My Heart Hemmed In

by Marie Ndiaye

  An incredulous little laugh escapes me as I turn the pages, confronted with the undeniable truth: this is exactly what Ange wrote in the articles he managed, not without effort or colossal pride, to have published in several journals, which I then couldn’t get out of reading, since he would have been gravely insulted. I even think I recognize bits and pieces of certain sentences, whole phrases, a rhythm, almost a breath, I think I can hear Ange breathing!

  I put the book back on the shelf, turn toward the principal. A last lingering hope makes me ask her:

  “Have you heard of Ange Lacordeyre?”

  “No,” she says.

  “He’s written articles on these same subjects, he…”

  “Richard Victor Noget is often imitated,” the principal interrupts, with a touch of arrogance in her smile, “but he has an instantly recognizable style all his own. Still, it’s true, there are some very talented plagiarists out there.”

  “When did his first book come out?”

  “Twenty years ago at least,” says the principal.

  Nothing of Ange’s is that old, but if he’d stolen from Noget, wouldn’t he have been caught? Can’t two minds think the same thoughts in the same words, a few years apart?

  Recess is ending, I hear the bell. Charming as ever, the principal casts a quick glance at her watch. She speaks a few words in that language I don’t know—or perhaps once knew and then unlearned, having so long cursed it—and seeing that I don’t understand she grows slightly troubled, as if suddenly alarmed that she’d greeted me as a peer, as if I might be an enemy hiding behind a friendly face.

  “I have to get back to work,” she says, with an apologetic smile.

  “Yes,” I say, “of course.”

  My hands clasp over my breast.

  “You wouldn’t by any chance,” I say, in a tone more pleading and desperate than I would have liked, “have something for me to do in your school? I’m a teacher, I’ve been teaching for years!”

  She freezes, silent and uncomfortable. She looks me up and down again, very quickly, from head to foot.

  Slowly, she answers, “I’m sorry, but we don’t have any openings.”

  She shakes her head, as if to forestall any further discussion. I start up again all the same, beseechingly:

  “I’d be happy just supervising at recess, and in the lunchroom at mealtimes.”

  “But you only seem to speak French,” says the principal, very polite, very gentle. “That won’t do for our children.”

  “I believe I’m perfectly capable of learning your language,” I say.

  She sighs, shrugs. She stands up to tell me it’s time I was on my way. Oh, I don’t want to go.

  The fact is, I know your language, I’d like to cry out; I pretend I don’t but the truth is I know it more intimately than any other—won’t you please let me stay!

  I really don’t want to go. How untroubled, how safe I feel in this clearing ringed with still, vigilant blue pines, under the friendly gaze and protection of teachers like tall, kindly pines! Wouldn’t the thing twitching and scheming in my stomach have to surrender in an atmosphere so free of poisonous ruminations?

  The principal lays one hand between my shoulder blades and gently pushes me out of the room. Now the schoolyard is empty and silent. Only a muffled purr of voices from the closed-up classrooms seems to faintly stir the limpid air, an air as if rock-hard in its purity.

  So I have no choice but to walk out of the school, walk away from the clearing. I take one last look back before I start down the road. The principal is watching from behind the fence. She raises a hand, gives me a slow wave.

  36. High times on Rue Esprit-des-Lois

  Back in my son’s house, I gather my courage and pick up the dining-room phone. I punch in the number of our apartment in Bordeaux.

  A stagnant air fills the whole of my son’s house, but here the atmosphere is heavy with death, constraint, and fear, and—I say to myself, dread washing over me—the hacking, slicing, and chopping of too many commingled meats. I think I hear Arno panting behind the consulting-room door.

  The phone rings and rings. When someone finally answers, I say nothing, choked with emotion.

  “Oh, it’s you, Nadia,” says Noget’s voice.

  “How’s Ange?” I whisper. “Oh God, oh God… Can I talk to him?”

  He doesn’t answer. Everything goes quiet, as if he’d put his hand over the mouthpiece. I shout, “Monsieur Noget?”

  “Yes,” he says. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Nadia. No, I can’t put Ange on.”

  I then make out the clink of bottlenecks against glasses, bursts of laughter.

  “But how is Ange?” I say desperately.

  “Not so well,” says Noget.

  He seems distant, bored, as if I were being a terrible nuisance.

  “So you’re having a party at my place, Monsieur Noget?”

  “Your place, yes… Listen, Nadia, I believe I’d best hand you over to one of my guests, I have quiches and turnovers in the oven, and those tricky little cheese croissants…”

  He loudly sets down the receiver (on my little marble table?), calls someone over.

  “Hello?” says the voice of my ex-husband, my son’s father. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s me, Nadia,” I say in a tiny little voice.

  “Oh, it’s you? Hello, hello!” he says in English.

  He’s clearly drunk, and his high spirits bring a chill to my heart.

  He laughs. I can clearly make out Corinna Daoui’s harsh, rasping voice behind him. Meek and imploring, I ask, “Tell me how Ange is doing?”

  “Who?”

  “Ange! Ange! My husband!”

  “Your husband? But that’s me, my love, I’m your husband!”

  He laughs again, without cruelty, almost sweetly. Then the line goes dead—did he hang up? Or was it Noget?

  Arno erupts into furious barking. I hurry out of the room, run to take shelter in the yard behind the house. It’s untended, planted almost solely with chestnut trees. It’s so dark that the trees, the dirt, the few overgrown bushes, everything seems black. The yard is steeply sloped, clinging to the mountainside. I take a few steps downhill, my feet splayed to keep from tumbling forward. With every step I stumble over what I first assume to be gravel, kicking it before me, seeing pale little shapes rolling along. I plop down on my backside.

  For a moment I sit where I’ve fallen. My fingers dig into the dirt. I pick up one of those pieces of gravel—but it’s not gravel at all, it’s a bone. And then another, and another: they’re all bones, an abundance of skeletal detritus in all different sizes. A groan of horrified surprise springs from my lips. I quickly stand up, dust off my clothes. So, I tell myself, they’ve killed all these animals, so many animals…

  I turn around and climb back toward the house. The bones shift and roll under my feet, under my groping hands—they spill down toward the valley, toward the blackened pines, toward the river’s dark, still waters.

  On this second night in my son’s house, I again get out of bed, forbidden to sleep by excruciating contractions. Unable to stand it any longer, I go to my son and Wilma’s room. Just when I’m about to knock, I still my hand. I hear a sound, the sound of a deep, superhuman breath. Could that be Arno exhaling, powerfully enough to rattle the door? But, I tell myself, Arno’s not so big that he… There’s an animal serenity in that breath, a wild, patient self-assurance, and the tranquil but vigilant pride of one who has laid a heavy paw on a defeated breast.

  I walk away as silently as I can, now more terrified of seeing that door open than of anything else. Back in my room, I latch the door behind me and open the window, hungry for fresh air. A white moon casts its cold light over the yard. I think of the little school in the clearing, wondering if the students stay there to sleep, if they spend their whole childhood there. Oh, I tell myself, I hope they don’t go home to the village! Violently, painfully, I wish I were there, in the milk-white clearing, in the friendly
shadow of the pines. How well I would look after those children, wherever they come from!

  Was I always fair and hospitable with the students—rare, in the neighborhood where I taught—who reminded me of Les Aubiers, was I always decent to the little girls who looked to one degree or another like the little girl I was? In all honesty, I wasn’t fair or hospitable or decent, I was unfeeling and remote, even derisive, silently wanting to see them eradicated, see them fly away, far away from my beloved school, and didn’t I sometimes picture them as pigeons, so multitudinous and filthy and unnecessary that they can be shot down without sanction?

  But now, I say to myself, how well I would look after those children!

  37. They still want to take care of their aging daughter

  This early morning in my son’s house goes by exactly like the one before.

  “You’ll go with Ralph on his rounds,” Wilma tells me.

  “Yes,” I say, “very gladly.”

  And my son acquiesces, without displeasure, as Wilma cuts up big pieces of duck pâté on her plate and puts them in her mouth with her fingers, trembling slightly with what I now know to be a desire so savage and an appetite so fierce that it hurts.

  And my son drives me back down to the seafront. We hardly say a word, but I sense that he’s already used to my being there, I sense he’s forgotten, in a way, that the woman beside him is his mother, who so filled him with rancor and rage. I myself never forget that this is my son sitting beside me.

  I’m so happy to be riding with you, I would tell him if I weren’t still afraid of his reaction. Was that you breathing so loudly last night? I’d like to ask. Or, I’d say, were you buried under the covers, waiting in terror for that woman to fall asleep at last?

  He parks his car in the hospital lot. He’s going to visit Nathalie’s child.

  “I’ll meet you back here,” I tell him, “I don’t want to go up.”

  He gives me a long look, then silently turns away and strides off to the hospital door, his big medical bag slapping his calf just as his schoolboy satchel once did. Unconcerned that he might see me (because my son knows perfectly well where my steps will take me, he knows perfectly well, and maybe he’s glad), I hurry straight back to the little street.

  I’ll walk by my parents’ house again, I tell myself, but I won’t go in, not yet. I feel my cheeks and forehead turn red. No sooner have I taken one step onto the refreshingly breeze-swept street than the words and melody of another song begin to float in the sweet, shimmering air.

  I’m in diapers,

  I’m in diapers,

  The child wails,

  Oh, how long will he wail?

  Again I recognize my mother’s voice, even grown piercing and thin with old age. That worn little bell of a voice won’t give up, it flutters down the street, drowning out the hum of televisions or conversations drifting over the other houses’ walls.

  I’m in diapers and I’m hurting,

  Oh Mama, how I’m hurting,

  Will that child wail forever?

  I’ve never heard that song before. But, I ask myself, almost angry, is that a song fit for the ears of a tiny little girl?

  The brave, battered goat bell of my mother’s voice draws me in spite of myself. I’m not far from the house. The door is wide open. Now my mother seems to be singing at the top of her lungs. My legs weak, I walk into my parents’ house.

  My mother stops singing. She’s standing near the sink, tiny and slight in the very cool kitchen. Her white hair is gathered into a wispy ponytail at the back of her neck. She’s wearing a long beige cotton dress, ornamented with arabesques.

  The baby, Souhar, her fingers hooked around the bars of a playpen, gives me a slightly blasé, superior look. Then she turns her eyes to my mother, waiting to see her reaction and no doubt match hers to it. My mother seems uneasy, expectant—but, oh God, what is she expecting?

  “Yes?” she finally asks, in her language.

  I swallow. In a murmur, I answer, “It’s me, your daughter.”

  “Which one?” my mother asks in French, after a pause.

  “Nadia,” I say.

  “Nadia?” my mother repeats.

  She puts her hands to her hair, as if to hide it, as if there were some rule that a daughter mustn’t see her neglected old mother’s hair. She glances at Souhar, looking lost. The child sees her bewilderment and grows worried, her chin quivering. My mother forces a reassuring smile, but Souhar seems not to trust her, watching for that false smile to fray, and my mother valiantly keeps it up.

  “Don’t you recognize me?” I say.

  “Of course I do,” says my mother.

  “No, you don’t,” I say, “I can see it.”

  And even though I’ve spent thirty-five years of my life doing all I could to ensure that no one in my family, should by some exceptional circumstance I run into them in the city, would recognize my face and my manner, at least not enough to approach me and speak to me; even though I inwardly snuffed out every visible trace of my upbringing so it wouldn’t leave its mark on my face or my way of speaking or standing; and even though the most glorious proof of those efforts’ success, the proof that would have delighted me most, would have been that on meeting this old woman I would summon up nothing in her maternal memory, I find myself somehow disappointed, almost shocked.

  “Sit down, Nadia,” says my mother.

  She sounds as if she’s saying my name to make sure she won’t forget it. I sit down at the table. My mother picks up Souhar, gives her a hug, and sits down in turn with the child on her knees. More for something to say than because I want to know, I ask, “Do you know where the baby’s mother is? Yasmine?”

  My mother begins to shake all over, from her head to her feet, whose flip-flops I suddenly hear clapping against the floor tiles. Her eyes fill with tears. She stands up, walks into another room. She comes back without the child in her arms, softly telling me she’s put her to bed. She sits down again.

  “You’ve seen the woman up there?” she whispers.

  “Wilma? Yes.”

  “She was the one who took Yasmine,” says my mother in a low, hissing, sorrowful voice.

  I repeat, “Took her?”

  But my mother presses her lips tight to keep herself quiet. She makes a hurried little gesture, pretending to toss something into her mouth.

  “Don’t eat any meat up there,” she mumbles, quick as she can. “If they try to give you some, say no. You haven’t eaten any, have you?”

  “No,” I say, frantic, sensing I’d be expelled from my parents’ house at once if I told the truth.

  My mother reaches out, strokes my hand.

  “I think I do recognize you now,” she says, “but you’ve gotten so fat, what could have made you put on all that weight?”

  “It’s menopause,” I say.

  “Yes,” says my mother, “that happens, my little girl.”

  The sound of my father’s footsteps comes from outside the door. He’s heard our voices, and he’s wondering if he should come in.

  “Look here, it’s Nadia,” my mother gaily cries in her language, “your daughter Nadia, she’s come back.”

  My father lets out a loud shout.

  A little later, in the kitchen grown quiet again, as if itself again, with Souhar still asleep, my mother confides, “Ralph brought the baby here so that woman wouldn’t take her too. He was afraid.”

  My father nods vigorously. The glances he gives me are still shy, but now they’re filled with joy.

  “That’s right,” he says, “he was afraid for the little one.”

  “That woman,” says my mother, “she put a spell on him.”

  There’s no hatred in her tone, no revolt, only the acceptance of something fated, an acknowledgement of bonds that can’t be undone. I then catch my father staring at my forehead—ardent, blissful. So, I tell myself, he loves the unlovely woman I’ve become, he still loves her…

  “Don’t go back there,” adds my mother. “Sh
e’ll take you next.”

  “Oh no,” begs my father, “don’t go back!”

  “Stay here, we have a room for you,” says my mother.

  I whisper, “You don’t feel any rancor?”

  They look at me blankly, vague smiles on their faces. The meaning of that word escapes them.

  “My poor son, my poor Ralph,” I say, “so I have to leave him alone in that house, with her…”

  “There’s no fighting these things,” says my mother.

  38. Everyone’s better now

  Noget spots me straight off in the crowd that’s come to hear him at the community center, and when he speaks he’s speaking only to me, even if his quick little eyes flit over the audience’s heads as he intones the clear, ringing words of his lecture.

  He’s clean, properly dressed in a suit and tie, but inelegant and even slightly indecent thanks to his paradoxical, nebulous flesh. I slip into the line of readers waiting their turn for a dedication. Sitting behind a table, he greets me with a sly smile. I bend down, my mouth very close to his ear.

  “Monsieur Noget, I’m ready to hear it now… Tell me… Is Ange dead?”

  “Dead?” he cries, feigning indignation.

  He bursts into a mocking laugh.

  “Nadia, Nadia! I don’t believe Ange has ever been better.”

  “Is that true?”

  I almost collapse in relief. Noget digs into a shoulder bag at his feet. He pulls out a wallet, and from the wallet a photo.

  “Look,” he says, “this is Ange with his new girlfriend, maybe two weeks ago. We were all out at a restaurant.”

  The man in the photo looks almost nothing like Ange. On the other hand, I immediately recognize the woman: Corinna Daoui. They’re sitting side-by-side, smiling, in fine spirits.

  “That’s nothing like Ange,” I say dubiously.

  “Yes it is,” says Noget, “look closer.”

  I hold the photo up to my eyes. The forehead, the straight nose, the full lips—yes, that could be Ange, thinner, younger, but it could also just as well not be.

  “I’m happy he pulled through, I really am,” I say, handing the picture back to Noget.