Marie Ndiaye - Three Strong Women

It was hard to escape from Rudy, and Rudy was sometimes a real drag, whereas the little neighbor of about nine or ten never asked for anything and saw Mummy as his salvation. She for her part failed to notice that the boy’s firm legs were always in Rudy’s face, how those same legs seemed to always move when Rudy did, thereby blocking his way to Mummy.

Ah, it was him, it was Manille!

Terribly shaken, Rudy was wriggling more and more in his seat.

The sunlight, still tinged with the shimmering glow of Cathie’s pink blouse, shone directly on his face through the window.

He was hot, fearfully hot.

Manille seemed to be looking at him anxiously.

Was it not extraordinary that Mummy never reminded him of that period when a big boy, relentless but low key, filled the kitchen with his fateful presence every Wednesday afternoon? Wasn’t it extraordinary that she’d never told him that the lad was Manille?

Behind his back Mummy and Manille had both shared this secret memory — why, for God’s sake?

Manille was talking to him.

Rudy could be in no doubt that Manille represented for Mummy exactly the kind of son she would’ve wanted, but was that a reason for …

Ah well, what’s it matter, after all.

He tried to understand what Manille was saying to him in his subdued, mellow voice, but a violent feeling of injustice gripped him at the thought that Manille had always blocked Mummy and that she, for her part …

Man, was he hot!

Manille was so positioned that he was in shadow, whereas Rudy was blinded by the sun.

He then became aware of frantically rubbing his bottom against the chair until it squeaked, causing colleagues at the back of the room to turn around.

So what was Manille saying about that customer, Madame Menotti?

Without understanding exactly why, he had a sense of foreboding and unease at the mention of this customer’s name, as if he were aware of having let her down while being unable to guess in what way.

He thought he was done with Madame Menotti and her pretentious kitchen, the execution of which he’d followed from the outset, having sketched the plans himself, helped her choose the color of the wood, and discussed at length with her what kind of exhaust hood she needed. When it finally occurred to him to wonder why Manille had entrusted the whole Menotti project to Rudy’s unskilled hands, it didn’t take long to find out: Madame Menotti had phoned him at home in the middle of the night to say she’d awoken in a terrible fit of anguish — no, worse, in a hyperventilating fit such as she’d never before experienced — at the thought that the whole design project wasn’t at all to her liking and why couldn’t they simply go back to the original idea and line the walls with the main elements, why could they not go back to the drawing board regarding the entire conception of this kitchen, which, she admitted, spluttering with distress, she wasn’t even sure she really wanted anymore, sitting there in her nightie in her beloved old kitchen, why not forget the whole thing, she felt so bad, so bad.

It had taken Rudy a good hour to remind her precisely why she’d gone to Manille in the first place: because she could no longer stand the mismatched, outdated furniture and fittings of her present kitchen; then, almost drunk with fatigue and boredom, he’d assured her that her secret longing to see her life transformed, brightened up thanks to the installation of ingenious cupboards and a retractable hood, was not an absurd hope—“Trust me, Madame Menotti,” he’d said.

He’d hung up, exhausted, but too tense to sleep.

He’d felt a spasm of hatred toward Madame Menotti, not because she’d awoken him in the middle of the night but because she’d envisaged quite simply canceling weeks of tedious, disheartening work devoted to the attempt to adapt the woman’s complicated, reckless desires to her limited budget.

Oh, the time he’d wasted in front of the computer seeking ways of including an American countertop or a trash bin that opened automatically into plans she’d approved only to have second thoughts on them, oh, the disillusionment he’d often felt realizing that he had to apply to such trivialities nothing less than his full intelligence, all his concentration and ingenuity!

It was at that point, perhaps, as he was offering Madame Menotti reassurances in the middle of the night, that he, for the first time — certainly never before so acutely and painfully — that he got the full measure of his world’s collapse.

He’d gone over with Madame Menotti every aspect of the kitchen, which he found grotesque, useless (built to receive each day many discriminating guests, even though she lived alone and, by her own admission, didn’t much like to cook), since that was his job, that was his life, and she couldn’t have imagined that he had aspired to a university chair or that he’d once considered himself an expert on medieval literature, because nothing showed now of the fine erudition that he’d once possessed and that was slowly fading, slowly buried under the ashes of the worries burned without end.

Those that are in wedlock resemble the fish swimming freely in the vastness of the sea …

How could he extricate himself, he’d wondered in despair, cold and lucid, from this unending, pitiless dream that was his life?

… that comes and goes at will and comes and goes so much that eventually it encounters a creel …

“She’s expecting you, go at once,” said Manille.

Could he be referring to Fanta?

Rudy was sure of one thing, that if Fanta had stopped expecting him, her husband, she wasn’t expecting Manille either. For some reason, Rudy didn’t know why, she’d found Manille a big disappointment.

Manille turned on his heel.

“I’ve got to go to Madame Menotti’s, is that it?” Rudy asked.

Without looking back at him Manille nodded, then returned to the showroom, where he’d left his two customers, a couple, sitting on barstools, their fat legs hanging awkwardly down to the ground, while he’d gone to speak to Rudy.

From far off the man smiled vaguely at Rudy.

He held his beret in his lap and Rudy could see, even at that distance, his bald pate shining over his pink forehead.

“They are in our midst!”

Might it be, he wondered, that this couple interested in a complete period kitchen in dark wood fitted with wrought-iron cupboard handles and peppered with fake wormholes formed part of the company of angels who, Mummy was certain, visited us regularly and who we could recognize if (thanks to Mummy’s brochures) our souls were made alert to their presence?

As Rudy smiled back, the man immediately looked away, inscrutable.

… in which there are several fish that have been caught by the bait within, having found it sweet of smell and good of taste, and when our fish sees it he tries hard to get inside …

Rudy got up and went over to Cathie’s desk, trying to act natural.

His anus was still burning terribly.

He picked up her phone. Cathie pursed her lips but said nothing.

As a junior salesperson he wasn’t allowed a direct line.

He dialed his own number and let it ring a dozen or so times.

He suddenly felt his forehead and hands damp with sweat.

Fanta couldn’t hear — or chose not to — or else, he thought, she couldn’t answer because she was out or …

When he put down the phone his eyes met Cathie’s. She was embarrassed, unsettled.

“It seems Madame Menotti wants to see me,” he said cheerfully.

But he was in such pain that he felt his upper lip curling into the usual rictus. Unable to stand the burning itch any longer he scratched himself briefly, frenziedly, with one hand.