Marie Ndiaye: All My Friends

A tongue vigorously licked her hand, and there was that awful brown dog again, with the squashed nose and the slightly overlong ears, the unlikely crossbreed she’d encountered a little earlier, by the lakeside. Good-hearted and peaceable, it looked at Brulard with disinterested affection. It was dirty, repugnant.

“What’s that?” the employee grumbled from behind the counter.

“Oh, he’s with me,” said Jimmy’s voice.

“Wait, you have a dog now?” said Brulard with a stunned laugh, a yelp of pained incredulity.

Even more aghast, almost, to learn that this was Jimmy’s dog than she was to see Jimmy here in this hotel, so distant did that Saturday now seem, so like something from an entirely different age of their lives, that previous Saturday, when the idea of running away and the actual running away had taken shape in the space of two short hours, the hotel and the lake and the bank decided on with only a brief conversation, whispered and breathless, from cellphone to cellphone — and now Brulard, engulfed in melancholy, was regretting that that phone call lay behind her, that those quivering, conspiratorial minutes, full of something like ardent youth, were now in the past.

Suddenly, Jimmy was here, and with that how could Brulard not find her sense of impetuousness absurd?

“Where’s Lulu?” asked Brulard, wearily.

“On holiday with the Alphonses,” Jimmy quickly replied.

She scowled in distaste and surprise. She patted the dog’s head, hoping Jimmy might tell her something more about the animal, but her husband said nothing. In his pale eye, now fixed on her, she thought she made out a tinge of pity that filled her with alarm. Was it not in fact Jimmy who deserved a pitying gaze? Was it not him who’d been abandoned without one word of warning, not for fear of some anguished reaction, but in anticipation of the staggering boredom that his voice and his grim, gentle face always unleashed when he tried to prevail, to explain himself, to defend himself? Hey, Jimmy, there’s nothing to explain, Brulard would simply have said, no more than you can convince someone they’re loved. Hey, Jimmy, Brulard would have said, irritated, nobody can do that, can they? Instead of which, swept along by a passion, an inner lyricism she hadn’t felt for a very long time, she’d said nothing, and her leaving was like an escape, and the murmurs into the telephone like the whispers of two cautious accomplices, although there was nothing they had to protect themselves from, nor, truth be told, anything to protect.

And now Jimmy was here, and his mere presence made Brulard’s amorous adventures ridiculous, all the more implacably in that Jimmy was looking exceptionally sunny, and unexpectedly elegant (and just how, Brulard snickered to herself, had he paid for those pants and that leather jacket?), his unjustified but wholly convincing air of prosperity underscored by the contrast with the dog’s shabbiness, as if, out of nothing other than snobbery, Jimmy thought himself far too fine to associate with a handsome beast.

Brulard felt small and pointless. She recalled that the money hadn’t been deposited into her account, that she’d had in fact no word at all, despite all she’d been promised. Briefly pushed to one side, her exhaustion came flooding back. She felt a little vein throbbing in one eyelid.

“So, Jimmy, you got yourself this dog to replace me?” she said with a forced laugh.

“He was following me, and I adopted him because I thought he was you,” Jimmy said gravely.

“That dog, me?”

“I thought he was you. Granted, I might have been mistaken.”

Brulard’s telephone rang in her pocket. She couldn’t hold back a dry sob: she’d been waiting so long for this. She gently pressed the telephone to her ear, sidling away from Jimmy. At first, no one answered her meekly whispered “Hello.” Only a heavy silence.

“You’ve had your fun,” growled a man’s voice unknown to Brulard, so thrumming with malice that she frantically switched off the phone and thrust it deep into her pocket.

She raised two fingers to her lips. Help, help, she moaned. But she must not have made a sound, because Jimmy gave her a little wave from across the lobby, suddenly all smiles. Behind his counter, the employee was looking at Jimmy with a respectful benevolence he’d never shown Brulard, far from it. Who are my friends? Brulard asked herself. Who’s watching over me? Whose sympathy. . A piercing cry echoed in her head, though, to Brulard’s great relief, the young Eve Brulard was nowhere to be seen, and in a fit of wounded, pathetic pride she answered Jimmy’s smile with a similarly easy smile, decorous, distinguished. She was terrified. You’ve had your fun — but how could anyone, how could a humble soul generally and in every way doing the best she could, arouse so much hatred? And could it truly be said that she’d ever in her life actually had fun?

Jimmy’s dog ran toward her, leapt up, dampened her cheek with a hearty lick. For the few seconds that the dog’s eyes were level with Brulard’s, she had the brutal feeling that she could see her own anxious soul reflected or submerged deep inside them. The dark mirror of the dog’s pupils seemed to be showing her not her own miniaturized face but something else, unexpected, inexplicable — as if, Brulard told herself at a loss, her appearance had suddenly changed beyond all recognition, or as if the dog’s incomprehensible black eye were reflecting Brulard’s true, secret being, of which she herself had no notion, which she couldn’t describe, even on finding it thus revealed in the gaze of that pitiful creature.

“I brought you some things,” said Jimmy, suddenly close enough to brush against her.

And he went on, very quietly, his chin wrinkling up, his hairless, satiny face suddenly contorted:

“Oh, why did you go away? Tell me why?”

A moment later he got hold of himself. He stood up straight, twisted his mouth into a self-deprecating little grin. Good old Jimmy, thought Brulard gratefully, brave, thoughtful Jimmy. Unless what brought Jimmy here was something very different from what she assumed (her husband’s slightly fussy and excessive thoughtfulness). Was there not once again a sort of free-floating pity in the surreptitious glances he cast at her, at her body, her hair? She felt a surge of anger and fear. But, smiling, she gently shook her head. What’s happened? Who is my friend, my guardian? How I wish I could lie down for a few minutes, Brulard thought. To her deep chagrin, she felt an embittered wariness toward Jimmy taking root in her.

“Who was that on the phone?” he asked.

“I think. . it’s none of your business,” Brulard mumbled. With difficulty, she added:

“The fact is, I have no idea.”

They stood face to face, tense and still, but knowing each other so well in adversity that a sort of weariness fell over Brulard, and she told herself she’d been through all this before, in different circumstances.

“Needless to say, Lulu stays with me,” said Jimmy in a hard voice.

He went on:

“Forever, no matter what.”

“Forever?”

And Brulard could feel the smile on her frozen face, her exquisite, imperceptibly mocking smile, at which Jimmy would certainly not take offense, for he knew her as well as she knew him, and he knew that the more insulting, painful, and unjust was her meaning, the more overt and delicious Brulard’s smile would be, and the more carefree her voice.

“I’ll come and see Lulu whenever I can,” she nevertheless said, in a tone so sharp and unbridled that a sort of alarm, an unease softened Jimmy’s intractable gaze, as she thought to herself: he doesn’t know how terribly I need to sleep, everything’s different when you wake up, even Eve Brulard finds it hard to pursue me when I’m well rested.