Marie NDiaye - Ladivine

Both felt his presence beside Clarisse Rivière, and both knew that man’s existence was turning them against each other, or rather, since Clarisse Rivière wanted nothing more than to see Ladivine one day approve of Freddy Moliger, turning Ladivine against her mother, fuelling an anger born with her first glimpse of Moliger’s sly, uncouth, stupidly cunning face, his way of sizing her up as he held out one clammy, evasive hand.

Ladivine couldn’t say a word about Freddy Moliger, because the simple fact of his being there was unthinkable, his being there between them, with his snickering half-smile, his perpetually furious, outraged, wary face.

It’s degrading to criticise someone like that, she was thinking.

It was simply unacceptable that she and her mother were having to deal with Moliger.

How, then, could she possibly imagine Clarisse Rivière offering him the vulnerability of her naked body, her undisguised, trusting face, perhaps her words of love?

That idea, those images, were more than Ladivine could bear.

Not because they involved Clarisse Rivière, her mother, but because they involved Freddy Moliger, whose mere hand repulsed her, his big, cagy, shiftless hand.

She gave up the search for Clarisse Rivière’s present and, resetting her sights, began looking for something for herself, so this trip to Bordeaux wouldn’t be for nothing.

It was then that she came onto the yellow gingham dress. She held the hanger up to her chin and clasped the dress to her chest.

Very nice, she read in Clarisse Rivière’s admiring eyes.

And indeed, were she invited to a wedding at this time of year, that was exactly the dress she would choose.

There was nothing she’d be more likely to wear than her yellow gingham dress, despite the abhorrence it caused her ever since Clarisse Rivière’s death.

Far from Langon, far from Berlin, in this land where her mother had never been, where nothing evoked her memory, she would certainly have found the courage to put on the yellow dress.

Who had done it for her? What woman, like her in every way, had worn that dress to the wedding?

Not the woman they’d seen at the market, who, even in that very dress, looked nothing like Ladivine. She must have got hold of it after the wedding, legally or otherwise.

Who, then, had boldly appeared in the yellow gingham dress from the Bordeaux Galeries Lafayette, bought by Ladivine out of anger and spite because Clarisse Rivière would not accept a gift offered with implacable bad blood, just as she silently refused to chase off the invisible but palpable presence of her lover, that Freddy Moliger she’d been seeing for several months, to whom she herself gave presents that were never spurned, whom she’d brought home, into her lonely, respectable house, where no blood had yet been spilled?

Ladivine could have worn that dress to a wedding, but even here, would she have found the courage?

And should she feel offended or grateful that someone had shown a daring that was perhaps beyond her, and that a stranger whose face people confused with her own had gone to that glamorous wedding to dazzle an admiring crowd with a yellow gingham dress that Ladivine had never put on, no more than Clarisse Rivière, to whom Ladivine had given not that dress but a beige cardigan later bought at Karstadt, after the anger and spite had subsided, but not the worry, nor the profound sense of disgrace?

Should she feel rescued or deceived? Should she feel humiliated or chosen?

Oh, she didn’t know, and perhaps she never would.

She climbed the broad staircase to the rooms the Cagnac woman had shown them before lunch.

The soles of her new sandals were neither slippery nor stiff, she thought she’d never worn any so comfortable.

Her legs felt slenderer, sprightlier, and her feet seemed to spring off each tread as if the young bride had also given her a little of her vitality, her high hopes.

On the second floor, in two rooms separated by a sliding door, Marko and the children were asleep, each in a generous, whitesheeted bed.

What was there to do after such a meal but sleep? she thought, apprehensive.

She took off her sandals and gently lay down beside Marko.

She closed her eyes, knowing she wouldn’t sleep, and when Wellington’s voice resounded in the corridor she first thought she was dreaming, having drifted off without knowing it.

But then she heard it again, a young voice, slightly sneering, speaking, in his peculiar English, words that Ladivine couldn’t make out from the bedroom.

Another boy answered, and they both began to laugh.

Lying hushed and stiff, Ladivine concentrated so hard on that voice that her head spun.

“Wellington, Wellington,” she murmured, sweat suddenly pouring down her face.

A still doubting joy, a still hesitant hope kept her pinned to the bed, perhaps waiting for some unambiguous sign, perhaps afraid that rushing into the corridor might shatter any chance that it really was Wellington.

At last she carefully got out of bed, opened the door, and there, at the top of the stairs, leaning on the banister, Wellington and another boy were chatting — one of the boys, she mechanically observed, who’d served them at lunch.

She saw Wellington in profile, speaking in his languid voice, head tilted back, ever ready to laugh at his own jokes.

He was resting his weight on one leg, and his very young man’s bony hips showed under the light fabric of his Bermuda shorts.

She silently closed the door and hurried to Marko, so excited that she stumbled on the polished wooden floor, suddenly unsure how to put one foot in front of the other.

“Wellington, Wellington,” she murmured, her breast swelling with overpowering rapture.

She shook Marko’s shoulder.

He opened his eyes, immediately breaking into a smile, and reached out for her.

“Marko, Wellington’s here, I’ve just seen him. He’s alive! He’s out in the passage. . Oh, darling, what a relief. .”

He frowned, perplexed, lost, and his arms fell back to the mattress.

“What Wellington? Who are you talking about?”

“You know! The boy you. . who went over the railing. .”

She broke off, realising Marko was only asking in hopes of a moment to choke back his fear.

For, beyond confusion, it was a blend of terror and deep disillusionment she saw pouring from Marko’s eyes, his suddenly ashen face, his trembling lips.

Rather than sit up on the bed, he burrowed under the covers.

She felt as if her body was slowly contracting.

“What’s the matter, Marko? Aren’t you happy? Aren’t you relieved, at least?” she whispered slowly.

“I was happy he was dead, you can’t imagine how happy! I don’t want to see him, I don’t want to hear about him!”

He was almost shouting. Tears of rage burst from his eyes.

Then the anger faded, and there was only bewilderment, disappointment, helplessness, very like the helplessness, thought Ladivine, that had gripped Marko’s face and made her afraid for him when they first landed in this country.

He turned his head to one side on the pillow. His cheeks were quivering like an old man’s.

“We’ve got to go back to the Plaza, I don’t want him alive here in front of me,” he whispered. “This damn holiday, it’s like it’s never going to end!”

To Ladivine, too, their stay seemed to be stretching out endlessly before them, like their very existence to come, but she was shocked to find Marko so anguished, when she herself felt only joy at the thought of it.

When Ladivine once again stepped out onto the gravelled patio, her feet so cosily and perfectly adapted to the new sandals that she could feel them throbbing with an eagerness to walk, a four-wheel drive pulled to a stop just in front of her, the young bride at the wheel. It was gigantic, with a belligerent snout and dazzling silver trim.