Marie NDiaye - Ladivine

And so, Ladivine thought at the time, frozen in sorrow, it was as if Clarisse Rivière had secretly deserved her degrading death, despite everything Richard Rivière had done, surrounding the altar with that heap of intoxicating flowers, in his attempt to honour her.

And how it comforted him, clearly, to find a knot of reporters awaiting their chance to interview him and Ladivine outside the church, for where she’d managed to choke out only two or three flat, rehearsed sentences, he’d held forth at length, fervidly, mingling in one single vindictive rage Clarisse Rivière’s murderer, some second cousin who hadn’t even apologised for not coming to the funeral, and his own distraught mother, who, clutching his arm, regularly broke in to ask when they would finally take her back home.

He angrily jerked his arm, as if to shake her off, but she seemed to have concentrated all the vigilance and strength she had left in her fingers, and her whole body, wispy, friable, weightless, lurched in time with her son’s furious twitches.

May guilt clutch him exactly like that for as long as he lives, Ladivine wished at the time, may it burrow its hooked head into his consciousness and never be dislodged, inaccessible as a tick in the middle of his back.

Oh, she loved her father all the same, she loved him with infuriated tenderness and dismay, yes, but what, if not love, was the warm delectation that swelled her breast when she thought of Richard Rivière?

She was still going on about the wonderful wedding, almost not hearing herself, the words pouring from her mouth in gilded torrents, sparkling with a thousand evocative gleams in the sparsely furnished, dark room. The old woman stared at her with a fascinated, vaguely hurt gaze.

Suddenly she heard Wellington snort. She paused and coolly turned towards him.

“We don’t care about those people,” Wellington growled. “You know where they get their money from? You know that, I imagine?”

“Not exactly,” answered Ladivine, as, she thought, a tension very slowly began to take shape, something coming her way, not yet outright hostility, but a stiffening, as if she’d abruptly fallen from favour.

“Well, you should have done some digging, maybe then you wouldn’t be here telling us all this. What gives you the right to think we give a damn about those people?” asked Wellington aggressively.

“Let her talk,” the old woman implored. “I love hearing about weddings.”

“We’ve got to be going,” said Marko firmly. “The children are tired.”

“Let her talk,” the old woman sobbed.

And from the others’ complete disregard for that woman, Ladivine realised it may have been a serious mistake to rely on this old crone’s presumed influence, of which as it turned out she had none, as she wandered into fabrication.

She was counting on the sway of a crazy old lady to lend her credibility!

And yet she’d spoken so well, with so many vivid details, she could so clearly see what she’d described that she almost found herself doubting she’d invented it.

Marko had risen to his feet, imitated at once by the children, their trepidation returning in the frosty, suddenly inhospitable atmosphere.

Ladivine knew she should stand up in turn, but a leaden inertia kept her in her chair.

And, although not quite sure what she’d done wrong, she wanted to make amends.

The old woman’s still-hungry gaze latched onto hers.

“How was the dance? Did they hire an orchestra, or what? Was there waltzing, or just salsa?”

“It was the famous orchestra of the Grand Hotel Regent’s,” Ladivine murmured. “They played a little of everything, but especially rock. They had that clarinettist everyone’s talking about, Tom Evert.”

“Ladivine, we’re going!” Marko cried angrily.

“We’re going, Mummy!” Annika frantically echoed.

Daniel began to sniffle. Ladivine slowly stood up, in a fog.

This time Marko dispensed with the handshakes. He merely addressed a vague wave to the silent assembly. Accusing, their huge shadows loomed on the dull blue wall.

Someone moved beneath the fluorescent light, his shadow surged, and Marko’s eyelids began to flutter, which meant, Ladivine knew, that he was afraid.

She took Daniel’s hand and, to her faint disgust, found it clammy.

She was crushed that the evening was ending this way, the children witnessing their parents’ failure to make themselves loved, their cowardice.

Although she knew it was unfair, she was angry with Marko, both for so quickly and with such manifest gratitude accepting Wellington’s invitation and for refusing the role she herself had consented to play for the pleasure of their hosts.

Because, had Marko only seconded and supported her, had he chimed in with a few details of his own (but what did he know of that wedding? was it not clear that she enjoyed an awareness of things he knew nothing of?), then Wellington would have kept his opinions on that family’s fortune to himself, thought Ladivine, and nothing would remain of this whole turn of events but the memory of a remarkable gift for fitting in. But no: here they were fleeing, ashamed and afraid, what had perhaps opened its doors to them as a model household.

She thought Marko had failed her terribly, that he’d lacked faith in her and was now dragging them into his own disgrace, infecting them with his craven terror. Hot and damp, Daniel’s poor hand attested to that, as did Annika’s eyes, open wide in ugly apprehension, whereas the two children had entered this room with joyful hearts, open and cordial, and ready to give of themselves without stinting.

Wellington’s sister sullenly showed them out, scuffing her soles on the concrete floor.

Obliged to open the door and lock it behind them, she had no choice but to accompany them to the threshold, but there, to chase them out into the street, she waved one arm in a sweeping gesture of contempt that eloquently expressed her real opinion of them, Ladivine noted sadly.

Then she viciously slammed the door, they heard the key turn in the lock, and Annika dissolved into tears. Ladivine thought she could so precisely feel what the little girl was feeling that she might easily weep along with her!

This rejection, this abandonment to the darkness and its possible dangers, no-one even trying to make sure they could find their way back to the hotel or successfully hail a taxi, all this proved that their lives were as nothing to their hosts, nor their safety, nor every last one of their emotions.

“Treated like dogs,” Marko mumbled, with a slightly unconvincing snicker.

He shot her a quick, accusing glance.

“Why did you have to tell them all that, all those lies?”

“I wasn’t lying,” protested Ladivine, shocked that he’d spoken the word in front of the children.

She smoothed Annika’s hair, gently pressed her close, feeling the sob-racked little chest against her stomach.

“You weren’t lying, Mummy?” asked Daniel.

“Of course not. It’s something else,” she said firmly.

She started off down the dark, empty street at a falsely decisive pace, having no idea of the way back to the hotel. The ground was sandy and shifting. She felt tiny pebbles in her sandals.

She heard Marko and the children following after her. Reassured but still vaguely angry, she did not look back.

For reasons she didn’t understand, her resentment, disappointment and irritation at Marko had begun to spread to the children as well, though with somewhat less virulence.

But what fault could she find with them, what fault could any- one find with such young children that wasn’t largely one’s own doing?

All the same, she could feel them blindly siding with Marko, and she blamed them for her own inability to win them over, wishing they could believe unconditionally in her prescience.