Marie Ndiaye: All My Friends

“Séverine is lazy. She’s kept eight of my books for fifteen years. She spends all her time on the phone. Séverine is not nice, Werner. She has nothing in her head. Séverine picks the wrong enemies and chooses her friends badly. She’s aging too quickly. Oh, she’s not an attractive young girl anymore, Werner. She’s turning fat and doughy. I don’t think Séverine deserves any better than the life she has now. What is this Séverine, deep down? A small person, savage and blind.”

Werner mutters to himself in irritation, standing a safe distance from my armchair. Then I reflect that the shop teacher raising my children must know Werner’s parents, as I’ve sometimes seen him entering their house, on Sunday, at the aperitif hour. Which means that my children, in a sense. .

“You don’t know Séverine,” Werner says sharply.

Over the years he came back several times, solely to see Séverine. She didn’t want to go to Paris. She’s never gone to Paris. And now, after years of study, he’s given up and left Paris for good, only to find her married to the Arab. He can’t understand it. He won’t resign himself to it. For Séverine was once his, Werner’s, more or less officially. What does this mean? That the Arab cast a spell on her? He can’t resign himself. He refuses to believe that Séverine could truly have chosen to marry the Arab. For what reason? What sense does that make?

“Séverine told me she loves him,” I declare.

“Séverine told me she loved me,” Werner growls, with a sinister, determined air that makes me uneasy.

He shakes his head slowly. In Paris, he then adds, he met all sorts of girls. But none had Séverine’s obscure, almost unbearable appeal, which has to do with the fact that she seems to imbue herself with existence only via the purifying element of a stern, grave demeanor, austerely and instinctively demanding, of which she herself has no idea.

“Séverine doesn’t run in your circles,” I say, full of spite.

“No matter,since Séverine is a religious woman,”Werner says calmly.

“Pff!”

Overcome with disgust, indignation, I can scarcely stop myself spitting on Werner’s white wooden floor. And all at once the lush, well-tended greenery I see in the garden seems corrupted in my eyes.

* * *

Now they’re all three in my house, obediently drawn here by an innocent invitation tendered and signed by the house itself — so I suppose, seeing them there, unable to imagine them showing up at my simple request. If my house schemes, can it not sometimes and by chance scheme in harmony with my desires?

They’re all here, my three former students: Séverine, the Arab, Werner, still so young in my eyes that I find it difficult to believe they’re as old as I was when I taught them. What sort of gratitude can I expect from these three? None, none, I tell myself, though unable to accept it entirely. And because the day before I spotted my two sons in equestrian garb in the street, because that attire and all that it signifies so scandalized me that I nearly, having no right to do so, went and rang the bell at my wife and the shop teacher’s house to tell them just what I think of a good upbringing cynically pushed to such an extreme, I spontaneously place myself closer to Séverine and the Arab than to Werner.

Séverine’s face furrowed with surprise on seeing Werner enter my living room. She defensively moved her hand toward her telephone, then gave up on that idea. Who was she thinking of calling for help? I wonder. My wife? Sentiments hostile to Séverine agglomerate in my mouth, forming a little ball of bitter paste, difficult to choke back. Then, as if planned out in advance, Séverine and the Arab square their shoulders. Their two faces look much alike. They stand straight and self-sufficient, unaware of their arrogance.

Werner tries to come closer to Séverine, but he stops, terror-struck, two meters away. The other two look at him, puzzled, ever so slightly repulsed, haughty and daunting. Their faces are similar, remote, radiating a haughty morality.

“I fear Séverine and her husband don’t live in the same century as we do,” I say to Werner with an urbane little laugh.

“Séverine, I’ve come back for you,” says Werner.

“This fine young man. .” I say, eager to tout Werner in spite of it all.

But no one hears my wispy voice, and no one pays any mind. I’m nowhere at all anymore. My house belongs to them, and all my belongings. Similarly, whenever I happen to bellow the shop teacher’s name in the break room, he turns to me with a curious, affable air — and have I not then, instead, murmured entreatingly: “Oh, if you would. . ” Or else, perhaps: “I wonder if you could tell me. . ”

Werner is red-faced and tense, hackles raised. He’s dressed in an elegant, pale blue shirt, a little tight at the neck. Séverine and the Arab are wearing well-pressed sports clothes. Werner’s right foot beats a distraught tattoo on my floor.

Then Séverine tells Werner his return means nothing to her. She tells Werner she’s married to this other man, and everything is just as it should be. Séverine says all this to Werner in a coolly confident voice, with no cruelty intended. But how to endure such a thing? Séverine and the Arab stand shoulder to shoulder, with their matching faces, their unfounded superiority, consecrating the occupation of my house.

Fist out, I leap at Séverine. She backs away, staggering, but she doesn’t fall, and she doesn’t speak a word. Séverine is strong and hard. The Arab pins my arms behind me and throws me to the floor. He kicks me several times, cautious and restrained, while, as if from another time, another age, I hear Werner’s anxious cries, and while, thinking what a grievous mistake it is, and how senseless, to seem to be taking his side against them, I tell myself with infinite regret that it will take far more than a rebuke such as this to get rid of me. It would take a great deal more than that.

I think I hear myself crying out:

“Take my house! Take my children! Take it all!”

My intestines are gurgling. Is that disagreeable sound drowning out my voice? Séverine hisses that I’ve probably broken her nose. Icily, she tells Werner not to touch her.

* * *

“We’ve got to get rid of the Arab,” says Werner.

“We’ve got to get rid of me,” I murmur.

“We’ve got to liquidate him,” Werner proclaims, gripped by a sort of frenzy.

He throws himself down in one corner of my big, desolate living room and begins to groan, head between his knees. He shows no concern for my condition. Who ever cares about his old teacher? Even when they’re thirty years old, I tell myself, the students think themselves caught up in the whirlwind of life, whereas nothing vigorous or enviable seems to have grazed the existence of their teacher, still mired in the same school after so many years.

I hoist myself onto the couch. My bones hurt. Werner hiccups that he’s been betrayed even more grievously than he thought, and not only Séverine but the Arab too has betrayed him, by taking a place he knew to be Werner’s. No, Séverine didn’t betray him. The Arab took her, bound her, such that Séverine has now lost. . her freedom of choice, her will, everything she. .

“Her husband works at the post office,” I say.

I’m buffeted by Werner’s long growl of contempt. But, in the end, is all this real? And in what way does it concern me, me to whom everyone involved owes such a great debt of patience, of understanding, of self-abnegation?

“Not to mention the books that were lent out and never returned,” I say.

“We’ve got to get rid of him,” Werner barks.

Is he going to say it? Place the burden of that mission in the hands of his former teacher?