My Heart Hemmed In

by Marie Ndiaye

  I look at him more closely. He seems to have fallen on very hard times. He’s wearing a gray corduroy suit I remember from long ago. A dull-white residue coats his lips.

  “I don’t understand what’s happening to me,” he sighs. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you. Every day, you hear me, every single day brings a fresh load of inexplicable torments. I’m sick of it.”

  Pointless though it is, and pathetic though he now seems to me, I can’t help lashing out at him, whispering furiously, “You were so mean, so unfair to Lanton! Do you really think their relationship was any of your business?”

  “Well, I at least happen to think that everything to do with my only son is my business,” he retorts, showing his yellowed teeth.

  This veiled reference—which he’s still sharp enough to work into the conversation, I see—to my supposed lack of interest in our son (meaning that I preferred my students to my child) sets me off.

  “Oh, yes, you, the perfect father,” I say, “meddling in his son’s love life so he can ruin it!”

  “Aren’t you glad to have a granddaughter? That Lanton would never have made you a grandmother, I can tell you that,” says my ex-husband, cruelly triumphant.

  I open my mouth to answer, then close it again, ashamed. I was just about to bemoan the choice of that name “Souhar,” which I can’t think about without feeling a pain like a kick in the stomach, which is to say a humiliated, undeserved pain, as well as a violent one. But it feels wrong to complain about that to him, so I say nothing, even as I seethe at his self-indulgent distress and arrogant insinuations.

  “Why do we have to go on being enemies?” I say plaintively.

  He shakes his head, denying the indisputable truth just as he did back when we loved each other, pinching his lips with the look I still know so well, the look of a man who has right firmly on his side.

  “Well, I’m certainly not anyone’s enemy,” he says. “And I must tell you, I couldn’t be happier to be a grandfather, and besides, she’s a wonderful baby.”

  “You’ve seen her?” I say, hurt.

  He’s surprised.

  “Souhar? Of course I’ve seen her.”

  “Don’t say her name!” I bark.

  “They came to visit me six or seven months ago,” he says with cruel relish, having obviously understood that I’d seen no sign of them.

  “She’s such a smart baby. They let me feed her, and by the end of the stay she had a special smile just for me. I love babies,” my ex-husband intones.

  “All the same,” I murmur, “Souhar…” And I add, my eyes stinging, “I so wish we could be friends, you, me, and Ange. Ange is terribly sick at the moment…”

  But he’s stopped paying attention, suddenly reminded of his immediate difficulties by Lanton’s appearance in the waiting room. He stands up, waves, cries out, putting on an act of joyous surprise:

  “Over here! I’m Ralph’s papa!”

  Lanton’s fine, limpid gaze drifts over him so scornfully that even I feel indignant and hurt for my ex-husband. How I loved him back then! I find myself drifting into the strange distraction that’s been coming over me lately, just when I should be most focused and vigilant. I shake my head.

  “I was looking for you, Nadia,” says Lanton, giving me the same tender smile he always did when I came calling.

  All around us, the hopeful silence that greeted his entrance dissolves into crestfallen murmurs.

  “I think all these people were here before me,” I say, a little flustered.

  He casts a vague glance behind him.

  “Well, they’ll just have to wait,” he says. “It’s not like they’ve got anything better to do, right?”

  An ignoble relief courses through me. Lanton shows such disdain for those people that, if I was really as like them as I thought, he’d have to treat me more or less the same way, I tell myself, which means I’m not really like them after all.

  He graciously takes my arm, and I follow him back behind the counter and into his office, the same as before.

  “Nadia, I’m so happy to see you again,” says Lanton.

  He clasps my two hands and lifts them to his lips. My face flushes deep red with emotion. It’s been such a long time since someone spoke kindly to me.

  He takes a step back and examines me. His brow furrows.

  “You’ve put on a great deal of weight,” he says reproachfully. “You’re not watching yourself at all, are you? That’s not good, Nadia. You were such a nice-looking woman, weren’t you?”

  Ridiculously, I stammer out something like an apology. My head is spinning. I sit down on a chair facing his desk. He lets out an affectionate little laugh and hurries over to take me in his arms.

  “Forgive me, forgive me. Forget all that, it doesn’t matter. I know it’s you, and I’m so happy you’re here.”

  “Who else would it be?” I murmur.

  “When you haven’t seen someone for years, you’re not always sure you’ll recognize them,” says Lanton.

  He’s dressed in light-colored jeans, a thick white sweater, elegant boots. He’s tall, tanned, and muscular. There’s a distinctive gleam in the two green slits of his eyes, a gleam, I tell myself, of power and fulfillment. Still today, Lanton is a far more handsome man than my son.

  “Well, I recognize you,” I say. “You look wonderful.”

  “Why did you stop coming to see me?” Lanton asks.

  Agitated, he begins to blink very quickly. Looking for something to do with his hands, which I suddenly see trembling, he hooks his thumbs over his belt and lifts one buttock onto a corner of his desk.

  “Was it really that hard on you that I stopped coming?” I say, disconcerted.

  “Yes,” says Lanton. “I thought we were friends, quite apart from anything I had with…”

  “Forgive me,” I say, “oh, I swear, I didn’t know…”

  I don’t dare say how terribly I missed him, how many times I almost went to see him, little caring, in the end, what my son thought of me, whether I was making him unhappy. But I never did, because that other young man is my son, not Lanton, and I believed it was my son I had to implicitly obey, and yes, now I regret it, I regret it so deeply that I feel an unjust anger at my son well up inside me.

  We sit in silence. I’m not sure I trust Lanton now, because the brutality I saw him display in the waiting room seems new to me.

  I look toward the window. There’s nothing to see but the fog, dense and still.

  “Why does this fog never lift anymore?” I ask gloomily.

  Then, in a sudden burst of vigor, I appeal to him:

  “You noticed how I fat I’ve become, well it’s true, that happened after my son left you; I put on some of this weight over a couple of months, but it’s especially been in the past several days, because we have a stranger cooking for us and more or less forcing us to eat all the fatty, delicious things he makes; it’s true, they’re exquisite, but he’s secretly loading them with fat, I don’t know how he does it, because I can’t tell it’s there, it never bothers me while I’m eating… Anyway, that’s what’s going on, and… Oh God, Lanton, Ange is so sick, and I can’t do anything about it…”

  “Don’t do anything at all, no matter what,” says Lanton. “Don’t call the doctor, don’t take him to the hospital.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Lanton crosses his arms, buying time. An uncomfortable expression flits over his face.

  “You know perfectly well, my dear Nadia,” he slowly begins, “that people like you aren’t exactly in favor…”

  “What on earth does that mean, people like us? Besides, Ange isn’t like me,” I say.

  He puts his index finger to his lips.

  “Not so loud, Nadia. The walls aren’t that thick here.”

  Leaning toward him, I whisper, enraged, “I assure you, I have no idea what I am, and I can’t think of any sort of people I belong to.”

  “That may not last,” says Lanton, hesitant, profound
ly ill at ease. “You might change, Nadia. What’s the name of this stranger who’s forcing his food on you?”

  “Richard Victor Noget,” I say glumly.

  He whistles, admiring and surprised.

  “If I had the great Noget looking after me, I wouldn’t turn up my nose. And even if he’s taken it into his head to fatten you up, just let him; a lot of people would give their eyeteeth to find themselves under Noget’s glorious wing!”

  “Well, I’ve never heard of this Noget person,” I say.

  “You see?” says Lanton.

  I look at him, not understanding. But Lanton’s beautiful, tan face seems to have turned slightly hard and annoyed, as if from an irritation he’s struggling not to show, and so I hold back my question (what is it I’m supposed to “see”?), and I remember I came here this morning to ask for his help. I shiver at the thought that he could easily send me away empty-handed. And with that I think: If we hadn’t grown so close when he was my son’s lover, might he not treat me just like the others, might he not hate me and scorn me as casually and straightforwardly as he did them?

  “I’m going away, my friend,” I say quietly.

  “You’re doing the right thing,” says Lanton.

  “But I’ll be leaving Ange here…until he gets better.”

  My voice begins to shake. A rush of shame burns my cheeks.

  “This Noget will be looking after him.”

  “Really? Looking after him?” says Lanton, skeptical. “And where are you going, Nadia?”

  “To my son’s.”

  Lanton’s jaw clenches violently. He crosses his arms and tucks his hands into his armpits, as if to give himself a hug or to shield himself. He stares at me.

  “It’s been so long since I last saw him,” I say. “He has a child now, a girl, and, can you imagine…”

  I let out an overwrought little laugh.

  “No, you’ll never guess what he named that baby.”

  I break off, my throat tightening. Lanton’s eyes are half closed. Saliva shooting from my lips, I half shout, “Souhar! He named her…Souhar!”

  Then I slump back in the chair, genuinely exhausted, drained.

  “But maybe none of this means that much to you,” I say after a moment, “my son’s new life and these impossible ideas he has, like calling his daughter…”

  “Enough, Nadia, enough!” says Lanton with an exasperated groan. “You’re right, what do I care? What do I care if he named his kid that? What do I care that this kid exists?”

  “I just wanted you to understand how much he’s changed,” I say. “He’s clearly not the guy you knew anymore. Can you imagine him as the head of a family? All the same, it’s a real joy for me, a pure joy, even if I haven’t met the baby yet.”

  Suddenly Lanton seems dispirited. He slides off the desk, slowly walks to the window, peers out at the fog. Keeping his back to me, he asks, “Why did you come here, Nadia?”

  “I need to get my ID card renewed,” I say.

  “And him…he’s expecting you?”

  “Oh no. He has no idea yet.”

  I don’t add that I’d rather not tell my son I’m coming before it’s too late to stop me, but Lanton must have guessed, because he murmurs, “You’re planning to tell him once you’re on the boat, right?”

  “Yes,” I say with a sheepish little laugh. “But he can always toss me into the harbor if he doesn’t want me there. Incidentally, my son’s father is here, out in the next room, you saw him, he needs a new ID card too…”

  Lanton pivots on his luxurious boots. He’s livid, but I notice his eyes are damp.

  “I will never lift one finger for that guy,” he cries. “He can go die, for all I care.”

  “He is his father, after all, Lanton,” I say.

  “Not one more word.”

  He would never have snapped at me like this in the old days. I say nothing more, afraid it might turn him against me. I feel desperately sad for my ex-husband; I feel like I’m failing in some very basic duty I owe him.

  Suddenly Lanton sits down at his desk and begins to write a letter, as quick as he can. It still takes him a full ten minutes. Then he folds the sheet in four and slips it into an envelope, which he seals.

  “I’ll take care of your ID card,” he says, slightly breathless from an emotion I can’t deduce, “and in return you’ll do me the favor of giving this letter to your son.”

  “Of course.”

  The atmosphere between us is heavy with tension. How tenderly we once loved each other, words flitted back and forth between us with a butterfly’s delicate grace. He loved me more than his own mother, he trusted me, and I was as proud of him as if I’d raised him myself and made him so handsome and accomplished.

  There then comes to me a thought that must tint my cheeks and forehead with a distinctive shade of pink. Lanton notices. He lets out a little laugh, his lips curling in a heartless sneer, and says, “Something I should tell you about my letter to your son, Nadia: I’ll know if you don’t give it to him, because then he won’t do a very specific thing I’m asking him to.”

  “Suppose he doesn’t do it anyway,” I say, “just because he doesn’t want to?”

  “Impossible,” says Lanton firmly.

  I see a threat in his eyes. A tingle runs down my legs, right to my toes.

  “I know where to find your husband,” says Lanton.

  Aghast, I begin to shout, “Ange isn’t that sick, I can still take him with me!”

  “Ange is very, very sick,” says Lanton coldly.

  I stand up, quivering with anger.

  “Of course I’ll give your letter to my son,” I say. “Why would you think I won’t?”

  And my anger is sincere and intense, but at the same time faintly unreal, as if Lanton and I were masterfully playing characters very different from what we are in real life, even the exact opposite, and I realize there’s no way I can possibly stop loving him or hold anything against him.

  Evidently Lanton’s feelings are in tune with my own. He comes to me and clasps my cheeks in his hands. How horribly awkward!

  “I don’t want you to go away mad,” he says urgently. “In the name of all the good times we’ve had together, Nadia… Do you remember? I want you to have only happy memories of me, happy memories…”

  I murmur, “Dear Lanton, do something for my son’s father.”

  I gently push away his hands and give him a hug of my own. His hair still has the teddy-bear smell that used to make me smile, and it moves me deeply.

  My ex-husband is still slouched in his chair when I cross back through the waiting room on my way out. They’re all there, in fact—all those people, our comrades in sorrow, who, like him, place their faith in Lanton’s unlikely goodwill. I wink at my ex-husband (how I loved that man! I tell myself again), because now I’m sure Lanton will see to his ID card, however deeply he hates him. And what about me, for that matter, don’t I hate him every bit as much?

  In the course of just a few years, my son’s father has turned into one of those aging, disheveled, disgruntled wrecks who trudge along the sidewalk, cackling or cursing in time with the sour tide sloshing back and forth in their skulls. Just because that man cares nothing for what people might think of him, does that mean he speaks deeper truths than the rest of us, I ask myself, we who have learned to fear giving offense or seeming ridiculous above all other things? No, it most certainly does not, it might even be that this dark indifference strips him of any useful understanding of the world around him, I tell myself, profoundly sad for him.

  He doesn’t react to my wink. He seems defeated, ground down by worry. But as I walk past him he leaps to his feet.

  “Nadia, you’re huge,” he says.

  “Yes, so what?” I say, nettled.

  He bristles, he scowls, he breathes his hot, noisome breath into my face (how I once kissed that mouth, I tell myself again, how I sucked at that tongue!).

  “You don’t understand, my dear, that your fat is of
fensive,” he whispers. “I certainly can’t afford to be overweight, I’ll tell you that.”

  “Oh, I don’t eat that much,” I say.

  Uncomfortable, not looking at him, I add, “I can help you, you know. Here.”

  I dig into my bag, take out a fifty-euro bill, slip it into his raincoat pocket. He pats the pocket with a snide, almost furious little laugh.

  “And I can help you again,” I say.

  “Yes, and where will you be?”

  Caught short, I hesitate. I murmur, “At our son’s.”

  “That’s impossible,” he says, aghast. “He’ll never allow it. Oh, what do I know? He’s going to be shocked, deeply shocked to find you so fat.”

  “I’m still his mother, aren’t I?”

  “I don’t know if he’ll see it that way,” my son’s father answers, after a moment’s thought.

  For the first time his gaze is sincere, troubled by something other than his own sad fate. He lays his hand on my arm, parts his lips, and in the end says nothing.

  I slip away and hurry toward the front door. Words from such a man’s mouth aren’t necessarily any nearer the truth than any others. Why, then, am I afraid of what my ex-husband might want to tell me?

  You’re afraid of everything, I tell myself once I’m out on the sidewalk. I must look worried and lost. My breath is heavy. And then there’s another thing I must face: long accustomed to educating children, my students as well as my son, I don’t like being taught lessons. Often—and yes, I regret it, I feel terrible about it—I’ve cut short conversations in which I foresaw a lesson coming, or sensed some such intention. And I would laugh or throw out a joke or walk out of the room, and I could feel my skin prickling and shuddering at the threat constituted in my mind by the possibility that some wisdom was about to be imparted. Ange is the same.

  What sort of lesson is being forced on me by that intolerable name “Souhar”? What is my own granddaughter meant to be telling me, a girl just a few months old? Yes, Ange is the same. The moment someone sets out to enlighten him on any subject at all, he cries out: Oh, I can’t stand pontificators!

  I slowly walk away from the police station, my throat tight, short of breath—it must be the fog, permeating the city with a metallic smell. All at once a man comes striding energetically past me, jostling me, and by his baseball cap with its long transparent visor I recognize him from Lanton’s waiting room. “Betrayer!” he whispers in my ear.