Lullaby

by Leïla Slimani

  Mila is cunning. She knows that crowds stare, and that Louise feels ashamed in the street. The nanny gives in more quickly when they are in public. Louise has to take detours to avoid the toyshop on the avenue, where the little girl stands in front of the window and screams. On the way to school, Mila drags her feet. She steals a raspberry from a greengrocer’s stall. She climbs on to windowsills, hides in porches, and runs away as fast as her legs will carry her. Louise tries to go after her while pushing the pram, yelling the girl’s name, but Mila doesn’t stop until she comes to the very end of the pavement. Sometimes Mila regrets her bad behaviour. She worries about Louise’s paleness and the frights she gives her. She becomes loving again, cuddly. She makes it up to the nanny, clinging to her legs. She cries and wants to be mothered.

  Slowly, Louise tames the child. Day after day, she tells her stories, where the same characters always recur. Orphans, lost little girls, princesses kept as prisoners, and castles abandoned by terrible ogres. Strange beasts – birds with twisted beaks, one-legged bears and melancholic unicorns – populate Louise’s landscapes. The little girl falls silent. She stays close to the nanny, attentive, impatient. She asks for certain characters to come back. Where do these stories come from? They emanate from Louise, in a continual flood, without her even thinking about it, without her making the slightest effort of memory or imagination. But in what black lake, in what deep forest has she found these cruel tales where the heroes die at the end, after first saving the world?

  Myriam is always disappointed when she hears the door open in the law firm where she works. Around 9.30 a.m., her colleagues start to arrive. They pour themselves coffee, telephones wail, the floorboards creak, the morning calm is shattered.

  Myriam gets to the office before eight. She is always the first there. She turns on her desk lamp, nothing else. Beneath that halo of light, in that cave-like silence, she rediscovers the concentration she used to have in her student years. She forgets everything and plunges with relish into the examination of her dossiers. Sometimes she walks through the dark corridor, document in hand, and talks to herself. She smokes a cigarette on the balcony as she drinks her coffee.

  The day she started work again, Myriam woke up at the crack of dawn, filled with a childlike excitement. She put on a new skirt, high heels, and Louise exclaimed: ‘You’re very beautiful.’ On the doorstep, holding Adam in her arms, the nanny pushed her boss out the door. ‘Don’t worry about us,’ she repeated. ‘Everything will be fine here.’

  Pascal gave Myriam a warm welcome. He assigned her the office next to his, with a communicating door that he often left ajar. Only two or three weeks after her arrival, Pascal entrusted her with responsibilities that some of his older employees had never been given. As the months passed, Myriam handled dozens of clients’ cases on her own. Pascal encourages her to try her hand at everything and to use her capacity for hard work, which he knows to be immense. She never says no. She does not refuse any of the dossiers that Pascal hands to her, she never complains about working late. Pascal often tells her: ‘You’re perfect.’ For months, she is weighed down by a mass of small cases. She defends sleazy dealers, halfwits, an exhibitionist, talentless robbers, alcoholics arrested at the wheel. She deals with cases of unpaid debt, credit-card fraud, identity theft.

  Pascal counts on her to find him new clients and encourages her to devote her time to legal-aid cases. Twice a month she goes to the Bobigny court and waits in the corridor until 9 p.m. for verdicts to be handed down, eyes glued to her watch, the hands barely moving. Sometimes she gets annoyed, responding brusquely to her disorientated clients. But she gives her all and obtains the best possible deals. Pascal repeats to her constantly: ‘You have to know each dossier by heart.’ She takes him at his word. She rereads statements and reports until late at night. She picks out the slightest inaccuracy, spots the smallest procedural error. She works with a fury and in the end she earns her reward. Former clients recommend her to friends. Her name circulates among the prisoners. One young man, who avoided a prison sentence thanks to her, promises to pay her back. ‘You got me out of there. I won’t forget that.’

  Once, she was called in the middle of the night and asked to report to the police station. A former client had been arrested for domestic violence. And yet he’d sworn to her that he was incapable of hitting a woman. She got dressed in the dark, soundlessly, at two in the morning, and she leaned down to kiss Paul. He grunted and then turned over.

  Often her husband tells her that she is working too hard and that drives her crazy. He is offended by her reaction and makes a big show of his benevolence. He pretends to be concerned about her health, to worry that Pascal is exploiting her. She tries not to think about her children, not to let the guilt eat away at her. Sometimes she starts imagining that they are all in league against her. Her mother-in-law tries to persuade her that ‘if Mila is often ill, it’s because she feels lonely’. Her colleagues never invite her to go for a drink with them after work and are surprised whenever she works until late. ‘But don’t you have children?’ Even the schoolteacher summoned her one morning to talk about a ridiculous incident between Mila and one of her classmates. When Myriam apologised for having missed the latest meetings and for having sent Louise in her place, the grey-haired teacher spread her hands. ‘If you only knew! It’s the modern malaise. All these poor children are left to their own devices while both parents are obsessed by their careers. They’re always running. You know what two words parents say most often to their children these days? “Hurry up!” And of course, we pay the price for all this. The children take out their anxieties and their feelings of abandonment on us.’

  Myriam had desperately wanted to put the teacher in her place, but she’d been incapable of doing it. Was it because of that little chair, on which she sat uncomfortably, in this little classroom that smelled of paint and plasticine? The setting, the teacher’s voice, all of this brought her forcefully back to her childhood, to that age of obedience and obligation. Myriam smiled. She stupidly thanked the woman and promised her that Mila would make progress. She didn’t throw the old harpy’s misogyny and moralising back in her face, as she wanted to. She was too afraid that the grey-haired lady would take out her revenge on Mila.

  Pascal seems to understand her rage, her vast hunger for recognition, for challenges that measure up to her abilities. Between her and Pascal, a battle begins, and both of them draw an ambiguous pleasure from it. He pushes her; she stands up to him. He exhausts her; she doesn’t disappoint him. One evening he invites her to have a drink with him after work. ‘You’ve been with us for nearly six months. That’s worth celebrating, don’t you think?’ They walk down the street in silence. He holds the door of the bar open for her and she smiles at him. They sit at the back of the room, on an upholstered bench. Pascal orders a bottle of white wine. They talk about one of their dossiers and then, very quickly, start reminiscing about their student years. The big party their friend Charlotte threw in her mansion in the eighteenth arrondissement. The panic attack, absolutely hilarious, that poor Céline suffered on the day of her orals. Myriam drinks fast and Pascal makes her laugh. She doesn’t feel like going home. She would like to have no one she has to call, no one waiting up for her. But there’s Paul. And there are the children.

  A gently thrilling, lightly erotic tension burns her throat and her breasts. She runs her tongue over her lips. She wants something. For the first time in a long time, she feels a gratuitous, futile, selfish desire. A desire of her own. Although she loves Paul, her husband’s body is weighed down by memories. When he penetrates her, it is her motherly womb that he enters, her heavy belly, where Paul’s sperm has so often been accommodated. Her belly of folds and waves, where they built their house, where so many worries and joys flowered. Paul has massaged her swollen, purple legs. He has seen the blood spread over the sheets. Paul has held her hair back from her forehead while she’s vomited, on her knees. He has heard her scream. He has wiped the sweat from her fac
e covered with angiomas while she pushed. He has delivered her children from her body.

  *

  She had always refused the idea that her children could be an impediment to her success, to her freedom. Like an anchor that drags you to the bottom, that pulls the face of the drowned man into the mud. At first, the realisation that she was wrong had plunged her into a profound sadness. She thought it unjust, terribly frustrating. She became aware that she could never live without feeling that she was incomplete, that she was doing things badly, sacrificing one part of her life for another. She had made a big deal out of this, refusing to renounce her dream of the ideal balance. Stubbornly thinking that everything was possible, that she could reach all her objectives, that she wouldn’t end up bitter or exhausted. That she wouldn’t play the role of a martyr or of the perfect mother.

  Every day, or nearly every day, Myriam receives a notification from her friend Emma. She posts sepia portraits of her two blonde children on social media. Perfect children who play in a park and go to a school that will allow them to blossom, bringing out the gifts that she already senses in them. She gave them unpronounceable names, taken from Nordic mythology, whose meanings she enjoys explaining. Emma is beautiful too, in these photographs. Her husband never appears in any of them, eternally devoted to taking pictures of an ideal family to which he belongs only as a spectator. He does his best to enter the frame, though. That bohemian bourgeois man with his beard and natural wool pullovers, who puts on tight, uncomfortable trousers to go to work.

  Myriam would never dare tell Emma this thought that fleetingly crosses her mind, this idea that is not cruel but shameful, and that she has as she observes Louise and her children. We will, all of us, only be happy, she thinks, when we don’t need one another any more. When we can live a life of our own, a life that belongs to us, that has nothing to do with anyone else. When we are free.

  Myriam heads to the door and looks through the spyhole. Every five minutes she repeats: ‘They’re late.’ She is making Mila nervous. Sitting on the edge of the sofa in her hideous taffeta dress, Mila has tears in her eyes. ‘You think they’re not coming?’

  ‘Of course they’re coming,’ Louise answers. ‘Give them time to get here.’

  The preparations for Mila’s birthday party have taken on ludicrous proportions. For the past two weeks, Louise has talked about nothing else. In the evenings, when Myriam comes home from work, exhausted, Louise shows her the party streamers she has made herself. In a hysterical voice, she describes the taffeta dress that she found in a boutique and that will, she feels sure, make Mila ecstatic. Several times, Myriam has had to force herself not to tell Louise to forget the whole thing. She is tired of these ridiculous preoccupations. Mila is so young! Myriam doesn’t see the point in putting her daughter in a state like this. But Louise stares at her with her wide-open little eyes. Just look at Mila – she is giddy with happiness. That’s all that counts, the pleasure of this little princess, the wonderland of her birthday celebration. Myriam swallows her sarcastic response. She feels as if she’s been caught in the wrong, and ends up promising that she will do her best to be there for the party.

  Louise decided to hold it on a Wednesday afternoon, when the children are off school. She wanted to be sure that everyone would be in Paris, and available to come. Myriam went to work that morning, swearing that she would come back after lunch.

  When she got home, early in the afternoon, she almost cried out in surprise. She didn’t recognise her own apartment any more. The living room was literally transformed, dripping with glitter, balloons, paper streamers. But most of all, the sofa had been removed to allow the children to play. Even the oak table, so heavy that they’d never moved it since their arrival, had been pushed to the other side of the room.

  ‘But who moved the furniture? Did Paul help you?’

  ‘No,’ Louise replies. ‘I did all that myself.’

  Myriam, incredulous, wants to laugh. It must be a joke, she thinks, observing the nanny’s match-thin arms. Then she remembers that she has already been taken aback by Louise’s strength. Once or twice, she was impressed by the way she picked up heavy, bulky parcels while carrying Adam in her arms. Concealed behind that frail, narrow physique, Louise has the power of a colossus.

  All morning Louise blew up balloons, twisted them into the shapes of animals and stuck them all over the apartment, from the entrance hall to the kitchen drawers. She made the birthday cake herself, an enormous red fruit charlotte covered with decorations.

  Myriam regrets having taken the afternoon off. She would have been so much happier in the calm of her office. Her daughter’s birthday party makes her anxious. She is afraid that the other children will be bored, impatient. She doesn’t want to have to deal with the ones who fight or console the ones whose parents are late to pick them up. Chilling memories of her own childhood come back to her. She sees herself on a thick, white wool carpet, isolated from the group of little girls playing with a doll’s tea set. She had let a piece of chocolate melt on the carpet and then she’d tried to hide her misdeed, which had only made things worse. Her host’s mother had told her off in front of everyone.

  Myriam holes up in her bedroom, closing the door and pretending to be absorbed in reading her emails. She knows that, as always, she can depend on Louise. The doorbell starts to ring. The living room swells with the noise of children. Louise has put music on. Myriam sneaks out of her room and watches the little guests, massed around the nanny. They spin around her, completely captivated. She has prepared songs and magic tricks. She disguises herself as they watch in disbelief and the children, who are not at all easy to deceive, know that she is one of their own. She is there, vibrant, joyful, teasing. She hums songs, makes animal noises. She even carries Mila and one of her friends on her back, and the other kids laugh until they cry, begging her to let them take part in the rodeo as well.

  Myriam admires this ability that Louise has to really play. When she plays, she is animated by that omnipotence that only children possess. One evening, coming home, Myriam finds Louise lying on the floor, her face painted. On her cheeks and forehead are the thick black lines of a warrior’s mask. She has made an Indian headdress out of crêpe paper. In the middle of the living room she has built a misshapen tepee out of a sheet, a broomstick and a chair. Standing in the half-open doorway, Myriam feels troubled. She watches Louise as she twists her body and makes wild noises, and she is horribly embarrassed. The nanny looks like she’s drunk. That is the first thought that comes to mind. Seeing Myriam there, Louise stands up, red-faced and staggering. ‘I’ve got pins and needles,’ she explains. Adam is clinging to her calf and Louise laughs, with a laugh that still belongs to the imaginary world in which their game is taking place.

  Perhaps, Myriam reassures herself, Louise is simply a child too. She takes very seriously the games she plays with Mila. For example, if they play cops and robbers, Louise lets herself be locked up behind invisible bars. Sometimes she plays the forces of law and order and runs after Mila. Each time, she invents a precise geography that Mila has to memorise. She creates costumes and develops a scenario filled with plot twists. She prepares the set with meticulous care. Occasionally the little girl gets tired of this. ‘Come on, let’s start!’ she begs.

  Myriam doesn’t know this, but Louise’s favourite game is hide-and-seek. Except that nobody counts and there are no rules. The game is based on the element of surprise. Without warning, Louise disappears. She nestles in a corner and lets the children search for her. She often chooses hiding places where she can continue to observe them. She hides under the bed or behind a door and doesn’t move. She holds her breath.

  And so Mila understands that the game has begun. She hollers like a mad girl and claps her hands. Adam follows her lead. He laughs so hard that he can hardly stand, and several times he falls on to his bottom. They call her name, but Louise does not respond. ‘Louise? Where are you?’ ‘Watch out, Louise, we’re coming, we’re going to find you.’
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br />   Louise says nothing. She does not come out of her hiding place, even when they scream, when they cry, when they fall into despair. Crouching in the shadows, she spies on Adam as he panics, lying on his back and sobbing. He doesn’t understand. He calls out ‘Louise’, swallowing the last syllable, snot dribbling over his lips, his cheeks purple with rage. Mila, too, ends up being scared. For a moment, they start to believe that Louise has really gone, that she has abandoned them in this apartment where night will soon fall, that they are alone and she will not come back. The anguish is unbearable and Mila begs the nanny. She says: ‘Louise, this isn’t funny. Where are you?’ The child becomes annoyed, stamps her feet. Louise waits. She watches them as if she’s studying the death throes of a fish she’s just caught, its gills bleeding, its body shaken by spasms. The fish wriggling on the bottom of the boat, sucking the air through its exhausted mouth, the fish that has no chance of surviving.

  Then Mila starts uncovering the hiding places. She has realised that she must open doors, lift up curtains, squat down to look under the bed. But Louise is so slim that she always finds new lairs where she can take refuge. She crawls into the laundry basket, under Paul’s desk, or to the back of a cupboard, where she covers herself with a blanket. Sometimes she hides in the shower cubicle, in the darkness of the bathroom. So, Mila searches in vain. She sobs and Louise remains motionless. The child’s despair does not make her yield.

  One day, Mila doesn’t cry any more. Louise is caught in her own trap. Mila stays silent, pacing around the hiding spot and pretending not to know that the nanny is there. She sits on the laundry basket and Louise feels as if she will suffocate. ‘Truce?’ whispers the child.