Marie NDiaye - Ladivine

She leapt up and hurried out, her nausea peaking.

Her broken sandal dragged over the tiles.

“No coffee?” asked one of the servants, coming back from the kitchen with a cup-laden platter.

Ladivine thought she heard something insolent and contemptuous in his voice, and she had the distinct impression that he was deliberately barring her way to the front door.

She sidestepped him, giving him a brusque bump with one shoulder, and walked out into the white-gravelled courtyard.

The heat hit her in the face, throat and arms, like so many blows aiming to knock her off her feet or drive her back into the airconditioned hall.

But she held her ground, tottering, resolute, took a few uncertain steps forward, searching for a shady spot.

The forest started up close by on all sides, and yet no tree shaded the Cagnacs’ property, not so much as a parasol sheltered the table and three metal chairs in the middle of the courtyard.

If the Cagnacs could tolerate this blast furnace, didn’t that mean they were made of that same metal, which could burn but remain unchanged inside?

Suddenly emerging from the forest, a couple came walking towards Ladivine.

Young, handsome, both dressed in white cotton, they greeted her pleasantly as they passed, then changed their minds, as if struck by something they hadn’t first seen, and walked back to face her.

“I’m sorry, we didn’t recognise you,” said the young woman, taking her in her arms.

Ladivine felt a pair of firm little breasts against her chest, a delicate ribcage, a heart full of sincere affection beating inside.

Perfumed with a renowned, high-priced scent, the woman’s neck bore a dark down, like the cheek of a new-born.

The young man embraced her, maintaining a slight distance, respectfully, thought Ladivine, so his chest and her breasts wouldn’t touch.

They smiled at her in such simple, obvious friendship that tears came to her eyes.

After a quick glance at Ladivine’s feet, the young woman took a pair of sandals from the big leather purse she had over her shoulder.

“I brought these for the test drive, but here, take them, you need them more than I do.”

She bent down and waited for Ladivine to hold out one foot, then the other, which she did, not even embarrassed.

Though her feet were wider than the young woman’s, the sandals fitted wonderfully.

They were pretty, flat-heeled, made of natural leather.

In one quick, nimble move the young woman slipped Ladivine’s old sandals into her bag, as if to put right a mistake or expunge a lapse in taste, then stood up again, pleased and pink-cheeked. Just then Cagnac came out.

He hurried towards the young couple, his back slightly bowed, smiling obsequiously.

“So you know each other?” he couldn’t help asking, more curious than he wanted to seem, Ladivine told herself.

“Why yes, she came to our wedding,” said the young woman.

“Oh, I didn’t know, I didn’t know.”

And the young woman gazed thoughtfully at Ladivine. Her large, dark, expertly made-up eyes closed halfway.

In a quiet, distant, melancholy voice she said:

“That yellow dress you had on, it was so pretty. . I’d love to have one just like it.”

“And I’d be so happy to give it to you, if only I still had it!” cried Ladivine.

At that moment she would have given her her very life.

While the young couple tried out the car Cagnac had brought them, slowly circling the grounds at the forest’s edge, Ladivine went back inside, overcome by the heat.

The absurdly vast, high-ceilinged entrance hall, imitating a French château with its broad, flaring stone staircase, was empty but echoing with lively voices that Ladivine thought must be coming from the kitchen, and among them she thought she heard Wellington’s, which she put down to the shock of her encounter with the newlyweds, still coursing through her trembling, drained body.

She could not, she told herself, have been at that wedding. Who looked so like her that people might mistake them? And why did she feel it would be an outrageous lie to deny she was there, why did she feel she wasn’t lying at all when she confirmed that she’d gone to that wedding in a little yellow gingham dress bought three years before at the Galeries Lafayette in Bordeaux?

Just three weeks ago she was laying it in her suitcase, fully aware that it was too dressy for a trip such as this and would surely go unworn, and even then she had yet to wear it.

Oh, Ladivine knew why, even if she’d tried hard to convince herself that she was only waiting for the proper occasion, because in its plainness it was a very elegant dress.

No, it wasn’t that.

She’d never found the strength to put on that dress because she’d bought it during her last visit to Clarisse Rivière, with Clarisse Rivière at her side, and two weeks later Clarisse Rivière would be killed, not in a yellow gingham dress but in the beige Karstadt cardigan Ladivine had sent for her birthday, because Clarisse Rivière had gently but stubbornly refused to be given anything at the Galeries Lafayette in Bordeaux, even with her birthday so near, and even though a peeved Ladivine thought it would be only polite of her mother not to make such a fuss and simply accept a present that Ladivine would otherwise have to go out of her way to send from Berlin the next week.

But Clarisse Rivière wouldn’t be moved, smiling in her vague, cautious, uninvolved way.

“No, thanks, I don’t want anything,” she would say each time Ladivine showed her some potentially suitable garment.

“But it’s for your birthday, I want to give you something,” Ladivine answered in mounting irritation.

I have to give you something, and it would make my life easier if I could just do it now — that’s what she was thinking, slightly ashamed of herself, as she briskly slid the hangers along the rods, inspecting the clothes with a vexed and critical eye.

She was still angry from the day before, when she’d first met the man who was sleeping with Clarisse Rivière.

And, seeing Ladivine’s deep disapproval of Freddy Moliger, her mother had turned distant and cold, as if her consenting to a gift might authorise Ladivine to speak of her horrified misgivings about that man.

But Ladivine had no intention of bringing up Moliger.

She found this whole affair so incongruous, so shocking, that she couldn’t have spoken of it without disgust and dismay, and the last thing she wanted was to hurt Clarisse Rivière’s feelings, even if she suspected her mother was not quite as happy as she claimed.

In truth, she would not have known how to begin.

She did not want to think about that man, about her mother’s relations with him, and yet a quiet foreboding was forcing her to do just that.

And so she said nothing.

She’d taken Clarisse Rivière to the Galeries Lafayette in Bordeaux so together they could pick out her fifty-fourth birthday present, and now Clarisse Rivière was saying “no thanks” in her closed, quiet way, telling her there was nothing she wanted, now Clarisse Rivière was leaving Ladivine no choice but to face her own anger.

And Ladivine savagely shoved the hangers aside, one after another, confessing to herself that Clarisse Rivière’s desires and motivations were completely beyond her, and that this angered and upset and even disappointed her.

And she also admitted that, given the way things were, she had no real wish to please Clarisse Rivière, that this would be a purely pro forma present, because her anger was heavy with spite and frustration, and Clarisse Rivière had seen it and was now gracefully, somewhat frostily choosing not to take part in that joyless game.

She was there, but she wasn’t alone, because her lover was with her, even though he’d stayed behind in Langon.