Marie NDiaye - Ladivine

When she called her daughter Ladivine in Germany the next day, she would tell her of Richard Rivière’s decision in a halting but calm, steady voice, and Ladivine’s palpable sadness would come as a balm to her, but then she would realise Richard Rivière had already told her, and, suddenly embarrassed, she would say nothing of her desperate need for consolation.

“I’m fine,” she would murmur in response to Ladivine’s question. “Yes, yes, I’m fine.”

She would later admit to herself that, against all reason, she was hoping Ladivine might rush straight to Langon, try to talk her father out of going away, press her to her young, vigorous, supple breast, and then everything would be just as it was, Richard Rivière would once again climb into his four-wheel drive every morning to go off and sell cars, carefree as ever, quietly, humbly, but visibly proud of his success, while she set off on foot, her jaunty heels clacking smartly over the paving stones, for the pizzeria where she now oversaw the waiting staff, and maybe Ladivine would move home again, watch over them, open her father’s eyes to the reality of their love.

Because they were in love, weren’t they? Clarisse Rivière, at least, felt an unmingled passion for her husband, unquestioning and uncritical.

But no such thing was happening.

The memory of the way it actually was came roaring back at her whenever she let herself drift into that daydream, or in the earliest hours of the morning, and she returned to reality with tears streaming down her cheeks.

Richard Rivière was still there beside her, cordial, watchful and distantly polite in a way that stung her cruelly. He was packing up his things, and Clarisse lent a hand, though she could see he didn’t like it, that it embarrassed him and, strangely, angered him.

She studied him when he turned his back, his tan nape, his hair, still thick and dark, the way his shoulder muscles bulged beneath his T-shirt when he lifted a box, then forgot to look away when he glanced furtively in her direction, catching her on the brink of tears, lost in thought, drained and hopeless.

He came to her reluctantly, gave her a distant embrace, as if taking care to avoid any gesture that might give Clarisse the idea his decision was anything other than irrevocable.

She felt that distance, and she clung to his neck, immediately thinking, Soon I won’t be able to do this anymore, and panic knotted her stomach. She bent double, silent, breathless with grief.

Richard Rivière’s body was as familiar as her own, and she thought she knew his face more intimately than hers, more than Clarisse Rivière’s narrow, delicate face, once a certain Malinka’s, which she always looked at askance in the mirror, uncertain and ill at ease, weary of that reflection.

She had never stopped studying Richard Rivière’s face, in repeated but serene wonderment, no longer sure if it was handsome or not, little caring, knowing it had aged and surely changed, but seeing it in the eternal present of her love and devotion.

How, she wondered, distraught and unbelieving, how would she ever do without that face? She might have gouged out her own eyes, had she not realised that Richard Rivière’s face would be just as absent to her blind.

“Where will you live?” she asked dully.

He paused for a very brief moment.

“In Annecy. I’ve found a place there.”

“That’s a long way from here,” she murmured, shocked.

“Yes, it is,” he said simply, with a half-shrug.

Then — out of discretion, she thought, perhaps to conceal any eagerness or anticipation in his eyes as he spoke the name Annecy

— he gently turned away.

They made love one last time the night before he left, and Richard Rivière, considerate and giving as always, seemed to her almost too attentive, hurtfully so, as if trying to soothe or appease her, to ward off an anger that she thus began to feel, almost reflexively, no such thought ever having entered her mind before, immersed as she was in shame and despair.

But no righteous anger could she feel. Were Richard Rivière’s reasons for leaving the house not perfectly valid, whatever they might be? Who was she to judge? Had she not made of the servant’s life a bitter bread?

She pressed hard against her husband’s body, bit his neck. He flinched, but he didn’t object. She hadn’t realised she was weeping, and her tears flowed between their two conjoined breasts, mingling with their sweat, equally salty, washing away any temptation or attempt to be angry, and leaving her, as for a few seconds longer she clung to that man who was at the same time herself, her husband and her son, horribly barren and sad.

When Richard Rivière’s four-wheel drive turned the corner and its silvery gleam disappeared, the August sun no longer illuminating the chestnut tree, dry, ignored and alone on the asphalted square, Clarisse Rivière took a few hurried, uncertain steps down the pavement, as if she had remembered that she was supposed to follow him and feared she might lose sight of the car.

Suddenly she stopped, her legs tangling, and she nearly fell over.

She let out a hoarse moan, sternly crossed her arms to steady herself, and then, as she was approaching the front door of the house, she caught sight of a big red-brown dog, emaciated and ungainly, in the sunlight’s almost unbearable blaze.

It was sidling towards her, watching her with one eye, its ugly head half turned away. Her vision dimmed in terror.

“No, absolutely not, not yet!” she shouted at the dog.

She began to run, raced into the house, slammed the door and pushed the bolt, turning the key in the lock.

Then she changed her mind, tremblingly opened the door, and offered herself to the wilting heat, putting on a brave smile but feeling her mouth and chin quivering. What did she care now, what could she care about anything now? What could possibly deserve her fear now?

The dog had gone on its way. She saw it turn the corner, it too, she told herself she’d been stupid and cowardly, and felt by turns freezing cold and devoured by a burning flame.

Had she not made of the servant’s life a bitter bread?

She thought she’d been fatally wounded, and had only to wait for her time to come, settling into that wait with the visible detachment and resignation she was so skilled at displaying.

Through the fog of her deep indifference to everything said around her, and even potentially said to her face, she sensed that people saw her as a humiliated woman.

Her daughter Ladivine, who telephoned often, and her coworkers at the restaurant, and Richard Rivière himself, who dutifully called once a month and wired her money she never spent, they were all doing their best, discreetly, affectionately, sometimes with openly expressed concern, to rescue her from her humiliation.

But she had never felt any such thing. Nor was she humiliated that people thought her humiliated, only vaguely surprised.

Richard Rivière’s leaving had filled her with shame, because it told her she’d failed in her attempt to offer all the love and generosity a human being might need, and more.

For, she thought, no-one could weary of such a gift if it was properly given, they’d know nothing of it, and it would filter invisibly into the tight weave of their lives.

And yet Richard Rivière had grown sick of it, and he’d run away, that was her failure, and that was what filled her with shame, but not humiliation.

She did not blame her husband, who’d done what he thought he had to, she blamed herself, and she felt ridiculous, pointless, heartless. She’d made of the servant’s life a bitter bread and in the end nothing had made up for that, though in her vanity she was convinced all this time that it had.