Marie NDiaye - Ladivine

But they did not, no more than Marko did.

From a rustling in the dark, the air discreetly shifting on the other side of the street, she knew that the dog was close by, no need to seek out the dim yellow gleam of its eyes in the night.

It wouldn’t let her go astray, she thought, and if it was now by her side, that could only mean the hotel was this way.

They were back in their room far sooner than Ladivine expected, from which she concluded that Wellington’s neighbourhood could not be more than a few hundred metres from the Plaza, that it was perhaps that very district’s winding streets and metal roofs they saw gleaming in the east each morning from their window.

Who knows, with binoculars, Wellington might well be able to spy on them from his house.

In any case, they were virtually neighbours, she breezily observed to Marko, determined to make peace, taking him in her arms as the children crawled into bed, but to her surprise he heaved an irritable sigh and wearily informed her that he’d had more than enough of her mystifications, that Wellington’s house was by the corniche, and thus a long way from the hotel, as evidenced by the lateness of the hour and the children’s exhaustion, not to mention his own, for unlike some people he couldn’t retreat into grandiosity and imposture and weirdness to take his mind off fatigue and sore muscles.

“I don’t want to fight,” Ladivine said in shock.

And tears rolled down her cheeks, her first since the death of Clarisse Rivière. Shaken, Marko put his arms around her.

She laid her forehead on his shoulder and smelled the strange, musky odour of his new tunic, the cotton stiffened by some unknown substance, something slightly oily.

“We all need some sleep,” Marko whispered.

His hair had picked up his new clothes’ strong smell, imbuing his whole person with a harshness that wasn’t his, as if he’d put on a disguise in a crude ploy to survive.

One or two hours later, she wasn’t sure, a violent noise woke her, and she thought the air conditioner must be malfunctioning.

At the same moment she realised Marko wasn’t beside her, and she saw shadows lurching and heaving on the tiny balcony.

She glanced at the children, both sound asleep.

The air conditioning was working in its usual way, with its loud thrum that always made you wonder, before you drifted off, how sleep could possibly escape it, and its sudden, unpredictable shutdowns that like it or not left you lying awake waiting for it to start up again, your ear vigilant, your heart pounding and raging. She sat up, put her feet on the carpet.

Now she could make out Marko’s form, which seemed to be grappling with another, shorter and slighter.

Marko’s back hit the glass door’s metal frame, again making the noise that had roused her.

She stood up, took a few steps forward, hiccupping in terror. What was she supposed to do? Call the front desk, ask for help?

She felt as lost as a child with no experience of the world.

She pictured herself picking up the phone and saying “Help!” in a muffled shout, but even as those images took shape in her mind she was moving towards the balcony, pulling aside the sheer curtains, stammering, “Marko?”

He was wearing only his underwear, and the other one was in jeans and a T-shirt, barefoot like Marko.

She’d recognised him a few seconds before, but she hesitated to utter his name.

Even given the circumstances, wasn’t she relieved to see Wellington before her, and not, as she’d vaguely feared from her bed, the big brown dog standing on its back legs? And Marko throttling that big brown dog as it panted in the dark?

Which would she have come running to rescue?

But no, it was only Wellington, thank God, she thought (not exactly a thought, more a sequence of sensations, first terror, then relief), and he seemed to be yielding to Marko’s calm, silent violence as he bent Wellington’s back over the railing.

Wellington rasped in pain.

And then, calm and silent, as if he knew just what he was doing, thought Ladivine dumbstruck, as if he’d been awaiting this moment to grasp at long last what his strength was for, the unforeseen strength of a thin, gangly, peaceable man, the strength of an urbanite finally unleashed, Marko clasped Wellington’s legs and flipped him over the railing.

They heard the adolescent’s surprised moan, then the thud of his body landing six floors below.

A stunned “oh!” escaped Ladivine, as if she couldn’t believe that this sound, like a heavy bundle falling onto hard ground, had been caused by Marko’s act, by his calm, silent, inflexible will, as if there were no conceivable link between the surprise revelation of Marko’s calm, silent violence and a teenaged boy’s body dropping onto a concrete terrace.

She leaned out, hoping to catch sight of Wellington, a string of singsong, almost light-hearted sentences running through her muddled mind — He’s about to get up and run off into the night, should we call him a taxi, we’ll stop by tomorrow and apologise, what on earth for — but she had only enough time to make out a still, dark shape on the pale grey pavement before Marko jerked her back inside.

He locked the balcony door, drew the curtain.

Then he went to the children, studied their sleeping faces in turn, almost suspiciously, Ladivine thought.

He wants to be sure they’re asleep, but what would he do if they weren’t?

His breath was loud and wild. Then he began to pant like a dog.

Little by little his face relaxed as he looked at the children.

The cold, quiet, self-assured fury that had clenched it and hardened it was now fading away.

He mechanically pulled the sheet up to cover Daniel’s shoulders, wandered aimlessly around the room for a moment.

Ladivine gently lay down again. She was trembling so hard that the bed creaked.

Marko turned on the water in the bathroom, then came back and lay down in turn, his hair and cheeks still wet.

“Marko, Marko,” murmured Ladivine, surprised at her own anguish-choked voice.

He took her hand, pressed it to his breast. He whispered:

“He was here to harm us, I’m sure of it. Rob us, kill us, who knows, maybe both?”

“But how. . how could he have climbed onto the balcony?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he went through the next room. If I hadn’t woken up in time. .”

He began to sob, like a dog, Ladivine thought again, in stifled yelps.

She pressed up against him and stroked his thin back, his delicate, hard shoulders, herself feeling fluid and limp, her boundaries erased, her body a liquid flesh spreading freely.

For the first time since they landed in this country, since she noticed the big dog before the hotel, she felt her fate bound up with Marko’s and the children’s just as it was before, no indecipherable exception now covering her, protecting her.

The thing in this place that didn’t like Marko, or Daniel or Annika, the thing determined to mortally test them, had tonight turned to her, abruptly wiping out any complicity between this land and her privileged self.

At this she felt more resentment than fear. She sensed that a vast undertaking would now have to be started anew, that she would now discover the true difficulty of that task, whereas before it had all happened without her even realising.

When she saw that Marko had gone back to sleep, she pulled away to a cool spot on the mattress.

Suddenly she was disgusted by the touch of Marko’s skin, the warm odour of his breath.

Wasn’t it like sharing a bed with Clarisse Rivière’s killer, inhaling the air expelled with his every tranquil breath, caressing his faintly pulsating skin?

Perhaps Wellington’s firm young skin was still moist and warm, she told herself, but Clarisse Rivière’s was most certainly now halfeaten by vermin.