Marie Ndiaye - Three Strong Women

Shame on her; she couldn’t tell anyone about it. There seemed to be nothing expressible or understandable about the mistake she’d made: a mistake, a crime against her own efforts.

Neither her mother nor her sister nor her few friends could conceive how Jakob and his daughter, Grete — both of them gentle and considerate, well brought up and likable — were working subtly to undermine the delicate balance that had finally been achieved in the lives of Norah and Lucie, before Norah — as if blinded in the end by an excess of mistrust — had obligingly opened her door to the charming incarnation of evil.

How lonely she felt!

How trapped, how stupid!

Shame on her.

But what words could she find sufficiently precise to comprehend the anger and disquiet that she’d felt two or three days before, during one of those family arguments that epitomized for her Jakob’s nasty underhandedness and her own feeblemindedness, she who had so aspired to simplicity and straightforwardness, she who had been so afraid of twisted thinking while she and Lucie lived alone together that she’d run a mile at the slightest hint of it, determined never to expose her child to eccentric or perverse behavior?

But she had been ignorant of the fact that evil can have a kindly face, that it could be accompanied by a delightful little girl, and that it could be prodigal in love — though, in fact, Jakob’s vague, impersonal, and inexhaustible love cost him nothing; she knew that now.

As on every other morning, Norah had gotten up first, made Grete and Lucie’s breakfast, and gotten them ready for school. Jakob, who normally only woke up after the three of them had left the house, emerged from the bedroom that morning just as Norah was finishing her hair in the bathroom.

The girls were putting on their shoes, and what should he do but start teasing them, undoing one girl’s laces and stealing the other’s shoe, running and hiding it under the sofa with howls of laughter like a mocking child, oblivious of the time and the distress of the girls, who, amused at first, ran around the apartment in pursuit, begging him to stop his tricks, on the verge of tears but trying to smile because it was all supposed to be comical and in good fun. Norah had to intervene and order him, like a dog, in that faux-gentle tone, pulsing with suppressed anger, that she used only with Jakob, to bring the shoe back at once, which he did with such good grace that Norah, and the girls too, suddenly looked like petty, sad women whom an impish teaser had only tried to cheer up.

Norah knew that she had to hurry now or be late for the first appointment of the day, so she refused tartly when Jakob offered to go with them. But the girls had encouraged him and backed him up, so Norah, weary and demoralized all of a sudden, gave in. Standing silently in the hallway with their coats, shoes, and scarves on, they had to wait for him to get dressed and join them. He had a way of being gay and lighthearted that seemed forced, almost threatening, to Norah. Their eyes had met as she glanced anxiously at her watch. All she saw in Jakob’s look was cruel spite, bordering on hardness, under his stubbornly effervescent manner.

It made her head spin, wondering what kind of man she’d allowed into her home.

He’d then taken her in his arms and embraced her more tenderly than anyone had ever done. Feeling miserable, she chided herself: Who can enjoy a taste of tenderness and then willingly give it up?

They had then trudged through the muddy slush on the pavement and clambered into Norah’s little car. It was cold and uncomfortable.

Jakob had gotten into the back with the girls (as was his annoying habit, Norah thought: as an adult, wasn’t his place in the front, next to her?), and while she let the engine warm up, she’d heard him whisper to the girls that they needn’t fasten their seat belts.

“Oh, why needn’t we?” Lucie had asked in astonishment.

“Because we’re not going far,” he’d said in his silly, excited voice.

Norah had gripped the steering wheel, and her hands had begun to tremble.

She’d ordered the girls to fasten their seat belts at once, the fury she felt against Jakob hardening her tone. Her anger had seemed aimed at them, the unfairness of which Grete and Lucie had expressed to Jakob with a pained look.

“We’re really not going far,” he’d said. “Anyway, I’m not going to fasten my seat belt.”

Norah pulled out.

She, who made a point of never being late, was certainly late now.

She was on the brink of tears.

She was a lost, pathetic creature.

After some hesitation, Grete and Lucie had given up fastening their seat belts and Norah said nothing, furious with Jakob for seeking always to cast her in the role of a killjoy or a villain, but also disgusted with herself for being, she felt, a coward, unworthy.

She’d felt like heaving the car against a bus, just to show him that fastening seat belts wasn’t pointless, but he knew that, didn’t he?

That wasn’t the issue. What was she doing? What did she want from this man who was hanging on her back with his adorable child in tow? What did she want from this man with the soft, pale eyes, who’d sunk his painless little claws in her flanks so that no matter what she did she couldn’t shake him off?

That’s what she could not, dare not, explain to her mother or her sister or her few remaining friends: the sheer ordinariness of such incidents, the narrowness of her concerns, the emptiness of such a life beneath the appearance of fullness that — such was the terrible power of enchantment wielded by Jakob and his daughter — so easily deceived mother, sister, and friends.

Norah’s father stopped in front of one of the cells that lined the corridor.

He opened the door carefully and immediately stood back.

“You’ll be sleeping here,” he said.

Gesturing toward the far end of the corridor, he added — as if Norah had shown a slight hesitation about this particular assignment—“There’re no longer any beds in the other rooms.”

Norah switched on the ceiling light.

The walls were covered with posters of basketball players.

“Sony’s room?” she mumbled.

Her father nodded.

He was breathing more audibly, with his mouth wide open, his back against the wall.

“What are the girls called?” asked Norah.

He shrugged, pretending to think.

She laughed, slightly shocked.

“Don’t you remember?” she asked.

“Their mother chose their names, rather strange names, I can never remember them,” he replied, laughing too, but mirthlessly.

To her great surprise she sensed in him an air of desperation.

“What do they do during the day, when their mother isn’t there?”

“They stay in their room,” he said abruptly.

“All day?”

“They have all they need. They don’t lack for anything. That girl takes good care of them.”

Norah then wanted to ask why he’d summoned her.

But though she knew her father well enough to be aware that it couldn’t have been for the simple pleasure of seeing her after so long and that he must be after something from her in particular, he seemed at that moment so old and vulnerable that she refrained from asking the question. When he’s ready, he’ll let me know, she said to herself, but she couldn’t help telling him, “I can only stay a few days.”

She thought of Jakob and the two overexcited girls, and her stomach tightened.

“Ah no,” he said, agitated all of a sudden, “you must stay a lot longer, it’s absolutely essential! Well, see you tomorrow.”

Slipping into the corridor, he trotted away, his flip-flops clacking on the concrete, his fat hips wiggling under the thin fabric of his trousers.