by Marie Ndiaye
He was relaxed, almost merry, as if—Norah thought—she’d lifted the terrible weight of Sony’s incarceration off his shoulders, as if all he had to do now was wait until she sorted things out, as if she’d taken upon herself the moral burden, relieving him of it forever.
Even in her father’s way with the girls she sensed an element of his courting her favor.
“Masseck showed you the house?” he suddenly asked.
“Yes, he showed me where my sister must have lived.”
He gave a knowing, offhand laugh.
“I know,” he said, “why you came to Grand Yoff, I’ve given it some thought, and now I remember.”
She was dizzy all of a sudden and felt like jumping up from her chair and rushing into the garden, but she thought of Sony and suppressed every fear and doubt, every discomfort and disappointment.
It didn’t matter what he might say to her, because she’d get him to cough up the truth.
“You came in order to get closer to me, yes. You must have been, I’m not sure exactly, twenty-eight or twenty-nine.”
He spoke in a very neutral tone, as if he wanted to dispel any hint of conflict between them.
Jakob and the children were listening carefully. Norah felt that her father’s affable manner, together with the air of authority conferred on him by his years and by the vestiges of wealth, ensured that those three gave him the benefit of the doubt where she never could: indeed, they were now inclined to believe him and not her.
And didn’t they have a point?
Weren’t all her child-rearing principles being called into question, their rigor, their fierceness, their luster?
For if Jakob, Grete, and Lucie came to think that she’d lied, dissembled, or somehow weirdly managed to forget, would she not seem all the more culpable for having, in their home life, preached and insisted on such rectitude?
A warm dampness slid along her thighs and insinuated itself between her buttocks and the chair.
She felt her dress anxiously.
In despair she wiped her wet fingers on her napkin.
“You were keen to know what it was like to live near Sony and me,” her father went on in his kindly voice, “so you rented that house in Grand Yoff. I suppose you wanted to be independent, because of course I’d never have refused to put you up. You didn’t stay long, did you? You’d probably imagined, I don’t know, that things would be as they are in your country now, with people constantly blathering on about ‘opening up,’ ‘asking for forgiveness,’ inventing all sorts of problems and banging on about how much they love each other, but I had work to do in Dara Salam and in any case it’s just not my thing to bare my soul. No, you didn’t stay long, you must have been disappointed. I don’t know. And Sony wasn’t exactly in top form at the time so perhaps he disappointed you too.”
Norah didn’t budge, so concerned was she not to let on just how wretched she felt.
She raised her feet and held them above the little puddle under her chair.
Her face and her neck were burning.
She said nothing, kept her eyes lowered, and remained seated until everyone had left the table. Then she went to the kitchen to fetch a rag.
That evening before dark she went outside and stood in the doorway, knowing she’d find her father there, waiting patiently as always for the moment he could make the leap.
In his grubby shirt he shone as never before.
He looked at the beige dress she’d put on, pursed his lips, and said, almost kindly, “You peed yourself just now. It doesn’t matter, you know.”
“Sony told me you strangled your wife,” Norah remarked, ignoring what he’d just said.
He didn’t jump, nor even shoot a sideways glance at her; he was already somewhat absent, absorbed no doubt by his awareness of night’s approach and his eagerness to regain his dusky perch in the poinciana.
“Sony acknowledges that he did it,” her father said at last, as if dragged back to a tedious present. “He’s never said, and will never say, anything different. I know him. I’ve every confidence in him.”
“But why all this?”
“I’m old, my girl. Can you see me in Reubeuss? Come on. Besides, you weren’t there, so far as I’m aware. What do you know about who did what? Nothing. Sony confessed, they’ve wound up the investigation, so that’s that.”
His thin, dreamy voice became fainter and fainter.
“My poor dear boy,” he whispered.
In the bedroom turned into a temporary office she read for the umpteenth time the file on Sony’s case.
Jakob and the girls had gone back to Paris as she was moving herself into the little house with the pink walls and the blue corrugated-iron roof. She’d reached an agreement with her colleagues at the firm that she could conduct Sony’s defense.
She occasionally looked up from the file to gaze with pleasure on the small, white, bare room. She accepted the idea that she had perhaps, ten years earlier, slept in this same room, because it was now much simpler to freely acknowledge that possibility than to deny it in fear and anger. As a result she no longer feared being overwhelmed by a feeling of déjà vu, which could just as well have been provoked by a dream she’d had as by what she was currently living through.
There she was, alone in the intense brightness of a strange house, sitting on a cool, hard, shiny metal chair. Her whole body was at peace and her mind was equally calm.
She understood what had happened in her father’s house, understood all those involved as if she were the devil gripping each one of them.
For this is what Sony had told the examining magistrate:
“I hid in my stepmother’s bedroom. I stood in a corner between the wardrobe and the wall. I had in my pocket a bit of cord I’d taken from the cupboard under the kitchen sink, a piece left over from the clothesline in the garden. I knew my stepmother would enter the room alone after putting the twins to bed because that was what she did every evening. I knew my father would not be joining her because he’d stopped sleeping in that room, I can’t say where he sleeps, I know but I can’t tell you. That means I acted with premeditation throughout, because I knew that my stepmother would go toward the wardrobe and that it would be easy to slip the cord around her neck. She was on the tall side, but quite slim and not particularly strong. Her slender arms were not very strong, so I knew she wouldn’t put up much of a struggle. I’d hugged her often enough in that same room, I’d put my arms around her often enough, to know that I was a great deal stronger than she was. She was so delicate that my hands almost touched my shoulders when I hugged her. Then everything went as planned. She came in, closed the door behind her, walked to the wardrobe, I reached out to her and did it. Her throat gurgled, she tried to grip the cord around her neck, but she was already too weak. She slumped a little, I lifted her up again and put her on the bed. I left the room and closed the door. Back in my own bedroom I pumped up all my basketballs. I knew that no one was going to pump them up for quite a while and I feel better if they’re correctly inflated. I went to bed and slept soundly. At six I was awoken by the twins screaming. They’d gone to see their mother and it was their screams that aroused me. A little later the police arrived and I told them what had happened, just as I’m telling you today. I did it because my stepmother and I were involved in a love affair that had been going on for three years. She was my age and it was the first time I’d ever been in love. I loved her more than anything or anyone in the whole world. When my father married and brought her home, it was love at first sight. It was very hard, I felt guilty, I felt dirty. But she had fallen for me too and we started making love. It was my first time, I’d waited until then, I’d never dared before. I found her carefree and beautiful, I was very happy. She got pregnant and I became very fond of the twins: I was sure they were mine. I was happy with the situation because my father didn’t suffer at all, I wasn’t afraid of him anymore and he took no interest in me. But she began to tire of me. She wasn’t capable of loving me for the
rest of her life as I was capable of loving her for the rest of mine. She was unhappy and started hating me. She said I had to leave the house and make my life elsewhere. But where could I go and what could I do and who else could I love? My home was in my father’s house and I was irrevocably married to my father’s wife and my father’s children were my children. As a result my father’s secrets were my secrets, too, which is why I can’t speak about him even though I know everything about him.”
And the young Khady Demba, eighteen, had said:
“I was in the kitchen and I heard the two little girls screaming. I left the kitchen and went to the bedroom where the girls were. They were standing close to the bed and their mother was stretched out on it. I saw that her eyes were open and her face wasn’t its normal color.”
And the father had said:
“I’m a self-made man and I think I’m entitled to take some pride in that. My parents had nothing, no one around me had anything, we lived by our wits and survived thanks to various schemes, but each day’s gains never equaled the amount of mental effort expended. I was a clever boy so I went to study in France. Then I returned with my son Sony, who was age five at the time, and I went into business. I bought a half-built holiday village in Dara Salam and I managed to turn it into a popular resort and make it profitable. But times changed and I had to sell Dara Salam. As you see me today I have to make do with very little, but I don’t care, I haven’t much pride left. When I entered the house I was greeted by all that screaming. If my son Sony affirms that he did this, I accept that, and I forgive him because I’ve always loved my son the way he is, even though people sometimes tell me, ‘Your son has never made good use of his intelligence,’ but he’s made what use he could of it, he’s done what he wanted, it’s not my concern. My wife betrayed me, he didn’t. He’s my son and I accept and understand what he’s done because I see myself in him. My son Sony is better than me, his generosity of spirit is greater than that of anyone else I’ve ever known, nevertheless I can see myself in him and I forgive him. I accept what he’s affirmed, I’ve nothing to add, nothing else to say, and if he were to withdraw his confession I’d accept that likewise. He’s my son and I raised him, that’s all. My wife, I didn’t raise her. I don’t know her and I can’t forgive her and my hatred of this woman who cuckolded me in my own house and didn’t care a fig for me will never fade.”
At afternoon’s end, when the shade made the heat less oppressive, Norah went to see Sony.
She left each day at the same time, walking slowly so as not to sweat too much.
And she went over in her mind the questions she would put to Sony, well aware that he would only answer with a smile, never going back on his resolve to protect their father, but she wanted to show him that she at least was determined to save him and was therefore prepared to confront him fair and square.
She walked joyfully along the familiar street. She was at peace with herself and her body was behaving itself.
She said hello to a neighbor who was sitting at her door and thought, What good neighbors I have, and if one or another of them, the Lebanese baker or the old woman who sold sodas in the street, piped up, claiming to have known her ten years earlier, it didn’t upset her.
She accepted it humbly, without reason, as a mystery.
In the same way she’d stopped wondering why she no longer doubted that her love for her child would be rekindled once she’d done all she could for Sony, once she’d delivered them both from the devils that had sunk their claws into them when she was eight and Sony was five.
That’s the way it was.
And she was able to contemplate with equanimity and gratitude the way Jakob was taking care of the children. His way of doing it was perhaps no worse than her way, and so she was able to think of Lucie without worrying.
She was able to think of her brother Sony’s radiant expression when, in the old days, she used to throw him playfully on the bed. She could think of it now without suffering the torments of the damned.
That’s the way it was.
And she’d watch over Sony and bring him back home.
That’s the way it was.
COUNTERPOINT
HE SENSED near him a breath not his own, another presence in the branches. For some weeks now he’d been aware that he was not alone in his hideout, and patiently, without irritation, he was waiting for the stranger to reveal herself, even though he knew what was going on since it could be nothing else. He wasn’t annoyed, and in the tranquil darkness of the poinciana his heart was beating languidly and his mind was lethargic. No, he wasn’t cross: his daughter Norah was there, close by, perched among the branches now bereft of flowers, surrounded by the bitter smell of the tiny leaves; she was there in the dark, in her lime-green dress, at a safe distance from her father’s phosphorescence. Why would she come and alight on the poinciana if it wasn’t to make peace, once and for all? His heart beat languidly, his mind was lethargic. He heard his daughter breathing, and it didn’t make him angry.
THROUGHOUT THE MORNING, the thought kept coming back to him, like the vestiges of a troubling, rather degrading dream, that it would have been better, for his own sake, not to have spoken to her like that. Going around and around in his unquiet mind the idea soon became a certainty, even though he could no longer remember the precise reason for the quarrel—that painful, degrading dream of which there remained only a bitter aftertaste.
He ought never, never, to have spoken to her that way. That was all he knew about their argument, and what made it now impossible for him to concentrate, or in any way gain an upper hand, anything that could prove useful when he returned home and found himself face-to-face with her again.
Because, he thought confusedly, how was he going to assuage his own conscience if his truncated memories of their disputes served to highlight nothing but his own guilt, over and over again, as in those troubling, degrading dreams in which whatever you say, whatever you decide, you’re always the one who’s irrevocably to blame?
And—he also wondered—if he couldn’t manage to assuage his own conscience, how could he calm down and become a proper father? How could he get people to love him again?
He certainly shouldn’t speak to her like that; no man had the right.
But what had pushed him to let slip those words that ought never to be uttered by a man who passionately desired to be loved as he had always been, that was what he couldn’t recall, as if the terrible phrases (but what were they, exactly?) had exploded inside his head, obliterating everything else.
So was it fair that he felt so guilty?
If only, he thought, he could prove before his inner tribunal that he’d had good reason to get so terribly angry, he’d be in a better position to regret his behavior and his whole nature would be improved thereby.
As for his present swirl of agitated, chaotic shame, it only served to anger him.
Oh, how he longed for clarity, for some peace and quiet!
Why did he feel, as the years drifted by, his fine younger days slipping away, that only the lives of others—the lives of almost everyone around him—were proceeding naturally, gliding along an increasingly unencumbered path, already illuminated by the warm, gentle rays of the light shining at the end? It was a fact that made it possible for all the men in his acquaintance to let their guard down and adopt a relaxed, subtly acerbic attitude toward life, an attitude inspired by a discreet awareness of having acquired wisdom at the price of perfect health, a supple, flat stomach, and a full head of hair.
Being plunged in grief, I find myself mightily dejected.
He, Rudy, could see what this wisdom consisted of, even if his own progress seemed painfully slow, his path choked with tangled undergrowth that no light could penetrate.
From the depths of his chaos, his fragility, he felt he understood the fundamental insignificance of his suffering, and yet he was incapable of deriving any advantage from this awareness, lost as he was on the fringes of the true existence that everyo
ne has the power to influence.
So—he said to himself—despite his forty-three summers, he, Rudy Descas, seemed yet to have acquired that knack, that easy levelheadedness, that sardonic tranquillity that he saw informing the simplest actions and the most routine utterances of other men, of people who spoke calmly and with unstudied sincerity to their children, who read newspapers and magazines with wry interest, who looked forward to a pleasant lunch with friends the following Sunday, whose success they could cheerfully make every necessary effort to ensure, never being obliged to conceal the fact that they were only just emerging from yet another squabble, from a painful, degrading dream.
I find myself mightily dejected.
He was never, ever, granted any of that.
But why, he wondered, why?
That he’d behaved badly at such-and-such a moment and in such-and-such a situation where it had been important to measure up to the attendant joy or the tragedy, that he was perfectly happy to acknowledge, but what constituted the tragedy, where was the joy, in this diminished life with his family, and what were the particular circumstances he’d been incapable of confronting as a fully formed person?
Exactly. It seemed to him that his immense fatigue—though his fury was no less considerable, Fanta would say with a snicker, adding that it was just like him to claim to be consumed, even as the perpetual muted rage he inflicted on his nearest and dearest was far more wearing on them: isn’t that right, Rudy?—that his great fatigue resulted from his efforts to steer their poor tumbrel, that load of painful, degrading dreams, in the right direction.
Had his desire to do the right thing ever been rewarded?
No, not even—no—not even acknowledged, let alone praised or honored.
In defense of Fanta, who always seemed to be blaming him silently for all their setbacks and misfortunes, he had to acknowledge that he was quick to preempt any such judgment by cultivating the feeling that he himself was vaguely accountable for all the bad luck that came their way.
