Adèle

by Leïla Slimani

  “Why did you marry Richard?” Lauren asks, as if reading her thoughts. “Were you really in love with him? I can’t understand how a woman like you could have ended up in this situation. You could have kept your freedom, lived your life the way you want to, without all these lies. It just seems . . . absurd.”

  Adèle looks at Lauren in surprise. She cannot grasp what her friend is saying to her.

  “I married him because he asked me. He was the first one, the only one so far. He had things to offer me. And anyway, my mother was so happy. I mean, he’s a doctor!”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I don’t see why I should have to stay alone.”

  “Independent isn’t alone.”

  “Like you, you mean?”

  “Adèle, I haven’t seen you in weeks and you can’t have spent more than five minutes with me tonight. I’m just an alibi for you. The way you behave . . .”

  “I don’t need an alibi. If you don’t want to do me a favor, I’ll find another solution.”

  “You can’t go on like this. You’ll get caught. And I’ve had enough of trying to look poor Richard in the eye while I tell him a load of lies.”

  “Taxi!” Adèle rushes into the road and a car stops. “Thanks for walking with me. I’ll call you.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Adèle enters the lobby of her apartment building. She sits on the stairs, takes a new pair of tights from her handbag, and puts them on. She rubs her face, neck, and hands with wet wipes. She arranges her hair. She goes upstairs.

  The living room is in darkness. She is grateful to Richard for not waiting up for her. She takes off her coat and opens the bedroom door.

  “Adèle? Is that you?”

  “Yes, go back to sleep.”

  Richard turns over. He reaches out across the empty bed, trying to touch her.

  “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  He hasn’t closed the shutters, and when she gets into bed Adèle can see the peaceful expression on her husband’s face. He trusts her. It’s as simple and as brutal as that. If he woke, would he see the night’s traces on her? If he opened his eyes, if he got close to her, would he smell a suspicious scent, would he sense her guilt? Adèle hates him for his naïveté, which persecutes her, which deepens her sin and makes her even more despicable. She wants to scratch that smooth, tender face of his, rip apart this reassuring bed.

  And yet she does love him. He is all she has in the world.

  She convinces herself that tonight was her last chance. That she won’t do it again. That from now on she will sleep in this bed with a clear conscience. It won’t matter how closely he looks at her, there’ll be nothing to see.

  Adèle slept well. With the duvet pulled up to her chin, she tells Richard that she dreamed about the sea. Not the old, greenish sea of her childhood, but the real sea: lagoons, rocky inlets, umbrella pines. She was lying on a hot, hard surface. A rock, perhaps. She was alone. Carefully, shyly, she took off her bra. Squinting, she turned toward the open sea, and thousands of stars—fragmented reflections of the sun on the water—prevented her from opening her eyes wide. “And in the dream, I thought to myself: Remember this day. Remember how happy you were.”

  She hears her son’s footstep on the floorboards. The bedroom door opens slowly and Lucien’s round, puffy-eyed face appears. “Mommy,” he whines, rubbing his eyes. He gets in their bed and, though usually so fidgety, so reluctant to hug, he rests his head on Adèle’s shoulder. “Did you sleep well, my love?” she asks gently, very carefully, as if afraid that the slightest wrong note might spoil this moment of grace. “Yes, I slept well.”

  She gets up, with the boy in her arms, and walks over to the kitchen. She feels exhilarated, like an imposter whose true identity has not yet been exposed. Full of gratitude for being loved and paralyzed by the idea of losing everything. At this moment nothing seems more precious to her than the reassuring sound of the electric razor at the end of the hallway. Nothing seems worth endangering these mornings with her son in her arms, this tenderness, this need he has for her and that no one else will ever have. She makes pancakes. Quickly changes the tablecloth that she’s left on the table for the past week despite the yellow stain at its center. She makes coffee for Richard and sits down next to Lucien. She watches him bite into the pancake and suck his jam-smeared fingers.

  While she waits for her husband to come out of the bathroom, she unfolds a sheet of paper and starts writing a list. Things to do, most of which should have been done long ago. Her head is clear now. She is going to clean up her life. One by one, she is going to jettison her anxieties. She is going to do her duty.

  * * *

  *

  When she arrives at the newspaper, the office is almost deserted. Clémence is the only one present, and she seems to live here. She always wears the same clothes anyway. Adèle pours herself a coffee and tidies up her desk. She throws out the stacks of printed articles, the invitations to events that have already happened. In little green and blue folders she files away all the documents that seem interesting, but which she will of course never look at again. With her mind uncluttered and her conscience appeased, she starts work. She counts out “One, two, three” to overcome her reluctance to call people, then picks up the phone and starts dialing numbers. “Try again later.” “Ah, no, you’ll have to ask that in writing.” “What? Which newspaper? No, I have nothing to say.” She keeps hitting a wall, but she doesn’t give up. Each time, she goes back into battle, rephrasing the questions that they refuse to answer. She is persistent. When she can’t write anymore, she walks through the long corridor that leads to a small inner courtyard. She goes out to smoke a cigarette, notes in hand, and repeats out loud her intro and her payoff.

  By four o’clock the piece is finished. She’s smoked too much. She’s not satisfied. In the editorial meeting everyone is animated. Cyril is thrilled. “Nothing like this has ever happened in Tunisia. I’m telling you, it’s going to get worse. This will end in blood.” She is about to send her article to the editor when her phone starts to vibrate. The white phone. She digs around at the bottom of her handbag. Opens it. A text:

  “Adèle, I can’t stop thinking about you, about that magical night. We have to see each other again. I’ll be in Paris next week—we could go for a drink or for dinner, whatever you prefer. It can’t end here. Nicolas.”

  * * *

  *

  She immediately deletes the message. She is furious. She met that guy a month ago at a symposium in Madrid. The journalists were there just to drink the free alcohol and enjoy their luxury hotel rooms paid for by a mysteriously funded think-tank. About three in the morning she followed Nicolas into his room. He had a hook nose and very nice hair. They had sex, stupidly. He kept pinching and biting her. She didn’t ask him to wear a condom. True, she was drunk, but she let him sodomize her without a condom.

  The next morning, in the hotel lobby, she treated him coldly. She didn’t say a word in the car that took them to the airport. He seemed surprised, disconcerted. He didn’t appear to understand that he disgusted her.

  She gave him her number. Without knowing why, she gave him the number for her white phone, which she usually reserved for the men she wanted to see again. Suddenly, she remembers that she told him where she lived. They talked about her neighborhood and he even said: “I love the eighteenth.”

  Adèle doesn’t feel like going to this dinner party. She had trouble choosing an outfit, always a bad sign. Her hair is dull and dry, her skin paler than ever. She locks herself in the bathroom and replies in a drab voice when Richard asks her to hurry up. Behind the door she can hear him chatting with the babysitter. Lucien is already asleep.

  In the end Adèle dresses in black. She never used to wear black when she was younger. Her wardrobe was wild and fanciful, all reds and bright oranges, all lemon-yellow skirts and electric-blue h
eels. As her spark faded with age, she came to prefer darker shades. These days she wears bold jewelry over her gray sweaters and black turtlenecks.

  Tonight she has gone for a pair of men’s trousers and a sweater cut low in the back. She highlights her green eyes—the color of a Japanese pond—with turquoise eyeliner. She puts lipstick on and then wipes it off. A reddish trace remains around her mouth, as if someone has just greedily kissed her. Through the door she hears Richard gently ask: “Are you nearly ready?” She knows that he is smiling at the babysitter as if to say: “Ah, these women . . .” Adèle is ready but she wants him to wait for her. She spreads a towel on the bathroom floor and lies down. She closes her eyes and hums a melody.

  * * *

  *

  Richard keeps talking to her about Xavier Rançon, the man to whose house they are invited. Xavier is a brilliant surgeon, the latest in a long family line of famous doctors. “A guy with an ethical code,” Richard stresses. To keep him happy, Adèle replies: “I’m looking forward to meeting him.”

  The taxi drops them in front of a pair of gates guarding a private driveway. “Classy!” Richard enthuses. Adèle too is impressed by the place’s beauty, but she would rather die than let her emotion show. She shrugs. He pushes open the gate and they walk up the paved path to the front door of a narrow three-story villa. The new owners have kept the art deco architecture while adding a floor with a large plant-filled terrace.

  Adèle smiles shyly. The man who opens the door leans toward her. He is stocky and wears a too-tight white shirt tucked into his jeans. “Hello, Xavier.”

  “Hello, I’m Sophie,” says the mistress of the house.

  Adèle offers her cheek in silence.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” Sophie says in a voice like a teacher’s.

  “Adèle.”

  “This is my wife,” Richard says. “Good evening.”

  They climb the wooden stairs and enter a vast living room with two taupe sofas and a 1950s Danish table. Everything is oval-shaped and immaculate. An immense black-and-white photograph of a derelict Cuban theater decorates the back wall. A candle on a shelf radiates the reassuring scent of a luxury boutique.

  Richard goes over to the men, who are sitting at the bar. They talk in loud voices, laugh at corny jokes. They rub their hands as they watch Xavier pour them glasses of Japanese whiskey.

  “Something to drink?” Sophie suggests to the women who surround her.

  Adèle holds out her glass. She looks over at the men and tries to find a way out, some excuse that will allow her to leave this group of squawking parakeets. These women are nothing. She does not even feel any desire to impress them. It is killing her to have to sit here and listen to them.

  “. . . So I said to Xavier, listen, darling, if we want this extra floor, we should do it! Sure, it’s three months of work, but look at the result: we’re in the middle of Paris and our villa has a living room like a cathedral! . . . The building work? Oh, it was a nightmare! It’s a full-time job, you know. Thankfully I wasn’t working. We’re so glad that we bought, though . . . It’s such a shame to waste thousands of euros on renting, don’t you think? The square footage? About 110,000. Incredible, isn’t it?

  “What? The children? Oh, they’ve been asleep for hours! We’re quite strict about their bedtime, so they didn’t wait up for you. I would have liked you to see them, though—they’ve grown so much . . . Marie-Lou plays the violin and little Arsène is starting to eat real food now. We found a really great girl to look after them. She’s African, very nice, and she speaks good French . . . Yeah, she’s got her papers. I wouldn’t mind hiring an illegal immigrant to clean the house, but not to look after my children. Never. That would be irresponsible. The only problem is that she observes Ramadan, and, you know, I just don’t get that. You can’t look after children when you’re starving, can you? No, you’re right, it’s not reasonable. But I’m hoping she’ll figure it out for herself and just stop. And what about you, Adèle, what do you do?”

  “I’m a journalist.”

  “Oh! That must be interesting!” Sophie exclaims, pouring more wine into the glass that Adèle holds out. She looks into her eyes and smiles, as if encouraging a timid child to speak up.

  “Well, dinner’s ready. Shall we move to the table?”

  * * *

  *

  Adèle pours herself more wine. Xavier, who is sitting to her left, takes the bottle from her hand and apologizes for not having served her. The other guests laugh at Richard’s jokes. Adèle doesn’t think he’s funny at all. She can’t understand why he’s the center of attention.

  Anyway, she’s not listening anymore. She is bitter and irritable. Tonight she seems unable to exist. No one sees her, no one hears her. She doesn’t even try to suppress the images that flash through her mind, that burn behind her eyelids. Her leg shakes beneath the table. She wants to be naked, she wants someone to touch her breasts. She wants to taste another mouth on hers, to feel a silent, animal presence. Her only ambition is to be wanted.

  Xavier stands up. Adèle follows him to the bathroom, at the end of a narrow hallway. As he comes out she stands in his way and rubs past him, sensing his unease. He goes back to the dining room without turning around. She enters the bathroom and stands in front of the mirror, moving her lips while smiling, miming a polite conversation with herself. Her mouth is dry and purple.

  She sits back down and puts her hand on Xavier’s knee. He quickly moves his leg away. She can sense his determination to avoid her gaze. She drinks to give herself more courage.

  “You’ve got a little boy, Adèle?” Sophie asks.

  “Yes. He’ll be three next month.”

  “How wonderful! And what about the next one? When do you think that will be?”

  “I don’t know. Probably never.”

  “Oh no! An only child? That’s so sad. When I think about the happiness a brother or sister can bring, I could never deprive my children of that.”

  “Adèle thinks children are too time-consuming,” Richard jokes. “But once we’re in our new house, with more space and a big garden, I think she’ll change her mind. You’ll want to fill it with children, won’t you, darling? We’ll be moving to Lisieux next year. I’ve been offered a fantastic opportunity to be a partner in a clinic!”

  * * *

  *

  It’s all she can think about now. Being alone with Xavier, just for five minutes, there at the end of the hallway where you can hear the echo of conversations from the living room. She doesn’t find him handsome, or even attractive. She doesn’t know what color his eyes are, but she is sure that she would feel relieved if he slid his hand under her sweater and then under her bra. If he pushed her against the wall, if he rubbed his erection against her, if she could sense that he desired her as much as she desired him. They couldn’t go any further, they’d have to be quick. She’d have time to touch his dick, perhaps even get on her knees to suck him off. They’d start laughing, then return to the living room. They wouldn’t go any further and that would be perfect.

  Sophie is an unattractive woman, thinks Adèle, staring at her hideous necklace. A string of yellow and blue plastic beads held together by a silk ribbon. She is a boring woman, Adèle convinces herself, an idiotic parakeet. She wonders what that kind of woman—an ordinary woman—is like in bed. She wonders if she knows how to feel or give pleasure, if she says “make love” or “fuck.”

  In the taxi home Richard is tense. Adèle knows that he’s annoyed. That she is too drunk, that she made a spectacle of herself. But Richard says nothing. He leans his head back, takes off his glasses, and closes his eyes.

  “Why do you keep telling everyone that we’re moving out of Paris?” Adèle goads him. “I never agreed to that, but you act like it’s a fait accompli.”

  “You don’t want to move?”

  “I didn’t say that
either.”

  “So you haven’t said anything. You never do say anything, in fact,” he observes calmly. “You never tell me what you want, so you can’t blame me for making a decision. And seriously, I don’t know why you feel the need to behave like that. To get drunk. To talk down to people as though you alone understand the mysteries of the world and we are just a bunch of moronic sheep. You know, you’re just as ordinary as we are, Adèle. The day you finally accept that, you’ll be a lot happier.”

  The first time Adèle visited Paris she was ten years old. It was during the autumn half-term holidays and Simone had booked a room in a small hotel on Boulevard Haussmann. For the first few days she left Adèle alone in the room. She made her swear not to open the door to anyone, under any circumstances. “Hotels are dangerous places, especially for a little girl.” Adèle had wanted to tell her: “Don’t leave me on my own, then.” But she didn’t.

  On the third day Adèle lay down under the thick duvet of the big hotel bed and turned on the television. She watched evening fall through the little window that overlooked a gloomy, gray courtyard. The sky outside was black and her mother still hadn’t returned. Adèle tried to sleep, lulled by the laughter and advertising jingles emitted by the television. She had a headache. She had lost all notion of time.

  Though desperately hungry, she didn’t dare take anything from the minibar, which her mother had told her was a “rip-off.” She rummaged around in her backpack in search of a chocolate bar or the remains of a ham sandwich, but all she found were two boiled sweets with scraps of tissue paper stuck to them.