My Heart Hemmed In

by Marie Ndiaye

  Ange took a certain pleasure in saying those words, but, I ask myself, who could ever have heard them but me? Only lately have I sensed a spiteful presence lurking in our living room. Before, it was just the two of us, Ange and me, and no one would ever suspect me of repeating anything Ange said, because I’m a discreet and even taciturn woman, when I’m with adults.

  I then hear Gladys’s voice fading away, dying out, as if blown off on a wind too strong to resist.

  “I’m learning to forget my father, and so is Priscilla,” says Gladys. “We don’t have a choice, you know. There’s no choice… It’s better for him this way too.”

  “Why is it better for him?” I shriek.

  Just as I feared, it’s too late: nothing more comes from the receiver but the slow beep of the signal telling me to hang up.

  I go to the window and peer out at the rain, hoping I might see the Chinese student again. My entire being is still basking in the consolation of her smile, short-lived though it was, almost imperceptible. Wasn’t Ange, wasn’t my beloved Ange going too far, hating that girl just because she liked to show off her pretty unclothed body? Once he pretended to slap her, broadly miming that slap in front of the window, a savage look on his face, to make it clear to her once and for all that he found her nudity so offensive that he couldn’t control his rage. And did that have any effect on her? She looked at him in surprise, then lowered her eyes to her breasts, her legs, as if she herself were just realizing she had nothing on, or as if she were trying to find anything in her appearance that might so upset Ange that he might want to destroy her from afar, and then she gave an innocent laugh, with an elegant shake of her head.

  I also remember the evening we had our friends in to toast the birth of Souhar (why on earth did you call her that? I asked my son on the phone, troubled and unhappy), when Ange pointed the student’s window out to everyone, braying, “You know how that girl behaves?”

  Whereupon he described and then imitated her way of parading around, and he managed to create such an impression of obscenity simply by walking with little mincing steps, his belly thrust out, his bottom held high, that it made the Dumezes and the Foulques deeply uncomfortable, I sensed, because they’re such good people, so innocent in a way. I wanted to tell Ange, “No, no, that’s not what she looks like at all,” but I only smiled in amusement, afraid Ange might order me to imitate the girl myself if I criticized him. And I’m not chaste enough to properly reproduce her natural, carefree display, I told myself, and my impersonation would be nearly as untrue and indecent as Ange’s. We don’t have anything like that girl’s wonderful weightlessness, I thought, no more than her slightly simple, slightly unpolished good-heartedness, and that’s why we can only be a hideous sight when we try to mock her.

  Finally night falls, swallowing up the dark day, the ceaseless rain. All at once I feel a cold breath on the back of my neck, and I hold my own breath, as I always do when he comes too close.

  “I’ve made dinner,” he purrs, his dry, icy lips grazing my neck. “Paupiettes with mushrooms and cream, and a little artichoke risotto you’re going to love. I have the crème fraîche delivered from a dairy in Normandy that guarantees all the wholesomeness and flavor I demand, just as you and your husband do, isn’t that so? You love good things as much as I do, don’t you? Come and eat, I have a plate all ready for you. Meanwhile, I’ll go feed our poor Ange.”

  “I’ll deal with that,” I say quickly.

  Only then does it occur to me that the time for such precautions might have passed, since I’ve resigned myself to leaving Ange behind, handing him over to Noget.

  Standing in the kitchen, I eat the food he’s made for us, hurried and vaguely disgusted, then tiptoe to our bedroom. Through the half-open door I see Noget’s back as he bends over Ange, and it comes to me that I bend over my students in exactly the same way when I’m scolding them, trying to intimidate them with the full weight of my furious, looming flesh. Ange is holding the fork himself, spearing pieces of meat on the plate Noget is offering him, and eating very quickly.

  He’s not letting him take his time, I tell myself.

  His cheeks are puffed out, still full of food, and already he’s stuffing in another piece, then a huge forkful of rice. Noget hurries him along.

  “Come on, come on,” he grumbles, “I’ve got things to do.”

  But after all, who am I to find fault? Aren’t I relieved that Noget has taken my place in the stinking bedroom?

  I’ve taken to sleeping in the room we use as a study. The smell of Ange’s wound makes me woozy. I can’t stand to be by his side for more than a few minutes, vainly mopping up the pus, running a washcloth dipped in eau de cologne over his forehead and cheeks, which turn yellower and more hollow with each passing day. Ange now looks at Noget and me with the same gaze, at once evasive and pleading, frightened and slightly lethargic. But when, just in case, I venture to murmur, “Do you want me to send for Doctor Charre?” his wasted face flushes, and he furiously shakes his head.

  “I’ve told you a hundred times, I don’t want to see anyone,” he grumbles. “Don’t you understand? He’d give me a shot…a lethal injection… I’m sure he’s got a syringe all ready…with my name on it. He’s just waiting for his cue… waiting for you to call.”

  “But why should that be, Ange?” I ask patiently.

  And he laughs meanly, trying to mimic me, but he doesn’t have the strength and soon has to give up, making do with an almost loathing glance that fills me with horror. What has my husband turned into? The man I loved, the man who was one with me, where has he gone?

  13. If only he were my son

  I haven’t been in to school for three days, and I must face the fact that the principal has never tried to get ahold of me, that no colleague has shown any concern. Nor has any parent written me, or passed on a little note or a sweet drawing from my students, as they did the few times I fell ill over the years.

  I seem to have been erased from the life of the school, just as completely as Ange.

  Not wanting to meet up with Noget, I never leave the study where I sleep except to race to the bathroom or look in on Ange. Nonetheless, even when Noget is away, I can feel his prying spirit around us, his watchful shadow. Just when I think he’s home for the night, I suddenly hear the creak of the hallway floorboards, the squeak of our bedroom door, and when, sitting up on the cot in the study, I cry, “Is that you, Monsieur Noget?” no one answers, and all at once everything in the apartment goes quiet.

  What is he here for? I knead my hands, too frightened to move but rebuking myself for not protecting Ange in his vulnerable state. I don’t believe he’s hurting him, exactly. And Ange never complains about him—yes, that’s true, but would he dare? He’s simply exerting some sort of force on or around Ange, and the nature or intention of that force I don’t know. As if he wanted to make sure that Ange never recovers.

  The morning of the fourth day, I drink the coffee Noget brings me before I’m even up (he must wait there behind the door, listening for the little sounds that tell him I’m awake), and that coffee truly is the smoothest and richest I’ve ever tasted. Then I get dressed, carefully choosing my clothes, and make up my eyes and mouth. My face in the mirror seems different, a little wider than usual, even fuller, my chin heavier.

  It’s all that rich food he’s forcing on us, I tell myself, and I feel at the same time apprehensive and vaguely as if I’d been tricked.

  “You use too much butter and oil in your dishes,” I tell him as I walk into the kitchen.

  He’s busy buttering the generous slices of warm bread he brings every morning. There are croissants as well, I see, and buns studded with lumps of sugar.

  “The butter is just pouring off that bread,” I say, irritated. “Why are you trying to fatten us up like a couple of pigs for the slaughter?”

  He looks up at me, a gaze without warmth that he does his best to instill with a sort of polite amiability.

  “Because I like you, n
othing more,” he says. “You’ve always had a taste for good food, haven’t you? I’ve seen you two coming home from the market with fine Italian charcuterie that perfumed the whole staircase, or little vegetables you sometimes braised all afternoon long, so I realized that like me you have a fondness for…”

  “And what about our neighbors,” I interrupt, my annoyance overflowing, “the Bertauxs, the delightful Foulques, those nice Dumezes, I suppose they’re all away on vacation?”

  “Oh, those people,” he says scornfully.

  He falls silent, pretending to be too polite to fully speak his mind.

  “What do you have against them?” I ask, minding my tone.

  “Who’s here at your side? It’s me, isn’t it? You haven’t seen hide nor hair of them, and you’re not going to. They wouldn’t even want to admit they’d ever met you.”

  He purses his lips, breaks into a sullen pout, pretends to be concentrating on the bread and butter. There’s a decency in his offended reserve, his sort of long-suffering forbearance, that shakes my confidence.

  “I’m sure you’re mistaken,” I say softly. “I’m sure our neighbors aren’t ashamed of us. As soon as they get a moment to give us a sign of their sympathy…”

  “Oh, oh, oh,” he says, disgusted.

  “You don’t know the first thing about it,” I say.

  I feel oppressed and disheartened, just as I always do when I talk with Noget. He muddles my thoughts, trying to drag me into the mire where he feels so repellently at home, where every event is judged from the single, unchanging viewpoint of suspicion.

  “There must be some reason you’ve decided to leave,” he says coolly.

  Burning hot blood rushes to my face. My cheeks feel monstrously swollen. Don’t even think of mentioning that to him, I tell myself.

  Suddenly I feel such pity for myself that my eyes fill with tears. I’ve devoted my life to my work, to the children, and now everyone’s shoving me aside like a piece of trash so vile you don’t even want the sight of it lingering in your memory.

  “I’m just going to visit my son,” I say. “I haven’t even seen my granddaughter yet.” I can’t help adding, in a bitter yelp: “They named her Souhar!”

  Noget doesn’t answer. An odd tension settles in between us, like when I rehooked my bra in front of him.

  “Souhar. Weird idea, don’t you think?” I murmur.

  With ostentatious care he arranges Ange’s breakfast things on a tray, and I dully observe that I’ve grown used to his tangled beard, his dubious clothes, his ambivalent form, slight and pudgy at the same time, and it no longer offends me.

  In hopes of dispelling the awkwardness I’ve created by bringing up Souhar (but how painful I find the mere thought of that name!), I go on: “Surely there’ll be a school to take me in where my son lives.”

  “Oh, you think so?” says Noget, courtly and cold.

  I leave the apartment without stopping in to say hello to Ange, for fear he might ask where I’m going.

  Rue Esprit-des-Lois is gray and damp this morning, yet again. Every day now for weeks, the fog rising up from the river has hung over the city until nightfall, filling the streets with the smell of silt.

  I look up and can’t see the sky. The topmost floor of our building, home to the very decent, very sweet Foulque couple, has vanished into the mist.

  I don’t have my coat to wear anymore. I shiver in my bulging old cardigan. This cardigan shouldn’t be so tight on me, I tell myself, angry at Noget, and angry at myself too, for blindly succumbing to the seductions of his cooking. It’s hard to believe. I don’t eat that much of it, because even though I’ve grown used to his appearance, I can’t shake my mistrust of any food chosen and cooked by his hand. And still I’ve ballooned, and I’m plump enough to begin with, and all this from just barely touching Noget’s dishes. Ange must be terribly sick, I suddenly tell myself in a flash of painful lucidity, to be getting thinner day after day even with Noget working so hard to stuff him—as if, I tell myself, shivering, that abundance of food were running out through Ange’s wound in the form of pus.

  I walk through the clinging fog to the Saint-Michel neighborhood. I’m glad the few passersby can’t see me clearly. I might run into parents from school, who wouldn’t even treat me with the contempt they’ve shown over these past several months, them and everyone else, which I’m now used to, in a way—no, they’d pretend they hadn’t even recognized me, now that I’ve been expelled from the school.

  I take several wrong turns before I finally reach La Rousselle police station.

  I haven’t been here for years, not since my son left Bordeaux and so deprived me of any pretext for calling on Inspector Lanton, a young man I was very fond of, my son’s lover at the time, and even what one might call his partner, though they never actually lived together. I hope he still works at La Rousselle—and how distant and enviable seem those days, not so long ago (three years? four?), when I and sometimes Ange used to stop by the station after school for a cup of coffee with Lanton, whose face always lit up with a sort of filial gratitude when he saw me, who always found time to chat and joke, even when he was busy, and to tell us all the latest sordid goings-on in the city, knowing that Ange and I took a fervent interest in such things.

  Ange is particularly fascinated by murders. He would blush with repressed exaltation as he listened to Lanton, his thigh jerking nervously. As soon as we were out of the station, he would work himself into a lather, brandishing his satchel and trying to demonstrate that it was the excessive liberty of contemporary society that led to these pointless, small-time murders Lanton had told us about. These speeches wearied me. And so I eventually found ways to visit Lanton without Ange’s knowing, and those tête-à-têtes sealed the bond that subtly united us. I was deeply unhappy when I learned that my son was breaking up with Lanton. Oh, I should have gone on visiting the station, I later reflected, rebuking myself for stupidly relinquishing my free will out of respect for the unspoken law that orders us to have nothing to do with our children’s former lovers, especially when the separation was painful—because Lanton, a finer young man than my son in many ways, suffered terribly at being left.

  The waiting room is full even at this early hour. Troubled, I stare vacantly into space, and then, once I find the courage to look at the crowd straight on, I realize we’re alike, they and I.

  How can I put it into words?

  It shakes me to the core. I don’t know any of these people, all of them perfectly ordinary men and women. And yet I realize it could just as well be Ange and me waiting here, with our faces so like theirs, our expressions rigorously identical to theirs, even if they vary slightly from one to the next—that makes no difference, it’s a multiple echo originating in our similar souls, a oneness I’ve just seen for the first time.

  Poor Ange, was it I who contaminated him?

  I’m almost unsurprised to see my ex-husband, my son’s father, slumped in a corner chair. Of course, I tell myself, of course, him too.

  He hasn’t spotted me yet. In fact, no one is paying me any mind, and it can only be because everyone here finds all the others’ faces so familiar. For my part, that resemblance disgusts me. How I despise them all of a sudden, every last one of them, with their anxious brows, their hunted look—all those frustrations, all those fears oozing from their glistening skin. Do I have that same shining skin, greasy with fright and fatigue?

  I approach the counter with a slightly hesitant step. The policeman on duty gives me an irritable glance.

  “I’m here to see Inspector Lanton,” I say, in my firm schoolteacher voice.

  “He expecting you?” the man asks, seeming to think it unlikely.

  “He’s expecting me,” I say, deeply relieved to hear that Lanton still works here.

  “OK, I’ll let him know.”

  I turn around toward the room. My ex-husband is watching me with the dubious, aggrieved eyes our son inherited. I reluctantly walk toward him. I’m starting to swea
t in the oddly tight cardigan, but I don’t want to take it off or unbutton it. I want everyone here to have only the vaguest idea of me, to have no notion what sort of top I’m wearing under my cardigan, and so on. In short, I don’t want to reveal anything that might confirm how entirely I belong to this family of people.

  “Nadia?”

  “Well yes,” I whisper, “it’s me.”

  His lips slowly tighten into a sarcastic little smile that immediately takes me back to the life we once lived together. I frown, telling myself: Never once did my poor Ange take up the cruel weapon of sarcasm.

  “You’re looking prosperous,” he says, inspecting me from head to toe.

  He smiles again, joylessly. He’s become a little man with long hair and a restless face racked by nervous tics. So, I say to myself, shocked, this is my first love, and perhaps even, yes, the one true love of my life.

  “You’re here to see Lanton too?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I say, deeply surprised. “Why do you want to see him?”

  “To get my ID card renewed,” he murmurs, scarcely opening his mouth.

  He’s seems terribly tired and anxious. I give him a steely look, not telling him I’ve come for the same thing. I feel stronger than my ex-husband, and more confident.

  “You hated him, you hated Lanton,” I say, very quietly. “You couldn’t stand it that he was our son’s lover.”

  “That’s true,” he says, “and it still makes me sick just to think of it.”

  I can see that he’s close to shouting in rage at the mere mention of their relationship.

  “You’re so infuriating!” I explode, because his offended, irascible air takes me back to the time when our son abruptly broke up with Lanton and I suspected my ex-husband of driving him to it.

  “And yet here you are coming to see Lanton,” I say, viciously.

  “Not by choice, I assure you,” he says.