Marie NDiaye - Ladivine

She had to overcome that frenzy she always fell into when she walked out on Malinka’s mother, which, at its peak, could knock her unconscious.

She had deep, inexhaustible reserves of coldness inside her.

She would dig deep into those reserves as she walked out of the door, she told herself.

But her excitement always won out, and she couldn’t help skipping like a child on the way to the station, her skin warming, flushed with the repressed fervour consuming her, the joy and the sorrow of freedom.

She vaguely remembered the days when her name was Malinka, a memory in black and white, with a fleeting impression of static faces, as if from some obscure old movie in which Malinka and her mother were not the leads but supporting actors for another, more interesting girl and her mother.

It seemed to her that she had known from the start, before she could even speak or understand, that Malinka and her mother meant nothing to anyone, that this was how it was and there were no grounds for complaint, that they were lowly flowers, their existence unjustified, lowly flowers.

Clarisse Rivière had forgotten the name of the town she grew up in, as she had forgotten virtually everything having to do with the life of that girl named Malinka.

She remembered only that it was outside Paris, and that at the far end of a cobblestoned courtyard near the railway line were two very clean little rooms, and one was hers, its window just above the ground, moss roses growing between the paving stones, and her mother slept in the other, on a fold-out couch crammed in next to the stove.

That girl Malinka had a room to herself, because she was a pathetic flower but also a sort of princess, oh, so alone, so unrecognised.

She was a princess to her mother, who often called her just that, Malinka’s mother who was a queen to no-one but only a servant, and came to seem one in that girl Malinka’s eyes.

“My princess,” the servant called her, more than she did “My daughter,” and in this that outwardly unremarkable Malinka surely found cause for vanity, thought Clarisse Rivière, although or because she was so very alone.

Her mother worked as a servant and cleaner in the city, in offices or spacious apartments, sometimes bringing Malinka with her, warning her not to touch anything, and she worked as a servant and cleaner at home, in those two rooms occupied by an unsung princess.

Her deep shyness vying with her self-importance, that girl Malinka followed the railway line to school, and nothing distinguished her from the children she joined in the playground, except that she had neither friends nor enemies and never spoke to the others.

She was better dressed than most, because her mother sometimes brought home beautiful skirts with scarcely a sign of wear or elegant little dresses given to her by the women who employed her.

Her mother, who was a servant, didn’t look as if she should be her mother, she who was a princess.

And so one day, when her mother came to pick her up at school and one of the other girls, addressing her for the first time, asked with a frown of surprise and disgust who that woman might be, Malinka replied: “My servant,” and felt she was speaking a very great truth.

All trace of repulsion vanished from the girl’s face, and she let out a satisfied and admiring little “Oh!”

And Malinka realised that disgust would have spread to this girl’s very body, she would have trembled and recoiled in a sort of horror, if Malinka had answered “My mother”, and that would have been what’s called a lie, since lies were ugly and repellent things.

Even alone, even colourless, a princess must never lie, Malinka must have thought.

That was how Clarisse Rivière imagined it.

Even as a child, that girl Malinka was already a lost cause.

But Clarisse Rivière also knew it was true, as Malinka had come to suspect early on, that their existence meant nothing to anyone in this world, not because those two, the servant and the beloved daughter, inspired any dislike, but simply because no bond linked them to anyone.

Malinka’s mother had no parents or brothers or sisters, although she had never said so and never brought up the subject, although, Malinka later told herself, there might well be, in that hazy province she came from, people who claimed to be her parents, her brothers, her sisters.

But since Malinka’s mother never spoke of them she and Malinka were embraced by no-one’s affection and solicitude, and when the door of the tiny house at the far end of the courtyard closed behind them, after dark, with the rain pounding and rattling the windows, Malinka felt they were as alone as if the whole world around them was dead, since in that world there was no love sent their way, since no tender or anxious words were ever exchanged about them, the servant with her thin face and long, restless limbs, and the girl she called her daughter, all appearances to the contrary.

When she thought about it, which she rarely did, that was how Clarisse Rivière imagined it: no doubt that girl Malinka scarcely knew how to talk, words too rarely had a reason to come out of her mouth, and as if that were not enough she feared they might come out with the servant’s slight accent, which she would have found mortifying.

And so she said nothing, or, now and then, answered her mother, who asked her about school only on principle and had no idea what kind of reply to expect, so foreign was that world to her.

Malinka’s mother was a naturally, inexplicably cheerful woman, Clarisse Rivière remembered.

She used to come home weighed down with shopping bags, bedraggled by rain and exhaustion, then turn on the gas under a nice piece of meat, with a side dish of vegetables she’d peeled and diced before work that morning, and her cooking always filled the air with a gentle, healthy, delicious aroma, as cheery as she, Malinka’s mother, who hummed, did a few little steps of a sliding dance on the tiled floor, never complained, never grumbled.

And so Malinka, unable to compare her life to other children’s, never having been invited to anyone’s house, long believed that her mother held no grudge against life or any living soul, not even the man whose face she looked for in crowds, whose figure or walk she relentlessly sought to find in every man she saw, but that irrational hope lay hidden behind words of lucidity and patience and so never appeared as what it was.

“Your father’s got to be somewhere,” Malinka’s mother would say in her calm, melodious voice. “We’ll run into him someday.”

And this seemed so indisputable that Malinka never waited for her mother to come home without thinking she might appear on the arm of the man who had been waiting close by, calm and patient as she, waiting for her to find him at last, and that man, with a musical voice and no trace of an accent, that man who could not show himself until his face had been spotted in the street, would be her father, her glorious father.

He was the only person Malinka’s mother ever spoke of, and she did so profusely, worshipfully, even if, Malinka came to realise, her descriptions were never particularly precise, and she seemed to know little of this eminent man’s life, past or present.

And so Malinka never felt his good will watching over them.

Unlike the naive servant, she knew that the man’s thoughts never turned to the two of them, that he might well know nothing of their existence, for they were only two lowly flowers.

“Your father’s a fine man,” Malinka’s mother often told her. “You know, he’s really, really nice. He has beautiful chestnut hair, and always wears it neatly combed back. He has a car. He might have a new one by now. I’ll bet he’s found a terrific job, too.”

Malinka felt no contempt for those hopes.