Ladivine

by Marie Ndiaye

  “We’ll send them a letter,” he said, his confidence restored, pulling away and, she sensed, getting a grip on himself in every way.

  Her written German was weak, so he took on the task, and she saw the slump in his back as he sat there, his broad back, usually so straight and so strong, now as if awaiting its punishment, consenting to the well-deserved reprimand that would surely be meted out by his disappointed parents, to whom, he observed in melancholy surprise, he hadn’t written since his childhood and his few stays at summer camp.

  They went off to mail the letter together at the Nestorstrasse post office.

  The line seemed to be made up entirely of women just like Marko’s mother, with their brave, tired faces, their drab padded jackets, gray locks emerging from under their knit caps.

  It was so easy, she thought, to pity old age and fault the hard-hearted son, but did they know the price that had been paid, in sorrows and miseries, for that necessary hardening?

  Because she felt her own body taking on Marko’s anxiousness, his unease, of which only complete absolution from his parents could relieve him.

  After a few days, they answered:

  Dear Son,

  You will not be surprised to learn that we were startled by your letter, and deeply hurt, perhaps more deeply than you can imagine. We prefer to think that, had you foreseen the depth of our displeasure, you would not only never have written that letter, but you would have abandoned your plans for this trip, which in any case we are certain is not within your means, financially, and will force you to ask for a loan from your bank. As you know, we are resolutely against all indebtedness for leisure purposes; we raised you according to those principles, and the ease with which you can discard them, on the pretext that the two of you are “a little tired” of your very simple, restful, inexpensive vacations at Lüneburg as at Warnemünde, that is a thing we cannot understand. But this is not what matters most. We want to speak to you less of our anger or hurt, or our concerns, than of the deep, unanticipated emotions that followed that anger. Thanks to your cruel letter, we have come to understand the reasons for the strange disenchantment that came over us after each of your visits, which we attributed, wrongly, to the feeling of emptiness that settles into a house with the departure of its youngest and noisiest occupants. That truth, which we have now finally seen, forces us to concede that your letter has at least that to be said for it. For without that letter, without the deep relief that followed and drowned out our anger, we might never have understood why such a wound always opened in us after you had come to stay at the house, why it seemed that nothing had taken place even though everything had gone well, why, in short, we felt more alone, more melancholy, and more insignificant after enjoying your presence than in all the long months we had gone without seeing you. It was because we were hoping for a communion, and that communion never came. We were hoping for an outpouring of heartfelt words, and we never heard them. Of what sort, exactly? you will ask. But we do not know. We only know, and we have just realized, that the falsity of those relations, or at least their incompleteness, their superficiality, plunged us into a disheartenment that your departure revealed or aggravated. We so longed for something more—but what? Confessions, effusions? Possibly, but what else? We have always sensed, in your wife as in yourself, a dread of displeasing us on the most trivial matters, a quickness to agree with us about everything, which aborted any hope of a fulfilling conversation, and left us feeling like ogres or boors. We sensed that you adamantly refused to open your heart, even a little, lest we seize the occasion to upbraid you for something or other. Your wariness, your deep reserve, your excessive, hurtful politeness, quite naturally influenced your children’s view of us, and our relationship with them too became cautious and stiff. Why should that be? We who find empty socializing so intolerable that we have stopped seeing some of our friends whose sincerity proved less entire than ours, how did it come to be that our own son’s visits were so marked by awkwardness and unspoken disappointment? With summer approaching we felt an anxiety and a sadness coming over us, though we were unsure how to interpret it. Then your letter arrived, and our first reaction, angry and hurt, was nothing more than the predictable reflex of two mistreated parents. When, later, we found ourselves forced to admit that we were in the end relieved not to be seeing you, we were at first frightened and ashamed, then thought it over and arrived at the reflections we have just shared with you. So, you will perhaps ask, what am I to conclude, do they want us to come all the same, now that we know the situation, and perhaps work to improve it, or would they genuinely prefer not to see us, never to see us again? What am I to feel, how am I to act (you will perhaps be wondering), in response to so many contradictory statements? How to answer you, dear son? We ourselves cannot say. Do as you think you must, you and your wife, and above all do not abandon your plans for that senseless trip simply for fear of displeasing us. If you do, let it be because you think it best to avoid it. Should you choose to go all the same, do not concern yourself with our judgment, even if, as you surely understand, that judgment is severe and unsparing. And should it turn out that you cancel that trip because all things considered you want nothing so much as to come to Lüneburg, because the thought of forgoing Lüneburg would make you simply too sad, know that we will welcome you without reservation. We could even, if you find it easier, pretend that nothing had happened, that we had never written this letter, that you had no idea how hungry we are for unsimulated emotions. In short, you are free.

  Your parents

  Marko read the letter, then handed it to her without a word, and she deciphered it slowly and laboriously, astonished to hear such language from people she’d feared precisely for their rudimentary minds, their limited vocabulary, which often led them to express themselves in a blunt and, for her who was used to more urbane ways, disconcerting manner.

  She looked up, not knowing what to think, surprised, wanting to ask Marko to translate some of the sentences.

  But his glance stopped her and made her blush with a pity beyond words.

  Never, in her husband’s pale eyes, had she seen such bewilderment, such grief.

  For the first time she glimpsed the child he once was, sensitive, no doubt easily hurt, few signs of whom could be seen in the confident, slightly aloof man he’d become, who appealed to her precisely because he so rarely allowed himself to be troubled.

  She reached out to touch his cheek. But that would have been a mistake, would have humiliated him and brought no consolation.

  She pushed the letter aside, turned away, and although they always talked about everything, neither would ever again speak of the letter from Lüneburg, nor of Marko’s parents, whose names they would soon utter only when the children now and then posed some question concerning them.

  Though they said nothing of it, it was clear that they would never again call Marko’s parents to see what was new, that they would not, that June, go to the Karstadt store to buy a birthday present for Marko’s mother.

  It seemed to her, but she couldn’t discuss it with Marko, that by writing “you are free” the elder Bergers had in effect delivered them of the impossibility of being angry.

  She was angry with them for the pain they’d caused Marko, and she was certain that Marko was equally angry and perhaps even outraged at his parents, whose decisions, until this question of their vacation came up, he had always obeyed, whose wishes he’d respected even when his own were very different, as when they’d obliged him to find a trade and give up on veterinary school, which to his parents’ mind took too long and offered no guarantees.

  From the tension in his face, the new hardness in his gaze, she sensed the sharpness and durability of his anger, but she also sensed that he wasn’t unhappy to be feeling and cultivating this newfound right to hate his parents, that it made him seem bigger in his own eyes, and bound him more tightly to his own will, heretofore often feeble because subjugated to his parents’, which was unbending, enigmatic, and sav
age.

  His voice became firmer, there was a hint of aggression in his humor, and even that she understood and respected.

  —

  The dog followed her to the vast walled lot set aside for the tourist market, wedged between the beach and the road.

  There, as if finding such a place beneath its dignity, it sat down by the entrance and watched her, from the greatest possible distance.

  It knew, she thought, that she would have to come through this same gate to start back for the hotel.

  Were there some other way out, the dog would surely have stayed close by her heels.

  It knew she would come through this same gate again, she thought. And it would be there, sitting in the dust, in the heat, its long tongue hanging out and its chest heaving, and the watchful look in its black eyes would give her no clue, convinced though she was that its vigilance was intended for her alone, by which to decide if it was spying on her or protecting her, if she should flee it or revel in its care.

  That didn’t concern her. The question was moot for her now.

  Because even were the dog spying on her, its watchfulness made her feel safe, not so much in the streets—perfectly sedate, as it happens—of this big, unfamiliar city but, more broadly, safe from sorrow or unhappiness, failure or ruin.

  She walked through the market stands with her new stride, at once lazy and confident, loose and firm, looking at everything and knowing she’d buy nothing because she and Marko now had to avoid all unnecessary expense, but not wanting anything anyway, neither fabric nor pottery nor metal bangles, simply happy as she thought she’d never been before (because anxiety had always subtly spoiled her most joyful moments, the birth of her children or the completion of her degree), feeling her healthy, familiar, faithful body move freely through the warmth, her thoughts wandering this way and that, unencumbered, weighed down by no worry, no incomprehension.

  She could, if she wanted to, or if the miracle of this new outlook hadn’t come to pass, easily find something to torment herself with, she knew that.

  But it was as if, rather than deposit her in another land, the plane had delivered her to a universe apart, where she could finally feel the happiness of being herself free of existence’s gravitational pull.

  Is this what death is like? she wondered. Could she have died and not remembered?

  But what she was feeling bore all the hallmarks of life at its fullest, particularly her awareness of her warm, rounded body, lightly dressed in pale linen, which she guided through the stands, she thought, smiling to herself, simply for the pleasure of enjoying its perfect mechanics.

  She stopped at a straw hut that sold mango juice.

  She put her elbows on the counter, ordered a drink, and the young brown-skinned woman who pureed the pieces of mango, added water, and poured the nectar into a glass was not a stranger, though this was the first time she’d seen her.

  She recognized the woman’s very motions, her precise way of peeling the fruit and then pulling the flesh from the pit—she’d seen all that before, exactly the same, no less than the high, smooth forehead, the little dark mouth, the cheek slashed by a thick scar, the faded red T-shirt, and the pointed cones of her breasts underneath.

  Down to the tiniest moment, she’d experienced all this before, though she’d never been to this market—how she raised the glass to her lips and saw that the rim wasn’t clean, saw the lingering trace of other lips, slightly sticky, perhaps crusted with sugar, and how she deliberately placed her own lips on that residue and found no distaste in her untroubled heart.

  In what dream had she, as it were, made a date with this woman and this glass and this thick juice, whose sweetness in her throat was exactly what she’d already known, though she’d never before drunk the juice of a freshly pureed mango?

  With a frivolous little laugh that she did her best to make reassuring, she asked:

  “Have you seen me before?”

  “Where? Here?”

  “Here or somewhere else.”

  The woman looked at her, slowly shook her head, then at once turned away, as if dreading another idiotic question and embarrassed in advance for them both.

  “Well, I’ve seen you before, but I can’t recall when.”

  And with good reason, she thought, if it was in one of those dreams that seem so perfectly real you wake up convinced that you really did travel someplace, that there are no such things as oneiric visions, only realities you assume to be dreams, even though you see yourself with no age, and the seasons have no tang.

  Suddenly eager to strike up a friendship, to confide in this woman and rouse her curiosity, she nearly added:

  You were wearing this same pale-red T-shirt, and I could see the shape of your breasts underneath it. I drank this same mango juice, which you served me in just the same way. Isn’t that incredible? I have a husband and two children, a girl and a boy, and I went out this morning and left them sleeping at the hotel. We have troubles, but in a way we’re very lucky, too.

  Instead, she only gave her an insistent smile.

  And the woman was still stubbornly looking down, refusing that dubious alliance.

  “I have to be going now,” said Ladivine, “but I’ll be back, and I’ll bring my husband and children with me.”

  Didn’t that sound more like a threat than a promise?

  Again she laughed her deliberately superficial little laugh, but she sensed at once that this triviality was no less out of place than that longing for a connection founded in a wondrous hallucination, on the incarnation of shadows she alone had perceived.

  Reluctantly, she walked away, and now her enchantment was dimmed by the feeling she’d done something wrong, shown a lack of discretion.

  It would soon be eleven o’clock. The market was gradually emptying out, the hubbub receding in the thick heat.

  She realized there was no point in trying to make anyone understand the strangeness of what she was feeling, or the vastness and harmoniousness of her joy, or how natural she found it to see her anxious life dissolving here in the big brown dog’s watchful gaze.

  And it wasn’t because she was on holiday. How misplaced that word seemed, given the rash of mishaps they’d endured since their arrival, and if they compared these past three days with their weeks-long vacations in Warnemünde and Lüneburg, they clearly should have been sorry they hadn’t gone once more to Warnemünde, sorry they’d so dreaded the tedium of Warnemünde that they dared to believe there was another way.

  But not for anything in the world would she have wanted to be waking up in the Warnemünde camper at this moment, and she was sure Marko felt the same, even if for now he seemed unable to find any palpable pleasure in their vacation here, perhaps, she told herself, because no one had seen fit to lodge his or her consciousness in the skin of a dog and become Marko Berger’s guardian.

  She smiled as she walked, a vague and ingenuous smile.

  She never doubted that Marko would rather be suffering here than stewing in his discomfort and anxiousness at his parents’, and even that he would sooner die here than surrender to Lüneburg and lay at his parents’ feet the weapons he’d just discovered he had.

  He was so angry with Lüneburg for making him spineless and vulnerable.

  But he’d granted himself the freedom to change. He woke every morning energized by a new sense of himself, able to make decisions, whether weighty or trivial, undaunted by Lüneburg’s judgment, and even defying it.

  Would his humiliated parents’ distraught faces never rise up before him, hurt and uncomprehending, Ladivine worried, would pity not one day end up crushing his attempts at liberation, his necessary initiation into hard-heartedness?

  —

  They’d realized they couldn’t safely return, summer after summer, to the creeping misery of Warnemünde or the restless stupor of Lüneburg, but then came the problem of where to spend their vacation—as they put it, out of habit, knowing perfectly well that what they needed was nothing less than an esc
ape from a quagmire.

  They wouldn’t necessarily have to go far away to find that new lucidity.

  It only had to be someplace utterly apart from the world of Lüneburg.

  The ideal, thought Ladivine, would almost be to make sure that the elder Bergers had never heard or spoken the name of the country they’d call home for three weeks, would almost be for that country not to appear on the illuminated globe in Marko’s parents’ living room.

  Every year she set aside three thousand euros from her French-teacher salary, while Marko, who repaired watches and alarm clocks in the timepiece department at the Karstadt on Wilmersdorfer Strasse, managed to save up two thousand, and though that sum was more than enough to rent the camper and buy low-end wine at the Warnemünde superette, they soon discovered it wouldn’t go far for a family of four vacationing in any spot unknown to the elder Bergers and to Lüneburg in general.

  Night after night, they’d put the children to bed and sat down at the computer to compare not only the prices of flights and hotels the world over but also the hundreds of comments posted by Internet-wise travelers, because more than anything Marko feared that their trip, that mighty step toward emancipation, might turn into just one more example of the horrible ways the most gullible and least well-heeled tourists could be fleeced, and yet, far from reassuring him with their potential preventative effect, these testimonials only further inflamed his anxiety and suspicion, sometimes driving him to the brink of despair.

  How, he asked Ladivine with a sort of dour satisfaction, when so many experienced people, far savvier than they, fell for the same old scams (and here he made as if to tap at the screen, to point out yet another grim, edifying tale), how could the two of them, who’d traveled so little, who’d never even been on an airplane, hope to escape fraud and deception?

  “Just listen to this,” he would say.

  And, although she was sitting there beside him, eyes fixed on the screen like his own, he read out the monotonous tales of swindles endured by strangers of whom an uncomfortable Ladivine would have preferred to know nothing.