Lullaby

by Leïla Slimani

  *

  The next morning, Paul wakes up in a crumpled shirt, his lips still stained by red wine. In the shower, fragments of the evening flash up in his memory. He remembers his proposal and the dark look his wife shot him. He feels stupid and tired in advance. He’ll have to fix his mistake now. Or pretend he never mentioned it, let time pass, wait for it to be forgotten. He knows that Myriam will make fun of him, of his drunken promises. She will blame him for his financial recklessness and the thoughtless way he treats Louise. ‘Because of you, she’ll be disappointed, but she’s so kind, she won’t even dare to say anything.’ Myriam will hold their bills in front of his eyes, bring him back to reality. ‘It’s always like that when you drink,’ she will conclude.

  But Myriam does not seem angry. Lying on the sofa, with Adam in her arms, she smiles at him so sweetly that he can’t believe it. She’s wearing men’s pyjamas, too big for her. Paul sits next to her and nuzzles her neck. He loves its heather-like smell. ‘Is it true what you said last night?’ she asks. ‘You think we can take Louise with us this summer? That’ll be so great! For once, we’ll have a real holiday. And Louise will be so happy. I mean, what else could she do that’d be better than that?’

  It’s so hot that Louise has left the window of the hotel room half-open. The shouts of drunkards and the screeching of car brakes do not wake Adam and Mila, who snore, mouths open, one leg dangling out of bed. They are spending only one night in Athens and Louise is sharing a tiny room with the children, to save money. They spent the whole evening laughing. They went to bed late. Adam was happy: he danced in the streets, on the cobblestones of Athens, and old people clapped their hands, captivated by his ballet. Louise did not like the city, which they walked through all afternoon despite the sweltering sun and the whining of the children. She is only thinking about tomorrow, about their trip to the islands, whose myths and legends Myriam has recounted to the children.

  Myriam isn’t good at telling stories. She has a slightly irritating way of articulating the complicated words and finishes all her sentences with ‘You see?’, ‘You understand?’ But Louise listened, like a studious child, to the story of Zeus and the goddess of war. Like Mila, her favourite was Aegeus, who gave his blue to the sea, the sea on which she will ride in a boat for the first time.

  In the morning, she has to drag Mila out of bed. The little girl is still asleep when the nanny undresses her. In the taxi on the way to the port of Piraeus, Louise tries to remember some ancient gods, but they are all gone from her memory. She should have written the names of those heroes down in her flowered notebook. She would have thought about them again afterwards, alone. At the entrance to the port, a huge bottleneck has formed and some policemen are trying to direct traffic. It’s already very hot and Adam, sitting on Louise’s knees, is soaked with sweat. Massive luminous signs point the way to the docks where the boats for the islands are moored, but Paul doesn’t understand them. He gets angry, becomes agitated. The taxi driver makes a U-turn, shrugging with resignation. He doesn’t speak English. Paul pays him. They get out of the car and run to their quay, dragging their suitcases and Adam’s pushchair behind them. The crew are about to raise the bridge when they see the family, frenzied and dishevelled, waving their arms about. They were lucky.

  No sooner are they on the boat than the children fall asleep. Adam in his mother’s arms and Mila with her head resting on Paul’s knees. Louise wants to see the sea and the contours of the islands. She goes up on to the bridge. On a bench, a woman is lying on her back. She is wearing a bikini: a thong and a strip of material around her chest that barely hides her breasts. She has very dry platinum-blonde hair, but what strikes Louise is her skin. It is purplish and covered with large brown stains. In places – inside her thighs, on her cheeks, just above her breasts – her skin is blistered and raw, as if she’s been burned. She is immobile, like the corpse of a flayed torture victim, left out as a warning to the others.

  Louise is seasick. She takes deep breaths. She closes her eyes then opens them, unable to quell the dizziness. She can’t move. She sits on a bench, her back to the bridge, far from the edge of the boat. She would like to look at the sea, to remember it, and those white-shored islands that the tourists are pointing at. She would like to memorise the shapes of the sailing boats that have anchored in the sea and the slim figures diving into the water. She would like to, but she feels nauseous.

  The sun grows hotter and hotter and now there is a crowd of people staring at the woman on the bench. She has covered her eyes and the sound of the wind probably prevents her from hearing the stifled laughter, the remarks, the whispers. Louise can’t stop looking at that scrawny body, streaming with sweat. That woman consumed by the sun, like a piece of meat thrown on the embers.

  Paul has rented two bedrooms in a charming guesthouse in the island’s hills, above a beach where the children spend a lot of time. The sun sets and a pink light envelops the bay. They walk towards Apollonia, the capital. The roads they take are lined with cactuses and fig trees. At the bottom of a cliff is a monastery visited by tourists in swimsuits. Louise is completely entranced by the beauty of the place, by the calmness of the narrow streets, the little squares where cats sleep. She sits on a wall, her feet dangling, and she watches an old woman sweep the courtyard outside her house.

  The sun has sunk into the sea, but it isn’t dark yet. The light has just taken on shades of pastel and the details of the landscape are still visible. The outline of a bell on the roof of a church. The aquiline profile of a stone bust. The sea and the bushy shore seem to relax, plunged into a languorous torpor, offering themselves to the night, very softly, playing hard to get.

  After putting the children to bed, Louise can’t sleep. She sits on the terrace outside her room, from where she can contemplate the rounded bay. The wind begins to blow in the evening, a sea wind, in which she can almost taste salt and utopias. She falls asleep there, on a deckchair, with a shawl covering her like a thin blanket. The cold dawn wakes her and she nearly cries out at the spectacle of the new day. A pure, simple, obvious beauty. A beauty within the reach of every heart.

  The children wake too, enthusiastic. The only word on their lips is the sea. Adam wants to roll around in the sand. Mila wants to see fish. As soon as they’ve finished breakfast, they go down to the beach. Louise wears a loose orange dress, a sort of djellaba that makes Myriam smile. It was Mrs Rouvier who gave it to her, years before, after telling her: ‘Oh, you know, I’ve worn it a lot.’

  The children are ready. She has smeared them in sun cream and they run straight for the sand. Louise sits with her back to a stone wall. In the shade of a pine tree, knees bent, she watches the sunlight glimmer on the sea. She has never seen anything so beautiful before.

  Myriam lies on her front and reads a novel. Paul, who ran four miles before breakfast, is dozing. Louise makes sandcastles. She sculpts an enormous turtle that Adam keeps destroying and she keeps patiently rebuilding. Mila, overwhelmed by the heat, pulls her by the arm. ‘Come on, Louise, let’s go in the sea.’ The nanny resists. She tells Mila to wait. To sit down with her. ‘Why don’t you help me finish my turtle?’ She shows the child some seashells that she’s collected and that she places delicately on the shell of her giant turtle.

  The pine tree no longer gives enough shade and the heat is growing ever more oppressive. Louise is pouring with sweat and she can no longer think of any argument to oppose the begging child. Mila takes her by the hand and Louise refuses to stand up. She grabs the little girl’s wrist and pushes her away so brusquely that Mila falls backwards. Louise shouts: ‘Will you leave me alone?’

  Paul opens his eyes. Myriam rushes over to Mila and consoles her weeping daughter. They glare at Louise, furious and disappointed. The nanny retreats, ashamed. They are about to ask her for an explanation when she whispers, slowly: ‘I didn’t tell you this before, but I can’t swim.’

  Paul and Myriam remain silent. They signal Mila, who has started to giggle, to be quiet. Mil
a mocks her: ‘Louise is a baby. She doesn’t even know how to swim.’ Paul is embarrassed, and that makes him angry. He blames Louise for having brought her poverty, her frailties all the way here. For having poisoned their day with her martyr’s face. He takes the children swimming and Myriam dives back into her book.

  The morning is spoiled by Louise’s sadness and when they eat lunch on the terrace of a little bar, no one speaks. They have not finished eating when, suddenly, Paul stands up and takes Adam in his arms. He walks to the little shop on the beach. He comes back, hopping, because the sand is burning the soles of his feet. He is holding a packet that he waves in front of Louise and Myriam. ‘Here you go,’ he says. The two women do not respond and Louise docilely holds up her arm so Paul can slide an inflatable armband past her elbow. ‘You’re so thin, you can even wear children’s armbands!’

  All week long, Paul takes Louise swimming. The two of them get up early, and while Myriam and the children stay by the guesthouse swimming pool, Louise and Paul go down to the still-deserted beach. As soon as they reach the wet sand, they hold hands and walk through the water for a long time, towards the horizon. They advance until their feet gently lift up from the sand and their bodies start to float. At that instant, Louise is invariably seized by a feeling of panic that she cannot hide. She cries out and Paul knows that he has to hold her hand even more tightly.

  To begin with, he is embarrassed by having to touch Louise’s skin. When he teaches her to float on her back, he puts one hand under the back of her neck and the other beneath her bottom. An idiotic thought flashes through his mind and he laughs inwardly: ‘Louise has a bottom.’ Louise has a body that trembles under Paul’s palms and fingers. A body he had not seen or even suspected before, having considered Louise as part of the world of children or the world of employees. Probably he didn’t see her at all. And yet, Louise is not unpleasant to look at. Abandoned to Paul’s hands, the nanny resembles a little doll. A few strands of blonde hair escape from the swimming cap that Myriam bought her. Her light tan has brought out tiny freckles on her cheeks and nose. For the first time, Paul notices the faint blonde down on her face, like the fur on newly hatched chicks. But there is something prudish and childlike about her, a reserve, that prevents Paul feeling anything as brazen as desire for her.

  Louise looks at her feet, which sink into the sand and are licked by the sea. In the boat, Myriam told them that Sifnos owed its past prosperity to the gold and silver mines under its earth. And Louise convinces herself that the sparkles she can see through the water, on the rocks, are shards of those precious metals. The cool water covers her thighs. Now her sex organs are submerged. The sea is calm, translucent. Not a single wave surprises Louise or splashes against her chest. There are babies sitting close to the edge of the sea, watched serenely by their parents. When the water reaches her waist, Louise can’t breathe any more. She looks at the sky, dazzling, unreal. She pats the yellow-and-blue armbands on her thin arms, with drawings of a lobster and a triton-snail shell on them. She stares at Paul, imploringly. ‘There’s no risk,’ Paul promises. ‘As long as you can stand up, there’s no risk at all.’ But Louise seems petrified. She feels she’s about to tip over. That she’s going to be snatched by the currents below, her head held underwater, her legs kicking at air, until she can’t struggle any more.

  She remembers how, when she was a child, one of her classmates fell in a pond during the village outing. It was a small expanse of muddy water, with a smell in the summer that sickened her. The children went there to play, despite their parents’ warnings, despite the mosquitoes drawn there by the stagnant water. Here, in the blue of the Aegean Sea, Louise thinks about that black, stinking water, and about the child found with his face buried in the mire. Ahead of her, Mila kicks her legs. She is floating.

  They’re drunk and they are climbing the stone stairs that lead to the terrace next to the children’s bedroom. They laugh and Louise sometimes clings to Paul’s arm to climb up a step that is higher than the others. She gets her breath back, sitting under the bright-red bougainvillea, and looks down below at the beach where young couples drink cocktails and dance. The bar has organised a party on the beach. A ‘Full Moon Party’ for the round, red rock that has shone down on them all evening, with all the guests commenting on its beauty. Louise had never seen a moon like that before, a moon so beautiful it was worth lassoing. Not a cold, grey moon, like the moons of her childhood.

  On the terrace of the restaurant in the hills, they contemplated the bay of Sifnos and the lava-coloured sunset. Paul pointed out the lacy clouds. The tourists took photographs and when Louise wanted to stand up too to get a snapshot of it with her mobile phone, Paul gently pulled her arm to make her sit down again. ‘It won’t capture it. Better just to remember what it looks like.’

  For the first time, the three of them eat dinner together. The guesthouse owner offered to look after the children. They are the same age as his and they have been inseparable since the start of the holiday. Myriam and Paul were caught unprepared. Louise, of course, began by refusing. She said she couldn’t leave them alone, that she had to put them to bed. That it was her job. ‘They’ve been swimming all day, they won’t have any trouble falling asleep,’ the owner said in bad French.

  So they walked to the restaurant, in a slightly awkward silence. At the table, they all drank more than usual. Myriam and Paul were dreading this dinner. What could they talk about? What would they have to say to one another? But they were convinced that it was the right thing to do, that Louise would be content. ‘I want her to know that we value her work, you understand?’ So they talk about the children, the landscape, the morning swim, Mila’s progress with the breaststroke. They make conversation. Louise wants to tell them something – doesn’t matter what, something about her – but she doesn’t dare. She inhales deeply, moves her face forward to say something then draws back, tongue-tied. They drink and the silence grows peaceful, languorous.

  Paul, who is sitting next to her, puts his arm round her shoulders. The ouzo has made him jovial. He squeezes her shoulder with his big hand, smiles at her like she’s an old friend, like they’re friends for ever. She stares, enchanted, at the man’s face. His tanned skin, his large white teeth, his hair turned blonde by the wind and the salt. He shakes her a little bit, the way you do with a friend who’s shy or sad, with someone you want to relax or get a grip. If she dared, she’d put her hand on Paul’s hand, she’d grip it with her slender fingers. But she doesn’t dare.

  She is fascinated by Paul’s easy assurance. He jokes around with the waiter, who brings them each a digestif. In a few days he has already learned enough Greek to make the shopkeepers laugh or give him a discount. People recognise him. On the beach, he’s the one that the other children want to play with. Laughing, he bows to their desires. He carries them on his back, he jumps in the water with them. He eats with an incredible appetite. Myriam seems irritated by this, but Louise is touched by his love of food, which drives him to order everything on the menu. ‘We’ll take that too. We have to try it, right?’ And he picks up the pieces of meat or pepper or cheese with his fingers and swallows them with innocent joy.

  Back on the guesthouse terrace, the three of them burst out laughing into their hands and Louise puts a finger to her lips. Mustn’t wake the little ones. This flash of responsibility suddenly strikes them as ludicrous. They play at being children, these adults whose whole day has been spent straining towards the same child-centred objective. Tonight a new light-heartedness blows over them. Their intoxication relieves the accumulated anxieties and tensions that their progeny has insinuated between them, husband and wife, mother and nanny.

  Louise knows how fleeting this moment is. She sees Paul staring greedily at his wife’s shoulder. Against her pale-blue dress, Myriam’s skin appears even more golden. They start to dance, swaying from side to side. They are clumsy, almost embarrassed, and Myriam giggles as if it’s been a long time since anyone held her round the waist like this.
As if she felt ridiculous to be desired in this way. Myriam puts her cheek on her husband’s shoulder. Louise knows that they are going to stop, say goodbye, pretend to be sleepy. She would like to hold them back, to cling to them, scratch her nails in the stone floor. She would like to put them under glass, like two dancers, frozen and smiling, stuck to the pedestal of a musical box. She thinks that she could stare at them for hours without ever getting bored. That she would be content to watch them live, working in the shadows so that everything was perfect, so that the mechanism never jammed. She has the intimate conviction now, the burning and painful conviction that her happiness belongs to them. That she is theirs and they are hers.

  Paul giggles. He whispers something, his lips deep in his wife’s neck. Something that Louise doesn’t hear. He keeps a firm hold of Myriam’s hand and, like two polite children, they wish Louise goodnight. She watches them climb the stone staircase that leads to their bedroom. The blue line of their two bodies blurs, fades, the door slams shut. The curtains are drawn. Louise sinks into an obscene daydream. She hears, without wanting to, while refusing to, despite herself. She hears Myriam’s wailing, her doll-like moans. She hears the rustle of sheets and the headboard banging against the wall.