  *

  Her obsessions devour her. She is helpless to stop them. Because her life requires so many lies, it has to be carefully organized—an exhausting activity that occupies her entire brain, that gnaws at her. Arranging a fake trip, inventing a pretext, renting a hotel room. Finding the right hotel. Calling the concierge ten times to check that the room has a bathtub, that it’s not too noisy. Lying without trying too hard to justify herself. Justifications give rise to suspicions.

  Choosing an outfit for a rendezvous, thinking about it constantly. Opening a cupboard in the middle of a meal and replying to Richard, when he asks her what she’s up to: “Oh, sorry, I’m looking for a dress. I can’t think where I’ve put it.”

  Checking her bank accounts, over and over. Withdrawing cash, and leaving no trace of it. Going into the red to buy lingerie, to pay for taxi trips and overpriced cocktails in hotel bars.

  Being beautiful, being ready. Getting her priorities mixed up, inevitably.

  Missing a doctor’s appointment for Lucien because of a kiss that went on too long. Being too ashamed to go back to that pediatrician, even though she was a good one. Being too lazy to choose a new one. Telling herself that, as his father is a doctor, Lucien doesn’t really need a pediatrician at all.

  She bought a flip phone. She never takes it out of her handbag and Richard knows nothing about it. She got a second computer, which she hides under the bed, on her side, near the window. She keeps no souvenirs, no receipts, no proof. She is wary of married men, sentimental men, hysterical men, old bachelors, young romantics, online lovers, friends of friends.

  At four in the afternoon Richard calls her. He apologizes for being on duty again. That’s two nights running and he should have warned her. But he felt obliged to accept; he owed this colleague a favor.

  “Xavier? Remember him?”