Marie Ndiaye: All My Friends

“Why did you change your first name, Werner?”

“Because it’s the same as yours,” Werner will answer, in the crisp, precise, slightly proud voice of the excellent student who was once mine, and which aroused in me, at the time, a certain antipathy.

Vaguely hurt, I’ll say nothing, wondering why this young man, whom I’d taught with no small devotion, who was fond of me, who might even, discreetly, have admired me, should, having attained a loftier standing than mine, find it appropriate to turn up his nose at what made him, what propelled him to the place he now occupies, to the lavish and ridiculous house I’ll be so pleased to visit and sit down in, for that house will treat me fairly and lovingly.

Unmoved by my lot, Werner will add, coolly:

“Because it’s the same as yours, and Séverine used to hate that.”

He will smile his disturbing little smile, disillusioned and sorrowful but devoid of compassion, thoughtfulness, or curiosity. All around me, Werner’s house will offer its protection. The spirit of the house will disengage from Werner to come closer to me, understanding that for Werner the house is only a tool, and not the object of an affection that I myself wholeheartedly feel for it, asking nothing in return.

And Werner will offer me a drink, and I’ll jump. I’ll even begin to tremble a little. Raising one arm as if he’s threatened to strike me, I’ll say:

“No, no. No alcohol, never again.”

And oh, his distant smile, his detachment as he pours himself a glass of something or other, wanting to know nothing more about me!

* * *

And why the other one, then, Séverine’s husband? Why a husband for Séverine? How did that ever happen?

Séverine’s husband, the only Arab in the class, enjoyed a special protection and benevolence on my part, mediocre student though he was, and is it not absurd, is it not a sign of my blindness that I treated him with more care than I did Werner, who did my teaching proud, who played a palpable role in the establishment of my renown, but whom I didn’t like, for whom I had no regard, whom I never favored, despite his superior grades and his personal charm? Was I not misguided? Oh yes, I was misguided, misguided, misguided. For Werner’s parents were notoriously bourgeois, and on those simple grounds I allowed myself, with a perfectly clear conscience, to feel a disdain tinged with aversion for the young man who was not then named Werner, never particularly troubling to hide it from Werner, very likely assuming that having two medical-specialist parents is reason enough for anyone to expect no consideration or friendship from others.

I will come to Werner’s house, I’ll relax gratefully in one of his armchairs, upholstered in something very like silken female skin, though light green. But even as I enfold Werner in a thankful, expectant gaze, I will find a remorse, a sense of my own duplicity and foolishness, a vague fear tarnishing my pleasure and quietude in spite of me. Because I used to curse Werner, for living in the town center’s finest neighborhood. And his elegant little leather jackets, his brand-name jeans, his smart haircut, his countless pairs of athletic shoes, I hated all that with a slightly painful relish, remembering some boy or other, very like Werner, who’d tormented me for my pathetic appearance when I was fifteen.

And yet I will now find myself in the thrall of Werner’s house, driven from my own by an indecipherable tyranny.

And yet I will now find myself in the thrall of Werner himself, not so much of that young man who was once my student, not so much of him as of all that comes with him: my earlier misjudgment, his friendly house, his single-minded longing for Séverine, his comfort, his wealth. Before everything I once resisted, fighting off the temptation to envy him or find him impressive, I will lay down my arms. And I’ll watch Werner gracefully come and go, I’ll hear him offer me comforting words, offhanded, with no real friendship, simply because he has in his house a frightened and lonely man and has learned that one has a duty to say comforting words to those in my situation. I’ll tell him of the treachery of my house, my wife, and my sons, who, on abandoning me, lost all consciousness of my existence. I will vehemently refuse any alcohol. Nevertheless, I will never tell him how I once hated him, and when that memory comes back, with Werner there before me, I will blush in humiliation, unable to stop it, a simple-minded smile on my lips. I will be so unhappy that it makes Werner uncomfortable, Werner who enjoys such a mastery over his emotions.

* * *

I ask Séverine if she remembers that boy who now calls himself Werner. Standing before the big mirror in the entryway, Séverine stretches, fists clenched and raised high above her head, eyes half shut. I glimpse the creamy skin around her very deep navel, revealed by the pink sweater pulled up almost to the base of her breasts by Séverine’s pose.

“This Werner was in your high-school class, Séverine, and his real name is the same as my own. He went off to study and work in Paris, and now he’s back with us, and, Séverine, you’re the reason he’s here.”

I speak in a murmur, as overcome with emotion as if I were asking for Séverine’s hand.

“I taught you all, and that boy was the most brilliant student I’ve ever had, Séverine,” I add, with the vanity of a father.

Séverine eyes me coldly in the mirror. Slowly she lowers her arms, virtuous and assured, and I know that, perfectly confident in her own austerity, she would be no less unembarrassed or brusque had I actually seen her breasts.

Séverine did no work that morning. She drifted through the house, opening and closing the doors, tapping the furniture with a bent index finger, a discreetly critical expression on her dispassionate face. She seemed to be playing at inspecting my house like a potential buyer, but, roleplay being foreign to Séverine’s nature, I thought in a sort of outraged dismay that Séverine might actually covet my house. I could see that she felt no fear of the place. The empty upper-floor rooms greeted her pleasantly. I took note of all that with some gloom.

Séverine then answers my question: yes, she remembers Werner. To my great surprise, she adds that she once dated Werner, then left him for another boy, now her husband, and today they’re all thirty years old, meaning that these adventures date back to a distant, apocryphal, and even unlikely past.

“Ah yes, your husband, Séverine,” I say peevishly. “Do you believe your husband will ever do better than a job at the post office counter, Séverine? He was not a good student, not a good student at all. I believe, Séverine, that the past deserves our trust and respect, and I believe you have no right to consider the Werner question closed.”

But I stop there, shocked at myself, and fall into torrents of apologies, already cringing at what I see gleaming in Séverine’s bronze-colored eye: a pure, sovereign anger whose legitimacy enrages me.

I remember the pitiful grades that once disgraced Séverine’s work, like that of the boy who became her husband, I remember the peculiarity they shared, a total absence of the ugliness and indignity that reveals itself now and then on the brows of all backward students. Indeed, as I often vaguely reflected, did not the blot of their incompetence, displayed before the whole class, sometimes land on me, me, unjustly and incomprehensibly? As if the dishonor of a grotesquely bad grade lay with me, I who had written that grade with my own hand, and not with them, they who merely accepted it, without really accepting it, arrogant as ever. They think they’re too fine for all this, I often seethed, they want to play artist, and they feel only disdain for the teacher who sweats for them, stammering in his excitement and his yearning to please.